The Disappeared (31 page)

39

Fresh information had leaked from the police overnight. Thea was watching the news while eating her breakfast. A knife and an axe had been found in the grave and sent to the National Forensics Lab, where they would try to establish whether the traces of blood on the weapons had come from the unidentified man or Rebecca Trolle.

Neither of them.

Thea forced herself to eat some of her breakfast. Otherwise, they would start wondering if she was feeling unwell; they would ring the doctor and cause all kinds of problems. A knife and an axe. Thea didn’t need to know any more to realise who else was waiting to be dug up by the police.

She felt a stab of anxiety. They mustn’t give up, they must carry on digging until all the dirt that had been hidden came to light.

There was a knock on the door, and the new nurse who didn’t know how to behave came bustling in.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

Her voice was shrill enough to crack the window panes.

‘You’ve got a visitor, Thea.’

She stepped aside and a tall figure was visible behind her.

‘Good morning,’ said Torbjörn Ross. ‘I must apologise for disturbing you in the middle of your breakfast.’

He smiled at the nurse as she left the room.

She couldn’t believe that he was still pursuing this with such determination. Or that he had the authority. But in fact, she didn’t think he had official permission at all. Torbjörn Ross was sick; Thea had realised that a long time ago. His recurring visits had been torture at first, but over the years she had learned that the best thing was simply to ignore him.

As usual, he pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. Too close. As if it wasn’t enough that she could hear him; he wanted her to feel his presence as well.

Thea stared at the television and carried on eating.

‘I see you’re following the Rebecca Trolle story,’ Ross said. ‘I can understand that.’

He sat there like a king on his chair, his hands in his pockets.

‘I’m sure my colleagues will be coming to see you. They know that you and Rebecca Trolle met. It was in her diary.’

Thea remembered the visit, the eager questions.

‘I think you can be free again,’ the girl had said. ‘Clear your name. It’s not right for you to be sitting here alone and forgotten.’

She had no idea how Rebecca Trolle had found out everything she knew; it was a mystery. Even though she didn’t know everything, she knew enough.

‘The nurse said you had a terrible cough last week,’ said Torbjörn Ross. He seemed concerned. ‘You’re no spring chicken; you need to look after yourself.’

He stank of snuff; it made her want to hold her breath.

‘This business of not speaking, Thea. You’re losing so much.’

He shook his head, looking sympathetic.

‘If you could only get this off your chest. We’d all be ready to listen, to help you.’

She would have liked to turn her head and stare at him at this point, but she forced herself to carry on eating her breakfast. Who were ‘all’ these people who would be ready to help her? During all these years, no one but Torbjörn Ross had continued to visit her. The other police officers didn’t care; they had moved on. The case of her missing son was regarded as insoluble, and under the circumstances she was deemed innocent. By everyone except Torbjörn Ross, who wasn’t prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. His obsession with the case terrified her.

She remembered their first meeting. She had immediately been aware that the look in his eyes was somehow different. Cloudy, unclear. Evil in a way that she was sure few people perceived. He had been young then, eager to learn, impatient when other officers wanted to take a break during interrogation. His role had been to sit and listen, to observe his more experienced colleagues.

She had watched him in silence. Seen the contempt that radiated from him behind the backs of his colleagues. He sat by the wall, behind the others, his arms folded, anger emanating from him and filling the entire room.

The first visit was to her cell. She had been afraid at first, thinking that he had come to hurt her. But he had just wanted to talk.

‘I know that you know,’ he had said. ‘And if it takes a lifetime, I will get you to talk so that the rest of us will know too. The boy will have justice. Whatever it costs.’

Many times, she wondered whether she ought to recognise him. Was he an old acquaintance, someone whose path she had crossed? If not, why the hell did he still care? Why did her son mean so much to this one policeman?

After three decades of visits, she thought she knew the answer to that question. Torbjörn Ross was crazy. If Thea wasn’t careful, her already wretched life could get even worse.

40

Fredrika Bergman was tired. Yet another night when she was unable to settle and get to sleep. Yet another night filled with speculation. Her brain was slow, unwilling to co-operate. Her heart was beating desperately, pumping oxygenated blood around a body that wanted only to rest.

A report from Kripos, the Norwegian National Crime Investigation Service, had been faxed through during the morning and was waiting for her when she got to work. A report on Valter Lund. She hadn’t been satisfied with the information that Lund was an immigrant from Norway; she wanted to know more, and had asked her colleagues in Kripos for help. What was his background with regard to education and training? Had he been married? Did he still have family in Norway?

The report was brief. Valter Lund was born in 1962, and grew up in Gol in Norway. His parents were both dead, no siblings. No living grandparents. The only living relative was an uncle who still lived in Gol.

Gol. Fredrika had been there once. It was about two hundred kilometres from Oslo, a charmless dump not far from the inviting ski slopes of Hemsedal. Low-rise buildings scattered in the middle of nowhere, with a railway line slicing the community in two. Was that where Valter Lund, one of Sweden’s most prominent businessmen, had grown up?

According to Kripos, Lund had spent two years at grammar school, and had not fulfilled his compulsory military service. He had a criminal record, and had been punished for a number of minor offences by the age of twenty. His father was heavily involved in criminal activities, and there was a suspicion that his mother had turned to prostitution. The Norwegian tax office had no income details for Valter Lund after 1979. At that point, Valter had declared a minimal income paid out by a shipping company based in Bergen.

Fredrika read through the report again. She didn’t know what to think. She tried to remember what she had read about Valter Lund in the past, how he himself usually described his background. Hadn’t he said he had a degree in Business Administration? Or was that something she had taken for granted?

She logged onto the Internet, searching for information on Valter Lund. She found plenty of interviews, countless articles, but nothing about his education. Valter Lund, smiling at the camera. Sitting at a desk, standing on a podium, in the back seat of a car. He looked friendly rather than over-confident. He was thinking about those who would be looking at the pictures; he wanted to convey the sense that he was a person who could be trusted. Fredrika met Valter’s gaze on the screen, let him get under her skin.

He had taken a different approach when it came to building his brand. He had taken responsibility, acknowledged the fact when he made mistakes. For two years in a row, he had given more than half of his bonus to technological support projects in Africa, south of the Sahara. His visits to places where these projects were running were documented in detail by the press. Valter Lund without a jacket or tie, his sleeves rolled up, his face creased with concern.

Fredrika recalled seeing the articles when they came out. She had admired Valter Lund’s generosity and his willingness to make a stand; she knew that he had fallen out with many colleagues in industry who felt that Valter’s contributions to development and security put others who gave less in a bad light.

Morgan Axberger had been less keen to open his wallet. In interviews, he naturally made positive comments about Valter Lund’s efforts, but he also maintained that the solution to global poverty was not to be found through providing support.

Therefore, while Valter Lund was regarded as warm and generous, Morgan Axberger came across as cynical and hard. Lund was the kid from Norway who had built his own success from nothing; Axberger was the man who had inherited both his position and his wealth. Valter Lund was often heard to say that there should be more women on the boards of major companies, while Axberger would smile with the authority of age when the question arose; in his opinion, the women destined for such a role were already in situ.

Fredrika thought back to the way Alex had almost burst out laughing when she suggested they should interview both Axberger and Lund. She herself found it difficult to see the funny side of the situation. After all, wasn’t everyone equal before the law?

For the first time, Peder and Alex were holding a private morning briefing in the Lions’ Den, with the door closed and the curtains drawn. None of the other team members had been informed.

‘What the hell do we do?’ Peder said.

Alex had been thinking about that very question almost all night. He had got home far too late and far too wide awake after visiting Diana. It was rare for those who were grieving to pass on energy to another person, but Diana did.

‘This is what I’ve decided: I’ll speak to Fredrika; then you go and pick up Spencer Lagergren. Unless anything else has emerged that changes the situation, in your opinion.’

Peder shook his head sorrowfully.

‘I don’t understand how she could have kept this information from the team.’

‘I do,’ Alex said drily. ‘She wanted to look into Spencer’s involvement herself, rather than bringing in the rest of us, because she’s convinced he’s innocent. To be honest . . . we would have done the same.’

Peder didn’t really want to think about that; he chose to carry on feeling annoyed.

‘Did you manage to find out any more about that film club?’ Alex asked.

‘A bit,’ said Peder. ‘It seems to have been a grade A gathering for snobs, if you ask me. Very few members with a very low turnover. The first time they were noticed was in 1960, when the four of them turned up at a premiere here in Stockholm, then slated the film in a review in
Dagens Nyheter
the following day.’

‘1960? It sounds as if they were active for a long time.’

‘Almost fifteen years. And there were never more than four members. Thea Aldrin was there from the start, as was Morgan Axberger. Thea was twenty-four at the time, and Axberger was twenty-one. Did you know that he defied his father for the first few years after his military service, and spent all his time writing poetry?’

Alex was surprised. Morgan Axberger’s father had founded the empire his son now headed; Alex had no idea the regime change had been preceded by some kind of rebellion.

Peder noticed his reaction.

‘I know, I was surprised too. Anyway, Morgan Axberger had his first collection of poetry published after completing his military service, and it attracted a considerable amount of attention and some very good reviews.’

‘And that’s how he became a member of The Guardian Angels,’ Alex concluded.

He could imagine that Axberger’s rebellion would have made an impression on someone like Thea Aldrin, paving the way for all kinds of things.

‘Who were the other members?’

Peder took out a sheet of paper with a poor copy of a black and white photograph taken at a film premiere.

‘Thea Aldrin and Morgan Axberger.’

He pointed, and Alex followed his finger.

‘And this guy on the left, can you guess who he is?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘That’s Thea Aldrin’s ex, the man she later stabbed to death in her garage.’

Alex let out a whistle.

‘He’s bloody tall.’

‘And she’s bloody short. Did you know that he acknowledged paternity of her son?’

Memories of his fishing trip with Torbjörn Ross came back to Alex. The weekend at his colleague’s summer cottage had left an increasingly bitter aftertaste. Alex had seen a new side of Ross – a side he didn’t like. A side that suggested things weren’t quite right.

‘So I’ve heard,’ he murmured in reply to Peder’s question. ‘What was his name, Thea’s ex?’

‘Manfred Svensson. Apparently, there was a real scandal over the fact that they were expecting a child and had no intention of getting married.’

Alex looked at the picture again.

‘And who’s the fourth man?’

‘A literary critic who died of a heart attack in 1972. Not exactly a celebrity. He was the one Lagergren replaced, by the way.’

‘Do we know how Lagergren became a member?’

‘No,’ Peder replied. ‘No idea. We can ask him when we interview him.’

The unpleasant feeling returned. Interviewing the partner of a colleague was something to be avoided, if possible. Suspecting that a colleague had withheld information during an investigation was even worse.

Alex broke the silence.

‘So who replaced Thea’s ex when he left the film club after they split up?’

‘That’s the only person I haven’t been able to identify. Some other high flyer, no doubt.’

‘And the film club kept going until Thea ended up in prison?’

‘Apparently not. For some unknown reason, it was dissolved a few years after Lagergren joined. I don’t know why.’

What was the connection between a film club and the disappearance and death of a twenty-three-year-old woman? Why did these odd characters keep on coming up in the investigation, over and over again?

‘We started with a bitter ex-girlfriend and a male friend who had a somewhat skewed view of reality, to say the least. We looked into the rumour that Rebecca was selling sex over the Internet; that turned out to be fabricated, but we still don’t know why. Then we found a supervisor who got into all kinds of trouble after Rebecca’s disappearance, and that led us to Spencer Lagergren. And now the cast has been increased with the addition of one of the country’s most noted businessmen. Two, if we include Morgan Axberger.’