The Disciple (23 page)

‘Torkel.’ It sounded weaker than usual. He turned and saw an ashen-faced Sebastian standing just outside the door, leaning against the concrete wall of the stairwell. It looked as if the wall was the only thing holding him up.

‘What?’

‘I need to speak to you.’ Sebastian was virtually whispering now.

Torkel went over to him, and Sebastian drew him a little way down the stairs. Torkel was annoyed; the last thing he needed right now was a game of Chinese whispers.

‘What do you want, Sebastian?’

The look in Sebastian’s eyes was almost pleading. ‘I think I might know her. Annette Willén, is that her name?’

‘We think so. She’s the person who lives here, anyway.’

It looked as if Sebastian lost his balance for a second; he leaned heavily against the wall once more.

‘How do you know her?’ Torkel wondered, slightly less annoyed. Sebastian was obviously upset.

‘We were in the same counselling group. Once. I only went there once . . . We had sex.’

Of course. Did Sebastian ever meet a woman he didn’t have sex with? Torkel doubted it. It didn’t usually mean anything to Sebastian, but he was clearly upset now, which gave Torkel a bad feeling.

‘How long ago did this happen?’

‘I left here just before five.’

‘What? This morning?’

‘Yes.’

Every sound receded.

‘For fuck’s sake, Sebastian!’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know . . .’ Sebastian was searching for the right words. He failed to find them. ‘I mean . . . what the hell should I do?’

Torkel looked around. Saw the uniformed officer standing with Billy and Vanja as they discussed door-to-door enquiries. Saw Ursula fetching a black bag and a different lens for the close-ups. Then he looked back at Sebastian’s colourless face. The man he had let into the investigation – which had just turned into a nightmare as far as the police were concerned.

‘You will go back to the station. And you will stay there until I get back.’

Sebastian nodded almost imperceptibly, but made no attempt to move.

Torkel shook his head in frustration and turned to the uniformed officer. ‘Someone needs to drive this man back to the station – can you get it sorted, please?’

Then he went back to join Ursula in the apartment. Back to the terrible crime which had previously seemed complex enough, but which now appeared to be the simpler of two problems.

Sebastian didn’t recall much about the drive back to Riksmord. He remembered that he had chosen to sit in the back of the car. He remembered that the driver had been a female officer. He was fully occupied in trying to understand this day somehow. The paralysing feeling of panic began to subside around halfway to the station. His logical thought process returned. He welcomed it. He needed to be able to function. He needed his intellect. The situation was critical. Annette Willén was dead. Murdered. The big question which Sebastian hardly dared ask was whether he had been allocated a role in the course of events. He had slept with Annette Willén. She had been murdered shortly afterwards.

He wanted to believe in chance.

Coincidence.

A twist of fate.

His entire being wanted it to be a mistake. But how great was the probability that the murderer had just happened to choose Annette Willén? Almost non-existent.

So far they hadn’t been able to find any kind of geographical pattern in the murderer’s choice of victim. One in Tumba, one in Bromma, one in Nynäshamn. And now Liljeholmen. The other women had been murdered in their own houses – two detached, one terraced. Now he had struck in a large apartment block, which involved a greater risk of discovery, and suggested even more strongly that this was not a random attack. Unfortunately. However Sebastian turned things over in his mind, he always reached the same conclusion.

There was a connection of some kind.

Him and Annette.

Annette and the murderer.

Sebastian went up to Riksmord. He didn’t really have a plan. He would wait for Torkel. He didn’t even know if he would be allowed to stay around for much longer.

He found his way to the Room. At least he could close the door and be alone with his feverish thoughts. He went and stood in front of the board with the photographs and notes. Looked at Billy’s timeline and the pictures of the previous victims. Soon Annette Willén would be joining them. None of them was exactly young. They were all over forty. Perhaps there was something in that. They all had history. More possible patterns in their past. He knew Billy had already gone through everything, but he had to wait for Torkel anyway, and it could be hours before he got back. He might as well do something. With a bit of luck, working would keep those other thoughts at bay.

On the table lay the three files about the victims, left behind by the team when they dashed off to Liljeholmen. Sebastian sat down and pulled the files towards him. They contained all the available information on each one, from official tax documents and details held on the electoral register to forensic evidence and interviews with everyone from the victims’ nearest and dearest to work colleagues and neighbours. Could he find something that no one else had noticed? The chances were very small. This team was the best in Sweden. But he intended to try.

He needed to do this.

He needed to try to understand.

He began to read. The first victim. Maria Lie. Separated from her husband Karl relatively recently, but the divorce hadn’t gone through yet. There was a lengthy interview with the ex-husband-to-be; it ran to ten A4 pages. Maria and Karl had been married for a long time, but the relationship had been childless, and they had drifted apart. Maria Lie worked as a finance officer with a recruitment company in the city. He worked for Tele 2, and the previous year he had met a younger woman and started an affair. Then came the discovery, the quarrels and the break-up in quick succession. Maria Lie had bought Karl out of the house; he needed the money, because his new partner was already pregnant. Maria Lie had recently applied to go back to her maiden name, Kaufmann, and they had . . .

Sebastian stopped. Read the name again. It couldn’t be.

KAUFMANN.

Ursula had finished taking photographs and wanted to wait for the crime scene investigation team to arrive before the body was moved and examined. The body wagon had been held up due to a serious road accident, and Ursula walked over to the living room windows to rest her eyes on something other than the pale, dirty grey body and the congealed blood on the bed.

Outside it was still a perfect summer’s day, with a clear blue sky. The blazing sun had moved west and was no longer shining straight into the apartment with full force, but the heat was still stifling in the stuffy room. Ursula carefully opened the balcony door and stepped outside. At least it was slightly cooler out there. The balcony was small, but had been lovingly tended; a beautiful yellow climbing rose in an ornate terracotta pot covered the concrete wall. Two folding chairs stood by the French-style bistro table in white-painted metal. The only thing on the table was a pale blue sugar bowl with slender white flowers on the enamel surface. Before long no doubt someone would pick it up and wonder what he or she should do with it, and all the rest of the stuff in the apartment. The things we leave behind. Ursula went over to the railing and looked out over the Essinge intersection and the green forest beyond. She watched the cars speeding by on the multi-lane highway. Inside the apartment a life had ended, while outside life continued to race by. That was how it worked. Life was a river; you couldn’t stop it however much you wanted to. However hard it seemed on the person who had been affected, just a short distance away life went on.

She took a deep breath, letting the oxygen fill her lungs. Closed her eyes and thought. There wasn’t a shred of doubt that it was the same murderer. Everything fitted, from the nightdress, the nylon stockings, the gaping wound in the throat to the rape from behind. In order to be absolutely certain she had looked for the storeroom that could be locked from the outside. There was nowhere inside the apartment itself, but Ursula assumed that not much had changed since she herself had lived in an apartment, even if it was many years ago. There ought to be a storeroom. And there was. In the cellar.

On the other side of a steel door she found a long corridor with a concrete floor. Naked light bulbs every five metres illuminated small storage areas behind chicken wire attached to wooden battens. A rough wooden door with a bolt on the outside led into each separate storeroom. A faint but unmistakeable smell of mould.

Ursula had walked past the identical cages until she reached 19, the number of Annette’s apartment. The padlock was broken. She had opened the door slowly and carefully, wearing gloves, and peered inside. This must now be regarded as part of the crime scene. There was comparatively little in Annette’s storeroom. Most of the ones Ursula had passed along the corridor were more or less packed. Annette’s housed only a few cardboard boxes, a floor lamp, a folding table, and four wooden chairs stacked on top of one another. In the middle of the floor the supplies were neatly arranged: the soft drink, the biscuits, the bananas, the bar of chocolate, the empty bottle for urine. They stood in a perfect line, each item precisely equidistant from the next. Exactly the same as at the other crime scenes. Ursula, the experienced crime scene technician, suddenly shuddered; it was something she would never admit to the others, but she found the precision with which the perpetrator re-created the same arrangement in every case terrifying. She crouched down, took out a small metal ruler and measured the distance between the items. As she suspected: 4.5 centimetres. He must measure it on every single occasion, she thought. That took time. But he allowed himself the time. That was how cold he was. How unstressed. That was how important it was to get it right.

To complete the ritual.

To do exactly the same as Hinde.

She had shuddered again.

Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard Torkel walk into the apartment. He seemed to be looking for her; he didn’t notice her on the balcony and headed for the small kitchen.

‘Torkel!’ she called out, tapping on the window. He looked up and nodded to her. His expression was serious. He came out onto the balcony and started with the simple stuff. The stuff he could understand.

‘We’ve been knocking on doors, but nothing so far. Annette was a quiet, respectable person. Didn’t draw much attention to herself. Apparently her ex-husband was a bastard, but nobody’s seen him for months.’

Ursula turned back to the view. ‘What about the friend who found her?’

‘Lena Högberg; she lives not far away. They were supposed to have lunch today, but Annette didn’t turn up. Lena kept ringing her all afternoon, but there was no reply.’

Ursula nodded in confirmation. ‘She’s been dead for less than twelve hours.’

‘Evidently things had been pretty tough for Annette over the last few years,’ Torkel went on, ‘so Lena got worried and decided to come over after work. She saw bloodstains on the floor through the letterbox . . .’

‘In what way had things been tough?’

‘The divorce, the son moved abroad, she lost her job. She was at a pretty low ebb, apparently.’ Torkel looked over at the traffic before continuing, ‘Vanja’s checking out the ex-husband.’

‘That’s probably a good idea, but it’s the same murderer. No one else.’

Torkel sighed heavily. Ursula looked at him. His expression was particularly grim, she thought.

‘We just have to make sure we do everything by the book now,’ he said, perhaps more to himself than to her. ‘We mustn’t miss anything.’

They fell silent for a moment, both gazing out across the motorway. Torkel took her hand and looked at her. She was surprised, but didn’t pull away.

‘We’ve got a problem. A big problem.’

‘What?’

‘Are you sure she’s been dead for less than twelve hours?’

‘It’s difficult to say because of the heat, but somewhere between six and twelve hours. Why?’

Torkel squeezed her hand even harder. ‘Sebastian had sex with her last night.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Sebastian Bergman had sex with her and left this apartment about twelve hours ago.’

Sebastian felt everything flow out of his body. Everything. The air. The power to act. The physical ability to orientate himself. He almost fell to the floor, and saved himself only by grabbing hold of the table. He clung onto the laminated surface as if it was the only thing keeping him from the abyss that had just opened up in front of him.

It was an impossibility.

It was a complete, utter impossibility.

And yet it was true.

This was what he had realised as he feverishly searched through the pictures, the interview transcripts, the witness statements, the personal details. Everywhere he discovered connections and memories he hadn’t seen before. The truth rose up before him like a pale figure, obliterating doubt, hope and blurred uncertainty. It took over his soul like an alien force. He was shaking, he could hardly breathe. The brutal realisation reminded him of that time on a beach in Khao Lak, where his inner being had met that deathly-white, implacable figure once before. On that occasion as he sat half-naked, sore and bleeding among wreckage and palm leaves, the movement had been coloured by the blackness of grief, paralysing him. This time in an office at police headquarters the insight crystallised into pure terror. Destructive fear. He tried to concentrate, to push away the thoughts so that he could somehow deal with the panic that was threatening to overwhelm him. He banged on the table with his clenched fist. Forced out a strangled roar. Anything to find some kind of focus and direction. After a few minutes he managed to get to his feet with a gargantuan effort. He swayed, but regained his balance and staggered over to the window, desperate to look at something other than the images of the dead women spread all over the table and pinned up on the wall. Outside, the sun was still shining. It had been shining on the beach on that day too, he found himself thinking, and suddenly he was groping for Sabine’s hand in his mind. He wanted to hold onto her. Not let go this time. Hide inside her child’s hand, disappear into her sun-warmed skin, her soft fingers. For a brief second he could see her there in front of him, those rounded cheeks, the blue eyes full of life, the hair curling over the back of her neck. He held her tight. Wanted to protect her as well as seeking protection himself. Protection from the truth that was there in that impossible connection. Disappear with his daughter forever.