The Man Who Watched Women (43 page)

Police work, absolutely.

Action and excitement, not so much.

Two months that felt like two years. That was why she had felt a small surge of excitement when she first heard about Lukas Ryd. A little boy. Missing. He might have been abducted. She had silently nurtured that hope until they arrived and established the facts.

Lukas's little Bamse the Bear rucksack was missing. Two cans of Coca-Cola and a packet of alphabet biscuits had also disappeared.

The kid had run away from home.

Or maybe it wasn't even that exciting.

He had woken up, felt like a picnic, and hadn't wanted to wake his parents.

So ordinary. So banal. So boring.

Jennifer Holmgren knew that this was probably the wrong attitude, but come on! He'd come home when he got too cold or too bored.

Unless he got lost, of course. There was plenty of forest around here. But at this time of year that thought didn't exactly produce a rush of adrenaline either. As far as the temperature was concerned, finding him wasn't a matter of urgency. That left quarries and lakes. Jennifer had thought of that as soon as she saw the garden. The boy could have wandered down to the lake and fallen in, but the family didn't have a jetty and the lake wasn't tidal, so if he had drowned he ought to be lying there in the shallow water.

Jennifer was allocated a search area a kilometre away. A small forest track on the other side of the main road. She felt a faint stirring of hope again. She had dismissed the idea of a planned kidnapping. The parents didn't seem to be rolling in money, in spite of the relatively large house overlooking the lake, but what about a random abduction somewhere along the main road? A little boy walking along in the ditch. A dirty old man. A paedo.

Not that she wished the child ill, or wanted him dead. Absolutely not. She really did hope that nothing had happened to him. But a bit of action, a bit of excitement … A tip-off about a suspect vehicle, the search, gradually closing in, the discovery, the strike, the arrest.

That was why she had joined the police. Not so that she could go for a brisk walk in the forest on a hot summer's day, searching for some kid who fancied a snack. She might as well have been a classroom assistant in a nursery, in that case. Okay, that was unfair, they didn't lose kids. Well, not often, but the principle …

She set off along the forest track. It looked as if it ended at a gravel pit or something similar, according to the map. Perhaps Lukas had got stuck in the gravel. Clambered up one of the heaps, then the loose stones underfoot had begun to shift. Slide. The more he tried to gain a foothold, the lower he sank. Could that even happen in a gravel pit? She didn't know, but the thought of heroically seizing the tiny hand that was the only thing protruding from the immense gravel canyon, of pulling the boy free, clearing his mouth and blowing life into him as her colleagues finally arrived … She lengthened her stride. She glanced distractedly among the trees on either side. His parents thought he was wearing blue cotton trousers and a yellow T-shirt with a short-sleeved blue checked shirt over the top. That was what he had been wearing yesterday, at any rate. Like a little Swedish flag running around in the forest. Jennifer suddenly wondered why the kid had run away from home. If it wasn't just a case of a six-year-old fancying a little adventure, of course. Had he run away for a reason? Jennifer had been furious with her parents on a number of occasions while she was growing up, who hadn't, but she had never run away from home. Could there be something exciting there? If she found the boy, she could pump him for information. He was only six. Children were still afraid of the police at that age, weren't they?

Jennifer reached the gravel pit. She was thirsty. Drenched in sweat. Flies buzzing all around her. The others were calling in via the radio on a regular basis. She didn't really see the point of reporting in every five minutes to say you hadn't found anything; surely it would have been better if they'd agreed that whoever found the boy would shout.

She hadn't found him, anyway. She was just about to turn back when she caught a flash of metal behind the heap of gravel furthest away, on the edge of the forest. She screwed up her eyes and shaded them from the sun with her hand. She could see a windscreen and a broken headlight. A car. It seemed an odd place to park a car. Very odd. Suspicious.

A prostitute who had brought a client here?

Someone dealing drugs?

A body that had been dumped?

Jennifer undid her holster and slowly approached the car.

Billy had showered and got himself a coffee. He glanced over at Vanja when he came back to the office, but she didn't even look up when he walked through the door, so he decided not to disturb her again. He hoped she wouldn't bear a grudge; he didn't actually know if she did that kind of thing or not. They had never fallen out before, as far as he could remember. Disagreed, discussed, but never quarrelled. He decided to leave it for a while, then if the worst came to the worst he would just have to apologise later. It wasn't the end of the world.

He sat down at the computer, logged on, put on his headphones and started Spotify on his mobile as he brought up a text document. He had written it last night when he couldn't sleep. It was just a series of points, a way of structuring his thoughts. It was the case, from the beginning right up to now. Ideas and theories. He had never tried working like this before; he just wanted to see if it would get him anywhere. He leaned back and looked through what he had written.

One possibility was that someone was killing Sebastian's former lovers and copying Hinde as he did so without there being any link whatsoever between the murderer and Hinde. It might just be an idea that some lunatic had had in order to get his revenge on Sebastian.

Highly unlikely.

Because Hinde was involved in these murders in some way. Sebastian seemed sure of it, and Vanja had also had a distinct feeling that this was the case after she had met Hinde. So they could probably assume that Hinde was involved.

But he couldn't carry out the murders himself. That was completely out of the question. In which case, as far as Billy could work out, that left two alternatives.

The first was that Hinde had asked someone to do it. On some occasion. Someone he had met only once. He had told this person that he wanted all the victims to have something in common, explained what that was, and subsequently the killer had acted entirely alone. He had followed Sebastian, and that was how he had found Annette.

Possible, but not really credible.

The sticking point was that the murderer had deviated from his MO when it came to Annette's murder. Women from Sebastian's past were suddenly abandoned in favour of his latest conquest. Why? If you toyed with the idea that Hinde had supplied a list of relevant women, would the copycat really have deviated from that list? Started to improvise?

Again it was possible, but not credible.

The only remaining alternative was that Hinde was in constant contact with the murderer. That they were somehow able to exchange information. With the murder of Annette Willén, it became clear to Billy that this had to be the case. The murderer followed Sebastian, saw Annette and told Hinde, who gave the order to kill her. Or Hinde had given the murderer the task of finding a woman who was more recent, so to speak. So that the link to Sebastian became clear.

Credible, but unfortunately not possible.

Because Hinde had no contact with the outside world. Or did he? Billy had spoken to Victor Bäckman at Lövhaga and had been given the details of Hinde's internet activity over the past few days. He was intending to start there. It was possible that someone had inserted coded information into the pages Hinde visited – a code only Hinde could interpret. Like in some old spy thriller.

But how did he reply, if that were the case? He couldn't use chat rooms, comment, or send anything at all from the computers in the library. Which meant there was only one alternative …

Someone patted Billy on the shoulder. Torkel. He took off the headphones.

‘Can we make a start?' Torkel said.

Billy gathered up a pile of papers from his desk, stood up and left the room. Vanja stayed where she was and closed her eyes tightly for a few seconds. She massaged her forehead with her index finger and thumb. The painkiller hadn't helped. She opened the drawer and took another tablet. Rinsed it down with coffee that wasn't even lukewarm any longer, and walked out into the corridor, where she almost bumped into Ursula. Sebastian was lumbering along a few steps behind her. Vanja ignored him.

‘Good morning,' she said to Ursula.

‘Hi. You look tired.'

Vanja nodded as she tried to come up with a suitable response. She didn't really want to advertise her midweek drinking binge. She went for an acceptable explanation for the dark circles under her eyes. Worry.

‘My grandmother is ill.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry,' Ursula said sympathetically. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?'

‘No. Anna's gone to see her. I'm sure she'll call …'

Sebastian smiled to himself. Anna had gone. Left the city. One less thing to worry about. He had thought about it a lot. What he had done. What he ought to have done. What he was going to do. If he had made a mistake and possibly led the murderer to Anna's apartment, the best thing would have been to post two police officers there to wait for the perpetrator. Smuggle them inside. Let Valdemar go out so that it would look as if Anna was home alone, then wait for the copycat to turn up. That would have been the best thing, the right thing, but it was impossible. How could Sebastian say that he was afraid that Anna might be next, when the victims had only one thing in common? It was out of the question. He would have to rely on Trolle. Who wasn't answering his phone. He hadn't picked up all morning. This was a cause for concern. Sebastian took out his mobile and tried Trolle again as he followed the others into the Room. No reply.

‘Sebastian …' Torkel was giving him a meaningful look. ‘We're ready to start.'

Sebastian put the phone in his pocket with a sigh.

Vanja reached for one of the bottles of water in the middle of the table; she opened it and drank deeply.

‘Okay,' Torkel began. ‘A quick update. Vanja, would you like to begin?'

Vanja quickly swallowed the last of the water with a little cough.

‘I've managed to eliminate Rodriguez from the theft of the car. The blue Focus was stolen two days after he cut across the E4 without looking where he was going. Drunk as a skunk, apparently.'

‘Anything else?'

‘Not as far as Rodriguez is concerned. There's nothing to indicate that he's involved in any way.'

Torkel nodded. A possible lead that had turned out to be a dead end. There had been a lot of those in this investigation. Too many. He turned to Billy. ‘Billy?'

Billy straightened up in his chair and more or less continued his musings aloud, starting from where he had been interrupted earlier. ‘I think someone is helping him.'

‘Congratulations, Einstein.' Sebastian brought his hands together in a slow clap. ‘It's pretty obvious that someone is helping him, isn't it?'

‘I don't mean with the murders. I mean with information. Contact. I think he has help inside Lövhaga.'

They all leaned forward. Interested. Focused. This wasn't a revolutionary suggestion – they had sniffed around the idea before – but Billy might have a new angle. One that might lead somewhere.

‘I've checked with Victor Bäckman, who's responsible for security out there,' Billy went on. ‘None of those held in the secure wing are allowed to communicate via the computers. However, two of them are allowed to use the telephone. Their calls are recorded; I've got the print-outs here.'

He picked up five sets of perhaps fifteen pages each and passed them around the table. ‘Names, addresses, phone numbers. There aren't many of them. One of them usually rings his girlfriend. The other usually rings his mother. There's the odd exception, but nothing regular. We ought to have a chat with them, though. The people they're calling, I mean.'

‘Absolutely.' Torkel looked up from the list he had just been given. ‘Vanja, could you sort that out?'

Vanja had to make a real effort not to show how surprised she was. The world had turned upside down. Billy was in the middle of a lengthy discourse about the case, mainly the more technical aspects, admittedly, but even so. He was pushing ahead. And she was supposed to sort out some uniforms to go and have a word with the people on the list he had given her. Her headache was getting worse.

‘Of course,' she said quietly, staring down at the desk.

‘Anything else?' Torkel was still looking at Billy.

‘If it isn't one of the inmates, it could be someone who works there. I've requested staff lists and I'm going to run them against everything we've got.'

‘I assume none of the guards at Lövhaga has a record?'

Billy shrugged. ‘You've said that Hinde is manipulative. He's communicating with someone. I know it …'

‘How can you be sure?'

Sebastian again. Genuinely curious this time.

Billy ran through his reasoning: the fourth murder was different.

Sebastian nodded. It was very unusual for a serial killer to change his MO, but for a copycat to do so was almost unthinkable. Unless Hinde had found a weak personality whom he could control. Someone for whom the killing was less important than pleasing Hinde. Not impossible. All they had to do was find him. Apparently Torkel had reached the same conclusion.

‘Go through the staff. Get some help if you need it. Good work, Billy.' He turned to Ursula, who spread her arms wide in an eloquent gesture.

‘As far as forensics goes we've got just as much today as we had yesterday. Or just as little, depending on how you want to look at it.'

Torkel nodded, gathered up the material he had brought with him and the papers he had been given during the briefing, and got ready to bring things to a close.