The Treacherous Net (5 page)

Irene couldn’t get
used to the silence that met her when she opened the front door.

She had to accept that her twin daughters had flown the nest once and for all. Jenny was on a cookery course in Malmö; she would be there for at least another year, then she was intending to apply to a cookery school in Amsterdam, which provided specialist training. Her goal was to become a high-class vegan chef.

Katarina and Felipe would be home in a few weeks after spending five months in Brazil. They were in Natal, working on the same capoeira project they had been involved with twice before. If the street children attended school, they were allowed to participate in a program of capoeira training, and they also received a meal at the center each day. For many of the children it was their only hot meal. If any of them missed school, they were immediately kicked off the project. It was tough, but it was the approach that worked. The basic philosophy was that education is the only way out of poverty. There are no shortcuts.

Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that was originally brought to the country by African slaves. They used dance moves to disguise their training, so that the slave owners wouldn’t suspect they were practicing a form of self-defense. In recent years the popularity of the sport has grown all over the world. Both Katarina and Felipe were skilled practitioners. They were working as trainers and leaders at the center in Natal, but it would be good to have them home again before too long.

And Sammie was gone. One cloudy day in March he had fallen asleep forever, with one front paw resting in Irene’s hand. At the ripe old age of fourteen years, nine months and four days, his heart had stopped beating. Now he was running around the Elysian Fields in doggy heaven, with grilled chicken for dinner and liver paste sandwiches every single day.

Irene’s throat closed up as she thought of Sammie. She missed him terribly, but she and Krister had agreed that they wouldn’t get another dog. They worked such long, unsociable hours.

Almost two years ago, Irene’s mother, Gerd, had slipped on a patch of ice and broken her hip. She had also hit the back of her head and sustained a severe injury to her skull, which was the reason for the constant dizziness that plagued her these days. The hip hadn’t healed properly, and the operation had to be done all over again. The result was better, but far from perfect. At about the same time, her partner, Sture, had died of a heart attack. It had all been too much for Gerd; she had lost her spark. She still lived in her apartment in Guldheden, but she no longer went out on her own. She was afraid of falling again because she was dizzy and unsteady on her feet. Irene and Krister did the shopping for her, and every other week someone from the home care service came to clean the apartment. In between times she was terribly lonely. “I’ve been around for too long. I’m nearly eighty. All my friends are dead or gaga or too feeble to come and see me,” she would say. Irene tried to jolly her out of it, but she realized there was a lot of truth to what Gerd said. Admittedly the various clubs and societies her mother had been a member of sometimes got in touch, but that was usually around Christmastime. The person who called in most often was a lively lady of about the same age who lived in a neighboring apartment. They had known each other for forty-five years, ever since Irene’s parents had moved to Doktor Bex Gata. Irene had grown up there; she hadn’t left home until she moved to Stockholm to study at the police academy in Ulriksdal.

Irene walked into her silent house. Krister was working the evening shift, and was unlikely to be home before midnight.

The only positive thing about the fact that her daughters had moved out was that Irene no longer had to eat Jenny’s vegan food. She hadn’t escaped completely, however; Krister had started to take an interest in vegetarian cuisine. As a professional master chef, he could turn the dullest root vegetables into a delicious delicacy. It was a talent she definitely lacked. Since she was married to a chef, she had never bothered to learn how to cook, and it wasn’t something that interested her.

She would make a sandwich and a pot of tea. While the water was heating up she defrosted two rolls in the microwave. A few slices of cheese and two dutiful slices of cucumber on each; that would have to do. She put everything on a tray and carried it upstairs to the TV room.

The local news began with confirmation from the police that Alexandra Hallwiin had been murdered. They were asking for information from anyone who had seen anything on Walpurgis Night, in the vicinity of the bus stop on Torslandavägen, in the area north of Lilleby and around Nötsund. They were particularly interested in hearing about any cars in the area that might have picked up Alexandra.

Surely someone must have seen the girl after she closed the gate of that impressive house on the hill, but not one single witness had come forward, presumably because of the wet and windy weather over the weekend. There had been no gangs of kids gathering on the shore for a barbecue; everyone had stayed indoors.

The police have also confirmed that the young woman whose body was found in the Gårdstensbergen area yesterday was the victim of a homicide. She went missing approximately one week before she was found. The police are not revealing her identity until all the relatives have been informed.

The newsreader moved on to their second case involving a murdered girl.

Irene nodded to herself. They still hadn’t managed to track down Moa Olsson’s father. Hannu was working on it, so Irene had high hopes of success. Could the missing father be the killer? From a purely statistical point of view, it was certainly possible. But there was something about the MO that made it seem unlikely. The injuries to Moa’s body indicated extreme sexual violence with a sadistic twist. There were no reports to suggest that Moa’s father had subjected her to any kind of sexual assault. According to the mother, he hadn’t even seen Moa since she was one year old. He had major problems with drug and alcohol abuse; he had drifted away to the periphery of society, and had broken off all contact with his daughter.

. . .
as the remains of the building were being demolished.

Irene suddenly became aware that the next big story was the discovery of the mummy. The recently purchased flat-screen TV was showing pictures of the cordoned-off area around the exposed cellar, though the police cars were obscuring the view. The cameras had just managed to catch a shot of the corpse being taken away in a body bag.

It appears that the body had been walled up in an aperture next to the base of the chimney. The police are not prepared to comment on the identity of the victim at this stage
.

The mummy was still a mystery. Tommy had spent the afternoon compiling a list of men who had disappeared without a trace over the past forty years. It had turned out to be a very long list. They had agreed to wait for the forensic pathologist’s preliminary report,
which should tell them how long the body had been walled up. It would also be interesting to get an idea of his age; that would enable them to cross a lot of names off the list.

Irene had gone through the database searching for sex offenders with sexual violence as part of their MO. Alexandra’s injuries indicated an extremely violent perpetrator, possibly with ritualistic tendencies, according to the pathologist. She had given a copy to Hannu, as there seemed to be certain similarities to the case of Moa Olsson.

She too had ended up with a long list. She had been able to delete several names right away because the violence had been directed at the woman the man in question was living with or had lived with. A further three men had been deported after serving their sentence, which left twenty-three names on the list. Tomorrow she and Jonny would start going through them.

Before she left for the day, Irene had called forensics to find out what had been used to strangle Alexandra. To her surprise it turned out to be a common computer cable; the various components of virtually every computer were linked by such thin cables. The killer had looped it around the girl’s neck, pulled it tight, then looped the rest around again. Which was an odd thing to do; it was as if he wanted to make sure it stayed put.

The three recent homicides would stretch the department’s resources even more, Irene thought. Fredrik Stridh was supposed to be working with a special team that was concentrating on the biker gangs, but in reality all his time was taken up by the two ongoing murder investigations linked to the gang war. They knew from experience that there was a significant risk of escalating violence over the summer; the gangs wanted to mark their territory before the fall. This was about power and big money. Neither of the gangs would back down.

Efva Thylqvist was in a difficult position, caught between the pressure to save money and the increased workload. It would be interesting to see if she had the skill to sort things out. Irene smiled to herself. She knew it was unkind, but she wanted to see her self-assured chief sweat a little, look slightly less competent in the eyes of her subordinates. Particularly as some of them didn’t appear to realize how manipulative she could be. Was Irene really the only one who could see what she was like?

“The forensic pathologist
is going to look at the mummy today; we’ll have a preliminary report sometime after three o’clock at the earliest. The body was lying on a rug, which forensics is analyzing now. At the moment I don’t know if it has anything to do with his death,” Efva Thylqvist announced as she opened morning prayer. Everyone nodded as they tried to fortify themselves with the contents of their coffee cups. It was going to be a hard day.

The teams reported back on the events of the previous day and how they were intending to proceed with their respective investigations. Just when they all thought the meeting was over and began to get to their feet, Hannu raised his hand.

“I took another look at the underclothes the girls were wearing. They belong together. The bra and the panties.”

As soon as Hannu spoke, Irene knew he was right. That lacy bra had bothered her right from the start; the suspicion that it probably hadn’t belonged to Alexandra had seemed important, even though she couldn’t quite work out why. It had remained there at the back of her mind, chafing away.

“Are you sure?” the superintendent asked.

“The fabric and the pattern on the lace are exactly the same. And the same brand.” He looked down at his notebook: “Sexy Thing.”

“Have you tried to trace the manufacturer?”

The look Hannu gave his boss was answer enough, but he replied politely, “Yes. It’s a common brand sold through mail order and in sex shops. Europe’s largest wholesaler is based in Hamburg. The clothes are made in Southeast Asia.”

The room fell silent as everyone thought about this new information.

“So you think we could be looking at the same killer,” Efva Thylqvist said eventually.

“Perhaps.”

The superintendent pressed the palms of her hands against the surface of the table and gazed down at her bare fingers. She played a brief drum solo with her nails, then looked up.

“This puts things in a completely different light. We could be dealing with a serial killer targeting young teenage girls. In spite of the fact that the killings took place in different parts of the city, we can perhaps assume they were carried out by the same person. The crux of the matter is that we can’t be sure we have a serial killer on our hands, which means we must continue to pursue the two investigations separately, without bias. However, from now on we will coordinate the two teams and ensure that there is an ongoing exchange of information. We also need to inform forensics of our suspicions and ask them to look out for details that could link the two murders.”

She fell silent, and her gaze swept the room.

“And not a word to the media. We need to find out how he made contact with the girls, and we need to find him fast! Because if our suspicions are correct, he will kill again. If he hasn’t done so already.”

“The Internet,” Fredrik Stridh said.

Several people nodded. The Internet was the most likely route if someone wanted to hook up with teenage girls.

“There was that guy in Malmö last year, remember. He was in his thirties, but online he pretended to be a twenty-five-year-old woman looking for young models. He talked them into everything from posing naked in front of a webcam to meeting up with him. They managed to prove fifty-six cases of rape. There were probably a lot more, but the girls weren’t prepared to come forward. They were all in their teens,” Fredrik went on.

“There are plenty of similar cases where a man has conned a girl into meeting up and then raped her, but none of them has led to murder,” Tommy pointed out.

“Not in Sweden. Overseas. There have been several in the US,” Hannu said.

“How can these girls be so naïve? Don’t they realize they’re arranging to meet a complete stranger? As a parent you don’t have a clue what they get up to online!”

Jonny spread his hands wide in a helpless gesture. Irene understood how he felt; his two girls were fourteen and twelve. His boys were slightly older.

“So it seems most likely that contact was established online,” Superintendent Thylqvist stated. She turned to Fredrik. “Could you make sure that Alexandra’s and Moa’s computers are checked?”

“I’ll speak to Jens.”

Jens was their IT expert, and he was highly skilled. As he sauntered along the corridors in his low-slung jeans and woolen hat he looked like a skateboarder who had left his board somewhere and gotten lost, but in fact he was thirty years old and had just become a father. Little Zelda was named after a princess in a popular video game. But then Jens was a bit different, and Irene always thought of him as their “IT oddball.”

“Thank you, Fredrik. Apart from that, I assume you’ve got your hands full with the gang murders. Jonny, Hannu and Irene—I’d like you to work on the two girls; Tommy, you’re on the mummy. Unfortunately, I have a meeting that will take all day.”

Efva Thylqvist got to her feet, signaling that the briefing was over.

They divided up
the twenty-three names on Irene’s list among the three of them. Only two of the men had convictions for homicide. Others were guilty of violent rape, serious assault and extreme threatening behavior. Jonny and Hannu each took one of the men convicted of homicide.

Irene spent the rest of the day working through her eight names. Three of them were still in jail and hadn’t been out on parole, so they could be crossed off right away. She was also able to eliminate another man who was in a state psychiatric institution. If he had done half of what was in his file, he was more than qualified for the role of serial killer on the hunt for young girls, so to be on the safe side Irene checked that he hadn’t been let out for any reason toward the end of April, and he hadn’t. His case worker made it clear that it would be a long time before he was even considered for parole.

Of the remaining four, one was held in an open jail and was on day release. He was employed in a car repair workshop and was doing well, according to the governor. On April 30 he had worked half a day and had spent the evening in front of the TV with some of the other inmates. His alibi seemed legitimate.

The last three names were trickier. She got a hold of the youngest, an eighteen-year-old, at his mother’s house in Tynnered. After a lengthy discussion, first with the mother and then with the boy himself, they arranged to meet the following day. He was adamant that he didn’t want to come down to the police station. “I get these traumatic flashbacks,” he insisted.
Someone’s obviously had therapy
, Irene thought. They agreed that she would come to his mother’s apartment at ten o’clock the following morning.

Then she hit a wall. Neither of the remaining two men answered on the number that was given in their contact details. In one case she heard an automated message informing her that this number was no longer in use, and when she dug a little deeper in the database, she discovered that the man had died two weeks earlier. The cause of death was listed as suicide. He had been released the previous month, after serving a sentence for the repeated rape of three little boys. After two years he had gotten out of jail, and a month later he took his own life.

A guilty conscience? Hardly. Irene had interviewed enough pedophiles over the years to realize that they rarely felt guilty about what they had put the children through. They usually defended themselves by insisting that the child had been a willing participant or had even taken the initiative in the sexual transaction. They claimed that pedophilia is a sexual orientation and that it is forbidden to persecute a minority.

It is almost always the social stigma and rejection that breaks a pedophile. They have the lowest status in jail, and are frequently subjected to harassment. It is rarely possible for pedophiles to return to their former workplaces, since most of their colleagues know what they had been up to. They often have to move because the neighbors know why they have been away. Pedophiles are abhorred everywhere, and by everyone.

And yet there are more and more of them.

Why? The Internet. It has brought about a revolution for pedophiles all over the world. The opportunity to access images has increased, as has the volume produced. No one needs to smuggle pictures and magazines across the border from one country to another these days. All you have to do is take pictures on a cell phone and post them on the net, where they spread at the speed of light. They will be there forever, and the victim has no way of getting them removed.

A note further down the page caught Irene’s attention; it was a link to a site called Pedophilewatch. She clicked on the link and brought up a site showing pictures and names of men, along with the occasional woman. The rubric explained they were convicted pedophiles, exposed on the Internet. Most were Americans, since the site was based in the US, but other countries were also represented. The names were arranged by nationality, so she quickly found the page showing Swedish names. The man who had committed suicide two weeks earlier was almost at the top of the list, with his photograph, description, education and training, former workplaces, convicted crimes and his last known address. Two more of the men Irene had found through the police database were also there.

It was obvious that the victims and their relatives were keeping the site updated. It would be virtually impossible for anyone on this particular register to find a place in the world where he or she wouldn’t have to worry about being recognized.

The sharks that hunt in the dark depths of the cyber ocean can get caught in the net themselves,
Irene thought,
with no chance of escape.

The idea didn’t give her any sense that justice was being served. Instead she was becoming increasingly aware that anyone at all can become a hunter online, and anyone can become a victim. All you have to do is click on a link, read a blog or enter a chat room. An innocent person who is hung out to dry on the net has just as little chance of escaping reprisals as a guilty person.

The Internet is a monster with a life of its own, and it’s growing at a mind-blowing speed, beyond all human and legal rules and restrictions
, she thought pessimistically.

Jonny had three
names of interest left on his list, while Hannu had two. Together with Irene’s two, that made a total of seven men they wanted to talk to about the murders of Alexandra and Moa.

“We’ll do this together,” Jonny decided.

“I’m meeting Tobias Hansson at his mother’s apartment on Smaragdgatan in Tynnered at ten tomorrow morning,” Irene said. “He didn’t want to come here. Said he was completely traumatized by the place.”

“Poor bastard. What does he have on his delicate little conscience?”

“The rape of a thirteen-year-old girl and the attempted rape of a twelve-year-old. The twelve-year-old’s father heard her screaming and came to the rescue; he happened to be out in the garage with the door open. He was able to give a good description of Tobias, who was picked up later that same evening. At first he insisted he was innocent, but he was linked to the attempted rape through DNA. The girl had managed to scratch him and had traces of skin under her nails. There were also scratch marks on Tobias’s forearms, and his DNA was found in the sperm taken from the thirteen-year-old rape victim. When he was confronted with the DNA evidence he changed tack and claimed he had lost his memory, due to the influence of both alcohol and GHB.”

“So his MO is a surprise attack on his victim?”

“Yes.”

“Where and when did these attacks take place?”

“Almost exactly a year ago, both within a kilometer of the apartment where Tobias lives with his mother. He’s just been released; he was given a reduced sentence because he was under eighteen.”

“He doesn’t really sound like our man. That kind of rape is governed by impulse, whereas Alexandra and Moa’s killer seems to have planned everything. He was very careful not to leave any traces. He was bent on homicide right from the start,” Hannu said thoughtfully.

“I agree. Plus the fact that little Tobbe operated in his own neighborhood in both cases. Our girls were murdered in completely different parts of the city, a long way from Tynnered,” Jonny pointed out.

“I think you’re right, but we’d better speak to him anyway so that we can eliminate him from the investigation if nothing else,” Irene said.

Hannu nodded. “I’ll come with you.”

“Good. In that case we might manage another name from the list for the morning,” said Jonny.

Irene turned to him and smiled.

“And maybe you could help me find out a bit more about this guy? I haven’t managed to track him down.”

Jonny looked far from pleased as he stared at the piece of paper she put in front of him.

“There’s so much to do when you’re leading a case,” Irene said, pretending to sympathize.

Jonny snorted, but couldn’t come up with a cutting reply. For once, Hannu smiled.

“I promise I’ll come out with you in the afternoon, just to make things fair,” Irene went out.

“No thanks—I’ll take Hannu. You can stay here and write up your report on what you find out in the morning,” Jonny said with a triumphant grin.