Without a Trace (25 page)

‘The lawyer wasn’t there to get his client off, he was there to speak for him.’

‘But how could the court fall for it if he wasn’t guilty?’

‘He had detailed knowledge of one of the murders – Lena’s. He read up about the others – all the facts were in the media, after all. The police and the court put together reconstructions of the crime scenes, and our man was very convincing. Maybe not worth an Oscar, but pretty close. He was convicted on the basis of his own confession, plus the knife he used to kill Lena. Okay, where’s this café?’

Valter tapped on his mobile. ‘Number one Slättgårdsvägen. You need to turn off at the next junction.’

Annika left the motorway and entered a grey suburban paradise of cramped plots and mix-and-match houses typical of the era they were built, much like Silvervägen in Saltsjöbaden: 1920s villas with hipped roofs and boxy outbuildings, 1940s houses with panelled façades, breeze-block constructions from the turn of the century.

Suddenly she heard Anne Snapphane’s voice inside her head.
This is where happiness has made its home
. Her reaction was almost physical, a kick in the gut. Where on earth had that come from? She brushed the hair off her face and took a deep breath. Sometimes she really did miss Anne, her pungent view of life and the world, her refreshing disregard for convention. Annika had always known that she was a bit unhinged – her intense ambition to become famous had been just one of the symptoms, but in the end their friendship had stopped working. Anne had embarked on a sort of vendetta against Annika on the internet. From her new position as a reporter for the gossip website mediatime, Anne had taken every opportunity to snipe at her.

She shook off the unsettling feeling of loneliness and parked in front of the entrance to Mälarhöjden metro station.

The café was on the ground floor of a block of 1940s flats, selling a classic Swedish-café menu of salads, pies and calorie-loaded pastries. Björn Västgård wasn’t there yet. Annika and Valter decided to have an early lunch while they waited. People came and went, some eating, others buying sandwiches or cake to take away. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. Annika felt as if she was back in Maestro in Hälleforsnäs.

They were having coffee by the time a van emblazoned with the name ‘Hot Shots’ pulled up outside. Annika looked at her watch – he was only forty minutes late, which should probably be regarded as a success (it was almost impossible to pin delivery companies down to a particular date).

A bearded man, extremely overweight, struggled out of the van and headed towards the café. The door squeaked and the bell rang as he came in. His face cracked into a broad smile when he caught sight of Annika. ‘There you are,’ he said, shaking her hand firmly. Annika could never get used to the fact that people recognized her – which version of her had they seen? The reporter, the wife of the kidnapped government official?

Björn Västgård got a cup of coffee and a Danish pastry, which Annika paid for. He settled onto a chair that creaked under his weight. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, sighing happily. ‘I ran that shop for seventeen years, seventeen years full of all sorts of weird jobs, I can tell you. It wasn’t all replacing the zip on a pair of favourite jeans or adding darts to old dears’ Chanel rip-offs, oh, no. I had to put hidden pockets in attaché cases and sew vibrators into latex underwear. But the lining of that coat really was the weirdest of the lot.’

‘Why?’ Annika asked.

He took a large bite of the pastry and chewed. ‘The first thing that struck me was that she was dressed in such a peculiar outfit,’ he said, once he’d swallowed his mouthful. ‘When she came into the shop I thought she was a Muslim – she was wearing a hijab with all her hair tucked away and one of those long skirts that they go about in. When the shop was quiet, though, and she was the only one in there, she took the headscarf off and I recognized her at once.’

‘You could tell she was Viola Söderland?’

His whole face was beaming. ‘As true as I’m sitting here. It struck me that someone really rich had just wandered into my humble little shop. I’d thought birds like her had servants who sorted their dirty washing out, and I suppose she did, because this was something completely different.’ He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. ‘This was something altogether out of the ordinary.’

Annika noticed a couple sitting at the next table stop talking to listen to the former tailor. He took a deep gulp of coffee and another bite of his pastry, scattering crumbs on the floor.

‘She’d brought a coat with her in a paper bag from ICA, a grey woollen coat, good quality. She wanted the lining changed, she said, and she had very particular specifications for what she wanted the new one to look like.’

Annika read from her notepad. ‘Four pockets measuring sixteen by seven centimetres, one fourteen by nine, and one seven by three.’

The tailor was astonished. He had flakes of pastry in his beard.

‘My boss still has his notes,’ she said. ‘Anders Schyman, the man who interviewed—’

‘Of course I know who Anders Schyman is. He’s having a very hard time in social media at the moment, under attack from all sides.’

‘Yes,’ Annika said. ‘Was there anything else special about that lining?’

The man stared at her with surprise, as if the measurements ought to be special enough. ‘The zips,’ he said. ‘They had to be concealed. The pockets mustn’t be visible, and they had to be watertight.’

‘Watertight? Why?’

Björn Västgård leaned even closer. ‘Who knows?’ he whispered.

Annika scribbled some notes. ‘So you agreed to do the work? How long did you have to do it in?’

He finished his coffee. ‘Two days. She was in a hurry. I explained I’d have to charge more if I was going to have to do it so quickly, an express fee, and she agreed to that.’

‘How did she pay? By card?’

‘No, cash.’

‘Did she show you any ID?’

Again he looked surprised. ‘No, why would she have done that?’

‘So it might not have been Viola Söderland in your shop at all?’

The man just smiled.

Annika cleared her throat. ‘And when did this happen? In relation to her disappearance?’

‘Two weeks before she went.’

‘Did she pick the coat up herself?’

‘Oh, yes, wearing the same Muslim outfit. She was very happy with the work, extremely pleased, actually …’

‘Have you ever heard from Viola again since then?’

He let out a deep sigh. ‘Not a peep,’ he said. ‘I don’t think she’s in Sweden. If she had been, she would have come back to me, I’m sure of that, because she was so happy with my work.’

Annika looked down at her notes. It wasn’t much to go on. The urgency to get the lining changed suggested she was planning her flight and running out of time. The question was: why? And why did the pockets have to be watertight? Was she planning to go swimming with the coat on? Or was it raining as much that autumn as it had been this spring?

She gave him a rather strained smile. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘We really appreciate you taking the time—’

The man put a large hand over hers. ‘I’ve got to ask – how’s your husband?’

Embarrassed, Annika pulled away her hand. ‘How do you mean?’

‘After the kidnapping in Somalia. That was such a terrible business.’

He certainly had a memory for faces, and an eye for detail, she had to admit. She put her notebook back into her bag.

‘I hope that blogger comes to his senses soon,’ Björn Västgård said.

‘Has he contacted you?’ Annika asked.

‘Several times. Unpleasant type, if you ask me.’

‘Have you met him? Do you know who he is?’

He shook his head. ‘We’ve talked on the phone and he says his name is Lars. I told him what I’m telling you now, that Viola Söderland wasn’t planning to die, she was planning to live.’

He stood up and brushed the crumbs from his trousers. ‘It was nice to meet you. Give my best to your old man.’

The Hot Shots delivery van pulled away with a roar.

‘Why was she going round dressed as a Muslim?’ Valter said, as he watched the vehicle drive off.

‘Muslim women are invisible in Sweden,’ Annika said. ‘People don’t see them, they look right past them. Schyman mentioned that in his documentary.’ She got to her feet. ‘Right. Let’s go to Skärholmen and find the man who sold her the car.’

Nina moved carefully around the furniture, scared of touching anything, which was irrational – the forensics team had completed their work.

The Lerberg family’s living room was cosy, thoughtfully decorated. Slightly over-furnished, perhaps. A sofa and two armchairs – Nina thought she recognized the design from Ikea – that had been created for people with more traditional homes: slightly bulging arms, soft cushions, chocolate-coloured.

She was standing on the wooden floor in her stockinged feet, and the cold crept up between her toes.

She had never been part of a family that had a home and didn’t really know what they were supposed to look like. She had grown up in various collectives where adults (
men
) with different languages and backgrounds came and went, and by the time she was a bit older, her mum was ill (
crazy
) and they moved to Södermanland, it was already too late. There was never any safe haven, just a chilly storage location. God, she had been frozen during those first years in Sweden – it was cold almost ten months of the year – but on Tenerife (back
home
on Tenerife?) it was always nice and warm, with occasional rain but mild winds. She had lived beneath fig trees and among thickets of mint, in a shower of orange blossom and on beaches made of lava. The coarse sand between her toes, the smell of the sea.

She looked around the cramped living room. There was an old circular teak coffee-table, probably from the fifties. Inherited, or from a flea market. No pot-plants. A fairly small flat-screen television on a low shelf along one wall, twenty-eight inches, maybe, and a DVD player with small speakers. A few children’s films, cartoons, Astrid Lindgren classics. Paintings of traditional subjects on the walls, clumsily produced in oil or acrylic, boats and landscapes.

Why did Nora disappear?

She created this home, then left it. Somewhere there had to be a hint of an explanation.

An open fire with birch logs, no ashes. A bookcase containing bestsellers and a few ornaments, a blue bird, a gold-coloured deer that functioned as a thermometer. An old rocking chair by the window, some knitting in a basket next to it. A piano against one wall.

Nina went over to it and carefully sat down on the stool. The first time she had tried playing a real piano was in Julia’s home, her childhood friend in Södermanland. Victor, one of her mother’s boyfriends, had played the guitar, but she’d never seen any other musical instruments before she’d stepped into Julia’s living room. She remembered the concentration as she pressed the keys, how fragile and beautiful the notes had sounded. Julia had been able to play several pieces, she remembered: ‘The Entertainer’, by Scott Joplin, from
The Sting
, and Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’, but Nina had never managed more than a very basic children’s song. She pressed a few keys up to the right of the keyboard where the notes were high, then down to the left where they ought to be lower, but there was no sound at all. She pressed the bass keys a bit harder, soft little thuds – nothing.

She straightened her back. She listened hard. The house was completely silent. She closed her eyes. Everything was still. There ought to have been some hint of movement, a draught from a loose window, a sigh from the hundred-year-old floorboards, but the rooms had stopped breathing.

Where was the life in this house?

She didn’t know what the norm was so she wasn’t sure what was bothering her. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. The air was slightly damp and a bit chilly. The cadaverous smell from the dog hadn’t quite gone.

She went over to the window. The curtains were light, with an abstract floral pattern. They were supposed to look as if they came from Svenskt Tenn, but they, too, were actually from Ikea, the label still attached. She drew them smoothly. They moved easily, didn’t catch anywhere. So the curtains were practical, not just aesthetic: they were used, put there as a protection and defence, if need be.

The daylight outside was heavy and grey. It tumbled in through squeaky-clean windows – the glass must have been washed no more than a week ago. She watched a train rattle past on the Saltsjöbanan track on the other side of Silvervägen. Even though it had stopped raining, she could see the moisture sparkling on her car on the road.

She turned her back to the window and went out into the hallway. It was narrow and fairly dark. There had been a Persian-style rug the first time she visited, but it had been taken away for analysis now, leaving a pale rectangle on the wooden floor to show where it had been. The hat-rack was still there, but the outdoor clothing that had hung on it had also been removed.

She looked up at the staircase, trying to imagine Ingemar Lerberg hanging there, tied to the wrought-iron railing above. He must have screamed. Even if he had tape over his mouth there would have been an awful lot of noise. She went to the small hall window, which was square, fairly high up, and looked out onto the front steps and the garden below. The house had been dark and unlit during the night between Thursday and Friday. No one had seen anyone arrive or leave the house during the evening, through the night or the following morning. There hadn’t been any unfamiliar cars parked in the neighbourhood.

The kitchen was bright and airy. Lime-washed pine floor, mass-produced rag-rugs, oiled beech-wood surfaces. A toaster on the worktop. A stainless-steel fridge and freezer, both from Ikea. She leaned against the sink. The sense of silence and emptiness grew stronger.

She bent to open the cupboard under the sink. Containers for rubbish and recycling. Dishwasher tablets, ecological drain cleaner, steel wool, all neatly lined up. She wondered if the forensics officers had left them like that. She closed the cupboard door and opened one of the glass-fronted cabinets. Wine glasses from Orrefors, a dozen. A wedding present, perhaps. She held one of the glasses up to the light. No marks at all. She replaced it and shut the door.