Sunday 22 November, 14.07
They were walking in the forest. It was grey and bitterly cold, and about half the time she regretted the decision to set out for a Sunday walk in the Trångsund Forest. The other half supported the impulse: it could be the last chance before the snow and frost slapped their six-month-long lid on experiences of nature.
And she wanted to give Lykke as many experiences of nature as possible in a world that was becoming ever more virtual, ever more unnatural. It was actually possible to drag her away from Facebook and Instagram, even if Snapchat was harder: every now and then she saw her daughter glance surreptitiously down at her jacket pocket.
Johnny was still working weekends, so it was just Deer and Lykke and the seeming endlessness of the forest, which made the ringtone of her mobile sound even more jarring than usual.
They were standing in a glade that opened on to the dramatic drop down towards the water of Drevviken. Lykke was in one of her impetuous moods, and Deer was doing her best to calm her down. She’d be damned if her daughter was going to fall off a cliff just because she had answered her phone. Especially given the identity of the caller, she thought as she looked at the screen. With some effort she managed to stop Lykke, sighed and answered, ‘What did we say about this, Sam?’
‘We’ve found three more victims,’ Berger said in a tinny voice.
‘What?’ Deer exclaimed.
‘I’ve emailed the documentation to you. You’ve been searching every police register for alternative formulations of ‘four-leaf clover on buttock’, just so you know. You identified three potential victims of the same killer. You’ve now studied the files and can say with certainty that they all have an ink drawing of a four-leaf clover on one buttock. In Malmö, Växjö and Täby. You’ve been sitting in your garage in your own time working on this. That ought to satisfy the NOD.’
‘You’ve certainly got the bit between your teeth up there, wherever you are.’
‘Has Robin sent a report from Sorsele?’
‘Only to say how delighted he was at the prospect of going up there on a Sunday morning. I don’t think he and his team have got there yet; I got one of my contacts to call the police in Arjeplog, and then everything took its time.’
‘Three victims, but not three bodies,’ Berger went on. ‘One of the women survived, badly wounded and severely traumatised after being held captive for a day and a half. She could hardly speak when the police spoke to her so wasn’t able to provide any information. The Täby police decided to wait for her to recover, but when they got round to making another attempt she’d already discharged herself from Danderyd Hospital. A couple of days later she and her girlfriend checked into a flight to Manila. And that’s where the trail goes cold.’
‘Manila in the Philippines?’
‘Yes. This was in July 2012, and since then there’s been no trace of Farida Hesari, now twenty-six years old. Can you instigate an international search for her?’
‘As soon as I’ve taken a look at the documentation, yes. Now I need to get on with my walk through this savage, brutal, harsh and wild forest.’
‘You’ve got considerably more than half your life left, Deer. By the way, aren’t you forgetting something?’
Deer stared with distaste at her phone, then eventually said, ‘Thanks a bunch.’
Then she ended the call.
Berger spoke.
‘She said thanks very much and asked me to send you her warmest regards.’
Blom just gave him a sideways glance and said, ‘Come here and let’s do this.’
He went round to her side of the table and sat down on her bed, just out of sight of the laptop’s built-in camera. Blom clicked and a ringing signal rang out from the computer. The Skype window remained empty, but then an elderly woman appeared, and said with unexpected clarity, ‘I skype with my grandchildren in the States, so you don’t have to ask if I understand the technology.’
‘Mrs Enoksson,’ Blom said. ‘I’m a police officer, Detective Inspector Eva Lundström. We’ve already emailed about what I’d like to talk to you about. Is that OK?’
‘Call me Laura, and I’ll call you Eva,’ Laura Enoksson said.
‘Laura, you were the social worker who handled the case of Jessica Johnsson and Eddy Karlsson back in the spring of 2005, weren’t you? What can you tell me about that?’
‘I was so sorry to hear about poor Jessica,’ Enoksson said. ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t entirely unexpected; she had an unfortunate tendency to pick the wrong men. But Eddy Karlsson’s dead, it can’t have been him. He came back from Thailand four years ago, a complete wreck from too many drugs, just a shadow of his former, repugnant self. But even the shadow was pretty repugnant.’
‘Did you see him then? When he came home?’
‘No, he kept under the radar. But I saw his body. I wanted to see his body. Men like him are the reason I ended up getting burned out.’
‘Tell me about it, right from the start, please, Laura.’
The old woman let out a deep sigh, and her slightly haggard face – which had evidently seen more than anyone should have to see – tightened slightly.
‘Jessica was twenty-five years old, a nurse, a bit naïve, perhaps. Like I said, one of those young women with something of a father complex who tend to pick the wrong men. And Eddy Karlsson was definitely the wrong man.’
‘Hang on,’ Blom said. ‘A father complex?’
‘I don’t really know that much about Jessica’s background, but I recognise the type. It’s often girls who don’t have a real father – they’re looking for a father figure who will both see and acknowledge them, and simultaneously set boundaries for them. It often goes wrong.’
‘And Eddy Karlsson was definitely the wrong man?’
‘Without a doubt,’ Laura Enoksson said. ‘He wasn’t just violent and off his head the whole time, he was also manipulative and paranoid. He monitored every step she took. He was arrested after hitting her a couple of times, but was released because of a lack of evidence. And in the absence of a witness statement, like so many women in her situation Jessica Johnsson initially refused to give a statement. Eddy went underground but carried on bullying her. It happened after that.’
‘It?’
‘Yes, the assault. The most serious assault, I mean. It was terrible. Not only did she have a miscarriage, but she was very seriously injured. Seriously enough to make the police react. She was given a protected identity while she was in hospital, and was secretly moved to another one, a long way from Stockholm. And that was the end of my involvement.’
‘So you don’t know what her new identity was?’
‘The whole point was for as few people as possible to know about it,’ Laura Enoksson said. ‘And I certainly wasn’t one of them.’
‘To backtrack a little,’ Blom said. ‘She had a miscarriage as a result of the assault? So Jessica Johnsson was pregnant?’
‘With Eddy’s child, apparently. He killed his own child.’
Blom fell silent and glanced quickly at Berger, just like they’d agreed not to do. But he understood, and the way he looked back gave her her answer.
‘Do you happen to know what sex the baby was?’ Blom asked.
‘Yes,’ Enoksson said. ‘It was a boy.’
Another glance; it was unavoidable.
Berger felt his lips form the name Eddy Karlsson.
The bastard wasn’t dead. He had faked his own death. He hadn’t been in Thailand for more than a year or so before coming back to Sweden and starting to kill. He vanished in 2005 and was back in time for Orsa in 2007.
He had killed his own son and wounded the child’s mother. Now he was going to do better.
And kill the mother at all costs.
The sickest thing was that it made sense. Berger couldn’t see anything that didn’t slot into place.
‘It was so terrible,’ Laura Enoksson said, shaking her head.
‘Killing his own unborn son …’ Blom said, lowering her gaze.
Enoksson looked surprised.
‘I was thinking more of Jessica,’ she said. ‘Of the injuries.’
‘The injuries?’
‘Jessica Johnsson’s injuries. To her reproductive organs.’
‘Right …?’ Blom said.
‘Her womb was damaged beyond repair,’ Enoksson said. ‘They had to remove it. An emergency hysterectomy.’
Berger looked at the back of Blom’s lowered head, faintly visible through her blonde curtain of hair. The cards were being shuffled again, and he felt he could actually see the brain cells working behind that hair. He heard her murmur her goodbyes to Laura Enoksson, asked her to get back if she thought of anything else, came up with a friendly but non-committal farewell, closed Skype and turned round.
They may never have stared at each other for so long before.
‘OK,’ Berger said in the end. ‘For a moment there I was certain that Eddy Karlsson had risen from the dead. Now – God knows.’
‘She was pregnant when we met her in Porjus, we’ve got a blood sample to prove it. An awful lot of blood samples. But ten years ago her wrecked womb was removed from her body in an emergency hysterectomy. In other words, she can’t have been pregnant.’
They looked at each other again.
‘Everything’s gone pretty weird now, hasn’t it?’ Berger eventually said.
Blom shook her head and said, ‘Was the woman we spoke to really Jessica Johnsson? Or was it someone completely different? Someone who was then murdered? But how could that work? A pregnant woman pretending to be Jessica and then getting killed pretty much in front of our eyes? How does that fit?’
‘Are there really no photographs at all of Jessica Johnsson?’ Berger asked. ‘No driving licence or passport photographs? No old school photos?’
‘I haven’t found any,’ Blom said. ‘Get your Desiré on to it.’
‘Is there something we’re not seeing?’ Berger said. ‘Something that’s right in front of our eyes, something that ought to be crystal-clear?’
Molly Blom shook her head so hard that the satellite phone started to ring. She recognised the number, lifted the receiver and said, ‘Dr Stenbom, I presume?’
At that precise moment Deer and Lykke reached Sjöängsbadet. There was no one swimming, but a few dogs were sniffing at the water’s edge. Lykke ran over to them, which Deer wasn’t very happy about – the dogs’ owners were over by the edge of the forest, anything could happen. But the dogs seemed friendly enough. Lykke could cling on to her naïve, trusting nature for a bit longer. She patted the dogs; everything was fine.
Deer gazed out across Drevviken. If the ice settled this year, this would be where the traditional skating race would start in February. It was said that Drevviken had the finest ice in the world, and Deer was thinking of forcing her whole family to take part. Even Johnny could manage to skate twenty kilometres on a pair of long-distance skates.
The dogs’ owners came down from the edge of the trees, but the branches kept moving, as if someone was hiding there in the shadows. The thought was thrust aside by a persistent ringtone. Deer was about to answer angrily, then saw that the number wasn’t the one she thought it was.
‘Yes, Robin?’ she said. ‘News from Sorsele?’
‘I’m in Linköping,’ Robin said.
‘What the—?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve sent my team, they know what they’re doing. I had to get to the bottom of that little white thread from the basement in Porjus, and for that I needed the best lab I could find.’
‘And now you’ve found it?’
‘Yes. Like I suspected, it’s from a gauze bandage, and sure enough there was blood on it. Microscopic quantities, but enough to get DNA.’
‘I’m listening,’ Deer said keenly.
‘The DNA belongs to a man called Reine Danielsson.’
‘Reine Danielsson?’ Deer exclaimed, watching her daughter down by the water. One of the dogs looked like it was getting a bit boisterous, it had started to growl in a slightly unnerving way. She called to Lykke and she started to amble back, presumably after noticing that the dog wasn’t quite so friendly after all. Then Deer glanced up towards the trees. The branches were still moving, but in a different place now, as if someone was moving along the treeline.
And, simultaneously, this absolutely fundamental piece of information.
‘Yes,’ Robin said. ‘Reine Danielsson, thirty-three years old. I haven’t got anything else on him yet, I called as soon as the result came through. I’ll text you his ID number and date of birth.’
And with that the conversation was over. Deer saw the text arrive, and quickly began to type another number, one that wasn’t in her list of contacts. But then her phone started to ring again. The call was from the number she had been halfway through entering.
‘Deer,’ a voice said excitedly. ‘We’ve found out the identity of the man calling himself Sam Berger at the Lindstorp Clinic in Arjeplog.’
‘Reine Danielsson?’ Deer asked.
The silence that followed felt almost definitive. Even so, it never occurred to her that the signal had broken.
A sudden clarity arose.
Reine Danielsson. Unknown. But nothing less than a genuine serial killer.
The silence lasted so long that something made its way into the clarity, like a grain of sand under a contact lens. Vision blurred as it itched and stung. There was something about the name Reine Danielsson …
‘How the hell do you know that?’ Berger finally said from the other side of the Arctic Circle.
‘The correct question is: how the hell do you know that?’ Deer said.
‘We’ve had the DNA in some skin fragments from Arjeplog analysed.’
‘You’ve “had the DNA in some skin fragments analysed”? How the hell did you manage that? Are you leaving a trail of evidence behind you now? A trail that’s going to lead back to me and take my head off?’
‘Unofficial channels,’ Berger said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘That makes me feel so much happier.’
‘How did you get hold of the name?’
‘There was a thread found in the boiler room in Porjus. A white thread, not black like the balaclava. From a gauze bandage, and Robin found traces of blood on it. The thread had caught on the wall, at head height for a man 1.85 metres tall if he was sitting on the floor. Could it possibly be the case that “Sam Berger” injured his head at the clinic?’
‘His face,’ Berger said. ‘We were told he ran straight into a bus.’
‘Sounds like we’re dealing with a highly intelligent serial killer, then.’
‘He’s only highly intelligent intermittently. The rest of the time he seems to be locked into the delusion that he’s someone else.’
‘You need to send me everything you know,’ Deer said. ‘This is only going to work if we’re completely in sync.’
‘We’ve got an audio file of our conversation with Senior Consultant Jacob Stenbom. I’ll send it to you. And we’ve got a bit more information about Jessica Johnsson’s background. For instance the fact that she can’t have been pregnant when she was murdered. Can you help us get hold of a photograph of her?’
‘I’ll try,’ Deer said, as the dog walkers slowly began to move away from the shore. Lykke was sitting on a rock openly looking at Snapchat, clearly in protest at her mother’s constant telephone calls.
‘Have you found out anything about this Reine Danielsson?’ Berger asked.
‘I’ve only just been given his name. But …’
‘Same here. But …’
‘I haven’t had time to process it yet,’ Deer said. ‘But something doesn’t feel right.’
‘I know,’ Berger said and hung up.
He turned to Blom.
‘Something doesn’t feel right.’
She frowned unhappily and tapped at her computer. Berger saw rolling text reflected off her irises. She shook her head.
‘I can’t find a Reine Danielsson,’ she said. ‘Not in any search at all. Which probably means, for instance, that he’s never paid tax in Sweden.’
‘And anyone who doesn’t pay tax in Sweden either has a pair of luxury yachts in Monaco or no income at all.’
‘If we set the luxury yachts to one side for a moment, why would someone not have an income?’
‘Down and out? Or …’
‘Yes?’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Berger blurted and threw himself at the large stack of paper beside the computer. He pulled out the thick file on the Helena Gradén case and leafed through it frenetically.
Blom watched his outburst of energy and said tentatively:
‘I thought you said it when I was having a shower. You babbled a load of names instead of handing me more water. We were talking about farm names from Dalarna.’
Berger shook his head in disbelief and pointed at the file.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Reine Danielsson, one of the other residents of Karl Hedblom’s care home in Orsa. Bloody hell.’
Blom rubbed the corners of her eyes and said, ‘Reine built the shelter. Reine abducted and killed Helena and Rasmus Gradén. Reine held them captive for almost two whole days and still held himself together in the hostel. Reine planted his fellow resident Karl Hedblom’s DNA at the scene. Reine can’t just have been an ordinary resident in that group.’
‘We questioned him,’ Berger said and felt the colour drain from his face.
‘We? You personally?’
‘Me personally,’ Berger confirmed. ‘And Deer personally. The pair of us personally.’
He picked up the satellite phone and called a familiar number. The call was answered as good as immediately.
‘Orsa,’ Deer’s tinny voice said. ‘It was Orsa, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Berger said. ‘We interviewed him, you and I interviewed him in the police’s provisional base in Orsa, in the hotel, if you remember. I can see in the file that that’s what happened, but I can’t say that I remember it. Do you?’
‘There were so many, a steady succession. But maybe …’
‘No, I can’t dredge up anything,’ Berger said.
‘You’ve always been bad at the past,’ Deer said. ‘I think I remember a fairly big, awkward lad, he could well have been 1.85 metres tall and have had size 45 shoes. He may have been around twenty-six years old, which would fit the date of birth. But can I remember anything about the interview itself? God knows. I need to think about it and get back to you.’
‘I’ve got the transcript in front of me,’ Berger said. ‘I’ll be in touch once I’ve read it and you’ve done your thinking.’
‘We should be home in half an hour or so,’ Deer said. ‘It’s starting to get dark here at Sjöängsbadet. We’ve been playing hopscotch.’
‘Well hop quickly,’ Berger said. ‘You need to be at police headquarters at five o’clock.’
‘What are you telling me now?’
‘And I’m afraid you’ll also need five thousand in cash.’
‘What exactly are you dragging me into this time?’
‘Robertsson,’ Berger said. ‘In the police store. He’s going to give you some videotapes.’
Deer let out a very deep sigh.
‘One more thing,’ Berger said. ‘Something that’s only just struck me.’
‘Yes?’
‘If I made such a deep impression on Reine Danielsson that he called himself Sam Berger during a deranged episode eight years later, there’s a risk that he remembers you too, Deer. Let’s not forget that the letter was addressed to you personally.’
Deer fell silent for a short while, then said, ‘What are you trying to say, Sam?’
‘Just be careful.’
‘I can take care of myself,’ Deer said and clicked to end the call.
She looked over towards Lykke. After reluctantly learning to play hopscotch on the sand she had gone back to her rock. In the rapidly growing dusk her face was lit up by a bluish glow from her mobile, where Snapchat was in full flow. The still, dark water of Drevviken was coloured faintly by the setting sun, a pink cloak foreboding the darkness. The dogs and dog owners were gone, mother and daughter were alone in the gathering dusk. Peculiarly alone. There wasn’t a sound, the silence was absolute. The pink cover thinned out across the water, replaced little by little by darkness.
Something rippled down Deer’s spine and burst into a shiver.
Reluctantly she looked round at the edge of the forest. The trees had been still for a long while now, she had long since dismissed the movement of the branches as the result of the autumn breeze, falling pine cones, nut-gathering squirrels. The car was over in the car park just a couple of hundred metres away. She studied the pine trees in the dusk light. There was nothing moving, everything was still.
‘Lykke?’ she said, and it felt like her voice was echoing through the deserted suburban forest.
Lykke looked up from her phone but didn’t say anything. Her still childish face was shining bluely.
‘Time to go,’ Deer said as gently but firmly as she could manage.
From one corner of her eye she saw Lykke get reluctantly to her feet, still staring into the depths of her mobile. From the other she saw the trees move.
Deer turned her head quickly in that direction. The branches of one pine tree were trembling lightly, like an aftershock. Nothing else happened. A quick glance at Lykke: she was ten metres away, still not looking up. Back at the forest again. Nothing. The swaying of the branches came to a stop. Stillness spread across Sjöängsbadet again, across Drevviken, across the whole of Trångsund Forest.
Lykke reached her, and Deer held out her hand. Her daughter took it, their hands were ice-cold, neither able to warm the other.
They had stayed too long.
They started to walk slowly up the path towards the car park. Dusk was falling with unexpected speed. Now Deer could only just make out the edge of the forest.
But the movement stood out all the more clearly.
At first it was just one branch trembling, then everything became still again. Deer stopped, squeezed Lykke’s hand, stared at the forest.
Then the movement again. Darting from branch to branch, as if someone were running through the trees.
Heading their way.
Deer crouched down, picked up a large stone, for the first time in a very long while missing her service pistol. She remembered telling Sam where they were; that was an unexpected consolation, as if it meant something beyond the fact that their bodies would be found.
The edge of the forest came closer, no more than a couple of metres from the path. The very closest tree trembled. The forest opened up. Someone sprang out with terrible speed.
Reine Danielsson, Deer thought, raising the stone. You’re not getting my daughter. I’ll fight until there’s nothing left of me but an arm clutching a stone.
The branches were pushed back, everything happened so incredibly fast yet in slow motion.
The figure running out of the forest came closer. And then it stopped, staring at her with death in its eyes.
Around the figure young were clustered, four baby wild boar around the huge sow. The two mothers stood still for a while, staring at each other, their eyes locked together.
Then it was as if they recognised the mother in each other, the mother that all life in the world depended on, the mother who would do whatever it took for her offspring.
The sow let out a grunt that was almost a roar. Then she turned abruptly and crashed into the forest. The piglets scampered after her.
Deer stood motionless for a long time. Eventually she realised she was clutching Lykke’s hand too tightly. She let go.
But not the stone, she wasn’t going to let that go. Not until they were safely back inside the car.
‘They were so cute!’ Lykke said, skipping with joy.