HIS FACE FILLED THE whole screen. Although he had a full, neatly trimmed beard, he looked so anonymous that Irene Lilja finally understood why no one had noticed him. She sat there staring at his picture, forgetting to blink until her eyes teared up, feverishly searching for something to remember him by, but there was nothing. No tiny asymmetry, no large — or small — nose. His eyes weren’t even a particular colour. She tried to form a mental picture of the face behind the beard, but all she came up with were two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. He was so normal and average that the face just passed by and disappeared.
He didn’t look like the sort of person who could cut off the hands of a victim who was still alive, or cut someone’s throat and make a Colombian necktie either. He looked more like someone who... well, what did he look like? She gave up. After all, she would never be able to describe him, at least not beyond the fact that he had a beard and looked incredibly ordinary.
But there was something about the name Torgny Sölmedal that seemed familiar. She knew she’d heard it before.
“What the hell? Did the computer find a match?” Lilja, who had completely forgotten that Molander was asleep on the floor at her feet, nodded mutely. Her thoughts were preoccupied with digging deeper and deeper into her memory until she came up with the connection.
Meanwhile, Molander got up and read the words on the screen out loud: “Torgny Sölmedal. Detained in 2005 for rape...”
“But freed due to lack of evidence. Not to mention, he turned up earlier in the investigation. Claes Mällvik, or Rune Schmeckel, as his name was at the time, operated on his prostate in 2004 and happened to leave two plastic clips behind in, well, you know... They made a pretty big deal of it in the papers and he even had to take a leave of absence from work for a while.”
“Oh right, I remember. It hurts just to think of it.”
*
ASTRID TUVESSON HURRIED THROUGH the pouring rain, phone to her ear, as she helped Lena Olsson into the back seat. “And you’re sure it’s him?”
“As sure as we can be,” Lilja answered. “There’s only one person listed with that name, and he lives at Motalagatan 24 in Husensjö.”
“In Helsingborg?”
“Yes. Molander and I can be there in ten minutes.”
“Not without the SWAT team,” Tuvesson said, trying to wrestle Lena Olsson’s bag into the trunk. “Call Malmö and wait for them.”
“Astrid, come on. We can’t wait for Malmö, it’ll take them over an hour and a half. We have to go now.”
Irene’s right, Tuvesson thought as she yanked the unwieldy suitcase back out and slammed the trunk, but she didn’t want to lose two of her best colleagues to a potential ambush.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Okay, go in alone, but I want you to be careful.” She pushed the wet bag into the passenger seat’s footwell and closed the door. “If you’re at all uncertain, back out, understood?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Irene, I mean it!”
“Okay, okay. By the way, how are things going for you?”
“I just picked up Lena Olsson and Stefan Munthe and I’m on my way to get Lina Pålsson.”
“What about the lonely pilgrim? Has he answered yet?”
“No, I’m planning to try one last time. If he doesn’t answer I’ll just go and ring his doorbell.”
They ended the call. Tuvesson walked around the car as she pulled up Kårheden’s home number. It rang on the other end. She was opening the driver’s side door to get in when someone picked up.
“This is Kårheden,” said a voice on the other end.
“Hello, I didn’t think you would answer. My name is Astrid Tuvesson.” She wondered if she should get in the car or take the call out in the rain. She decided she couldn’t get any wetter anyway.
“Excuse me, but do I know you?”
“I’m sorry; I’m a detective superintedent in Helsingborg.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”
“Yes, I just got back from a trip to Spain.”
“So we heard. Have you been following the news about what’s been going on while you were gone?”
“No, not at all. Isn’t that the whole point of a vacation? But the billboards at Kastrup were impossible to miss. Is it really true what they say? Is he after the whole class?”
“We don’t know, but unfortunately we have every reason to believe he is.”
“That’s awful. And you don’t have any leads on the killer’s identity?”
“We do, but I can’t discuss the details. I’m calling you because the only way we can offer you protection right now is to bring you to the prison along with your former classmates. How would you feel about me coming to pick you up?”
“Right now?”
“Yes, in about half an hour.”
There was a long sigh.
“It can’t wait until later or the next day? I just got home and I was gone for more than a month.”
“Let me put it this way: we judge your risk to be extremely high, although ultimately it’s your choice. We can’t force anyone to come in.”
Silence filled the other end of the line.
“Okay. I understand.”
Tuvesson hung up, got behind the wheel, and turned the key. A tense, expectant mood had taken over the back seat. Through the rear-view mirror she could see them staring out at the rain with evasive looks.
She knew how they felt.