Jocke got his way. I went at once. The sun was blazing and the car’s paint gleamed. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have been able to help myself and would have started grinning the moment I saw it. Not this time. The Porsche aroused nothing but feelings of discomfort in me.
‘I fixed the dent in the bonnet as well,’ Jocke said.
‘Great,’ I said.
The dent in the bonnet. The cause of which I had absolutely no idea about.
‘What did you make of that?’ I said. ‘The dent, I mean.’
‘Tricky question,’ Jocke said. ‘The police asked the same thing. I assume they’ve got their own experts, but they wanted my opinion as well.’
‘They wanted to know if the dent was caused when someone was run over?’
‘He, not they. There was only one of them here. But yes, that’s what he wanted to know.’
Just one police officer. Not more.
‘What was his name?’
‘Didrik, I think.’
Of course.
‘And what did you say when he asked about the dent?’
‘That I wasn’t sure. That it looked as if someone had jumped up and landed on the bonnet on their butt. Something like that.’
‘Big butt,’ I said, and made an attempt at a relaxed laugh.
‘Hmm,’ Jocke said. ‘Bloody big butt. But at least it no longer stinks of rotten orange. The car, I mean.’
I’d never driven so cautiously as when I pulled out onto the road. I drove straight home and parked it in the garage. I had no intention of taking it out again for a very long time. To be on the safe side I left the satnav on. Then there’d be no doubt about whether or not the car had moved, in case anyone asked.
Lucy had gone out when I got back to the office. I was disconcerted by the fact that Didrik himself had gone to the garage. He ought to have sent an underling. And then there was the fact that the unappealing Herman Nilson had lent his house to Rakel Minnhagen. There had to be a common denominator of some sort, holding all this crap together. So why was it proving so hard to find?
I leafed through Lucy’s papers about the preschool again. If Herman Nilson was involved in the conspiracy I had fallen victim to, getting in touch with him would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. Incredibly stupid. That notwithstanding, however, it was unavoidable. After some hesitation I called Madeleine Rossander. Her voice sounded flat when she realised who was calling.
‘Just a quick question,’ I said. ‘Do you remember Herman Nilson?’
‘Er, yes. We worked at the same practice until a few months ago.’
Eureka.
‘Excellent. If someone wanted to bump into him and make it look like a coincidence – where would they find him?’
I heard Madeleine take a deep breath.
‘Why do you want to know?’
I stifled a sigh. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand why she was asking. She didn’t want to throw her acquaintances onto a blazing fire. Even if she didn’t particularly like them.
‘I need to check something with him,’ I said.
My voice was much lower than normal.
‘I don’t like this, Martin. What is it you need to check?’
My fingers were totally dry as they touched the papers on my desk.
‘He rented out his summer cottage to a woman for part of last year. Or at least she was registered at that address. I’d like to find out how he knows her.’
‘And you were thinking of asking him completely out of the blue when you pretended to bump into him somewhere?’
Her voice contained so many different shades of doubt that I could feel my cheeks burn.
‘I’m happy to admit that I’ve run out of good ideas,’ I said.
I heard her laugh quietly down the phone. It was a nice laugh. I once tried to match-make between her and a friend of mine.
‘What’s the best thing about her?’ he had asked.
‘She laughs really easily,’ I replied.
It had never occurred to me to try it on with Madeleine. She was far too good for me. Or too smart.
‘This woman,’ Madeleine said. ‘Does she have a name?’
I hesitated.
‘Not one that I feel like sharing right now,’ I said.
‘I’ll buy that,’ Madeleine said. ‘But keep your distance from Herman. He’s unreliable, towards men and women alike.’
‘Feel free to elaborate on that.’
‘Easy. He sleeps with any woman who comes near him, and only has a small number of male friends left, seeing as he has a tendency to exploit people in general. I was extremely surprised when he once cancelled a meeting to go and pick his godson up from preschool. In Flemingsberg of all places. Who the hell would pick someone like Herman to be a godfather?’
A godson at preschool. In Flemingsberg.
I made an effort not to sound too excited.
‘How come a man like Herman Nilson would have a godson at preschool in Flemingsberg?’ I said. ‘I thought all his friends were as rich as him.’
No one rich would choose to live in Flemingsberg. Not if you had similar assets to Nilson.
‘I’m afraid I have no answer to that particular question,’ Madeleine said.
‘But perhaps you know the names of the godson’s parents?’ I said.
‘No, but if it’s important I could probably find out.’
Was it important? Important enough to risk sending Madeleine out into the line of fire again? I needed to find some connections between all the little fragments of information I had.
‘If you could, please.’
‘I’ll get back to you,’ Madeleine said.
‘I might do the same,’ I said. ‘If it turns out that I really do need to get hold of Herman Nilson.’
My office felt very quiet after Madeleine had hung up. I quickly checked the newspapers’ websites again. Not a word about poor dead Elias. I was starting to feel sick. Where was the body? And where the hell was Mio? He’d also been in Rakel’s house and had then disappeared from there.
As long as Mio wasn’t dead. That thought made me feel utterly desolate. I didn’t know Mio; my relationship to him was purely practical. Either I found him and everything turned out alright, or I didn’t find him, in which case I might as well shoot myself. I hated being in that position. I hated the fact that I was expected to care so little about a young person.
Restlessness crept across my body like a rash. There was so much I wanted to get done, without knowing how to go about it.
I wanted to talk to the journalist Fredrik Ohlander’s family, but I didn’t dare contact them. Fredrik’s and my collaboration had been secret. And had to remain so. Previously for both our sakes, but now for mine alone.
I also wanted to know more about who might be aware of the sin I had buried in Texas, but I didn’t know who to ask.
My phone contained a short note about Stesolid. Did Mio suffer from epilepsy or febrile convulsions? His aunt or grandmother ought to be able to answer that. And that ought to have made the police try harder to find him when he went missing. I thought about what Didrik had said when we met at the Press Club. That the police were convinced Mio had been killed by his mother before she took her own life. Had that conviction been so strong that it got in the way of any real attempt to find him? Apparently. That impression was also reinforced by the police file. There wasn’t a single photograph of the boy among the material.
That couldn’t be right.
I needed to talk to another police officer. Someone must have reacted to the way the investigation had been handled, must have disagreed with it. But the police were out of bounds to me; I wasn’t going to get anywhere there. I found myself thinking about Susanne instead. The woman who had called in the middle of the night and wanted to remain anonymous. I didn’t know her name, and I didn’t know what she looked like. But I knew where she worked, and that would have to do. Having made up my mind, I stood up and went outside to the hire-car. A short while later I was on my way to Mio’s preschool.