Dark Secrets (4 page)

Perhaps Tommy, their leader, knew that.

Perhaps that was why he had gone up to the police and the soldiers and asked what was going on when they got to Listakärr.

Perhaps that was why he had offered the services of himself and the group.

Whatever the reason, the police officer—whose name was Haraldsson—had thought things over and after a certain amount of hesitation had come to the conclusion that it couldn’t do any harm to have nine more pairs of eyes in the forest. They could even have their own little sector to march around in. The police officer had asked Tommy to split them into groups of three, to choose a leader for each group, and to send the leaders to him for instructions. Joakim felt as if he’d won the lottery. He was in a group with Emma and Alice, the prettiest girls in the troop. And he was chosen as leader.

Joakim went back to the girls, who were waiting for him. Haraldsson had been so cool and brusque, just like the detectives in the Martin Beck movies. Joakim felt pretty important. He could already picture the way the rest of this fantastic day would turn out. He would find the missing boy, seriously wounded. The boy would look up at Joakim with that pleading expression only the dying can achieve; he would be too weak to talk, but his eyes would say it all. Joakim would pick him up and carry him toward the others, just like in the movies. The others would catch sight of him, smile at him, applaud, cheer, and everything would work out in the end.

Back in the group Joakim organized his team so that he had Emma on his left and Alice on the other side. Haraldsson had given strict orders to keep the chain together, and Joakim looked seriously at the girls and told them how important it was to stick together. Time to step up to the mark. After what felt like an eternity, Haraldsson signaled to them, and the search party began to move at last.

Joakim soon noticed that it was very difficult to keep a chain together, even though it consisted of only three groups with three people in each. Particularly as they moved deeper into the forest and the bog forced them to take a detour away from the marked route, time and time again. One group found it difficult to keep up; the other didn’t slow down at all and soon disappeared behind the hillocks. Just
as Haraldsson had said. Joakim was even more impressed by him. He seemed to know everything. Joakim smiled at the girls and made them repeat Haraldsson’s final words.

“If you find anything, you shout ‘Found!’ ”

Emma nodded, looking annoyed.

“You’ve said that like a thousand times.”

Joakim did not allow himself to be put off by her response. With the sun in his eyes he trudged on, trying to maintain distance and alignment, even though it was becoming more and more difficult. And he could no longer see Lasse’s group, which had been slightly to the left of them just now.

After half an hour Emma wanted a rest. Joakim tried to make her understand that they couldn’t just stop. They might fall behind and lose the others.

“What others?” Alice said, smiling meaningfully.

Joakim realized they hadn’t seen the others for a while now.

“It sounds as if they’re behind us.”

They fell silent, listened a little more carefully. Faint sounds in the distance. Someone shouting.

“No, we’ll keep going,” said Joakim, although deep down he felt Alice was probably right. They had been moving too fast. Or in the wrong direction.

“In that case, you’re on your own,” Emma replied, her expression furious. For a second Joakim felt that he was losing his grip on the team and that Emma was slipping through his fingers. And she had actually looked at him appreciatively over the last half hour. Joakim was suddenly dripping in sweat, and it wasn’t only because his underwear was too warm. He had driven them on to impress her, couldn’t she see that? And now she was acting as if it was all his fault.

“Are you hungry?” Alice interrupted Joakim’s train of thought. She had taken a packet of wraps out of her backpack.

“No,” he answered a little too quickly, before realizing that he was indeed hungry. He walked off and clambered up onto a hillock so that
it would look as if he had a plan. Emma gratefully accepted a soft wrap, completely ignoring Joakim’s attempts to appear important. Joakim decided he needed to change tack. He took a deep breath, allowing the fresh forest air to fill his lungs. The sky had clouded over, the sun had disappeared, and with it the promise of a perfect day. He went back to the girls. Decided to soften his tone.

“Actually, I would like a sandwich if you’ve got one left,” he said as pleasantly as he could.

“Sure,” Alice replied, digging out a wrap for him. She smiled at him, and Joakim could see that this was a better strategy.

“I wonder where we are,” Emma said, pulling a small map out of her pocket. They gathered around it, trying to work out where they were. It was quite difficult: the terrain had no real distinguishing features, just hillocks, forest, and boggy ground giving way to one another. But they knew where they had started from, after all, and roughly in which direction they had been moving.

“We’ve been heading north almost all the time, so we should be in this area,” Emma suggested. Joakim nodded; he was impressed. Emma was smart.

“Shall we carry on, or wait for the others?” Alice wondered.

“I think we should carry on,” Joakim replied quickly, then added, “unless you’d rather wait?”

He looked at the girls—Emma with her bright blue eyes and her soft face, Alice with her slightly more angular features. They were both gorgeous, he thought, suddenly wishing that they would suggest waiting for the others. And that the others would take a long, long time to come.

“I suppose we might just as well carry on. If we’re here, it’s not far from where we were supposed to meet up anyway,” said Emma, pointing at the map.

“Yes, but you’re right, the others are behind us, so maybe we ought to wait for them,” Joakim ventured.

“I thought you wanted to get there first. I mean, you took off like a
bat out of hell,” said Alice. The girls laughed, and Joakim realized it was good to laugh with pretty girls. He gave Alice a playful little shove.

“You weren’t exactly hanging about yourself.”

They started chasing one another. They ran between the pools of water, randomly at first, but after Emma stumbled into one the aim was to get the others as wet as possible. It was a brilliant break from the slightly boring search, and just what Joakim needed. He ran after Emma and briefly grabbed her arm. She tore herself free and tried to run away from him, but her left foot caught on a protruding tree root and she lost her balance. For a second it looked as though she would stay on her feet, but the area around the pool was slippery with mud and she fell in, the water reaching her waist.

Joakim laughed, but Emma was screaming. He fell silent and moved toward her. She screamed even louder.
Odd
, thought Joakim. It wasn’t that bad, surely. Just a bit of water. Then he saw the pale white body sticking up just a short distance away from Emma. It was as if it had been lying beneath the surface, waiting for its victim. That was the end of innocence and their childish game. There was nothing left now but dizziness and blind panic. Emma threw up; Alice started sobbing. Joakim stood there frozen in time, staring at the image that would be with him for the rest of his life.

Haraldsson was in bed, dozing. Jenny was lying next to him, the soles of her feet on the mattress, a pillow underneath her bottom. She hadn’t wanted to drag things out.

“Best if we get it over with, then we can do it again before I have to get back.”

Get it over with.
Is there a bigger turnoff in any language? Haraldsson doubted it. But there you go, they’d gotten it over with and Haraldsson was dozing. Someone somewhere was playing ABBA. “Ring Ring.”

“That’s your phone.” Jenny poked him in the side. Haraldsson woke up, well aware that he wasn’t supposed to be in bed with his wife. He
grabbed his pants from the floor and dug out his cell phone. Hanser. Obviously. He took a deep breath and answered.

Five words this time.

“Where the fuck are you?”

Hanser hung up angrily.
Sprained his ankle.
Not a chance. She had a good mind to drive to the hospital, or at least send a car there just to prove that the bastard was lying. But she didn’t have time. She was suddenly responsible for a murder investigation. It hadn’t exactly helped that the person responsible for the team working around Listakärr hadn’t been on-site or that he had agreed to use underage Scouts in the search party. Minors for whom she would now need to arrange counseling, since one of them had fallen into a pool of water and brought a corpse up with her when she got to her feet.

Hanser shook her head. Everything to do with this disappearance had gone wrong.
Everything.
No more mistakes. From now on they had to start getting it right. Being professional. She looked at the phone, which was still in her hand. An idea was born. It was a big step to take. Too early, many people would think. It might possibly undermine her leadership. But she had long ago promised herself that she would never be afraid of uncomfortable decisions. There was too much at stake.

A boy was dead.

Murdered.

It was time to work with the best.

“There’s a call for you,” said Vanja, poking her head around Torkel Höglund’s door. His office, like most things about Torkel, was lean and simple. Nothing fussy, nothing expensive, hardly even anything personal. With its furniture sourced from a central storage depot somewhere, the room gave the impression that it was occupied by a school principal in some cash-strapped small town, rather than by one of the
most senior police chiefs in Sweden. Some of his colleagues found it strange that the person responsible for the national homicide unit, known as Riksmord, had no desire to show the world how far he had come. Others interpreted it differently, concluding that his success had not gone to his head. The truth was simpler: Torkel never had any time. His job was demanding; he was always traveling around the country, and he wasn’t the kind of man who wanted to spend his spare time beautifying an office he rarely used.

“It’s Västerås,” said Vanja, sitting down opposite him. “The murdered sixteen-year-old boy.”

Torkel watched Vanja settle down. Clearly he wouldn’t be taking this call in private. He nodded and picked up the phone. Since his second divorce it felt as if phone calls were about nothing but sudden death. It was more than three years since anyone had wondered if he’d be home on time for dinner, or anything else so gloriously mundane.

He recognized the name: Kerstin Hanser, who headed up the team at police headquarters in Västerås. He had gotten to know her during a training course a few years ago. A good person and undoubtedly a good boss, he had thought at the time, and he remembered feeling pleased when he read about her new position. Now her voice sounded stressed and strained.

“I need help. I’ve decided to ask for Riksmord, and I’d really appreciate it if you could come. Might that be possible?” Her tone was almost pleading.

For a second Torkel considered ducking the question. He and his team had just returned from an unpleasant investigation in Linköping, but he realized that if Kerstin Hanser had called him, it was because she really needed help.