The Disciple (24 page)

But suddenly she was gone. Torn from his grasp. Again. He was standing there all alone. In a conference room full of pictures of other dead people. With the devastating truth as his only companion.

He stretched.

Just as he had done on the beach that day, he straightened up.

And slowly walked away.

At first Ursula’s reaction had surprised Torkel. He had expected fury, but her response was more like a pale silence. Then came a barrage of questions. How was this possible? Could it really be true? It wasn’t unusual for Sebastian Bergman to mess things up, but to do so on this scale and in this particular way was unbelievable. Sebastian had slept with the woman in that room. The woman who had subsequently been murdered. Everything had happened within the course of half a day, give or take a few hours. Someone was copying Edward Hinde. Down to the very last detail. Sebastian was the person who had been responsible for putting Hinde away, the person who had put the final pieces of the puzzle together. It had been Sebastian’s finest hour as a profiler, and it had made him the man he was. However Ursula turned things over in her mind, she kept coming back to the same impossible conclusion.

There was a connection.

But that just couldn’t be true.

Together they had quickly decided that the rest of the team must be told. As they ran down the stairs a small part of Torkel was relieved that he had had the wisdom to involve everyone in the decision to bring Sebastian in. Otherwise this would have been exclusively his problem. He hated thinking that way; it felt petty when there was a woman lying murdered in an apartment upstairs. But the thought was there.

Billy had moved away from the police cars and the curious onlookers who had begun to gather. He was on the phone, walking up and down as he talked. Vanja came to meet them and nodded in Billy’s direction.

‘He’s trying to locate the ex-husband so we can send a car. We’ve found Annette’s son in Canada, and the local police out there are going to speak to him. If he doesn’t get in touch with us, we’ll call him later.’

Torkel nodded impatiently. That was all very well, but informing the next of kin was way down his list of priorities at the moment.

‘Tell them you’ll call back if you haven’t got hold of him yet,’ he said sharply to Billy.

‘They’ve just gone to find him.’

‘You’ll have to ring back. We need to talk. Now.’

Billy ended the call. It was very rare for Torkel to use such a peremptory tone. Obviously whatever he had to say couldn’t wait.

Those who had gathered behind the police tape looked at them curiously as they stood in an intimate circle.

‘We have a situation,’ Torkel began. ‘Sebastian slept with the victim about twelve hours ago.’

Billy and Vanja stared at him in silence. Billy’s phone rang. Presumably the ex-husband had been located. Billy didn’t take the call.

Torkel and Billy sped back to the station in Vanja’s car. They had decided that Ursula would head over to the lab to try to persuade them to establish a definite time of death for Annette as soon as possible.

Vanja was really gunning for Sebastian this time, but Torkel had asked her to calm down for once. For a while, anyway. They needed to know what had happened, they needed to gather facts and information, then act. They mustn’t forget that four women were dead, and that had to be their main focus. Nothing else. They would need to deal with Sebastian professionally. They couldn’t let their feelings gain the upper hand at this stage, however powerful those feelings might be. Vanja gritted her teeth and shut up, but Billy could see that she was seething.

They parked in the underground car park and took the lift up to the department in silence. They started by looking for Sebastian in the Room. It was empty, but the table was a mess; the files relating to the previous victims had been opened, and there were pictures, transcripts and A4 pages strewn all over the place. A chair had been overturned. Someone had been there. Sebastian, in all probability.

‘Stay here and see if you can sort this lot out.’ Torkel made a sweeping gesture across the table as he turned to Billy.

‘Okay.’ For a second Billy thought about asking why Vanja couldn’t do it instead. But this was not the time.

‘Check that nothing’s missing. If it is, I want to know,’ said Torkel, heading for the door.

Billy stopped him. ‘You don’t seriously think Sebastian is involved in all this?’

Torkel’s expression was grave as he turned back to face Billy, his hand on the door handle. ‘As far as we know, he was the last person to see Annette Willén alive. So yes, he is involved.’

Torkel and Vanja hurried down the corridor, calling in at the staffroom where a group of uniformed officers were helping themselves to coffee from the machine. One of them had seen Sebastian a while ago and said hello, but Sebastian hadn’t replied. Torkel’s office door was open. Sebastian was slumped on the brown sofa, his head bowed. As Torkel entered, Sebastian looked up slowly. His expression was resigned, yet somehow powerful. As if he had reached the end of the road and had nowhere to run, but intended to fight anyway. He got to his feet. Vanja appeared in the doorway and looked Sebastian straight in the eye, her gaze full of suppressed rage.

‘Leave us alone, please.’ Torkel felt instinctively that it would be best to speak to his old friend alone. He needed dialogue, not immediate confrontation. He glanced at Vanja. ‘Close the door.’

Without a word she did as she was told. The hint of a slam, perhaps.

Torkel looked at Sebastian. ‘We’ve got a few things to sort out, you and I.’

‘More than you think.’ Sebastian’s voice was clear, and at least as forceful as Torkel’s. This unexpected show of strength annoyed Torkel; Sebastian should be speaking in no more than a whisper, he thought before he went on.

‘As far as you’re concerned, it ends here. You will have nothing further to do with this investigation.’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘Sebastian, listen to me!’ Torkel couldn’t stop his anger flaring up. Did Sebastian really not see the problem? ‘You had sex with one of the victims.’

‘I’ve had sex with all four.’

Torkel’s face drained of colour as he stared blankly into Sebastian’s burning eyes.

‘This is no ordinary copycat, Torkel. This is personal. And it’s aimed at me.’

It took a while to gather the whole team. Ursula was called back from pathology, even though the autopsy was nowhere near complete. Billy had sorted out the files and tidied up by the time Sebastian and Torkel arrived in the Room; nothing was missing, as far as he could see. Although she found it frustrating, Vanja had willingly agreed to take over the task of trying to track down Annette’s ex-husband. After what had happened she needed to feel that they were still effective as police officers, and were capable of acting correctly. She had managed to locate him and had sent a patrol to tell him what had happened. If he already knew they would question him briefly anyway, just to establish whether he had an alibi for the relevant time frame. Vanja was the last to arrive in the Room, and made a point of positioning herself near the door with her arms folded. As far away from Sebastian as possible.

‘We’re facing a critical situation here,’ he began.

Vanja shook her head. ‘
You
are facing a critical situation. Not
we
. Don’t drag us into this, if you don’t mind.’

Torkel silenced her with a look. ‘Let him finish.’

Sebastian nodded gratefully to Torkel and glanced apologetically at Vanja. He didn’t want to fight with her now. Anything but that. It was a long time since he had felt so alone.

He turned and pointed to a picture of the first victim. ‘I didn’t recognise Maria Lie at first, but her name was Kaufmann when she was at university. According to the documentation, we were students there at the same time, and I remember I was seeing a Maria Kaufmann for a while.’ He swallowed and moved on to the picture of Katharina Granlund.

‘I should have recognised Katharina. She came to a book signing back in ’97. At the book fair. She was already married at the time. We saw each other a few times. I realised it was her when I read that she had a small tattoo of a green lizard in an . . . an intimate place . . .’

‘You can’t be serious?’ Vanja said. ‘You don’t remember what the women you’ve shagged are called or what they look like, but you remember their tattoos down there?’

‘A tattoo is easier to remember than a face,’ Billy said.

Vanja turned to him like lightning. ‘Are you sticking up for him?’

‘I’m just saying that . . .’

‘Stop it. Both of you!’ Torkel interrupted the discussion as if he were separating two quarrelsome children. ‘Sebastian, please go on.’

Sebastian couldn’t look at Vanja as he turned to the last picture. The blonde woman in Nynäshamn. Victim number two.

‘Jeanette Jansson . . . I don’t recognise her, I don’t remember her at all, but I read in one of the interviews that she was known as “JoJo”, and I was . . . I went to bed with a JoJo a few years after I left university. In Växjö . . . She was blonde and she had a scar here.’ Sebastian pointed to his upper lip. ‘Jeanette Jansson comes from Växjö and had an operation to correct a harelip when she was a child.’

His words were met with total silence. Vanja was staring at him with pure disgust written all over her face. Sebastian suddenly looked immensely old and weary.

‘So it’s my fault that these particular women are dead. I’m the link you’ve been searching for. Me and Hinde.’

‘But Edward Hinde is locked up in Lövhaga,’ Billy pointed out. ‘Can we really be sure he has something to do with this?’

‘It’s beyond unlikely that someone would be copying Edward’s murders down to the last detail with all the victims linked to me without Edward having anything to do with it. Four murders, four women I’ve slept with – there has to be a connection!’

The room fell silent again. They knew Sebastian was right. It was impossible to disregard the pattern, however much they might want to.

Ursula got up and went over to the whiteboard. ‘Why now? Why is this happening now? Hinde committed his murders more than fifteen years ago.’

‘That’s what we have to find out,’ Torkel replied, suddenly realising that whichever way he looked at it, Sebastian was the key to the solution. ‘Sebastian, have you had any contact with Hinde since you interviewed him in the nineties?’

‘No. None at all.’

Torkel looked at his team. It was a long time since he had seen such a mixture of surprise, shock and anger. In a moment of clarity he knew what he had to do. It was likely that no one else would understand. But he was absolutely certain. Torkel didn’t know Edward Hinde as well as Sebastian did, but he knew him well enough to be aware that their opponent was a calculating, highly intelligent psychopath. Back in the nineties he had been one step ahead of them all the way along, until Sebastian Bergman joined the investigation.

Most of the team had been sceptical about the involvement of the egocentric psychologist, but Torkel at least had changed his mind very quickly. It was only with Sebastian on board that they had begun to find the patterns which eventually led to Hinde’s arrest. That was the truth. He needed Sebastian. He tried to catch Vanja’s and Ursula’s eyes, and cleared his throat.

‘You’re not going to like this. But you have to trust me. I want Sebastian there when Hinde is questioned.’

‘What do you mean?’ Vanja appeared to have calmed down slightly but now she found a new burst of energy. Her cheeks acquired a faint red flush. An angry flush.

‘If Hinde sees Sebastian as his opponent, if he’s gone as far as he has in order to make that clear . . .’ Torkel broke off and glanced at Sebastian, who seemed strangely indifferent. ‘Then he shall have Sebastian as his opponent. For real.’

‘Why?’ Vanja again. Of course.

‘Because until we show him that we’ve understood, the danger will continue.’

‘So if Sebastian turns up, he’ll stop?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

Nobody else spoke. They didn’t even know where to start. Torkel turned to Vanja again.

‘You will accompany Sebastian to Lövhaga tomorrow.’

‘No way! There are other people on this team.’

‘But you’re the one I’m asking to keep an eye on Sebastian. Somebody needs to kick the shit out of him if he doesn’t behave. You’ll do that better than anyone else.’

Vanja looked at Sebastian, then back at Torkel. Sebastian and Hinde seemed to be linked in a way she didn’t understand, and now Torkel was proposing to give Hinde precisely what he wanted. That certainly wasn’t doing things by the book. On the contrary, it could end very badly. She took a couple of steps towards him. ‘Do you realise what you’re doing?’

‘Yes.’

Vanja looked around for support from the others, but none was forthcoming.

Billy leaned forward. ‘I was just thinking: should we issue some kind of warning?’

The others stared at him uncomprehendingly.

Billy looked slightly embarrassed. ‘I mean, there must be a lot of women who . . . who are at risk, if you know what I mean.’

Vanja shook her head. ‘And what are we supposed to do? Issue a mug shot – “Have you slept with this man?” How many are there? A hundred? Two hundred? Five hundred?’