The Disciple (71 page)

‘I heard you. On the landing. You offered to take my place.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Sebastian shrugged. It was painful. He winced. ‘Because I enjoy charging in like a knight in shining armour.’

Vanja smiled and stood up. She leaned over and gave him a big hug. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

Sebastian couldn’t answer. Didn’t want to. He wanted to freeze this moment forever. This was what he had been yearning for. For months. Longer than that, to be honest. How long was it since anyone had shown him genuine affection? Ellinor, yes, but she was . . . Ellinor. He hugged Vanja back. For slightly too long, but she didn’t seem to mind.

She was smiling at him again as she sat down.

Sebastian exhaled as slowly as he could. The hug had been very painful, but it had been well worth it.

‘So what are you going to do now?’ Vanja asked.

‘Have you seen that slightly older nurse who . . .’

She gave him a push. That hurt too. He wondered if there was anything he could do that didn’t hurt.

‘I meant as far as work goes.’

‘I don’t know.’

Vanja nodded and glanced down at her hands, then she looked up at him, her eyes full of sincerity. ‘I wouldn’t mind working with you again.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘That means a lot to me.’

He held her gaze, hoping she could see that he really meant it.

Vanja’s telephone rang. The moment, if there had been one, was gone. She fished her phone out of her pocket and looked at the display. ‘I need to take this.’

She turned away from the bed for a moment as she answered. ‘Hi, Dad . . . No, I’m at the hospital. Visiting Sebastian . . . Yes, that Sebastian.’

She flashed him a brief smile. He smiled back. At least, he hoped that was what he was doing. There were so many emotions.

Joy, sorrow, pride, pain.

‘Yes, I was there,’ Vanja went on. ‘It’s a long story. Can I call you later? . . . Okay. Love you too.’

She ended the call and put her phone away. ‘That was Dad. He’s seen the news about Hinde on the net.’

‘He doesn’t know what’s happened?’

‘No, and I’m not sure how much to tell him. He worries about me. I want to protect him. And Anna.’

It must run in the family, Sebastian thought. The desire to protect one’s nearest and dearest from unpleasant truths. Like him.

‘I’ll let you get some rest,’ Vanja said, getting to her feet. She picked up the chair and carried it back to its original spot.

‘He’s lucky to have you. Your dad,’ Sebastian said to her back.

‘I’m lucky to have him. He’s the best.’

‘I’m sure he is.’

Vanja headed for the door. She stopped, her hand resting on the handle. As if she was slightly reluctant to go. ‘Okay, I’m off. Take care of yourself.’

‘You too.’

He watched her go. Not in anger. Not after a heated exchange of words. Not after a fight. He made a decision. Whatever Trolle might have dug up about Valdemar, he was never going to use it. He wasn’t even going to look at the papers to find out what Valdemar had done. As soon as he got home, he would burn the contents of the carrier bag. Valdemar’s secret would die with Trolle.

He turned over. It hurt. Of course. He gazed out of the window. It was just after five o’clock. The sun had been up for about half an hour, and there was no heat in it yet. But it was going to be a beautiful day.

She had asked him what he was going to do.

He knew what he wasn’t going to do.

He wasn’t going to be her father. Ever. He was going to stop trying. If he played his cards right, he might get to be close to her. Be accepted. Not loved, but perhaps liked.

That was good enough.

He didn’t have many things in his life that were good, so it would be stupid to throw this one away.

It would be all right.

He could feel it.

Everything would be all right.

Billy got to work early; he was the first one there. Maya had spent the night at her own place, so there was no real reason for him to stay in bed. He hadn’t slept properly anyway.

He had shot a man.

Dead.

He had had no choice, nobody needed to tell him that, even though both Vanja and Torkel had said it immediately afterwards. Billy was absolutely certain that Hinde would have killed Vanja if he hadn’t shot him. Had it been necessary to kill him? Impossible to say. Even an injured Hinde would have needed no more than a second to inflict serious injuries on Vanja. Fatal injuries. Billy just couldn’t take the risk.

He and Vanja had talked briefly while she was waiting for the ambulance. The first one had taken Sebastian.

They had sorted things out.

A kidnapping and a fatal shooting had turned out to be very effective when it came to resolving conflict.

Suddenly everything else seemed fairly petty.

Unimportant, easily sorted.

He sat down at the computer and started up Ralph’s damaged hard drive. Not that there was any real necessity. They had everything they needed on Ralph Svensson: fingerprints, DNA, traces of blood from the victims, the nylon stockings and the collection of press cuttings, not to mention a confession. Nobody would be looking for anything Billy might retrieve from Ralph’s computer in order to secure a conviction.

He wasn’t doing this for the case.

He was doing it for himself.

Just as it had been when he was worried about Vanja, work was the best way of suppressing those unwelcome thoughts. Thoughts about the shooting. About the fact that he had taken a life. Besides, this was what he was good at. This was what he enjoyed doing. This was where the challenge lay. Where he got results. Maya could say whatever she liked, but it was these skills that had led them to Hinde. Saved Vanja.

Billy had reached the part of the conversation where Hinde told Ralph it was time to move from fantasy to execution. Hinde gave Ralph the names of his victims. One by one. Maria Lie. Jeanette Jansson Nyberg. Katharina Granlund. Gave him their names and addresses.

Meanwhile Ralph reported back on Sebastian’s fresh conquests, including Annette Willén. On that occasion the reply from Hinde was almost immediate. She must die that same day. So that the link to Sebastian would become crystal clear. It was a strange feeling, reading the brief, precise lines and knowing that they had led to the deaths of four women.

He carried on reading.

There was a name he recognised.

Anna Eriksson.

Wasn’t that . . . ?

In Västerås, Sebastian had asked Billy to help him find an address. For someone called Anna Eriksson. Same name. Admittedly it was fairly common, but it still seemed like a bit of a coincidence. Billy had found the address for Sebastian; now where was it?

He minimised the window from Ralph’s hard drive and selected the ‘Västerås’ folder from the desktop. Opened it and selected the file that contained all the loose ends that he hadn’t been able to link to anything in particular. Including that address.

Storskärsgatan 12.

He looked it up on Eniro. Discovered that Anna Eriksson lived there with Valdemar Lithner.

Lithner.

Hang on.

Vanja’s mother was called Anna.

Was Sebastian’s Anna Eriksson Vanja’s mother?

All the pieces of the puzzle were laid out in front of him, but he couldn’t see the whole picture. He approached the problem methodically. Started from the beginning.

Sebastian had been looking for someone called Anna Eriksson.

It turned out that she lived on Storskärsgatan.

Anna Eriksson was Vanja’s mother.

Ralph reported Anna Eriksson at Storskärsgatan 12 as a possible victim.

Did that mean Sebastian had slept with her? It had to, surely. At some point, anyway.

Sebastian and Vanja’s mother.

Was that why Vanja disliked Sebastian so much?

Billy leaned back, convinced there was more to all this. Why had Sebastian been searching for Anna when he was in Västerås? If he knew she was Vanja’s mother, then surely he could simply have asked Vanja about her? But he didn’t. What did that mean? He didn’t know, or he didn’t want to ask Vanja?

Instinctively Billy felt he ought to stop there. Perhaps he should even delete the information he had just discovered relating to Anna Eriksson. Nobody was going to need it, after all. He thought it over for a while. In the end his curiosity got the better of him. He copied the relevant pages onto his computer and deleted them from Ralph’s hard drive.

Everything was on the internet – that was what people said. Billy knew it was true. And once the internal investigation started, he would have all the time in the world. Because he would be investigated. Not only had he drawn his gun and fired a shot, it had been a fatal shooting. His conduct would be examined, and he would be cleared of any wrongdoing. And while he was waiting, he would have his little project.

Ellinor woke just before six. Sebastian wasn’t home. It looked as if he’d been out all night. His side of the bed was untouched. Ellinor stayed where she was. She didn’t really need to get up; she had taken the whole week off work, and no one was waiting for her.

But she was waiting for someone.

She reached over to the bedside table and picked up her phone. Called Sebastian’s mobile. He didn’t answer. He hadn’t answered yesterday evening either. The last time she tried it had been after one o’clock in the morning. Where was he? What was he doing? There was no way she would be able to go back to sleep, so she got up, pulled on one of his shirts and went into the kitchen. Filled the kettle and switched it on. Made herself two substantial sandwiches of cottage cheese and tomato while she waited for it to boil. Made herself a cup of tea and fetched the paper from the hallway before settling down with her breakfast. She glanced out of the window and found herself staring at the guttering on the building opposite. She hadn’t known Sebastian very long, but he didn’t seem to be the kind of man who worked all night. So where was he? Why hadn’t he called, or picked up when she called him?

Was he with another woman?

He had spoken about someone called Hinde on the phone before he disappeared yesterday evening. Or spoken to someone called Hinde. Was it a surname? Was it a woman?

Perhaps it was someone who was in need of a friendly, explanatory chat about who belonged to whom, and how wrong it was to try to steal a person who belonged to someone else. Her ex-husband had been unfaithful. Left her.

He was dead now.

But when she thought back to the last couple of days, that didn’t really add up. Sebastian had been very persistent; he had made a real effort to get her to be with him. Surely he wouldn’t deceive her as soon as she had moved in, as soon as he had got what he wanted? So far he had been nothing but loving.

The perfect man.

She had judged him too quickly. She was slightly ashamed of herself. She would make it up to him when he got home. There could be other reasons for his sudden departure and overnight absence. There had to be other reasons. She thought back over the events of the previous evening as her untouched cup of tea grew cold. He had seemed stressed when he left, that was for sure. Perhaps there were problems, either at work or in his private life. Obviously she wished he would talk to her if there was something bothering him, but some men insisted on being stoical and coping on their own. They found it terribly difficult to ask for help. But he didn’t need to ask Ellinor. She would help anyway, if only she knew how.

She began systematically going through everything they had done together yesterday. Was there a moment when he had acted differently? Tried to hide something?

She remembered the supermarket carrier bag she had found. She thought it contained important papers, but when she asked him about it he had gone quiet. In fact he had remained quiet for a while. He had seemed very pensive, and had looked a little bit sad. As if the contents of the bag were a burden to him, as if he was wondering whether to share it with her. Perhaps he had been asking himself whether he had any right to drag her into his problems, but had then decided against the idea. He had asked her to throw the bag away. In a casual tone of voice. As if it meant nothing to him. Nothing at all. Putting up a facade. Which she could now see right through. He wanted to protect her. They would have to talk about that when he got back. She didn’t need protecting. She was far more capable than he thought. But she loved the fact that he had tried.

With a little smile on her lips she went into their bedroom and fetched the bag. She pushed her untouched breakfast to one side and started to empty the contents of the carrier bag onto the table.

Forty-five minutes later she had read every word.

Twice.

It was all to do with someone called Valdemar Lithner. He had done a number of foolish things. Illegal things, as far as she could make out. This made sense; Sebastian sometimes worked with the police. Was Lithner someone they were going to pick up? Someone they had been investigating, and now they had passed all the information on to Sebastian so that he could work on a psychological evaluation of the suspect? A ‘profile’? Could well be.

But in that case, why had he asked her to throw away the contents of the bag?

Perhaps it just wouldn’t stand up in court. Maybe it wasn’t enough to take Valdemar Lithner into custody or arrest him or whatever it was they did.

But if that was the explanation, why had Sebastian seemed stressed about it all? Why hadn’t he just told her the truth? Explained what it was and why there was no point in keeping it any longer?

No, it didn’t make sense. Admittedly Ellinor had no legal training, but she was pretty sure that the papers she had in front of her would be enough to put Valdemar behind bars for quite some time.

So it must be something else.

Did this Lithner know that he was in trouble? Had he threatened Sebastian and the other police officers, forcing them to drop the case? She thought she had heard him say ‘Hinde’ on the phone yesterday, but it could just as easily have been ‘Lithner’. The names sounded similar, and she hadn’t been listening all that carefully. What if something had happened to Sebastian? Was that why he hadn’t come home? She pulled herself up short. Ellinor Bergkvist wasn’t a woman who allowed her imagination to run away with her. Among the documentation was a piece of paper with a name and a mobile number; presumably this was the man who had put it all together. She picked up her phone. It wouldn’t do any harm to find out a bit more. Knowing the facts would reassure her.