Without a Trace (24 page)

The man reddened. ‘No, well … It wasn’t like that.’

She leaned across the table. ‘Hans,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to report you to the tax office. I don’t care if you didn’t declare the income from the rent in your tax return.’

Hans Larsén exhaled on a long sigh of relief. He sat down at the table, dropped two lumps of sugar into his cup of coffee and stirred hard. ‘I’m grateful to you,’ he said. ‘Kag was my lodger. He’s lived here for several years, with his own entrance and bathroom. He never disturbed me. He wasn’t allowed to bring his drinking buddies back here, and he never did.’

‘Several years, you said. How many?’

Hans Larsén looked up at the ceiling. ‘Let’s see now, time really does fly – it’ll be seven years this summer.’

‘How much rent did he pay you?’

A hesitant glance. ‘Four thousand five hundred, but that included heat and water, and internet access.’

‘Did he use the internet much?’

Hans Larsén became defensive again. ‘Not really. He didn’t have a computer of his own. But he had a new phone, one of those smart ones, and could surf the net on that. I’ve got wireless, of course.’

This last remark was made with a degree of pride.

‘Did you get the impression that he had a lot of money?’

Hans Larsén nodded. ‘Oh, yes – well, I don’t know about a lot. Who has a lot of money these days, apart from bankers? But he always paid the rent on time, and he had a fridge of his own in his room where he kept bread and butter, beer and tomatoes. Do you want to see it?’

Evidently Hans Larsén had made a habit of visiting his lodger’s room and checking the contents of his fridge.

‘Is there anything left to look at?’

‘The bed and the chest of drawers.’

‘I’ll respect my colleagues’ no-entry sign,’ she said.

The man seemed suddenly anxious. ‘It’s going to be tricky making ends meet now – it’s a big loss of income. Is there any sort of social security that covers things like this, do you know?’

He was pushing his luck now, Nina thought. He hadn’t declared seven years’ worth of rental income to the tax office, and now he wanted compensation because his illegal funds had dried up.

Her mobile started to vibrate in her inside pocket. ‘That would be tricky,’ she said, pulling her phone out. ‘You’ll probably have to find another lodger.’ She looked at the screen: Södermalm Hospital. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to take this call,’ she said, standing up.

She hurried out onto the front step, closing the door behind her. ‘Thanks for calling,’ she said to Dr Kararei.

‘It’s not good news,’ the doctor said. ‘There’s been a rapid deterioration in Ingemar Lerberg’s condition overnight. He’s suffered a massive embolism caused by septicaemia, which probably stems from the infections in the soles of his feet. It’s taken hold of his lungs and he’s back on the ventilator.’

Nina glanced down the street. In the background she could see the forest. Deep among the trees lay Kråkträsken. ‘What does the embolism mean?’

‘His blood coagulation system has collapsed. He’s got microscopic blood clots all over his body. We can probably deal with the infection, and we’re giving him anti-coagulation treatment to deal with the embolism, but we don’t know if his brain has been affected.’

Hans Larsén opened the curtains and peered at her through the window. She turned her back on him pointedly. ‘What’s the prognosis? When do you think we’ll be able to question him again?’

There was silence for a few seconds.

‘Perhaps I’m not expressing myself clearly enough,’ Dr Kararei said. ‘We can’t be sure that he’s going to regain consciousness again, ever.’

She felt a chill in her gut, spreading slowly through her chest. The wind grabbed at her hair and made her eyes water. ‘Did he say anything else yesterday? Anything about the perpetrators, or his wife?’

‘He’s been unconscious since you left the ward yesterday morning.’

Nina thanked him and ended the call, then went back in to Hans Larsén. She stopped in the kitchen doorway. ‘It’s very important that you think about this carefully and tell me the truth,’ she said. ‘Did Karl Gustaf ever mention a man called Ingemar? Ingemar Lerberg?’

Hans Larsén stared at her with alarm. ‘Ingemar? No, that’s the sort of name you’d remember.’

‘Are you quite sure? You’ve never heard Kag talk about an Ingemar Lerberg?’

Hans Larsén’s eyes widened. ‘Isn’t that the politician who got beaten up?’

‘What about Nora? Nora Lerberg?’

The man shook his head. ‘Never.’

‘Where did Kag get his money from?’

Hans Larsén sank down at the table. ‘You don’t ask people that sort of thing.’

‘How did he pay the rent?’

‘Cash. He didn’t have a bank account.’

‘And you’re quite sure about that?’

He nodded.

She put her mobile back into her pocket, which also contained the keys to the Lerberg family’s home on Silvervägen.

She thanked him for the coffee and hurried out to the car.

‘Seriously?’ Valter said dubiously. ‘She’s been gone twenty years, and Anders Schyman wants us to find her?’

‘Seriously,’ Annika said. She understood his scepticism. To Valter, Viola Söderland’s disappearance might as well have happened in the Middle Ages. He had been a baby when she’d gone missing – he had no way of relating to the event, and had never heard of Golden Spire. He had dutifully written down the facts she had presented to him: the change of name, the passport, the trip to the Cayman Islands, the car, the tailor, the picture from the petrol station.

‘But how’s this going to work?’ he asked. ‘After all, no one’s seen her since she vanished.’

‘If she’s alive, there’ll be people who see her every day,’ Annika said.

They were sitting in their usual places in the newsroom. Patrik Nilsson hadn’t tried to send them out on some pointless task all morning so Schyman must have told him they were engaged in an important project.

‘I think we should work backwards,’ Annika said. ‘Take the last lead first.’

‘The owner of the petrol station,’ Valter said.

‘There were several petrol stations in Håkansö, outside Piteå, in the early 1990s,’ Annika said. ‘This one was a Mobil but it closed down ages ago. The owner wasn’t named in the documentary, but his name is Ulf Hedström. Can you look him up while I deal with the tailor?’

Valter pulled his laptop towards him and began typing.

The shop that had made the special lining for Viola’s coat was called Västgård’s Dry-cleaning and Key-cutting, and was based in Solna, just outside Stockholm. The owner, Björn Västgård, had done the work himself. He had appeared in the programme – Annika remembered a cheerful, red-haired man with a broad chest and strong arms. He was clearly excited about being on television, and – with an appropriately conspiratorial air – went into great detail about the peculiar job, actually the most peculiar he had ever had, sewing hidden pockets into the lining of an ordinary coat.

He couldn’t have led a particularly exciting life, Annika mused, as she typed into Google. ‘Västgård’s Dry-cleaning and Key-cutting’ didn’t come up with anything – it had probably changed name and owner. ‘Björn Västgård’ gave 412 results, but none had anything to do with dry-cleaning or tailoring. She went into the database covering the population of the whole country and restricted the search criteria: four matches, much more manageable. The red-haired Björn Västgård ought to be in his sixties now, which fitted two of the men on the list, one in Spånga and one in Järfalla.

She called the one in Spånga first and his wife answered. ‘Björn’s working in Norway at the moment,’ she said. ‘He’ll be home next Friday.’ No, he had never worked as a tailor in Solna.

She moved on and tried the mobile number of Björn Västgård in Järfalla. He answered on the second ring, and sounded loud and enthusiastic. Yes, he had run a dry-cleaning business in Solna in the 1990s. He was happy to talk to the
Evening Post
. He was working as a delivery driver, these days. Maybe they could meet for a coffee somewhere. He suggested the café next to the metro station out in Mälarhöjden in three-quarters of an hour.

Annika hung up and wondered how Valter was getting on. He looked slightly manic: his hair was sticking straight up and he had sweat on his forehead.

‘There are loads of Ulf Hedströms,’ he said.

‘If you try the population register you can see where in Sweden they are. Focus on the ones up in Norrbotten. When you click the names you’ll be able to see how old the person is.’

‘Brilliant.’

She sighed: what did they teach them at college?

‘There’s a man who’s going to be sixty-six on Monday,’ he said. ‘Lives on Ankarskatavägen in Piteå. Could he be the one?’

‘Why don’t you call him and ask?’ Annika said.

He hesitated. ‘What shall I say? That we’re looking for Viola Söderland?’

‘Maybe not directly,’ Annika said. ‘Do you want me to try?’

He clicked at his computer and a phone number appeared on Annika’s screen. She dialled the number and a woman answered, ‘Hedström,’ in a weak voice.

‘Good morning,’ Annika said cheerfully. ‘My name’s Annika Bengtzon, and I’m calling from the
Evening Post
. I was wondering if I could speak to the Ulf Hedström who ran the Mobil petrol station in Håkansö in the 1990s. Have I got the right number?’

Annika could hear the woman’s strained breathing as a recurrent crackle on the line. ‘I know it’s his birthday on Monday,’ she said, ‘so it’s probably not too early to wish him many happy returns, but if he’s not too busy doing—’

The woman started to cry. ‘Why can’t you just leave us alone?’ she shouted.

Annika held the phone away from her ear. ‘Sorry?’ she said.

‘Ulf’s dead, and you keep phoning and phoning,’ she wailed. ‘What do you want?’

Valter leaned forward.

‘Oh,’ Annika said, ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that he was dead. When did it happen?’

Valter slapped a hand to his forehead.

‘Last month,’ the woman sobbed. ‘What do you want?’

‘I haven’t called before,’ Annika said. ‘There must be some misunderstanding. What did he die of?’

‘It was his prostate. So you’re not the one who’s been calling? From that blog?’ She blew her nose.

‘No,’ Annika said. ‘I’m calling from the
Evening Post
, the newspaper. Has a blogger been trying to contact Ulf?’

‘Several times, while he was in the hospice in Sunderbyn. Is it about that picture? The one of that rich bitch?’

Yes, Annika had to admit that it was.

The woman sounded angry now. ‘He dismantled the camera and took his punishment. What more could he have done?’

Annika closed her eyes. This was the crux of the story: how could Schyman have known about that picture? A tiny fragment of evidence in a preliminary investigation that had led to a trial and conviction in a little district court in Norrbotten? And how had the picture ended up with the police?

‘How did Ulf get caught for setting up that camera?’ she said.

The woman on the phone let out a deep sigh. ‘Someone grassed. Ulf thought it was one of the people who used to steal petrol, but I have my own theories. It was one of the other petrol-station owners, someone who wanted to get rid of the competition.’

‘So someone called the police and tipped them off about the camera?’ Annika said. ‘And you don’t know who?’

‘No. They said it was anonymous.’

‘Do you know when they received the tip-off?’

‘In September that year. The rich bitch drove past in the middle of the night, and the police were there the next morning. She was on the last picture.’

‘Have you heard from Viola Söderland at all since that picture was taken?’ Annika asked. ‘Do you know if she visited the petrol station on any other occasion?’

‘Never,’ the woman said. They hadn’t heard a thing, apart from that blogger who wouldn’t stop ringing. Annika thanked her, expressed her condolences once more, and apologized for intruding at such a difficult time.

‘Bloody hell, that was rough,’ Valter said, once she’d hung up.

‘That’s just what happens sometimes,’ Annika said. ‘There’s always a bit of a delay with official records so we had no way of knowing he was dead.’ She stood up and put on her coat. ‘Do you fancy coming out to the suburbs for coffee?’

They picked up one of the paper’s cars and headed south on the E4. It wasn’t raining hard enough for Annika to have the windscreen wipers on, but too much for her not to use them. She left them on, and had to put up with the squeak of rubber on glass.

‘I’ve been thinking about Gustaf Holmerud,’ Valter said.

Annika glanced at him. ‘Having trouble letting go?’

‘I checked the archive. The rest of the media wrote about him for a while, and quoted us, but then they stopped. Why?’

Annika noted that he said ‘us’ when referring to the
Evening Post
, and took that as a good sign. ‘We launched him,’ she said. ‘He was our creation.’

Valter goggled at her.

‘Last autumn five women were stabbed to death in the Stockholm region over a fairly short period of time,’ she said. ‘Murders of women by their partners aren’t regarded as proper murders in the media, often only referred to in passing, pretty much like deaths from drink-driving or genocide in Africa. But I started to tease Nilsson. “Maybe it wasn’t their partners. What if you’re missing a serial killer?” He took me at my word. He started to push the theory of a psychopathic serial killer in the Stockholm suburbs as hard news, and soon the police were forced to comment. Then that nutter turned up and claimed responsibility for everything.’

‘But he’s been convicted of five murders,’ Valter said. ‘Are you saying he’s innocent?’

‘Not entirely. He probably murdered Lena, a forty-two-year-old mother of two from Sätra. They’d had a brief relationship last summer, until she ended it. I think the rest of the media have figured out that Holmerud is a mythomaniac. They’re trying to distance themselves from the whole story, but the
Evening Post
can’t do that because that would mean admitting our mistake.’

Valter was clearly bewildered. ‘But,’ he said, ‘why didn’t Holmerud’s lawyer do anything?’