Without a Trace (26 page)

She didn’t know what a home was, but something was telling her that this wasn’t right. There was something strained about it, the curtains, the furniture and windowpanes. It wasn’t organic – it had no life, no pulse.

She wondered if that meant anything.

She went out into the utility room, where the built-in cupboards were less smart. Washing-machine, tumbledrier, airing-cupboard, a hook on the back door …

Her eyes stopped. She crouched.

A pair of slippers, light brown, worn, made of a blanket-like material. They were positioned beside the back door, neatly lined up next to a bucket containing a mop.

She went back to the kitchen, tore off a piece of kitchen roll, then returned to the utility room.

She picked up the right slipper with the paper and turned it upside down.

Size 34.

Nora wore size 38 or 39. At least, that was the size of all the shoes in her wardrobe.

She crouched there for a while. Then she replaced the slipper and called Lamia, and asked her to send a couple of forensics officers to Silvervägen with an evidence bag big enough for a pair of slippers, then to get hold of surveillance footage from every station along the Saltsjöbanan line for the morning of Monday, 13 May.

Annika turned into the multi-storey car-park at Skärholmen shopping centre, a huge concrete structure stretching as far as the eye could see. She drove to the back of the second floor and found a spot fairly close to the entrance, five hours’ free parking.

‘This Light of Truth,’ Valter said. ‘Have you read the blog?’

‘Some of it,’ Annika said, switching the engine off. ‘Why?’

‘I’ve read just about all of it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Not the comments, there are thousands of those now, but he hasn’t written anything about interviewing Björn Västgård.’

She took the key out of the ignition and grabbed her bag from the back seat. ‘Björn Västgård’s version of events doesn’t fit the blogger’s, so he’s just pretending it doesn’t exist.’

They got out of the car.

‘Can you make a point of remembering where we parked, or we’ll never find our way back here,’ Annika said. She had a hopeless sense of direction.

They took the escalator up to the shopping centre, a classic suburban mall with a glass roof and all the obligatory chain-stores. Outside there was a large concrete square. Annika stopped at the doors and squinted as she peered out at the blustery scene. ‘He’s supposed to sell vegetables here,’ she said, nodding towards some market stalls in front of a brown brick edifice, which, according to a sign next to the wooden door, was Skärholmen Church.

A dozen men, all from somewhere outside Scandinavia, were gathered beneath the canvas awnings covering the stalls. A few women in headscarves and full-length skirts were picking at the lettuces and turnips.

Annika went over to the first stall. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to find Abdullah Mustafa. Is he here today?’

The man gave her a brief sideways glance as he carried on putting out a tray of yellow peppers. ‘We’ve got lovely strawberries today,’ he said. ‘Extra lovely, extra sweet.’

‘Abdullah Mustafa,’ Annika said. ‘He’s supposed to work at one of these stalls?’

The man shook his head. ‘Cucumber?’ he suggested. ‘We’ve got lovely cucumbers.’

Either the man didn’t know who Abdullah Mustafa was, or he didn’t want to say. Annika moved on to the next stall. ‘Hi, excuse me, but I’m looking for someone,’ she said. ‘Abdullah Mustafa?’

‘Don’t know him,’ the man at the second stall said, and turned his back on her.

Valter grasped Annika’s arm and pulled her away. ‘How about I give it a try? They might find it easier to talk to someone like them.’ He turned his collar up against the wind.

She blinked, taken aback. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You know, another immigrant.’

‘I think these guys are Kurds. You’re not Kurdish, are you?’

‘No, Iranian, but I can pass as all manner of things … Kurdish, Arabic, South American …’

‘With that accent? From the very smartest bit of Östermalm?’

He clenched his teeth and looked at the ground, visibly hurt.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean …’ She took a step back. ‘Go ahead, I’ll follow you.’

They walked back in among the stalls, passing the two men Annika had already spoken to and moving further in. Valter stopped a man selling knitted children’s clothes with garish patterns, and asked for Abdullah Mustafa. The man pointed at a man in a cap who was busy unloading boxes of French beans from the back of a Volvo van.

Valter walked up to him. ‘Abdullah Mustafa?’

The man in the cap put his box down and looked up.

‘My name’s Valter Wennergren,’ Valter said, in his drawling Stockholm accent, holding out his hand. ‘Sorry to disturb you when you’re working, I’m from the
Evening Post
newspaper and I was wondering if I could have a few words with you. Can I get you a cup of coffee?’

The man shook Valter’s hand, wary but not dismissive. ‘A few words about what?’

‘The same thing everyone else has been asking you about recently,’ Valter said. ‘That car you sold to a rich woman a hundred years ago.’

Amusement flashed across Abdullah Mustafa’s face, then he turned away. ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’

Annika watched Valter. He clearly wasn’t about to let Abdullah Mustafa go now that he’d found him.

‘I understand,’ Valter said. ‘It was such a long time ago.’

The man spun round and looked straight at him. ‘I remember,’ he said. ‘I just don’t want to talk.’

Valter shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to talk. What are you afraid of?’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘No?’

The men stared at each other for a moment.

‘I need to unload these,’ Abdullah Mustafa said, nodding towards the van.

‘I can wait,’ Valter said, taking a step back.

Abdullah Mustafa turned towards the boxes. A few minutes later he had finished. He closed the door and looked at Valter. ‘I need to get the van out of the way. I’ll see you at Kahramane in ten minutes,’ he said.

‘Sure.’

‘Kahramane?’ Annika said, but Abdullah Mustafa had already driven off.

Valter gave her a slightly desperate look. ‘We can find it, can’t we? There can’t be that many places called Kahra … Kama …’

Annika took her mobile out, Googled ‘karamane’ and got 40,600 results. She added ‘skärholmen’ and got one:
Welcome to Kahramane Restaurant on Bredholmsgatan, just outside the shopping centre!

‘It’s often a good idea to ask for the address,’ Annika said. ‘This way.’

Valter trudged after her as she headed back into the mall. They passed chemists, clothes stores and a hobby shop – a man tried to get them to sign up to a cheap and completely useless mobile operator – and then they were out the other side. In front of them was the Kahramane restaurant. Above the door a sign showed a beautiful sunset, and some Arabic or Kurdish writing, Annika couldn’t tell which. Valter pulled the door open, walked straight up to the counter and ordered a chicken shawarma with fries and all the trimmings.

‘We’ve only just eaten,’ Annika pointed out.

‘Yeah, salad,’ Valter snorted, popping a piece of chicken into his mouth.

They sat down at one of the little tables. There were a few men in the far corner, talking quietly with their heads close together, but otherwise the place was empty. A television on the wall above their heads was blaring out an Iraqi music channel. Beautiful men and women sang pop songs in an unfamiliar key – it was evidently some sort of chart run-down.

Valter had already managed to eat most of his chicken by the time Abdullah Mustafa came in. He greeted the staff behind the counter and got himself a cup of coffee without paying. ‘So what do you want to know?’ he said, glancing suspiciously at Annika.

‘This is my colleague,’ Valter said, nodding towards her. ‘We’d like to talk about the woman who bought your car.’

The man took his cap off, smoothed his hair down and took a seat opposite them. ‘There was nothing unusual about it. I put an advert in the paper saying I wanted to sell my Volvo 245. She rang up. She was actually the only person who called. It was pretty old, three hundred thousand kilometres on the clock – I have to drive a lot for work, get vegetables for the stall … She said her name was Harriet Johansson. She showed me her driving licence. It said Harriet Johansson and a couple of other names, but it checked out. It was her.’

Valter wasn’t taking any notes, and Annika wondered for a moment if she should get her pen and pad out, but decided against it.

‘Then there was loads of stuff in the papers when Viola Söderland disappeared,’ Valter said. ‘You didn’t recognize her as the woman who had bought your car?’

The man shook his head. ‘I don’t read the papers much, just the
Metro
occasionally. I didn’t really think about it.’

‘So she bought the car straight away?’

‘She took it for a test drive, then bought it. It was very quick. She paid cash, five thousand. I was very happy. It was a good car but the mileage was high, and it was pretty rusty.’

‘And when was this?’

‘In the summer, June. I wanted to get rid of it during the summer because the winter tyres were worn out.’

So Viola Söderland had bought the car three months before she disappeared, Annika thought.

‘I filled in the form about a change of ownership and she signed it, then said she’d post it. I didn’t think any more about it. I bought a new car, a Ford, but it was nowhere near as good as the Volvo so now I only drive Volvos.’

‘When was the next time you heard about the car?’ Valter asked. ‘When Anders Schyman contacted you?’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘When the police called me.’

‘The police?’

‘The Finnish police. The car was left parked outside Kuusamo, on the Russian border, with the keys in the ignition.’

Annika wished she could write all this down: it was new.

Abdullah Mustafa nodded to himself. ‘It had been there for a fortnight. That was when I realized she hadn’t sent off the change-of-ownership form. The car was still mine.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘I got it back.’

Annika and Valter stared at him.

‘Have you still got it?’ Valter asked.

The man shuffled on his chair. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I sold it at once. I only got three thousand the second time, but that was still good. It didn’t have any winter tyres.’

‘What condition was it in? Had it been knocked about, dented?’

‘No, it was the same as when I sold it. Nice and clean, just rusty.’

Why hadn’t he mentioned this before? Or had he?

Annika hesitated. Should she intervene in the conversation? Ask if he’d seen the documentary about Viola? Or would she only spoil things?

‘When you got the car back,’ Valter said, ‘was it empty?’

‘Empty?’

‘Was there anything inside the car that wasn’t there when you sold it?’

The man seemed to slump. The chart show above their heads started from the beginning again.

‘It was empty. Well, almost empty. There was one thing. A case.’

Valter and Annika sat without speaking, waiting for him to go on.

‘In the boot,’ Abdullah Mustafa said. ‘There was a compartment at the back of the car, under the floor, for storing the jack and spanners … It was in there, under a blanket.’

‘A case?’ Valter said.

‘A little one – a briefcase. Leather. Thin.’

Annika felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Anders Schyman hadn’t heard about this, she was sure. ‘Did you look inside it?’

The man hesitated. ‘There was nothing valuable. Just old stuff. I put it back inside.’

‘What did you do with the case?’

The man took a deep breath. ‘I thought she might have left it there by accident, Harriet Johansson, so I kept it. But she never called.’

‘Where is it now?’

He thought for a moment. ‘In the garage, I think.’

‘You’ve still got it?’

‘I don’t think I ever got rid of it.’

‘Could we take a look at it?’

The man peered at his watch. ‘I’ve got to take a delivery out to Botkyrka, but we should have time.’

*

Mum taught me to knit. First casting on, then pulling the wool through the back loop, one after another, until the row was finished and I could turn it round and start again. Plain knitting, ribbing, then crochet, it was completely magical, the way the long thread from the ball of wool could become something so completely different, and I was responsible for the change. I was the one creating it all.

It was almost like being God, I said.

Mum laughed at me. It was back when she still laughed – but then she stopped laughing, and I stopped being God.

*

‘Under the jack?’

Schyman looked suspiciously at the leather briefcase Annika Bengtzon had placed on his desk: light brown and dusty, smelling of engine oil.

‘It was Valter who persuaded Abdullah Mustafa to let us take it,’ she said.

He glanced through his glass wall: the trainee was sitting in Berit Hamrin’s place, his attention focused on his mobile phone. ‘And it’s been kept in a garage?’

‘For almost twenty years,’ Annika said.

‘What’s inside it?’

‘You’re welcome to open it and take a look,’ she said.

He clenched his fists, feeling his fingernails dig into his palms. Then he reached for the case, undid the brass lock and opened the lid. Carefully he put his hand inside and pulled out the first thing he found: a thin folder. His fingers were trembling as he opened it at the first page.

It was a wedding photograph.

God, it was her – it really was Viola, a smiling young woman with sixties hair and a short white wedding dress, the bridegroom in a trendy suit with impressive sideburns. He swallowed hard.

‘I presume that’s Viola and her husband,’ Annika Bengtzon said.

Schyman blew his nose. ‘Olof Söderland,’ he said, sounding choked. ‘They married young, both in their teens.’ He leafed through the album slowly, almost respectfully.

On the next page were studio pictures of two babies laughing at the camera: a blond boy in knitted dungarees and a red-haired girl with a bow in her hair and a lace dress.