Watching You(17)

Deer really had managed to bring almost everyone in for the eleven o’clock ‘afternoon’ meeting. Berger rolled his shoulders and moved the naked watch, still ticking on beneath the warming glow of the lamp. He put the magnifying glass and case opener into his rucksack, heaved the files out and set off towards the whiteboard.

Without condescending to look at his assembled team he stuck three photographs to the board. Then he began.

‘The official view of this investigation is that Ellen Savinger’s kidnapping is an isolated event. Allan has chosen to keep the investigation free from speculation, and I can understand that. Even so, one or two of you are aware that I don’t agree. This has been too perfectly carried out; it’s far too professional for a first attempt. Digging through the many cases of people who disappear without trace I thought I’d managed to find two possible precursors, but there was no evidence of a connection whatsoever, not even anything circumstantial. Apart from the fact that they concerned fifteen-year-old girls who vanished without any warning. Only later was sufficient evidence found to suggest that both Julia Almstr?m from V?ster?s and Jonna Eriksson from Kristinehamn had made plans to run away with their respective boyfriends, both of whom wanted to disappear off the radar for a variety of reasons. After investigations lasting a month or so, both were believed to have disappeared voluntarily, possibly changing their identities and leaving the country. Cases closed.’

‘But we haven’t got anything like that in Ellen’s case,’ Samir said.

‘Something’s happened,’ Berger said. ‘Something that’s made him change his method.’

‘This sounds like the sort of vague idea that Allan hates,’ Deer said. ‘So you’ve found something that means you dare make your secret, unofficial investigation public. Sharpened teeth?’

And then that look.

Berger couldn’t help smiling. Bloody Deer. He pointed to one of the photographs on the whiteboard.

‘Here, my dear Deer – this was when you and I were standing on the porch outside that bloody house in M?rsta, right after the raid. You remember?’

‘You took pictures then? Why?’

‘Because I got a feeling. Don’t ask me to explain. Intuition is nothing but a concentration of experience.’

‘Old jungle saying,’ Deer said tonelessly.

‘Let’s start here instead,’ Berger said, pointing at a fairly grainy photograph featuring a number of motorbikes and biker jackets. ‘One week before this photograph was taken, fifteen-year-old Julia Almstr?m vanished from her home in Malmaberg in the north-east of V?ster?s. It was March 17, a year and a half ago. Because her disappearance was confirmed in the morning, Julia was assumed to have disappeared from her home during the night. She certainly had the opportunity, and eventually a secret email correspondence with a young man was uncovered, in which he claimed he wanted to flee from a criminal past to “somewhere the sun never stops shining”. Which, taken literally, is everywhere on the planet, because otherwise we’d all be dead.’

‘Was the boyfriend identified?’ someone wondered aloud.

‘No,’ Berger said. ‘There were hints that he’d recently been released from prison, and among men who had been let out within a plausible time frame, there were at least eight who had disappeared without trace. A completely ordinary phenomenon. Fake passports are easy enough to buy these days. In other words, a perfect choice of persona.’

‘Persona?’ Deer said.

‘Exactly,’ Berger said, pointing at her. ‘That’s exactly the sort of prompt a sidekick with perfect timing should be asking.’

‘Leave it out,’ Deer said calmly, accustomed as she was to that sort of line. ‘What do you mean by persona?’

‘That this young criminal was a persona, a mask. That he never even existed. That the whole email exchange was fake. That it was all a matter of constructing a narrative which in hindsight looks pretty similar to the phone call which led us to the house in M?rsta yesterday, the call from our so-called Lina Vikstr?m. Who is standing right here.’

With that he drew a thick circle in red marker pen on the busy photograph featuring a biker gang.

He looked round. Never before had he seen so many furrowed brows in one room.

‘But,’ Deer eventually said. Her jaw had fallen open.

‘A raid on a local biker gang in V?ster?s,’ Berger said. ‘One week after Julia Almstr?m’s disappearance, before the email exchange was discovered. There were suggestions that the gang offered “fresh meat”. In many ways it was a fortuitous raid – a large amount of cocaine seized, two underage Ukrainian girls, and assorted stolen goods worth a total of three million kronor – but no Julia Almstr?m. Among the curious onlookers: this woman. Blonde, snub nose, mid-thirties, on a bicycle.’

The room was still thick with frowns, but at least now there was a certain focus to them. Berger pointed at the next photograph.

‘Almost one year later. Now we’re in the depths of the V?rmland forests. February this year, the forest between Kristinehamn and Karlskoga, so maybe not the deepest depths. Either way: fifteen-year-old Jonna Eriksson from Kristinehamn has been missing for a few days. Because her boyfriend, Simon Lundberg, disappeared at the same time, the investigation has been fairly half-hearted. Jonna and Simon aren’t exactly angels, they were both raised in foster homes and had a history of running away and then coming back with their tails between their legs. But then someone raises the alarm about a freshly dug grave in the forest, right on the boundary between V?rmland and ?rebro, in the new police district of Bergslagen. In the twenty-four hours that follow each of the former police forces succumbs to the temptation of blaming each other, even though they’ve actually been part of the same district for a month or so. It’s basically a disaster from a policing perspective: what ends up being disinterred from the snow-covered grave in the forest is nothing more than an illegally shot elk calf.’