Dark Secrets (2 page)

Haraldsson’s left foot sank deeper. He could feel his socks sucking up the cold water. The air held the young, fleeting warmth of spring, but winter still had the water clutched in its icy grip. He shivered, then managed to extract his foot and find solid ground.

He looked around. East should be that way. Weren’t the National Service recruits over there? Or the scouts? Then again, he could have traveled in a complete circle and totally lost his bearings as to where north might be. He spotted a small hill a short distance away and realized this meant dry ground, a patch of paradise in this sodden hell. He started to move in that direction. His foot sank once more. The right one this time. Fan-fucking-tastic.

It was all Hanser’s fault.

He wouldn’t be standing here soaked to the skin halfway up his legs if it weren’t for the fact that Hanser wanted to give the impression that
she was strong and capable of decisive action. And she certainly needed to, because at heart she was not a real cop. She was one of those law school graduates who sneaks through and grabs the top job without getting her hands dirty—or, as in Haraldsson’s case, her feet wet.

No: if Haraldsson had been in charge, this would have been handled very differently. True, the kid had been missing since Friday and according to regulations the correct procedure was to widen the search area, particularly as someone had reported “nocturnal activities” and “lights in the forest” around Listakärr that particular weekend. But Haraldsson knew from experience that this was an exercise in futility. The kid was in Stockholm, laughing at his worried mother. He was sixteen. That was the kind of thing sixteen-year-old kids did. Laughed at their mothers.

Hanser.

The wetter Haraldsson got, the more he hated her. She was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Young, attractive, successful, political; a representative of the new, modern police force.

She had gotten in his way. When she’d held her first meeting in Västerås, Haraldsson had realized that his career had screeched to a halt. He had applied for the job. She’d gotten it. She would be in charge for at least five years.
His
five years. The ladder leading upward had been snatched away. Now his career had slowly begun to plateau instead, and it felt like only a matter of time before it started to slide downward. It was almost symbolic that he was now standing up to his knees in stinking mud in a forest some six miles from Västerås.

The text message he had received this morning said SNUGGLE LUNCH 2DAY in big letters. It meant that Jenny was coming home during her lunch break to have sex with him, then they would have sex once or twice more during the course of the evening. That was how their lives were these days. Jenny was undergoing treatment for their failure to conceive a child, and together with the doctor she had worked out a schedule that was supposed to optimize their chances. Today was one of those optimum days. Hence the text message. Haraldsson had
mixed feelings. On the one hand he appreciated the fact that their sex life had increased by several hundred percent of late. That Jenny always wanted him. At the same time, he couldn’t escape the feeling that it wasn’t really him she wanted: it was his sperm. If she hadn’t been so desperate for a child, it would never have occurred to her to head home at lunchtime for a quickie. There was something of the stud farm about the whole thing. As soon as an egg began its journey toward the womb, they were at it like rabbits. In between times, too, to be honest, just to be on the safe side. But never for pleasure these days, never for the closeness. What had happened to the passion? The desire? And now she would come home during her lunch break to an empty house. Perhaps he should have called her and asked if he should jerk off before he left and stick it in a jar in the fridge. Unfortunately he wasn’t completely certain Jenny would think it was all that bad an idea.

It had started the previous Saturday.

A call had been put through to the Västerås police via the emergency number at about 3:00 p.m. A mother had reported her sixteen-year-old son missing. Since the call involved a minor, it was given top priority. Entirely in accordance with regulations.

Unfortunately the prioritized report was left lying around until Sunday, when a patrol was asked to follow it up. This resulted in a visit by two uniformed officers to the boy’s mother at approximately 4:00 p.m. The officers took down the details once again, and their report was logged when they went off duty later that evening. At that point no action had been taken, apart from the fact that there were two neat, identical reports about the same disappearance. Both marked
TOP PRIORITY
.

It was not until Monday morning, when Roger Eriksson had been missing for fifty-eight hours, that the duty officer noticed that no action had been taken. Unfortunately a union meeting about the National Police Board’s proposals on new uniforms took up some considerable time, and it wasn’t until after lunch on Monday that the case was passed
on to Haraldsson. When he saw the date of receipt he thanked his lucky stars that the patrol had visited Lena Eriksson on Sunday evening. There was no need for her to know that they had only written another report. No, the investigation had gotten under way on Sunday, but had produced nothing so far. That was the version Haraldsson intended to stick to.

Haraldsson realized that he would need at least some fresh information before he spoke to Lena Eriksson, so he tried calling Lisa Hansson, Roger’s girlfriend, but she was still in school.

He checked both Lena and Roger against official police records. There were a few incidents of shoplifting involving Roger, but the latest was about a year ago, and it was difficult to make any link with the disappearance. Nothing on the mother.

Haraldsson called the local authority and found out that Roger attended Palmlövska High School.

Not good
, he thought.

Palmlövska was a private prep school that also took boarders and was ranked among the top schools in the country as far as examination results were concerned. Its students were gifted and highly motivated, and had rich parents. Parents with contacts. They would be searching for a scapegoat to blame for the fact that the investigation hadn’t been started immediately, and it didn’t look good if the police had made no progress by the third day. Haraldsson decided to put everything else on the backburner. His career was already at a standstill, and it would be stupid to take any more risks.

So Haraldsson worked hard all that afternoon. He visited the school. Both Ragnar Groth, the head teacher, and Beatrice Strand, Roger’s class teacher, expressed great concern and perplexity when they heard that Roger was missing, but they were unable to help. Nothing had happened that they knew about, at any rate. Roger had behaved perfectly normally, had attended school as usual, had had an important Swedish exam on Friday afternoon, and according to his classmates had been in a good mood afterward.

Haraldsson did, however, get hold of Lisa Hansson, the last person to have seen Roger on Friday evening. She was in the same grade, and Haraldsson asked someone to point her out in the school cafeteria. She was a pretty girl, but fairly ordinary. Straight blond hair, her bangs swept back with a plain hair clip. Blue eyes, no makeup. A white shirt buttoned almost to the top, worn beneath a vest. Haraldsson immediately thought of the Free Church when he sat down opposite her. Or the girl in that series
The White Stone
, which had been on TV when he was young. He asked her if she would like anything to eat or drink. She shook her head.

“Tell me about Friday, when Roger was at your house.”

Lisa looked at him and gave a slight shrug.

“He arrived at around half past five, we sat in my room and watched TV, and he went home around ten. Well, he said he was going home, anyway…”

Haraldsson nodded. Four and a half hours in her room. Two sixteen-year-olds. Watching TV. Nice try. Or maybe he was just damaged by the life he led? How long had it been since he and Jenny had spent an evening watching TV? Without a quickie during the ads? Months.

“So nothing else happened? You didn’t have an argument, fall out or anything?”

Lisa shook her head. She nibbled at an almost nonexistent thumbnail. Haraldsson noticed that the cuticle was infected.

“Has he disappeared like this before?”

Lisa shook her head again.

“Not as far as I know, but we haven’t been together very long. Haven’t you spoken to his mother?” For a moment Haraldsson thought she was accusing him, but then he realized that of course that wasn’t the case. Hanser’s fault. She had made him doubt his own abilities.

“My colleagues have spoken to her, but we need to talk to everyone. Get an overview.” Haraldsson cleared his throat. “How are things between Roger and his mother? Any problems?”

Lisa shrugged her shoulders once more. It occurred to Haraldsson
that her repertoire was somewhat limited. Shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders.

“Did they quarrel?”

“I suppose so. Sometimes. She didn’t like the school.”

“This school?”

Lisa nodded in response.

“She thought it was stuck up.”

She’s not bloody wrong there
, thought Haraldsson.

“Does Roger’s father live in town?”

“No. I don’t know where he lives. I’m not sure if Roger knows either. He never mentions him.”

Interesting.
Haraldsson made a note. Perhaps the son had taken off to look for his roots. To confront an absent father. Kept it secret from his mother. Stranger things had happened.

“What do you think has happened to him?”

Haraldsson’s train of thought was interrupted. He looked at Lisa and realized for the first time that she was on the verge of tears.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I expect he’ll turn up. Maybe he’s just gone to Stockholm for a while, or something. A little adventure. Something like that.”

“Why would he do that?”

Haraldsson looked at her questioning expression. The unvarnished, chewed nail in a mouth free of lipstick. No, little Miss Free Church probably wouldn’t understand why, but Haraldsson was becoming more and more convinced that this disappearance was actually a case of the boy running away.

“Sometimes things just seem like a good idea at the time. I’m sure he’ll turn up.” Haraldsson gave Lisa a reassuring smile, but he could tell from her expression that it wasn’t working.

“I promise,” he added.

Before Haraldsson left he asked Lisa to make a list of Roger’s friends and the people he hung out with. Lisa sat and thought for a long time, then wrote something down and handed him the piece of paper. Two
names: Johan Strand and Erik Heverin.
A lonely boy
, Haraldsson thought.
Lonely boys run away.

When he got in the car that Monday afternoon, Thomas Haraldsson felt quite pleased with the day in spite of everything. Admittedly the conversation with Johan Strand hadn’t thrown up anything fresh. The last time Johan had seen Roger was at the end of school on Friday. As far as he knew, Roger was going around to Lisa’s that evening. He had no idea where Roger might have gone after that. Erik Heverin had been given an extended leave of absence from school. Six months in Florida. He’d already been gone for seven weeks. The boy’s mother had taken up a consultancy post in the United States and the whole family had gone with her.
It’s all right for some
, thought Haraldsson, trying to recall the exotic locations to which his own job had taken him. That seminar in Riga was the only thing he could come up with off the top of his head, but he’d had a stomach bug most of the time, and his overriding memory was of staring into a blue plastic bucket while his colleagues had an infuriatingly good time.

Still, Haraldsson was fairly satisfied. He had followed up several leads and, most important, he had found a possible conflict between mother and son that indicated that this might soon no longer be a police matter. Hadn’t the mother used the phrase “ran off” when she called? Indeed she had. Haraldsson remembered that he had reacted to this when he heard the tape. Her son didn’t “leave” or “disappear”—he “ran off.” Didn’t that suggest he’d left home in a huff? A slammed door, a faintly resigned mother. Haraldsson was becoming more and more convinced: the boy was in Stockholm, expanding his horizons.