Silenced (26 page)

‘Preferably never, if that’s all right with you,’ he replied casually, opening the car door.

His arrogance made Fredrika roar with laughter.

‘You’re not getting hysterical now, are you?’ Spencer said anxiously.

He walked round to open the door on her side. Fredrika beat him to it and pushed the door open just as he was coming round the bonnet.

‘Look,’ she said in mock triumph. ‘I can get out of the car all by myself.’

‘That’s hardly the point,’ muttered Spencer, who saw it as a matter of principle for a man to open the door for his female companion.

Let him open the door for his other woman, Fredrika thought waspishly, but kept her mouth shut.

She could see her mother through the kitchen window, which looked out on the road. The two of them were often told they were very alike. Fredrika waved. Her mother waved back, but to judge by her expression she was – despite having doubtless prepared herself – shocked to see her heavily pregnant daughter with a man the age of her own husband.

‘Okay?’ asked Fredrika, slipping her hand into Spencer’s.

‘I suppose so,’ he answered, holding her hand in a warm clasp. ‘Can hardly be any worse than other things I’ve experienced in this context.’

Fredrika had no idea what he meant.

Things got off to a bad start when she made the mistake of accepting a glass of wine she had not been offered.

‘Fredrika,’ her mother exclaimed in dismay. ‘You’re not drinking while you’re pregnant?’

‘Good grief, Mum,’ said Fredrika. ‘On the Continent, pregnant women have been drinking for millennia. The public health body in Britain has just changed its recommendations and says they can drink two glasses a week with no ill effects.’

This did nothing to reassure her mother, who had little time for the British findings and looked at her daughter as if she were insane when she raised the glass to her lips and took a gulp.

‘Mmm,’ she said, with an appreciative smile at her father, who also looked extremely quizzical.

‘Being in the police hasn’t turned you into an alcoholic, has it, Fredrika?’ he asked with a troubled look.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she cried, not knowing whether to laugh or weep.

Her parents gave her long stares, but said no more.

The seating arrangement reminded Fredrika of the way she used to set out her dolls when she was playing with her doll’s house as a child. Mummy and Daddy on one side of the table and Guests on the other.

I’m a guest, she thought with fascination. In my own parents’ home.

She tried to think when she had last introduced anyone to her parents. A long time ago, she realised. Ten years, to be precise. And the man in question had been called Elvis, which had amused her mother no end.

‘I understand you work at Uppsala University,’ she heard her father say.

‘That’s right,’ said Spencer. ‘It sounds absurd to admit it, but I’ve been teaching there for thirty-five years now.’

He laughed loudly, not noticing the way Fredrika’s parents stiffened.

They ought to have lots in common, really, thought Fredrika. Spencer’s only five years younger than Dad, after all.

Again she felt the same desire to burst out laughing that had come over her in the car. She coughed discreetly. She asked her mother if she could pass the gravy, which went so well with this delicious roast. Complimented her father on his choice of wine, but then realised it was a mistake to draw attention back to the fact that she was drinking at all. Her father asked how work was going and she said it was all right. Her mother wanted to know if she was sleeping any better now and she said sometimes, but mostly not.

‘I hope you don’t have to sleep alone every night,’ her mother said with a meaningful glance at Spencer.

‘Sometimes I do,’ Fredrika said non-committally.

‘Oh?’ said her mother.

‘Ah,’ said her father.

And then they lapsed into silence. Absence of sound can be a blessing, or a curse, depending on the context. In this case there was absolutely no doubt: this wordless dinner was going to be a disaster.

Fredrika could not help feeling exasperated. What had her parents expected? They knew Spencer was married, knew she often slept alone, knew she would be bringing up the child at least partially as a single mother. An unorthodox arrangement, admittedly, but hardly the only lapse from orthodoxy in their family history. Fredrika’s uncle, for example, had been bold enough to come out as a homosexual back in the 1960s. And the family had always welcomed him on the same terms as everybody else.

Then Spencer asked a few polite questions about Fredrika’s mother’s interest in music, and the mood round the table grew a bit more cordial. Her father went to the kitchen for more potatoes and her mother put on an LP she had picked up in a second-hand shop a few days before.

‘Vinyl,’ she said. ‘You can’t beat it.’

‘I agree with you there,’ said Spencer, and snorted. ‘You wouldn’t catch me buying a CD.’

Fredrika’s mother smiled, and this time the smile even reached her eyes. Fredrika started to relax a little. They had broken the ice and the temperature was rising. Her father, seemingly still a bit wary of this son-in-law of his own age, cleared his throat and said: ‘More wine, anybody?’

It sounded almost like a plea.

They carried on chatting, the words coming more easily for everyone at the table, even her father.

Fredrika wished she could have drunk more wine. Somewhere out there, a murderer was on the loose. And they had no sense at all of whether he thought he had finished the job now, or whether the murders of Jakob and Marja Ahlbin were part of something bigger.

Her thoughts went to their daughter Johanna, who must have found out about their deaths on the internet by now. And then to Karolina, the one Elsie Ljung called Lazarus.

A day of rest tomorrow, thought Fredrika. But on Monday that’s the very first thing I shall tackle. If Karolina Ahlbin
is
alive, why on earth hasn’t she been in touch?

A thought flashed through her mind. Two sisters. One certifies the other’s death and then leaves the country. But neither has actually died.

A bloody good alibi for both of them.

Could the simple, woeful case be that Karolina and Johanna were the murderers the police were looking for? Was it the daughters pulling all the strings and choreographing developments with such precision?

The thought made Fredrika feel light-headed and it hit her that drastic measures would be required if there was to be any hope of getting off to sleep that night and not lying awake thinking about those murders.

Maybe she should get her violin out again? Playing for a while ought to bring some peace of mind. Just for a while. Any more than that would be a waste of time.

She quietly drained her wine glass.

Time’s running out for us, she thought. We need a new line of investigation. And we’ve got to find Johanna, double quick.

SUNDAY 2 MARCH 2008

BANGKOK, THAILAND

The flat was tiny and hot. The sun was kept out by thick curtains intended as a shield against prying eyes. As if anybody would be able to see into a flat on the fourth floor.

She paced restlessly to and fro between the little living room and kitchen. She had drunk all the water but did not dare to go out for more, or to drink the tap water. Dehydration and lack of sleep were taking their toll, trying to force her over the edge which she knew all too well she was balanced on. Below gaped a yawning chasm that threatened to swallow her alive. She tried to think constantly about where she was putting her feet, almost as if she did not trust the floor of the flat to bear her weight.

It was two days since she had learned from the online press that her family had died, probably the victims of murder. She could scarcely remember the first hours after she found out. Seeing her collapse into tears, the café owner resolutely closed his premises for the evening and took her home with him. He and his wife put her to bed on their settee and took turns to sit with her all night. Her weeping had been wild and uncontrolled, her grief insupportable.

It was the terror that was her salvation in the end. The news of what had happened to her family put her own situation in a different light. Someone was trying methodically, systematically, to dismantle her life and her past, and wipe out her family. Wondering what could possibly be the motive for such actions, she was suddenly horror-struck. And the horror and fear brought new, rational insight, forcing her to take action on her own behalf. As the sun rose over Bangkok that Sunday morning, she was calm and collected. She knew exactly what she had to do.

She did not know the background to the tragedy she was now being forced to live through. But she knew this much: her own disappearance was a vital part of the operation. People did not stage nightmare scenarios involving murder and conspiracy without a good reason. She sensed that it was all directed more at her and her father than at her mother or sister. Presumably because they were both so actively involved with migrant issues. Possibly prompted by the information-gathering trip she had just undertaken. Information that was now gone.

It was all pointless, she thought. The whole thing.

Her lack of personal documents and possessions frightened the trafficker to whom she turned for help.

‘Are you a criminal?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I can’t help you, if so.’

She had met him when she first came to Bangkok. She had been following the refugee trail, mapping out how things worked in Thailand. It seemed absurd and incomprehensible that people from the Middle East travelled to Europe via Thailand. It took her several days to win his trust, to convince him that she was nothing to do with the police, but had come to the country on her own initiative.

‘Why would a vicar’s daughter get involved in this sort of thing?’ he demanded scornfully.

‘Because she’s part of the reception system in Sweden,’ she answered, eyes lowered. ‘Because her father spent years hiding illegal migrants and now she’s following in his footsteps.’

‘So how do you view me, then?’ he asked, his voice full of doubt. ‘Unlike you, I’m not in it for anything but the money.’

‘Which could be seen as reasonable,’ she replied, though she was far from convinced. ‘Since you’re also taking enormous risks and could face a long prison sentence. So it seems reasonable for you to be paid in line with that.’

That was how she had won his confidence and trust. He let her shadow him, meeting passport forgers and travel document providers, individuals engaged in subversive activities at airports and key figures in the provision of safe houses. The network was unobtrusive but extensive, and constantly pursued by a corrupt police force, half-heartedly trying to clamp down. And at the core of it all were the people the entire operation revolved round. The people in flight, delivered up to a network that was criminal at heart, with hopeless, empty eyes and years of chaos and disintegration behind them.

She had taken photographs and documented. Borrowed an interpreter and talked to a number of the people involved. Explained that her aim was to present a fair picture of all parties, that there was great public ignorance on the subject in Sweden and that it would be to the benefit of everyone for this misery to be more widely known. To those earning money from the trafficking she promised complete anonymity and offered the carrot of indirect publicity and rising demand for their services. As if they could be more in demand than they already were; as if people had anyone else to turn to.

Bangkok had been her final destination. The journey had started in Greece, one of Europe’s major transit countries, where she had documented the treatment of asylum seekers and how they reached mainland Europe. She had moved on to Turkey and then to Damascus and Amman. There were over two million Iraqi refugees currently parked in Syria and Jordan. Their options were exceedingly few; if they returned home they would in many cases become what were known as internal migrants – still without a home or any sound basis for a life. Out of two and a half million migrants, a very small proportion went on to Europe. There seemed to be innumerable ways of doing it, but most took the land route through Turkey. She went back to Turkey herself, accompanying one particular family to observe things at close quarters.

It was when they told her of their expectations of their new life in Sweden that her tears came. They had dreams of a bright new future, of jobs, and good schools for their children. Of houses and gardens and a society that would welcome them in a way best described as unrealistic.

‘They need labour in Sweden,’ the man told her with conviction. ‘So we know everything will work out once we get there.’

But she, like all those with inside knowledge, was all too well aware that few of the family’s expectations would be met and that it was only a question of time before they found themselves rendered passive and apathetic, and stuck in a cramped flat on some estate, waiting for a Migration Agency decision that could take an eternity and still be a no. And then the real running away would start. Running away from deportation.

She had rung her father at home and cried down the phone line. Said she understood now what it was that had utterly broken his heart when he got involved in this desperate struggle for human redress.

And now here she was in one of the safe flats in Bangkok herself, fleeing an enemy she did not even have a name for. The only thing that consoled her even the slightest was that she had made that phone call to her father.

When she thought back over her trip, she began to suspect it was the final stage that had been the problem and perhaps triggered the catastrophe that had now befallen her. There had been talk of a new way of getting to Sweden from Iraq, Syria and Jordan. Disconnected little hints, nobody could confirm anything. But what she heard fitted with what had come to her father’s notice in Sweden. That there was a new operator on the scene, whose method involved a different set of values and smaller sums of money. Someone who was offering a simple way of getting to Europe, if you promised not to reveal anything about the arrangement before you left. But of course people occasionally let things slip anyway, which was how the secret had started circulating.