The Silent Girl (Sebastian Bergman 4)
Contents
About the Book
About the Authors
Also by Hjorth and Rosenfeldt
Title Page
Introducing Riksmord
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
An idyllic white, two-storey, beautiful house in Sweden. Inside, a family has been brutally murdered – mother, father and two young children all shot in broad daylight. And the killer has got away.
Sebastian Bergman has been brought in to solve the crime, but with no credible suspects, he is at a dead end.
Until he discovers that there was a witness to the crime: a young girl who saw it all happen, and she has fled, in fear for her life.
Bergman has to track the young girl down before it’s too late. But the killer is chasing her too – and he is determined to finish what he started.
Will they ever find out who killed these people, and why?
About the Authors
Michael Hjorth is one of Sweden’s best-known film and TV producers, and a renowned screenwriter whose work includes several screenplays of Henning Mankell’s Wallander.
Hans Rosenfeldt has hosted both radio and television shows, and is Sweden’s leading screenwriter and the creator of The Bridge, which is broadcast in more than 170 countries, and Marcella.
Also by Hjorth and Rosenfeldt
The Man Who Watched Women
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Introducing the national police homicide unit, based in Stockholm – also known as Riksmord …
Torkel Höglund – Chief Inspector
Ursula Andersson – police forensics expert
Vanja Lithner – investigative police officer
Billy Rosén – investigative police officer
Sebastian Bergman – psychologist and leading criminal profiler
Other police
Jennifer Holmgren – junior police officer in the small town of Sigtuna. Temporarily seconded to Riksmord.
He doesn’t know what day it is.
But it’s not a school day. He is still in his pyjamas, even though it is after nine o’clock.
Everyone is at home. He can hear the sound of SpongeBob SquarePants coming from the living room.
Mummy puts a bowl of yogurt on the table and asks him if he washed his hands after he went to the toilet. He nods. Would he like a sandwich too? He shakes his head. The yogurt will be enough. Banana and vanilla. He would have liked Frosties with his yogurt, but Fred has finished them, so he has to have Oat Krispies instead. However, that means he’s allowed to watch a DVD straight after breakfast to make up for the disappointment. He decides on Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Again.
The doorbell rings.
‘Who on earth can that be at this hour of the morning?’ Mummy wonders as she heads for the front door. He doesn’t even register the familiar noises as she pushes down the handle and opens it.
Then he hears a loud bang, and it sounds as if someone has fallen over in the hallway.
He gives a start, splashing yogurt all over the table, but he doesn’t notice the mess. Daddy calls down anxiously from the bedroom. He’s not up yet, but now rapid footsteps are crossing the landing.
Then someone appears in the kitchen doorway.
Holding a gun.
There were two of them now.
She was two separate individuals.
On the outside and on the inside.
★ ★ ★
On the outside she was still moving.
Reluctant but purposeful. The lesson she had learned in school about staying exactly where you were if you got lost went against her instinctive urge to run.
Was she lost?
She didn’t really know where she was, but she knew where she was going. She made sure she could still hear the cars passing by on the road. She could go back to the road. Walk alongside it. Hide whenever someone came by. Keep walking until she reached a signpost, check that she was still going the right way, then disappear back into the forest. So she wasn’t lost. There was no reason to stay where she was. Then there was the cold. The damp, bitter cold that persuaded her it was a good idea to keep on going. She was warmer when she was on the move. Less hungry. So she kept on going.
★ ★ ★
On the inside she was completely still.
For a while she had run. Both on the inside and on the outside. Racing blindly ahead. Now she couldn’t really remember what she had been running away from, or recognise the place she had arrived at. It wasn’t a place, or a room, it was more like … a feeling, perhaps.
She didn’t know. But she was there and it was empty and she was still.
She was empty and it was still.
Silent.
That felt like the most important thing. As long as it remained silent, she was safe. In the place that wasn’t a place, illuminated without light. Where no colours reminded her of the colours her staring eyes continued to register from the world outside. Open, but closed to everything. Except that feeling of safety. Which would disappear along with the silence. Instinctively she knew that. Words would give her away. Words would tear down the walls she couldn’t see, make everything real again. Let in the terrible things that were
waiting out there.
The bangs, the screams, the warm red liquid, the fear.
Her own and everyone else’s.
On the inside she was still and silent.
★ ★ ★
On the outside she had to keep on going.
Go where no one could find her. Where no one would try to talk to her. The outside had to protect the inside.
She knew where to go.
There was a place they had been told about, warned about. A place where you would never be found, if you went inside. Never ever. That was what they had been told. No one would find her.
★ ★ ★
On the outside she pulled her thin, inadequate jacket more tightly around her body and increased her speed.
On the inside she curled up, became smaller and smaller, hoping that she would disappear completely.
Anna Eriksson was sitting in the car outside the pale yellow apartment block, waiting.
Vanja was late, which was very unusual. Anna assumed this was yet another of the ways in which her daughter had chosen to make her point over the past few months.
The worst thing was that she no longer called.
Anna could live with that. She understood why, and somewhere deep down perhaps she thought she deserved it. And to be honest, they had never had the kind of mother/daughter relationship that involved long chats on the phone.
But for Valdemar … He found the way Vanja had distanced herself unbearably painful, and it had reduced him to a shadow of his former self – more than the cancer, in fact. He couldn’t stop talking about his daughter, and the truth they should never have kept from her. They should have done everything differently. He had cheated death, only to discover that life was full of grief and regret. Anna also found the whole situation difficult, of course, but it was easier for her to cope. She had always been stronger than her husband.
Valdemar had been out of hospital for over a month now, but she couldn’t get him to leave the apartment. His body seemed to have fully accepted the new kidney, but Valdemar couldn’t accept his new world. A world without Vanja. He simply pushed everything away.
Anna. The few colleagues who got in touch, in spite of what he had done. The even fewer friends who called less and less often.
Even the ongoing police investigation didn’t seem to bother him these days. The accusations of tax evasion and fraud were serious, but they paled into insignificance compared with what he had put Vanja through.
She had hurled herself at him in a fury. It had been horrible. The yelling, the rows, the tears. Neither of them had ever seen Vanja like that.
So angry.
So terribly hurt.
The refrain was always the same: how could they do this? What kind of mother and father would do such a thing? What kind of people were they, for God’s sake?
Anna understood. She would have felt exactly the same in Vanja’s shoes. Her daughter’s questions were justified and understandable. It was the answers Anna didn’t like.
She was the kind of mother who would do such a thing.
Several times during the very worst quarrels Anna had been on the point of saying:
‘Do you want to know who your father is? Do you really want to know?’
But she had bitten her tongue, refused to tell Vanja, insisted it was irrelevant.
Not because she wanted to protect Sebastian Bergman; she could see exactly what he wanted. He was trying to worm his way in, claim a right he didn’t have, like a debt-collector determined to demand a payment that no one actually owed him.
Sebastian had never been Vanja’s father. Valdemar had fulfilled that role, every single day, to the best of his ability. Whatever it said in the hospital notes Vanja had waved around in such a rage. The only positive aspect was that Sebastian couldn’t exploit the situation to his own advantage. Like Anna, he was trapped by all the lies. If he told Vanja he had known the truth for quite some time but said nothing, he would reveal that he had let her down, just like Anna and Valdemar.
She would hate him too.
Freeze him out.
Sebastian was well aware of that. He had called Anna several times over the past few weeks, practically begging her to help him find a way to tell Vanja the truth. Anna refused. She would never enable him to take Vanja from Valdemar. Never. That was one of the few things she knew for sure; everything else was a complete mess.
Today, however, she was going to start regaining control of the situation. Today she was going to take the first step towards putting things right. She had a plan.
The door of the apartment block flew open and Vanja finally emerged, her hands thrust deep into her pockets, shoulders hunched. She had dark shadows under her eyes and looked washed out and exhausted; it was as if she had aged a couple of years over the last few months. She pushed back her lifeless, unwashed hair as she crossed the street. Anna gathered her thoughts, took a deep breath and got out of the car.
‘Hi, sweetheart, I’m so glad you could come,’ she said, trying to sound as positive as possible.
‘What do you want?’ came the response. ‘I’m really busy.’
They hadn’t spoken for three weeks, and it seemed to Anna that her daughter’s tone was a fraction less sharp. That could be wishful thinking, of course.
‘There’s something I want to show you,’ Anna said tentatively.
‘What?’
‘Let’s go – I’ll explain on the way.’
Vanja stared suspiciously at her. Anna knew that the longer they stood there, the more likely it was that Vanja would go with her. She had learned that during the course of all those rows; there was no point in attacking Vanja, or forcing her into a corner and trying to make her do something. If Vanja was going to get in the car, she had to do it without any kind of confrontation, and on her own terms.
‘You’ll think it’s worth it,’ Anna went on. ‘I know you will.’
After a moment Vanja nodded. She got in the car without saying a word.
Anna joined her and they drove off. When they reached the petrol station down by the Freeport, she broke the silence and made her first mistake.
‘Valdemar sends his love. He really misses you.’
‘I miss my father too. My real father,’ Vanja shot back.
‘I’m quite worried about him, to be honest.’
‘You only have yourselves to blame,’ Vanja snapped. ‘I’m not the one who’s been lying all my life.’
Anna knew they were on the verge of another blazing row. It would have been so easy to cross the line. Vanja’s anger was understandable, but Anna wished she could make her realise how much she was hurting those who really loved her, those who had always supported her, been there for her. They had lied to protect her, not to hurt her. She could tell that Vanja was just waiting for an excuse to explode, so she tried to defuse the situation.
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry, I really don’t want to argue. Not today …’
Vanja seemed to accept a temporary ceasefire, and they drove on in silence: along Valhallavägen and west towards Norrtull.
‘Where are we going?’ Vanja asked as they passed Stallmästargården.
‘As I said, there’s something I want to show you.’
‘What?’
Anna didn’t answer immediately, and Vanja turned to face her.
‘You said you’d explain on the way, so start talking.’
Anna took a deep breath, keeping her eyes on the road and the traffic ahead.
‘I’m taking you to your father.’
‘You can go in now.’
Erik Flodin turned to glance up at the large, white-painted two-storey house where Fabian Hellström, the forensic technician who had travelled up from Karlstad with him, was standing on the veranda. ‘We’re almost done.’
Erik raised a hand to indicate that he’d heard, then looked back at the open countryside spread before him.
This was a beautiful spot. The fresh green lawn extended as far as the stone wall, and beyon
d it lay a meadow, waiting for spring to burst into life. The evergreen conifers now had competition from the delicate pale green attire of the deciduous trees as their leaves began to unfurl. A buzzard drifted high above the open field, breaking the silence with its plaintive cry.
Erik wondered whether to call Pia before he went inside. She was bound to find out what had happened, and she would be devastated. This was going to affect the whole community.
Her community.
But if he called her, she would start asking questions. Wanting to know more. Wanting to know everything, when in fact he knew only what his colleagues had told him when he arrived. So what would be the point in calling Pia? None at all.
She would have to wait, he decided. He glanced at the sandpit one last time. Traces of the weekend’s downpour on a yellow plastic truck. A spade, a sandy Transformer and two dinosaurs.
Erik sighed and headed for the house and the deceased.
Fredrika Fransson was waiting by the patrol car, and came to join him. She had been first on the scene, and briefed him when he arrived. They had worked together in the past, when he was promoted to DI with special responsibilities in Karlstad. She was a good officer, conscientious and committed. She was almost twenty centimetres shorter than Erik’s one metre eighty-five, and at least ten kilos heavier than his seventy-eight. Easier to jump over her than to run all the way around her, as one of his more poisonous colleagues had put it. Fredrika herself had never said a word about her weight – or much else, for that matter. She wasn’t particularly chatty.
Erik thought he could smell the cordite as he stepped onto the veranda and saw the first victim. He couldn’t, of course. He knew that. After a quick examination of the victims, the forensic pathologist had given him a preliminary time of death: approximately twenty-four hours ago. Even if the front door had been closed – which apparently it hadn’t been when the nine-year-old from next door came round to see if she could find someone to play with – too much time had passed for any residual odour to remain in the air.
Erik put on shoe protectors and white plastic gloves before entering the property. He pushed aside the branches of pussy willow adorned with colourful Easter eggs displayed in a large vase by the shoe rack and knelt down next to the body of a woman, lying on her back on the rough stone floor. The first of four victims.