Dark Secrets Page 3

  Joakim soon noticed that it was very difficult to keep a chain together, even though it consisted of only three groups with three people in each. Particularly as they moved deeper into the forest and the bog forced them to take a detour away from the marked route, time and time again. One group found it difficult to keep up; the other didn’t slow down at all and soon disappeared behind the hillocks. Just as Haraldsson had said. Joakim was even more impressed by him. He seemed to know everything. Joakim smiled at the girls and made them repeat Haraldsson’s final words.

  “If you find anything, you shout ‘Found!’ ”

  Emma nodded, looking annoyed.

  “You’ve said that like a thousand times.”

  Joakim did not allow himself to be put off by her response. With the sun in his eyes he trudged on, trying to maintain distance and alignment, even though it was becoming more and more difficult. And he could no longer see Lasse’s group, which had been slightly to the left of them just now.

  After half an hour Emma wanted a rest. Joakim tried to make her understand that they couldn’t just stop. They might fall behind and lose the others.

  “What others?” Alice said, smiling meaningfully.

  Joakim realized they hadn’t seen the others for a while now.

  “It sounds as if they’re behind us.”

  They fell silent, listened a little more carefully. Faint sounds in the distance. Someone shouting.

  “No, we’ll keep going,” said Joakim, although deep down he felt Alice was probably right. They had been moving too fast. Or in the wrong direction.

  “In that case, you’re on your own,” Emma replied, her expression furious. For a second Joakim felt that he was losing his grip on the team and that Emma was slipping through his fingers. And she had actually looked at him appreciatively over the last half hour. Joakim was suddenly dripping in sweat, and it wasn’t only because his underwear was too warm. He had driven them on to impress her, couldn’t she see that? And now she was acting as if it was all his fault.

  “Are you hungry?” Alice interrupted Joakim’s train of thought. She had taken a packet of wraps out of her backpack.

  “No,” he answered a little too quickly, before realizing that he was indeed hungry. He walked off and clambered up onto a hillock so that it would look as if he had a plan. Emma gratefully accepted a soft wrap, completely ignoring Joakim’s attempts to appear important. Joakim decided he needed to change tack. He took a deep breath, allowing the fresh forest air to fill his lungs. The sky had clouded over, the sun had disappeared, and with it the promise of a perfect day. He went back to the girls. Decided to soften his tone.

  “Actually, I would like a sandwich if you’ve got one left,” he said as pleasantly as he could.

  “Sure,” Alice replied, digging out a wrap for him. She smiled at him, and Joakim could see that this was a better strategy.

  “I wonder where we are,” Emma said, pulling a small map out of her pocket. They gathered around it, trying to work out where they were. It was quite difficult: the terrain had no real distinguishing features, just hillocks, forest, and boggy ground giving way to one another. But they knew where they had started from, after all, and roughly in which direction they had been moving.

  “We’ve been heading north almost all the time, so we should be in this area,” Emma suggested. Joakim nodded; he was impressed. Emma was smart.

  “Shall we carry on, or wait for the others?” Alice wondered.

  “I think we should carry on,” Joakim replied quickly, then added, “unless you’d rather wait?”

  He looked at the girls—Emma with her bright blue eyes and her soft face, Alice with her slightly more angular features. They were both gorgeous, he thought, suddenly wishing that they would suggest waiting for the others. And that the others would take a long, long time to come.

  “I suppose we might just as well carry on. If we’re here, it’s not far from where we were supposed to meet up anyway,” said Emma, pointing at the map.

  “Yes, but you’re right, the others are behind us, so maybe we ought to wait for them,” Joakim ventured.

  “I thought you wanted to get there first. I mean, you took off like a bat out of hell,” said Alice. The girls laughed, and Joakim realized it was good to laugh with pretty girls. He gave Alice a playful little shove.

  “You weren’t exactly hanging about yourself.”

  They started chasing one another. They ran between the pools of water, randomly at first, but after Emma stumbled into one the aim was to get the others as wet as possible. It was a brilliant break from the slightly boring search, and just what Joakim needed. He ran after Emma and briefly grabbed her arm. She tore herself free and tried to run away from him, but her left foot caught on a protruding tree root and she lost her balance. For a second it looked as though she would stay on her feet, but the area around the pool was slippery with mud and she fell in, the water reaching her waist.

  Joakim laughed, but Emma was screaming. He fell silent and moved toward her. She screamed even louder. Odd, thought Joakim. It wasn’t that bad, surely. Just a bit of water. Then he saw the pale white body sticking up just a short distance away from Emma. It was as if it had been lying beneath the surface, waiting for its victim. That was the end of innocence and their childish game. There was nothing left now but dizziness and blind panic. Emma threw up; Alice started sobbing. Joakim stood there frozen in time, staring at the image that would be with him for the rest of his life.

  Haraldsson was in bed, dozing. Jenny was lying next to him, the soles of her feet on the mattress, a pillow underneath her bottom. She hadn’t wanted to drag things out.

  “Best if we get it over with, then we can do it again before I have to get back.”

  Get it over with. Is there a bigger turnoff in any language? Haraldsson doubted it. But there you go, they’d gotten it over with and Haraldsson was dozing. Someone somewhere was playing ABBA. “Ring Ring.”

  “That’s your phone.” Jenny poked him in the side. Haraldsson woke up, well aware that he wasn’t supposed to be in bed with his wife. He grabbed his pants from the floor and dug out his cell phone. Hanser. Obviously. He took a deep breath and answered.

  Five words this time.

  “Where the fuck are you?”

  Hanser hung up angrily. Sprained his ankle. Not a chance. She had a good mind to drive to the hospital, or at least send a car there just to prove that the bastard was lying. But she didn’t have time. She was suddenly responsible for a murder investigation. It hadn’t exactly helped that the person responsible for the team working around Listakärr hadn’t been on-site or that he had agreed to use underage Scouts in the search party. Minors for whom she would now need to arrange counseling, since one of them had fallen into a pool of water and brought a corpse up with her when she got to her feet.

  Hanser shook her head. Everything to do with this disappearance had gone wrong. Everything. No more mistakes. From now on they had to start getting it right. Being professional. She looked at the phone, which was still in her hand. An idea was born. It was a big step to take. Too early, many people would think. It might possibly undermine her leadership. But she had long ago promised herself that she would never be afraid of uncomfortable decisions. There was too much at stake.

  A boy was dead.

  Murdered.

  It was time to work with the best.

  “There’s a call for you,” said Vanja, poking her head around Torkel Höglund’s door. His office, like most things about Torkel, was lean and simple. Nothing fussy, nothing expensive, hardly even anything personal. With its furniture sourced from a central storage depot somewhere, the room gave the impression that it was occupied by a school principal in some cash-strapped small town, rather than by one of the most senior police chiefs in Sweden. Some of his colleagues found it strange that the person responsible for the national homicide unit, known as Riksmord, had no desire to show the world how far he had come. Others interpreted it differently, concluding t
hat his success had not gone to his head. The truth was simpler: Torkel never had any time. His job was demanding; he was always traveling around the country, and he wasn’t the kind of man who wanted to spend his spare time beautifying an office he rarely used.

  “It’s Västerås,” said Vanja, sitting down opposite him. “The murdered sixteen-year-old boy.”

  Torkel watched Vanja settle down. Clearly he wouldn’t be taking this call in private. He nodded and picked up the phone. Since his second divorce it felt as if phone calls were about nothing but sudden death. It was more than three years since anyone had wondered if he’d be home on time for dinner, or anything else so gloriously mundane.

  He recognized the name: Kerstin Hanser, who headed up the team at police headquarters in Västerås. He had gotten to know her during a training course a few years ago. A good person and undoubtedly a good boss, he had thought at the time, and he remembered feeling pleased when he read about her new position. Now her voice sounded stressed and strained.

  “I need help. I’ve decided to ask for Riksmord, and I’d really appreciate it if you could come. Might that be possible?” Her tone was almost pleading.

  For a second Torkel considered ducking the question. He and his team had just returned from an unpleasant investigation in Linköping, but he realized that if Kerstin Hanser had called him, it was because she really needed help.

  “We got this one wrong from the start. There’s a risk the whole thing might blow up in our faces, so I really do need your help,” she said, as if she had picked up on his hesitation.

  “What’s it about?”

  “A sixteen-year-old. Missing for a week. Found dead. Murdered. Brutally.”

  “If you e-mail me all the material I’ll take a look at it,” Torkel replied, looking at Vanja, who had moved to the other phone and picked it up.

  “Billy, can you come to Torkel’s office? We’ve got a job,” she said before hanging up. It was as if she already knew what Torkel’s response would be in the end. She always did, apparently. Torkel felt proud and slightly annoyed at the same time. Vanja Lithner was his closest ally on the team. She had only just turned thirty, but in spite of her tender age she had developed into a fine murder investigator in the two years she had worked with him—he found her almost irritatingly good. If only he had been as good when he was her age. He smiled at her as he ended the conversation with Kerstin Hanser.

  “I’m still the boss here,” he began.

  “I know. I’m just getting the team together so that you can hear what we think. Then it’s your decision, as always,” she said with a glint in her eye.

  “Oh yes, as if I had a choice once you get your teeth into something,” he replied, getting to his feet. “I might as well start packing—we’re off to Västerås.”

  Billy Rosén was driving the van up the E18. Too fast as usual. Torkel had stopped commenting on it long ago. Instead he concentrated on the material about the murdered boy, Roger Eriksson. The report was rather short and sparse, and Thomas Haraldsson, the investigating officer, didn’t seem to be the kind of man who overexerted himself. They would probably have to start all over again from the beginning.

  Torkel knew that this was exactly the kind of case the tabloids loved to get hold of. It didn’t help that the preliminary cause of death—established where the body was found—indicated an extremely violent assault, with countless stab wounds to the heart and lungs. But that wasn’t what bothered Torkel the most. It was the short final sentence in the report, a statement made by the pathologist at the scene.

  A preliminary examination indicates that most of the heart is missing.

  Torkel looked out of the window at the trees flying by. Someone had removed the heart. He hoped for everyone’s sake that the boy hadn’t been a fan of hard rock or too much of a dedicated World of Warcraft player. If so, the speculation in the press would be completely crazy.

  Crazier than usual, he corrected himself.

  Vanja looked up from her folder. She had probably just seen the same sentence.

  “Perhaps we ought to bring Ursula in as well,” she said, reading his mind as usual. Torkel gave a brief nod. Billy glanced over his shoulder.

  “Do we have an address?”

  Torkel gave it to him and Billy quickly entered it into the GPS. Torkel didn’t really like Billy doing other things while he was driving, but at least he slowed down while he was keying in their destination. Which was something.

  “Another thirty minutes.” Billy put his foot down and the big van responded. “We may do it in twenty, depending on traffic.”

  “Thirty is fine. I always find it so unpleasant when we break the sound barrier.”

  Billy knew exactly what Torkel thought of his driving, but he just smiled at his boss in the rearview mirror. Good road, good car, good driver. Why not take full advantage? He increased his speed even more.

  Torkel picked up his phone and called Ursula.

  Chapter Four

  THE TRAIN left Stockholm’s Central Station at 4:07 p.m. Sebastian settled down in first class. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as they left the city.

  In the past he had never been able to stay awake on trains. But now, even though his body was telling him how welcome an hour’s sleep would be, he couldn’t find the necessary peace of mind.

  Instead he took out the letter from the funeral director, opened it, and read it. He already knew what it said. One of his mother’s former colleagues had called and told him she had passed away. It had been quiet and dignified, she said. Quiet and dignified—his mother’s life in a nutshell. There was nothing positive in this response, at least not if your name was Sebastian Bergman; no, for him life was a battle from the first moment to the last. Those who were quiet and dignified had no place in his world. Dead and boring—that’s what he usually called them. People who lived with one foot in the grave. He was no longer quite so sure. How would his life have turned out if he had been quiet and dignified?

  Better, presumably.

  Less painful.

  At least, that’s what Stefan Hammarström, Sebastian’s therapist, had tried to get him to believe. They had discussed the matter at a recent session, when Sebastian mentioned that his mother had died.

  “How dangerous can it be to be like other people?” Stefan had asked when Sebastian made it clear what he thought about “quiet and dignified.”

  “Extremely dangerous,” Sebastian had replied. “Lethal, in fact. Evidently.”

  They had then spent almost an hour discussing mankind’s genetic predisposition for danger. It was a subject Sebastian loved.

  He had realized how important danger could be as a driving force, partly through his own life, partly because of his research into serial killers. He explained to his therapist that there are two real motivators for a serial killer: fantasy and danger. The fantasy is the engine humming away: a constant presence, but simply idling.

  Most people have fantasies. Dark, sexual, brutal, always affirming our own ego, always destroying whatever or whomever might be standing in our way. In our fantasies we are powerful. Very few people actually live out their fantasies. Those who do have found the key.

  The danger.

  The danger of being caught.

  The danger of doing the unmentionable.

  The adrenaline and the endorphins released at that moment provided the turbo charge—the fuel, the explosion that made the engine function at the peak of its capacity. That was why thrill-seekers sought new thrills, why serial killers became serial killers. It’s difficult to go back to idling once you’ve revved the engine. Felt the power. Discovered what it is that makes you feel alive. The danger.

  “Is it really danger you’re talking about? Isn’t it excitement?” Stefan leaned forward as Sebastian fell silent.

  “Is this a language lesson?”

  “No, this is you giving a lecture.” Stefan poured a glass of water from a carafe on the table beside him and passed it to Sebastian. “D
idn’t you used to get paid for doing that, instead of paying out yourself?”

  “I’m paying you to listen. To whatever I say.”

  Stefan smiled and shook his head.

  “No, you know why you’re paying me. You need help, and these small digressions mean we have less time to discuss what we should really be talking about.”

  Sebastian didn’t reply. Didn’t change his expression one iota. He liked Stefan. No bullshit.

  “So let’s get back to your mother. When’s the funeral?”

  “It’s already taken place.”

  “Were you there?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I thought it should be a ceremony for people who actually liked her.”

  Stefan had looked at him in silence for a few seconds.

  “There you are, you see—we’ve got lots to talk about.”

  Outside the swaying carriage lay an attractive landscape. The train forged ahead through the fresh green meadows and forests northwest of Stockholm. It was just possible to catch a glimpse of Lake Mälaren in all its sparkling glory through the trees. For any other passenger this might have stirred thoughts of life’s possibilities. For Sebastian, exactly the opposite was true. He saw no possibilities in the beauty around him. He turned his gaze up to the ceiling. All his life he had been running away from his parents. His father, against whom he had battled ever since his youth, and his mother, quiet and dignified but never on his side. Never on his side. That was how he felt.

  Sebastian’s eyes filled with tears for a moment. This was something that had developed in recent years. Tears. Strange, he thought, that I should have to discover something as simple as tears at my age.

  Emotional.

  Irrational.

  Everything he had never wanted to be. He went back to the only thing he knew that was capable of numbing his emotions: women. Another promise Sebastian had broken. He had kept to the straight and narrow from the moment he met Lily and had vowed to remain faithful to her. But with the excoriating dream that haunted him at night and the empty, meaningless days, he could see no other way out. The hunt for fresh conquests and the few short hours with different women filled his life, and his thoughts managed to overcome the feeling of powerlessness—for a while, at least. As a man, a lover, a predator, constantly on the hunt for new women, he was able to function. This was a skill he had retained in spite of everything. This both pleased and frightened him. The fact that he was everything he was. A lonely man who filled his time with the young and old, students, colleagues, married or unmarried. He didn’t discriminate against anyone. For him there was just one rule: she was going to be his. She would prove that he wasn’t worthless, that he was alive. He knew exactly how destructive his behavior was, but he welcomed it and pushed away the knowledge that one day he would probably have to find a way out.