The Find, page 12
He kneeled and gently touched the side of her pale face. It felt so cold. The eyes were wide open, staring back at him. Her mouth, all twisted and frozen in a weird grimace by the starting rigor mortis, made her almost unrecognizable, like she was wearing a mask. It had taken her by surprise. She had been so perfect, but now the large gaping wound in her neck and head destroyed it all. Tenderly he let his fingers run up her arm and shoulders, along her breasts down to her thighs. Never again he would make love to her, hold her in his arms, caress her, and feel her warm naked body against his. Clara... sweet, beautiful Clara!
He got up and sat down on the wooden chair in the corner of the room. It was time to be practical now. How could he get rid of the body?
There was so much blood. It would take hours to remove all of it, but she had to go first. The blanket on the bed was just large enough to wrap the young girl. He carefully placed it on the ground. But it was more difficult than expected and he had to pull her arms and roll her over a few times before he could put her on the blanket. The blood stained his shoes and trousers. He stopped and looked at it. It felt dirty.
Wipe it off. No, not now. There was no time.
The physical labor was beyond anything he had ever done before, and it had drained all energy out of him. Panting and snorting like a dog, he sat down again on the chair. He was in such bad shape. The cadence of his own breath brought a certain calm. He closed his eyes. It was so quiet. So soothingly calm.
And then... What was that? There was a soft noise coming from behind the door. Suddenly, all his senses were on high alert. How could he be so stupid?
The door slowly opened. Paralyzed, he was just a mere bystander seeing it all happen, unable to intervene. But nobody came in. The door remained ajar, and he heard someone running away through the tunnel. He had to go after them. This was such a mess!
The tunnel, that connected the room with the entrance, was poorly lit. He only heard the footsteps. Small, quick steps. There was something off. Who was this?
Finally, light. The light at the end of the tunnel drew the contours of the person in front of him. It was a child. He stopped. He knew who it was. The sound of the footsteps was fading.
What would he do? Go back or run after him? How could he explain this to him?
Go back or run after him? It was a calculated risk. He was just a child, with a vivid imagination. Who would believe him? But he was smart, maybe too smart, and people would trust him.
He went back to the room, continued to wrap the body and waited until sunset to put the remains in the car’s trunk. He still didn’t know what to do with her. What a mess he got himself in! This was murder.
Oh, God, this was murder! They would come after him. It had been a mistake to let the child go. He should have gone after him. But to do what? Persuade him not to tell? Would he kill him too?
The panic was so crippling. He was a man of reason, and he should be able to figure this out. Sitting behind the steering wheel of the car, he tried to calm down and find his peace of mind. Clara. Why couldn’t he just keep her? Here. Forever.
He clenched his fists, dropped them on the steering wheel, almost hitting the horn, and let out a gust of frustration. With eyes closed, he tried to control his breathing. The sharpness of mind came back and within seconds the blast of neuron spiking painted a new picture in his head. Yes, he knew what to do now. It could work; it should work. He got out of the car, closed it and took the road toward the cabins.
***
The Norman house had been out of the ordinary, but this one impressed him even more. The two-story house stretched itself out over the wide lawns, now covered with snow. The large avenue that led to the house was on both sides planted with tall slender trees. As Magnus drove up to the front door, he saw two Mercedes parked next to the house. Married to a venture capitalist, mother of two young boys, Marian Bergqvist, part-time fashion designer and socialite, had done well for herself. The woman that opened the door was in her mid-forties, blond, not too bad looking, and well groomed. She was pleasantly surprised by the handsome inspector standing at her front door. Maybe he was a bit too old for her taste.
As he followed her to the living room through the impressive hallway, the overload and excessive display of richness blew him away. It was like walking through a showroom: Chinese vases, Egyptian-style statues, large tapestries, and paintings decorated the cupboards, tables, and walls. But it felt like a sham. Why did people do that? It was a show to convince everyone how happy they were, and how well they had done in life. There was always something else hidden behind it.
The few pictures that were displayed on the cabinet near the small window, opposite the chairs where they took place, were mostly pictures of her children. None of the husband. She offered him a cup of coffee, which he gladly accepted. While Marian went to get the coffee, he quickly checked his mobile phone. There was still no message from his wife.
“You wanted to talk about my father, inspector,” she said while she brought the tray and put it on the glass table.
“Can I ask why?” she asked and handed him the cup.
“You must have heard about the dead girls in Sandviken.”
She shook her head and said astonished: “Sandviken? My parents had a cabin there, and we used to spend most of our summer vacations in Sandviken.”
“Yes, we know. That is why I contacted you. We believe this is the work of a serial killer that has been active for over thirty years.”
“Thirty years, my goodness,” she cried out.
Magnus took a sip of the coffee and continued: “We have been talking to people who know the area: Alexander Nordin, Mats Norman, and Josip Radić, who suggested contacting you.”
“Josip Radić! I haven’t seen him for years. How is he doing these days? Wasn’t he accused of abducting a girl?”
She wasn’t completely honest with him. Josip had contacted her a few days before to meet, and yes, she had known what it was about. But for her, the matter had been closed years ago, and she had refused to see him. Josip just needed to forget everything and move on with his life like all of them had done.
“Yes,” Magnus answered, “actually she was one of the girls we found in Sandviken.”
For a moment, she didn’t know what to say.
“Do you think he’s guilty?”
“Josip Radić? I can’t comment on this. But I wanted to talk to you about your time in Sandviken and... about your father. It came to my attention that...”
“No need to beat about the bush,” she interrupted him, “my father was a real bastard, a bully who abused my mother. He had no respect for women, and he is responsible for my sister’s death.”
The words came out so fast as if she had bottled it up for years.
“Mrs. Mortensen...,” he started.
“Mrs. Bergqvist please,” she said, “Mortensen is my husband’s name, not mine.”
“Okay, sorry... Mrs. Bergqvist, this is quite some information. Can you tell me a bit more?”
“Life at home was hell, especially for my mother. He beat her almost every day. And it got even worse when he got older. Even when my mother was already ill – she was diagnosed with cancer - he kept on treating her like crap. He treated all women badly, and unfortunately for him, for us, he had three daughters.”
“Was he ever abusive toward you and your sisters?”
There was silence. She got up and walked toward the cabinet. He saw her elegant silhouette outlined against the sunlight pouring in through the window. What was she doing? She had triggered the question, she knew that. But after so many years, it was still so hard to talk about it, although she wanted to, she needed to.
“Not against myself and Tasha...,” she started.
It was another lie.
“...but my youngest sister Elle, that is another story. She was so beautiful, so lovely but so fragile. She had always been his favorite, and somehow we were jealous about the special relationship they had until we found out he had been raping her since she was six.”
She paused. It was tough. There was so much regret. If she had only told Elle about the ordeal Tasha and herself had gone through all those years, if they had only realized that the moment their abuse had stopped, he had found another victim in their younger sister.
“By then it was too late. We couldn’t help her anymore. Being in and out of psychiatric hospitals, she finally hung herself in the bathroom of a cheap hotel, a few kilometers away from here.”
She gazed at a picture, slightly hidden behind the ones of her sons. Her sister, her beautiful sister.
“You know what shocked me the most,” she cried while holding it. Magnus shook his head.
“My mother defended him... and she kept on defending him until she died. Initially Tasha and I broke all contact with my mother. We reconciled a few years before her death. But talking about Elle was a taboo and would stay one until her death. We never reconnected with my father. Neither Tasha nor I were at his funeral.”
“He died a few years ago, right?” Magnus interrupted.
“No, he died six months ago,” she said surprised.
“Six months ago, but I thought...”
And he browsed through his notebook but couldn’t find the information he was looking for. The background check of the Bergqvist family was missing. It had been a hearsay.
“He died all alone. I heard only a few people attended his funeral.” Since he had supposedly died before Stina Jonasson’s abduction, Magnus had omitted Olav Bergqvist as a suspect but now he wasn’t convinced anymore. Everything was open. Olav could still have abducted and killed her before he died.
“How did he die?”
“Heart attack. They found him two days later after one of his neighbors had alarmed the police.”
She sat down next to him and gave him the picture.
“This is my sister Elle when she was twenty,” and she pointed at the young girl in the middle, flanked by two other women, with the sea and a perfect blue sky in the background. He recognized Marian Bergqvist, but it was the third woman who drew his attention.
“Who is this?” Magnus asked and pointed at the woman on the left side.
“That is my sister Tasha or Natasha. Why?”
“She has a daughter Sara, right?”
“Yes, and a son.”
Magnus had met Tasha before. She was the mother of Sara Norberg, Stina’s best friend.
“Tell me about the cabin in Sandviken,” he said, ignoring the staggered look she gave him.
“Uh... the property belonged to my grandparents. When they died, my father inherited it. In the nineties, but especially in the eighties, we went there often during the summers. That is where we met the other families: Norman, Nordin, and Radić. My sisters and I were much older than the other children but that didn’t matter much. It was fun. At least for us, it was usually a time when my father was calmer and more behaved. After 2000, my parents rarely visited the place anymore. The last few years, my sister Tasha and her family used it for the holidays but not as often as we did before. After my father’s death and Tasha’s divorce, we sold it.”
“I am sorry to ask but do you think your father might have abducted these girls and killed them?”
“He could have. He has a history of not only abusing his own children... child, but...”
A slip of the tongue. He had noticed it.
“He was accused of rape when he was a teenager. Even after that, there were rumors of him assaulting young women and girls. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“They never arrested him?”
“No.”
“There might have been rumors but did you ever see any indications he was actually involved in these kinds of activities?”
“No, no... maybe Mats Norman can tell you more. My father often went out with the professor. Mats was a bit of a womanizer. He probably knows more about what my father was up to during those night-outs.”
“Thank you. We will contact Professor Norman again. What about the other families? Nordin and Radić? Did you have a lot of contact with them?”
“Yes, we spent a lot of time with the children. Elle was fond of Alex. He was the youngest and still a toddler when we first met them. Elle loved to take care of him, like a mother. Josip was another story. He was a wild boy, full of energy, but also full of anger. It wasn’t too surprising he got himself into trouble.”
She stopped and offered to pour him another cup of coffee, but he refused. Too much coffee would put him on edge.
“The Norman children - two boys and a girl - were always very charming, polite, always smiling. They looked too good to be true. Of course, the marriage was shaky. Everyone could see that. He went off to meet other women while she stayed at home and took care of the children. And like father, like son. His oldest son had quite a turbulent love life himself, leaving his family for an eighteen-year-old girl, with whom he had a child. Of course, that didn’t last long. The number of women, he had an affair with, seems innumerable.”
She didn’t mention that she had been one of them. It was a fling, that hadn’t lasted long, but she had already been married at that time. God, he had been exciting and so sexual, the first in a long line of young lovers. Her husband must have known, although he had never, not once in all these years, said a word about it.
“Mrs. Bergqvist, one last question, have there been, in all these years, any strange things or events that caught your attention?”
“The red car,” she said without hesitation.
“The red car? What do you mean?”
“I have always wondered...,” she mused.
In her younger years, she might have fitted the profile perfectly: slim, blue eyes, dark hair – she was blond now, but her real hair color was dark brown – and beautiful. Could she have been a target?
She continued: “It must have been over twenty years ago. There was a time I had the impression I was being stalked.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I saw a red car showing up everywhere I went.”
“It could have been a local,” Magnus suggested.
No local. Why didn’t she just tell him? Why tell him about the car and not the person? Because she wasn’t sure at all.
“That’s what I thought at first... until there were a few incidents where the car followed me, slowly. I was so scared I remember running toward the woods thinking he could not follow me. A second time, I rang the bell of a house nearby. Luckily the people were home, and they let me in. The car drove off with high speed and that was the last time I’ve ever seen it. I didn’t dare to tell my parents. They wouldn’t have believed me, anyway. It wasn’t until the summer after that, I was confronted with the incident again.”
Why didn’t she just tell him? If she told the story, she should just tell it all.
“What happened?”
“We were just walking around, just us… the children, and suddenly Alex mentioned that he had seen the red car again. It was a shock... I can tell you. The others didn’t really know what he was talking about, but I did. Later that day, I talked to Alex again about the remark and he mentioned the man in the car had taken him for a ride and that he had enjoyed it. The man had told him he would come back and then he would also take his friends for a drive.”
“He had talked to the man? He had seen him? Could he describe him?”
She smiled. Exactly what she had asked the young boy, but he couldn’t tell her much, besides the fact that the man had a mustache, dark hair and a red cap. She realized he had been sitting in the back of the car, with no clear view of the driver. While she was telling the story to Magnus, she felt a sudden rush of adrenalin… of fear. It was as if she was back there and then, talking to Alex. She remembered how calm he had been, not showing the slightest sign of fear. But it had felt like a threat, a threat toward her, like the man had wanted to let her know he could get to her friends anytime, anywhere.
“He mentioned he had seen the car again. Is that correct?”
“Yes, but this time the car had followed him for a while when he had been walking toward the village.”
“What happened after that?”
“I can tell you I was really scared that summer,” she said, “but finally... I didn’t see the man and the car anymore. Alex never talked about it again and so I finally forgot all about it.” She kept staring at the ground for a while. This was the moment to confess. But the truth... what was the truth? They wouldn’t understand. She didn’t understand it herself.
She let it pass.
“Mrs. Bergqvist, if there is nothing more you can think of, I’d like to thank you. If I have any more questions later, can I call you?”
“Yes, no problem,” she answered.
It was nice to feel the fresh air outside, on his face, in his lungs. The last hour every sense in his body had been challenged. The visual overload, the perfume so overpowering it had burnt the hairs in his nostrils. But like with every scent, he finally got used to it. He took another deep breath. It was good to see the simplicity of the plain snow. He reached for his mobile phone while walking to his car. The missed call was from Isa, no message from Sophie. She needed him back at the office, but he didn’t go to the police station. He drove back home.
***
The whiteboard was covered with pictures of the nine girls and key protagonists. The scribblings next to the photographs were mostly Isa’s. Facts, remarks but sometimes even disconnected thoughts, written on post-its or written in felt-tip pen next to the pictures. Nina looked at it in dismay. She liked it to be more structured and systematic but that was not Isa’s style. Lars and Berger entered the room. The large room was open and bright, with plenty of windows toward the outside and toward the hallway which was not always so practical as most people passing by could see everything: who was in the room, which presentations were given and in this case the whiteboard with all the case information. Isa was sitting at the back, feet casually put on the table in front of her and the eyes fixed on the whiteboard. It irritated Nina even more. The careless style of her boss totally clashed with her own structured by-the-book way of working. This chaos was not efficient at all. At least not to her own mind.
