The Find, page 20
She sighed, took her mobile phone and tried to call Magnus. Her six attempts to reach him were unsuccessful. In all cases, she was redirected to his voice mail. The messages he had left for her during the night were short and had given little information, only mentioning that he would be off work for a few days because of urgent family matters.
Urgent family matters? Why didn’t he call back? What was going on? It worried her. For a moment, she considered calling Sophie, but she quickly put that idea aside. A confrontation between wife and ex-mistress wasn’t the best idea.
She put the phone back in the pocket of her coat and turned to check where Alex had gone to. He was angry and she couldn’t blame him. The way she had handled the situation hadn’t been exactly an example of sensitivity and understanding. More and more, she doubted if she had made the right decision. A decision, she had made for the both of them, having given him no chance whatsoever to talk about what he felt or wanted.
The way back to the Norman cabin was difficult as expected. From the footsteps in the snow, she noticed he had gotten off-track a few times, had slipped and fallen. Finally, she found him standing near the rock they had seen yesterday.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“It should be close by. I think it’s more toward the west... the image in my head is a bit fuzzy.”
To her it seemed hopeless to find anything in this sea of whiteness, but she kept following him, almost incited by a wrong and twisted feeling of remorse and pity.
Stepping through the deep snow demanded its toll. With every movement, he felt increasingly exhausted. By the time they had reached the place he had been looking for, he was gasping for air and the pain in his limbs was agonizing.
Numerous branches and stones covered the entrance of the tunnel. He saw the oak tree and suddenly everything came flooding back. This was where he had seen the girl.
There it was. A dungeon in a forest, hidden behind the trees and rocks. Isa had had major doubts about the quest of her companion, but he had been right.
“We need to go in,” he said and looked at her, seeking for approval. She said nothing and paced around the area.
“Isa?”
“No, we need to get a forensics team here,” she answered eventually, “this is a crime scene.”
She took the mobile phone and dialed the number of the police station. The call lasted about ten minutes. Then she turned to Alex.
“There is no point in waiting here. In the best case, they will be here in two hours. We can go back to your cabin or sit in a cold car. What do you prefer?”
He sighed. For a split second, he thought of stirring up the situation again by giving her a rather sarcastic and angry answer to the simple question she had posed, but he was tired, and he didn’t have the energy to start a fight about something she had deemed non-existent and unimportant.
They went back to the cabin and stayed there until Ingrid’s team arrived almost three hours later. The waiting was done in complete silence, avoiding each other. He stayed behind in the house while Isa joined the forensics team.
“Someone will come and take your statement,” she said before leaving.
He nodded.
“I would appreciate it if you...,” she continued as she put on her coat and opened the door.
The frown on his face showed she had hit a sensitive note.
“Don’t worry I won’t say anything about our... whatever it is,” he said angrily and turned around.
Her eyes followed his every move as he walked toward the kitchen. Sleeping with him had been a mistake. In her head, she kept repeating it over and over, even though she didn’t really believe it.
***
Carefully they removed the wood from the entrance and found a tunnel made in concrete, leading to an underground room. It almost looked like a bunker, built during the war. The tunnel, unlit and slippery because of the snow and ice, was long and small. At the other end, a metal door with several locks, that could only be locked from outside. The door was open, and they entered. What they found behind it, was something none of them had expected and left them all breathless.
“Finally a breakthrough in the case,” Isa thought, but the pure horror of the scene had not sunk in.
The room was small with only one basement window, a bed in one corner of the room and a table and chair in the other one. The light was faint but enough to see the traces of blood, scattered over the room, dried out and absorbed by the porous structure of the concrete. In the wall, near the bed, thick metal chains with handcuffs were placed. The smell was a mixture of moisture, sweat, urine, and the iron sniff of blood.
“Be careful not to contaminate anything,” Ingrid said to the rest of the team. She looked at Isa, who stood near the door, trying to make sense of it all. It put the spotlight back on the Nordin family. Alex had led her here, so he had been inside this room. But why? What had he been doing here?
“Isa, how did you find this place?”
She hesitated for a moment and decided that it was not the right time to go into the details.
“It’s a rather long story. I’ll tell you when we get back to the station.”
“Well, that will take a while,” Ingrid answered, while she unpacked the equipment.
“I saw that you are here with Alexander Nordin,” Ingrid continued, trying to provoke a reaction from her friend. Isa kept her posture and ignored the comment, but her body language was telling the opposite. She felt a gush of adrenalin going through her veins.
“Well, yes...,” she stammered, “he helped me in the investigation.”
“Right,” Ingrid replied. Isa was nervous and obviously hiding something. She could probably guess what her friend had been keeping from her. It was disappointing. Hadn’t she learned anything?
“Well, Ingrid, I need to go back. I think you can handle it here.”
“The roads are probably still blocked. You might need to wait a little longer.”
“I’ll manage. See you at the station tomorrow.”
As she walked back to the cabin, she realized how stupid and rude she had been to Alex. She wanted to undo all of it. She stopped and closed her eyes. While she felt the cold air on her face, she remembered his touch, how he had run his fingers over her body, how he had kissed her, how they had made love, his body against hers. And it thrilled her. It was difficult to admit it, but she was actually falling for him. It was madness, irresponsible and so exciting.
When she entered, he was in the kitchen.
“And?” he asked.
“Yes, the girls were probably held captive there,” she replied, while she saw his expression become more serious and gloomier. He kept staring in front of him as he whispered: “So I was there. What does that mean? Have I seen the murderer?”
“Possibly...,” she answered.
“Now what? Am I in danger? Just like Josip.”
It had crossed her mind. They would need to keep an eye on him.
“I’ll take you home. We’ll talk again about this in the next few days. Okay?”
It didn’t put his mind at ease.
***
That afternoon they drove back to Uppsala. The atmosphere was anything but pleasant. The days after, he locked himself in his apartment, the way he had done many times in the past when things got too difficult to bear, and when the problems seemed insurmountable. The doubts about his father and his involvement in the murders were back, more pronounced than ever before. The fear he could be in danger, and the disappointment and the heartache over Isa had brought him to an all-time low.
***
It took the forensics team a full week to examine the room. The DNA results were disappointing. Few links to the murdered girls and there had been nothing useful to identify the murderer: no blood, no DNA, not a single fiber. Neither in the bunker, nor in the cabin where Josip supposedly had stayed those last days before his death.
“Maybe we should consider hypnosis,” Nina said.
Isa looked at her, with a grin on her face and a slight frowning of the eyebrows, while they were walking back to her office. This had been the weirdest suggestion of miss Kowalczyk so far.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, there have been several reports where it has been successful in retrieving long lost memories. There is no harm in trying.”
“I don’t think so,” Isa answered and opened the door.
Talking to Alex was not exactly what she had in mind. Moreover, she had been unsuccessful in convincing Anders to put him under police surveillance and she had lost track of his whereabouts. It wasn’t okay Their prime witness. And no one knew where he was. If she could only get over that barrier of shame and guilt, she would go after him and make sure he was fine.
He was okay, wasn’t he? Maybe she should check.
“I got the ballistics report of the Radić murder,” Nina handed her the paper.
“So, the bullet that killed him came from the gun found at the crime scene.”
Isa quickly ran through the text while she opened the door.
“The gun is registered to a Nikolaj Blom and was reported stolen in 1992,” Nina added.
“Who is Nikolaj Blom?” Isa asked surprised.
“Let’s discuss that later, but first there is something else I wanted to show you.”
She put a file on the table and opened it. With a fluent twist, she put it in front of Isa who had taken place on the opposite side of the desk.
“What am I looking at?”
“Alexander Nordin’s file. Please look at the top of the page. As a baby, he was reported missing. This happened a few days after he was born. But look at the date.”
“26 June 1987? This is supposed to ring a bell?”
“It’s the day Clara Persson disappeared,” Nina said.
Her boss looked up from the file and stared at her for a moment.
“What happened?”
“A nurse at the hospital reported the disappearance. While Irene was sleeping, someone took the baby. That evening, however, he was found in a basket on the steps outside the hospital... unharmed. They never found out where he had been and what had happened to him during the eight hours he went missing.”
“You think this has something to do with the case?” Isa asked.
“As you said before: the coincidences in this case are piling up until they are no longer coincidental. This family is at the center of it, but we still don’t know why.”
“Does he know?”
“What do you mean?” Nina asked.
“Does he know about all this? The kidnapping?”
“God, Isa, I assume so. I assume his parents must have told him, no?”
“How can someone just walk out of a hospital with a baby?”
Holding her head in her hands, she read the file again, looking for details and clues, but there was little useful information other than what Nina had already told her.
“Nobody will find it unusual if a father takes his baby for a walk, no?”
“Then Peter took him? But why?”
“A father and a baby... wouldn’t that prompt more trust than a man alone?”
“So, he used the child to get to Clara?”
“Maybe. It has been done before.”
Isa got up and wandered around. This was a sign for Nina to keep quiet.
“I still don’t understand why the disappearance was reported by the nurse, not by Irene.”
“Maybe she was sound asleep,” Nina tried to find an explanation.
“Really? You think she wouldn’t notice if someone entered the room and took her baby. On the other hand, it might have nothing to do with our case.”
Berger entered the room.
“I have some news about the bunker,” he started.
“Berger, please learn to knock,” Isa reprimanded him.
“Sorry, boss. But I have information...”
She signaled that he had to come to the point quickly as she was becoming impatient. The conversation with Nina had made it clear she needed to talk to Irene Nordin again. Alex had not given her a lot to work with. For some reason, he had seemed hesitant to talk to his mother.
“The bunker is not a bunker, but a house. Construction started in 1979 but was stopped by local authorities at the beginning of 1980 because the region is protected, and the building was in fact illegal.”
“Who was the owner?”
Berger looked through the papers he was holding.
“The owner was Nikolaj Blom. He bought the property in 1985 from the first owner, a Doctor... Karsegard. But here is something interesting...”
“Nikolaj Blom disappeared in 1992,” Nina interrupted.
“How... how do you know?” Berger asked surprised.
“The gun that killed Josip Radić was registered to his name.”
“And he was declared dead in 2010. His grandchildren inherited the land including the unfinished house.”
“What happened to him?”
“Well, hard to say. Some thought he had run off and was laying low. Most of the family described him as a swindler and a lay-about, usually involved in fishy business. Police reports show that there was an active search to find him, but they stopped looking after 18 months. Then the case was closed.”
“Are you now telling me Nikolaj Blom is our killer?” Isa asked annoyed.
“Maybe,” Berger answered cautiously.
“If he is still alive, he’ll be ninety-five or so,” Nina added, “probably not.”
“Did you contact the family about the house?” Nina asked Berger.
“Yes, they all stated that no one in the family had seen the place in years. Since Nikolaj’s disappearance, they weren’t exactly on speaking terms. But one of the sons said someone must have expanded the place since the tunnel was not originally there.”
“None of them were aware?”
“Exactly and neither seems Mats Norman and his family. For years, everyone had assumed the place was off-limits. Too dangerous for hiking because of the landslides.”
“Seems indeed not the best place to build a home. Ideal for a killer though. Is there anything else forensics found?”
Berger shrugged his shoulders and answered: “I don’t think so. Dr. Olsson only found DNA from the girls, but nothing else, surprisingly.”
“He is very shrewd.”
“Who reported the disappearance of the gun?”
Nina quickly checked the report.
“His son... he reported it around the time Nikolaj went missing.”
“Any connection between Nikolaj Blom and the Nordin family, or any of the others?”
“None we could find.”
Isa sighed and stared at the window for a while. Nina and Berger were waiting for some reaction from her side. When she finally looked at them, she said: “Everything leads to the Nordins, but I am not convinced that Peter Nordin is the killer. There is something else. I cannot put my finger on it.”
“Okay, I think it makes sense to talk to Irene Nordin again. I’ll set up the meeting. I assume that inspector Wieland is still on leave?”
Isa nodded her head. Magnus had requested a leave of indefinite duration because of family reasons. It was all very mysterious. Nobody, except Anders knew what was really going on. He had ignored all of Isa’s phone calls. He simply had disappeared from the scene and Isa had given up finding out what was going on.
Nina got up, but before leaving the room, turned around and asked: “And should we question the son again?”
That was what Isa dreaded even more. She needed to face him at a given moment, but preferably on her own, not with her coworkers in the room.
“No, not now.”
CHAPTER
18
L
IESBETH HAD STOOD SO MANY times in front of that door, touching the handle, trying to go inside but never crossing that doorstep. The last fifteen years had been a nightmare for the family not knowing if Katrien had been alive or not. She felt her heart beating fast. The breathing was superficial and was the only sign of the anxiety she was feeling. She opened the door. Only the cleaning lady had been in Katrien’s room during the years she had gone missing. Today it was different. Today she had buried her husband André. The emotions of the last months had worn him down until he had simply given up. Two funerals in the last four months. People pitied her, but strangely enough, the tranquility she felt, had been liberating. Yes, her daughter was dead. But at least she could lay her to rest, putting an end to the agonizing uncertainty they had been living with all those years. Yes, her husband was dead. The love, she had felt for the man she had once considered her significant other, had been reduced to a mere pat on the back, a volatile kiss on the cheek. Only now she realized how she had missed the passion and romance they had shared before. It was time to move on. As she stepped inside, she recalled happier times. She hadn’t expected that. During those fifteen years, she had never allowed those feelings to surface.
Everything looked the same as so many years before: the posters, the dressing table with the make-up and perfume, her books and notes of the previous school year still lying around on the desk. She had planned to go through them before starting the new school year. That was Katrien: serious, conscientious, but also very ambitious. She sat down on the neatly made bed, that no one had slept in for years. She sighed. It was her task to clean up and put her daughter’s stuff in boxes. It scared her. It was as if she would tuck her daughter away forever. But she needed full closure, she needed to move on with her life.
As she looked at the wedding ring around her finger, she knew she had to do the same with her marriage and she took it off, but the ring slipped from her hand, fell on the ground and rolled under the bed. The gap between the edge of the bed and the floor was narrow, and it took her a while to get her arm under the bed. She felt the thick layer of dust beneath her fingertips which made it harder to find the lost ring. Suddenly her hand hit something, but it wasn’t the cold and metal-like surface of a ring. It felt like the pages of a book. Trying to get a better grip on the object, she tried to get her arm further under the bed. As she pulled it out, she saw that it was a pack of letters. She wiped the dust from them and sat down on the bed. On some of them, she recognized her daughter’s handwriting. Others weren’t hers. The writing was majestic, elegant and almost calligraphic. As she opened one, feelings of distress and terror took hold of her again. Why had Katrien hidden this? After all these years, would Liesbeth find the answers she had been looking for: why and who?
