“Are you all right, Joona?” asks Anja, popping her head around the door.
“I’m going to go and speak to the parents,” he says.
“I’m sure someone else can do that.”
“No. This is my case,” says Joona. “I’ll go.”
“I understand.”
“Could you find some addresses for me in the meantime?”
“No problem.”
“I’d like to know every place Lydia Everson has lived for the past thirteen years.” His heart is heavy as he pulls on his fur hat and overcoat and sets off to tell Isabella and Joakim Samuelsson that their son has been found dead.
Anja calls him as he’s driving out of the city.
“That was quick,” he says, trying to sound cheerful but failing.
“This is my job after all, darling,” chirrups Anja.
He hears her take a deep breath and he thinks of the two pictures of Johan in the folder. In one he’s dressed in a policeman’s uniform, laughing out loud, his hair standing on end. And in the other: a collection of bones laid out on a metal table, neatly labelled with numbers.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” he mutters to himself.
“Hey!”
“Sorry, Anja, it was another driver.”
“All right, all right. But I don’t want to hear that kind of language.”
“No, I know,” he says wearily, incapable of joining in the banter.
Anja finally seems to realize that he isn’t in the mood for jokes and says neutrally, “The house where Johan Samuelsson’s remains were found is Lydia Everson’s mother’s place. She grew up there, and that’s always been her only address.”
“Any family? Parents? Brothers and sisters?”
“Wait, I’m just checking it now… It doesn’t look like it. There’s no record of her father, and her mother’s dead. It doesn’t even look as if Lydia was in her care for very long.”
“Brothers and sisters?” Joona asks again.
“No,” says Anja, leafing through papers. “Sorry, yes,” she calls out. “She had a little brother, but he seems to have died at an early age.”
“How old was Lydia at the time?”
“She was ten.”
“So she’s always lived in that house?”
“No, that’s not exactly what I said. She
“Where?” Joona asks patiently.
“Ulleraker, Ulleraker, Ulleraker Psychiatric Clinic.”
“Three stays.”
“That’s what it says.”
“There are pieces missing,” Joona remarks quietly to himself.
“What are you saying?”
“There are too many pieces missing,” he answers. “I can’t make sense of it, and now I have to try to explain to two parents why Lydia took their child.”
Chapter 94
Joona has turned onto the little street where Johan Samuelsson’s parents still live. He spots their place at once, an eighteenth-century house painted Falun red, with a saddle roof. A shabby playhouse stands in the garden. Beyond the Samuelssons’ hilly plot it is just possible to glimpse the black, heavy water of the Baltic Sea.
“I have to go, Anja.”
He pulls his car into a raked gravel drive neatly edged with cobblestones and runs his hands over his face before getting out. He walks up to the door and rings the bell, waits, rings again. Eventually he hears someone shouting inside.
“Coming!”
The lock rattles and a teenage girl pushes open the door. Her eyes are heavily made up with kohl, and she has dyed her hair purple.
“Hey,” she says.
“My name is Joona Linna,” he says. “I’m from the National CID. Are your parents at home?”
The girl nods and turns to shout to them. But a middle-aged woman is already standing in the hallway, staring at Joona. “Amanda,” she says in a frightened voice, “ask him… ask him what he wants.”
Joona shakes his head. “I’d prefer not to say on the doorstep what I came to say,” he says. “May I come in?”
“Yes,” whispers the mother.
Joona steps inside and closes the door. He looks at the girl, whose lower lip has begun to tremble. Then he looks at Isabella Samuelsson. Her hands are pressed to her breast, and her face is deathly pale.
Joona takes a deep breath and explains quietly. “I’m so very, very sorry. We’ve found Johan’s remains.”
The mother presses her clenched fist to her mouth, making a faint whimpering sound. She leans on the wall but slips and sinks to the floor.
“Dad!” yells Amanda. “Dad!”
A man comes running down the stairs. When he sees his wife weeping on the floor, he slows down. It’s as if every vestige of colour disappears from his face. He looks at his wife, his daughter, then Joona. “It’s Johan,” is all he says.
“We’ve found his remains,” says Joona, his voice subdued.
They sit in the living room. The girl puts her arm around her mother, who is weeping inconsolably. The father still seems strangely calm. Joona has seen it before, these men- and sometimes women, though this is less common- who show very little reaction, who continue to talk and ask questions, whose voices take on a peculiarly vacant tone as they ask about the details. Joona knows this is not indifference but a battle, a desperate attempt to put off the moment when the pain comes.
“How did you find him?” the mother whispers, between bouts of weeping. “Where was he?”
“We were looking for another child at the home of a person suspected of kidnapping,” says Joona. “Our dog picked up the scent and led us to a spot in the garden.”
“In the garden?”
Joona swallows. “Johan has been buried there for ten years, according to the forensic pathologist.”
Joakim Samuelsson looks up. “Ten years?” He shakes his head. “It’s thirteen years since Johan disappeared,” he whispers.
Joona nods, feeling utterly drained as he explains. “We have reason to believe that the person who took your child held him captive- ” He looks down, making an enormous effort to sound calm when he looks up again. “Johan was held captive for three years,” he goes on. “Before the perpetrator killed him. He was five when he died.”
At this point the father’s face breaks. His iron-hard facade is shattered into countless fragments, like a thin pane of glass. It is very painful to watch. His face crumples and tears begin to pour down his cheeks. Rough, dreadful sobs rend the air.
Joona looks around the room at the framed photographs on the walls. Recognizes the picture from the folder of little two-year-old Johan in his police uniform. Sees a confirmation photo of the girl. A picture of the parents, laughing and holding up a newborn baby. He swallows and waits. It isn’t over yet.
“There’s one more thing I have to ask you,” he says, after giving them a moment to compose themselves. “I
