The visit to the Eisenbergs would have to be postponed.
A big red hat on a little girl’s head.
Without it, Peder’s argument was nothing.
They met in a café on Östermalm Square; Alex had already forgotten the name of it. Alex, Peder and Fredrika: just like the old days. But they had never met in a café; it was a new environment for the old team.
‘Thanks for this – I thought it was best if you didn’t come to the community centre.’
Alex agreed.
What Peder had done was far beyond the remit of his role as head of security; he had done the police’s job for them, and he had done it well.
‘You have to take back Josephine’s case from the National Crime Unit,’ Peder said. ‘I’m sure they’ve given up any attempt to link the murder to organised crime by now; it could just be lying there, with no one making much of an effort.’
He took a sip of his coffee, then bit into a cinnamon bun the size of a saucer.
Fredrika was drinking tea and eating a marzipan cake.
‘I thought you didn’t eat crap like that,’ Peder said.
‘Well, there you go.’ She took a big bite. ‘What made you think that?’
Peder looked down, picking sugar crystals off the tablecloth.
‘I thought you were too much of a gourmet for that kind of thing.’
Alex was about to interrupt the discussion before Fredrika made mincemeat of Peder, but discovered that he no longer needed to act as playgroup leader. Those days were gone. The years that had passed had tempered both of them, in different ways.
Fredrika looked as if she was about to burst out laughing. No doubt she realised that she was partly to blame; she had been quite difficult in the past.
Obviously Peder still didn’t quite know where to draw the line, because when he realised that he had got away with his comment about the cake, he decided to carry on:
‘Since you’ve started eating like a cop, maybe you could try dressing like one too,’ he said, glancing at her smart blouse and jacket, which looked more like something a banker or stockbroker might wear.
At that point Alex decided he had had enough; they didn’t have time for this.
‘A red hat,’ he said. ‘Worn by the wrong child. You think that’s enough to jump to the conclusion that the Eisenbergs’ daughter was the target, not the teacher.’
Peder bristled.
‘You wouldn’t be sitting here if you didn’t think the same.’
Always difficult when people knew you…
‘Besides,’ Peder went on, ‘this doesn’t just come down to a red hat.’
‘Convince me.’
‘First of alclass="underline" the timing. The killer was lying high up on a roof. It was snowing and several degrees below freezing. So he or she wouldn’t want to stay there for too long. Therefore, I believe we can assume he was intending to carry out his mission at about three o’clock, which was when Polly was due to be picked up. Secondly…’
‘How did the killer know she was due to be collected then?’ Fredrika asked.
‘I don’t know. But we can assume he checked it out; if he knew what school she attended, it seems likely that he would have found out when her parents usually came for her. Polly is collected at three o’clock every day; her parents take it in turns. The killer could easily have watched the family for a few days, and very quickly got a handle on their routines.’
‘But why shoot the child outside the school?’ Alex said. ‘There must be a hundred other opportunities to choose from.’
‘In inner-city Stockholm?’ Peder said. ‘Think about it. You found the two boys out on Lovön. In broad daylight. Not far from Sweden’s head of state. Not a particularly discreet crime. You have to admit the person you’re dealing with here is seriously disturbed.’
The three of them fell silent.
‘Or someone who likes the attention,’ Peder added so quietly that Alex had to lean forward to hear what he said.
‘Okay, I’ll stop interrupting,’ he said. ‘Carry on. You were talking about the timing.’
Alex Recht gave his former colleague one more chance to prove his point.
Peder felt a fresh surge of energy.
‘Secondly, as I said, it was very cold on Wednesday, and it was windy too. And it was snowing. Our friend on the roof can’t have wanted to stay there any longer than absolutely necessary. Polly Eisenberg was supposed to go home at three o’clock, not Josephine. There was no reason whatsoever why the sniper would have expected to see Josephine out there before five o’clock, when she finished work. And another thing – the angle of the shot is wrong. If Josephine hadn’t crouched down to help a child do up his shoelace, the bullet would have hit her in the leg, not the back.’
‘Which suggests that he was aiming at someone shorter than Josephine,’ Fredrika said.
‘Exactly.’
‘In which case he missed,’ Alex said.
‘It was snowing,’ Peder said. ‘Visibility was very poor. And just as the shot was fired, the little girl who was wearing Polly’s hat moved. Josephine turned around to call to Polly, who was still inside, and the girl who had taken Polly’s hat got cross and pulled away from her father. Then the gun went off.’
‘You mean if she had stayed where she was, she would have been hit?’
‘I only have second-hand accounts to go on, but yes, it looks that way.’
Alex sipped his coffee. He had decided against a pastry; Diana had suggested that both of them ought to be eating less rubbish. Reluctantly he had accepted that it was a good idea, particularly on days like this.
He caught Fredrika’s eye.
‘What do you think? This is what you said right from the start: that there was a chance the bullet wasn’t meant for Josephine.’
Fredrika finished off her cake.
‘That was just a guess, but at the time I didn’t know there was a link to the Eisenberg and Goldmann families.’
‘And now?’
The door of the café opened and closed as a customer came in. Cold air sliced across the floor.
Fredrika hesitated.
‘I don’t think we can rule it out. But regardless of what I think, Peder has managed to reinforce one key point.’
‘Which is?’
‘That Josephine died by pure chance. There is absolutely no reason to believe that someone would have stayed up there on the roof for hours, just waiting for her to appear. It’s out of the question.’
‘So where does that leave us?’ Peder said.
‘Either things really are as bad as in some TV drama, and we’re looking at serial killers who specialise in Jewish victims – but in that case, why haven’t we seen more victims, given how quickly things happened that first day? Or the bullet actually did hit the right victim, but she was chosen at random – the killer was prepared to shoot whoever was outside the school at that particular moment.’
Alex prayed that Peder wouldn’t pick up the additional information Fredrika had just revealed – information that was most definitely not intended for anyone outside the team.
His prayer was in vain, of course.
‘Serial killers?’ Peder said.
‘That’s just one theory we’re considering,’ Fredrika said.
‘I understand that, but you’re talking as if there’s more than one killer.’
Fredrika blinked.
‘Sorry, I made a mistake.’
‘No, you didn’t. It was the same murder weapon; are you still saying there was more than one killer?’
A man and a woman, Alex wanted to say. We think there could be two of the bastards working together.
But it was too soon to share information like that with an outsider.
‘It’s just one of a number of theories we’re considering at the moment,’ he said, placing a calming hand on Peder’s shoulder. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d keep it to yourself.’
Peder reluctantly agreed.
Alex knew exactly what he was thinking. He had taken the trouble to call them, placed all his cards on the table, and now Fredrika and Alex wouldn’t let him in.