Chapter Ten
All was chaos. Utter, noisy, uncontrollable chaos. Stefan paced the shadows beyond the reach of the police cars' lights. He threw his head back and covered his face with his hands, a desperate and futile attempt to block out the noise and the relentless flashing blue lights. Somewhere, a radio crackled and blared almost constant messages from the control room. A few neighbours had gathered, and were demanding to know what was going on, to the chagrin of the officers manning the cordon, who knew nothing and were telling even less. Further down the street a dog had started barking. It was as if all the noise and confusion were trying to cram itself inside his head, Stefan thought. He couldn't stop it – any minute now would come the inevitable explosion in his brain, when his neurons hit breaking point.
Then he realised he was no longer alone. Solberg had slipped into the shadows to join him. She looked terrible, and for a moment he thought she was going to burst into tears. It was yet another shock to see this usually stoic and coldly professional officer crumble before his eyes. Then she regained control of herself.
"Got a cigarette?" she asked.
"I don't smoke. I didn't know you did either."
"I don't. But right now..." her voice trailed away. "How the hell did this happen?"
Indeed, how the hell had it happened? They sat down on a low wall, watching their colleagues come and go like a frantic swarm of ants, combing the house for any clue of what had been going on just an hour earlier. The ambulance carrying Ingvar had long departed for the hospital and it seemed as if there were nothing to do now but wait and hope.
Presently Turesson appeared out of the midst of the commotion and headed towards them, shaking his head.
"You two should go home," he said in a flat, exhausted voice.
"But what about Elias?" Once again Solberg seemed on the verge of breaking down. "We were supposed to protect him, Martin! We failed, and who knows what sort of danger he's in – if he's even still alive."
"That's enough, Britta." Turesson laid a consoling hand on her shoulder. "The crime scene guys are doing their best. We can't do much of a search for him till it gets light, and right now we just have to hope for the best."
"Is that it? 'Hope for the best'? What if the worst has happened already?"
"As I said, there's not much we can do at the moment. It won't do Elias any good if we're exhausted and emotional, so please, you two, try and get some rest. There'll be a meeting at eight, and I need you to be able to think straight, okay?"
With some reluctance Britta nodded and got up. Turesson watched her go, then patted Stefan on the back.
"You go too. At least try and rest for a while."
Stefan nodded and they parted. After climbing into his car, Stefan watched Turesson take a long phonecall, then drive away. For a moment he sat completely still in the driver's seat. He had no idea what had happened at this allegedly safe location, and he had no intention of leaving until he at least had some hint of what had happened to Elias. He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on a train of thought that was forming despite the confusion in his head.
I'm a frightened young boy in an unfamiliar place. My abusers have caught up with me and beaten my brother senseless. Assuming they haven't got me as well, what do I do? Do I hide from them? Or do I try to run away?
If Elias had gone into hiding, surely the officers searching the property would have discovered him by now. The house was not a very large one, and had an equally small garden containing a rickety shed. Practically the first thing one of the crime scene officers had done was to look in the shed, which turned out to empty apart from a set of lawn chairs. There was no sign that the boy had ever been in there. Likewise, the whole house had been searched, including the cupboards and cellar, to no avail.
There were few signs of a struggle, apart from the blood-spattered hallway where the assailants had brutally beaten Ingvar. So far, it hadn't even been established how they got into the house, and nobody from outside had had noticed anything unusual. Not even the officers posted to watch the house had noticed any sign of trouble until one of them had gone to make a routine security check of the premises at around three o'clock and found Ingvar unconscious and Elias missing. So far it was impossible to say how the attackers had got in, and therefore if Elias had managed to flee it was hard to see which direction he would have gone in.
Stefan opened his eyes. Why had nobody noticed anything? The house was under constant surveillance, for God's sake.
He got out of the car and marched to the house, letting himself under the police tape. The crime scene team had just about finished and were conferring by the front door.
"Is it all right to go in?" Stefan asked their supervisor.
"Be my guest," said the woman, as she began climbing out of her blue contamination suit. "You might want to watch where you put your feet, though. In fact, put these on." She threw him a pair of blue plastic shoe covers before turning back to her team, who were gathered round their photographer, examining his shots of the scene. Stefan slipped the covers on and stepped into the house.
The hall was liberally bloodstained. Unsure of where to start looking, or even what he was looking for, Stefan stepped over the largest stain and went up the stairs. The bedrooms and bathroom had been turned upside down, yielding nothing. Stefan opened every door he could find, despite knowing it was pointless. He pulled open the hatch to the attic and climbed the ladder. The harsh light of the single bare bulb swinging from the rafters showed no sign of anyone having been there. Dispirited, he climbed back down, went into one of the bedrooms, sat on the bed and put his head in his hands.
We failed. Yet again.
A cold breeze from the window ruffled his hair. He looked up. The window was wide open.
There was a technician rattling around on the landing, collecting some forgotten equipment. Stefan called out to him.
"Hey! Did one of you guys open this window?"
The technician shook his head.
"Nope. That was open when we got here. I should know, I was the first one in that room."
Stefan jumped to his feet and raced to the window. Below the window was a roughly three-metre drop to the roof of the little garage that adjoined the house. It was too high for someone to have climbed in, but just low enough for someone brave or desperate enough to scramble out. The garage roof seemed strong enough to bear at least some weight.
Stefan sat gingerly on the window sill and pulled the blue covers off his feet, before clambering out through the window. Ignoring the technician's admonition to watch out, he lowered himself as far as he could go, before carefully jumping down onto the garage. In the dull light from the window he could see some scuff marks.
"Can you throw me a torch?" he shouted to the technician, who was gawping at him from the window.
"I suppose so." After a moment, a torch landed in Stefan's hands. He shone it down onto the ground, noticing that a bush beside the garage had several broken branches, and there was a ragged hole in the hedge next to it.
"What's on the other side of that hedge?"
"It's a path to the farm on the other side of the woods," the technician called back to him.
Before the technician could say anything else, or even start to wonder what kind of insanity had seized his strange colleague, Stefan had jumped down from the roof and forced his way through the hedge. Half running, he kept the beam of the torch trained on the bumpy path that twisted through the trees. Branches clawed at his face and caught on his jacket. Twice he tripped on a tree root, before eventually stumbling out the other side of the trees.
Gasping for breath, he called to Elias. The torch beam showed a low barn ahead, beyond it the dark bulk of the farmhouse, its occupants still sleeping, unaware of the chaos nearby.
"Elias?" he called again, louder this time. "Elias! It's Stefan. Where are you?"
A light went on in the farmhouse. At the same moment, Stefan saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. The barn door had opened a crack, and a pale face was just visible inside.
"Elias. It's okay. You're safe now."
Stefan stepped forward slowly, reaching a hand out to the boy.
"It's all right." He rested his hand on Elias' shoulder and guided him slowly out of the barn.
It was while Stefan was sitting with Elias in the kitchen at the farm, waiting for a patrol car to come and pick them both up, that the thought hit him.
This was an inside job.
It couldn't be any other way. When pressed, Elias was adamant that no strangers had come to the house that evening until the attackers somehow got in. Nobody apart from the small team of detectives and the few uniformed officers on the security detail knew about the safe house. The house itself had been in Turesson's family for years and had been easily available when needed for Elias and his brother, so not even a letting agent had been involved. Therefore, whoever it was that had attacked Ingvar, they must have gotten their information and access to him from one of the officers involved.
A deep chill gripped him, leaving him momentarily paralysed and unable to breathe.
He stormed through the corridors of the police station until he found Ahlqvist wearily leaning on a water cooler, cup in hand.
"Where are the two who were on duty at the safe house last night?"
"Well, I think Nisse's in the break room..."
Bursting into the break room he recognised the miserable-looking officer who sat on his own staring into a cup of coffee.
"Did anyone come to check on the safe house last night?"
"What?" The other man looked up at him in bewilderment.
Stefan slapped the table in front of him.
"Who came out to check the security of the safe house last night? It's a simple enough question!"
The officer jumped and blinked up at him blankly.
"Uh, no-one unusual. Chief Turesson looked in on his way home, and then Evert came round a bit later. That was it."
Stefan closed his eyes and took a very deep breath. Something inside him was about to burst, he was sure of it. Then, without another word, he turned on his heel and strode out of the room as fast as he could.
Turesson's office was roughly halfway along the corridor and it took him precisely thirty steps to reach it. Stefan burst in, slamming the door behind him. As expected, Turesson was at his desk, and Stefan's noisy entrance made him jump violently and nearly spill the coffee he was drinking.
"What's going on? I thought I told you to go home?"
"Listen," said Stefan, throwing himself down into Turesson's guest chair. "How do you think this happened? How did the attackers get into the house? Nobody knew about the house except a few of us. It must have been one of us who let them in."
Turesson froze, a look of utter horror on his face, then slowly lowered his coffee cup onto the desk.
"Good God," he said in a quiet voice. "You're right."