Something about his facial expression seemed to question her actions, but Jana pretended not to notice.
The house was deserted and would soon be examined by the forensic team. She knew that. She also knew that she really shouldn’t be inside there. But still she quickly went upstairs. On her way up she noticed that there were hardly any dust or spiderwebs on the banisters, and she had the impression that somebody had been in the house recently. She shivered as she turned to the left at the top of the stairs, and entered a large room. The planks of the wooden floor were damp and had warped. Four single beds with steel frames were placed close to each other. The mattresses had holes with batting coming out and rat droppings everywhere. A broken lamp hung from the ceiling; the walls were a sad gray color.
Jana’s gaze fastened on a chest of drawers next to one of the beds. She went up and pulled out the top drawer, which was empty. Then she pulled out all the others, and they were empty too. Then she used both hands to pull the chest away from the wall as quietly as she could. She leaned down and looked at the wall. Two faces were scratched on the wallpaper; they showed a man and a woman. A mama and a papa. Carved by a child’s hand.
Carved by her.
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
Saturday, April 28
SHE COULD REMEMBER it so clearly now, could see everything before her every time she closed her eyes for a few moments. It was as if somebody had given her a good shaking. She remembered the container, that she was dragged out of it, that she was taken away in a van, trained hard and then that she fled away from it all.
From Papa.
At the same time, she realized that every single detail, every note and every image in her notebooks were from the same reality. So they hadn’t been dreams; they had been memories. Nobody had believed her either. Her father and mother had tried to silence her with medication and psychologists.
Sitting in her car, Jana hit at the steering wheel.
She shut her eyes and roared out loud. Then she became quiet. Breathed deeply. And suddenly, behind her closed eyes, she saw Papa before her.
*
He stood over her, watched how she tensed up. The terror had grown in her eyes. The hate in his.
And when he gave her the knife, she had realized what she was forced to do. She was forced to kill so as not to be killed. So she turned round and let the knife in her hand slowly sink between the ribs of the boy who lay beside her.
He, too, with tape over his mouth, and panic in his eyes.
*
It had been beautiful, in a horribly dreadful way.
When Jana opened her eyes again, for a brief moment she experienced the feeling of carrying out a required task for Papa. But then she slowly returned to the horrific reality.
She started the car and drove out onto the motorway. When she passed the sign that welcomed her to Link?ping, she increased speed and felt how the adrenaline ran through her. Outside the forensic center she adjusted her jacket and ran her fingers through her hair.
She was back in her role as prosecutor.
*
Medical examiner Bj?rn Ahlmann was leaning over the little girl who lay on the bench. Her body was partly decomposed from lying in the grave. Her eye sockets were holes.
Bj?rn had the girl’s hand in his and took her fingerprints. When he heard somebody in the doorway, he looked up and saw Jana Berzelius.
“Can you identify them?” she said.
“Let’s hope so. For their parents’ sake,” said Bj?rn.
“They’re not alive,” Jana said briefly.
“The parents?” said Bj?rn.
“No, they are dead too,” said Jana.
“How can you know that?”
“I assume it.”
“An assumption is only a guess. As prosecutor you must be certain.”
“I am.”
“Certain?”
“Yes, I believe the children’s parents were in those containers that were salvaged.”
“To believe is also a guess.”
“Match their DNA with the children’s and you’ll see.”
“You know that means a lot of work.”
“Yes, and the possibility to be able to identify them.”
Bj?rn Ahlmann was just about to open his mouth to say something when Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander entered the room. Mia furrowed her brow when she saw the corpse on the bench and stopped a few meters away.
“She’s not very old, is she?”
“About eight years,” said Bj?rn.
“What do we know?” said Henrik.
“Shot,” said Bj?rn. “They were all shot.”
“All of them?” said Henrik.
“Yes, but the entry holes are different,” said Bj?rn.
“Did the children die where they were found?” said Henrik.
“In the ditch, yes. It seems so. They have presumably stood naked on the edge and been shot.”
“Presumably is only a guess,” said Jana and winked.
Bj?rn cleared his throat.
“And there is reason to believe that the children belong to the people who were found in the containers,” Henrik said.
“Yes, and the prosecutor has initiated such a DNA match attempt,” said Bj?rn.
Henrik ran his fingers through his hair and then left his hand on his neck a few moments.
“Fine. See if you can match them, straightaway,” he said.
Bj?rn nodded in answer.
“Anything else?” said Henrik.
“Yes, I found something interesting on the girl’s neck,” said Bj?rn.
He turned her head to one side and exposed her neck.
The letters E-R-I-D-A were carved in the skin below her hairline. Erida.
Mia immediately pulled her cell out of her pocket and did a search for the name on her network.
“It must be the same person who has carved the name on the boy we found out at Viddviken,” said Henrik.
“Yes,” said Mia without taking her eyes off her telephone.
“So it’s the same murderer,” said Henrik.
“The goddess of hate,” said Mia. “Erida stands for the goddess of hate and that too is a name from Greek mythology. Like Thanatos.”
The room fell silent.
All you could hear was the sound of the fans.
“One more thing,” Bj?rn said finally. “The girl’s head was shaved, but I found several long strands of hair on the girl. They are dark and thick and definitely not hers.”
“Send them straight to the National Forensics Lab,” said Henrik.
“Already done,” Bj?rn answered.
*
The team sat in the conference room waiting for the briefing to begin. Gunnar ?hrn thumbed through a pile of papers. Anneli Lindgren was fidgeting with her hair; Henrik Levin leaned back in his chair with his arms folded over his chest. Mia Bolander also leaned back balancing her chair on its back legs. Jana Berzelius was leaning forward over the table with her notepad in front of her.
“First,” said Gunnar. “I’ve just spoken to Bj?rn Ahlmann who confirms that several of the murdered children have the same DNA profile as the remains of those adults who were found in the salvaged containers. Which means they are relatives.”
“So presumably they are their parents,” said Henrik.
“Yes, it seems so,” said Gunnar. “We can reasonably assume that the children must have been originally in the containers, then were taken out and brought to the island. The parents were shot and dumped in the sea.”
“The containers came from Chile, right? Could this have been human trafficking?” said Henrik.
“Yes. I would guess this is about illegal refugees from Chile,” said Gunnar.
An oppressive silence spread around the table.
Gunnar went on, “The children that Bj?rn Ahlmann has been able to perform an autopsy on have all had names carved on their necks. The names come from Greek mythology. Marking children is like giving them an identity. Carving into their flesh is beyond barbaric.”
“Marking is common among gangs. Think tattoos, emblems,” said Mia.
“But this has been systematic. Deliberate kidnapping.”
“But that’s just crazy,” said Anneli.
“The toxicological analyses tell us that a couple of the children had drugs in their blood,” said Gunnar. “Our boy, Thanatos, was also drugged. My guess is that the children sold drugs or were used as couriers in the drug trade.”
“So we should look for a drug dealer,” Henrik noted.