The Disappeared Read Online Free PDF

Alex’s team.
    Peder glanced at her.
    ‘You came back a bit bloody fast,’ he said. ‘Overnight, in fact.’
    When Fredrika didn’t reply immediately he added hurriedly:
    ‘It’s good to have you here, of course.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Fredrika. ‘Things changed at home, so I ended up coming back to work a bit sooner than I’d intended.’
    Peder still looked surprised, but Fredrika couldn’t help him. She was confused herself. The step from beginning to miss her job and thinking it might be nice to go back part time to actually starting work had been rather shorter than she had expected. Astonishingly short, in fact. And she wasn’t really back, not properly. She would be working part time for the next three weeks, and then . . . She would just have to wait and see what felt right.
    Alex was waiting for them in the conference room, which looked almost exactly the same as the Den. The memory of her conversation with Margareta Berlin was bothering Fredrika. She had promised to report back if Alex’s leadership seemed unsatisfactory, out of the ordinary in some way. Few things were worse than volunteering to be a spy for the head of HR. But it wasn’t entirely voluntary.
    It’s because I care about you, Alex.
    Fredrika had heard about his trip to Iraq, and wept when she was told why he had gone. There were no words to describe how she felt when she thought about the kindness of what Alex had done, travelling halfway around the world to return an engagement ring to a woman who had lost the man she loved without knowing how or why.
    I nearly lost you, Spencer.
    They sat down around the table: Fredrika, Alex, Peder, and a number of faces Fredrika didn’t recognise. These were additional colleagues on loan to the team because of the dismembered body in the plastic bags.
    Rebecca Trolle. Initial tests using DNA from a body in an advanced state of decay had proven her identity. The process had been speeded up because of the unusual circumstances, given priority at SKL, the National Forensics Laboratory in Linköping, and everywhere else as necessary.
    Alex, who had never been in any doubt about the identity of the corpse, was keen to get started.
    ‘We heard from SKL less than an hour ago, and we won’t be releasing any information to the media until Rebecca’s mother has been informed.’
    ‘Are we telling her that her daughter’s dead?’ Peder asked.
    Is that the right term when you’re informing someone that a person who has been missing for two years has been found dead? Fredrika wondered. She decided it probably was. Even if death was the only logical assumption, there was no reason to give up hope. Not if you really loved the person who was missing, not if you needed that hope. If Saga disappeared, how many years would it be before Fredrika gave up? A hundred? A thousand?
    ‘We will be informing her that her daughter has been found dead,’ Alex said. ‘I’m going to do it myself when the meeting is over. Fredrika can come with me.’
    ‘But there’s something I wanted to ask her,’ Peder objected. ‘The mother, I mean.’
    ‘There will be plenty of opportunities to speak to her, Peder. I’ve kept in touch with her since Rebecca disappeared, and I think this news will bring her peace of mind. She already suspects that her daughter is dead, but she wants that confirmation. And of course she’ll want to know what happened.’
    Alex took a deep breath.
    ‘It’s difficult to establish the exact cause of death because the body has been lying there for such a long time. There is nothing to indicate bullet wounds or other physical trauma – broken ribs as a result of a struggle, for example. She might have been strangled, but we can’t be sure.’
    He opened a folder and took out a number of photographs.
    ‘However, the pathologist was able to establish that she was pregnant at the time of her death.’
    Fredrika looked up in surprise.
    ‘Did we know that?’
    ‘No, it didn’t come to light in