The Disappeared by Kristina Ohlsson Page A

it out.
    ‘Sometimes, Alex, I think it would have done you good to work with the living as well, so that you could dilute all that black grief with something more life-affirming.’
    She had thought he couldn’t cope with it on his own; sometimes she had seen that he was on the brink of going under, and had helped him to rediscover a balance in life. Fear clutched at his heart. Who would help him now?
    Fredrika Bergman couldn’t stop thinking about Rebecca Trolle. When she closed her eyes to go to sleep, she could see the young woman in her mind’s eye, running for her life with a madman chasing after her with a chainsaw in his hand. But it couldn’t have been like that, surely? She couldn’t have been alive when he cut her body in two, could she?
    Fredrika felt sick. Shortly before midnight she gave up, got out of bed and went into the kitchen. She made some coffee and read the previous day’s newspaper without taking in what she was reading. Restlessness drove her to the nursery; she had to check that Saga was asleep, that she was all right. She was fine. Through talking to the mothers in the parents’ group – which was actually a mothers’ group – she had realised that Saga’s ability to sleep soundly was a blessing. She went down after she had been fed in the evening, and didn’t wake until half past six in the morning. At the earliest.
    As she stood there in her daughter’s bedroom, Fredrika could hardly believe that it was only a few days since she had been on full time maternity leave. Had it gone too fast, she asked herself? Would Saga be damaged by Fredrika’s abrupt disappearance from her life? She didn’t think so. It wasn’t as if she had put Saga into day care; she was at home with her father.
    Fredrika couldn’t help smiling. Spencer as a father. She would never have believed it that first time she and Spencer met outside the university, and he went home with her. Not then and not later on. She had loved him, but she had never counted on him. Not until now.
    The last year had been unimaginably turbulent. Spencer had taken the step from being her secret lover to becoming her partner with astonishing ease. After some initial hesitation, her parents had understood how important he was to her, and had accepted him. On one occasion when Fredrika had gone away for the weekend to visit a friend in Malmö, Spencer had actually gone to dinner at her parents’ on his own.
    ‘Why not?’ Fredrika had said. ‘You’re the same age, after all.’
    Age wasn’t an issue for Fredrika, but she knew perfectly well that few people shared that view. The mothers in the group looked horrified when Fredrika talked about Saga’s daddy. They smiled, but their eyes betrayed sheer panic. They found her life choices challenging; she made them feel insecure about what they had.
    Fredrika went back to the kitchen. The mothers’ group was the last thing to provide her with peace of mind. If she wanted to sleep, she needed to think about something else.
    But not Rebecca Trolle.
    Those pictures again, almost like a film. The chainsaw raised in the air, cutting and slicing and hacking. Fredrika covered her eyes with her hands; wanting the images to disappear. Think about something else, think about something else.
    If Rebecca Trolle had lived and had chosen to carry her baby to full term, she would have been a young mother in Stockholm. More than ten years younger than Fredrika. Rebecca hadn’t wanted to keep the child; Fredrika could feel it in every fibre of her body. She had gone to the clinic, discussed a termination. She hadn’t told a single friend. Was she so lonely, or was there another reason why she kept quiet about such an important matter?
    Peder and the other officers had asked around among Rebecca’s circle of friends, reminding each one that this was a confidential matter. They didn’t want the media to find out about the pregnancy yet. No one had heard that Rebecca was pregnant, but several had heard