The Bucket List Page 11

  Forward.

  To what was to come.

  Fredrik Adamsson, thirty-four years old, adopted child of mother Irene and father Birger. Just after he had started school, the family moved to Springfield, Massachusetts.

  After two decades, his parents retired and moved back home, while their son remained across the Atlantic. Both parents had died around a year ago in a car crash. Fredrik had spent some time in Sweden because of the funeral, and he had decided to put down roots in his old home country.

  He’d never been married and had no children. Two addresses were listed in the population register: his childhood home in Årsta and an address in Stockholm’s Södermalm, where he had lived since his return to Sweden. He had no criminal convictions and no disputes with the Swedish Tax Agency or any other government authority.

  The food service ended and the cabin lights were dimmed. John felt his eyes growing heavier and the letters on the page began to blur. He put the document back in his bag, closed his eyes, and sank into a shallow sleep, which was all he could manage in the uncomfortable seat.

  When the plane finally landed, his black suitcase was one of the first bags to appear on the luggage belt. John grabbed it, cleared customs, and headed into the Arrivals hall. He scanned the row of taxi drivers holding up signs with names on them and approached one—an anemic young man who looked like he needed a square meal and forty-eight hours of sleep before he got behind the wheel.

  “Fredrik Adamsson?” said the driver.

  “Yes, that’s me,” John replied.

  The journey to Karlstad was a quiet one. The driver displayed no willingness to talk and John was grateful for that. It was mid-October, which meant the landscape outside was wet and gray. Rain had been falling constantly since they had left the taxi stand at Arlanda and the drops formed beautiful patterns on the rear windows. Many of the red barns visible alongside the E18 highway had rickety walls and sagging roofs that couldn’t keep the damp out. Buildings were sparsely distributed at the dividing lines between the fields and John saw tractors and rusty cars in the farmyards outside them.

  John recognized most of the place names—Västerås, Örebro, Karlskoga—but he had no memories of the family ever visiting them. They hadn’t been able to afford outings.

  His father had run a convenience store in Sweden too, but it hadn’t been anywhere near as lucrative as the store he had later bought in New York. His income had been modest and his mother’s wages at the paper mill even worse. And she had often called in sick. As a child, John and his brother had learned to keep out of the way when the worst arguments erupted. At the time, he hadn’t understood why their parents always had to fight. As an adult, he thought the real mystery was why they had ever gotten together.

  It was hard to imagine two more mismatched people. He, the down-to-earth, dark-skinned man with roots in the southern hemisphere. She, the dreamer, the free spirit from the north. It hadn’t taken long for the passion to die down. Then a tortuous daily existence took hold, which for him involved a never-ending string of responsibilities and for her an equally long string of cheap bottles of wine from the store where all Swedes bought their alcohol. John realized he had forgotten the name of the shop. He’d find out when he arrived.

  He was grateful that Fredrik Adamsson had lived in the States for so many years. It would explain his accent and any cultural missteps in the coming months.

  The driver signaled right and exited the highway in the pouring rain just after the sign welcoming visitors to Karlstad. John had a reservation at a Best Western hotel called Gustaf Fröding—a name that was unfamiliar to John but that every single person in Karlstad probably recognized. Was he an old-time king with connections to Värmland? The Swedish monarchs were usually called Gustaf—that much he remembered from school. A little later, Google would help him find out the name of the liquor store and the years when Gustaf Fröding had reigned.

  The driver came to a stop under the canopy on the hotel driveway and carried his heavy bags into the lobby. He was surprisingly strong for someone so delicately built. John thanked him and pushed a bill into his hand. The anemic-looking man seemed surprised, but he muttered “great” and then disappeared back out to his car.

  John realized he had just made a mistake. They didn’t tip in Sweden. It was strange that he’d forgotten, given that his dad used to complain about the socialist Swedes who didn’t know how to reward good service.

  Behind the reception desk, a blonde woman in glasses asked if he wanted to check in.

  “Yes please,” he said.

  “And the name?”

  “Fredrik Adamsson.”

  It still felt weird to say it, but he knew he would quickly grow used to a new name. He made the Nigerian one he’d used during the operation in Baltimore his own in a matter of just a few weeks.

  “Welcome to Best Western, Fredrik,” she said, handing him a keycard. “You have some guests waiting in one of our conference rooms. I’ll show you through.”

  John waited silently while she summoned a colleague to take his things up to his room. Then he followed her toward the conference rooms, which were on the right down a corridor beside reception. There were photographs hanging on the walls that she explained were part of a series called “Värmland Up Close.” The series consisted of photos of nature taken with little depth of field. Moss on a rotting tree stump. A reed sticking through the ice. An orange flower—which upon closer examination was the funnel of a chanterelle.

  They were the kind of photos that ought to have made John feel nostalgic about his local roots. In reality he felt anything but at home. Granted, he was glad there was an ocean between him and the people who wanted him dead, but he was still on the run. It would take more than a close-up of a mushroom to change that.

  “They’re in the Dungen Room,” the woman said, pointing at a door.

  He thanked her and watched her disappear back toward reception. Then he took a deep breath and knocked. The door was opened immediately, as if the woman behind it had been waiting with her hand on the handle.

  “Mona Ejdewik, National Crime,” she said, proffering her hand.

  Then she nodded at the man beside her.

  “And this is Bernt Primer, Chief of Police in Värmland.”

  John scrutinized them. The woman was the older of the two—probably around sixty—but in conspicuously better shape than her male colleague. She was wearing jeans in a size that not many women of her age would have been able to button up. Her black top was short-sleeved and showed off a pair of toned arms.

  He recognized Bernt Primer from the photo in the newspaper clipping his mother had sent along with the police investigation files. With his round face, gray-flecked stubble, and a jacket that was two sizes too big for him, he was the epitome of a small-town cop. At the same time, there was an alertness in his eyes. John had read masses of transcripts in which Primer had been lead interrogator, and the man was no fool. In a strange way, it felt like John already knew him.

  John realized he was still thinking like an undercover agent. The difference this time was that no one knew about his mission. When he had demanded that Brodwick arrange the job on the cold case team, he had been worried that the Bureau would find out that his brother had been the chief suspect in the AckWe case. But apparently there were limits to what the FBI knew about its agents. Billy had never actually been charged with the crime and therefore wasn’t in any database.

  Mona invited him to sit down at the oversize conference table. She had a formal tone when she spoke and a natural air of authority.

  “First, a few simple rules. No one in Sweden—including myself—knows your true identity. We know you’ve worked for the FBI, that you speak Swedish, and are in witness protection. But we don’t want or need to know more than that. As of now, you are Fredrik Adamsson, a Swedish-American from Stockholm who has gotten a job here in Karlstad. Bernt will be your supervisor and you can discuss all issues relating to the job with him. Issues pertaini
ng to your security you should discuss with me and no one else.”

  “Understood,” he said. He appreciated her clarity. It was almost like taking orders from Brodwick.

  “Well, that’s my cue,” Primer said jovially in a broad Värmland dialect. John had forgotten what it sounded like. It was almost like another language.

  “I just want to welcome you and say that I hope you’ll be happy here,” his new boss continued. “We probably won’t have the resources you’re used to, but I know you’ll be a real asset to the team.”

  “I’m sure you’ve got a highly skilled department,” John said.

  “We do our best in any case,” Primer replied, looking almost abashed. “Do you think you can start as soon as tomorrow? I’d like to introduce you to your new colleagues at our weekly meeting.”

  “No problem.”

  “That’s great. We only started this cold case team a few weeks ago, so we’re just starting to get systems in place,” Primer said, taking a folder out of his bag and placing it on the table. “Some homework for this evening if you’re not too tired from your trip. It’s a summary of the first case we’ve taken on—a missing girl whose body was never found.”

  John picked up the folder but didn’t open it.

  “I’ll read it right away,” he said, although he was already at least as familiar with the folder’s contents as his new boss was.

  “That’s great,” Primer said with a smile, patting John’s upper arm rather tentatively. “Oh, and I need to give you these too. You need to be able to get around town.”

  He pulled some car keys from the inside pocket of his jacket and passed them to John.

  “It’s outside in the hotel parking lot. A 2016 SEAT. You can use it until you get your own car. If any repairs are needed, just talk to the boys in the garage down at the station.”

  John thanked him and took the keys. He glanced at the small metal disc attached to the keyring. The big S of the logo was completely unfamiliar.

  Shortly thereafter, the meeting came to an end. John took the elevator up to his third-floor room. He stretched out on the bed and opened the laptop. It turned out that the liquor store was called Systembolaget and that Gustaf Fröding hadn’t been a king at all—he had been a Värmland poet. John Googled some of his best known poems. They were beautiful—even if some of the words were old-fashioned and hard to understand.

  He checked the time. Too early to go to bed. If he slept now, he’d be wide-awake in the middle of the night. Reluctantly, he got up, put the laptop on the desk, and began to hang up his shirts in the wardrobe. He was considering taking a shower to wake himself up when there was a knock on the door. He peered through the peephole.

  Mona Ejdewik was standing there holding two bottles of beer.

  “I thought we might have a chat without your new boss,” she said after John let her into the room.

  “Of course,” he said, looking for a bottle opener.

  Mona was less formal now that they were alone. He gestured to the armchair by the wardrobe and she sat down.

  “For a moment, I thought he was going to ask you to sign a poster of yourself,” she said. “But Primer has a point. County CID isn’t the FBI. You’ll need to fit in—keep a low profile.”

  John took a sip of the beer and nodded slowly. According to Fredrik Adamsson’s fabricated résumé, he had worked as an investigator for the police in Springfield—a town not significantly bigger than Karlstad—before moving to Stockholm and getting his American police training accredited. Any FBI behavior would be out of character—or whatever they called that in Swedish.

  “Don’t worry, I like my identity and don’t plan to do anything that jeopardizes it,” he said.

  The answer wasn’t entirely truthful. His plan to learn the truth about his brother was hardly risk-free. If the police here discovered his true identity, he’d be thrown out headfirst. The fact that he’d participated in an investigation where his own brother was the prime suspect would certainly get out. Reporters would feast on the scandal. They’d publish his real name and photograph on every news website and social media platform, and all it would take for Ganiru’s men to find him would be a Google search.

  Mona stayed for half an hour and they managed to get through another beer each from the minibar before she left him to sleep. Her train to Stockholm was at seven the next morning.

  John’s tiredness gave way to mild inebriation. He went to the window and studied the contours of the dark trees and bushes outside. He thought about his brother and remembered how he and Billy used to hide in the big garden behind their childhood home when it was time to go to bed. It was a strange feeling after so many years to be in the same town again. But visiting him was out of the question. It was best for both of them if Billy didn’t know he was here.

  On the other hand, he would have to take the risk of tracking down his mother—if she was still alive. It had been eight months since she’d sent the letter with the investigation files, the letter that said she was dying. He wanted to tell her that he had listened this time. That he had come back for her and Billy’s sake.

  17

  John had never felt as overdressed as he did when he opened the meeting room door at the police station in Karlstad. In order to not stick out, he had chosen his most basic suit: a navy wool suit from Paul Smith. His shirt was white, and he skipped the tie, as he’d heard that Swedes dress casually for work.

  But he wasn’t expecting this. The men in the room looked like they were on a Sunday outing with their families. The first to proffer his hand was introduced by Primer as Detective Inspector Ruben Jonsson. He was wearing light-colored jeans with what looked like a mustard stain on one thigh. His polo shirt was clean but so washed out that the once-blue fabric was now faded.

  The second man introduced himself before Primer got there. His name was Ulf Törner, and he held the same rank as Ruben Jonsson. The shirt he was wearing with his worn-out chinos fit his shoulders badly and was missing a button on one sleeve.

  John realized that his own attire would become the topic of conversation the second he left the room. But it couldn’t be helped. He’d gone with a suit and to dress differently tomorrow would signal insecurity.

  Primer kept the opening of the meeting brief. John introduced himself as Fredrik Adamsson, then told them about his previous job in Springfield and the move to Karlstad. He ducked awkward questions about how to get American police training accredited in Sweden and instead listened attentively as the others presented their own career trajectories with the force. In the meantime, he read his colleagues’ body language. It was a technique he’d learned during his training to be an undercover agent, in order to quickly determine whether a person was positive, negative, or neutral toward him.

  Ulf Törner was easy to read. He had turned his upper body toward John and his arms were resting squarely on the table. His face was open and he even smiled when Primer described John as an asset to the team.

  Ruben Jonsson was harder to get a fix on. His facial expression and body language were neutral. He seemed to belong to that category of people who kept their thoughts and opinions to themselves.

  Once they wrapped up the formalities, Ruben started to lay out the team’s plan for solving the cold case of the missing girl.

  “The challenge isn’t finding the culprit, since we already know who killed her,” he began. “It was a lowlife named Billy Nerman who still lives in the area. A lot of us would like to see him behind bars, but we need to find the body. We didn’t have that last time.”

  John had to make an effort to conceal his irritation. He agreed that the forensic evidence against Billy was strong. But the whole point of a cold case review was to look at the case with fresh eyes. If their conclusions still led to the same perpetrator, it should be the result of police work and not preconceived notions. He understood why his mother was so anxious for him to return. She knew how tongues wagged at the police station and that Billy would never be given a fair c
hance.

  “Have you planned the search for the body?” he said as neutrally as possible.

  Ruben went up to the map attached with magnets to the whiteboard. John stood next to him and examined the contours of Hammarö outside Karlstad, where he had spent his first twelve years of life. His new colleague pointed at a boundary that someone had drawn in black ink in the northeast corner of the map.

  “This area, by the Tynäs promontory, is where they found the blood and semen ten years ago. They searched the area with cadaver dogs in the early days after the girl’s disappearance. We’ve started by going over it again in case something was missed last time.”

  “But I assume you’re not using the dogs this time?” John interjected.

  “Metal detectors. According to the girl’s parents, she was wearing a silver heart pendant around her neck when she went missing.”

  It sounded like a reasonable plan, even if it had its shortcomings. There was a risk that the perpetrator had moved the body by car or managed to make it vanish into the water despite the inauspicious winds and currents.

  “Have you questioned the suspect again?” John asked. It went against the grain to refer to his own brother that way, but he couldn’t let his emotional ties to Billy influence him.

  “Yes, just the once. He’s sticking to his story. There’s no point to additional questioning at this stage without new evidence to push him with.”

  John tried to imagine Billy as a grown man, but without success. To him, his brother was oddly frozen in time. It had been the same when he’d read the old interviews back in the hospital in Baltimore. It was the voice of an obstinate eight-year-old boy that he’d heard answering the interrogator’s questions.

  “What are we doing, in addition to looking for the body?” he said.

  “I’m trying to identify a potential witness who’ll hopefully tie the suspect to the victim on the night of the murder,” said Ulf, who had been quiet until now.

  He continued to describe what John already knew. The friend—Maja—had never been identified. If she could name Billy Nerman as the one Emelie Bjurwall left the party to meet, it might be enough to bring charges—even without a body.