Читать книгу The Sandman - Ларс Кеплер - Страница 25

One wall of Samuel’s office in the National Criminal Investigation Department was covered with a large map of Sweden, dotted with pins to indicate the missing persons.

Obviously they couldn’t assume that all forty-five had been murdered, but for the time being they couldn’t rule any of them out.

Because no known perpetrator could be linked to the times of the disappearances, they started looking for motives and a modus operandi. There were no similarities with cases that had been solved. The murderer they were dealing with this time left no trace of violence, and he hid his victims’ bodies very well.

The choice of victim usually divides serial killers into two groups: organised killers, who always seek out the ideal victim who matches their fantasies as closely as possible. These killers focus on a particular type of person, exclusively seeking out pre-pubertal blond boys, for example.

The other group comprises the disorganised killers – here it is the availability of the victim that counts. The victim primarily fills a role in the murderer’s fantasies, and it doesn’t particularly matter who they really are, or what they look like.

But the serial killer that Joona and Samuel were starting to envisage didn’t seem to fit either of these categories. On the one hand he was disorganised, because the victims were so varied, but on the other hand none of them was especially easy to get hold of.

They were looking for a serial killer who was practically invisible. He didn’t follow a pattern, and left no evidence, no intentional signature.

Days went by without the missing women from Sollentuna being found.

Joona and Samuel had no concrete proof of a serial killer that they could present to their boss. They merely repeated that there couldn’t be any other explanation for all these missing people. Two days later the preliminary investigation was downgraded and the resources for further work reallocated.

But Joona and Samuel couldn’t let it go, and started to devote their free time during the evenings and weekends to the search.

They concentrated on the pattern that suggested that if two people had gone missing from the same family, there was an increased risk of a further family member going missing within the near future.

While they were keeping an eye on the family of the women who had vanished from Sollentuna, two children were reported missing from Tyresö. Mikael and Felicia Kohler-Frost. The children of the well-known author, Reidar Frost.