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.
Joona looks at the petrol gauge as he passes the Statoil filling station and a snow-covered lay-by.
He remembers talking to Reidar Frost and his wife Roseanna Kohler three days after their two children went missing. He didn’t mention his suspicions to them – that they had been murdered by a serial killer whom the police had stopped looking for, a murderer whose existence they had only managed to identify in theory.
Joona just asked his questions, and let the parents cling onto the idea that the children had drowned.
The family lived on Varvsvägen, in a beautiful house facing a sandy beach and the water. There had been several mild weeks and a lot of the snow had thawed. The streets and footpaths were dark and wet. There was barely any ice along the shoreline, and what remained was grey slush.
Joona remembers walking through the house, passing a large kitchen and sitting down at a huge white table next to a window. But Roseanna had closed all the curtains, and although her voice was calm her head was shaking the whole time.
The search for the children was fruitless. There had been countless helicopter searches, divers had been called in, and the water had been dragged for bodies. The surroundings had been searched by chain gangs of both volunteers and specialist dog units.
But no one had seen or heard anything.
Reidar Frost looked like a captured animal.
He just wanted to keep on searching.
Joona had sat opposite the two parents, asking routine questions about whether they had received any threats, if anyone had behaved oddly or differently, if they had felt they were being followed.
‘Everyone thinks they fell in the water,’ the wife had said, her head starting to shake again.
‘You mentioned that they sometimes climb out of the window after their bedtime prayers,’ Joona went on calmly.
‘Obviously, they’re not supposed to,’ Reidar said.
‘But you know that they sometimes creep out and cycle off to see a friend?’
‘Rikard.’
‘Rikard van Horn, number 7 Björnbärsvägen,’ Joona said.
‘We’ve tried talking to Micke and Felicia about it, but … well, they’re children, and I suppose we didn’t think it was that harmful,’ Reidar replied, gently laying his hand over his wife’s.
‘What do they do at Rikard’s?’
‘They never stay for long, just play a bit of Diablo.’
‘They all do,’ Roseanna whispered, pulling her hand away.
‘But on Saturday they didn’t cycle to Rikard’s, but went to Badholmen instead,’ Joona went on. ‘Do they often go there in the evening?’
‘We don’t think so,’ Roseanna said, getting up restlessly from the table, as if she could no longer keep her internal trembling in check.
Joona nodded.
He knew that the boy, Mikael, had answered the phone just before he and his younger sister had left the house, but the number had been impossible to trace.
It had been unbearable, sitting there opposite the children’s parents. Joona said nothing, but was feeling more and more convinced that the children were victims of the serial killer. He listened, and asked his questions, but he couldn’t tell them what he suspected.
If the two children were victims of this serial killer, and they were correct in thinking that he would soon try to kill one of the parents as well, they had to make a choice.
Joona and Samuel decided to concentrate their efforts on Roseanna Kohler.
She had moved out to live with her sister in Gärdet, in north-east Stockholm.
The sister lived with her four-year-old daughter in a white apartment block at 25 Lanforsvägen, close to Lill-Jan’s Forest.
Joona and Samuel took turns keeping watch on the building at night. For a week, one of them would sit in their car a bit further along the road until it got light.
On the eighth day Joona was leaning back in his seat, watching the building’s inhabitants get ready for night as usual. The lights went off in a pattern that he was starting to recognise.
A woman in a silver-coloured padded jacket went for her usual walk with her golden retriever, then the last windows went dark.
Joona’s car was parked in the shadows on Porjusvägen, between a dirty white pickup and a red Toyota.
In the rear-view mirror
