Dark Secrets Read Free Page A

town?”
    “No. I don’t know where he lives. I’m not sure if Roger knows either. He never mentions him.”
    Interesting.
Haraldsson made a note. Perhaps the son had taken off to look for his roots. To confront an absent father. Kept it secret from his mother. Stranger things had happened.
    “What do you think has happened to him?”
    Haraldsson’s train of thought was interrupted. He looked at Lisa and realized for the first time that she was on the verge of tears.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “But I expect he’ll turn up. Maybe he’s just gone to Stockholm for a while, or something. A little adventure. Something like that.”
    “Why would he do that?”
    Haraldsson looked at her questioning expression. The unvarnished, chewed nail in a mouth free of lipstick. No, little Miss Free Church probably wouldn’t understand why, but Haraldsson was becoming more and more convinced that this disappearance was actually a case of the boy running away.
    “Sometimes things just seem like a good idea at the time. I’m sure he’ll turn up.” Haraldsson gave Lisa a reassuring smile, but he could tell from her expression that it wasn’t working.
    “I promise,” he added.
    Before Haraldsson left he asked Lisa to make a list of Roger’s friends and the people he hung out with. Lisa sat and thought for a long time, then wrote something down and handed him the piece of paper. Twonames: Johan Strand and Erik Heverin.
A lonely boy
, Haraldsson thought.
Lonely boys run away.

    When he got in the car that Monday afternoon, Thomas Haraldsson felt quite pleased with the day in spite of everything. Admittedly the conversation with Johan Strand hadn’t thrown up anything fresh. The last time Johan had seen Roger was at the end of school on Friday. As far as he knew, Roger was going around to Lisa’s that evening. He had no idea where Roger might have gone after that. Erik Heverin had been given an extended leave of absence from school. Six months in Florida. He’d already been gone for seven weeks. The boy’s mother had taken up a consultancy post in the United States and the whole family had gone with her.
It’s all right for some
, thought Haraldsson, trying to recall the exotic locations to which his own job had taken him. That seminar in Riga was the only thing he could come up with off the top of his head, but he’d had a stomach bug most of the time, and his overriding memory was of staring into a blue plastic bucket while his colleagues had an infuriatingly good time.
    Still, Haraldsson was fairly satisfied. He had followed up several leads and, most important, he had found a possible conflict between mother and son that indicated that this might soon no longer be a police matter. Hadn’t the mother used the phrase “ran off” when she called? Indeed she had. Haraldsson remembered that he had reacted to this when he heard the tape. Her son didn’t “leave” or “disappear”—he “ran off.” Didn’t that suggest he’d left home in a huff? A slammed door, a faintly resigned mother. Haraldsson was becoming more and more convinced: the boy was in Stockholm, expanding his horizons.
    However, just to be on the safe side, he thought he might swing by Lisa’s house and knock on a few doors. The plan was to be noticed, to make sure a few people would recognize him just in case anyone started wondering how the investigation was going. Someone mighteven have seen Roger heading for the town center and the station, with a bit of luck. Then he would go and see the mother, put a bit of pressure on to find out how much they really did quarrel.
Good plan
, he thought, and started the car.
    His cell phone rang. A quick look at the display screen sent a slight chill down his spine.
Hanser.
    “What the fuck does she want now?” Haraldsson muttered, switching off the engine. Should he ignore the call? Tempting, but maybe the boy had come back. Perhaps that was what Hanser wanted to tell him. That Haraldsson had been right