by Kepler, Lars
She gasps when, instead of hair and the back of her head, she finds herself looking at the woman’s face.
It’s been pulled back hard.
Her neck has been broken so brutally that the ligaments have torn and the soft tissue between the first and second vertebrae has been crushed.
‘What the hell’s happened here?’ Andrej whispers.
‘Check the next room,’ she says, unnecessarily loudly.
The woman’s face is white, her lips closed, eyes wide open, and blood is running from her nose.
Karin keeps her pistol pointing into the kitchen as she crouches down to feel the woman’s neck.
She feels cool, must have been dead for several hours.
Thoughts are swirling through Karin’s head. The alarm was raised far too late, there’s no point setting up roadblocks, and they don’t need the support of the rapid-response unit.
She stands up and is walking in to look at the trashed kitchen when Andrej calls to her. Karin turns, steps past the dead woman and accidentally walks into a chair, knocking it against the table with a bang.
Andrej is standing in the gloom of the dance and yoga room. The curtains are half drawn, and the pink glow of a mood-enhancing lamp is shining off a guitar hanging on the wall.
A glitterball is rotating up in the ceiling, its tiny reflections sliding across the walls.
Karin follows Andrej’s gaze and looks at the far corner.
A man with a black beard and thick eyebrows is sitting on a yoga mat, leaning against a rib-backed chair. His head has been smashed in. His forehead has been pushed in by at least five centimetres, and his face and chest are covered with dark blood.
Andrej mutters that they’ve got here too late and leaves the room.
Karin doesn’t move, just listens to her pulse racing in her ears.
Even though she can see the man is dead, she still goes over and feels his neck.
She wipes her hand on her trousers, then starts to walk back towards the cloakroom.
When she emerges into the cool air outside the building, Andrej is sitting on a bench next to a dark wooden table.
They can hear sirens in the distance. A tattooed man is pulling a heavy hose from the van down the street.
‘He killed the staff and took the girl,’ Andrej says without looking at her.
‘Looks like it,’ she replies. ‘Have you reported back?’
‘I’m doing it now.’
While Andrej talks to their immediate superior Karin goes to the car and fetches the roll of cordon tape. She ties one end to the spiral fire-escape, runs it around the shed and trees, then round the entire building, before she starts to make some notes about what’s happened.
The yellow glare of the streetlamps lights up the leaves on the tarmac. At this time of year the lamps are on almost all day long.
The first ambulance turns into Mittelvägen, drives up onto the pavement to get past their police car, and stops outside the cordon.
Karin goes over and explains the situation to the paramedics. They follow her into the out-of-school club and check the first body.
They move on into the dimly lit dance and yoga room together.
Karin stops in the middle of the room and watches as the paramedics crouch down next to the dead man. The reflections from the glitterball are playing across the dead face and beard.
‘We’ll get the stretcher,’ one of the paramedics says in a heavy voice.
Karin goes over to the window and pulls one of the curtains back to let in the light of the streetlamp outside.
When she pulls the curtain back she gets such a shock that her head instantly fills with adrenalin.
Her pulse is thudding in her ears.
A little girl is standing completely still with her hands clamped over her mouth, with her eyes screwed shut behind thick glasses.
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Karin manages to say.
The girl must have been hiding behind the curtain for several hours. When Karin touches her gently on the shoulder, she opens her eyes and wobbles.
‘There’s no need to be scared now, he’s gone,’ Karin says.
The girl’s lips are white and she looks exhausted. Suddenly her legs give way and she sinks to the floor. Karin kneels down and holds the child, feeling the tense, trembling body.
‘Can I carry you?’
Very carefully she picks the girl up and walks out of the dance room. She holds her in such a way that she can’t see the dead man or the woman in the entrance to the kitchen.
‘Who’s been here?’ she asks as they move between the tables.
The girl doesn’t answer. Karin can feel her warm, damp breath against her shoulder, and whispers to her that she doesn’t have to be scared now.
They agree that Andrej should wait for the forensics team and detectives while Karin goes with the child in the ambulance. She sits down next to her, holds the girl’s hand, and asks again who she was hiding from, but the girl doesn’t answer, just holds her hand tight. Her eyelids are half-closed, as if she’s about to fall asleep.
43
Lars-Erik Bauer wakes up with a feeling of catastrophe in his body. Something’s very wrong, but his sluggish brain can’t process the information from his senses.
It’s cold, he’s lying down, and the ground seems to be shaking beneath him.
The moment before he opens his eyes he thinks about the peculiar phone call from Kristina.
She sounded different.
Something had happened.
He’s never heard such a lonely voice before. She must have apologised at least ten times, saying that the battery in her car was flat.
She’d given her son a lift to Barkarby Flying Club, south of Järvafältet. On the way back, in the middle of the forest, her car conked out.
There was no answer when she tried calling different breakdown services, and in the end she just locked herself inside the car, too afraid to walk through the forest.
If he set off at once with his jump-leads he’d have time to get back and make Pellerina’s tea on time.
They were actually supposed to be meeting for the first time next week, he’d already booked a table at Wedholm’s fish restaurant.
Lars-Erik groans when his back is hit hard.
He opens his eyes, blinks, and sees the full moon glinting above treetops flashing past.
It’s like a dream.
His jaw snaps shut when his head hits something hard.
He can’t make sense of what’s happening. He’s being dragged on a tarpaulin along a path in a pine forest. Time and again his head and back hit rocks and roots.
He can’t move his hands or legs, and realises that he’s been drugged. His mouth is dry and he has no idea how long he was out.
His eyes close once more, he can’t keep them open.
He thinks about the effects of the anaesthetic gases that used to be widely used, such as Halothane, in combination with opioids and overdoses of muscle relaxants injected into the spinal column.
Immediate anaesthesia and lingering paralysis.
It must have been a trap.
Kristina tricked him, got him interested, lured him into the forest.
The last thing he remembers is parking his car on the dark forest road.
The headlights were pointing at Kristina’s car on the gravel road. The surrounding trees and the undergrowth in the ditch looked like a grey theatre set.
Then Pellerina sent him a picture of a painting she’d done at school, and he called her and said it was a lovely dog.
It looked like a brown lump with four legs.
He saw in the wing-mirror that someone was approaching the car from behind as Pellerina explained that it was a horse, not a dog, and that his name was Silver.
Someone in a black rain poncho was approaching very quickly from behind the car, turning red in the glare of the rear lights.
Lars-Erik opened the door, but doesn’t remember what happened after that.
He r
emembers the tall grass lining the verge bending under the car door as it opened.
A car park ticket blew off the dashboard in the draught.
Then the faint sound of glass against glass.
He loses consciousness again and doesn’t come round until the person dragging him through the forest stops and lets go of the tarpaulin.
Lars-Erik’s head sinks heavily to the ground.
He looks up at the moon and the black treetops surrounding the clearing.
Everything is cold and silent.
He opens his mouth and tries to say something, but he has no voice, all he can do is lie there on his back, breathing in the smell of the moss and damp earth.
His toes are itching and tingling.
He makes an attempt to move but his body won’t obey him. All he manages to do is turn his head slightly to one side.
Footsteps are approaching on the soft ground.
He looks around at the trees.
A branch breaks, then he sees a thin man walking along the path.
Lars-Erik tries to call for help, but no sound comes out.
The figure passes a fallen tree, then becomes visible in the moonlight.
His thin face is covered by a network of wrinkles.
The man walks past Lars-Erik, very close, without so much as glancing at him, then stops somewhere outside his field of vision before returning.
He’s rolling a large plastic barrel.
Lars-Erik tries to tell him to get help. But the sound that emerges from his mouth is no louder than a whisper.
The man carefully lifts his feet into the opening of the barrel, then pulls it up over his legs, all the way to his hips.
Lars-Erik still can’t move, all he can do is toss his sluggish head from side to side, towards the mute, dark trees.
The old man says nothing, and doesn’t look him in the eye, it’s clear that he’s just doing a job. With brusque movements he stuffs Lars-Erik’s lower half into the barrel.
He handles Lars-Erik as though he were a slaughtered animal, a carcass.
With a hard jerk he stands the barrel up and Lars-Erik’s legs give way beneath him. He slumps into the barrel, up to his armpits. His shirt slides up and he cuts his stomach on the sharp edge of the plastic.
He still can’t understand what’s going on.
The old man tries to push him down into the barrel.
He’s unexpectedly strong, but it’s impossible, his arms are dangling over the sides and half his upper body is still above the rim.
The man takes several steps to the side and returns with a spade.
Now Lars-Erik notices a deep hole in the ground next to the barrel. On the grass beside the hole is a roll of plastic and a bucket containing a white liquid.
The thin man walks over to him again, raises the blade of the spade and brings it down hard on his shoulder.
Lars-Erik groans with pain as his left collarbone breaks. He’s breathing hard through his nose and tears are running down his cheeks.
The man tosses the spade on the ground and leans over him.
The pain is so bad that Lars-Erik’s vision fades as the man squeezes his shoulder to get it past the edge of the barrel. His right arm is sticking straight up, but the man folds it down over his neck, then pushes his head down and puts a lid on the barrel.
The old man rocks the barrel a few times until it tips over, then rolls it into the large hole.
The impact makes Lars-Erik pass out. When he comes round he can hear a clattering sound, like a heavy shower of rain.
After a few moments he realises that the man has stood the barrel up in the bottom of the hole and has started to fill it in. The clattering sound becomes more and more distant, then stops altogether.
The moist air inside the barrel smells of plastic, and there isn’t enough oxygen.
His body is still paralysed, and he tries to twist his head in panic, and sees a small point of light on the side of the barrel.
Lars-Erik stares at the light, and realises that it’s moonlight shining through an air-tube in the lid of the barrel.
His contorted shoulder and broken collarbone are throbbing with pain. His fingers are ice-cold, his circulation isn’t reaching them.
Lars-Erik realises that he’s been buried alive.
44
Saga drives past the open ambulance entrance at Södermalm Hospital, pulls up onto the pavement and gets out of Nathan’s car without closing the door. She runs past stretchers and discarded prams and carries on into the children’s emergency room, past a metre-high green plastic frog.
The waiting room is full of people, crying babies, and pale youths. There are information leaflets scattered across the floor. One man is engaged in a heated conversation on his phone.
Jurek made his move early that morning, thirty minutes after Saga dropped Pellerina off at the out-of-school club and set off for the ferry to Högmarsö.
He had plenty of time.
He killed the staff inside the club, the manager, and special needs assistant.
The police officers who were first on the scene found Pellerina hiding behind a curtain.
If Saga hadn’t told her how to hide and stay completely silent, Jurek Walter would have snatched her that morning.
She would never have seen her sister again.
Ignoring the queuing system, Saga walks straight up to the desk, shows her ID, and asks to see Pellerina Bauer.
Her sister is in one of the emergency rooms.
Saga starts to run along the corridor, pushing a cleaning trolley out of her way.
The mop topples over and she hears the handle hit the floor.
Wheelchairs, drip-stands, and blue-mattressed trolleys are lined up along one wall.
A nurse is moving a crash cart.
Saga slows down as she approaches the uniformed police officer standing outside the last door before Lift B.
‘Are you alone?’ she asks, showing her police ID.
‘Yes,’ the man replies, without taking his eyes off her.
‘What the …?’ she sighs, then goes in.
The lighting in the cramped, windowless treatment room is subdued. Pellerina is sitting in the bed with a yellow blanket round her shoulders.
On the bedside table beside her there’s a glass of juice and a cheese sandwich on a paper plate.
Saga hurries over and puts her arms round her. As she holds her sister she allows the relief to wash over her for the first time. She presses her face into Pellerina’s tangled hair. ‘I came as quickly as I could,’ she says.
They hug for a long time, then Saga looks at Pellerina, forces herself to smile and strokes her cheek.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine,’ the girl replies seriously.
‘Really?’ Saga whispers, fighting to hold back the tears.
‘Can we go home to Dad now?’
Saga swallows hard. She keeps having to stop her own thoughts, force herself not to imagine what might have happened to her dad.
‘Were you scared?’
Pellerina nods and lowers her gaze, takes off her glasses and picks at the corner of one eye. Her pale eyelashes cast small shadows across her round cheeks.
‘I can understand that,’ Saga says, brushing some hair from Pellerina’s forehead.
‘I hid behind the curtain and I was as quiet as a mouse,’ she smiles, and puts her glasses back on again.
‘That was really clever,’ Saga says. ‘Did you see him?’
‘A bit, before I closed my eyes … It was a man, but he was really quick.’
Saga feels her heart speed up and glances over at the door.
‘We have to go now,’ she says. ‘Has the doctor looked at you?’
‘She’s coming soon.’
‘How long have you been waiting?’
‘I don’t know.’
Saga presses the alarm button and after a while a carer comes in, a middle-aged man with a round stomach and glasses.
‘I w
ant a doctor to look at her before we leave,’ Saga says.
‘Doctor Sami will be here as soon as she can,’ the man replies, with already strained patience.
‘Pellerina is only twelve years old, and I don’t know how long you’ve made her wait so far.’
‘I appreciate that it’s annoying, but we have to prioritise the most acute cases, I’m sure you can—’
‘Listen to me,’ Saga interrupts sharply. ‘You’re in no position to evaluate the urgency of this case.’
She shows the man her ID, he studies it carefully, then hands it back.
‘This child is a priority,’ Saga says.
‘I can ask the triage doctor to come and make a new assessment—’
‘There’s no time for that,’ she cuts in. ‘Just get any damn doctor who’s qualified.’
The man doesn’t answer, just leaves the room looking agitated.
‘Why are you so angry?’ Pellerina asks.
‘I’m not angry, I’m really not, you know I sometimes sound angry when I get stressed.’
‘You swore.’
‘I know, I shouldn’t have done that, that was very silly of me.’
After a while they hear voices outside the door, then the doctor comes in, a short woman with light brown eyes.
‘I heard you wanted to talk to me,’ she says warily.
‘Just examine her,’ Saga says impatiently.
‘I don’t understand,’ the doctor smiles.
‘We can’t stay here, we’re in a hurry but first I want to make sure she’s OK.’
‘I won’t stop you as long as you can prove you’re her guardian.’
‘Just do as I say!’
The police officer comes in with his hand on his holster.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Guard the door!’ Saga snaps. ‘You don’t leave that door, and for God’s sake fasten your protective vest!’
The police officer doesn’t move.
‘What kind of threat are we expecting?’
‘I haven’t got time to explain … and it really doesn’t matter, you wouldn’t stand a chance anyway,’ she says, and tries to calm down.
She looks the doctor in the eye and takes a couple of steps towards her, trying to talk quietly so Pellerina won’t hear.
