by Kepler, Lars
Joona opens the fridge and finds butter and fresh eggs. Saga finds a bag of bread in the larder and holds it up to the window to check the date.
‘Baked yesterday,’ she says quickly.
Joona goes back out into the hall. He gently nudges the bathroom door open with the barrel of his pistol. There are several bright yellow disposable razors on the basin. Next to the tap there’s a toothbrush perched in a streaked glass.
Saga goes into the bedroom.
There’s a row of photographs on top of a dark, wooden chest of drawers.
Jan Andersson’s family, his daughter, and wife.
Joona comes in behind her and holsters his pistol as he spots the tear-gas canister in the middle of the unmade bed.
‘He’s been living here all these years, but he hasn’t changed a thing, not one detail,’ Saga says, opening the wardrobe. ‘This bed’s where he’s been sleeping, isn’t it? He’s kept the fridge stocked and hung his clothes in the wardrobe next to Jan Andersson’s.’
They search the room, even though deep down they know they’re not going to find anything useful.
There’s a Bible in the drawer of the bedside cabinet, as well as a pair of reading glasses and a jar of indigestion pills. Joona feels under the drawer and leafs through the Bible.
They spend two hours looking for maps, addresses, anything at all that could lead them to Valeria and Pellerina.
The tingling sense that they’re finally closing in on Jurek slowly fades away.
When Joona and Saga walk outside again the rapid response unit is gone. Everything they found inside the smaller house is neatly lined up on the paved area. Nathan has moved the plastic chair and is sitting in the middle of the sacks and buckets, sheltered from the cold wind.
‘They checked in all the other buildings, spoke to any neighbours who were home,’ he says. ‘Jurek seems to have kept to himself, they’ve only seen him at a distance a few times in all these years.’
Saga walks slowly along the row of lawnmowers, pots of paint, boxes full of old electronics.
‘If there’s anything that could help us, it should be here,’ Saga says. ‘This is his place, the house, we’ve obviously found where he’s been living.’
‘And that’s why there are no graves nearby … just as there weren’t any in the gravel pit,’ Joona says.
‘Home and burial sites are kept separate,’ Nathan nods.
‘Yes,’ Saga sighs.
‘We’ve got experts examining Jan Andersson’s bank account to see if it’s possible to link purchases with locations,’ Nathan says.
‘It won’t be,’ Joona says, looking towards the dark forest behind them.
‘Come on, Pellerina and Valeria have to be somewhere – it must be possible to find them,’ Saga says.
‘We know he used a constellation to keep track of the coffins in Lill-Jans Forest,’ Nathan says, thinking out loud. ‘That means he uses systems, and that we can decode them.’
‘We know him, we’re getting closer,’ Joona goes on. ‘He assumed the foreman’s identity, called himself Andersson …’
‘Because this is where everything changed for him,’ Saga says.
‘But where the hell are the rest of the graves?’ Nathan asks.
Saga pulls out her map and unfolds it. The large sheet of paper rustles in the cold wind. They look at the houses in the clearing, the road through the forest, the small community closer to Kungsängen.
Joona looks at the red circles around the two houses, the narrow inlet, the bridge, and road leading towards Jakobsberg and Rotebro.
‘He’s done it again,’ he says in a low voice.
‘What?’ Saga asks.
‘The Twins, only on a different scale. This time the constellation is much, much bigger,’ Joona replies, pointing at the red circles on the map. ‘This is us, at the place where Jurek lived for years, this is where he kept coming back to, this is Pollux, the head of one of the twins …’
‘Slow down,’ Nathan says.
‘Look,’ Joona says, pointing to the workers’ barracks at the gravel pit in Rotebro. ‘This is Castor, the head of the other twin. And of course that was where Jurek’s brother lived. It’s the same thing again, he keeps using the same constellation the whole time, the same mental picture.’
‘Like a mind palace,’ Nathan says.
Joona adds the other stars that make up the constellation, then draws lines between them so the image becomes clearer: twin boys with their heads almost touching, holding hands.
‘This star, the gravel pit, that’s Igor’s head,’ Joona repeats. ‘And, at this scale, his left hand is in Lill-Jans Forest in Stockholm.’
‘Because he was watching over the graves there,’ Saga whispers.
‘These are the coordinates we’re looking for,’ Joona says, pointing at the map. ‘We have seventeen precise points, and we’ve already searched three of them. I promise you, Pellerina and Valeria are somewhere among the ones that are left.’
77
Emilia is wearing a black kimono and has her red hair loosely tied back after her shower. In one hand she’s holding a dog-eared textbook, Mathematics 3, that she found on the kitchen table.
Her stepson, Darian, is in his last year of high school, and is doing his homework in his room with a friend.
The Do Not Disturb sign he stole from a hotel has fallen off the door handle.
Emilia opens the door and enters the narrow passageway with a pair of boxing gloves on the wall, steps over the jackets on the floor, then turns the corner to enter the main part of the room.
She can hear the sound of waves, and a lot of sighing.
Dorian and his friend are sitting on the floor with their backs to her, they haven’t noticed her coming in.
She stops when she realises they’re watching porn on a laptop: the screen shows a blonde having sex with two men at the same time.
Emilia can’t help spying on the boys for a moment. She stands still and looks at their serious faces from behind and off to one side. Their eyes are open wide, their trousers tight across their crotches.
The woman in the film is being taken from behind by one man, while the other is thrusting into her mouth.
Emilia stares at the young men as they concentrate on the screen, then slowly moves backwards, and accidentally kicks a skateboard with her foot.
Dorian quickly shuts the laptop.
She turns back towards them, pretending not to have noticed anything, and tells them they left the textbook in the kitchen as she walks over to them.
They’re clearly both embarrassed, and lean forward to hide their crotches, thank her for the book and say they’re going to carry on studying.
‘Dorian? What are you two up to?’
‘Nothing,’ he replies quickly.
‘I know you’re hiding something.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Move your hands,’ she says, in a slightly sterner voice.
Dorian blushes but does as she asks. His jeans are so tight that the zip in his crotch is clearly visible. Emilia crouches down with an expression of feigned concern on her face, before the seriousness of the moment hits her.
‘What’s this?’ she asks, and swallows hard.
She runs her hand gently across her stepson’s crotch and tries to hide the fact that she’s breathing faster as she squeezes his stiffness. His blond friend is staring at them, unable to understand what’s going on.
‘Can I see?’ she asks, running two fingers across the taut denim.
Dorian looks away, undoes the button of his jeans and starts to pull the zip down when the picture freezes.
The director stops the rough-cut of the introduction to the scene and closes down the program on his computer. He’s putting together a first cut because the producer is going to be calling in today to see how far they’ve got.
Emilia comes back into the studio from the dressing room in a thick towelling dressing-gown. Her heavy mascara has left a line of black dots b
elow one eyebrow.
She watches as the director puts his reading glasses down next to the computer and says something to Ralf, who’s in charge of the cameras.
They’ve fallen behind schedule, but Ralf doesn’t seem bothered. Emilia has met him many times before. He’s over sixty, and has been married to the same woman for more than twenty years. His face is tanned and slightly puffy. His Smiths T-shirt is pulled tight across his stomach, and he’s wearing washed-out jeans with a brown leather belt, kneepads and a pair of black Crocs.
Emilia hasn’t worked with this director before. He looks stressed, and is evidently more accustomed to directing adverts. He has a big black beard and a shaved head, and is wearing Adidas trousers and a blue shirt with dark sweat patches under the arms.
Swedeep Pictures is a recently established production company that’s still looking for premises of its own.
This isn’t a real studio, just an old industrial building with a polished cement floor. It might have been used as a warehouse by some wholesaler. Beside the front door is a tatty advert featuring a picture of a doctor smoking.
It isn’t an ideal location for recording, but the hired cameras are decent quality and the scenery looks real enough. It probably came from a genuine television studio, borrowed or stolen from a store somewhere.
They record thirty and sixty seconds of the sex scenes at a time, then have a ten-minute break.
It would be impossible otherwise.
Emilia has got rid of her nicotine chewing-gum and drunk some mineral water.
The long oral scenes are done now.
According to the script, first she sucks her stepson, then his friend, while the stepson licks her.
Now they’re going to do vaginal penetration, followed by anal and more sucking, then double penetration, and finally cumshots to the face.
Very original, as she muttered to herself during the read-through.
The director and Ralf spent the morning setting up, and by the time she arrived at eleven they were ready to run through that day’s scenes with her. They don’t exactly have high standards for the acting, but she still gets directed.
Look at the door, look at him, stretch your wrists.
Smile when you say his dad’s at work.
Just like in fairy tales, it’s always the stepmother who’s the dangerous one.
They usually film using three cameras, except when they’re doing the extreme close-ups. Then Ralf uses one camera and the steadycam.
The new guy calls himself Dorian. He’s only twenty, has short dark hair, green eyes, and tattooed arms.
She’s checked his medical certificate, it was issued on Monday by the same doctor she goes to.
Dorian was brought in after the original guy was fired on the first day. The producer got angry and dragged him out by the hair because he was snooping through the things in the storerooms next to the dressing room.
The producer attended the first day of shooting, and said they’d been given permission to use the premises by a friend, and repeated that they needed to respect that.
Presumably the friend has left some belongings in the storeroom next to the women’s dressing room. There’s no lock on the door, but no one’s allowed to go in there, that was one of the conditions.
Emilia couldn’t help thinking that the friend probably didn’t know what his premises were being used for.
The producer walked up to each of them in turn, looked them in the eye, and said that the storeroom was absolutely out of bounds.
Emilia prefers professional partners, ones who just do their job.
The biggest problem with beginners is that they sometimes think it’s about sex, and make a real effort to get her excited.
She’s worked with guys who thought she could actually have an orgasm while they were recording.
The odds of that happening really aren’t that high.
Back at the start, she actually came close a couple of times, when she was performing with her ex. He was the one who got her started in the business. Before she met him she had no self-confidence at all, and had even tried to commit suicide. They’d had to pump her stomach.
Obviously she feels what’s going on, her nerves get stimulated during vaginal intercourse, but there’s no excitement at all, she doesn’t get wet.
It’s all about the money.
At least, unlike the guys, she gets paid well. She’s never understood why they do it. Being in a porn film isn’t exactly the sort of thing you can boast about.
She does her best to avoid seeing the films; it makes her feel weird, seeing herself on screen. She remembers the first time she watched while they were editing, and saw a huge, shiny penis slipping inside her.
The same thing, every time.
Emilia has thought a lot about an article she read recently, about two female directors who make feminist porn films. She got curious and considered contacting them, but couldn’t pluck up the courage. She was too worried that they would look down on her.
Emilia hangs up the dressing-gown and lies down on the bed again. The football poster on the wall has fallen off, but it doesn’t matter, seeing as they’re about to do the close-ups.
She grabs the plastic tube and squirts more lubricant into her vagina. The make-up artist comes over and wipes away any that’s in the wrong place, then applies powder to take the shine off her skin.
Dorian is standing beside the bed, masturbating to get his erection back. His face shows no emotion as he stands there with his back hunched.
The heat from the lamps makes her shiver until she warms up.
While she waits for Dorian to be ready she looks around at the set, the lights, the reflective screens, the soft-boxes.
She looks at the row of small windows up by the ceiling, and sees a bit of Christmas tinsel hanging from a grille in the wall.
The director and Ralf are waiting in silence. There’s nothing to say, everyone knows what they have to do.
Dorian breaks into a sweat as he masturbates and the make-up artist goes over and pats his cheeks and chest and applies some more powder.
No fluffers any more, Emilia thinks. She feels a bit sorry for the men, having to take care of themselves, eating loads of Viagra and wanking.
It’s easy enough to fake ejaculation, but they have to manage to get an erection for themselves.
Emilia is careful not to take any responsibility for the guys who have trouble. She tries to stay out of it and does her best to hide her irritation and impatience when they take too long.
Dorian is sweet, and is so keen to impress.
Earlier that day he’d had a bit of trouble, his hands were cold, and he kept shaking and muttering to himself.
‘Come on,’ she says gently.
‘It’s not going to work,’ he replies, giving her a pleading look.
‘Idiot,’ the director mutters.
Ralf sighs and adjusts one kneepad.
‘Come on, it’s OK,’ she says. ‘Let’s pretend it’s just you and me …’
Dorian walks round the bed and lies on top of her, she helps him in and keeps hold of his semi-hard penis.
‘You know, you really have got a great cock,’ she whispers.
‘This isn’t working,’ Ralf says, starting to remove the camera from the steadycam.
Dorian lies down heavily on top of her, his stubble against her cheek, and slowly starts to move his hips.
‘It’s just you and me here now,’ Emilia whispers.
She can feel his heartbeat start to speed up, and puts her arms round him even though that’s against her rules. She usually tries to relax as much as she can, to stop herself getting tired, and to avoid injuries.
‘Don’t stop now.’
Emilia groans in his ear and feels him growing and getting hard.
‘God, this is great,’ she lies, and catches Ralf’s eye.
‘OK, camera rolling,’ the director says.
‘Lie on your side,’ Ralf says, kneeling down with the
camera in front of the bed.
‘Keep going, keep going, I’m going to come soon,’ she whispers.
‘On your side,’ the director repeats.
Dorian lets out a groan and she feels him ejaculate, three hard pulses, and his back feels sweaty under her hand. His body relaxes and he gets heavier, then rolls onto his side and whispers sorry.
‘Jesus, this can’t be happening,’ the director sighs wearily.
Emilia lies back and can’t help laughing, but stops at once when she sees that the thickset producer has come into the studio.
He’s standing just inside the door in a black raincoat. His broad shoulders are dusted with a thin layer of snow.
She goes completely cold when she remembers what she did yesterday. Without looking at the producer, she gets off the bed and puts her dressing-gown on. Dorian’s semen is trickling down the inside of one of her thighs.
Emilia doesn’t know why the order not to look in the forbidden storeroom had the opposite effect on her. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t like being treated like a child.
When Ralf needed a long break to copy the recordings from the memory card, she went into the corridor, past her dressing room, and stopped in front of the metal door.
There was a hole in the door where the lock should have been. She was only planning to bend over and look through it, but found herself reaching for the handle and opening the door instead.
She couldn’t help it, despite what had happened to her first leading man.
The storeroom was dark, but she’d been able to make out something to her left.
There had been a dusty smell of freshly sawn wood in the air.
She had lit the torch on her phone, letting its chalk-white glow tremble across the bare concrete walls.
In the far corner was a dark blue tarpaulin covering what looked like furniture or boxes.
Emilia remembers hearing the director talking to the two guys in their dressing room. She’d hesitated for a moment, then crept further into the storeroom.
She’d taken hold of one corner of the tarpaulin, but it had been far too heavy for her to lift with one hand.
So she had put her phone down on the floor, letting its cold light shine straight up at the ceiling.
