by Kepler, Lars
Saga leans over Pellerina, strokes her cheek, then straightens up and turns away.
She picks up a scalpel from the trolley and stumbles out from the operating theatre.
Two police officers are still on duty outside the door.
She doesn’t hear what they say to her, just carries on along the corridor.
The light from the lamps in the ceiling lies like pools of salt on the linoleum floor ahead of her.
The automatic doors at the end of the corridor swing open for a group of nurses.
Saga turns right and goes into the toilet, locks the door behind her and walks over to the basin.
They’re all dead – her mother, her father, her sister.
It’s all her fault, no one else’s.
She presses the sharp blade of the scalpel to her left wrist and makes an incision. The blade sinks almost without resistance through the skin and taut veins, ligaments and muscle, right down to the bone.
When the scalpel cuts through the artery the first jet of blood shoots up across the mirror and tiles.
Tiny red dots spatter the toilet lid and cistern.
She gasps as burning pain from the incision reaches her brain.
The blood is pumping out in strong pulses, hitting the edge of the basin before running down to the plughole.
Her heart starts to beat faster and faster to compensate for the loss in pressure.
She reaches out to the wall to keep her balance.
A sticker from the left-wing youth movement has been half-scraped off the mirror.
Her legs are on the point of giving way.
She sits down on the toilet lid and holds her arm over the basin. Her fingers are ice-cold.
There’s a blue plastic shoe-cover on the floor. Daylight reaches in through the crack under the door.
She’s breathing faster now, and leans her head back against the wall, closes her eyes and feels nothing but relief.
This is where she’s been on her way for so many years.
She hears a distant knock, as if from a different world.
Her pulse is roaring in her ears.
It puts her in mind of a train, the noise as it races over the joins in the track, the lurches as it crosses sets of points.
Her arm falls from the basin.
Saga opens her eyes and stares blankly at the white walls. She’s forgotten where she is. She can’t find the energy to raise her arm again. The blood runs over her hand and drips onto the floor.
She doesn’t hear when the knocks on the door turn into thuds.
The cut is stinging badly.
She gasps for breath and closes her eyes again.
A huge angel is gliding across the floor of a ballroom. Its footsteps make no sound at all as it heads straight towards her, hitting its head on the large chandelier and making it swing.
Its heavy wings are folded behind its back.
The crystal prisms tinkle, then the noise fades.
The angel stops in front of her and looks at her with its sad, welcoming gaze.
Epilogue
It’s the middle of May, and the evening is surprisingly mild. The Beaver leaves the Grand Hotel and walks past the little square named after Raoul Wallenberg. The water in Nybroviken is almost as still as the hazy light.
He goes into Riche and pushes his way through a group of youngsters. The music is far too loud, the conversations already stupid.
The Beaver is wearing a crumpled linen suit and a pink shirt that keeps riding up from his trousers, revealing his hairless stomach.
The look in his eyes is calm, but the pearl earrings sway anxiously as he sits down on one of the tall barstools.
‘What an evening,’ he says to the woman sitting on the stool next to him.
‘It’s wonderful,’ she says politely before carrying on her conversation with her friend.
When the bartender comes over, the Beaver orders five shots of Finlandia vodka.
He looks at the woman’s hand resting beside her wine-glass, her neat fingernails and smooth wedding ring.
A glint of light reflects off the bottle. The bartender lines up the five small glasses and fills them to the brim.
‘Perfect,’ the Beaver says, and knocks back the first.
He looks at the glass in his hand, turning it round in his fingers before putting it back down on the bar.
The Beaver is currently running a locksmith and key-cutting service in Årsta, he’s put in a bid on a chemical factory in Amiens in northern France, and is building up a shipping company in Gothenburg.
He feels the warmth of the alcohol reach his stomach and thinks back to the time he paid Valeria de Castro a visit in hospital back in the winter. The plan was to sedate her, then take her to a grave on an island in Lake Mälaren. Because she was tired from the effects of the morphine and didn’t recognise him, he was able to prepare the anaesthetic syringe without having to resort to violence. She was talking on the phone, and sounded like she was about to drift off to sleep.
He was about to administer the injection when he heard her say that Jurek Walter was dead.
As he understood it, she had just been told by the person she was talking to.
It sounded like a definite fact, but he remembers thinking that it didn’t necessarily have to be true merely because it sounded that way.
‘You finally stopped him,’ she had said in her tired voice.
When he heard those words he started to hear the mechanical ticking sound inside his head. It was a matter of a few seconds, no more. He saw a large clock-face before him, its Roman numerals picked out in brown and gold.
Tick tock, tick tock.
The ornate minute hand moved forward one notch, and was pointing at the number one as he saw his own face.
He was about to turn back towards Valeria as she lay there on the bed, but his eye was caught by his own reflection in the mirror above the basin instead.
The clock went on ticking, and was pointing at the number two before he saw her face.
He was going to die before Valeria, and he had to leave.
He had already left his signature on the mirror, as a mocking greeting that the police would never understand.
It was only a game, after all.
Two men with beards sit down next to the Beaver and order fancy beer from a Swedish micro-brewery. The slightly older one is evidently the other man’s boss. They stand with their backs to the bar and talk about capital investments and try to sound more worldly than they actually are.
The Beaver empties the second glass, then kicks his shoes off onto the floor beside the bar.
‘Please, keep your shoes on,’ the younger man says.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Beaver says, looking him in the eye. ‘I suffer from water retention, and my feet are swollen.’
‘In that case, no problem,’ the man grins.
The Beaver nods and raises the third glass to his lips. He downs the burning liquid in one, then puts the glass down.
You can do the whole puzzle for the police, and even hand them the last piece, he thinks. It’s like asking a beetle to solve a quadratic equation.
‘Nice earrings,’ the younger man says.
‘Thanks,’ he replies. ‘I wear them as a tribute to my sister.’
‘I’m kidding with you.’
‘I know,’ the Beaver says seriously. ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine.’
The Beaver walked out of the hospital, throwing away his ID card, keys and nurse’s uniform when he emerged onto Katrinebergsvägen.
Seeing as Jurek Walter had saved his life, he had accepted the harsh punishments when he made mistakes.
He would take his shirt off himself, and hand him the belt.
But now Jurek’s dead, the Beaver has erased every connection to him. He’s destroyed his computers and phones, thrown away the research material and pictures, cleaned and dismantled the guns.
That connection is very nearly at an end, he thinks as he downs the last glass of vodka.
>
‘Nearly,’ he whispers, and crushes the glass in his hand.
The only thing left is a small colour photograph that he keeps in his wallet. The fold across the middle looks like a streak of snow, right across Joona Linna’s throat.
Keep Reading
If you’re a Joona Linna fan, read the series in order:
BOOK 1
HE WILL TRAP YOU IN A WORLD OF TERROR
Click here to buy The Hypnotist
BOOK 2
HE SEES YOUR DARKEST DREAMS
THEN HE MAKES THEM COME TRUE
Click here to buy The Nightmare
BOOK 3
WAKE UP TO TRUE EVIL
Click here to buy The Fire Witness
BOOK 4
HE’LL STEAL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP
Click here to buy The Sandman
BOOK 5
YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE ALONE.
THINK AGAIN.
Click here to buy Stalker
BOOK 6
YOU ARE HIS PREY
Click here to buy Hunter
About the Author
Lars Kepler is a No.1 bestselling international sensation, whose Joona Linna thrillers have sold more than 14 million copies in 40 languages. The first book in the series, The Hypnotist, was selected for the 2012 Richard and Judy Book Club and the most recent, The Sandman, was the Evening Standard’s book of the year. Lazarus is the seventh book in the series and went straight to No.1 in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Holland, Iceland and the Czech Republic.
Lars Kepler is the pseudonym for writing duo, Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril. They live with their family in Sweden.
Facebook.com/larskepler
www.larskepler.com
Also by Lars Kepler
The Hypnotist
The Nightmare
The Fire Witness
The Sandman
Stalker
Hunter (originally published as The Rabbit Hunter)
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