by Lars Kepler
Moving like a sleepwalker, Reidar Frost buttons his shirt on the way to Stockholm and tucks it into his pants. He hears the police say that the patient who has been identified as Mikael Kohler-Frost has been moved from intensive care to a private room. It doesn’t seem real.
Reidar’s son was declared dead seven years ago.
Now Reidar is following the plainclothes officer down a long corridor and staring at the interwoven tracks left on the floor by the wheels of countless beds. He tries to tell himself not to hope too much, that the police might have made a mistake.
Thirteen years ago, his children disappeared when they were out playing one evening. The police thought that one of the siblings had fallen into the cold March water, and the other had been dragged in while trying to help the first one out.
Reidar had secretly hired a private-detective agency to investigate other possible leads, primarily everyone in the children’s vicinity: all their teachers, soccer coaches, neighbors, the mailmen, bus drivers, gardeners, shop assistants, café staff, and anyone the children had interacted with on the phone or the Internet. Their classmates’ parents were checked, and even Reidar’s own relatives.
Long after the police had stopped looking, and when everyone with even the faintest connection to the children had been investigated, Reidar began to understand that it was over. But for several years after that, he walked along the coastline every day, expecting his children to be washed ashore.
* * *
—
Reidar and the plainclothes officer wait while an old woman is wheeled into the elevator. They head over to the doors of the ward and pull on pale-blue shoe covers.
Reidar staggers and leans against the wall. He has wondered several times if he’s dreaming, and tries not to let his thoughts get carried away.
They pass nurses in white uniforms.
He can hear the noise of the hospital, but inside him there is nothing but an immense silence.
At the far end of the corridor, on the right, is Room 4. He bumps into a food trolley, sending a pile of cups to the floor.
It’s as if he’s become detached from reality as he enters the room and sees the young man lying in bed, with a drip attached to the crook of his arm and oxygen being fed into his nose. An IV bag hangs from the drip stand next to a white heart monitor attached to his left index finger.
Reidar stops and feels himself lose control of his face. Reality returns like a deafening torrent of emotions.
“Mikael,” Reidar says gently.
The young man opens his eyes, and Reidar can see how much he resembles his mother. He puts his hand against Mikael’s cheek. His own mouth is trembling so much that he can hardly speak.
“Where have you been?” Reidar asks, crying.
“Dad,” Mikael whispers.
His face is frighteningly pale and his eyes are tired. Thirteen years have passed, and the child’s face that Reidar has buried in his memory has become a man’s face, but so skinny.
“Now I can be happy again,” Reidar breathes, stroking his son’s head.
38
Disa is finally back in Stockholm from an archaeological expedition to the north of Sweden. She’s waiting in his apartment, on the top floor of 31 Wallin Street. Joona is on his way home from buying some turbot that he’s planning to fry and serve with rémoulade sauce.
All the lights of the city look like misty lanterns. As he passes Kammakar Street, he hears agitated voices up ahead. This is a dark part of the city. Rows of parked cars throw shadows. Dull buildings, streaked with snowmelt.
“I want my money,” a gruff voice is shouting.
There are two figures in the distance, moving slowly along the railings toward the Dala steps. Joona walks toward them.
The two men are panting, staring at each other, hunched, drunk, and angry. One is wearing a checkered jacket and a fur hat. In his hand is a small, shiny knife.
“Fucking bastard,” he rasps. “Fucking little—”
The other one has a full beard and a black overcoat with a tear on one shoulder, and is waving an empty wine bottle in front of him.
“I want my money back, with interest,” the bearded man repeats.
“Get away from me,” the other man says, spitting blood on the snow.
A thickset woman in her sixties is leaning against a blue box of rock salt for the steps. The tip of her cigarette glows, lighting up her puffy face.
The man with the bottle backs under the snow-covered branches of the big tree. The other man stumbles after him. The knife blade flashes as he stabs the air. The bearded man moves backward, waving the bottle and hitting the other man in the head. The bottle breaks, and green glass flies around the fur hat. Joona has an impulse to reach for his pistol, even though he knows it’s locked away in the gun cabinet.
The man with the knife stumbles but manages to stay on his feet. The other is holding the jagged remains of the bottle.
There’s a scream. Joona jumps over the piled-up snow at the curb.
The bearded man slips on something and falls flat on his back. He’s fumbling with his hand on the railing at the top of the steps.
“My money,” he repeats with a cough.
Joona sweeps some snow off a parked car and presses it to make a snowball.
The man in the checkered jacket with the knife in his hand sways as he approaches the prone man.
“I’ll cut you open and stuff you with your money—”
Joona throws the snowball and hits the man holding the knife in the back of the neck. There’s a dull thud as the snow breaks up and flies in all directions.
“Shit,” the man says, confused, as he turns around.
“Snowball fight, gentlemen!” Joona shouts, forming a new ball.
The man with the knife looks at him with a spark in his eye.
Joona throws again and hits the man on the ground in the middle of the chest, spraying snow in his face.
The man with the knife looks down at him, then laughs unkindly: “The snowman.”
The man on the ground throws some loose snow up at him. The man with the knife backs off and puts the knife away. He is forming a snowball. The bearded man rises unsteadily, clinging to the railing.
“I’ll get you,” says the man packing the snowball.
He takes aim at the bearded man, but abruptly turns around and throws it at Joona instead, hitting him on the shoulder.
For several minutes, snowballs fly in all directions. Joona slips and falls. The bearded man loses his hat, and the other man rushes over and fills it with snow.
The woman claps her hands, and is rewarded with a snowball to her forehead that sticks there like a white bump. The bearded man bursts out laughing and falls backward into a pile of old Christmas trees. The man in the checkered jacket kicks some snow over him, but gives up. He’s panting as he turns to look at Joona.
“Where the hell did you come from?” he asks.
“National Crime,” Joona replies, brushing the snow from his clothes.
“The police?”
“You took my child,” the woman mutters.
Joona picks up the fur hat and shakes the snow off before handing it to the man in the jacket.
“Thanks.”
“I saw the shooting star,” the drunken woman goes on, looking Joona in the eye. “I saw it when I was seven. And I wish you’d burn in the fires of hell and scream like—”
“You shut your mouth,” the man in the checkered jacket shouts. “I’m glad I didn’t stab my little brother, and—”
“I want my money,” the other man calls with a smile.
39
There’s a light on in the bathroom when Joona gets home. He opens the door slightly and sees Disa lying in the bath with her eyes closed. She’s surrounded by bubbles and is humming to herself. Her muddy clothes are in a big heap on the bathroom floor.
“I thought they’d locked you up in prison,” Disa says. “I was ready to take over your apartment.”
&nb
sp; Over the winter, Joona has been under investigation by the Prosecution Authority’s national unit for internal investigations, accused of wrecking a long-term surveillance operation and exposing the Security Police rapid-response unit to danger.
“Apparently, I’m guilty,” he replies, picking her clothes up and putting them in the washing machine.
“I said that right from the start.”
“Yes, well…”
Joona’s eyes have turned as gray as a rainy sky.
“Is it something else?”
“A long day,” he replies, and goes out into the kitchen.
“Don’t go.”
When he doesn’t come back, she climbs out of the bath, dries herself, and puts on a thin robe. The beige silk clings to her warm body.
Joona is standing in the kitchen, frying some baby potatoes golden brown, when she comes in.
“What happened?”
Joona glances at her. “One of Jurek Walter’s victims has been found alive. He’s been held captive all this time.”
She takes a moment to process what he’s said. “So you were right—there was an accomplice.”
“Yes,” he sighs.
Disa steps toward him, then gently rests her palm flat against the small of his back.
“Can you catch him?”
“I hope so,” Joona says seriously. “I haven’t had the chance to question the boy properly. He’s not in a good state. But he should be able to lead us there.”
Joona takes the frying pan off the heat, then turns and looks at her.
“What is it?” she asks, alarmed.
“Disa, you have to say yes to the archaeological research project in Brazil.”
“I told you, I don’t want to go,” she says, then realizes what he means. “You can’t think like that. I don’t give a damn about Jurek Walter. I’m not scared. I won’t be governed by fear.”
He gently brushes aside the wet hair that has fallen over her face.
“Only for a little while,” he says. “Until I get this sorted out.”
She leans against his chest and hears the muffled double beat of his heart.
“There’s never been anyone but you,” she says. “When you stayed with me after your family’s accident, well, that was…you know, that was when I…fell for you, as they say. But it’s true.”
“I’m worried about you.”
She strokes his arm and whispers that she doesn’t want to go. When her voice breaks, he pulls her to him and kisses her.
“But we’ve seen each other through,” Disa says, looking into his face. “I mean, if there’s an accomplice who’s a threat to us, why hasn’t anything happened? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. I agree, but…I have to do this. I’m going after him, and it’s happening now.”
Disa can feel a sob rising in her throat. She fights it back down and turns her face away. Once she had been Summa’s friend. That was how they met. And when his life fell apart, she was there.
He moved in and stayed with her for a while when things were at their very worst for him. At night, he would sleep on her sofa, and she would hear him moving around and knew that he knew she was lying awake in the next room. That he was looking at the door to her bedroom and thinking about her lying in there, more and more confused and hurt by how distant he was being, how cold. Until, one night, he got up, got dressed, and left her apartment.
“I’m staying.” Disa wipes the tears from her face.
“You have to go.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you,” he says. “You must know that.”
“Do you really think I’d go now?” she asks with a smile.
40
Jurek Walter is visible on one of the nine squares of the huge monitor. He paces the dayroom, walking around the sofa, then turning left past the television. He goes around the treadmill, turns left again, and walks back into his room.
Anders Rönn watches him from above on the screen.
Jurek washes his face and sits down on the plastic chair without drying himself. He stares at the door to the corridor as the water drips onto his shirt and dries.
My, the nurse, is sitting in the operator’s chair. She checks the time, waits another thirty seconds, looks at Jurek, makes a note of his location on the computer, and locks the door from Jurek’s room to the dayroom.
“He’s getting cigarettes this evening. He likes that,” she says.
“He does?”
Anders Rönn already thinks that the routines surrounding this one patient are so repetitive and static that it would be hard to tell the days apart if it weren’t for the daily meeting up on Ward 30. The other doctors talk about their patients and care plans. He doesn’t need to say anything. No one even expects him to repeat that the situation in the secure unit is unchanged.
“Have you ever tried talking to the patient?” Anders asks.
“With Jurek? We’re not allowed to,” she replies, and scratches her tattooed arm. “It’s because…well, he says things you can’t forget.”
Anders hasn’t spoken to Jurek Walter since that first day. He just makes sure that the patient gets his regular injection of neuroleptic drugs.
“Do you know if the computer system is working?” Anders asks. “I couldn’t sign out of the medical records.”
“In that case, you’re not allowed to go home,” she says.
“But I—”
“I’m joking,” she says, laughing. “The computers down here are always crashing.”
She gets up, grabs her bottle of Fanta from the desk, and goes out into the corridor. Anders sees that Jurek is still sitting completely motionless with his eyes open.
He follows My. When she reaches the brightly lit office he notices that her red underwear is visible through the white fabric of her scrubs.
“Now, let’s see,” she mutters, sitting in his chair and rousing the computer from standby mode. With a grin, she forces the program to close and logs in again.
Anders thanks her and asks her to restock the medication trolley if she has time.
“Don’t forget to sign the requisition orders afterward,” he says, then leaves.
He walks around the corner into the changing room. The ward is completely silent. He doesn’t know what drives him to do it, but he opens My’s locker and starts to rummage through her gym bag with trembling hands. He unfolds a damp T-shirt and a pair of pale-gray jogging pants, and finds a pair of sweaty underpants. He takes them out, lifts them to his face, and breathes in her scent. Suddenly it dawns on him that My could see him on the monitor the moment she returned to the control room.
41
When Anders gets home, the house is quiet and the light is off in Agnes’s room. He locks the door behind him and goes into the kitchen. Petra is standing at the sink, rinsing the blender.
She’s wearing baggy stay-at-home clothes: a Chicago White Sox T-shirt that’s too big for her, and yellow leggings that she’s pulled up to her knees. Anders walks up behind her and puts his arms around her, smelling her hair and fresh deodorant. She’s about to pull away when he moves his hands up to cup her heavy breasts.
“How’s Agnes?” he asks, letting go of her.
“She has a new best friend at preschool,” Petra says. “A little boy who started last week. Apparently, he’s in love with her. I don’t know if it’s reciprocated, but she let him give her some Legos.”
“Sounds like love,” he says, sitting down.
“Tired?”
“I wouldn’t mind a glass of wine—do you want one?” he asks.
“Want one?”
She smiles more broadly than she has for a long time.
“What do you mean by that?” he asks.
“Does what I want matter?” she whispers.
He shakes his head, and she looks at him with twinkling eyes. They leave the kitchen and go silently into the bedroom. Anders locks the door to the hallway and watches as Petra opens the mirrored wardrobe door and
pulls out a drawer. She removes a bundle of underwear and takes out a bag.
“So that’s where you hide everything?”
“You’re not supposed to make me feel embarrassed, now,” she says.
He pulls the duvet aside, and Petra empties the contents of the bag, all the things they bought after she’d read Fifty Shades of Grey. He picks up the soft rope and ties her hands, loops it through the slatted headboard, then tightens it, making her fall onto her back with her hands above her head. He ties the rope to the bottom of the bed with two half-hitch knots. She parts her legs and squirms as he pulls off her leggings and underwear.
He loosens the rope again, loops it around her left ankle and ties it to the bedpost, then pulls it around the other post and ties her right ankle.
He pulls the rope, making her legs slowly spread open.
She’s looking at him, her cheeks flushed.
He pulls harder and forces her thighs apart as far as they’ll go.
“Careful,” she says quickly.
“Keep quiet,” he tells her, and sees her smile to herself.
He fastens the rope, then moves up the bed and pulls her T-shirt over her face so she can’t see him. Her breasts sway as she tries to get the fabric off her face.
There’s no way she can get loose—she’s entirely helpless in this position, with her arms over her head and her legs pulled so far apart that her inner thighs must be aching.
Anders just stands there, watching her shake her head, and feels his heart beat faster, harder. Slowly he undoes his trousers as he sees her crotch start to glisten.
42
Joona enters the patient’s room and sees an older man sitting by the boy’s bed. It takes him a few seconds to recognize Reidar Frost. Though it’s been years since he last saw him, Reidar has aged considerably more than that. The young man is asleep, but Reidar is sitting there holding his left hand in both of his.
“You never believed my children had drowned,” the father says in a muted voice.
“No,” Joona replies.
Reidar’s gaze rests on Mikael’s sleeping face. He turns to Joona and says, “Thank you for not telling me about the murderer.”
