by Lars Kepler
Her voice breaks and she whimpers quietly to herself before continuing.
“When he asked if he could put his cock in my mouth. I said he was disgusting. So he went into my little sister’s room and began to hit her. She was only two years old.”
Evelyn weeps and then composes herself.
“He made me watch while he jerked off, several times every day. If I said no, he hit my sister, told me he’d kill her. Maybe a few months later, he started demanding sex from me. Every day. He threatened me. But I came up with an answer. I don’t know why it worked, but I told him he was below the age of consent and it was against the law. I wouldn’t do something illegal.”
She wipes the tears away again.
“He seemed to buy it; I don’t know why. I thought his demands would go away. I thought—if you can believe it—that he’d outgrow them, like it was a phase. So I moved out. A year passed, but then he started calling me, reminding me he would be fifteen soon. That’s when I hid. I … I don’t know how he found out I was at the cottage.” She is sobbing with her mouth open now. “Oh God!”
“So he threatened you,” says Joona. “He threatened to kill the whole family if you didn’t—”
“He didn’t say that!” she screams. “He said he would start with Dad. It’s all my fault. I just want to die …”
She sinks down on the floor and cowers against the wall.
33
friday, december 11: afternoon
Joona sits in his office and stares at his hands. One hand still holds the telephone. When he informed Jens Svanehjälm of Evelyn’s sudden change of heart, Jens had listened in silence, sighing heavily as Joona went over the cruel motive behind the crime.
“To be perfectly honest, Joona,” he had said eventually, “this is all a little bit thin, bearing in mind that Josef Ek accused his sister of being behind the whole thing. What we really need is a confession or some kind of forensic evidence.”
Joona glances around the room, rubs his hand over his face, then calls Daniella Richards to arrange a suitable time to continue questioning Josef, when the suspect will have a lower level of analgesics in his body.
“His head must be clear,” says Joona.
“You could come in at five o’clock,” says Daniella.
“This afternoon?”
“His next dose of morphine isn’t due until six. It levels out around teatime.”
Joona looks at the clock. It’s 2:30 p.m.
“That would suit me very well,” he says.
After the conversation with Daniella Richards, he calls Lisbet Carlén and informs her of the time.
In the staff room he takes an apple from the fruit bowl; when he returns to his office, his seat is occupied by Erixon, the crime-scene technician. His entire body is wedged against the desk. His face is bright red, and he is puffing and panting as he waves a weary hand at Joona.
“If you shove that apple in my mouth, you’ll have a suckling pig all ready for Christmas,” he says.
“Oh, shut up,” says Joona, taking a bite.
“I deserve it,” says Erixon. “Since that Thai place opened on the corner, I’ve put on twenty-five pounds.”
Joona shrugs. “The food’s really good.”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“So what did you find in the women’s locker room?” asks Joona.
Erixon holds up a chubby hand in a defensive gesture. “Don’t say, What did I tell you?”
Joona grins. “We’ll see,” he says diplomatically.
“All right,” says Erixon, wiping the sweat from his cheeks. “There was hair belonging to Josef Ek in the drain, and there was blood from his father between the tiles on the floor.”
“What did I tell you?” Joona beams.
In the lift down to the foyer, Joona calls Jens Svanehjälm again.
“I’m glad you called,” says Jens. “I’m getting a lot of shit about this hypnosis business. They’re saying we ought to scrap the preliminary investigation into Josef, that it’s just going to cost money and—”
“Hold on.”
“But I’ve decided to—”
“Jens?”
“What?” he replies irritably.
“We’ve got forensic evidence,” he says seriously. “We can link Josef Ek to the first crime scene and to his father’s blood.”
Chief Prosecutor Jens Svanehjälm breathes heavily on the other end of the phone. “Joona, you know you’ve called at the last possible minute.”
“But I’m in time.”
“Yes.”
They are just about to hang up when Joona says, “What did I tell you?”
“What?”
“I was right, wasn’t I?”
There is silence at the other end of the line. Then Jens says, slowly and deliberately, “Yes, Joona, you were right.”
They end the conversation, and the smile fades from the detective’s face. He walks along the glass wall facing the courtyard and checks the time once again. In half an hour he wants to be at the Nordic Museum.
34
friday, december 11: afternoon
Joona walks up the staircase in the museum and down the long, empty corridors, passing hundreds of illuminated display cases without even glancing at them. He does not see the tools, the treasures, or the fine examples of handicrafts; he does not notice the exhibitions, the folk costumes, or the large photographs.
The guard has already drawn up a chair next to the faintly illuminated display case. Without saying a word, Joona sits down as usual and contemplates the Sami bridal headdress, sewn by descendents of indigenous people from the Scandinavian peninsula. Fragile and delicate, it widens out into a perfect circle. The pieces of lace are reminiscent of the cup of a flower, or a pair of hands brought together with the fingers stretching upward. Slowly Joona moves his head, so that the light gradually moves. The headdress is woven from roots, tied by hand. The material was dug from the ground, but it shines like gold.
The present is gone, but the memory lingers mercilessly.
He is driving a car, the rain has stopped, but the puddles of water glow like fire in the sunset. Everything is so wonderfully beautiful, and then gone forever.
This time, Joona sits in front of the display case for an hour before he gets to his feet, nods to the guard, and slowly leaves the museum. The slush on the ground is dirty, and he can smell diesel from a boat beneath the bridge, Djurgårdsbron. He is ambling toward Strandvägen when his mobile rings. It’s Nils Åhlén, the Chief Medical Officer.
“I’m glad I got hold of you,” The Needle says when Joona answers.
“Have you finished the postmortem?”
“More or less.”
Joona sees a young father on the pavement, tipping a buggy up over and over again to make his child laugh. A woman is standing motionless at a window, gazing out into the street; when he catches her eye, she immediately takes a step backwards into her apartment.
“Did you find anything unexpected?” asks Joona.
“Well, I don’t know …”
“But?”
“Joona, these bodies were subjected to a great deal of violence. Particularly the little girl.”
“I realise that,” says Joona.
“Many of the wounds were inflicted purely for pleasure. It’s appalling.”
“Yes,” says Joona, thinking about how things looked when he arrived at the scenes of the crimes: the shocked police officers, the feeling of chaos in the air, the bodies inside. He remembers Lillemor Blom’s ashen cheeks as she stood outside smoking, her hands shaking. He recalls how the blood had splashed on the windowpanes, had run down the inside of the patio doors at the back of the house.
“And then there’s this business with the rather surgical cut to the stomach,” says The Needle.
“Have you come to any conclusion about that?”
The Needle sighs. “Well, it’s just as we thought. The cut was inflicted some two hours after death. Someone turned her body over and used a shar
p knife to cut open the old C-section scar.” He leafs through his papers. “However, our perpetrator doesn’t know much about section caesarea. Katja Ek had an emergency C-section scar running down from the navel in a vertical line.”
“And?”
The Needle puffs loudly. “Well, the thing is, the cut in the womb is always horizontal, even if the cut in the stomach is vertical.”
“But Josef didn’t know that,” says Joona.
“No,” replies The Needle. “He simply opened the stomach without realising that a C-section always involves two incisions, one through the stomach and one through the womb.”
“Is there anything else I ought to know straightaway?”
“Maybe the fact that he attacked the bodies for an unusually long time; he just kept on and on. They were long dead by the time he was done with them. He must have been getting more and more tired. That kind of violence would take a lot out of you. But he couldn’t get enough; his rage showed no sign of subsiding.”
Silence falls between them. Joona continues along Strandvägen. He starts to think about his most recent interview with Evelyn again.
“Anyway, I just wanted to confirm this business with the C-section,” says The Needle, after a while. “The fact that the cut was made some two hours after death.”
“Thanks, Nils,” says Joona.
“You’ll have my full report in the morning.”
Joona tries to remember what Evelyn had said about her mother’s C-section while slumped on the floor against the wall in the interview room, talking about Josef’s pathological jealousy of his little sister.
“There’s something wrong inside Josef’s head,” she had whispered. “There always has been. I remember when he was born, Mum was really sick. I don’t know what it was, but they had to do an emergency C-section.” Evelyn shook her head and sucked in her lips before continuing. “Do you know what an emergency C-section is?”
“More or less,” Joona replied.
“Sometimes … sometimes there can be complications when you give birth that way.” Evelyn looked at him shyly.
“You mean the baby can be starved of oxygen, that kind of thing?” Joona asked.
She shook her head and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I mean, not with the baby. The mother can have psychological problems. I read about it. A woman who’s gone through a difficult labour and is then suddenly anaesthetised for a C-section sometimes has problems later.”
“Post-natal depression?”
“Not exactly,” said Evelyn, her voice thick and heavy. “My mother developed a psychosis after she gave birth to Josef. They didn’t realise on the maternity ward; they just let her take him home. I was only eight, but I noticed right away. Everything was wrong. She didn’t pay any attention to him at all, she didn’t touch him, she just lay in bed and cried and cried and cried. I was the one who took care of him.”
Evelyn looked at Joona and whispered the rest.
“Mum would say he wasn’t hers. She’d say her real child was dead. In the end, she had to be hospitalised.”
Evelyn smiled wryly when she mentioned the vast psychiatric unit.
“Mum came home after about a year. She pretended everything was back to normal, but in reality she continued to deny his existence.”
“So you don’t think your mother had really recovered?” Joona asked tentatively.
“She was fine, because when she had Lisa, everything was different. She was so happy about Lisa; she did everything for her.”
“And you did everything for Josef.”
“I took care of him—someone had to—but he started saying that Mum should have given birth to him properly. For him, what explained the unfairness of it all was that Lisa had been born through her cunt and he hadn’t. That’s what he said all the time: Mum should have given birth to him through her cunt …”
Evelyn’s voice died away. She turned her face to the wall, and Joona looked at her tense, hunched shoulders without daring to touch her.
35
friday, december 11: evening
For once it is not totally silent in the intensive care unit at Karolinska University Hospital when Joona arrives. Someone has switched the television on in the common room, and Joona can hear the clink of tableware on dinner plates. The aroma of institutional food permeates the ward.
He thinks about Josef cutting open the old C-section scar on his mother’s stomach: his passage into life, one that had condemned him to a motherless existence.
The boy must have realised from an early age that he was not like the other children. Joona considers the endless loneliness of a boy rejected by his mother. A person who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of the conqueror, but the opposite results not only in an absence of this feeling but also the presence of an active darkness. The only one who gave Josef love and care was Evelyn, and he couldn’t cope with being rejected by her; the slightest indication that she was distancing herself from him plunged him into despair and rage, his fury directed increasingly at the beloved younger sister.
Joona nods at Sunesson, the officer on guard, who is standing outside the door of Josef Ek’s room, then glances in at the boy. A heavy drip stand right next to the bed is supplying him with both fluid and blood plasma. The boy’s feet protrude from beneath the pale blue blanket; the soles are dirty, hairs and bits of grit and rubbish are stuck to the surgical tape covering the stitches. The television is on, but he doesn’t appear to be watching it.
The social worker, Lisbet Carlén, is already in the room. She hasn’t noticed Joona yet; she is standing by the window adjusting a barrette in her hair.
Josef is bleeding anew from one of his cuts; the blood runs along his arm and drips to the floor. An older nurse leans over the boy, tending to his dressings. She loosens the compress, tapes the edges of the wound together once again, wipes the blood away, and leaves the room.
“Excuse me,” says Joona, catching up with her in the hallway.
“Yes?”
“How is he? How is Josef getting on?”
“You’ll have to speak to the doctor in charge,” the nurse replies, setting off once again.
“I will,” says Joona with a smile, hurrying after her. “But there’s something I’d like to show him. Would it be possible for me to take him there—in a wheelchair, I mean?”
The nurse stops dead and shakes her head. “Under no circumstances is the patient to be moved,” she says sternly. “What a ridiculous idea. He’s in a great deal of pain, he can’t move, there could be new bleeds, and he could begin to haemorrhage if he were to sit up.”
Joona returns to Josef’s room, walking in without knocking, and turns off the TV. He switches on the tape recorder, mutters the date and time and those present, and sits down. Josef opens his heavy eyes and looks at him with a mild lack of interest. The chest drain emits a pleasant, low-pitched, bubbling noise.
“You’ll be discharged soon,” says Joona.
“Good,” says Josef faintly.
“Although you’ll immediately be transferred to police custody.”
“What do you mean? Lisbet said the prosecutor isn’t prepared to take any action,” says Josef, glancing over at the social worker.
“That was before we had a witness.”
Josef closes his eyes gently. “Who?”
“We’ve talked quite a bit, you and I,” says Joona. “But you might want to change something you’ve already said or add something you haven’t said.”
“Evelyn,” he whispers.
“You’re going to be inside for a very long time.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, Josef, I’m telling the truth. Trust me. You’ll be arrested, and you now have the right to legal representation.”
Josef attempts to raise his hand but doesn’t have the strength. “You hypnotised her,” he says with a smile.
Joona shakes his head.
“It’s her word against mine,” he says.
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“Not exactly,” says Joona, contemplating the boy’s clean, pale face. “We also have forensic evidence.”
Josef clamps his jaws tightly together.
“I haven’t got a lot of time, but if there’s anything you want to tell me, I can stay for a little while longer,” says Joona pleasantly.
He allows half a minute to pass, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair, and then gets to his feet, picks up the tape recorder, and leaves the room with a brief nod to the social worker.
In the car outside the hospital, Joona considers whether he should have confronted Josef with Evelyn’s story, just to see the boy’s reaction. There is a simmering arrogance in Josef Ek that might lead him to incriminate himself if he were sufficiently provoked.
He considers going back inside for a moment, but he doesn’t want to be late for dinner with his girlfriend. Josef Ek will keep until next time.
36
friday, december 11: evening
It is dark and misty when he parks the car outside Disa’s cream-coloured building on Lützengatan. He feels frozen as he makes his way to the front door, glancing at the frosty grass, the black branches of the trees.
He tries to recall Josef, lying there in his bed, but all he can remember is the chest drain, bubbling and rattling away. Yet he has the feeling he saw something important without comprehending it. The sense that something isn’t right continues to nag at him as he takes the lift up to Disa’s apartment and rings the bell. While he waits, Joona can hear someone on the landing up above, sighing spasmodically or weeping quietly.
Disa opens the door looking stressed, wearing only her bra and panty-hose.
“I assumed you’d be late,” she explains.
“Well, I’m slightly early instead,” says Joona, kissing her lightly on the cheek.
“Perhaps you could come inside and shut the door before all the neighbours see my ass.”
