by Lars Kepler
The welcoming hall smells of food. The fringe of a pink lampshade tickles the top of Joona’s head.
“I’m doing sole with almonds and new potatoes,” says Disa.
“With melted butter?”
“And mushrooms, and parsley.”
“Delicious.”
The one-bedroom apartment is rather shabby, but with an inherent elegance; high ceilings with varnished wood panelling, a beautifully varnished parquet floor, and graceful windows framed in teak.
Joona follows Disa into her bedroom, still trying to remember what it was that he saw in Josef’s room. Disa’s laptop is in the middle of her unmade bed, with books and sheets of paper strewn around.
He settles into an armchair and waits for her to finish dressing. Without a word she turns her back to him so he can zip up a close-fitting, simply cut dress.
Joona glances at one of Disa’s open books and spies a large, black-and-white photo of a graveyard. A group of men, archaeologists, dressed in clothing from the 1940s, are walking along towards the back of the picture, peering at the photographer. It looks as if the site has just begun to be excavated; the surface of the ground is marked with dozens of small flags.
“Those are graves,” she says quietly. “The flags show the location of the graves. The man who conducted the dig on this site was called Hannes Müller; he died a while ago, but he was at least a hundred years old. Stayed on at the institute until the end. He looked like a sweet old tortoise.”
She stands in front of the long mirror, weaves her straight hair into two thin braids, and turns to face him.
“How do I look?”
“Lovely,” says Joona.
“Yes,” she replies sadly. “How’s your mum?”
Joona catches hold of her hand. “She’s fine,” he whispers. “She sends you her love.”
“That’s nice. What else did she say?”
“She said you shouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
“No,” says Disa gloomily. “She’s right, of course.”
Slowly she runs her fingers through his thick, tousled hair. She smiles at him suddenly, then goes over to the laptop, switches it off, and puts it on the chest of drawers.
“Did you know that, according to pre-Christian law, newborn babies were not regarded as fully valid individuals until they had been put to the breast? It was permissible to place a newborn child out in the forest during the period between birth and the first feed.”
“So you became a person through the choice of others,” says Joona slowly.
Disa opens her wardrobe, lifts out a shoebox, and takes out a pair of dark brown sandals with soft straps and beautiful heels, made up of strips of different kinds of wood.
“New?” asks Joona.
“Sergio Rossi. They were a present to myself, because I have such an unglamorous job,” she says. “I spend entire days crawling around in a muddy field.”
“Are you still out in Sigtuna?”
“Yes.”
“What have you actually found?”
“I’ll tell you while we’re eating.”
He points to her shoes. “Very nice,” he says, getting up from the armchair.
Disa turns away with a wry smile. “I’m sorry, Joona,” she says over her shoulder, “but I don’t think they make them in your size.”
He suddenly stops dead. “Hang on,” he says, reaching out to the wall to support himself.
Disa is looking at him inquiringly. “It was just a joke,” she explains.
“No, no, it’s his feet!”
Joona pushes past her into the hallway, pulls his phone out of his overcoat pocket, calls Central Control, and calmly informs them that Sunesson needs immediate backup at the hospital.
“What’s happening?” asks Disa.
“His feet were really dirty,” Joona tells her. “They told me he can’t move, but he’s been out of bed. He’s been out of bed, walking around.”
Joona calls Sunesson, and when no one answers he pulls on his jacket, whispers an apology, and races down the stairs.
37
friday, december 11: evening
At approximately the same time as Joona is ringing Disa’s doorbell, Josef Ek sits up in bed in his room at the hospital.
Last night he checked to see if he could walk: he eased his feet to the floor and stood still for a long time with his hands resting on the bed-frame, as the pain from his many wounds washed over him like boiling oil and the agonising stab from his damaged liver made everything go black. But he could walk. He had stretched out the tubes from the drip and the chest drain, checked what was in the store cupboard, and climbed back into bed.
It is now thirty minutes since the nurse on the night shift came in to see him. The hall is almost silent. Josef slowly pulls out the IV in his wrist, feels the sucking of the tube as it leaves his body. A small amount of blood trickles down onto his knee.
It doesn’t hurt as much when he gets out of bed this time. He moves stiffly over to the cupboard with the scalpels and syringes he’d seen amid the compresses and rolls of gauze bandage. He pushes a few syringes into the wide, loose pocket of his hospital gown. With trembling hands he breaks open the packaging of a scalpel and slices through the chest drain tube. Slimy blood runs out, and his left lung slowly deflates. He can feel the ache behind one shoulder blade and coughs slightly, but he isn’t really aware of the difference, the reduced lung capacity.
Suddenly he hears footsteps out in the corridor, rubber soles against the vinyl flooring. With the scalpel in his hand, Josef positions himself behind the door, peers through the pane of glass, and waits.
The nurse stops to chat with the police officer on guard. Josef can hear them laughing about something.
“But I’ve quit smoking,” she says.
“If you’ve got a nicotine patch I wouldn’t say no,” the police officer goes on.
“I quit those too,” she replies. “But go outside if you need to, I’ll be in here for a while.”
“Five minutes,” says the cop eagerly.
He goes away, there is the rattle of keys, and the nurse enters the room leafing through some papers. She looks up, startled. The laughter lines around the corners of her eyes become more prominent as the blade of the scalpel slices into her throat. He is weaker than he thought and has to stab at her several times. The sudden violence of his movements pulls at the scabs on his body, sending a fiery sensation shooting through him. The nurse does not fall down immediately but tries to hold on to him. They slide down to the floor together. Her body is all sweaty; steaming hot. He tries to stand up but slips on her hair, which has spread out in a wide, blonde sheaf. When he wrenches the scalpel out of her throat, she makes a whistling sound and her legs begin to jerk. Josef stands gazing at her for a while before making his way out into the corridor. Her dress has worked its way up, and he can clearly see her pink panties beneath her tights.
He makes his way down the corridor. He heads to the right, finds some clean clothes on a cart, and changes. Some distance away, a short, stocky woman is moving a mop back and forth across the shining vinyl floor. She is listening to music through headphones. Coming closer, Josef stands behind her and takes out a disposable syringe, stabbing at the air behind her back several times, stopping short of touching her. She continues mopping, oblivious. Josef can hear a tinny beat coming from the headphones. He pushes the syringe back in his pocket, and shoves the woman aside as he walks past. She almost falls over and swears in Spanish. Josef stops dead and turns to face her.
“What did you say?” he asks.
She takes off the headphones and gapes at him.
“Did you say something?” he asks.
She shakes her head quickly and goes on cleaning. He stares at her for a while and then continues on his way towards the lift.
38
friday, december 11: evening
Joona Linna drives along Valhallavägen at high speed, past the stadium where the summer Olympics were held in 1912,
and changes lanes to overtake a big Mercedes. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the lighted red-brick façade of Sophiahemmet flickering through the trees. The tyres thunder over a large metal plate. Stomping on the gas, he passes a bus that is just about to pull out from the stop. The driver sounds his horn angrily and for a long time as Joona cuts in ahead of him. The water from a grey puddle splashes up over the parked cars and pavements just past the University of Technology.
Joona runs a red light at Norrtull, passes Stallmästaregården, and hits almost 110 miles per hour on the short stretch along Uppsalavägen before slowing when he reaches the exit ramp that dips steeply beneath the motorway and up towards Karolinska Hospital.
As he parks next to the main entrance, he sees several police cars with blue lights flashing, sweeping across the brown façade of the hospital like terrible wing beats. Reporters and camera crews surround a group of nurses who shiver outside the big doors, fear etched on their faces. A couple of them weep openly in front of the cameras.
Joona tries to go inside but is immediately stopped by a young police officer who is stamping his feet up and down, either with shock or agitation.
“Out,” says the cop, giving him a shove.
Joona looks into a pair of dumb pale-blue eyes. He removes the hand from his chest and says calmly, “National CID.”
There is a stab of suspicion in the pale blue eyes. “ID, please.”
“Joona, get a move on, over here.”
Carlos Eliasson, Head of the National CID, is waving to him in the pale yellow light by the reception desk. Through the window he can see Sunesson sitting on a bench weeping, his face crumpled. A younger colleague sits down beside him and puts an arm around his shoulders.
Joona shows his ID and the officer moves to one side, his expression surly. Large parts of the entrance have been cordoned off with police tape. The journalists’ cameras flash outside the glass walls, while inside the crime team is busy taking their photographs.
Carlos is leading the investigation and is responsible for both the overall strategic approach and the immediate tactical detail. He issues rapid instructions to the scene-of-crime coordinator and then turns to Joona.
“Have you got him?” asks Joona.
“We have eyewitnesses who saw him making his way outside using a wheeled walker,” says Carlos. “It’s down at the bus stop.” He glances at his notes. “Two buses have left since then, plus seven taxis and patient transport vehicles … and probably a dozen or so private cars, and just one ambulance.”
“Have you sealed off the exits?”
“Too late for that.”
A uniformed officer is waved through.
“We’ve traced the buses—no luck,” he says.
“What about the taxis?” asks Carlos.
“We’ve finished with Taxi Stockholm and Taxi Kurir, but …” The officer waves a hand helplessly as if he can no longer remember what he was going to say.
“Have you contacted Erik Maria Bark?” asks Joona.
“We called him straight away. There was no answer, but we’re trying to get hold of him.”
“He needs protection.”
“Rolle!” yells Carlos. “Did you get hold of Bark?”
“I just called,” replies Roland Svensson.
“Try again,” says Joona.
“I need to speak to Omar in Central Control,” says Carlos, looking around. “We need to put out a national alert.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Stay here, check if I’ve missed anything,” says Carlos. He calls over Mikael Verner, one of the technicians from the murder squad.
“Tell Detective Linna what you’ve found so far,” Carlos orders.
Verner looks at Joona, his face expressionless, and says in a nasal voice, “A dead nurse … Several witnesses saw the suspect making his way out with a wheeled walker.”
“Show me,” says Joona.
They go up the fire escape together, since the lifts are still being examined.
Joona contemplates the red footprints left by the barefoot Josef Ek on his way down to the exit. There is a smell of electricity and death. A bloody handprint on the wall suggests that he stumbled or had to support himself. Joona sees blood on the metal lift door and something that looks like the greasy imprint of a forehead and the tip of a nose.
They continue along the corridor and stop in the doorway of the room where he spoke to Josef only an hour or so ago. A pool of almost black blood surrounds a body on the floor.
“She was a nurse,” says Verner tersely. “Ann-Katrin Eriksson.”
Joona looks at the dead woman’s pale blonde hair and lifeless eyes. Her uniform is bunched up around her hips. It looks as if the murderer tried to pull up her dress, he thinks.
“It seems likely the murder weapon was a scalpel,” says Verner.
Joona mutters something, takes out his phone, and rings the holding cells at Kronoberg. A sleepy male voice replies, saying something Joona doesn’t hear.
“Joona Linna here,” he says quickly. “I need to know if Evelyn Ek is still with you.”
“What?”
Joona repeats his question. “Is Evelyn Ek still there?”
“You’ll need to ask the duty officer,” the voice responds sourly.
“Put him on, please.”
“Just a minute,” says the man, putting the phone down.
Joona hears him walk away, followed by the squeak of a door. Then there is an exchange of words, and something bangs. Joona looks at his watch. He’s already been at the hospital for ten minutes.
He heads down to the main door, keeping the phone to his ear.
“Kronoberg,” says a genial voice.
“Joona Linna, National CID. I need to know the status of one of your detainees: Evelyn Ek,” he says briefly.
“Evelyn Ek,” says the voice thoughtfully. “Right, yes. We let her go; it wasn’t easy. She wanted to stay here.”
“And you just put her on the street?”
“No, no, the prosecutor was here; she’s in”—Joona can hear pages turning—“she’s in one of our safe apartments.”
“Good,” he says. “Put some officers outside her door. Do you hear me?”
“We’re not idiots.”
Joona finds Carlos, who is intently studying something on the screen of his laptop. He tries to get his attention but when he fails he just keeps going, out through the glass doors.
On Joona’s police radio, Omar at Central Control is repeating the code word Echo, the designation for the deployment of dog units. Joona guesses that they have traced most of the cars by this time, with no results.
He wanders over to the abandoned walker, left at the bus stop, and looks around. He blots out the people who are watching from the other side of the police cordon, he blots out the flashing blue lights and the agitated movements of the police officers, he blots out the flashing cameras of the journalists, and instead he allows his gaze to roam over the car park and in between the various buildings of the hospital complex.
Joona sets off, stepping over the fluttering tape cordoning off the area. He pushes his way through the group of curious onlookers and heads for Northern Cemetery, following the fence and peering among the black silhouettes of trees and gravestones. A network of paths, some better lit than others, extends over an area of roughly 150 acres, containing memorial groves, a crematorium, and 30,000 graves.
39
friday, december 11: evening
Joona passes the lodge by the gate to the large cemetery, increases his speed, glances over at Alfred Nobel’s pale obelisk, and moves on past the enormous crypt.
In the quiet here, the wind rustles through the bare branches of the trees and his own footsteps echo faintly between gravestones and crosses. Some kind of heavy vehicle thunders along in the distance on the motorway. Something rustles among the dry leaves beneath a bush. Here and there, candles are burning by the graves in misty glass containers.
Joona m
akes for the eastern edge of the cemetery, the area facing the slip road for the motorway. Suddenly, he sees a pale form moving in the darkness among the tall gravestones, heading for the cemetery’s office, perhaps 400 yards away. He stops and tries to focus his eyes. The figure has an angular, stooping shape. Joona begins to run between monuments and plantings, flickering candle flames and carved angels. He sees the slender figure hurry across the frosty grass, his white clothes flapping around him.
“Josef!” Joona shouts. “Stop!”
The boy keeps going, disappearing behind a huge family plot with a wrought-iron fence and neatly raked gravel. Joona draws his gun, removes the safety catch, and runs laterally, catching sight of the boy. Taking aim at his right thigh, Joona shouts to him to stop. Suddenly an old woman is standing in his way, her face directly in the line of fire. She had been bending over a grave, and now she has straightened up. Joona feels a stab of fear in his stomach and lowers his gun.
“I just want to light a candle on Ingrid Bergman’s grave,” wails the woman.
Josef disappears behind a cypress hedge and Joona takes off after him. He gazes into the darkness, searching. Josef has disappeared among the trees and the gravestones. The few streetlamps illuminate only small areas, a green park bench or a few yards of gravel path. Joona takes out his mobile, calls Central Control, and demands immediate backup, at least five teams and a helicopter. He hurries up the slope, jumps over a low fence, and stops. He can hear dogs barking in the distance and the crunch of gravel not far away; he begins to run in that direction. Sensing movement among the gravestones, he keeps his gaze fixed on the area, trying to get closer, to find a line of fire if he manages to spot the boy. There’s an uproar, and blackbirds rise into the air. A dustbin falls over, its lid rolling along the path before clattering to a stop.
Suddenly Joona sees Josef running behind a brown frost-covered hedge. He is bent as if with pain but moves quickly. Joona pivots to follow and slips, sliding down a knoll and crashing at the bottom into a stand of watering cans and vases. By the time he gets to his feet, he has lost sight of the boy. His pulse pounds in his temples. His lower back throbs where he fell on it, and his hands are cold and numb.
