by Lars Kepler
“For your own sake.”
The female officer comes over to Kennet again, clears her throat, and says, “We’re very sorry about all this.”
“It’s OK,” says Kennet, helping Simone up from the floor.
“The cellar,” she says, almost inaudibly.
“I’ll take care of it,” says Kennet, turning to Joona. “There are one or more persons in a hidden room in the cellar, behind the wardrobe with life jackets in it.”
“Listen carefully,” Joona calls to the others. “We have reason to believe that the suspect is in the cellar. I will be leading this operation throughout. Be careful. It is possible that a hostage situation could arise, and in that case I will be the negotiator. The suspect is a dangerous individual, but fire is to be directed at the legs in the first instance.”
Joona borrows a bullet-proof vest and quickly shrugs it on. Then he sends two officers round to the back of the house and gathers a team around him. They listen to his rapid instructions and then disappear with him through the doorway leading to the cellar. The metal staircase clangs loudly beneath their weight.
Simone is afraid that her whole body is shaking, so Kennet wraps his arms around her. He whispers to her that everything will be fine, but the only thing Simone wants to hear is her son’s voice from the cellar; she prays that she will hear him calling to her any second.
After only a short while Joona returns, the bullet-proof vest in his hand. “He got away,” he says tersely.
“Benjamin, where’s Benjamin?” asks Simone.
“Not here,” replies Joona.
“But the room—”
She moves toward the cellar doorway. Kennet tries to hold her back, but she yanks her hand away and pushes past Joona and down the iron steps. With three spotlights on stands filling the space with light, the cellar is now as bright as a summer’s day. The stepladder has been moved and is now under the small open window. The wardrobe has been pushed to one side and a police officer guards the entrance to the secret room. Simone walks slowly toward him. She can hear her father behind her, but she doesn’t understand what he is saying.
“I have to,” she says faintly.
The officer raises a hand and shakes his head.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you in,” he says.
“It’s my son.”
She feels her father’s arms around her, but tries to break free.
“He isn’t here, Simone.”
“Let go of me!”
She lurches forward and looks into a room with a mattress on the floor, piles of old comics, empty bags of crisps, cans and cereal boxes, pale blue overshoes, and a large, shiny axe.
54
sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): midday
In the car on the way back from Tumba, Simone listens to Kennet rant about the police and their lack of coordination. She says nothing, gazing out of the window as he complains. The streets are filled with families on their way somewhere. Mothers and their toddlers dressed in snowsuits, children trying to make their way through the slush on sledges. They wear the same backpacks. A group of girls with Lucia tinsel in their hair woven into shiny headbands eat something out of a small bag and laugh with delight.
More than twenty-four hours have passed since Benjamin was taken away from us, pulled out of his own bed and dragged out of his home, she thinks. She looks down at her hands. Ugly red marks from the handcuffs are still clearly visible.
There is nothing to indicate that Josef Ek is involved in Benjamin’s disappearance. There were no traces of Benjamin in the hidden room, only of Josef. It is more than likely that Josef was sitting in there when she and her father went down into the cellar. Realising they had discovered his hiding place, he must have reached for the axe as quietly as possible. And when the tumult erupted, when the police came storming down to the cellar and dragged her and Kennet upstairs, Josef had taken the opportunity to push the wardrobe aside, move the ladder over to the window, and climb out. He got away, he deceived the police, and he is still at large. A national alert has gone out.
But Josef Ek can’t have kidnapped Benjamin. They were simply two things that happened at approximately the same time, just as Erik has been trying to tell her.
“Are you coming?” asks Kennet.
She looks up and realises that they are parked outside their apartment block on Luntmakargatan and Kennet is repeating his question.
She unlocks the door and sees Benjamin’s coat hanging in the hall. Her heart leaps and she just has time to think that he must be home before she remembers that he was dragged out in his pyjamas.
Her father’s face is grey; again she registers how old he seems to have become. He says he’s going for a shower and disappears into the bathroom.
Simone leans against the wall and closes her eyes. If I can just have Benjamin back, she thinks, I will forget everything that has happened, that is happening, that will happen; I won’t talk about it, I won’t think about it, I won’t be angry with anyone, I’ll just be grateful.
She hears the water begin to run in the bathroom.
With a sigh she slides off her shoes, lets her jacket drop to the floor, and eases down onto the bed. Suddenly she cannot remember what she’s doing in the bedroom. Did she come in to get something or just to lie down and rest for a while? She feels the coolness of the sheets against the palm of her hand and sees Erik’s creased pyjama bottoms sticking out from under the pillow.
Just as the shower stops running she remembers what she was going to do. She was going to get a clean towel for her father and then try to find something on Benjamin’s computer that could be linked to his abduction. She takes a bath towel out of the cupboard and goes back into the hall just as the bathroom door opens and Kennet emerges, fully dressed.
“Towel,” she says.
“I used the small one.”
His hair is damp and smells of lavender. She realises he must have used the cheap soap in the pump dispenser by the washbasin.
“Did you wash your hair with soap?” she asks.
“It smelled nice,” he replies.
“There is shampoo, Dad.”
“Same thing.”
“Fine,” she says with a smile, deciding not to tell him what the small hand towel is used for.
“I’ll make some coffee,” says Kennet, heading for the kitchen.
Simone drops the bath towel on the sideboard and goes into Benjamin’s room, where she sits at the desk and switches on the computer. She needs to clean up in here. The bedclothes on the floor and the water glass lying on its side remind her, stabbingly, of the abduction.
The welcome melody from the computer’s operating system rings out, Simone places her hand on the mouse, waits a few seconds, then clicks on the miniature picture of Benjamin’s face to log in.
The computer requests a user name and password. Simone types in BENJAMIN, takes a deep breath, and writes DUMBLEDORE.
55
sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): midday
Benjamin’s computer screen flickers, like an eye closing and then opening. She’s in.
A photograph of a deer in a forest glade fills the desktop screen. The greenery is bathed in a magical dewy light. The shy animal seems totally calm at this particular moment. Despite the fact that Simone knows she is intruding into Benjamin’s private space, it’s as if something of him is suddenly close to her again.
“You’re a genius,” she hears her father say behind her.
“I’m not,” she replies.
Kennet places one hand on her shoulder, and she launches the e-mail programme.
“How far back should we go?” she asks.
“We’ll go through everything.”
She scrolls through the inbox, opening message after message. A classmate has a question about a portfolio. A school group project is discussed. Someone claims Benjamin has won four million euros in a Spanish lottery.
Kennet disappears and returns with two mugs of coffee. “Best drink in the world, c
offee,” he says, sitting down. “How the hell did you manage to crack the computer?”
She shrugs diffidently and takes a sip of coffee. But she can’t bring herself to tell him that Erik provided her with the password.
“I’ll have to call my computer friend and tell him we don’t need his help. He’s too slow!”
She moves through the list, opening a message from Aida, who tells him all about a bad film in an amusing way, saying that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a lobotomised Shrek.
The weekly bulletin from school. A warning from the bank about the importance of not revealing details of your account to anyone. Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.
Simone logs onto Benjamin’s Facebook page. There are hundreds of inquiries featuring the group hypno monkey. Every comment has to do with Erik, various sneering theories that Benjamin has been hypnotised into being a nerd, evidence that Erik has hypnotised the entire Swedish nation, one person demanding compensation because Erik has hypnotised his cock.
There is a link to a clip on YouTube. Simone follows it and finds a short film titled Asshole. The sound track features a researcher describing how serious hypnosis works, while the film shows Erik pushing past a number of people. He happens to bump into an elderly woman using a wheeled walker, and she gives him the finger behind his back.
Simone goes back to Benjamin’s e-mail inbox and finds a short note from Aida that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. There is something about these few words that make a formless fear begin to rise up in her stomach. Her palms are suddenly sweaty. She turns the screen toward Kennet.
“Read this, Dad.”
Nicky says Wailord is angry and has opened his mouth against you. I think this could be really dangerous, Benjamin.
“Nicky is Aida’s younger brother,” says Simone.
“And Wailord?” asks Kennet, taking a deep breath. “Do you know about this?”
Simone shakes her head. The fear inside her is so dark, so dense, it feels as if it’s made of marble. What does she actually know about Benjamin’s life?
“I think Wailord is the name of a Pokémon character,” she says.
Simone clicks on the SENT folder and finds Benjamin’s agitated response:
Nicky has to stay indoors. Don’t let him go down to the sea. If Wailord is really angry, one of us is in trouble. We should have gone to the police straight away. I think it’s too dangerous to do it now.
“Fuck,” says Kennet.
“I don’t know if this is genuine or if it’s part of a game.”
“It doesn’t sound like a game.”
“No.”
Kennet lets out a long breath and scratches his stomach. “Aida and Nicky,” he says slowly. “What kind of people are they, then?”
Simone looks at her father and wonders how to answer him. He would never understand a person like Aida: a girl who always dresses in black, wears lots of make-up, has piercings and tattoos, and whose home circumstances are peculiar to say the least.
“Aida is Benjamin’s girlfriend,” says Simone. “And Nicky is her younger brother. There’s a picture of her and Benjamin somewhere.”
She finds Benjamin’s wallet and digs out the picture of Aida. Benjamin has his arm round her shoulders. Aida looks slightly uncomfortable, but Benjamin is laughing into the camera, his expression relaxed.
“But what kind of people are they?” asks Kennet stubbornly, looking at Aida’s face with its harsh make-up.
“What kind of people?” she says slowly. “I don’t really know. I just know that Benjamin is extremely fond of her. And she seems to take good care of her brother. I think he’s got some kind of learning disability.”
“Aggressive?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Benjamin writes about a real threat,” Kennet says, “but Wailord doesn’t really exist.”
56
sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): midday
Kennet folds his arms. He leans back and looks up at the ceiling. Then he straightens up and says in a serious tone, “So Wailord is a cartoon character?”
“A Pokémon,” she replies.
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“If you have children of a certain age, you know about it whether you want to or not,” she says.
Kennet is looking blankly at her.
“Pokémon,” Simone repeats. “It’s a kind of game.”
“A game?”
“It was something Benjamin loved when he was younger. He used to collect the cards and talk about the different powers, about how the characters transformed themselves.”
Kennet shakes his head.
“He must have been into it for about two years,” she says.
“But not any more?”
“He’s a bit too old now.”
“I used to see you playing with dolls when you came home from riding camp.”
“Well, who knows, maybe he plays in secret,” she replies.
“So what’s it all about, this Pokémon?”
“How can I explain? It’s Japanese, originally. It became really popular in the nineties. A whole industry, really. The characters are pocket monsters. They’re animals but not real animals. They’re invented; they can look like insects or robots, something along those lines. Some of them are cute, others are just revolting. The person playing keeps them in his pocket; they can be rolled up and placed in little balls. The whole thing is really stupid. You compete against other players by arranging fights between your different Pokémons. Very violently, of course. Anyway, the goal is to beat as many as possible, because then you get money—the player gets money, the Pokémon character gets points.”
“And the one with the most points is the winner?” says Kennet.
“I don’t actually know. It never seems to end.”
“So this is a computer game?”
“It’s everything, Dad. Computer game, Nintendo, a TV show, a movie, stuffed toys, sweets, trading cards.”
“I don’t know if I’m really any the wiser,” he says.
“No,” she says hesitantly.
He studies her. “What are you thinking?”
“I’ve just realised that’s exactly the point: adults are to be excluded,” she says. “The kids are ignored, left to their own devices, because we can’t understand. We dismiss it, call it stupid, but really the Pokémon world is too big, too complex for us.”
“Do you think Benjamin has started playing again?” asks Kennet.
“Not in the same way. This must be something else,” she says, pointing at the screen.
“You think this Wailord is a real person,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Who has nothing to do with Pokémon?”
“I don’t know … Aida’s brother talked to me about Wailord as if he was talking about a Pokémon. Perhaps that’s just his way of talking. As I said, he’s a little … off. But everything is cast in a different light when Benjamin writes Don’t let Nicky go down to the sea.”
“It does sound as if Benjamin’s taking the threat seriously,” says Kennet.
“But the sea,” she says. “What sea? There is no sea here, it only exists in the game. The sea is pretend, but the threat is genuine,” she says thoughtfully.
“We have to find this Wailord.”
“It could be a Lunar,” she says hesitantly. “Or an Avatar, or something.”
He looks at her with a small smile. “I’m beginning to understand why it was time for me to retire.”
“Lunar is an identity on a chat page,” Simone explains, moving closer to the screen. “I’ll do a search for Wailord.”
The result gives 85,000 hits. Kennet goes into the kitchen, and she hears the sound of the police radio being turned up. Crackling and hissing is mixed with human voices.
She skims through page after page of Japanese Pokémon material.
Wailord is the largest of all identified Pokémon up to now. This giant Pokémon swi
ms in the open sea, eating massive amounts of food at once with its enormous mouth.
“There’s your sea,” says Kennet quietly, reading over her shoulder.
She didn’t hear him come back.
The text describes how Wailord chases its prey and herds them by making a gigantic leap and landing in the middle of the shoal. It is terrible, Simone reads, to see Wailord swallow its prey in one gulp.
She refines the search by requesting only pages written in Swedish and enters a forum where she finds a conversation:
Hi, how do you get a Wailord?
If you want to get a Wailord, the easiest thing is to catch a Wailmer somewhere out at sea.
OK, but where?
Almost anywhere, as long as you use Super Rod.
“Anything useful?” asks Kennet.
“This could take a while.”
“Go through all his messages, check the trash, and try to track down this Wailord.”
She looks up and sees that Kennet has his leather jacket on.
“I’m off,” he says briefly.
“Off where? Home?”
“I need to talk to Nicky and Aida.”
“Shall I come with you?” she asks.
Kennet shakes his head. “It’s better if you’re the one who goes through the computer.”
Kennet tries to summon up a smile as she walks to the door with him. He looks very tired. She gives him a hug before he goes, locks up behind him, and hears him press the button for the lift.
She walks into the kitchen and sees a brioche sitting on the flattened paper bag it came in, a slice cut from it. The coffee machine is still on, but there is only a dark sediment in the bottom of the pot.
The smell of burnt coffee mingles with a sense of panic over the feeling that her life has been divided into two acts and that the first act, the happy one, has just ended. She can’t bring herself to think about Act Two. Outside the window lies the December darkness. It looks windy. The traffic signals, suspended over the junctions, swing back and forth, and wet snowflakes are falling through the light.
She finds a deleted message from Aida: I feel sorry for you, living in a house of lies. The message has a large attachment. Simone feels the pulse at her temples beating faster. Just as she is about to click open the file, there is a tentative knock at the front door. It is almost a scraping sound. She holds her breath, hears another knock, and stands up. Her legs feel weak as she begins to walk down the long passage leading to the hall and the outside door.
