Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle

by Lars Kepler

  “There is actually nothing that is wrong,” she said, and took his hand in both of hers.

  Sibel and Pierre came back. Everyone was quiet and subdued. Charlotte looked very fragile. Her slender arms were crossed over her chest; her hands were on her shoulders.

  I changed the tape in the video camera, gave the date and time, and explained that everyone was still in a post-hypnotic state. I looked through the lens, raised the tripod a fraction, and refocused the camera. Then I straightened the chairs and asked the group to sit down again.

  “Let’s continue,” I said.

  There was a sudden knock at the door and Eva Blau walked in. I could see instantly that she was under stress and went over to greet her.

  “Welcome,” I said.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  Eva Blau sat down on the empty chair and clamped her hands firmly between her thighs. I went back to my place and carefully introduced the second session.

  “Please get comfortable. Let’s keep our feet on the floor, hands on our knees. The first part didn’t quite turn out as I expected.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Charlotte.

  “Nobody need apologise, least of all you; I hope you understand.”

  Eva Blau was staring at me the whole time.

  “We’re going to begin with thoughts and associations from the first session,” I said. “Would anyone like to comment?”

  “Confusing,” said Sibel.

  “Frus … tra … ting,” said Jussi. “I mean, I only just had time to open my eyes and scratch my head, and it was all over.”

  “What did you feel?” I asked him.

  “Hair,” he answered, with a smile.

  “Hair?” asked Sibel, giggling.

  “When I scratched my noggin,” Jussi explained.

  Some of them laughed.

  “Let’s have some associations with hair,” I said, with a smile. “Charlotte?”

  “I don’t know. Hair? Beard, maybe … no.”

  Pierre interrupted her in his high voice. “A hippie, a hippie on a chopper,” he said with a smile. “He’s sitting like this, chewing a piece of Juicyfruit, and—”

  Suddenly Eva got up with such a violent movement that the chair banged behind her. “This is just childish nonsense,” she said angrily, pointing at Pierre.

  “Why do you feel that way?” I asked.

  Eva didn’t reply, she merely met my gaze before sulkily flopping back down on her chair.

  “Pierre, would you continue, please,” I said calmly.

  He shook his head, forming a cross with his index fingers and pointing them at Eva, pretending to protect himself against her.

  “They shot Dennis Hopper because he was a hippie,” he whispered conspiratorially.

  Sibel giggled even more loudly and glanced expectantly at me. Jussi raised his hand and turned to Eva.

  “In the haunted house you won’t have to listen to our childish nonsense,” he said, in his strong accent.

  The room fell completely silent. It occurred to me that Eva had no way of knowing what the haunted house meant to our group, but I left it.

  Eva Blau turned to Jussi. It looked as if she were going to yell something at him, but he simply gazed back at her with such a calm, serious expression that she appeared to change her mind and settled back down.

  “Eva, we begin with relaxation exercises and breathing and then I hypnotise you, one by one or in pairs,” I explained. “Of course, everyone participates all the time, regardless of the level of consciousness on which you find yourself.”

  An ironic smile passed over Eva’s face.

  “And sometimes,” I went on, “if I feel it will work, I try to put the whole group into a deep hypnosis.”

  I pulled up my chair and asked them to close their eyes and lean back. “Your feet should be on the floor, your hands should be resting on your lap,” I repeated.

  As I gently led them deeper into a state of relaxation, I decided to begin by investigating Eva Blau’s secret rooms. It was important for her to make some contribution soon, in order to be accepted by the group. I counted backwards and listened to their breathing, immersing them in a light hypnotic state and leaving them just beneath the silvery surface of the water.

  “Eva, I am speaking only to you,” I said. “You should feel safe and relaxed. Just listen to my voice and follow my words. Follow my words spontaneously all the time. Do not question them. You are amid their flow, not anticipating, not analysing, but right here in the moment the whole time.”

  We were sinking through grey water, falling down into the dark depths past a thick rope, a hawser festooned with swaying ribbons of seaweed. I looked up and glimpsed the rest of the group dangling there with the tops of their heads brushing the rippling mirror.

  At the same time, I was actually standing behind Eva Blau’s chair with one hand on her shoulder, speaking calmly, my voice growing softer. She was leaning back, her face relaxed.

  In my own trance, the water around her was sometimes brown, sometimes grey. Her face lay in shadow, her mouth tightly closed. Her brow was furrowed, but her gaze was completely blank. Lars Ohlson’s notes contained almost nothing about her background, so I decided to try a cautious entry strategy. Evoking a calm and happy time ironically often proves to be the quickest way into the most difficult areas.

  “You are ten years old, Eva,” I said, coming around so that I could observe her from the front.

  Her chest was barely moving; she was breathing calmly, gently, from down in her diaphragm.

  “You are ten years old, Eva. This is a good day. You are happy. Why are you happy?”

  Eva pouted sweetly, smiled to herself, and said, “Because the man is dancing and splashing in the puddles.”

  “Who’s dancing?” I asked.

  “Who?” She didn’t speak for a moment. “Gene Kelly, Mummy says.”

  “Oh, so you’re watching Singin’ in the Rain?”

  A slow nod.

  “What happens?”

  I saw her face slowly sink towards her chest. Suddenly a strange expression flitted across her lips.

  “My tummy is big,” she said, almost inaudibly.

  “Your tummy?”

  “It’s huge,” she said, with tears in her voice.

  Jussi was breathing heavily beside her. From the corner of my eye I could see that he was moving his lips.

  “The haunted house,” he whispered, in his state of light hypnosis. “The haunted house.”

  “Eva, listen to me,” I said. “You can hear everyone else in this room, but you must listen only to my voice. Pay no attention to what the others say, pay attention only to my voice.”

  “OK,” she said, her expression contented.

  “Do you know why your tummy is big?” I asked.

  “I want to go into the haunted house,” she whispered.

  I counted backwards, suggesting the staircase that led ever downwards. As I counted, I was thinking that something wasn’t right. I myself was immersed in pleasantly warm water, as I slowly drifted down past the rock face, deeper and deeper.

  Eva Blau lifted her chin, moistened her lips, sucked in her cheeks, and whispered, “I can see them taking someone. They just come up and take someone.”

  “Who’s taking someone?” I asked.

  Her breathing became irregular. Her face grew darker. Brown, cloudy water drifted in front of her.

  “A man with a ponytail. He’s hanging the little person up on the ceiling,” she whimpered.

  She was clutching the hawser with the billowing seaweed tightly with one hand; her legs were paddling slowly.

  Something wasn’t right. With an effortful thrust I pushed myself outside the hypnosis. Eva Blau was faking. I was absolutely certain that she wasn’t under hypnosis. She had resisted, blocked my suggestion. She’s lying, she isn’t under hypnosis at all, my brain whispered coldly.

  She was throwing herself back and forth on her chair. “The man is pulling and pul
ling at the little person, he’s pulling too hard.” Suddenly she met my gaze and stopped moving. Her lips distended in a wide, ugly grin. “Was I good?” she asked me.

  I didn’t reply. I just watched as she stood up, took her coat from the hook, and calmly walked out of the room.

  I wrote the haunted house on a piece of paper, wrapped it around tape number 14, and secured it with a rubber band. But instead of archiving the tape as usual, I took it to my office. I wanted to analyse Eva Blau’s lie and my own reaction, but I was still in the hall when I realised what had been wrong all along: Eva had been aware of her face and had tried to look sweet; she had not had the listless, open face that those under hypnosis always have. A person under hypnosis can smile, but it isn’t their usual smile, it’s a somnolent, slack smile.

  As I turned the corner leading to my office, I saw Maja Swartling waiting outside my door. I surprised myself by remembering her name. When she caught sight of me, her face lit up and she waved.

  “Sorry to keep bothering you like this,” she said quickly, “but since I’m basing part of my dissertation on your research, my advisor suggested that I interview you.” She looked at me intently.

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Is it all right if I ask you a few questions?” she asked.

  Suddenly she looked like a little girl: wide awake but unsure of herself. Her eyes were very dark, set off against the milky glow of her fair skin. She wore her shiny hair in looped braids: an old-fashioned hairstyle, but it suited her.

  “Is it all right?” she repeated softly. “You have no idea how persistent I can be.”

  I realised I was standing there smiling. There was something so bright and healthy about her. She laughed and gave me a lingering, satisfied look. I unlocked the door and she followed me into the office, settled down in the visitor’s chair, and took out a notepad and pen.

  “What would you like to ask me?”

  Maja blushed deeply and sat, then began to talk.

  “I’ve read your reports,” she said, “and your hypnosis group is made up not only of victims, people who have been subjected to some kind of abuse, but also perpetrators, those who have done terrible things to others.”

  “You have to understand that sometimes the level of coercion is so great that a person is forced to commit terrible acts. The victim becomes the perpetrator through the very process of victimisation. In any event, for patients like this, it works the same way in the subconscious, and in the context of group therapy this is in fact a resource.”

  “Interesting,” she said, taking more notes. “I want to come back to that, but what I’d like to know now is how the perpetrator sees himself or herself during hypnosis—after all, you do put forward the idea that the victim often replaces the perpetrator with something else, like an animal.”

  “I haven’t had time to investigate how perpetrators see themselves, and I don’t want to speculate.”

  Maja leaned forward, lips pursed. “But you’ve got an idea?”

  “I have a patient, for example, who—” I fell silent, thinking of Jussi Persson, the man from Norrland who carried his loneliness like a dreadful self-imposed weight.

  “What were you going to say?”

  “Under hypnosis this patient returns to a hunting tower. It’s as if the gun is in control of him; he shoots deer and simply leaves them lying there.”

  We sat in silence, looking at each other.

  “It’s getting late,” I said.

  “I still have a lot of questions.”

  I waved my hand. “We’ll have to meet again.”

  She looked at me. My body suddenly felt strangely hot as I noticed a faint flush rising on her pale skin. There was something mischievous between us, a mixture of seriousness and the desire to laugh.

  “Can I buy you a drink to say thank you? There’s a really nice Lebanese—”

  She stopped abruptly as the telephone rang. I apologised and picked it up.

  “Erik?” It was Simone, sounding stressed.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I … I’m out in back, on the bike path. It looks like someone’s broken into our home.”

  An ice-cold shudder ran through me. I thought about the ferrule that had been left outside our door, the old instrument of punishment.

  “What happened?”

  I heard Simone swallow hard. Some children were playing in the background; they might have been up on the football pitch. I heard the sound of a whistle and screams.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Nothing, a class of schoolchildren,” she said firmly. “Erik, Benjamin’s veranda door is open and the window has been smashed.”

  Maja Swartling stood and pointed at the door, asking if she should go. I nodded briefly, with an apologetic shrug. She bumped into the chair, which scraped along the floor.

  “Are you alone?” asked Simone.

  “Yes,” I said, without knowing why I was lying.

  Maja waved and closed the door soundlessly behind her. I could still smell her perfume.

  “It’s just as well you didn’t go inside,” I went on. “Have you called the police?”

  “Erik, you sound funny. Has something happened?”

  “You mean apart from the fact that there might be a burglar inside our house right now? Have you called the police?”

  “Yes, I called Dad.”

  “Good.”

  “He said he was on his way.”

  “Move further away from the house, Simone.”

  “I’m standing on the bike path.”

  “Can you still see the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you can see the house, anyone inside the house can see you.”

  “Stop it!” she said.

  “Please, Simone, go up to the football pitch. I’m on my way home.”

  I stopped behind Kennet’s dirty Opel and got out of the car. Kennet came running toward me, his expression tense.

  “Where the hell is Sixan?” he shouted.

  “I told her to wait on the football pitch.”

  “Good, I was afraid she’d—”

  “She would have gone inside otherwise, I know her; she takes after you.”

  He laughed and hugged me tightly. “Good to see you, kid.”

  We set off around the block, to get to the back. Simone was standing not far from our garden. Presumably she had been keeping an eye on the broken veranda door the whole time; it led straight to our shady patio. She looked up, left her bike, came straight over and gave me a hug, and looked over my shoulder. “Hi, Dad.”

  “I’m going in,” he said, his tone serious.

  “I’m coming with you,” I said.

  Simone sighed. “Women and children wait outside.”

  All three of us stepped over the low potentilla hedge and walked across the grass to the patio, with its white plastic table and four plastic chairs.

  Shards of glass covered the step and the doorsill. On the wall-to-wall carpet in Benjamin’s room, a large stone lay among fragments and shards. As we went in, I reminded myself to tell Kennet about the ferrule that we’d found outside our door.

  Simone followed us and switched on the ceiling light. Her face was glowing, and her strawberry-blonde hair hung down in curls over her shoulders.

  Kennet went into the hall, looked into the bedroom on the right, and into the bathroom. The reading lamp in the TV room was on. In the kitchen, a chair lay on its side on the floor. We went from room to room, but nothing seemed to be missing. In the downstairs bathroom, the toilet paper had been yanked violently off the roll and lay strewn across the floor.

  Kennet looked at me with an odd expression. “Do you have any unfinished business with anyone?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Not as far as I know,” I said. “Obviously, I meet a lot of damaged people in my work. Just like you.”

  He nodded.

  “They haven’t taken anything,” I said.

  “Is that
normal, Dad?” asked Simone.

  Kennet shook his head. “It isn’t normal, not if they break a window. Somebody wanted you to know they’d been here.”

  Simone was standing in the doorway of Benjamin’s room. “It looks as if someone has been lying in his bed,” she said quietly. “What’s the name of that fable? Goldilocks, isn’t it?”

  We hurried into our bedroom and saw that somebody had been lying in our bed too. The bedspread had been pulled down and the sheets were crumpled.

  “This is pretty weird,” said Kennet.

  There was silence for a little while.

  “The ferrule!” Simone exclaimed.

  “Exactly. I thought about it and then I forgot,” I said. I went into the hall and got it from the stand.

  “My God,” said Kennet. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was a boy.”

  “It was outside our door yesterday,” said Simone.

  “Let me have a look,” said Kennet.

  “They used to use it for corporal punishment,” I said.

  “I know what it is,” said Kennet, running his hand over it.

  “I don’t like this at all. The whole thing feels creepy,” said Simone.

  “Has anyone threatened you, or have you experienced anything that could be construed as a threat?”

  “No,” she replied.

  “But perhaps that’s how we should regard it,” I said. “Perhaps someone thinks we should be punished. I thought maybe it was just a bad joke, because we coddle Benjamin so much. I mean, if you didn’t know about Benjamin’s illness, we’d seem pretty neurotic.”

  Simone went straight to the telephone and called Benjamin’s nursery school to check that he was all right.

  That evening we put Benjamin to bed early; as usual, I lay down beside him and told him the entire plot of a children’s film about an African boy. Benjamin had watched it many times and almost always wanted me to tell him the story when he settled down to go to sleep. If I forgot the smallest detail he would remind me, and if he was still awake when I got to the end, Simone got to sing lullabies.

  That night, he fell asleep easily. I made a pot of tea, and Simone and I settled down to watch a video. But neither of us could focus on the movie, so I paused the machine and we talked about the break-in, reassuring ourselves with the fact that nothing was stolen; someone had just unrolled the toilet paper and messed up our beds.