by Lars Kepler
“But you helped Charlotte,” Joona says.
“So it seems,” Erik says quietly.
Just after a traffic circle, they bump over a railroad crossing, turn off to the left at a playing field, drive across a river, and stop outside a large grey apartment building.
Joona points to the glove compartment. “Would you pass me my gun, please.”
Erik opens the compartment and hands over the heavy weapon. Joona checks the barrel and the magazine and makes sure the safety catch is on before slipping the gun into his pocket.
They walk quickly across the parking lot, passing a playground with swings, a sandpit, and a jungle gym.
Erik points out the way to the main door; he looks up and sees flashing Christmas decorations and satellite dishes on virtually every balcony.
An old woman is standing inside the locked door, leaning on a wheeled walker. Joona knocks and waves cheerily. She looks at them and shakes her head. Joona shows her his ID through the glass, but she just shakes her head again. Erik rummages in his pockets and finds an envelope containing a receipt he was supposed to hand in to the finance office. He walks up to the glass, taps on it, and holds up the envelope. The woman immediately moves over to the door and presses the button to release the electrical lock.
“Is it the mail?” she asks shakily.
“Express delivery,” Erik replies.
“There’s so much sobbing and screaming in here,” the woman whispers towards the wall.
“What did you say?” asks Joona.
Erik looks at the list of names and finds Veronica Andersson on the second floor. The narrow staircase is covered with graffiti. A rank smell comes from the rubbish chute. The fluorescent fixture overhead flickers. They locate the right door and Joona rings the bell. Muddy footprints from children’s boots lead up and down the stairs.
No response.
“Try again,” says Erik.
Joona pushes open the letter box and shouts that he has a letter from The Watchtower. Erik sees the detective’s head jerk back, as if he has been hit by a blast wave.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but I want you to wait outside,” says Joona, his expression strained in the flickering light.
“No.”
“I’m going in alone.”
Something crashes to the floor in one of the neighbouring apartments. Joona reaches out and tries the door. It isn’t locked. A powerful smell surges out as the door swings open. Joona draws his gun and gestures sharply to Erik to stay where he is.
79
wednesday, december 16: afternoon
Erik clamps a hand to his nose and mouth. His heart pounds in his chest and the blood rushes to his ears. The stillness within is horribly ominous. Benjamin can’t be here. The lights in the stairwell go out altogether, and darkness surrounds him. Suddenly Joona is standing in front of him again.
“I think you’re going to have to come in, Erik,” he says.
They go inside and Joona switches on the main light. The bathroom door is wide open. The smell of decay is unbearable. Eva Blau is lying in the empty shower stall. Her face is swollen, and flies are crawling around her mouth and buzzing in the air. Her blue blouse has worked its way up; her stomach is distended and bluish green. Deep black incisions run along both her arms. The fabric of her blouse and her blonde hair have stuck fast to the coagulated blood. Her skin is pale grey, and a brown network of veins is clearly visible all over her body. The stagnant blood has rotted inside the vascular system. Piles of small yellow eggs laid by flies can be seen in the corners of her eyes and around her mouth and nostrils. The blood has overflowed the drain and trickled onto the small bath mat, the edges of which have darkened in colour. A blood-stained kitchen knife is lying in the bath beside the body.
“Is that her?” asks Joona.
“Yes. That’s Eva.”
“She’s been dead for at least a week. The stomach has had time to swell up significantly.”
“I realise that,” Erik replies.
“So she wasn’t the one who took Benjamin,” Joona states.
“I need to think,” says Erik. “I was so sure.”
He looks out the window. There is a low brick building on the other side of the railroad tracks. Eva could see the Kingdom Hall from her window. He thinks that probably made her feel more secure.
80
thursday, december 17: morning
Simone tastes blood. She has bitten her lower lip without noticing. She sits beside her father’s bed in a dim room at St Göran’s Hospital. He has been lying here for days while the doctors try to establish how badly hurt he is. All she knows for certain is that Kennet was hit by a car, and the impact could have killed him. Her headache is a steel ball, rolling around inside her head. She has lost Erik, she may have lost Benjamin, and now it’s possible she could lose her father, too.
She doesn’t know how many times she’s done it already, but just to be on the safe side she gets her mobile phone out, checks that it’s working, and returns it to the outside pocket of her bag, where it will be easy to get hold of, on the outside chance that it should ring.
She leans over her father and straightens the covers. He is sleeping, but there isn’t a sound. She’s always struck by this: Kennet Sträng is probably the only man in the world who doesn’t make a noise when he’s asleep.
His head is bound in a chalk-white bandage, from beneath which a dark shadow creeps out, an aubergine-coloured bruise that extends down across one cheek. He looks terrible: the bruising, the pale grey complexion, the swollen nose, the mouth drooping at one corner.
But he isn’t dead, she thinks. He’s alive. And Benjamin is alive, too; she knows it, he has to be.
She gets up and paces back and forth. She thinks about the conversation she’d had with her father the other day, just as she’d gotten home from Sim Shulman’s apartment, just before the accident. He’d told her he’d found Wailord and was going to a place called “the sea,” somewhere out on Loudden.
She looks at her father again. His sleep is so deep.
“Dad?”
She immediately regrets speaking. He doesn’t wake, but a troubled expression flits across his face like a cloud. Simone cautiously touches the wound on her lower lip. Her gaze falls on the Advent candles in the window. Some Christmas this year, she thinks. She looks at her shoes in their blue plastic protectors. The headache pounds against her temples. She shudders and pulls her cardigan more tightly around her, although she isn’t cold. She thinks about an afternoon many years ago, when she and Kennet watched her mother wave and then disappear in her little green Fiat.
Suddenly Kennet gives a low groan.
“Daddy,” she says, like a little child.
He opens his eyes. They seem unfocused, not fully awake. The white of one eye is covered in blood.
“Daddy, it’s me,” says Simone. “How are you feeling?”
His gaze wanders past her. She’s suddenly afraid that he can’t see.
“Sixan?”
“I’m here, Dad.”
She sits down beside him and gently takes his hand. His eyes close again, his eyebrows contract as if he is in pain.
“Dad,” she asks again, “how are you feeling?”
He tries to pat her on the hand, but he can’t quite manage it. “I’ll soon be on my feet,” he wheezes. “Don’t you worry about me.”
Silence. Simone tries to keep her thoughts at bay, to ward off the anxiety hurtling toward her. She doesn’t want to put any pressure on him in this state, but panic forces her to make an attempt.
“Dad?” she asks tentatively. “Do you remember what we were talking about just before the accident?”
He peers wearily at her and shakes his head.
“You said you knew where Wailord was. You talked about the sea. You said you were going to the sea.”
Kennet’s eyes flicker. He tries to sit up but falls back with a groan.
“Dad, tell me, I have to know wh
ere it is. Who’s Wailord? Who is he?”
He opens his mouth, his chin trembling as he answers. “A … child … It’s … a child.”
“What are you saying?”
But Kennet has closed his eyes and no longer seems able to hear her. Simone goes over to the window and looks out at the hospital complex. She can feel a cold draft. There is a strip of dirt along the glass. When she breathes on it, she can see the impression of someone else’s face in the mist for a brief moment. Someone else has stood in this exact spot, leaning against the windowpane.
The church on the opposite side of the street is in darkness, the streetlamps reflected in its black arched windows. She thinks about Benjamin’s message to Aida, telling her not to let Nicky go to the sea.
“Aida,” she says aloud. “I’ll go and see Aida, and this time she’s going to tell me everything.”
81
thursday, december 17: morning
It is Nicky who opens the door when Simone rings the bell. He looks at her in surprise.
“Hi, Nicky,” she says.
“I’ve got some new cards,” he tells her eagerly.
“That’s great,” she says.
“They’re girl cards, but lots of them are really strong.”
“Is your sister in?” Simone asks, patting Nicky on the arm.
“Aida! Aida!” Nicky runs off down the dark hall and disappears inside the apartment.
Simone waits in the hallway. Then she hears a strange pumping noise, something rattles faintly, and after a while she sees an emaciated, stooping woman coming toward her. She is pulling a small trolley behind her with an oxygen tank mounted on it. A hose runs from the tank to the woman, pumping oxygen into her nostrils through thin, transparent plastic tubes.
The woman taps her chest with a tiny clenched fist. “Em … physema,” she wheezes. Her wrinkled face contracts in a painful, debilitating bout of coughing.
When she eventually stops, she gestures to Simone to come in. They walk together through the long, dark hallway until they reach a living room full of heavy furniture. On the floor, between a stereo system with glass doors and a low television unit, Nicky is playing with his Pokémon cards. Aida is sitting on the brown sofa, which has been squeezed in between two large indoor palms.
Simone barely recognises her. She isn’t wearing a scrap of make-up. Her face is sweet and very young. Her hair has been brushed until it shines and is caught up in a neat ponytail. If not for the cigarette she holds in a trembling hand, she would look like a child.
“Hello, Aida,” says Simone. “How are you doing?”
Aida shrugs her shoulders. She looks as if she’s been crying. She takes a drag on her cigarette and lifts a green saucer up towards the glowing tip, as if she’s afraid of dropping ash on the furniture.
“Sit … down,” her mother wheezes to Simone, who perches on one of two wide armchairs crammed in beside the sofa, the table, and the palms.
Aida taps the ash onto the green saucer.
“I’ve just come from the hospital,” Simone says. “My father was hit by a car. He was on his way to the sea, to Wailord.”
Nicky suddenly lurches to his feet. His face is bright red. “Wailord is angry, very angry, very angry.”
Simone turns to Aida, who swallows hard and then closes her eyes.
“What’s all this about?” Simone asks. “Who’s Wailord? What’s going on?”
Aida stubs out her cigarette, then says unsteadily, “They’ve disappeared.”
“Who?”
“A gang who used to be horrible to us. Nicky and me. They were terrible, they were going to mark me, they were going to make—” She falls silent and looks at her mother, who makes a snorting sound. “They were going to make a bonfire … of Mum,” Aida says slowly.
“Shit … fuck,” wheezes her mother from the other armchair.
“They use Pokémon names; they’re called Azelf, Magmortar, or Lucario. Sometimes they change the names. You never know what they’re doing.”
“How many of them are there?”
“I don’t know, maybe only five,” she replies. “They’re just kids; the oldest is about my age, the youngest is only about six. But they decided that everybody who lives here had to give them something,” says Aida, looking Simone in the eye for the first time. Her eyes are the colour of amber, beautiful, clear, but full of fear. “The little ones had to give them sweets or pens,” she goes on in her thin voice. “They gave them all their money so they wouldn’t get beaten up. Others gave them their stuff: mobile phones, Nintendo games. They took my jacket, they took cigarettes. And Nicky—they just used to beat Nicky up; they took everything he had, they were so horrible to him.”
Her voice dies away and tears spring to her eyes.
“Did they take Benjamin?”
Aida’s mother waves her hand. “That … boy … is … no … good.”
“Answer me, Aida,” Simone says sharply. “You’re going to give me an answer!”
“Don’t … shout … at … my … daughter,” her mother hisses.
Simone ignores the shrunken woman and says, even more firmly this time, “You’re going to tell me what you know, do you hear me?”
Aida swallows hard. “I don’t know much,” she says eventually. “Benjamin stepped in, told us we shouldn’t give those kids anything. Wailord went crazy; he said it was a declaration of war and demanded loads of money from us.”
She lights a fresh cigarette, takes a drag, carefully taps the ash onto the green saucer, then goes on.
“When Wailord found out about Benjamin’s disease, he gave the others needles to scratch him with.” The girl stops and shrugs her shoulders.
“What happened?” Simone asks harshly.
Aida bites her lips and removes a flake of tobacco from her tongue.
“What happened?”
“Wailord just stopped,” she whispers. “Suddenly he was gone. I’ve seen the other kids around; they went after Nicky just the other day. Now they’re following someone who calls himself Ariados, but it’s not the same. They’re confused and desperate since Wailord disappeared.”
“When was this? When did Wailord disappear?”
Aida considers the question. “I think … I think it was last Wednesday. Three days before Benjamin disappeared.” Her mouth begins to tremble. “Wailord’s taken him,” she whispers. “Wailord’s done something terrible to him. And now he’s hiding out.”
She begins to sob, loudly and convulsively. Her mother gets to her feet with difficulty, takes the cigarette out of her hand, and slowly stubs it out on the green saucer.
“Fucking … monstrosity,” wheezes her mother.
Simone has no idea who she’s talking about. “Who is he?” she asks again. “What’s Wailord’s real name? You have to tell me who he is.”
“I don’t know,” yells Aida. “I don’t know!”
Simone takes out the photograph of the patch of grass and the bushes in front of a brown fence.
“I found this on Benjamin’s computer,” she says firmly.
Aida looks at the print-out, her face blank.
“Where is this?” Simone asks.
Aida shrugs her shoulders and glances briefly at her mother. “Haven’t a clue,” she says tonelessly, handing it back.
“But you sent it to him,” Simone says angrily. “It came from you, Aida.”
The girl’s eyes slide away, seeking out her mother once again, sitting with the hissing oxygen tank at her feet.
Simone waves the sheet of paper in front of her face. “Look at it, Aida. Look again. Why did you send this to my son?”
“It was just a joke,” she whispers.
“A joke?”
Aida nods. “Would you like to live here, Benjamin? Something like that,” she says feebly.
“I don’t believe you,” Simone says doggedly. “Tell me the truth!”
Aida’s mother struggles to her feet again and waves at Simone. “Get out of my house. You people th
ink you can come in here and say whatever the hell you want to whoever the hell you want.”
“Why are you lying?” Simone asks, as Aida finally meets her gaze.
The girl looks deeply unhappy. “Sorry,” she says in a small voice. “Sorry.”
On her way out, Simone meets Nicky. He’s standing in the darkness in the hallway, rubbing his eyes.
“I have no power. I’m a worthless Pokémon.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true,” Simone responds. “I’m sure you do have power.”
82
thursday, december 17: afternoon
When Simone gets back to Kennet’s room, he’s sitting up in bed. His face has a little more colour, and he wears a wry, self-satisfied expression, as if he’d known she was about to walk in.
She goes over, bends down, smiles, and gently presses her cheek against his.
“Do you know what I dreamed, Sixan?” he asks.
“No.”
“I dreamed about my father.”
“About Granddad?”
He laughs quietly. “Can you imagine? He was standing in his workshop with a big grin, sweating. My boy. That was all he said. I can still smell the diesel.” Kennet shakes his head cautiously.
Simone swallows. There’s a hard, painful lump in her throat. “Dad,” she whispers. “Do you remember what you were telling me just before the car hit you?”
He looks at her, his expression serious, and suddenly it’s as if a light has come on behind his sharp, intelligent eyes.
“Do you remember, Dad?”
“I remember everything.” He tries to get up, but moves too quickly and falls back onto the bed. “Help me, Simone,” he says impatiently. “We need to hurry, I can’t stay here.”
He runs his hand over his eyes, clears his throat, and extends his arms. “Grab hold of me,” he orders, and this time, with Simone’s help, he manages to sit up in bed and swing his legs over the side. He rests for a moment, breathing heavily.
