by Lars Kepler
She gasps and begins to back away. Her body feels as if it’s moving in the heavy water of a dream.
She’s immediately aware of how dangerous her situation is, but fear overwhelms her so she almost feels paralyzed.
Only the creaking of the floor startles her into running for her life.
The figure in the dark is heading for her.
She whirls around and runs as fast as she can with the sound of footfalls behind her. She slips on the rag rug and hits her shoulder against the wall, but she keeps running.
A soft voice urges her to stop, but she doesn’t. She runs faster and practically throws herself though the passageway.
Doors open and shut behind her.
She’s panicking as she races past the registration room and throws her hand against the wall to steady herself. The framed picture of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child falls from its hook and crashes onto the floor.
Elisabet has made it to the door to the outside and she grabs the handle, throws it open and runs out into the cool night air. She slips on the outside stairs and falls down onto her hip with one leg beneath her. Her ankle hurts so much she has to scream. She slides down to the ground, listening to the heavy steps in the hall behind her. She crawls for a stretch, losing her slippers. She gets up, moaning.
4
THE DOG IS BARKING AT HER. He’s running in circles around her, panting and whimpering. Elisabet limps away from the house and across the gravel driveway. The dog keeps barking, obviously upset. Elisabet knows there is no escape in the forest. It takes at least half an hour to drive to the next farm. There’s nowhere she can go. She swivels her head around, searching, and then limps behind the drying shed towards the old former brewery. She opens the door, hands shaking, goes inside, and pulls the door shut behind her.
She’s panting for breath and collapses to the ground. She searches her pockets for her mobile phone.
“Oh, God! Oh, God!”
Her hands are shaking too much and she drops the phone. The back flap opens and the battery falls out. She scrambles to pick up the pieces when she hears footsteps crunching on the gravel.
She holds her breath.
Her pulse pounds and throbs in her ears as she peers out of the low window.
The dog is barking right outside. Buster has followed her and now scratches frantically on the door, whimpering.
Elisabet creeps into the corner beside the masonry fireplace and tries to silence her breaths. She crouches down behind the woodpile and tries to force the battery back into her phone.
When the door to the brewery is flung open, Elisabet screams. She slides along the wall in panic but there’s nowhere for her to go.
She can see the boots, the shadowy figure, the twisted face and the raised hammer with its heft and dark shine.
She listens to the voice, nods and then covers her face with her hands.
The shadow pauses another moment and then rushes across the floor to knock her to the ground, holding her down and hitting her hard. Her forehead burns with the blow. Her sight is gone, and it hurts, but at the same time she can feel her own warm blood running over her ears and down the sides of her throat as if it were a caress.
The next blow targets the same spot. Her head is knocked askew and now the only thing she knows is how to draw oxygen into her lungs.
Confused, she thinks how wonderfully sweet oxygen is. Then she loses consciousness.
She cannot feel the further blows and how her body spasms. She cannot feel when her keys to the office and the isolation room are taken from her pocket. She cannot look down at her body lying on the floor and how the dog sneaks into the brewery tentatively lapping at the blood from her crushed head as her life slowly ebbs away.
5
SOMEONE LEFT A LARGE RED APPLE on the table. It gleams and looks wonderfully tasty. Perhaps she’ll just eat the whole thing and then pretend she knows nothing about it. She’ll sit there, looking glum, and ignore the harangues while refusing to answer their questions.
She reaches for the apple, but when she finally has it in her hand, it’s completely rotten. Her fingers sink into its cold, soggy flesh.
Nina Molander wakes up as she pulls her hand away. It’s the middle of the night. She’s lying in her bed. The only thing she hears is the dog barking in the yard. This new medicine makes her wake up at night. She has to get up and go to the bathroom. She needs to take this medicine, even though it makes her feet and calves swell up. Without it, dark thoughts consume her to the point where she no longer cares about anything and can only lie in bed with her eyes closed.
She thinks she needs something to look forward to instead of thoughts about death.
Nina throws off her blanket, sets her feet on the warm wooden floor and gets out of bed. She’s fifteen years old. She has straight, blonde hair. She is hefty and has wide hips and large breasts. Her white flannel nightgown is tight around her belly.
The home for troubled girls is quiet. The hallway is illuminated by the green light of the emergency exit sign. There are strange whispers behind one of the doors. Nina thinks that the other girls are having a party but no one decided to invite her.
As if I’d ever want to go, she thinks.
Hanging in the air is the scent of an old fire, which has gone out. The dog starts barking again. Nina finds the floor is cooler out in the hallway. She doesn’t worry about whether she’s quiet or not. She feels like slamming the bathroom doors over and over. She doesn’t give a damn that Almira will get angry and throw things back at her.
The old tiles creak slightly. Nina keeps heading towards the bathroom, but stops when she feels a wet patch beneath her right foot. A dark pool is spreading from beneath the door of the isolation room where Miranda is sleeping. Nina is confused and doesn’t know what to do at first, but then she sees that the key to the isolation room has been left in the lock.
That’s weird.
She opens the door, walks inside and flicks on the light.
There’s blood everywhere – it shines as it drips and runs down the walls.
Miranda is sprawled on the bed.
Nina takes a few steps backwards and doesn’t notice that she’s wet herself. She looks at the bloody shoe prints on the floor and thinks that she’s going to faint.
She turns and finds herself in the hallway. She opens the door to the next room, turns on the ceiling light and walks right over to shake Caroline’s shoulder.
“Miranda’s hurt,” she whispers. “I think Miranda’s hurt.”
“What the hell are you doing in my room?” asks Caroline as she sits up in bed. “What time is it anyway?”
“There’s blood all over the floor!” Nina is screaming.
“Calm down!”
6
NINA CAN HARDLY BREATHE AS SHE LOOKS into Caroline’s eyes, needing to make Caroline understand, but she’s also surprised to find that she’s screaming at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night.
“There’s blood everywhere!”
“Shut up!” Caroline hisses as she gets out of bed.
Nina’s screams have woken the other girls. They can hear alarmed voices from the other rooms.
“Come and see for yourself,” Nina says as she begins to anxiously scratch her arms. “Miranda looks weird. You’ve got to take a look at her! You’ve got to!”
“Can you please calm down? I’ll look, but I’m sure…”
Another scream sounds in the hallway. It’s tiny Tuula. Caroline scrambles out of her bedroom. Tuula is staring into the isolation room and her eyes are as wide as saucers.
Indie walks out of her room, too, scratching her armpit.
Caroline pulls Tuula away, but in doing so catches sight of the blood on the walls and Miranda’s pale body. She blocks Indie, thinking that no one should have to see another suicide.
“There’s been an accident,” she explains quickly. “Can you ask everyone to come to the dining room, Indie?”
“What’s wrong
with Miranda?” Indie asks.
“We have to wake up Elisabet.”
Lu Chu and Almira come out of their double room. Lu Chu is wearing only pyjama bottoms and Almira has wrapped herself into a blanket.
“Go to the dining room,” Indie orders.
“Don’t I have time to wash my face first?” Lu Chu pouts.
“Take Tuula with you.”
“What the fuck is going on?” asks Almira.
“We don’t know,” Caroline answers shortly.
While Indie tries to gather everyone together in the dining room, Caroline rushes to the on-call room. She knows that Elisabet takes sleeping pills and never hears when the girls get up and wander around at night.
Caroline bangs on the door as loud as she can.
“Elisabet, you have to wake up!” she yells.
Nothing happens. Caroline can’t hear a sound.
Caroline hurries past the registration room and over to the nurse’s office. The door is open and she runs right over to the telephone and calls Daniel.
There’s static on the line.
Indie and Nina crowd in together through the office door. Nina’s face is totally white and she’s shaking all over.
“Go and wait in the dining room!” Caroline snaps.
“But the blood! Did you see all that blood?” Nina says and scratches her arm so furiously that a red patch appears.
“Daniel Grim,” a sleepy voice says on the other end of the line.
“It’s me, Caroline. There’s been an accident here and Elisabet is not waking up, so I called you because I don’t know what else to do.”
“There’s blood all over my feet!” screams Nina. “I have blood all over my feet!”
“Take it easy,” Indie screams back as she tries to pull Nina back out of the office.
“What’s going on?” Daniel asks. His voice is sharper now and in control.
“Miranda’s in the cell, but it’s full of blood,” Caroline replies and swallows. “I don’t know what we should…”
“Is she seriously hurt?” asks Daniel.
“Yes, I believe…or I…”
“Caroline,” Daniel says. “I’m going to call for an ambulance. And then…”
“What should I do? What should I…”
“See if Miranda needs help and then try and wake Elisabet,” Daniel commands.
7
THE EMERGENCY CENTRE in Sundsvall is located in a three storey, red brick building on Björneborgsgatan next to Bäck Park. Jasmin usually has no problems with night shifts but at the moment, she’s feeling unusually tired. It’s four in the morning and the hour of the wolf has passed. She’s sitting with her headset in front of the computer and blowing on the black coffee in her mug. She can hear conversation and laughter from the break room. Yesterday’s evening newspaper had reported that one of the police officers at the emergency centre earned extra cash as a telephone sex worker. It turned out that she only had an administrative job at a company that provided phone sex, but the newspapers made it seem as if she’d taken more than one type of call while on duty.
Jasmin looks over her screen and out the window. There is no light in the sky yet. A truck thunders past. Further up the road, a street lamp shines on the leaves of a tree and a grey electric box as well as a small part of the pavement.
Jasmin puts down her coffee mug to answer an incoming call.
“SOS 112…What’s going on?”
“My name is Daniel Grim and I’m the head social worker at Birgittagården. One of the girls has just called me and it sounds like an emergency. You have to send someone right away.”
“Can you give me more details?” Jasmin asks while searching for Birgittagården on her computer.
“I don’t have more information. One of the girls called, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. Everybody was screaming in the background and the girl was crying and said there was blood all over the room.”
Jasmin signals to her colleague, Ingrid Sandén, that more operators are needed on this call.
“Are you at the home now?” Ingrid asks through her headset.
“No, I was at home asleep, but one of the girls called…”
“You are talking about Birgittagården north of Sunnås?” asks Jasmin.
“Please hurry!” The man’s voice is shaking.
“We are sending the police and an ambulance to Birgittagården north of Sunnås,” Jasmin says clearly to give the man time to correct her if she’s wrong.
Then she turns away for a moment to issue the alarm to the police and the ambulance.
Ingrid continues to ask Daniel questions.
“Isn’t Birgittagården a youth home?”
“Yes, for girls,” he replies.
“Shouldn’t there be employees on the premises?”
“Yes, my wife Elisabet is on duty tonight. I’ll call her now…I have no idea what’s going on over there.”
“The police are on their way,” Ingrid says in a calming voice while she watches the blue lights flash across the deserted street as the first emergency vehicle pulls out of the garage.
***
About the Author
A No. 1 bestselling international sensation, Lars Kepler has sold in excess of 1.5 million copies of the Joona Linna series in Sweden alone. Their first thriller, The Hypnotist has just been released as a major motion picture directed by Lasse Hallström. The Nightmare is the second Joona Linna thriller with The Fire Witness publishing in the UK in Spring 2013.
Lars Kepler is the pseudonym for writing duo, Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril. Authors in their own right, they joined forces to create one of the most thrilling crime series of recent years. They live with their family in Sweden.
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Blue Door
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Lars Kepler 2012
Lars Kepler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
EPub Edition © 2012 ISBN: 9780007514502
Version 1
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