And it didn’t get any better at the security checkpoint, where their luggage was searched piece by piece. “No, you can’t bring these nail clippers in. You can borrow some here. But you have to let me take the shampoo... No.” Followed by an obligatory “I’m sorry.”
The prison officers had been informed that they would have special guests, but their attitudes were so deeply rooted that they were more or less unable to give up their usual practices. They searched the new guests down to their bare skin as if they were regular old inmates, “for their own safety.” A few protested, reminding the staff they were not criminals.
Seth Kårheden was the most vocal, refusing to let himself be pushed around. He vocally declared that he had come for protection, not for punishment, and he threatened to go home. This actually seemed to help, and he was allowed to bring in his insulin syringes, even though the jail doctor wasn’t there to approve them.
Tuvesson could tell that Klippan was feeling exactly the same way, but like her, he was doing his best not to let it show, pretending that this whole thing was well-thought-out and for a good reason.
They needed to convince the members of the class they weren’t being locked up like prisoners.
99
HE HEARD ANOTHER ONE of the barely audible ticking sounds that preceded the buzzing and the twisting action. The first few times after he figured out what was going on, he’d tensed the muscles of his neck and tried to resist as much as he could, but then he realized that the best thing to do was relax.
His neck had already cracked a number of times, and he had survived much longer than he’d been expecting. It ought to be over soon — four more buzzes at the most. He calculated the pauses between the buzzes to be slightly over three minutes, and every fifth turn was a little bit greater, twisting an extra couple of degrees. He couldn’t survive another one of those.
The screen in front of him displayed another picture of Theodor. His eyes were closed and he was sitting on the floor of his room in their new house. Fabian recognized the striped rug they had purchased at the Kungens Kurva IKEA a few years back. Theodor had wanted a plain black one, but Sonja insisted on a rug that had stripes in every colour. In the photo he was lying on it with his arms extending straight out from his body, like Jesus on the cross. Probably because he had been knocked out.
And then Fabian realized something he should have figured out a long time ago. Theodor had never left the house: he had been there all along. Carrying the body of a teenage boy out of a house wouldn’t exactly have been easy, and there would have been a real risk that the neighbours or a passer-by might notice and ask questions. Why hadn’t it occurred to him before? The sounds he’d heard down in the basement weren’t from his neighbour — they were from Theodor.
He had been locked up in the bread oven that Sonja had discovered when they moved in. Theodor had tried to make noise, but his father hadn’t heard. No, that wasn’t true — he had heard, but he had ignored it. His thoughts had been somewhere else, like always.
The barely noticeable ticking started up again.
Soon there would only be three turns left.
*
“THERE. CAN’T YOU SEE IT?” Molander said, pointing at the baseboard.
Lilja’s eyes roamed over the brown board but nothing caught her attention. “All I can see is a brown-stained baseboard.”
“And above that?”
“A cable.”
“Exactly. It’s also stained brown, and leads into the wardrobe, right?”
Lilja nodded.
“But where does it end?” Molander continued, opening the wardrobe of beige clothing. “There’s no light or anything in here.”
“Maybe it keeps going to the bed.”
Molander shook his head. “No, it disappears somewhere behind here. Help me pull it out.”
They each took a side and tried to pull the wardrobe away from the wall, but it wouldn’t budge.
“It must be attached to the floor and the wall,” Molander said, trying to see behind it.
Meanwhile, Lilja sifted through the beige clothing again. There was something bothering her; she couldn’t put her finger on it, but now that she was standing here for the second time, she realized that she’d felt this way when she was looking through the wardrobe for the first time. The clothes were certainly beige and boring — two pairs of corduroys, three pairs of chinos, a few shirts and polos — but that wasn’t the problem.
Lilja couldn’t make sense of it until she discovered a small plastic bag containing two buttons attached to one of the shirts’ cuffs. She looked down at Molander, who was on his stomach, shining a flashlight under the wardrobe.
“These clothes are brand new.”
“Okay...”
“I mean, all of them. They’ve never been worn — they must just be hanging here for show.” She pulled them aside and felt along the back panel of the wardrobe but couldn’t find a seam.
Molander joined Lilja inside the wardrobe and shone his flashlight along the edges. They soon discovered there was a tiny seam after all. They emptied the contents of the closet and tried to push in the back panel, but it wouldn’t move. Molander started tapping on the wardrobe in different places, and was met with the same dull sound no matter where he knocked.
“You might need some sort of remote control,” he said, stepping out of the closet and looking around.
“Try cutting the cable,” Lilja suggested.
Molander severed the cable with a pair of pliers.
Lilja, who was still in the wardrobe with her ear pressed to the back panel, felt the air change immediately. There was suddenly a faint draft. Molander came back to help, and they managed to press the back panel in about thirty centimetres; then it moved to the side like a sliding door. A row of bare light bulbs switched on in front of them, and they could see a wooden staircase that appeared to lead straight underground.
*
FABIAN HAD TRIED TO distract himself by thinking of other things. He thought about Sonja and Matilda and wondered what they were up to right now, whether they were still awake or if they had gone to bed. He tried thinking about Stockholm and how brutal the winters could be there, especially the most recent one. He remembered their vacation to Thailand three years ago, and daydreamed about their new house. Nothing helped. All he could think about was the pain: it had taken over and was demanding all of his attention.
Then he heard the quiet ticking he had spent three minutes waiting for: the buzz came one second later. It would be the fourth and last buzz before it was time for the fifth — the one that would put an end to his pain, in three long minutes.
*
LILJA AND MOLANDER WENT down the steep staircase with their handguns drawn. The dirt-cellar feeling vanished when they reached the bottom. Instead, it was as if they were on a spaceship from the 1960s. The ceiling was weakly lit and they seemed to be in a narrow, pipe-shaped corridor that slanted slightly downhill and was covered in red, wall-to-wall shag carpeting. On one side of the wall there was a shoe rack with a pair of slippers, and a hook with a white coat hanging from it.
They stooped to avoid hitting their heads on the ceiling as they walked through the hallway. After a few metres, it branched out into a T-shaped corridor that was about five metres long in both directions. They could stand upright now; the walls were straight up and down with two doors on each side of both corridors — eight doors in all.
“You go left. I’ll take the right,” Molander said, opening the first door on the right-hand side. It led into a room that was painted red, with blinking diodes on the ceiling and exercise equipment spread across the floor. Lounge music was streaming from recessed speakers.
Lilja opened the first door on her side and entered a room filled with neatly hung clothes. There was a vanity table with an illuminated mirror in one corner, and several wigs were arranged on mannequin heads on a shelf. There was a ton of stuff to examine in here, but the details would have to wait. She went back into the cor
ridor.
Molander’s eyes were searching a new room that looked like a small apartment, with a neatly made bed and a nightstand at one end, and a small group of furniture with a TV at the other. The room was covered in classic Art Deco wallpaper, and a bookcase full of books and LPs took up one entire wall. There were two additional doors in this room: one was visible and led to a bathroom, and the other was hidden in the patterned wallpaper. If it hadn’t been for the wall-to-wall carpeting, which had a clear path trampled into it, he never would have discovered it. He stuck his finger in the small hole and slid the door to the side. The warmth of the neighbouring room hit him unexpectedly. When he saw thousands upon thousands of diodes blinking in the darkness, he knew exactly what sort of room he had found.
Lilja turned the handle to another room, but the door was locked. She backed up as a far as she could and gave the door two hard kicks, but it wouldn’t give. Only on the third blow did she manage to kick the door down. She found herself in complete darkness and felt the wall for a light switch, but then realized there were three heavy curtains hanging in front of the door. She pulled them aside one by one and quickly scanned the semicircular room as she raised her weapon at the man sitting with his back to her, in what looked like an old dentist’s chair.
She told him to stand up slowly and put his hands over his head, but there was no reaction: either the man was dead, or he was unable to answer for some reason. She walked around the chair and realized it was Fabian Risk. Part of her had been worried that he was in danger, while another part of her had been worried that he was behind everything. She was totally unprepared for what she saw: his head was fastened to two plates and had been twisted so far to the side that just looking at it made her sick.
She placed her hand on his extended neck — he still had a pulse. He must have passed out from the pain. She shouted for Molander as loudly as she could, but stopped as soon as she felt a faint vibration from the plates that were holding Risk’s head. This peculiar device was about to twist his head off.
She stuffed her handgun into her waistband and grabbed hold of the plates to try to keep the machine from turning as she put her weight against the armrest. She couldn’t get a grip and felt the device continue to turn. She wanted to hit it out of sheer rage, but she was afraid that she might do more harm than good.
Suddenly the buzzing stopped and all the lights went out, after which she had no trouble twisting the entire contraption back in the other direction. With trembling fingertips she fumbled for Fabian’s pulse in the pitch-black, feeling like she was about to drown in the wave of questions she wanted to ask.
A beam of light came dancing along the vaulted wall, and she heard Molander’s voice.
“I think I found the fuse box.”
100
FABIAN CAME TO WITH a severe pain in his neck and a throbbing headache. He was thirsty and sweaty. He wanted to swallow, but his sandpapery mouth made it impossible. It was bright, too bright to try opening his eyes. He tried to gather his thoughts, but eventually admitted to himself that he had no idea what had happened or where he was.
He thought back through the most recent events he could recall. It had been a record-breakingly miserable summer, so they’d decided to take a last-minute trip to somewhere warm: him, Sonja, and the kids. They went to Mallorca — Illetas, in fact. He last remembered being in a deck chair by the pool.
He tried to move his head, but his stiff neck refused. He must have fallen asleep with his head in a strange position, or maybe it was sunburn. Perhaps that would explain why he was so confused. He really didn’t like going on seaside holidays. This damn heat was only making his headache worse, and the screaming kids all over the place weren’t helping. Couldn’t they at least have an age limit in the pool area? If this were his hotel, he would have banned kids altogether.
He thought about taking a dip. Maybe that was just what he needed. Then he would have a beer to make him feel at home. The bright lights were making him squint. Where was everyone else? He could see their deck chairs and wet towels. Kerstin Ekman’s Blackwater was lying open on Sonja’s chair. She’d already made it halfway through. He must have been out for hours.
He stood up and waited out a head rush for a few seconds before approaching the pool. Children kept sneaking by and jumping in, trying to splash as much water as they could on the sunbathing hotel guests, but now it was his turn.
It was important for the dive to look decent without making it seem like he was trying too hard: people were probably watching him. He sucked in his stomach, put his hands above his head, jumped in. His legs were straight and together. The cool water surrounded his body. His hands struck something hard, then his forehead. He heard something crunch in his neck. The water turned red.
A German-speaking man tried to help him out of the pool; he wanted to get him to lie down. But he didn’t want any help. He didn’t want to bleed in the water. He only wanted to get away from the pool and the sticky warmth; away from Sonja and the kids; away from everything.
Someone placed a glass of water to his lips and he opened and closed his eyes. Everything was spinning out of control. He saw a familiar female face. She looked good. He was sure they had met before. Was this all just a dream? No, he could clearly remember diving into the pool, hitting his head, and noticing how the blood dripped into big splotches on the deck when the German tried to get him to lie down. He put his hand to his forehead, but he didn’t feel a wound.
Was he even alive? He felt something around his neck. Then he heard a voice. He’d heard it before, but he couldn’t place it. Fabian... Fabian... He opened his eyes again and saw the same woman. Everything was moving behind her. What was her name again? Lilja... Irene Lilja. That should mean that he was alive, unless he was dead at the same time? Theodor... he had to get home and take care of Theodor. He tried to get up, but Lilja pressed him back down onto the hard stretcher.
“You have to lie down until we get there.”
“Get where?”
“The emergency room. It will only be a minute now. The best thing you can do is relax.”
But he didn’t want to relax, much less go to some ER and wait for hours to be helped. He didn’t need any help.
“I’m fine. I just have to get home to Theo.”
“It’s just the anesthetic,” Lilja said, patting his forehead. “Just take it easy and try to relax.”
He screamed at her, telling her she was wrong and that he had to go home to Theo, his son, but she refused to listen. She smiled calmly and repeated over and over again that he should take it easy, reminding him that everything would work out. He wasn’t supposed to see it, but he did: she banged on the window to the cab of the ambulance. Then he hit her again. For the second time in twenty-four hours he hit her in the face.
She went quiet and held her reddening cheek.
Finally, she was listening.
*
HE COULDN’T REMEMBER HOW he got out of the ambulance and up the front steps, or if Lilja tried to stop him, or if the door was locked. All he remembered was suddenly standing in his own basement, looking at Theodor lying on the floor.
Lifeless.
A woman was straddling him, pressing her mouth to his. Who was she and what was she doing? He was dead. The woman rose and started rhythmically pressing both hands against his rib cage.
“Fifteen... sixteen... seventeen...” she counted in Danish.
Only then did he realize that she was the police officer from Copenhagen. What was she doing in his house? He tried to ask, but she didn’t respond.
“She can’t talk right now,” Lilja said from behind him.
He turned around but she was already on her way back upstairs. He had no idea how long he watched the Danish policewoman try to bring his dead son back to life.
It was as if time had gotten stuck, and suddenly the paramedics were just there. He watched them open their bags, take out their equipment, and hook up tubes and wires of various colours. They inserted a t
ube attached to a squeeze bag into Theodor’s mouth, cut his clothes off, and spread something gooey on his chest. The Danish policewoman was lying on the floor beside him, exhausted. Lilja squatted beside her and gave her something to drink.
He heard a loud beeping noise while two paddles were placed on that very young chest. Theo’s body bowed up from the floor and fell back down, lifeless, without a pulse. One paramedic made sure that the wires were connected correctly and another squeezed the bag.
How long did it continue? Fabian had no idea.
All he knew for certain was that it was his own fault.
101
ASTRID TUVESSON HAD TO admit that Ragnar Palm had done his best to mitigate the prison atmosphere since she’d last been here. He had hung curtains on the outer wall to hide the fact that there were no windows, and he had put up framed posters from exhibitions at the Louisiana Museum on all the other walls. They were probably Palm’s own posters. Tuvesson knew he never missed an exhibit.
But, despite his efforts, it was still plain as day that they were in a jail. Hopefully it will give them a sense of security, she thought as the temporary guests selected their beds.
It happened just as she’d predicted: the men settled along one wall, the women along the other. What she hadn’t counted on was their questions. She’d been naive enough to assume that they were just as wrecked as she was and would want to go to sleep. Instead, they asked all the questions she didn’t have answers to: “How long do you think we’ll have to stay here?” “Is there Wi-Fi?” “My kids are coming home on Sunday. Will they have to stay here too?” “Have you even thought this through?”
She wanted to shout one big, long “Nooooo” at them. This was the opposite of well-thought-out. The decision had been made quite suddenly, in what could most aptly be described as a state of panic: every wasted minute made it more likely that the list of victims would grow even longer, and that the media would make more profit and add to the myth of the unrivalled killer who baffled the police like no other.
Victim Without a Face Page 44
