Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  As she watches Erik’s BMW pull into the car park she walks over to him, blowing on one of the mugs and taking a cautious sip before putting it on the roof of the car and opening the back door.

  ‘I don’t know what this is about, but we’ve got a superintendent who seems pretty wound up,’ she says, passing him one of the mugs between the seats.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I explained that we always have the best interest of our patients at heart,’ Nelly says as she gets in and closes the car door behind her. ‘Shit! God, sorry … have you got any tissues? I’ve spilled some coffee on the seat.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Are you cross? You’re cross,’ she says.

  The smell of coffee spreads through the car and Erik closes his eyes for a moment.

  ‘Nelly, just tell me what they said.’

  ‘I don’t seem to be getting on very well with that fucking … I mean, that lovely policewoman.’

  ‘Is there anything I ought to know before I go inside?’ he asks, opening the door.

  ‘I told her she could wait in your office and go through your drawers.’

  ‘Thanks for the coffee … both mugs,’ he says, as they get out of the car.

  Erik locks up, puts the keys in his pocket, runs a hand through his hair and starts to walk towards the clinic.

  ‘I didn’t actually say that bit about the drawers,’ she calls after him.

  Erik walks up the steps, turns right and runs his passcard through the reader, taps in his code, then carries on along the next corridor to his room. He still feels groggy, and it occurs to him that he really must get the tablets under control soon. They make him sleep too deeply. It’s almost like drowning. His drugged dreams have started to feel claustrophobic. Yesterday he had a nightmare about two dogs that had grown into each other, and last week he fell asleep here at the clinic and had a sexual dream about Nelly. He can’t really remember it, but she was on her knees in front of him handing him a cold, glass ball.

  His thoughts dissipate when he sees the superintendent sitting on his office chair with her feet resting on the edge of the waste-paper bin. She’s holding her huge stomach with one hand and a can of Coke in the other. Her brow is furrowed, her chin has fallen open and she’s breathing through her half-open mouth.

  Her ID badge is lying on his desk, and she gestures wearily towards it as she introduces herself.

  ‘Margot Silverman … National Crime.’

  ‘Erik Maria Bark,’ he says, shaking her hand.

  ‘Thanks for coming in at such short notice,’ she says, moistening her lips. ‘We’ve got a traumatised witness … Everyone tells me I should have you in the room with me. We’ve already tried to question him four times …’

  ‘I have to point out that there are five of us here in our specialist unit, and that I never usually sit in on interviews of perpetrators or suspected perpetrators myself.’

  The light from the ceiling lamp reflects off her pale eyes. Her curly hair is trying to escape from her thick plait.

  ‘OK, but Björn Kern isn’t a suspect. He works in London, and was on a plane home when someone murdered his wife,’ she replies, squeezing the Coke-can and making the thin metal creak.

  ‘OK, then,’ Erik says.

  ‘He got a taxi from Arlanda, and found her dead,’ the superintendent goes on. ‘We don’t know exactly what he did after that, but he was certainly busy. We’re not sure where she was lying to start with, we found her tucked up in bed in the bedroom … He cleaned up as well, wiped away the blood … he doesn’t remember anything, he says, but the furniture had been moved, and the blood-soaked rug was already in the washing machine … he was found more than a kilometre away from the house, a neighbour almost ran him over on the road, he was still wearing his blood-soaked suit, no shoes.’

  ‘I’ll certainly see him,’ Erik says. ‘But I must say at the outset that it would be wrong to try to force information from him.’

  ‘He has to talk,’ she says stubbornly, squeezing the can tighter.

  ‘I understand your frustration, but he could enter a psychosis if you push too hard … Give him time, he’ll tell you what you need.’

  ‘You’ve helped the police before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Many times.’

  ‘But this time … this is the second murder in what looks like a series,’ she says.

  ‘A series,’ Erik repeats.

  Margot’s face has turned grey and the thin lines round her eyes are emphasised by the light from the lamp.

  ‘We’re hunting a serial killer.’

  ‘OK, I get that, but the patient needs—’

  ‘This murderer has entered an active phase, and isn’t going to stop of his own accord,’ she interrupts. ‘And Björn Kern is a disaster from my point of view. First he goes round and rearranges everything at the crime scene before the police get there … and now we can’t get him to tell us what it looked like when he arrived.’

  She drops her feet to the floor, whispers to herself that they need to get going, then sits there stiff-backed, panting for breath.

  ‘If we put pressure on him now, he may clam up for good,’ Erik says, unlocking his birchwood cabinet and removing the fake-leather case containing his camera.

  She gets to her feet, puts the can down on the desk at last, picks up her badge and walks heavily towards the door.

  ‘Obviously I realise that this is seriously bloody awful for him, given what’s happened, but he’s going to have to pull himself together and—’

  ‘Yes, but it’s a lot more than awful … it might actually be impossible for him to think about it at the moment,’ Erik replies. ‘Because what you’ve described sounds like a critical stress response, and—’

  ‘Those are just words,’ she interrupts, her cheeks flushing with irritation.

  ‘A mental trauma can be followed by an acute blockage—’

  ‘Why? I don’t believe that,’ she says.

  ‘As you may know, our spatial and temporal memories are organised by the hippocampus … and that information is then conveyed to the prefrontal cortex,’ Erik replies patiently, pointing to his forehead. ‘But that all changes at times of extreme arousal, and in cases of shock … When the amygdala identifies a threat, both the autonomous nervous system and what’s known as the cortisol axis are activated, and—’

  ‘OK, what the hell, I get it. Loads of stuff happens in the brain.’

  ‘The important thing is that this degree of stress means that memories aren’t stored as they usually are, but at an effective distance … they’re frozen, like ice-cubes, separately … closed off.’

  ‘I get it, you’re saying he’s doing his best,’ Margot says, putting her hand on her stomach. ‘But Björn may have seen something that can help us stop this serial killer. You have to get him to calm down, so he starts talking.’

  ‘I will, but I can’t tell you how long that’s going to take,’ he replies. ‘I’ve worked in Uganda with people who’ve suffered the trauma of war … people whose lives have been completely shattered. You have to move slowly, using security, sleep, conversation, exercise, medication—’

  ‘Not hypnosis?’ she asks, with an involuntary smile.

  ‘Sure, as long as no one has exaggerated expectations about the result … Sometimes gentle hypnosis can help a patient to restructure their memories so that they can actually be accessed.’

  ‘Right now I’d give the go-ahead for a horse to kick him in the head if that would help.’

  ‘OK, but that’s a different department,’ Erik says drily.

  ‘Sorry, I get a bit impatient when I’m pregnant,’ she says, and he can hear how hard she’s trying to sound reasonable. ‘But I have to identify any parallels with the first murder, I need a pattern if I’m going to be able to track down this murderer, and right now I haven’t got a thing.’

  They’ve reached the patient’s room. Two uniformed police officers are standing outside the door.

 
; ‘This is important to you,’ Erik says. ‘But bear in mind that he’s just found his wife murdered.’

  8

  Erik follows Margot into the room. It has been furnished with two armchairs and a sofa, a low white table, two chairs, a water dispenser with plastic cups, and a wastepaper bin.

  On the floor under the windowsill is a broken pot, the linoleum floor strewn with soil.

  The air is thick with stress and sweat. The man is standing in the far corner, as if he were trying to get as far away as possible.

  When he sees Erik and Margot he slides towards the sofa with his back against the wall. He’s extremely pale, with a hunted look in his bloodshot eyes. His pale blue shirt has sweat rings under the arms, and is hanging outside his trousers.

  ‘Hello, Björn,’ Margot says. ‘This is Erik, he’s a doctor here.’

  The man looks anxiously at Erik, then moves back into the corner.

  ‘Hello,’ Erik says.

  ‘I’m not ill.’

  ‘No, but what you’ve been through means that you have the right to treatment,’ Erik replies matter-of-factly.

  ‘You don’t know what I’ve been through,’ the man says, then whispers something to himself.

  ‘I know you haven’t been given any tranquillisers,’ Erik says calmly. ‘But I’d like you to know that the option is there, if—’

  ‘What the fuck do I want a load of pills for?’ he butts in. ‘Will pills help? Will they make everything all right?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Will they let me see Sanna again?’ he shouts. ‘That’s not going to happen – is it?’

  ‘Nothing can change what’s happened,’ Erik says seriously. ‘But your relationship to what has happened will change, regardless of whether you—’

  ‘I don’t even understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘I’m just trying to find a good way to explain that the way you’re feeling is part of a process, and that you can accept my help with that process if you want to.’

  Björn glances at him briefly, then slips further away along the wall.

  Margot puts her little recording device on the table, babbles the date and time, and the names of those present in the room.

  ‘This is the fifth interview with Björn Kern,’ she concludes, then turns towards him as he stands picking at the back-rest of the sofa. ‘Björn, can you tell me in your own words—’

  ‘About what?’ he asks quickly. ‘About what?’

  ‘About when you got home,’ Margot replies.

  ‘What for?’ he whispers.

  ‘Because I want to know what happened, and what you saw,’ she says curtly.

  ‘What do you mean? I just got home, isn’t that allowed?’

  He puts his hands over his ears and stands there panting. Erik notes that the knuckles of both his hands are bleeding.

  ‘What did you see?’ Margot asks wearily.

  ‘Why are you asking me that? I don’t know why you’re asking me. Fucking hell …’

  Björn shakes his head and rubs his mouth and eyes hard.

  ‘I want you to feel safe here, in this room,’ Erik says. ‘You don’t think you’re allowed to relax, you might not think it’s possible, but it is.’

  The man picks at the edge of a piece of wallpaper with his fingernails, then tears off a little strip.

  ‘This is what I’m thinking,’ he says, without looking at them. ‘I’m thinking I’ve got to do it all again, but do it right this time … I’ve got to go home and go in through the door, and then it will be right.’

  ‘How do you mean, right?’ Erik asks, managing to catch his eye.

  ‘I know how it sounds, but what if it’s true, you can’t know,’ he says, making a despairing gesture to keep them quiet. ‘I can go in, through the door, and call Sanna’s name … She knows I’ve got something for her, I always have, something from duty-free … and I take my shoes off and go inside …’

  He looks utterly distraught.

  ‘There’s soil on the floor,’ he whispers.

  ‘Was there soil on the floor?’ Margot asks.

  ‘Shut up!’ Björn yells, his voice cracking.

  He walks over the soil-strewn floor, picks up the other pot-plant and throws it at the wall. The plastic pot shatters and soil rains down behind the sofa.

  ‘Fucking HELL!’ he gasps.

  He leans both hands against the wall, his head hanging, and a string of saliva drops to the floor.

  ‘Björn?’

  ‘Fuck it, this is hopeless,’ he says, with a sob in his voice.

  ‘Björn,’ Erik says slowly. ‘Margot is here to find out more about what happened. That’s her job. My job is to help you. I’m here for your sake … I’m used to seeing people who are having trouble, people who have suffered a terrible loss, who’ve experienced terrible things … things no one should have to go through, but which unfortunately are part of life for some of us.’

  The man doesn’t respond. He just sobs quietly. His eyes are dark, bloodshot and glassy.

  ‘Do you want to stand over there?’ Erik asks gently. ‘You wouldn’t rather sit in the armchair?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Nor do I …’

  ‘Good,’ Björn whispers, turning towards him.

  ‘I’ve already mentioned it, and I know what you said, but it’s my job to offer you all the help that’s available … I can give you a sedative. It won’t get rid of the terrible thing that’s happened, but it will help to calm the panic you’re feeling inside.’

  ‘Can you help me?’ the man whispers after a pause.

  ‘I can help you take the first steps towards … towards getting through the worst of it,’ Erik explains quietly.

  ‘I start to shake when I think about the front door at home … because I must have gone through a different door, the wrong door.’

  ‘I can understand why you’d feel that.’

  Björn moves his lips cautiously, as though they were hurting him.

  ‘Do you want me to sit down?’ he asks, glancing cautiously at Erik.

  ‘If it would make you feel more comfortable,’ Erik replies.

  Björn sits down for the first time, and Erik notices Margot looking at him, but doesn’t return the look.

  ‘What happens when you walk through the wrong door?’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ he replies.

  ‘But you do remember?’

  ‘Can you … can you get rid of the panic?’ the man whispers to Erik.

  ‘That’s your decision,’ Erik says. ‘But I’m happy to sit here and talk to you with Margot … or you and I could talk on our own … and we could also try hypnosis – that might help you through the worst of it.’

  ‘Hypnosis?’

  ‘Some people find it works well,’ Erik replies simply.

  ‘No.’ Björn smiles.

  ‘Hypnosis is just a combination of relaxation and concentration.’

  Björn laughs silently with his hand over his mouth, then stands up and walks along the wall again until he reaches the corner and turns to look at Erik.

  ‘I think maybe the drugs you mentioned might be a good idea …’

  ‘OK.’ Erik nods. ‘I can give you Stesolid – have you heard of that before? It will make you feel warm and tired, but also a lot calmer.’

  ‘OK, good.’

  Björn slaps the wall several times with one palm, then walks over to the water dispenser.

  ‘I’ll ask a nurse to bring you the pill,’ Erik says.

  He leaves the room, confident that Björn Kern will request hypnosis fairly soon.

  9

  The building at 4 Lill-Jans plan differs from those around it, with its dark façade and Gothic design, ornamental brickwork, oriels, pilasters and arches.

  The curtains on the ground floor are closed, otherwise it would be possible to see in through the windows.

  Erik looks at the address on the piece of paper, hesitates for a moment, then goes in
through the large doorway. He hasn’t told anyone about this.

  His stomach flutters as he approaches the door. He can hear gentle piano music in the stairwell. He looks at the time, sees that he’s slightly early, and returns to the front door to wait.

  Back in the spring he found a flyer advertising piano lessons in his letterbox, and rather rashly booked an intensive course for his son Benjamin, who would be turning eighteen at the start of the summer.

  It’s never too late to learn to play an instrument, he thought. He himself had always dreamed of playing the piano, sitting down alone to play a melancholic nocturne by Chopin.

  But the day before Benjamin’s birthday Nelly pointed out that you didn’t have to be a psychologist to see that he was projecting his own dream on to his son.

  Erik quickly booked a series of driving lessons instead. Benjamin was happy, and Simone thought it a very generous gift.

  He was sure he had cancelled the piano lessons. But that morning he had received an email reminding him not to miss the first lesson.

  Erik feels ridiculously embarrassed, nevertheless he’s decided to attend the first lesson himself, to give it a chance.

  The idea of walking off and sending a text to say that he had already cancelled the lessons is whirling round his head as he returns to the door, raises his finger and rings the bell.

  The piano music doesn’t stop, but he hears someone run lightly across the floor.

  A small child opens the door, a girl of about seven, with big, pale eyes and tousled hair. She’s wearing a polka-dot dress and is holding a toy hedgehog in her hand.

  ‘Mummy’s got a pupil,’ she says in a low voice.

  The beautiful music streams through the flat.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment at seven o’clock … I’m here for a piano lesson,’ he explains.

  ‘Mummy says you have to start when you’re little,’ the girl says.

  ‘If you want to get good, but I’m not going to do that,’ he smiles. ‘I’ll be happy if the piano doesn’t block its ears or throw up.’

  The girl can’t help smiling.

  ‘Can I take your coat?’ she remembers to ask.

  ‘Can you manage to carry it?’