Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  He puts his heavy coat in her thin arms and watches her disappear towards the tall cupboards further inside the hall.

  A woman in her mid-thirties comes towards him along the corridor. She seems deep in thought, but perhaps she’s just listening to the music.

  Her hair is black, and cut in a short, boyish style, and her eyes are hidden behind small round sunglasses. Her lips are pale pink, and her face appears to be completely free of make-up, yet she still looks like a French film star.

  He realises that she must be Jackie Federer, the piano teacher.

  She’s wearing a black, loose-knit sweater and a suede skirt, and has flat ballet-pumps on her feet.

  ‘Benjamin?’ she asks.

  ‘My name is Erik Maria Bark, I booked the lessons for my son, Benjamin … they were a birthday present, but I never told him about the gift … I’ve come instead, because I’m actually the one who wants to learn how to play.’

  ‘You want to learn to play the piano?’

  ‘Unless I’m too old,’ he hurries to say.

  ‘Come in, I’m just at the end of a lesson,’ the woman says.

  He follows her back through the corridor, and sees her trace the fingers of one hand along the wall as she walks.

  ‘I got Benjamin another present, obviously,’ Erik explains to her back.

  She opens a door and the music gets louder.

  ‘Have a seat,’ the woman says, and sits down on the edge of the sofa.

  Light is streaming into the room from high windows looking out on to a leafy inner courtyard.

  A sixteen-year-old girl is sitting with her back straight at a black piano. She is playing an advanced piece, her body rocking gently. She turns a page of the score, then her fingers run across the keys and her feet press deftly at the pedals.

  ‘Stay in time,’ Jackie says, her chin jutting.

  The girl blushes but goes on playing. It sounds wonderful, but Erik can see that Jackie isn’t happy.

  He wonders if she used to be a star, a famous concert pianist whose name he ought to know; Jackie Federer, a diva who wears dark glasses indoors.

  The piece comes to an end, its notes lingering in the air until they ebb away. They’ve almost vanished when the girl takes her foot off the right pedal and the damper muffles the strings.

  ‘Good, that sounded much better today,’ Jackie says.

  ‘Thank you,’ the girl says, picking up her score and hurrying out.

  Silence descends on the room. The large tree in the courtyard is casting swaying green shadows across the pale wooden floor.

  ‘So you want to learn to play the piano,’ Jackie says, getting up from the sofa.

  ‘I’ve always dreamed of learning, but I’ve never got round to it … Naturally, I’ve got absolutely no talent at all,’ Erik explains quickly. ‘I’m completely unmusical.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ she says in a quiet voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, we might as well have a go,’ she says, and puts her hand out to the wall.

  ‘Mummy, I’ve mixed some juice,’ the little girl says, and comes into the room with a tray containing glasses of juice.

  ‘Ask our guest if he’s thirsty.’

  ‘Are you thirsty?’

  ‘Thank you, that’s very kind of you,’ Erik says, and takes a sip. ‘Do you play the piano as well?’

  ‘I’m better than Mummy was at my age,’ the girl replies, as if that’s a phrase she’s heard many times.

  Jackie smiles and strokes her daughter’s hair and neck rather clumsily, before turning back towards him.

  ‘You’ve paid for twenty lessons,’ she says.

  ‘I have a tendency to go over the top,’ Erik admits.

  ‘So what do you want to get out of the course?’

  ‘If I’m honest, I fantasise about being able to play a sonata … one of Chopin’s nocturnes,’ Erik says, and feels himself blush. ‘But I’m aware I’m going to have to start with “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”.’

  ‘We can work with Chopin, but perhaps an étude instead.’

  ‘If there’s a short one.’

  ‘Madeleine, can you get me Chopin … opus 25, the first étude.’

  The girl searches the shelf next to Jackie, pulls out a folder and removes the score. Only when she puts it in her mother’s hand does Erik realise that the teacher is blind.

  10

  Erik can’t help smiling to himself as he sits in front of the highly polished black piano with the name C. Bechstein, Berlin picked out in small gold lettering.

  ‘He needs to lower the stool,’ the girl says.

  Erik stands up and lowers the seat by spinning it a few times.

  ‘We’ll start with your right hand, but we’ll pick out some notes with your left.’

  He looks at her fair face, with its straight nose and half-open mouth.

  ‘Don’t look at me, look at the notes and the keyboard,’ she says, reaching over his shoulder and putting her little finger gently on one of the black keys. A high note echoes inside the piano.

  ‘This is E flat … We’ll start with the first formation, which consists of six notes, six sixteenths,’ she says, and plays the notes.

  ‘OK,’ Erik mutters.

  ‘Where did I start?’

  He presses the key, producing a hard note.

  ‘Use your little finger.’

  ‘How did you know …’

  ‘Because it’s natural – now, play,’ she says.

  He struggles through the lesson, concentrating on her instructions, stressing the first note of the six, but loses his way when he has to add a few notes with his left hand. A couple of times she touches his hand again and tells him to relax his fingers.

  ‘OK, you’re tired, let’s stop there,’ Jackie says in a neutral voice. ‘You’ve done some good work.’

  She gives him notes for the next lesson, then asks the girl to show him to the door. They pass a closed door with ‘No entry!’ scrawled in childish writing on a large sign.

  ‘Is that your room?’ Erik asks.

  ‘Only Mummy’s allowed in there,’ the child says.

  ‘When I was little I wouldn’t even let my mummy come into my room.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I drew a big skull and hung that on the door, but I think she went in anyway, because sometimes there were clean sheets on the bed.’

  The evening air is fresh when he steps outside. It feels like he’s hardly been breathing during the course of the lesson. His back is so tense that it hurts, and he still feels strangely embarrassed.

  When he gets home he has a long, hot shower, then he calls the piano teacher.

  ‘Yes, this is Jackie.’

  ‘Hello, Erik Maria Bark here. Your new pupil, you know …’

  ‘Hello,’ she says, curious.

  ‘I’m calling to … to apologise. I wasted your whole evening and … well, I can see it’s hopeless, it’s too late for me to …’

  ‘You did some good work, like I said,’ Jackie says. ‘Do the exercises I gave you and I’ll see you again soon.’

  He doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she says, and ends the call.

  Before he goes to bed he puts on Chopin’s opus 25, to hear what he’s aiming at. When he hears the pianist Maurizio Pollini’s bubbling notes, he can’t help laughing.

  11

  The sun is high above the trees, and the blue-and-white plastic tape is fluttering in the breeze. A transparent shadow of the tape dances on the tarmac.

  The police officers posted at the cordon let through a black Lincoln Towncar, and it rolls slowly along Stenhammarsvägen as a reflection of the green gardens runs across the black paint like a forest at night.

  Margot Silverman pulls over to the kerb and glides smoothly to a halt behind the command vehicle, and sits there for a while with her hand on the handbrake.

  She’s thinking about how hard they worked to try to identify Susanna Kern before time ran out,
then, once an hour had passed and they realised it was too late, carried on anyway.

  Margot and Adam had gone down to see their exhausted IT experts, and had just been told that it wasn’t possible to trace the video clip when the call came in.

  Shortly after two o’clock in the morning the forensics team were at the scene, and the entire area between Bromma kyrkväg and Lillängsgatan had been cordoned off.

  Throughout the day the arduous task of examining the crime scene continued as further attempts were made to question the victim’s husband, with the help of psychiatrist Erik Maria Bark.

  The police have carried out door-to-door inquiries in the neighbourhood, they’ve checked recordings from nearby traffic-surveillance cameras, and Margot has booked a meeting for herself and Adam to see a forensics expert called Erixon.

  She takes a deep breath, picks up her McDonald’s bag, and gets out of the car.

  Outside the cordon blocking off Stenhammarsvägen is a growing pile of flowers, and there are now three candles burning. A few shocked neighbours have gathered in the parish hall, but most of them have stuck to their plans for the weekend.

  They have no suspects.

  Susanna’s ex-husband was playing football at Kristineberg sports club with their son when the police caught up with him. They already knew that he had an alibi for the time of the murder, but took him to one side to tell him.

  Margot has been told that after he was informed, he went back in goal and saved penalty after penalty from the boy.

  This morning Margot drew up a plan for the initial stages of the investigation in the absence of any witnesses or forensic results.

  Paying particular attention to people convicted of sex crimes who have either been released or given parole recently, they’re planning to track down anyone who’s been institutionalised or attended a clinic for obsessive disorder therapy in the past couple of years, and then work closely with the criminal profiling unit.

  Margot crumples the paper bag in her hand while she’s still chewing, then hands it to a uniformed officer.

  ‘I’m eating for five,’ she says.

  Wearily she lifts the crime-scene tape over her head, then walks heavily towards Adam, who is waiting outside the gate.

  ‘Just so you know, there’s no serial killer,’ she says sullenly.

  ‘So I heard,’ he replies, and lets her go through the gate ahead of him.

  ‘Bosses,’ she sighs. ‘What the hell are they thinking? The evening tabloids are going to speculate, it doesn’t matter what we say; the police are fair game to them, but we have to follow the rules. It’s like shooting a fucking barrel.’

  ‘Fish in a barrel,’ Adam corrects her.

  ‘We don’t know what effect the media are likely to have on the perpetrator,’ she goes on. ‘He might feel exposed and become more cautious, withdraw for a while … or all the attention could feed his vanity and make him overconfident.’

  Bright floodlights are shining through the windows of the house, as if it were a film location or the setting for a fashion shoot.

  Erixon the forensics expert opens a can of Coca-Cola and hurries to drink it, as though there were some magic power in the first bubbles. His face is shiny with sweat, his mask is tucked below his chin, and his protective white overalls are straining at the seams to accommodate his huge stomach.

  ‘I’m looking for Erixon,’ Margot says.

  ‘Try looking for a massive meringue that cries if you so much as mention the numbers 5 and 2,’ Erixon replies, holding out his hand.

  While Margot and Adam pull on their thin protective overalls, Erixon tells them he’s managed to get a print of a rubber-soled boot, size 43, from the outside steps, but all the evidence inside the house has been ruined or contaminated thanks to the efforts of the victim’s husband to clean up.

  ‘Everything’s taking five times as long,’ he says, wiping the sweat from his cheeks with a white handkerchief. ‘We can’t attempt the usual reconstruction, but I’ve had a few ideas about the course of events that we can talk through.’

  ‘And the body?’

  ‘We’ll take a look at Susanna, but she’s been moved, and … well, you know.’

  ‘Put to bed,’ Margot says.

  Erixon helps her with the zip of her overalls, as Adam rolls up the sleeves of his.

  ‘We could start a kids’ programme about three meringues,’ Margot says, placing both hands on her stomach.

  They sign their names on the list of visitors to the crime scene, then follow Erixon to the front door.

  ‘Ready?’ Erixon asks with sudden solemnity. ‘An ordinary home, an ordinary woman, all those good years – then a visitor from hell for a few short minutes.’

  They go inside, the protective plastic rustles, the door closes behind them, the hinges squealing like a trapped hare. The daylight vanishes, and the sudden shift from a late summer’s day to the gloom of the hallway is blinding.

  They stand still as their eyes adjust.

  The air is warm and there are bloody handprints on the door frame and around the lock and handle, fumbling in horror.

  A vacuum cleaner with no nozzle is standing on a plastic sheet on the floor. There’s a trickle of dark blood from the hose.

  Adam’s mask moves rapidly in front of his mouth and beads of sweat break out on his forehead.

  They follow Erixon across the protective boards on the floor towards the kitchen. There are bloody footprints on the linoleum. They’ve been clumsily wiped, and then trodden in again. One side of the sink is blocked with wet kitchen roll, and a shower-scraper is visible in the murky water.

  ‘We’ve found prints from Björn’s feet,’ Erixon says. ‘First he went round in his blood-soaked socks, then barefoot … we found his socks in the rubbish bin in the kitchen.’

  He falls silent and they carry on into the passageway that connects the kitchen with the dining and living rooms.

  A crime scene changes over time, and is gradually destroyed as the investigation proceeds. So as not to miss any evidence, forensics officers start by securing rubbish bins and vehicles parked in the area, and make a note of specific smells and other transitory elements.

  Apart from that, they conduct a general examination of the crime scene from the outside in, and approach the body and the actual murder scene with caution.

  The living room is bathed in bright light. The cloying smell of blood is inescapable. The chaos is oddly invisible because the furniture has been wiped and put back in position.

  Yesterday evening Margot saw the video of Susanna as she stood in this room eating ice cream with a spoon, straight from the tub.

  A plane comes in to land at Bromma Airport with a thunderous roar, making the glass-fronted cabinet rattle. Margot notes that all the porcelain figures are lying down, as if they were asleep.

  Flies are buzzing around a bloody mop that’s been left behind the sofa. The water in the bucket is dark red, the floor streaked. It’s possible to see the trail of the mop by the damp marks left on the skirting boards and furniture.

  ‘First he tried to hoover up the blood,’ Erixon says. ‘I don’t really know, but he seems to have mopped the floor, then wiped it with a dishcloth and kitchen roll.’

  ‘He doesn’t remember anything,’ Margot says.

  ‘Almost all the original blood patterns have been destroyed, but he missed some here,’ Erixon says, pointing to a thin spatter on one strip of wallpaper.

  He’s used the old technique and has stretched eight threads from the outermost marks on the wall to find the point where they converge – the point where the blood originated.

  ‘This is one precise point … the knife goes in at an angle from above, fairly deep,’ Erixon says breathlessly. ‘And of course this is one of the first blows.’

  ‘Because she’s on her feet,’ Margot says quietly.

  ‘Because she’s still on her feet,’ he confirms.

  Margot looks at the cabinet containing the prone porcelain figures,
and thinks that Susanna must have stumbled and hit it when she was trying to escape.

  ‘This wall has been cleaned,’ Erixon shows them. ‘So I’m having to guess a bit now, but she was probably leaning with her back against it, and slid down … She may have rolled over once, and may have kicked her legs … either way, she certainly lay here for a while with a punctured lung.’

  Margot bends over and sees the blood that has been exhaled across the back of the sofa, from below, possibly during a cough.

  ‘But the blood carries on over there, doesn’t it? It looks like it,’ she says, pointing. ‘Susanna struggled like a wild animal …’

  ‘And we don’t even know where Björn found her?’ Adam asks.

  ‘No, but we do have a large concentration of blood over there,’ Erixon says, and points.

  ‘And there,’ Margot says, gesturing towards the window.

  ‘Yes, she was there, but she was dragged there … she was in various different places after she died, she lay on the sofa, and … in the bathroom, as well as …’

  ‘So now she’s in the bedroom,’ Margot says.

  12

  The white light of the floodlamps fills the bedroom, forming blinding suns in the glass of the window. Everything is illuminated, every thread, every swirling mote of dust. A trail of blood runs across the pale grey carpet to the bed, like tiny black pearls.

  Margot stops inside the door, but hears the others carry on towards the bed, then the rustling of their overalls stops.

  ‘God,’ Adam gasps in a muffled voice.

  Once again Margot thinks of the video, of Susanna walking about with her trousers dangling from one foot as she kicked to get rid of them.

  She lowers her eyes and sees that her clothes have been turned the right way and are now piled neatly on the chair.

  ‘Margot? Are you OK?’

  She meets Adam’s gaze, sees his dilated pupils, hears the dull buzz of flies, and forces herself to look at the victim.

  The covers have been pulled up under her chin.

  Her face is nothing but a dark-red, deformed pulp. He’s hacked, cut, stabbed and carved away at it.

  She goes closer and sees a single eye staring crookedly up at the ceiling.