by Lars Kepler
‘All these absent fathers …’
‘When Maddy was almost four and was able to answer the phone, she picked up once when he called … She was delighted, said he’d promised to come on her birthday, and bring a puppy, and …’
Her lips begin to tremble and she falls silent. Erik pours them both some more wine and puts her hand to the glass, feeling her warmth.
‘But you’re not an absent father?’ she says.
‘No, I’m not … but when Benjamin was small I had a problem with prescription drugs, things got pretty bad,’ he replies honestly.
‘And his mother?’
‘Simone and I were married for almost twenty years …’
‘Why did you split up?’
‘She met a Danish architect. I don’t blame her, I actually like John … And I’m genuinely happy for her.’
‘I don’t believe that.’ She smiles.
He laughs.
‘Sometimes you just have to pretend you’re grown up, and do what you’re supposed to, say the things that grown-ups say …’
He thinks about Simone, and their backwards ceremony where they gave their rings back to each other, retracted their vows, and then at the party afterwards had a divorce cake and a last dance.
‘Have you met anyone else?’ Jackie asks quietly.
‘I’ve had a few relationships since the divorce,’ he admits. ‘I met a woman at the gym, and …’
‘You go to the gym?’
‘You should see my muscles,’ he jokes.
‘Who was she?’
‘Maria … nothing came of it, she was probably a bit too advanced for me.’
‘But you’ve never slept with your professor?’
‘No,’ Erik laughs. ‘Almost, though. I did end up in bed with a colleague of mine.’
‘Oops.’
‘No, it was OK, actually … We were drunk, I was divorced and abandoned … she and her husband were taking a break, it wasn’t a big deal … Nelly’s wonderful, but I wouldn’t want to live with her.’
‘What about patients?’
‘Occasionally you find them attractive,’ Erik says honestly. ‘That’s unavoidable, it’s an extremely intimate situation … but attraction and seduction are merely a way for the patient to avoid thinking about anything painful.’
He thinks of how Sandra used to stop in the middle of a sentence and feel her beautiful, intelligent face with her fingertips as tears welled up in her forest-green eyes. She wanted him to hold her, and when he did she dissolved in his arms, as though they were making love.
He doesn’t know if it was premeditated, but he still asked Nelly to take her on instead. Sandra had already met her, and it seemed like the natural solution.
‘So who are you seeing at the moment?’ Jackie says.
Erik looks at her smile, the shape of her face in the soft light, her dark, short hair and white neck. Rocky Kyrklund suddenly feels a very long way away, and he can’t understand how he managed to get so worried.
‘I don’t know how serious it is, but … Well, we’ve only met a few times,’ he says. ‘But I feel happy whenever I’m with her …’
‘That’s good,’ Jackie mumbles, and blushes.
She picks up another piece of bread.
‘When I’m with her I never want to go home … And I already like her daughter, and I’m also learning to play the piano like a robot,’ he says, and puts his hand on hers.
‘You’ve got soft hands,’ she says, with a big smile.
He strokes her hands, wrists and lower arms, slides his fingers up to her face, following her skin. He leans forward and kisses her gently on the mouth, several times. He looks at her, her heavy eyelids, her chin, her long neck.
She smiles as she waits to be kissed again, and they kiss, open their mouths and feel each other’s tongues, tentatively, breathing tremulously, when the doorbell suddenly rings.
They both start, and sit perfectly still, trying to breathe quietly.
The bell rings again.
Jackie hurries to stand up and Erik does the same, but when she opens the door there’s no one there. The stairwell is completely dark.
‘Mummy!’ Madeleine calls from her room. ‘Mummy!’
Jackie reaches out her hand and touches Erik’s face.
‘You should probably go now,’ she whispers.
36
An old woman with plastic bags wrapped over her clothes casts an anxious glance at Joona Linna as he wobbles unsteadily beside her in the queue of homeless people.
He tried to get some rest on the green line of the underground, but met a Roma man who offered him somewhere to sleep. He’s been lying on the floor of a caravan out in Huddinge, wrapped in a blanket, with his eyes closed, waiting for sleep, but his thoughts won’t leave him alone.
He hasn’t eaten or slept since Lumi left. He gave her all his money, keeping only enough to cover the journey to see Nils Åhlén.
Lack of sleep means that his migraines are coming more and more frequently. The pain is like a burning needle behind one eye, and his hip is getting even worse.
An Iranian man with friendly eyes is patiently pouring coffee for the hungry and giving them sandwiches. Most of the people here have probably been sleeping in the Central Station or in the nearby multi-storey car parks.
Joona no longer feels hungry, it’s only there as a weight that makes his legs weak. When he’s handed his coffee and sandwich, he feels like he’s going to faint. He moves to one side, unwraps the bread, takes a bite and swallows it, but his stomach starts to cramp, trying to reject the food. He puts his hand over his mouth and turns his back on the others. Dizziness forces him to his knees. He spills his coffee on the ground, takes another bite, coughs and spits it out, and feels sweat break out on his forehead.
‘How are you doing?’ the Iranian man says, having seen what happened.
‘I haven’t got round to eating anything for a while,’ he replies.
‘A busy man.’ The Iranian smiles gently.
‘Yes,’ Joona says, coughing again.
‘Just let me know if you need help.’
‘Thanks, but I’m fine,’ Joona mutters, then picks up his stick and limps away.
‘At one o’clock the soup kitchen in St Clara Church opens,’ the man calls after him. ‘Come along, you could do with sitting down and getting warm.’
Joona crosses the bridge towards the City Hall, feeds the sandwich to the swans, and walks with heavy steps up the long slope of Hantverkargatan. He stops and rests for a while outside Kungsholmen Gymnasium School, fingering the little stone in his pocket, and then carries on towards the fire station before turning off into Kronoberg Park. The foliage high above is drenched in sunlight, but the grass beneath the trees is shady, a soft moss-green.
Joona walks slowly up the hill, leaning on his stick, loosens the wire inside the railings, opens the gate and enters the old Jewish Cemetery.
‘I’m sorry I look the way I do,’ he says, putting the stone down on Samuel Mendel’s family grave.
Joona pushes a sweet wrapper away with his stick and tells his former partner that Jurek Walter is dead at last. Then he stands in silence, listening to the wind through the trees, and the sound of the children in the nearby playground.
‘I’ve seen the evidence,’ he whispers, patting the headstone before he leaves.
Margot Silverman has asked Joona to attend an unofficial meeting today. She’s probably just trying to be nice to him, letting him play at being a detective for a while.
On his way down towards Fleminggatan Joona thinks about the orgies Maria Carlsson attended.
Saturnalias, carnivals, drunken binges – they have always been part of human life. Every breath takes us closer to death, and we console ourselves with work and routines, but every so often we have to turn our regulated lives upside down, if only to prove to ourselves that we are free.
Maria Carlsson had evidently been planning to attend a saturnalia the day she was murdered. It�
��s impossible to say if the orgies are the link between the victims, but on her calendar Susanna Kern had circled the same July Saturday that Maria Carlsson had booked for an orgy.
Childhood friends Filip Cronstedt and Eugene Cassel are joint owners of the company Croca Communication Ltd, which had a turnover of ninety-five million euros last year. Even though they’re both registered as living abroad, it’s very obvious that they spend most of their time in Sweden.
Neither of them has visited the office on Sibyllegatan in the past six months, and they haven’t attended a board meeting in a very long time. The managing director has been in touch with Eugene, most recently just last week, but he hasn’t heard from Filip since the start of the year.
Linda Bergman said she was still in contact with Maria Carlsson when Filip suddenly withdrew from the saturnalias.
But the orgies went on, attended by both Maria and Eugene.
There seem to be a number of regular participants who attend every time, while a limited number of new people are invited along for a trial.
According to Linda, passcards for the hotel suite double as entrance tickets.
The investigative team have little expectation of finding Filip at the hotel, but they’re relatively confident that Eugene will be there.
According to Maria Carlsson’s Filofax, there’s an orgy planned for next Saturday, and another one in three weeks’ time. These two dates may be their only hope of finding Eugene and tracing Filip.
37
Adam, Margot and Joona are sitting at a table in the new part of The Doors bar. A football match is playing on the television. Margot is eating a large hamburger and drinking water. Adam and Joona are both drinking black coffee.
‘Filip doesn’t seem to have left Sweden,’ Adam says, arranging some printouts on the table. ‘He’s here, but he’s not registered as living here, and he doesn’t appear to have been in any of the homes owned by the company.’
Filip Cronstedt’s face looks up at them from the table. The photograph shows a man in his forties with back-combed blond hair and pale eyebrows. He looks like a friendly, considerate banker. His furrowed brow and the set of his cheeks and chin suggest hard-living, but that only makes him look more sympathetic.
‘I don’t know if I believe that he killed Maria Carlsson,’ Adam adds, pointing a finger at the picture. ‘It doesn’t make sense … I mean, he hasn’t got a history of violence, he’s got no criminal record, he’s never even been suspected of anything, and there’s no mention of him in Social Service records.’
‘He can afford good lawyers,’ Margot says.
‘Yes, but even so,’ Adam says.
A woman is dragging a fifty-litre barrel of beer across the floor. A family with three young girls walk past the scratched window overlooking Tulegatan.
‘All we know is that Filip Cronstedt started to get jealous of Maria,’ Margot says, and puts some French fries in her mouth. ‘He wanted her to stop going to the saturnalias, but she kept going … and now she’s dead, and that stud in her tongue is missing …’
‘Yes, but …’
‘I’m thinking,’ she goes on. ‘I’m thinking that he became obsessed with Maria Carlsson, stood on the sidelines watching her at the orgies … So far, so good – but is he a serial killer?’
‘Or a spree killer,’ Adam says. ‘We’ve only got two murders, and that’s not actually enough to—’
‘But we’re hunting a serial killer,’ she interrupts.
‘That doesn’t really matter,’ Joona says quietly. ‘But Margot’s right, because …’
He shuts his eyes as his migraine flares up behind his eye and he raises his hand slowly to his head. While the pain subsides he sits absolutely still and tries to remember what he was going to say about spree killers. The term refers to a murderer who has killed at least two people in different places, with barely any time between them. A spree killer doesn’t have the serial killer’s lifelong, sexualised attitude towards the dramaturgy of murder, but commits his murders as a direct response to a crisis.
‘OK,’ Adam says after a while.
‘It’s still too early to say anything about Filip,’ Margot says with her mouth full. ‘It could be him, I think that’s a possibility, but …’
‘In that case, the orgies form part of his fantasy about killing,’ Joona says, opening his eyes.
‘We’ll carry on with what we’ve got,’ Margot declares. ‘This evening is the only time we know where Eugene Cassel is going to be … and if anyone can tell us where Filip is, it’s Cassel.’
‘Mind you, we can’t just storm into a private orgy,’ Adam says with a grin.
‘Only one of us needs to go in. Find Eugene and talk to him, nice and calmly,’ Margot says, then takes a large bite of her hamburger.
‘You can’t work out in the field, seeing as you’re pregnant,’ Adam says.
‘Does it show?’ she asks as she chews.
‘OK, what the hell, I’ll do it,’ Adam says.
‘This isn’t a raid,’ Margot says. ‘There’s no obvious threat … We’ll call it a meeting with an anonymous informant, then we don’t need to run it past management beforehand.’
Adam sighs and leans back.
‘So now I’ve to go in among a load of …’
He falls silent, stares into space with glazed eyes, and shakes his head.
‘Obviously it’s a bit tricky, approaching people in a situation like that, but what can we do?’ Margot says.
‘I don’t get it … What sort of people would want to go to an orgy?’
‘I don’t know, I haven’t had group sex for at least ten years,’ Margot says, dipping some fries in ketchup.
Adam stares at her open-mouthed as she chews, a slight smile on her face. She wipes her fingers on a napkin and then looks up at him.
‘I was joking,’ she says with a grin. ‘I’m a nice girl, I promise, but I was actually involved in a raid on a swingers’ club when I worked in Helsingborg … As I recall, it was mostly just men in their sixties, with big bellies and skinny legs—’
‘Enough!’ Adam said, slumping down in his chair.
‘I’ll give your wife a call tomorrow and ask what time you got home, just so you know.’
‘Fine,’ Adam sighs, then grins.
‘Think of it as a job, nothing more,’ Joona says. ‘The other people are irrelevant, you just go straight in and talk to Eugene, get him to tell you where Filip is, and arrest him as soon as you’re sure you’ve got the information.’
‘Arrest him?’
‘To stop him warning Filip,’ Joona says, looking Adam in the eye.
‘If you find out anything about Filip,’ Margot says, ‘then …’
‘Then we call you,’ Adam fills in.
‘No, I’ll be asleep,’ she says, and puts the last of the food in her mouth. ‘If you find out anything, hand it over to the rapid-response unit.’
The two men remain seated at the table after Margot has left the pub. A few elderly patrons get up from their table and go outside to smoke.
‘Where are you staying?’ Adam asks, looking at Joona.
‘There’s a campsite on the outskirts of Huddinge.’
‘The Roma?’
Joona doesn’t reply, takes a sip of coffee and looks out of the window.
‘I’ve looked you up,’ Adam says. ‘I saw that … the year before you were injured you taught the Special Operations Unit in military Krav Maga … Sorry, but looking at you now, it’s hard to believe you were a paratrooper.’
Joona looks at his own hands and thinks that what he liked most was jumping from a great height, plummeting down into a terrible storm.
‘Have you ever been to Leeuwarden?’ he asks Adam.
Joona was the only Swede to be sent to the Netherlands to be trained in unconventional close combat and guerrilla warfare. That was at a base north of Leeuwarden. He used to go for long runs along the sandy beaches of the Wadden Sea when the tide had gone out.
38
The psychedelic room at the Birger Jarl Hotel that Linda Bergman described is actually known as ‘the Retro Room’, and can be booked just like any other room.
The hotel underwent a complete renovation at the turn of the millennium. All the rooms were gutted and the décor completely changed. Once the workmen had left, it turned out that room 247 had been forgotten.
The room had somehow been ignored during every refurbishment since the hotel was built in 1974.
It’s still intact, like a small time-capsule from a bygone age.
In 2013 a murder was committed at the hotel, after a sofa in room 247 was changed. Naturally, everyone claims that there was no connection between the two events, but now the staff refuse to make any adjustments to the layout of the room.
Adam has been sitting in his car in front of the old electricity works for five hours, watching the entrance to the hotel. Joona has been standing outside, wrapped in his blanket, holding out a cup with some coins in it.
Thirty-five guests have gone in during that time, but no Eugene.
Further down the street a grey-haired waiter is squatting down outside an Italian restaurant, smoking. When the church bells slowly strike eleven o’clock, Joona limps over to the car.
‘You’d better go in,’ he says to Adam.
‘Can’t you come with me?’
‘I’ll wait here,’ Joona says.
Adam drums his thumbs on the steering wheel.
‘OK,’ he says, and rubs his chin a few times.
‘Take it easy in there,’ Joona says. ‘Just because they’re there doesn’t make them criminals. You’re likely to see quite a lot of drugs, but ignore that. You should intervene only if you see signs of forced sexual activity, or if there’s anyone underage.’
Adam nods, and feels his stomach flutter as he gets out of the car and walks into the hotel.
The softly curved reception desk is empty except for a man talking on the phone.
Adam goes over to the desk, shows his ID, is given a passcard and continues towards the lifts. The Retro Room is at the end of the corridor, and on the door handle is a floppy plastic sign saying ‘Do not disturb’.
