by Lars Kepler
When the man speeds up the replay, a few trees appear to move in the wind. The night-time security guard walks along the corridor and disappears into the staffroom.
Suddenly the technician stops the film and points at an area of grass that spreads out like a patch of grey water. Margot leans forward and sees a number of dark shapes against the bushes and trees.
The technician enlarges the image and plays the footage. Three deer appear in the glow of a lamp. They walk across the grass, all stop at once, stand still with their necks craned, then carry on.
He shrinks the image and hits fast-forward again. Daylight arrives and the transparent shadows grow sharper as the sun rises.
Cars arrive and staff go inside and spread out through the corridors and tunnels.
The technician stops the recordings to show the night-staff leaving. Margot watches the morning round in the various sections in silence.
There’s very little activity, given that it’s Sunday. There’s no sign of Rocky Kyrklund among the patients who have opted to go out into the exercise yard.
They carry on fast-forwarding, stopping occasionally to look more closely at anyone in the corridors, but everything seems to be calm as the hours tick by.
‘And there you are,’ the technician says with a smile.
He enlarges one square to show her struggling to get out of her car, and her wrap dress slips open, revealing her pink underwear.
‘Whoops,’ she mumbles.
Margot sees herself walk across the car park with her big leather bag over her shoulder, her hands round her stomach. She goes round the corner of the building and disappears from view, but the next camera picks her up outside the entrance. At the same time she is visible from another angle on a camera above the reception desk in the lobby.
‘I disappeared for a few seconds as I went round the corner of the building,’ she says.
‘No,’ he says calmly.
‘It felt like it,’ she insists.
He goes back to the image of her getting out of her car, flashing her underwear, follows her across the car park, and stops the recording as she walks round the corner of the building and disappears from that screen.
‘We’ve got a camera here that ought to …’
He enlarges another square, showing the end of the building, and lots of leaves, but not her. He plays the footage slowly, and she comes into view outside the entrance.
‘OK, you’re gone for a few seconds,’ he eventually says. ‘There are always going to be tiny gaps in the system.’
‘Could someone exploit them to escape?’
The technician leans back, and the wad of chewing tobacco beneath his lip slips down over one of his teeth as he shakes his head.
‘Not even theoretically,’ he says firmly.
‘How certain are you of that?’
‘Pretty much one hundred per cent,’ he replies.
‘OK,’ Margot says. She gets up laboriously from her chair and thanks him for his help.
If Rocky couldn’t have escaped, she’s going to have to think again. The murder he committed has to be linked to the recent killings.
There are no coincidences on that level.
The priest must have had someone helping him, an apprentice on the outside, she thinks to herself.
Unless they’re dealing with a completely independent copycat, or someone with whom Rocky Kyrklund has been communicating.
The technician leads her back through the deserted corridors to Neil Lindegren’s room. The head of security is talking to a woman in a white coat when Margot walks in.
‘I need to talk to Rocky Kyrklund,’ she says.
‘But it’s not even certain that he’ll be able to remember what he’s been doing today,’ Neil says, gesturing towards the doctor.
‘Kyrklund has a serious neurological injury,’ the doctor explains. ‘His memories only come back to him as tiny fragments … and sometimes he does things without being aware of them at all.’
‘Is he dangerous?’
‘He would already be getting prepared for rehabilitation back into society if he’d shown any indication that that’s what he wants,’ Neil says.
‘He doesn’t want to get out – is that what you’re saying?’ Margot asks.
‘We start socialising most of our inmates fairly early … they get a chance to meet people outside the hospital, have supervised excursions, but he mostly keeps to himself and won’t accept any visitors … He never phones anyone, writes no letters, and doesn’t use the Internet,’ the doctor says.
‘Does he talk to the other patients?’
‘Sometimes, as I understand it,’ Neil replies.
‘I need to know which patients have been discharged from Section D:4 during the time he’s been there,’ she says, sitting down on the chair she sat on earlier.
She looks round Neil’s tidy office while he searches his computer. He’s got no photographs on display, no books or ornaments.
‘Have you found anything?’ she asks, and can hear how anxious her voice sounds.
Neil turns the screen to show her.
‘Not much,’ he says. ‘That section has a very low turnover of patients. There are a few who have been moved to other psychiatric institutions, but we’ve only had two inmates discharged in the time Rocky has been here.’
‘Two in nine years?’
‘That’s normal,’ the doctor says.
Margot opens her leather bag, takes out her notebook and writes the names down.
‘Now I want to see Rocky Kyrklund,’ she says.
53
Two guards with emergency alarms, batons and tasers on their belts accompany Margot through the airlocks and into the corridor where Rocky Kyrklund’s section is located.
He’s sitting on the bunk in his room watching a Formula 1 race on a television fixed to the wall up near the ceiling.
The shimmering cars move round the track like dragonflies, with their bursts of speed and metallic colours.
‘My name is Margot Silverman, I’m a superintendent with the National Criminal Investigation Department,’ she explains, leaning back against his desk chair.
‘Adam fucked Eve and then she got pregnant and gave birth to Cain,’ Rocky says, looking at her stomach.
‘I’ve come here from Stockholm to talk to you.’
‘You’re not observing the day of rest,’ Rocky states, then looks back at the television.
‘Are you?’ she asks, pulling the chair out and sitting down. ‘What have you done today?’
His face is calm, his nose looks like it was broken at some point, his cheeks are covered by a grey beard, and there are folds in his thick neck.
‘Have you been out today?’ she asks, and waits a moment before going on. ‘You haven’t been out in the exercise yard – but perhaps there are other ways of getting out.’
Rocky Kyrklund shows no reaction. His eyes are following the cars on the screen. One of the guards by the door shifts his weight and the keys on his belt jangle.
‘Who have you been in contact with on the outside?’ she asks. ‘Friends, relatives, other patients?’
The turbo engines roar. They sound like chainsaws cutting through dry wood, over and over again.
Margot looks at his stockinged feet, the worn heels and clumsy darning of one sock.
‘I’ve been told that you don’t see any visitors?’
Rocky doesn’t answer. His stomach rises and falls calmly under his denim shirt. One hand is resting between his legs, and he’s leaning back against two pillows.
‘But you do have personal contact with the staff? Some of them have worked here for many years … you must have got to know each other. Haven’t you?’
Rocky Kyrklund remains silent.
On the television a Ferrari driver comes into the pits at speed. Before his car has even stopped the crew are ready to change his tyres.
‘You have your meals with patients from other sections, and you share the exercise yard … Who d
o you like best? If you had to say a name?’
A bible with about sixty bookmarks in the form of red thread is lying on the bedside table. Beside it stands a dirty milk-glass. Light filtered by the trees comes through the vertical bars on the window.
Margot shifts position uncomfortably on the chair and takes the notebook containing the names of the two discharged patients out of her bag.
‘Do you remember Jens Ramberg? Marek Semiovic?’ she asks. ‘You do, don’t you?’
One car collides with another and spins round in a cloud of smoke while parts of the car fly across the track.
‘Do you have any memory of what you were doing earlier today?’
She waits a while, then stands up again as the accident is replayed on the screen, its glow reflecting off Rocky’s face and chest.
The guards don’t meet her gaze as they leave the room together. Rocky doesn’t seem to notice her departure.
As she walks back towards the car park, she can feel the technician watching her on one of the thirty cameras.
Before she drives back, she sits in the car and reads through the material about the murder of Rebecka Hansson, and thinks that Rocky Kyrklund must be involved in the new murders in some way, if only as a sort of distant rodef.
Margot sees that Erik Maria Bark was part of the team that conducted the forensic psychiatric evaluation of Kyrklund. Their conclusions, which formed the basis of the sentence, were based upon long conversations between Erik and Rocky. Erik evidently managed to gain his trust. She notes that he has taken part in almost one hundred forensic psychiatric evaluations and has been called as an expert witness during forty trials.
54
Adam Youssef is sitting in his car next to his wife Katryna. She’s massaging her hands, and the smell of her hand cream is spreading through the car. It’s starting to get dark, and the traffic on Valhallavägen is fairly light. They’ve been to the Dramatic Institute to watch her brother Fuad’s performance about post-punk group The Cure.
The middle-aged singer, Robert Smith, was depicted sitting without any make-up on a carousel horse, talking about his years at Notre Dame Middle School.
Adam stops at a red light and looks at Katryna. She’s plucked her eyebrows a bit too much, making her face look rather cruel.
‘You’re not saying anything,’ he says.
She shrugs her shoulders. He looks at her nails. She’s painted them in a colour that shifts from violet to pink at their tips. He ought to say something about them.
‘Katryna,’ he says. ‘What is it?’
She looks him in the eye with a seriousness that makes him scared.
‘I don’t want to have the baby,’ she explains.
‘You don’t?’
She shakes her head and the red light disappears from her face. He turns back towards the traffic light. It’s turned green, but he can’t bring himself to drive on.
‘I’m not sure I want children at all,’ she whispers.
‘You’ve only just got pregnant,’ he says helplessly. ‘Can’t you wait, see if you change your mind?’
‘I’m not going to,’ she says simply.
He nods and swallows. A car blows its horn a couple of times before overtaking on the right, and then the light goes red again. He looks at the switch for the hazard-warning lights, but can’t be bothered to press it.
‘OK,’ he says.
‘I’ve made up my mind, I’ve booked an appointment to have an abortion next week.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘There’s no need.’
‘But I could wait in the car while—’
‘I don’t want you there,’ she interrupts.
He stares at the cars driving across the junction in front of them, then at some black birds flying overhead; they’re describing a wide arc in front of Stockholm’s Olympic Stadium.
He’s losing her, it’s already happening.
Recently he’s been trying to show her he loves her every day. They love each other, after all, they really do. Or at least he thought they did.
What if she’s lying when she says she’s going out with her workmates at Sephora after work every Thursday? She never talks about it, and he hasn’t been interested enough to ask or go along.
The light goes green again and he moves his foot on to the accelerator and drives on. They’re approaching Sveavägen when his phone rings.
‘Can you look and see who it is?’
She picks up the phone from the pocket by the gearstick and turns it over.
‘It’s your boss.’
Adam looks away from the traffic for a moment before taking the phone.
‘Margot?’ he says in a weak voice.
‘It’s the same deer,’ she says.
The broken edge of the deer in Sandra’s room has been matched with the little head found in Susanna Kern’s hand, one hundred per cent.
‘It seemed completely mad when we saw it on the video,’ Margot says, sounding like she’s panting for breath. ‘But all it means is that the murders are planned long before they take place, that someone has recorded them and then waited – possibly for weeks.’
‘But why?’ Adam asks, feeling his hand sweating on the wheel.
The murders are following each other like a string of pearls, a ring of roses, he thinks. The order of death is ordained long before anyone pulls the trigger. That ought to give us more time, in theory, but not in practice, seeing as the murderer doesn’t upload the videos until it’s too late for us to identify the scene or the woman.
‘I’ve found some similarities with an old case,’ Margot says.
‘What did you say?’
‘Are you listening?’
‘Yes, sorry …’
He looks at Katryna’s face, turned away from him, as he listens to Margot tell him about the similarities with an old murder in Salem, about the priest who was found guilty, about Rebecka Hansson’s ravaged face and arranged posture.
She explains that she’s checked the security arrangements at Karsudden, and that it seems impossible that anyone could have got out without it being discovered.
‘So he must have an accomplice, a disciple … unless it’s a copycat.’
‘OK,’ Adam says hesitantly.
‘Do you think I’m making too much of this?’
‘Maybe,’ he says honestly.
‘I can understand that, but right now it doesn’t matter. You’ll see what I mean when you take a look.’
‘Do you want us to go and have a word with the priest?’ Adam asks.
‘I’m on my way back from there now.’
‘Weren’t you and Jenny supposed to be having some sort of big dinner today?’
‘That’s next weekend,’ she says curtly.
‘So what did he say, then?’
‘Nothing. He didn’t even look at me,’ she says. ‘It appears I’m completely devoid of interest.’
‘Nice,’ Adam says.
‘That seems to be par for the course with him,’ she says tolerantly. ‘That was why they brought Erik Maria Bark into the team conducting the forensic psychiatric examination, he gets people to talk …’
‘Apart from our witness,’ Adam points out.
‘Practically the entire investigation had its foundations in his conversations with Kyrklund,’ Margot explains. ‘It’s a huge amount of material, we’re going to have to get people to examine every last detail.’
‘How long’s that going to take?’
‘That’s why I’m on my way to see Erik Maria Bark now,’ Margot says.
‘Now?’
‘Well, I’m already in the car, so …’
‘So am I,’ Adam laughs. ‘But I’m certainly not thinking of—’
‘I have to say, it would be brilliant to have you there,’ she interrupts amiably.
55
Erik is sitting in his reading chair with a copy of the Swedish Psychiatric Association’s journal in his lap, thinking about dinner at Nelly an
d Martin’s. They invite him round fairly often to their huge modernist house with its curved windows and a terrace that looks like the bridge of an old sailing yacht.
After dinner Martin took off his tie and led them through the house clutching a glass of Calvados in his hand. In his study he had a fairly small oil painting he had just been given by his aunt in Westphalia. It was of a gloomy-looking angel. Nelly thought it was horrible and tried to offer it to Erik. Martin agreed with her, but Erik declined the offer because it was obvious that he wanted to keep it really.
When Martin had to take a call from Sydney, Erik and Nelly went to the billiard room. Nelly poured more wine, she was already fairly drunk. Her eyes were moist and she was leaning against the raised edge of the table.
‘Martin looks at porn,’ she slurred.
‘Why do you think that?’ Erik asked, rolling a ball across the green baize.
‘I don’t care, it’s nothing perverse.’
‘Does it make you sad?’
‘Not jealous, but … I don’t know, you should see the women … They’re young and beautiful and they do things I’d never dare to try,’ she said, reaching out and touching his lips.
‘Talk to him.’
‘Is youth the only thing that counts?’ she drawled.
‘Not to me.’
‘What does matter, then? What do you want? What does any man really want?’ she said, swaying slightly.
He helped her to her bedroom, but left before she took off her mocha-coloured dress.
When Nelly called him to discuss two Iranian patients from the unit for survivors of torture out in Danderyd, he took the opportunity to thank her for dinner. She just laughed and said he should be grateful she didn’t get too drunk and embarrassing.
Now Erik leans back in his armchair and thinks about the bottle of champagne in the fridge that he opened earlier, all alone. He sealed it with some argon, a noble gas that will have kept it tasting like new if he were to have a glass now.
That would get rid of my headache, Erik thinks, as he sees the car headlights sweep in through the large glass window.
