Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  Rocky is standing in front of him on top of the underwater mountain, his clothes moving in the gentle current, his hair floating like slow flames above his head. He opens his mouth and large bubbles stream out and float up in front of his face.

  ‘Tell me what you can see,’ Erik says calmly.

  ‘I see her … I’m standing in the garden at the back of the house … Through the terrace door I see her sitting on the sofa watching television. Her knitting needles are moving and a ball of blue wool is slowly unravelling beside her hip … She’s said she doesn’t want to see me, but I think she’ll open her legs anyway …’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I knock on the glass door, she takes her glasses off and lets me in … she says she has to go to bed because she’s working in the morning … but that I can stay the night if I like …’

  Erik doesn’t interrupt, just waits for the next segment of memories, waits for the images to join up.

  ‘I sit down on the sofa and touch her necklace … There’s an old knitting pattern in a women’s magazine on the floor … Rebecka puts her knitting down on the table and I slip a hand between her thighs … she pulls away, says she doesn’t want to … but I pull her nightdress up again …’

  Rocky is breathing heavily.

  ‘She resists, but I know she’s changed her mind, I can see it in her eyes, she wants this now … I kiss her, and put my hand between her legs.’

  He’s smiling to himself on the chair, then turns serious.

  ‘She says we should go to her bedroom, and I put a finger in her mouth and she sucks it, and … Outside.’

  Rocky stops himself and just stares, his eyes wide open.

  ‘There’s someone outside! I can see a face. There’s someone at the window.’

  ‘Outside the house?’ Erik asks.

  ‘It was a face, I go over to the glass door but I can’t see anything … just darkness, and the room reflected in the glass … and then I see someone standing behind me … I spin round, ready to lash out, but it’s only Rebecka … she gets scared and tells me to leave … she means it, so I go into the hall and take all the money she’s got in her bag, and …’

  He falls silent, breathing more heavily, and the energy in the room changes, slowly becomes more dangerous.

  ‘Rocky, I want you to stay with Rebecka,’ Erik says. ‘It’s the same evening, you’re at home with her, and—’

  ‘I’ve gone to the Zone,’ Rocky interrupts in a slurred voice.

  ‘Later that evening, you mean?’

  ‘I ignore the strippers on the main stage,’ he whispers. ‘I ignore the dealers, because what I’m looking for …’

  ‘Do you go back to Rebecka’s?’

  ‘No, we sit in the disabled toilet so we can be alone.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘My girlfriend … the woman I love. Tina, who … She gives me a blow job without a condom, she doesn’t care, she’s in a hurry now, she’s sweating all over.’

  Erik wonders if he ought to bring the patient out of hypnosis, he can feel Rocky moving too quickly through his memories, and no longer knows if it’s possible to keep him at the right level.

  ‘Tina coughs over the basin and looks at me in the mirror with fear in her eyes … I know she’s in a bad way, but …’

  ‘Is Tina your accomplice?’ Erik asks, looking at Rocky’s open face.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, they owe me a hundred thousand, I’ll be getting it next week,’ he mutters. ‘But right now I can only afford … shitty brown shoe-scrapings, have to dissolve it in acid so I can shoot up.’

  Rocky starts to shake his head anxiously, and is breathing unevenly through his nose.

  ‘There’s no danger here,’ Erik says, as calmly as he can. ‘You’re quite safe, you can talk about everything that happens.’

  Rocky’s body relaxes again, but his face is lined and sweaty.

  ‘I sit there, let her have the spoon … I’m not getting a kick any more, but I feel great and start to nod off, and I see her use a cable as a tourniquet round her arm … the adapter’s whirring and getting all tangled, and she can’t sort it out afterwards … I’m too out of it to help her, I hear her ask for help with a sob in her voice …’

  Rocky whimpers slightly and the atmosphere seems to contract to a single dark pinprick.

  ‘What’s happening now?’ Erik asks.

  ‘The door opens,’ Rocky replies. ‘Some bastard has picked the lock … I shut my eyes, I’ve got to rest, but I know it’s the preacher, the preacher’s found me …’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I can tell because of the filthy smell of old gear. It’s withdrawal, it smells metallic, like fish-guts …’

  Rocky shakes his head again, his breathing is getting too quick, and Erik thinks he should start to bring Rocky out of his hypnosis, but holds back.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he whispers.

  ‘I open my eyes and the preacher looks a fucking wreck,’ he says. ‘Hepatitis, probably, completely yellow eyes … The preacher snorts back some snot, then starts to speak in a really high voice.’

  Rocky is breathing shallowly, twisting on his chair and moaning in anguish between his words.

  ‘The preacher goes over to Tina … she’s shot up, but can’t get the cable loose … Dear God in heaven, have mercy on my soul, dear God in heaven …’

  ‘Rocky, I’m going to start to wake you up, and—’

  ‘The preacher’s holding a machete, and it sounds like when you stick a spade into mud—’

  Rocky starts to retch, he’s panting heavily now, but goes on talking.

  ‘The preacher chops her arm off at the shoulder, loosens the tourniquet and drinks …’

  ‘Listen to my voice now.’

  ‘And drinks the blood from her arm … while Tina lies bleeding to death on the floor … Dear God in heaven … Dear God—’

  ‘Three, two, one … now you’re above the disabled toilet, you’re high above it, and nothing you can see is going to hurt you …’

  ‘Dear God,’ Rocky sobs, hanging his head.

  ‘You’re still in a state of deep relaxation, and you’re going to tell me how much of what you’ve just said to me was a dream … You’ve taken drugs, and have been having nightmares … You’re looking down at yourself on the toilet floor. What’s really going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rocky says slowly.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘The preacher’s face is covered in blood … shows me a polaroid picture of Rebecka … just like Tina the week before, and …’

  His hoarse voice disappears, but his mouth keeps moving for a while until it stops. He leans his big head to one side, and looks straight through Erik with empty eyes.

  ‘I didn’t hear what you said.’

  ‘It’s my fault … I should pluck out my eye, for it has offended me, it would be better to pluck my eye out than this.’

  Rocky tries to stand up, but Erik holds him down with a gentle hand on his shoulder, and feels the big body vibrate, trembling with fear.

  ‘You’re in a state of deep relaxation,’ Erik says, as sweat trickles down his back. ‘But before you wake up, I want you to look straight at the preacher and … tell me what you see.’

  ‘I’m lying on the floor, I can see boots … I can smell blood, and I shut my eyes.’

  ‘Go back a little.’

  ‘I can’t do any more,’ Rocky says, and starts to come round from his hypnosis.

  ‘Stay there, just for a moment … There’s no danger, you’re relaxed, you’re telling me about the first time you saw the unclean preacher.’

  ‘It’s in the church …’

  He opens his eyes for a moment, then shuts them again, and mutters something inaudible.

  ‘Tell me about the church,’ Erik says. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rocky gasps. ‘It’s not a sermon …’

  ‘What can you see?’
/>   ‘He’s wearing make-up over his stubble … and his arms are so fucking riddled with holes that—’

  Rocky tries to stand up, but his chair falls over and he collapses and hits the back of his head on the floor.

  61

  Rocky rolls on to his side and Erik helps him to his feet. He stretches his back, rubs his mouth with his hand, pushes Erik away and goes over to the window, looking through the gaps between the vertical bars.

  ‘Do you remember anything from when you were hypnotised?’ Erik asks, picking the chair up off the floor.

  Rocky turns round and looks at him through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Was I entertaining?’

  ‘You talked a lot about the preacher. You do know what his real name is – don’t you?’

  Rocky purses his lips and slowly shakes his head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you do, and I don’t understand why you’re protecting him …’

  ‘The preacher is just a scapegoat, a—’

  ‘Give me a name, then,’ Erik persists.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Rocky says.

  ‘A place, then. Where is he? Where’s the Zone?’

  Sunlight from behind shines through his beard onto his furrowed cheeks.

  ‘Was this the first time you’ve hypnotised me?’ Rocky asks.

  ‘I’ve never hypnotised you before.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, the evaluation was a waste of time,’ Rocky says, without listening. ‘But I liked talking to you.’

  ‘You remember that? It’s almost ten years ago …’

  ‘I remember your brown cord jacket, that must have been pretty damn retro even then … We used to sit on opposite sides of a table … chipboard, with a birch veneer, you can tell by the smell … Paper cups of water, Dictaphone, notebook … and my head was really hurting again, I needed morphine, but I wanted to tell you about my alibi first …’

  ‘I don’t remember that,’ Erik says, taking a step back.

  Rocky picks at the window between the bars.

  ‘I wrote down Olivia’s address, but that was never mentioned in court.’

  ‘But you confessed to murdering—’

  ‘Just tell me what happened to my alibi,’ he interrupts.

  ‘I didn’t really take it seriously.’

  Rocky turns round, walks closer, hunches up slightly and lowers his head, as if to see Erik better.

  ‘So you never mentioned it to my defence lawyer?’

  Erik glances quickly over his shoulder and can see that the guard outside the door has disappeared. Rocky shoves the chairs between them out of the way with his foot.

  ‘I don’t remember being given an address,’ Erik says quickly. ‘But if I was, I’m sure I would have handed it to your defence team.’

  ‘You threw it away – didn’t you?’ Rocky says darkly and steps closer.

  ‘Calm down,’ Erik replies, moving towards the door.

  ‘You sentenced me to this,’ Rocky shouts. ‘It was you! You were the one who did this to me!’

  Erik is standing with his back to the door, and raises his hands to hold Rocky back, but he doesn’t stand a chance of defending himself. Rocky just brushes his arms aside and punches him in the chest with his fist. The blow feels like a sledgehammer. All the air goes out of his lungs and he can’t breathe. The next punch strikes exactly the same place and Erik’s head slams back against the door with a dull thud.

  He is struggling to stay upright. The zip on his jacket catches on the textured wallpaper as he moves sideways to get away. He raises a hand to fend Rocky off, coughs and tries to breathe.

  ‘Do you want me to look into your alibi?’ he hisses.

  ‘Liar!’ Rocky roars, grabbing Erik by the chin and pressing his mouth closed.

  Rocky pulls him towards him and slaps the side of his head so hard that his vision goes black. Erik staggers to one side with the force of the blow, falls over the plastic chair and careers into the metal bed-frame with a force that makes his back creak. He pulls the covers off the bed as he slides down on to the floor, his cheek burning.

  ‘That’s enough, now,’ Erik gasps, shuffling backwards.

  ‘Shut up,’ Rocky yells, and shoves the plastic chair aside.

  As he leans forward Erik kicks out at him and hits him in the chest. Rocky catches hold of his foot and Erik kicks out with the other one. His shoe comes off and Rocky stumbles back just as the guard comes in holding a taser.

  ‘Stand against the wall, Rocky! Hands behind your head, feet wide apart.’

  Erik gets slowly to his feet and adjusts his clothes. He picks up the covers from the floor with trembling hands, and puts them back on the bed.

  ‘It might look a bit odd,’ he gasps, tasting blood in his mouth. ‘But I had cramp in my leg and Rocky was helping me take my shoes off.’

  The guard stares at him.

  ‘Cramp?’

  ‘It feels better already.’

  Rocky is standing quietly to the side with his fingers laced behind his neck. The back of his white vest is wet with sweat.

  ‘What have you got to say, Rocky?’

  He lowers his hands and turns round slowly, scratches his beard and nods.

  ‘I was helping the doctor with his shoe,’ he says gruffly.

  ‘We did shout, but no one heard,’ Erik explains. ‘I tried lying down on the bed, but slipped off onto the floor.’

  ‘Is it feeling better now?’ Rocky asks, picking Erik’s shoe up from the floor.

  ‘Much better, thanks.’

  The guard stands there with the taser in his hand, looks at them, then nods, although something obviously isn’t right.

  ‘The visit’s over,’ the guard says.

  ‘If you can just tell me Olivia’s surname, I can find her,’ Erik says, meeting Rocky’s gaze.

  ‘Her name is Olivia Toreby,’ he says simply.

  Erik leaves with the guard, follows him along the corridor, and sees that Casillas is talking to the head of section in the dayroom.

  ‘Did it go OK?’ Casillas calls.

  Erik stops in the doorway, his cheek still stinging from the force of the blow.

  ‘I have to say, you’ve done a remarkable job with the patient,’ he replies.

  ‘Thanks,’ Casillas smiles. ‘I’m pretty sure he’d have been released if he’d applied for parole … but he doesn’t seem to think he’s done his penance yet.’

  Erik limps towards his car, gets out his phone and dials Margot’s number to tell her about Olivia Toreby.

  62

  Joona opens his eyes and looks up at the white ceiling. Daylight is filtering into the room around the edges of the dark-blue roller-blind. The window is open slightly, and fresh air is streaming in, cooling the clean sheets.

  There are blackbirds singing in the garden.

  He looks at the alarm clock and sees that he has slept for thirteen hours. Erik has left him a phone, and on the bedside table are two pink capsules and three tablets on top of a note saying ‘Eat us now, drinks loads of water, and have a look in the fridge’.

  Joona swallows the drugs, empties the glass of water, then groans as he stands up. But he can at least bear to put some weight on his leg. The pain is still there, but it’s far from severe. The nausea and pain in his stomach have vanished as though they never existed.

  He goes over to the window and looks out at the apple trees as he dials Lumi’s number.

  ‘It’s Dad,’ Joona says, feeling his heart tighten.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘How are you getting on? Do you like Paris?’

  ‘It’s a bit bigger than Nattavaara,’ his daughter replies in a voice that could be Summa’s.

  ‘How’s college?’

  ‘I’m still finding it confusing, but I think it’s pretty good …’

  Joona reassures himself that she’s got everything she needs, and Lumi tells him to shave off his beard and join the police again, and then they end the call.

  Erik has
left him a pair of black sweatpants and a white T-shirt. The clothes are too small, the trousers flutter round his calves and the T-shirt is tight across his chest. By the bed is a pair of white slippers, the sort you get in hotels.

  Joona thinks that mysteries are only mysteries until you have discounted all the impossibilities.

  When he was in hospital Margot told him that the videos had been recorded long before the murders took place.

  Maria Carlsson owned nothing but black underwear, but the seams of the tights she was wearing when she died were different to the ones in the video. The spoon found in the tub of ice cream in Susanna Kern’s home wasn’t the same one that was in the video, and the post- mortem will probably show that Sandra Lundgren hadn’t injected herself with insulin in her thigh on the day she was murdered.

  Classic stalking. The women have been watched and their behaviour mapped over a long period.

  Joona leans against the walls as he walks through the house towards the kitchen. He tells himself that he’ll call the police in Huddinge and follow up the previous day’s events as soon as he’s had something to eat.

  He drinks some more water, puts coffee on, and looks in the fridge, where he finds half a pizza and a tub of yoghurt.

  On the kitchen table, next to Erik’s empty coffee cup, are printouts relating to an almost ten-year-old case that was tried in Södertälje District Court.

  Joona eats the cold pizza as he reads the verdict, the post-mortem analysis and the entire preliminary investigation report.

  The old murder has striking similarities to the recent ones.

  The vicar of the parish of Salem, Rocky Kyrklund, was arrested and convicted for the murder of a woman called Rebecka Hansson.

  Joona was pretty out of it yesterday when Erik was taking care of him, but he can remember what Erik said. Margot Silverman had asked him to go and talk to a guy who had been sentenced to secure psychiatric care. She wanted Erik to find out if he had any accomplices or disciples.

  She must have meant Rocky Kyrklund.

  Margot’s thinking along the right lines, Joona thinks, bracing his arms on the table as he stands up again. He walks barefoot into the back garden, sits down on the cushionless garden swing for a while, then walks over to the shed.