Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  ‘What?’ Jackie asks.

  ‘When I pick Maddy up after her match,’ Erik replies.

  Jackie’s face goes pale and turns hard.

  ‘That was yesterday,’ she says in a heavy voice.

  ‘Mum, I … I can make my own …’

  ‘Did you walk on your own?’ Jackie asks.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Erik says. ‘I thought—’

  ‘Be quiet,’ she interrupts. ‘Maddy, did Erik not turn up after the match?’

  ‘It was fine, Mum,’ the little girl says, and starts to cry.

  Erik merely sits there with his hands hanging, feeling his headache throb. He suddenly feels sick again.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says quietly. ‘I can’t understand how—’

  ‘You promised me!’

  ‘Mum, stop,’ Madeleine cries.

  ‘Jackie, I’ve had such a ridiculous amount to—’

  ‘I don’t care!’ she yells. ‘I don’t want to hear!’

  ‘Stop shouting,’ Madeleine sobs.

  Erik kneels down in front of her and looks her in the eye.

  ‘Maddy, I thought it was tomorrow, I got it wrong.’

  ‘It’s OK—’

  ‘Don’t talk to him!’ Jackie snaps.

  ‘Please, I only want to—’

  ‘I knew it,’ she says, and her dark glasses flash angrily. ‘Those pills, they weren’t Alvedon, were they?’

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ Erik tries to explain, standing up. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Fine,’ Jackie mutters, as she pulls Madeleine towards the door.

  ‘But this time it—’

  She walks into a table that had to be moved to make room for the piano. A vase of dried flowers falls and breaks into three large pieces.

  ‘Mum, you broke—’

  ‘I don’t care!’ Jackie snaps.

  Madeleine looks scared as she follows her mother, crying and hiccoughing.

  ‘Jackie, wait!’ Erik pleads, trying to follow them. ‘I’m having a bit of trouble with my pills, I don’t how it happened, but—’

  ‘Do you think I care? Am I supposed to feel sorry for you now? Because you take drugs and put my daughter in danger? I can’t trust you now, you must see that, surely. I don’t want you anywhere near her.’

  ‘I’ll call a taxi,’ Erik says heavily.

  ‘Mum, it wasn’t his fault. Please, Mum—’

  Jackie doesn’t answer, tears are streaming down her cheeks as she leads her daughter outside.

  ‘I’m sorry, I ruin everything,’ Madeleine sobs.

  74

  Where Mäster Samuelsgatan crosses Malmskillnadsgatan, the tall buildings form a canyon that forces the wind to become gusty and hard. Dust and rubbish swirl about restlessly around the little bronze girl whose downturned eyes have been surrounded by prostitutes for more than three decades.

  Erik has come with Joona so that he’s close at hand if they manage to find Rocky. He’s sitting in the Mozzarella restaurant and has just ordered a cup of coffee.

  He’s already called Jackie and left two messages for her, apologising and then trying to explain that there might be a patient stalking him.

  He takes a sip of his coffee, and sees his worried face reflected in the window facing the street. He can’t understand how he’s managed to ruin everything. Being alone after Simone left hadn’t scared him, but then he’d been given another chance, Cupid had crept to the edge of his cloud and fired another arrow his way.

  He gets out his phone, looks at the time, then calls Jackie for a third time. When her recorded voice asks him to leave a message, he closes his eyes and speaks:

  ‘Jackie … I’m so very sorry, I’ve already said that, but people do make mistakes … I’m not going to make any excuses, but I’m here … I’ll wait for you, I’ll practise my étude … and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to make you start trusting me again.’

  As Erik puts his phone down on the table, alongside his cup, Joona stops next to two women standing against a blank concrete wall. Leaning on his stick, he tries to strike up a conversation with them, but when they realise he isn’t a customer they turn their back on him and begin talking to each other in low voices.

  ‘Do you know somewhere called the Zone?’ he asks. ‘I’ll pay well if you can tell me where it is.’

  They start to walk off and Joona limps after them, trying to explain that the Zone might be called something else officially.

  He stops and turns to walk in the opposite direction. Further ahead, close to the Kungsgatan towers, a thin woman gets into a white van.

  Joona passes some scaffolding, and sees a pile of discarded latex gloves and condoms beside the wall.

  A woman in her forties is sitting in the next doorway. Her hair is pulled up into a messy ponytail and she’s wrapped in a thick jacket. She’s wearing a pair of stained red shorts, and her legs are bare and covered in scabs.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Joona says.

  ‘I’m going,’ the woman slurs.

  She stands up with the manner of someone who is used to being moved on, her coat falls open, revealing her cropped T-shirt, and she looks up.

  ‘Liza?’ Joona says.

  Her eyes are watery, and her face is wrinkled and tired.

  ‘They told me you were dead,’ she says.

  ‘I came back.’

  ‘You came back.’ She laughs hoarsely. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  She rubs her eyes hard, smearing her make-up.

  ‘Your son?’ Joona says, leaning on his stick. ‘He was with a foster-family, you were going to start seeing him again.’

  ‘Are you disappointed in me?’ she asks, turning her face away.

  ‘I just thought you’d packed this in,’ he replies.

  ‘So did I, but what the hell …’

  She takes a few unsteady steps, then stops and leans on an overflowing rubbish bin.

  ‘Can I get you a coffee and a cheese roll?’ Joona asks.

  Liza shakes her head.

  ‘You have to eat, don’t you?’

  She looks up and blows some strands of hair from her face.

  ‘Just tell me what you want to know.’

  ‘Do you know a place called the Zone? It sounds like a lot of girls work there, it’s pretty Russian, it’s existed for ten years or so, and you can get hold of heroin fairly easily there …’

  ‘There used to be a place out in Barkarby – what the fuck was it called?’

  ‘Club Noir … that’s gone now.’

  A flock of sparrows takes off from the trees.

  ‘There’s the massage parlour out in Solna, but …’

  ‘That’s too small,’ Joona says.

  ‘Try the Internet,’ she suggests.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll do that,’ he says, and starts to walk off.

  ‘Most men are OK,’ she mutters.

  Joona stops and looks at her again. She’s standing unsteadily with her hands on the rubbish bin, licking her lips.

  ‘Do you know where Peter Dahlin hangs out these days?’ he asks.

  ‘In hell, I hope.’

  ‘I know … but if he hasn’t got there yet?’

  She bends over and starts scratching her leg.

  ‘I heard he’d moved back into his mum’s flat in the Fältöversten building, over at Karlaplan,’ she says quietly, and stares at her nails.

  75

  Erik pulls up in the car park beneath the shopping centre at Fältöversten, and as they walk towards the lifts Joona explains that he’s not allowed to be there.

  ‘I’ve got a restraining order,’ he says, and his smile makes Erik shiver.

  On the sixth floor they walk along a dull corridor with names on letterboxes, dusty doormats, prams and trainers.

  Joona rings on a door bearing an ornate brass sign with the name Dahlin on it.

  After a while a woman in her twenties opens the door. There’s a frightened look in her eyes, she’s got bad skin and her hair is in old-fashion
ed rollers.

  ‘Is Peter watching television?’ Joona asks, walking in.

  Erik follows him and closes the door. He looks around the drab hall with floral embroidery on the walls, as well as colour photographs of an old woman with two cats in her lap.

  Joona pushes the glass door open with his stick, walks straight into the living room and stops in front of an older man sitting on a brown leather sofa with two tabby cats. He’s wearing thick glasses, a white shirt and red tie, and his wavy hair has been combed over a bald patch in the middle of his head.

  An old episode of Columbo is showing on television. Peter Falk puts his hands in the pockets of his crumpled raincoat and smiles to himself.

  The man on the sofa gives Joona a quick glance, pulls a cat treat from a dusty bag, throws it on the floor and then smells his fingers.

  The two cats jump down on to the floor without much enthusiasm and sniff the treat. The young woman limps off to the kitchen and squeezes out a dishcloth.

  ‘Did you do your usual?’ Joona asks.

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ Peter Dahlin says in a nasal voice.

  ‘Does she have any idea that this is only the start?’

  Peter Dahlin smiles at him, but the corners of his eyes are twitching nervously.

  ‘I’ve undergone voluntary sterilisation, you know that,’ he says. ‘My conviction was overturned in the Court of Appeal, I was awarded damages, and you’re not allowed to come anywhere near me.’

  ‘I’ll leave as soon as you answer my question.’

  ‘You can count on me reporting this,’ he says, scratching his groin.

  ‘I need to find a place called the Zone.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Peter, you’ve been to all the places people aren’t supposed to go, and …’

  ‘I’m so very, very bad,’ the man says sarcastically.

  The girl in the kitchen puts her hand against her stomach and closes her eyes for a moment.

  ‘She’s not wearing any pants,’ Peter says, putting his feet up on the end of the sofa. ‘They’re soaking in vinegar under the bed.’

  ‘Erik,’ Joona says. ‘Get her out of here, explain that we’re from the police, I think she needs to see a doctor.’

  ‘I’ll only find another one,’ Peter says nonchalantly.

  Erik leads the girl into the hall. She’s holding her hand to her stomach, and sways as she pulls her boots on and picks up her bag.

  Before they’ve even closed the door Joona grabs hold of one of Peter’s ankles and starts walking towards the kitchen. The older man manages to grab hold of the arm of the sofa, which moves with him, crumpling the Persian carpet.

  ‘Let go of me, you’re not allowed …’

  The sofa catches on the threshold of the kitchen and Peter slides over the armrest and groans loudly as he hits the floor. Joona drags him across the linoleum kitchen floor. There’s a clatter of cats’ paws as they scuttle away. Peter tries to grab hold of one leg of the table, but can’t quite reach.

  Joona leans his stick in the corner, opens the door to the balcony and drags Peter out on to the green plastic grass before letting go.

  ‘What are you playing at? I don’t know anything, and you’re not—’

  Joona grabs him and heaves him over the railing, and he thuds into the outside of the red balcony screen. He doesn’t let go until he sees that Peter is holding on properly.

  ‘I’m slipping, I’m slipping!’ Peter cries.

  His knuckles are turning white and his glasses tumble to the ground far below.

  ‘Tell me where the Zone is.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ he gasps.

  ‘A large place, could be Russian … with prostitutes, a stage, plenty of drugs circulating.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Peter sobs. ‘You have to believe me!’

  ‘Then I’m leaving,’ Joona says, and turns away.

  ‘OK, I’ve heard the name, Joona! I can’t hold on any longer, I don’t know where it is, I don’t know anything.’

  Joona looks at him again, then pulls him back over the railing. Peter’s whole body is shaking as he tries to get into the kitchen.

  ‘That’s not enough,’ Joona says, pushing him back towards the railing.

  ‘A few years ago … there was a girl, she mentioned some guys from Volgograd,’ he says quickly, moving along the railing to the wall. ‘It wasn’t a brothel, it sounded more like a ring … you know, tough as hell, everyone watching each other …’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea, I swear,’ he whispers. ‘I’d tell you if I knew.’

  ‘Where can I find the woman who told you about it?’

  ‘It was in a bar in Bangkok. She’d spent a few years in Stockholm, I don’t know what her name is.’

  Joona returns to the kitchen. Peter Dahlin follows him, and closes the door to the balcony.

  ‘You can’t just do this,’ he says, pulling himself together and wiping his tears with kitchen roll. ‘You’ll get the sack, and—’

  ‘I’m not in the police any more,’ Joona says, picking up his stick from the corner. ‘So I’ve got plenty of time to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘What do you mean, keep an eye on me? What do you want?’

  ‘If you do as I say, you’ll be fine,’ Joona replies, turning his stick over in his hands.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Peter Dahlin asks.

  ‘As soon as you’ve been to the hospital, you go to the police and …’

  ‘Why would I be going to the hospital?’

  Joona hits Peter Dahlin across the face with his stick. He staggers backwards, clutching both hands to his nose, stumbles into a chair, falls on his back and hits his head on the floor so hard that blood splatters the cat food in the bowls.

  ‘When you’ve been to the hospital, you go to the police and confess to all the assaults,’ Joona says, pushing the stick on to the pit of his throat. ‘Mirjam was fourteen years old when she killed herself, Anna-Lena lost her ovaries, Liza got caught in prostitution, and the girl who was here just now—’

  ‘OK!’ Peter cries. ‘OK!’

  76

  Erik picks Joona up from Valhallavägen after driving the young woman to a gynaecologist he knows at the Sophia Hospital.

  ‘Now we know that the Zone exists,’ Joona says as he gets in the car. ‘But it seems to be a Russian set-up … where you buy membership by contributing to their illegal activities.’

  ‘And that way you’re bound to keep quiet,’ Erik says, drumming his fingers on the wheel. ‘That’s why no one knows anything.’

  ‘We’re never going to be able to track it down, and it would take several years to infiltrate.’

  Joona looks at his phone and sees that Nils Åhlén has called him three times in the last hour.

  ‘Now we’ve only one lead to follow if we’re going to find the Zone,’ Joona says. ‘And that’s the woman Rocky called Tina.’

  ‘But she’s not alive any more – is she?’

  ‘She not in the database, no one’s been murdered that way in Sweden,’ he replies. ‘Having an arm chopped off isn’t the sort of thing that’s likely to get missed.’

  ‘Maybe it was just a nightmare?’

  ‘Do you believe that?’ Joona asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right, let’s go and see Nils Åhlén.’

  The Forensic Medicine Institute has a number of lecture rooms, but only one room for the display of bodies. The hall is reminiscent of an anatomy theatre. The room is circular, with banks of seating rising higher and higher around the small stage containing the post-mortem table.

  From the lobby they can hear Nils Åhlén’s sharp voice through the closed doors. He’s just finishing a lecture.

  They go in as quietly as they can and sit down. Åhlén is dressed in his white coat, and is standing beside the blackened body of a man who froze to death.

  ‘And out of everything I’ve said today, there’s one particular t
hing that you mustn’t forget,’ Nils Åhlén says in conclusion. ‘A human being isn’t dead until it’s both dead and warm.’

  He puts a gloved hand on the chest of the corpse and gives a bow as the medical students applaud.

  Joona and Erik wait until the students have left the room before going down to the central dais. The corpse is giving off a strong smell of yeast and decay.

  ‘I’ve checked our records as well,’ Åhlén says. ‘But there’s no mention of that sort of injury … I’ve been through the databases covering violent crime, accidents and suicide … She doesn’t exist.’

  ‘But you also checked for me,’ Joona says.

  ‘So the obvious answer is that the body hasn’t been found,’ Åhlén mutters, taking off his glasses and polishing them.

  ‘Of course, but—’

  ‘Some are never found,’ Åhlén interrupts. ‘Some are found many years later … and some are found but never identified … We try dental records and DNA, and keep the bodies for a couple of years … The people at the National Board of Forensic Medicine are good, but even they have to bury a few unidentified bodies each year.’

  ‘The injuries would still be recorded, though, wouldn’t they?’ Joona persists.

  Nils Åhlén has a strange glint in his eye as he lowers his voice.

  ‘I’ve thought of another possibility,’ he says. ‘There used to be a group of forensic medical officers who collaborated with certain detectives … They were known as the “Tax Savers”, and they believed they could identify in advance the cases that were never going to lead anywhere.’

  ‘You’ve never told me about that,’ Joona says.

  ‘It was back in the eighties … the Tax Savers didn’t want Swedish taxpayers to be burdened with the cost of pointless police investigations and hopeless attempts to identify bodies. It wasn’t a major scandal, a few people got ticked off, but it made me think … When you described Tina as a heroin addict, a prostitute, possibly a victim of human trafficking …’

  ‘You’re wondering if the Tax Savers are still active?’ Joona asks.

  ‘No paperwork,’ Nils Åhlén says, clicking his fingers. ‘No investigation, no Interpol, the body gets buried as an unknown, and the resources are used elsewhere.’