Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  ‘But in that case Tina would still be in the database of the National Board of Forensic Medicine,’ Erik says.

  ‘Try looking for an unidentified body, natural cause of death, illness,’ Åhlén says.

  ‘Who do I talk to?’ Joona asks.

  ‘Talk to Johan in Forensic Genetics, mention my name,’ he says. ‘Or I could give him a call, seeing as we’re here …’

  He scrolls through his contacts, then puts his mobile to his ear.

  ‘Hello, this is Professor Nils Åhlén, I … no, thank you, it was very enjoyable … Just offbeat enough, I’d say …’

  Åhlén circles the body twice as he talks. When he ends the call he stands in silence for a moment. His mouth twitches slightly. The empty benches spread out around them like the growth rings of a huge tree.

  ‘There’s only one unknown woman from Stockholm who matches Tina’s age during the period in question,’ Åhlén says eventually. ‘Either it’s her, or her body was never found.’

  ‘So could it be her?’ Erik asks.

  ‘The death certificate says heart attack … there’s a reference to another file, but that file doesn’t exist …’

  ‘There’s no description of the body?’

  ‘Obviously they kept a DNA sample, fingerprints, dental records,’ Åhlén replies.

  ‘Where is she now?’ Joona asks

  ‘She’s in Skogskyrkogården, buried among the trees of the Forest Cemetery.’ Åhlén smiles. ‘No name, grave number 32 2 53 332.’

  77

  Skogskyrkogården, to the south of Stockholm, is a Unesco World Heritage site, and holds more than one hundred thousand graves. Erik and Joona walk along the well-tended paths, past the Woodland Chapel, and notice the yellow roses in front of Greta Garbo’s red headstone.

  Block number 53 is located further away, close to the fence facing Gamla Tyresövägen. The cemetery workers have unloaded a digger on caterpillar tracks from a council truck, and have already dug out the earth above the coffin. The grass is lying alongside the heap of soil, a tangle of fibrous roots and plump worms.

  Nils Åhlén and his assistant Frippe are approaching from the other direction, and the four of them greet each other in subdued voices. Frippe has had a haircut and his face looks a bit rounder, but he’s still wearing the same old studded belt and washed-out T-shirt with a black Hammerfell logo.

  The cab of the digger rotates gently and the hydraulics hiss as the scoop sinks and moves forward, carefully scraping the soil from the lid of the coffin.

  As usual Nils is giving Frippe a short lecture, this time about how ammonia, hydrogen sulphide and hydrocarbons are released when proteins and carbohydrates break down.

  ‘The final stage of the decomposition process leaves the skeleton entirely exposed.’

  Nils signals to the digger driver to back away. Clumps of clay soil fall from the blade of the scoop. He slides down into the grave with his hand on the edge. The lid of the coffin has given way under the weight of the soil.

  He scrapes around the edge of the coffin with a spade, then brushes it clean with his hands, inserts the blade of the spade under the lid and tries to prise it open, but the chipboard snaps. There’s no strength left in it, it’s like wet cardboard.

  Nils whispers something to himself, tosses the spade aside and slowly starts removing it, piece by piece, with his hands. He passes the pieces to Frippe, until the contents of the grave are entirely uncovered.

  The dead body isn’t remotely unpleasant, it just looks defenceless.

  The skeleton in the coffin looks small, almost like a child’s, but Nils Åhlén assures them that it belonged to a grown woman.

  ‘One metre sixty-five tall,’ he murmurs.

  She was buried in a T-shirt and briefs, the fabric is clinging to the skeleton, the curve of the ribcage is intact, but the material has sunk into the pelvis.

  An image of a cobalt-blue angel is still visible on the T-shirt.

  Frippe walks round the grave taking photographs from every angle. Åhlén has taken out a small brush which he uses to remove soil and fragments of chipboard from the skeleton.

  ‘The left arm has been chopped off close to the shoulder,’ Åhlén declares.

  ‘We’ve found the nightmare,’ Joona says in a low voice.

  They watch Åhlén carefully turn the skull. The jaw has come loose, but otherwise the cranium is in one piece.

  ‘Deep incisions across the front of the cranium,’ Åhlén says. ‘Forehead, zygomatic bone, cheekbone, upper jaw … the incisions continue across the collarbone and sternum …’

  ‘The preacher’s back,’ Erik says with an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Nils Åhlén goes on brushing soil away from the body. Next to the hipbone he find a wristwatch with a scratched face. The leather strap is gone, turned to grey dust.

  ‘Looks like a man’s watch,’ he says, picking it up and turning it over.

  The back is inscribed with Cyrillic letters. Åhlén takes out his mobile and takes a picture of the lettering.

  ‘I’ll send this to Maria at the Slavic Institute,’ he mutters.

  78

  Joona’s just had another cortisone injection, and is in Erik’s back garden practising combat techniques with a long wooden pole.

  Nils Åhlén is trying to track down the colleague who signed Tina’s death certificate while they wait for the translation of the engraving on the watch, to find out if it can help them make progress.

  Erik is sitting at the grand piano, watching his friend’s repetitive pattern of blocks and attacks as shadows cross the thin linen curtain.

  Like a Chinese shadow-theatre, he thinks, then looks down at the piano keys in front of him.

  He was planning to practise his étude, but can’t bring himself to try. His mind is too unfocused. He still hasn’t got hold of Jackie, and Nelly called him from work an hour ago to ask if she could come over.

  Slowly he puts his little finger on a key and strikes it, making the first note echo as his phone starts to ring.

  ‘Erik Maria Bark,’ he answers.

  ‘Hello,’ a high voice says. ‘My name is Madeleine Federer, and …’

  ‘Maddy?’ Erik gasps. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ she says quietly. ‘I’ve borrowed Rosita’s phone … I just wanted to say it was nice when you were here with us.’

  ‘I loved spending time with you and your mum,’ Erik says.

  ‘Mum misses you, but she’s silly and pretends that—’

  ‘You need to listen to her, and—’

  ‘Maddy,’ someone calls in the background. ‘What are you doing with my phone?’

  ‘Sorry I ruined everything,’ the girl says quickly, then the call ends.

  Erik slips off his piano stool and just sits on the floor with his hands over his face. After a while he lies back and stares up at the ceiling, thinking that it’s time to get a grip on things again and stop taking pills.

  He’s used to helping patients move on.

  When everything is at it darkest, it can only get brighter, he usually says.

  He gets up with a sigh, goes and rinses his face, then sits down on the steps outside the glass door.

  Joona groans as he turns round, strikes low with the stick, then jabs behind him before he stops and looks into Erik’s face.

  His face is wet with sweat, his muscles are pumped with blood and he’s breathing hard, but isn’t exactly out of breath.

  ‘Have you had time to look into your old patients?’

  ‘I’ve found a few who were the children of priests,’ Erik says. Then he hears a car pull in and stop at the front of the house.

  ‘Give their names to Margot.’

  ‘But I’ve only just started going through the archive,’ he says.

  Nelly walks round the house, waves, and comes over to them. She’s wearing a fitted riding jacket and tight black trousers.

  ‘We ought to be at Rachel Yehuda’s lecture,’ she says, sitting d
own next to Erik.

  ‘Is that today?’

  Joona’s phone rings and he walks over towards the shed before answering.

  It strikes Erik that Nelly seems tired and subdued. The thin skin below her eyes is grey and she’s frowning.

  ‘Can’t you report yourself?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ve thought about it.’

  She just shakes her head and looks wearily at him.

  ‘Do you think my mouth is ugly?’ she asks. ‘Your lips get thinner as you get older. And Martin … he’s very sensitive when it comes to mouths.’

  ‘So how does Martin look, then? Hasn’t he got older?’

  ‘Don’t laugh, but I’m thinking of having surgery … I’m not prepared to get older, I don’t want anyone thinking he’s being kind by sleeping with me.’

  ‘You’re very attractive, Nelly.’

  ‘I’m not fishing for compliments, but that’s not the way it feels, not any more …’

  She falls silent as her chin starts to tremble.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she says, gently rubbing beneath her eyes before looking up.

  ‘You need to talk to Martin about those porn films if it’s upsetting you.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ she says.

  Joona has finished his call and is heading towards them with his phone in his hand.

  ‘The Slavic Institute have managed to decipher the lettering on that watch. The writing’s Belarusian, apparently.’

  ‘What does it say?’ Erik asks.

  ‘In honour of Andrej Kaliov’s great achievements, Military Faculty, Yanka Kupala University.’

  They follow Joona into the study and listen to him as he tracks the name down in less than five minutes. Interpol has one hundred and ninety member countries, and he is put through by the unit for international police cooperation to the office of the National Central Bureau in Minsk.

  He finds out that there’s no indication that Andrej Kaliov is missing, but that a woman by the name of Natalia Kaliova from Gomel has been reported missing.

  In British-accented English the woman on the phone explains that Natalia – the woman Rocky called Tina – was believed to have been a victim of human trafficking.

  ‘Her family say that a friend of hers called from Sweden and encouraged her to go there via Finland, without a residence permit.’

  ‘Is that everything?’ Joona asks.

  ‘You could try talking to her sister,’ the woman says.

  ‘Her sister?’

  ‘She went to Sweden to look for her big sister, and is evidently still there. It says here that she calls us regularly to find out if there’s any news.’

  ‘What’s the sister’s name?’

  ‘Irina Kaliova.’

  79

  The central kitchen of the NBA on Kungsholmen in Stockholm smells of boiled potatoes. The cooks are standing at their stoves dressed in protective white clothing and hairnets. The sound of a slicing machine echoes off the tiled walls and metal worktops.

  Erik asked Nelly to go with them to meet Irina Kaliova. It could be useful to have a female psychologist on hand when the woman finds out that her sister had been a victim of the sex-trafficking industry before she was murdered.

  Irina is dressed like all the others, in a hairnet and white coat. She’s standing by a row of huge saucepans hanging from fixed hooks. She’s staring at a display panel with a look of concentration, taps a command and pulls a lever to tip one of the pans.

  ‘Irina?’ Joona asks.

  She lifts her head and looks inquisitively at the three strangers. Her cheeks are red and her forehead sweaty from the steam rising from the boiling water, and a strand of loose hair is hanging over her brow.

  ‘Do you speak Swedish?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and carries on working.

  ‘We’re from the police, the National Criminal Investigation Department.’

  ‘I’ve got a residence permit,’ she says quickly. ‘Everything’s in my locker, my passport and all my documents.’

  ‘Is there somewhere we could go and talk?’

  ‘I need to ask my boss first.’

  ‘We’ve already spoken to him,’ Joona says.

  Irina says something to one of the women, who smiles back. She puts her hairnet in her pocket, then leads them through the noisy kitchen, past a row of food trolleys and into a small staffroom with a sink full of unwashed mugs. There are six chairs around a table with a bowl of apples at its centre.

  ‘I thought I was about to get the sack,’ she says with a nervous smile.

  ‘Can we sit down?’ Joona asks.

  Irina nods and sits on one of the chairs. She has a pretty, round face, like a fourteen-year-old. Joona looks at her slender shoulders in her white coat, and finds himself thinking of her sister’s white skeleton in the grave.

  Natalia used the name Tina as a prostitute, and she was murdered and buried like so much rubbish because she was alone, had no papers, and no one to help her. She was used up by Sweden, and afterwards wasn’t even worth the cost of proper identification.

  There’s nothing so hard in police work as having to inform a relative about a death in the course of an investigation.

  There’s no way to get used to the pain that fills their eyes, the way all the colour drains from their faces. Any attempt to be sociable, to laugh and joke vanishes. The last thing to go is an effort to appear rational, to try to ask sensible questions.

  Irina gathers together some crumbs on the table with a trembling hand. Hope and fear flit across her face.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve got bad news,’ Joona says. ‘Your sister Natalia is dead, her remains have just been found.’

  ‘Now?’ she asks hollowly.

  ‘She’s been dead for nine years.’

  ‘I don’t understand …’

  ‘But she’s only just been found.’

  ‘In Sweden? I looked for her, I don’t understand.’

  ‘She had been buried, but couldn’t be identified before, that’s why it’s taken so long.’

  The small hands keep moving the crumbs, then slip on to her lap.

  ‘How did it happen?’ she asks, her eyes still wide-open and empty.

  ‘We’re not sure yet,’ Erik replies.

  ‘Her heart was always … she didn’t want to worry us, but sometimes it would just stop beating, it felt like an eternity before it …’

  Irina’s chin begins to tremble, she hides her mouth with her hand, looks down and swallows hard.

  ‘Have you got anyone to talk to after work?’ Nelly asks.

  ‘What?’

  She quickly wipes the tears from her cheeks, swallows again and looks up.

  ‘OK,’ she says, in a more focused voice. ‘What do I have to do, do I have to pay anything?’

  ‘Nothing, we’d just like to ask a few questions,’ Joona says. ‘Would that be OK?’

  She nods, and starts picking at the crumbs on the table again. They hear a metallic sound from the kitchen and someone tries the door.

  ‘Did you have any contact with your sister while she was in Sweden?’

  Irina shakes her head, her mouth moves slightly, then she looks up.

  ‘I was the only person who knew she was heading to Stockholm, but I promised not to say anything. I was young, I didn’t understand … She was very stern with me, said she wanted to surprise Mum with her first wages … Nothing ever came, but I spoke to her on the telephone once, she just said that everything would be all right …’

  Irina falls silent and drifts off.

  ‘Did she say where she was living?’

  ‘We haven’t got any brothers,’ she replies. ‘Dad died when we were little, I don’t remember him but Natalia did … and after Natalia had gone, there was just me and Mum left … Mum missed her so much, she used to cry and worry about her weak heart, and said she just knew that something terrible had happened. So I thought if I could find my sister and take her back home, then everything w
ould be fine … Mum didn’t want me to leave, and she was alone when she died.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Joona says.

  ‘Thank you. Well, now I know that Natalia is dead,’ Irina says, getting to her feet. ‘I suppose I suspected as much, but now I know.’

  ‘Do you know where she was living?’

  ‘No.’

  She takes a step towards the door, clearly keen to get away from the whole situation.

  ‘Please, sit down for a moment,’ Erik asks.

  ‘OK, but I need to get back to work.’

  ‘Irina,’ Joona says, with a dark resonance in his voice that makes the young woman listen. ‘Your sister was murdered.’

  ‘No, I just told you, her heart—’

  Irina’s coat catches on the back of the chair, dragging it backwards with her. As the truth sinks in, she loses control of her face. Her cheeks turn white, her lips quiver and her pupils dilate.

  ‘No,’ she whimpers.

  She leans back against the worktop, shakes her head, fumbles across the front of the fridge for something to hold on to. Nelly tries to calm her down, but she pulls free.

  ‘Irina, you need to—’

  ‘God, no, not Natalia!’ she cries. ‘She promised …’

  She grabs hold of the handle of the fridge, and the door swings open as she falls, dislodging a shelf full of ketchup and jam. Nelly hurries across to her and holds her slender shoulders.

  ‘Nje maja ciastra,’ she gasps. ‘Nje maja ciastra …’

  She curls up in Nelly’s lap and tries to hold her hand over her mouth as she cries, screaming into her palm and shaking uncontrollably.

  After a while she calms down and sits up, but she’s still breathing unevenly between sobs. She wipes her tears and clears her throat weakly, trying to control her breathing.

  ‘Did someone hurt her?’ she asks in a ragged voice. ‘Did they hit her, did they hit Natalia?’

  Her face contorts again as she tries to hold her tears back, but they run down her cheeks.

  Joona takes some napkins from a pack on the worktop and hands them to her, then pulls a chair over and sits down in front of her.

  ‘If you know anything at all, it’s very important that you tell us,’ he says sternly.