Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  Katryna bends down to put her trainers on as a cascade of blood sprays across the hall mirror. Then she hears the sharp crack of the gun and the echo from the house on the other side of the road.

  The plain-clothes officer throws his arm out, manages to grab the coats and pulls them with him as he falls. He collapses on his back among the shoes. The hangers rattle as blood pulses from the bullet-hole in his black jacket.

  ‘Hide,’ he gasps. ‘Go and hide again …’

  Two further shots ring out and Katryna moves backwards. Someone is screaming like an animal outside. She stares at the wounded police officer, and at the blood seeping along the cracks in the tiled floor. A window pane shatters as another shot echoes through the neighbourhood.

  Katryna runs at a crouch through the living room, slipping on the Tabriz rug and hitting her shoulder against the wall, but she manages to keep her balance, carries on out into the passageway and opens one of the cleaning cupboard doors. The mop handle falls out, pulling the red bucket with it, and the strainer comes loose and clatters on to the floor. Katryna picks the mop up and tries to get it to stand up among the clothes. A jacket falls down and the thick hose of the vacuum cleaner pushes the other door open.

  She hears two more shots, leaves the cupboard and carries on towards the kitchen. She sees the glass door and the darkness outside, opens the cellar door and starts to go down the steep staircase.

  She’s so frightened she can barely breathe, and can only think that this is an organised hate-based crime, that the racists have found them, that they’re upset about Adam buying a new Jaguar.

  She can hear police cars through the stone walls, and thinks that she can hide in the boiler room until the police have caught the intruder.

  Her anxiety increases as she heads down into the darkness.

  She clings on to the cool handrail, blinks and opens her eyes wide, but can hardly see a thing.

  The air smells of stone, damp pipes and oil from the boiler.

  She’s treading carefully, but the steps still creak under her weight. Finally she reaches the tiled floor. She blinks and can make out the washing machine as a paler shape in the darkness next to the door with the rope around its handle. She turns round and moves in the opposite direction, past Adam’s old pinball machine, and into the boiler room. She carefully closes the door behind her and hears a whining sound.

  Katryna stands still with her fingers on the door handle, listening. The pipes are clicking faintly, but otherwise everything is quiet.

  She moves further in, away from the door, thinking that she’ll just sit here, it won’t be long, not now that the police have arrived.

  She hears the whimpering sound again. Very close to her.

  She turns her head but can’t see anything.

  The whimpering becomes a weak wheezing sound.

  It’s coming from the safety valve of the hot-water tank.

  Katryna feels her way forward and finds the paint-stained stepladder standing against the wall.

  She unfolds it in silence and moves it to the wall beneath the window up by the ceiling.

  Someone has stolen Lamassu, she thinks. The embroidered cloth with her protective deity, her protector, that’s why this is happening.

  She can’t stay in the house, she never wants to come back here again. She twists the two catches of the window and is pushing the little window against the weeds when she feels a cold draught around her ankles.

  Someone’s coming up behind her, she’s convinced of it.

  Someone’s got in through the cellar door, they’ve cut the rope holding it closed and are on their way inside.

  It’s impossible to open the window properly. She tries again, but it keeps hitting something. Panting for breath, she reaches out with her arm, through the weeds, and feels that the lawnmower is parked too close.

  She tries to push it away with her hand, pushing even though she can feel the stepladder slide backwards beneath her. She turns the wheel of the lawnmower by hand and manages to roll it a few centimetres.

  The window slides open and she starts to crawl out as the door to the boiler room bursts open and the light is switched on. The old starter switch makes the fluorescent tube flicker. Katryna tries to scramble out as the steps are yanked away from beneath her and clatter to the floor. Her legs thud against the wall, her knees sting, but she clings on to the frame and fights to pull herself up.

  The first stab of the knife hits her back so hard that she hears the point scrape the concrete wall in front of her.

  92

  Adam Youssef is lying on his stomach on the paved path outside his home, with his hands cuffed behind his back. His thigh is throbbing, his black jeans are wet with blood, but the superficial gunshot wound doesn’t really hurt. Blue lights from various vehicles are pulsing over the dark greenery of the garden in a peculiar rhythm.

  A police officer presses his knee into Adam’s shoulder blades and yells at him to be quiet while he explains the situation to the operational team.

  ‘Katryna’s still in there,’ Adam pants.

  The operational lead officer is in direct contact with the head of the Stockholm Rapid Response Unit, trying to coordinate their efforts. The first team is forcing the windows and doors, securing entry and letting the paramedics through.

  The officer who has been shot is rolled out on a stretcher while staff at the Karolinska Hospital in Huddinge have been warned to prepare for immediate sedation and an operation.

  Adam tries to pull free but is struck so hard across the kidneys that he loses his breath. He coughs, and feels the police officer pressing his knee against the back of his neck, grabbing his jacket and roaring at him to lie still.

  ‘I’m a police officer, and—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  The second officer takes Adam’s wallet, backs away slightly, and the gravel crunches beneath his shoes as he looks at Adam’s police badge and ID.

  ‘National Crime,’ he confirms.

  The police officer removes his knee from Adam’s back and stands up, breathing hard. As the pressure is removed from his neck and lungs, Adam catches his breath and tries to roll over on to his side.

  ‘You shot a plain-clothed police officer,’ the officer says.

  ‘He had my wife, I saw her with him, and thought—’

  ‘He was the first officer on the scene and he was on his way out with her … everyone had received that information.’

  ‘Just get her out!’ Adam begs.

  ‘What the hell are you two doing?’ a woman shouts.

  It’s Margot. Adam sees her legs through the blackberry bushes by the road, as she walks through the gate and stops.

  ‘He’s a police officer,’ she says, and takes several shallow breaths. ‘It’s his wife who—’

  ‘He shot a colleague,’ one of the officers says.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Adam says. ‘I thought—’

  ‘Don’t say anything else,’ Margot interrupts. ‘Where’s Katryna?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know anything … Margot—’

  ‘I’m going in,’ she says, and he watches her feet move along the path.

  ‘Tell her I love her,’ he whispers.

  ‘Help him up,’ Margot tells the two officers. ‘And get those handcuffs off – put him in one of the cars for the time being.’

  She starts to walk towards the house with both hands round her stomach.

  A young man from the rapid response unit comes out through the front door with his helmet in his hand. He passes Margot and throws up right across the front steps, then carries on down the garden path with a glazed look on his face. He unfastens his bulletproof vest and lets it fall to the ground, emerges on to the street and throws up again between two parked patrol cars, then leans on the bonnet of one of the cars and spits.

  The two officers take hold of Adam’s arms, pull him up on to his feet and lead him away from the house. He feels blood trickling down his thigh from the gunshot wound. Th
ey lead him off to a patrol car and sit him in the back seat, but leave the handcuffs on.

  Another ambulance passes the cordon and is waved forward by the police. Adam can hear the sharp clatter of a helicopter and looks towards the front door to see if Margot is coming out with Katryna.

  When the fourth video was received at National Crime, the system spun into action instantly, the way that it should.

  One of the technicians was a good friend of Adam Youssef. He recognised Katryna on the film and issued immediate emergency information on the National Crime intranet, then called Adam.

  To save time and maintain tactical efficiency, a so-called ‘special event’ was declared, and the various divisions within the police coordinated their efforts as rapidly as possible.

  The alarm was sounded on police radio covering the Southern and Western Police Districts, as well as the City Centre, Nacka and Södertörn.

  The officer closest to Bultvägen 5 was a plain-clothes detective rather than a patrol car. He was on the scene just seven minutes after the video was received by the police.

  93

  It feels like an eternity before Adam sees Margot again. She’s walking slowly, holding the handrail, then stops with her hand round her stomach. Her nose is pale and her forehead is shiny with sweat as she walks towards him out in the street.

  ‘Get those fucking handcuffs off,’ she says with barely suppressed anger to the police officers.

  They hurry to free Adam. He massages his wrists and looks into her eyes, sees her dilated pupils and feels a wave of nausea rise in his stomach.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asks in a frightened voice.

  She shakes her head, comes closer, glances quickly towards the house and then looks back at him again.

  ‘Adam, I’m sorry, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

  ‘What for?’ he asks stiffly, opening the car door.

  ‘Sit down,’ she says.

  But he gets out of the car and stops in front of her, with a peculiar feeling of being completely weightless.

  ‘Is it Katryna?’ he asks. ‘Just tell me. Is she hurt?’

  ‘Katryna’s dead.’

  ‘I saw her in the doorway, I saw her …’

  ‘Adam,’ she pleads.

  ‘Are you sure? Have you spoken to the paramedics?’

  She hugs him, but he pulls free, takes a step back, and sees some heavy blackberries swaying on a thin branch.

  ‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ she says again.

  ‘You’re sure she’s dead? I mean, the ambulance … what’s the ambulance doing here if she’s …?’

  ‘Katryna will stay here until the forensic examination of the scene is complete.’

  ‘Is she in the hall? Can you tell me where she is?’

  ‘In the boiler room, she must have hidden in the boiler room.’

  Adam looks at her and the pain in his thigh is suddenly throbbing, all-encompassing. He watches all the police officers leave the house and gather for a debriefing over by the command vehicle.

  A flash of insight passes through his mind. His wife was almost safe, but he shot the police officer who was on his way out with her.

  ‘I shot a colleague,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t think about that now … you’re sleeping at mine tonight, I’ll call the boss.’

  She tries to take hold of his arm but he turns away.

  ‘I need to be alone … sorry, I …’

  The helicopter is hovering a short distance away, over the sports ground, it looks like.

  ‘Did they get the preacher?’ he asks.

  ‘Adam, we’re going to get him, he’s in the area, we’re deploying everything we’ve got, absolutely everything.’

  He nods a few times, then turns away again.

  ‘Just give me a moment,’ he whispers, takes a few steps and picks at the branch of a bush.

  ‘You have to stay here,’ Margot says.

  Adam looks at her for a few seconds, then begins to wander slowly out into the garden. He’s holding his face, pretending to try to absorb what she’s said, but he knows he needs to see Katryna, because he doesn’t believe them, it can’t be true, it isn’t true, Katryna has nothing to do with this.

  Adam starts walking round the house. The green hose is lying in the unmown grass. A swarm of gnats is visible in the shimmering blue light. It gets darker when he reaches the back of the house.

  Adam sees himself as a black silhouette in the red dome of the round barbeque. He goes round the corner and sees that the cellar door is open. The rope has been cut. He goes inside. The lights are all on down there.

  He can hear people walking about upstairs. A forensics officer is laying out walking plates.

  Adam takes another step in, and that’s when he sees Katryna in the cold neon light of the boiler room. She’s sitting leaning against the boiler, and there’s blood everywhere, on her sweatpants, her vest, the floor. Her hair is tucked behind one ear, but most of her face is gone, hacked off. Dark blood glints across the whole of her ribcage, and her left hand appears to be squeezing the fingers of her right hand.

  Adam staggers backwards, hears the sound of his own breathing, knocks over a packet of washing powder, stumbles over his own wellington boots, and emerges into the garden again.

  He’s gasping for breath, but can’t get enough air into his lungs, and starts poking at his mouth.

  Nothing is comprehensible any more.

  The alarm was sounded half an hour ago, and now everything is irrevocable.

  Adam turns to walk back and is just passing the compost heap when he hears a branch creak in the forest. An officer comes round the corner of the house and calls for him, but he carries on in amongst the trees, following the sound of someone moving in there.

  Behind him the floodlights are switched on, flooding his home and garden with light. The trunks of the trees shine grey, as if they were covered by a layer of ash. As if he were in an underground forest.

  Twenty metres in stands a man, looking at him. Their eyes meet between the gently glowing stems, and it takes Adam a few seconds to realise who the man in front of him is.

  The psychiatrist, Erik Maria Bark.

  It’s like a lightning flash in his head when he realises everything. Awareness hits him like an axe striking a block of wood.

  Adam reaches down and pulls the little pistol from his ankle. There’s a rasping sound as the velcro comes loose. He feeds a bullet into the chamber, raises the pistol and fires.

  The shot hits the top of a branch in front of Erik’s face and is deflected, splinters fly up and he sees the psychiatrist flinch.

  His hand is shaking, he tries to aim lower, the psychiatrist moves backwards and he fires again. The shot simply disappears, as dark branches sway between the two of them.

  He sees the psychiatrist run, crouching down, then slide down a slope and vanish behind a thick tree trunk. Adam follows, but he can no longer see him. He runs straight into some fir branches. Police officers who have heard his shots come running from the garden and the entire edge of the forest is suddenly full of bright light.

  ‘Put your gun down!’ someone calls out. ‘Adam, put your gun down!’

  Adam turns round and raises his arms.

  ‘The killer’s still in the forest!’ he gasps. ‘It’s the hypnotist, it’s the fucking hypnotist!’

  94

  Erik takes a deep breath and stares up at the night sky and dark treetops. He must have passed out after he fell. His back is hurting badly. He knows he scraped himself as he slid down the slope.

  He stands up and reaches his hand out to the wet rock face. He can smell moss and ferns, and looks up to see the glow of bright lights flickering through the trees above.

  He crouches down and pushes his way through the undergrowth, holding a branch out of the way and moving away from the slope.

  The distant sound of dogs barking merges with the clattering noise of an approaching helicopter.

  Erik followed the prea
cher down a narrow path, but it grew so dark as the trees became thicker that he lost track of him. He stood for a while and listened, but heard nothing more than the wind through the branches high above him. In the end he decided to go back to the car and wait there, when sirens from a number of emergency vehicles all seemed to converge somewhere on the road on the far side of the woodland.

  He began to walk in that direction instead, thinking that Joona must have put the police on the right track, that they may even have caught the preacher.

  The forest was overgrown and rocky, and it took him time to make his way through in the dark, but after a while he could make out flashing blue-grey lights between the trees, and suddenly he was standing in front of Adam Youssef from the National Criminal Investigation Department.

  Adam looked me in the eyes and fired, Erik thinks as he runs down a slope. What’s happened? What happened at the Zone after I left?

  Loose stones slide under his feet and he almost falls, grabs a branch with his hand and cuts himself on something. He feels his palm grow wet with blood and stops, gasping, trying to calm his breathing as he hears the helicopter above the treetops again.

  Do they think he’s involved in the murders because he didn’t tell the whole truth about knowing the victims?

  Erik thinks about how he lied to the police, how he withheld Rocky’s alibi and kept quiet about what Björn said under hypnosis.

  The helicopter hovers above the forest, searching with spotlights, getting closer and closer. He needs to hide. Branches rustle, treetops sway, leaves come loose and swirl through the air.

  He can feel the clattering of the rotors inside him. Erik presses against a tree, standing absolutely still as the branches lash around him.

  This is completely mad, Erik thinks, feeling the whirling air tug at his clothes.

  I was very nearly shot.

  Dry earth and fallen pine needles fly up into his face.

  The helicopter sweeps on, and the searchlight moves away through the forest, flickering through the tree trunks.

  He’s the person they’re hunting.

  In a few rays of light some twenty metres away he sees two heavily armed response unit officers with helmets, bulletproof vests and green assault rifles.