Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  They go back into the living room again, past the kitchen to a closed door that Erik hasn’t noticed before because it’s on the far side of a cupboard.

  Above the bed in the spare room is a large poster of Björn Borg kissing the Wimbledon trophy. On the wall opposite is a shelf full of porcelain dogs.

  There’s an old corner cupboard painted in traditional folk-art style. The top door is decorated with a hand-painted motif: the ages of man, from cradle to grave. A man and woman stand side by side on a bridge where each step represents a decade. On the top step the pair stand tall as fifty-year-olds, but death lurks beneath the bridge in the form of a skeleton with a scythe in his hand.

  ‘That’s lovely,’ Erik says, looking at Nestor, who is still standing in the living room.

  ‘I sleep in … M-mother’s room. I moved in there when …’

  Nestor cranes his neck oddly, as if he wanted to look at someone standing behind him.

  ‘Goodnight,’ Erik says.

  He takes hold of the door handle to close it, but Nestor puts his hand on the door and looks at him with anxious eyes.

  ‘The r-rich need it, the poor already have it, but you f-fear it more than death,’ Nestor whispers.

  ‘I’m a bit too tired for riddles, Nestor.’

  ‘The rich need it, the p-poor already have it, but you fear it more than death,’ Nestor repeats, then licks his lips.

  ‘I’ll think about the answer,’ Erik says, and closes the door. ‘Well, goodnight.’

  Erik sits down and stares at the hideous wallpaper with its repeated pattern that looks like ornate coats of arms, garlands, peacock feathers, and hundreds of eyes.

  The roller-blind is already closed, and he switches the light off and detects a faint smell of lavender as he folds back the heavy covers and gets into bed.

  He’s so exhausted that all his thoughts drift away and lose their shape. He’s just about to tumble over the boundary into sleep when he hears a small creaking sound in the room. Someone is trying to open the door quietly.

  ‘What is it, Nestor?’ Erik asks.

  ‘A clue,’ the soft voice says. ‘I c-can give you a clue.’

  ‘I’m very tired, and—’

  ‘Priests think it’s b-bigger than God Himself,’ Nestor interrupts.

  ‘Can you close the door, please?’

  The handle clicks as Nestor lets go of it and pads away across the parquet in the living room.

  Erik falls asleep, and in his dreams little Madeleine is standing by his bed, blowing on his face and whispering the answer to Nestor’s riddle.

  ‘Nothing,’ she whispers, blowing on him. ‘The rich need … nothing, the poor have nothing … And you fear nothing more than death.’

  104

  Erik is pulled from sleep by a breeze on his face. Someone is whispering quickly, but stops the moment he opens his eyes. The darkness is almost impenetrable, and it takes him a few seconds before he realises where he is.

  The old horsehair mattress creaks when he rolls over.

  Even if he was fast asleep, some part of him was alert, a force that yanked him from sleep.

  Perhaps he just heard water running through the building’s pipes, or the wind pressing against the window.

  No one has been whispering in his room, everything is still and dark.

  Erik wonders if this was where Nestor was sleeping when he slipped into psychosis, when the rattling of the pipes turned into voices, into the old woman brushing dandruff from her long grey hair who told him you shouldn’t look your nearest and dearest in the eye when you kill them.

  Erik knows it was all about the dog Nestor was forced to put down when he was a child, but he still used to shiver every time Nestor imitated the woman’s creaking voice.

  He thinks of the way Nestor used to sit with his hands clasped in his lap and his head lowered, a little smile would play on his lips and he would flush slightly as he dispensed advice on how to murder a child.

  The old cupboard creaks and the shadows by the door are hard to interpret. He closes his stinging eyes and goes back to sleep, but wakes up again immediately when the door to the guestroom closes.

  Erik thinks that he’s going to have to tell Nestor to leave him alone when he’s sleeping, that he doesn’t have to keep checking on him, but he can’t be bothered to get up now.

  A car passes on the street outside, and its chill light finds its way past the roller-blind, slides across the patterned wallpaper and disappears.

  Erik stares at the wall.

  It looks like a trace of the light has been left on the wall once the car has gone. He thinks that there must be a weak lamp by the shelf that he hasn’t seen before.

  Erik blinks, stares at the motionless blue light, and realises that there’s a peephole between the rooms.

  The light is coming from the other bedroom, Erik thinks when everything suddenly goes dark.

  Nestor is looking on to his room right now.

  Erik lies absolutely still.

  It’s so quiet that he can hear himself swallow.

  The blue light becomes visible again and he can hear intense whispering through the wall.

  Erik quickly gets dressed in the darkness and moves closer to the light.

  The point of light is between the two lower shelves of the bookcase. The little hole would be invisible if the porcelain animals were arranged differently.

  It’s positioned in the very darkest part of the pattern on the wallpaper, so small that he realises he’s going to have to press his face to the wall and put his eye right next to the hole to be able to see anything.

  He moves a porcelain puppy in a basket, leans his hands on the wall and carefully puts his head between the shelves, feeling the wood against his hair and the wallpaper touching the tip of his nose.

  When he is right next to the hole he can see straight into the next room.

  There’s a mobile phone on the bedside table, the screen is lit up, illuminating the alarm clock and the oval pattern of the wallpaper. Erik manages to catch a glimpse of the neatly made bed and a framed photograph of a young child in a christening gown before the light from the phone goes out.

  He hears rapid footsteps somewhere in the flat and tries to pull his head back, but his hair catches on a splinter in the wood. The porcelain figures tinkle ominously.

  Erik puts his hand up and tries to free his hair as the door opens behind him.

  He pulls his head out and hears the figurines on the shelf rattle. Nestor comes towards him and he backs away.

  ‘I’ve called the p-police, I c-came back to tell you,’ Nestor whispers. ‘It’s your t-turn to get h-help now, I’ve spoken to them several times, they’re here now.’

  ‘Nestor, you don’t understand,’ Erik says forlornly.

  ‘No, no, you d-don’t understand,’ Nestor interrupts in a friendly voice, and switches on the lamp in the window. ‘I said it’s your t-turn to get medicine and—’

  There’s a sudden noise, like a stone hitting the window, the dark roller-blind quivers in the light from the lamp, and a cascade of glass falls down behind the blind and tinkles over the radiator.

  Nestor lurches. He’s been shot, right through his body with a high-velocity weapon. Blood sprays out of the exit hole in his shoulder.

  He looks at the blood in surprise.

  ‘They p-promised …’

  He stumbles, falls on to his hip and looks up with a confused expression.

  ‘G-get out through the extra door,’ he hisses. ‘Go down into the laundry room, straight through, and you’ll be in the next building …’

  He puts his knuckles on the floor as if to push himself up.

  ‘Lie down,’ Erik whispers. ‘Just lie flat.’

  ‘Run across the schoolyard, then follow the church wall t-to the forest and the pet cemetery.’

  ‘Lie still,’ Erik repeats, then runs at a crouch towards the door.

  When he reaches the living room he hears Nestor’s front door being
forced open. There’s a crash and splinters and pieces of metal from the lock clatter across the floor.

  ‘Hide in the little r-red house,’ Nestor gasps behind him.

  Erik turns round and sees that Nestor has stood up to point. The glass in front of Björn Borg’s smiling face explodes and the echo of a shot resounds between the buildings. Nestor is holding one hand against the side of his neck as a torrent of blood pulses out between his fingers.

  Three of the flat’s windows shatter, and distraction grenades explode, flashing with such ferocity that time seems to stand still.

  Erik staggers backwards.

  The silence is like a sandy beach. Slow waves roll in, then pull back with a crackle.

  He feels his way through the living room, unable to see anything but the freeze-frame image of the bedroom with Nestor’s silhouette against the window, and the drops of blood hanging in the air in front of the cupboard door with death hiding under a bridge.

  Erik’s hearing has been knocked out, but he feels further blasts as waves of pressure against his chest. He walks straight into the battered sofa, and feels his way along its back.

  Then the shock lifts, his eyes are working again, and he makes his way round the table and magazine rack, but he’s still as giddy as if he were very drunk.

  Lights from guns sweep round the hall and kitchen.

  His ears start to ring, but he still can’t hear anything around him.

  He locates the extra door behind the curtain, unlocks it and creeps out into the back stairwell. He almost trips over the first step but grabs hold of the handrail.

  He makes his way downstairs on unsteady feet, then walks until he reaches a metal door, and finds himself in the laundry room. He feels his way along the wall until his fingers make contact with the light switch, turns the lights on and hurries past washing machines, trolleys and bins full of empty bottles as he tries to remember what Nestor said.

  His head feels strangely detached, as if none of this really concerns him.

  His temporary blindness lingers as silvery spots. Any light source stronger than five million candelas activates all the photocells in the eye, meaning that everything you see after being dazzled seems to happen slightly out of synch.

  At the end of the long corridor is a door, and he runs up a narrow flight of steps and finds himself in a different stairwell.

  Erik walks out into the cool night air. There are no emergency vehicles on this side of the block. Presumably the rapid response unit are some distance away.

  Erik hurries through the little park. In the cold he can feel that one of his ears is wet. He touches his cheek and realises that he’s bleeding. Without looking round he walks straight across Karlskronavägen and past a car park and some dirty recycling bins. Broken glass crunches beneath his feet.

  The tarmacked schoolyard is empty. A beer can rolls in the wind, the basketball hoops on their posts have no nets.

  High above a helicopter is approaching. The clatter of the rotors is audible across the rooftops, and Erik realises that his hearing is starting to come back.

  He walks on, more slowly, gasping for breath, then creeps round the building and in amongst the trees. It’s almost pitch-black here. Erik holds his hands out in front of his face to protect himself from branches, until he sees the low church wall.

  Fear is beginning to catch up with him as he follows the wall through tall nettles.

  Deep within the forest there’s a sudden concentration of tiny graves, decorated by children. He sees headstones with dogs’ collars hanging off them, graves with squeezy toys, drawings, photographs and flowers, homemade crosses or painted stones, burned-out candles and sooty lanterns.

  105

  It’s past two o’clock in the morning, but Joona is standing in the middle of his room at the Hotel Hansson. The floor is covered with photographs from the crime scenes and post-mortems.

  Because Erik’s house is out of bounds for the duration of the search, the police have sent him to a hotel.

  His jacket and pistol are lying on the untouched bed. He’s had a Caesar salad in his room, the remains are under the shiny metal dome on the low coffee table.

  As Joona reads the forensic experts’ analyses of the crime scenes he compares them with the pictures, post-mortem reports and test results from the National Forensics Laboratory.

  Rocky’s nightmares were genuine memories, everything he said under hypnosis was true, the same murderer has returned – the unclean preacher has started killing again. After the murder of Rebecka Hansson the serial killer went into a long cooling-off period. He waited in a state of cold-storage until the next escalation began.

  For a stalker, following someone is like a drug-addiction, it’s impossible to stop, he has to get closer, make contact, give gifts, and as time passes develops a real relationship with them inside his own head. Outwardly he can exhibit submissive gratitude, but in actual fact he is extremely resentful and jealous.

  The police have a list of almost seven hundred names who fit the basic outline of the perpetrator profile: bishops, pastors, priests and members of their families, deacons, churchwardens, caretakers, undertakers, preachers and faith healers.

  Joona believes that the perpetrator is intentionally trying to make it look like Erik is guilty of the murders, but he can’t find any connection between Erik and any of the men on the list.

  What Joona is looking for now among the reports and analysis is something definite that will allow him to cross most of the names off the list.

  There’s nothing that stands out in the material, but perhaps different elements could be combined in an unexpected way. Joona tries separating the pieces of the puzzle and seeing if there are other ways of putting them together.

  He walks across to the pictures of the deer’s head and a tub of melted ice cream, and stops in front of the photograph of Sandra Lundgren’s murder weapon. The stained knife was photographed where it was found, on the floor beside her dead body. The flash from the camera shimmers like a dark sun in the brown blood.

  He reads that it is a chef’s knife, with a stainless steel blade that’s twenty centimetres long, and then examines Erixon’s careful sketches attempting to reconstruct the brutal process of the attack from blood traces and spatter patterns.

  The perpetrator has worn the same footwear each time: touring boots, size 43.

  Joona tries to identify clues that have been missed, things that don’t match the overall picture. He pores over picture after picture, and stops in front of a photograph with the number 311: a blue pottery fragment that resembles a bird’s skull, with white bubbles along one edge, and a sharp point that’s smooth as ice.

  He leafs forward to the item in Erixon’s report and reads that it was tucked between the cracks in Sandra’s floor, and was only found when low-level light was shone across the floor. According to the laboratory analysis, the tiny, two-millimetre-long fragment consists of glass, iron, sand and chamotte clay.

  Joona moves to the report from Adam Youssef’s home. In spite of the gunfire, the murderer chose to go through with his plan, and according to the preliminary report Katryna was missing the false fingernails from both her hands.

  The preacher takes trophies, then marks the places he’s taken them from with the victim’s hands, like a judgement in a trial.

  At quarter past three Anja Larsson calls to say that she has just been informed about an imminent operation. The police have received a tip-off that is regarded as highly credible. A man claims that Erik is sleeping in the spare room in his flat. Erik had been his psychiatrist some years ago.

  ‘The man has been told to leave the flat.’

  ‘Who’s leading the operation?’ Joona asks.

  ‘Daniel Frick.’

  ‘He’s one of Adam’s best friends.’

  ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Anja says. ‘But I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, because this operation is still being led by the National Response Unit.’

/>   Joona goes over to the window and looks down at the hire car he’s left parked on the pavement rather than in the hotel’s garage. It’s a gun-metal grey Porsche with six cylinders and 560 horsepower.

  ‘Where’s the flat?’

  ‘Because everyone knows that I’m loyal to you, Margot has decided that I should be kept outside the current investigation … and she’s got a point, because if I knew the address I’d tell you.’

  Anja doesn’t know where the operation is going to take place, but she’s worked out that it must be somewhere south of Stockholm. She says the response unit has been given permission to use pump-action shotguns, assault rifles, repeaters and PSG 90 sniper rifles.

  After the call Joona stands and gazes at the floor of the hotel room. Hundreds of pictures, lined up in rows, from wall to wall, with the floor lamp reflecting off the glossy surface of the photographs.

  He carries on reading Erixon’s crime scene analysis, but his mind keeps wandering to Erik and the impending operation.

  Joona walks to the other side of the room, looks at a picture of a fragment of yellow fibre, then reads a lab report about a piece of trampled leaf left on the kitchen floor in Maria Carlsson’s home. It turned out to be a fragment of stinging nettle.

  He looks at the enlargement on the photograph. The tiny piece of leaf fills the whole sheet of paper, like a spiky green tongue. The hairs look like crystal needles, or fragile pipettes.

  Dawn comes and the sky in the east grows paler. Narrow streaks of sunlight filter past chimneys and gables, over the roofs and copper ornaments of Vasastan.

  The operation must be over by now, Joona thinks, and calls Erik on his new phone.

  He tries a second time, but gets no answer.

  Even though it’s only half past five in the morning, he decides to call Margot. He has to know if they’ve caught Erik, but can’t ask straight out about the operation because he doesn’t want to get Anja in trouble.

  ‘Have you managed to arrest an innocent suspect yet, then?’

  ‘Joona, I’m asleep …’

  ‘I know, but what’s going on?’