Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  ‘Sorry I asked,’ Erik says, feeling black hopelessness fill his heart.

  ‘But I’ve got an old place,’ Nelly goes on. ‘Have I ever told you about Solbacken, it used to belong to Dad’s parents?’

  ‘How do I get there?’

  ‘Erik, I’m probably not much good at car chases, I haven’t got the balls, but I can go and … I don’t know, I can rent a car at Statoil or something …’

  ‘You’d do that for me?’ he asks.

  ‘Tell me you love me,’ she replies cheerfully.

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘Where shall we meet?’

  ‘Do you know the bathing beach at Sickla strand? Erik asks.

  ‘No, but I’m sure I can find it.’

  ‘There’s a school or nursery right next to the beach – wait there until I show up.’

  He hears the dogs again, as their barking echoes through the trees.

  Erik crouches down and runs through the dense undergrowth at the edge of the water, and pulls off his shoes and heavy trousers. He bundles his clothes up and hides in the bushes as a helicopter passes low overhead.

  His pursuers are getting closer, the dogs sound eager and are barking excitedly.

  Dressed in just his underpants and vest he wades out into Sicklasjön. The chill stabs at his feet and legs.

  He can hears sirens from emergency vehicles from several directions, carried across the water and through the trees.

  Erik sees blue lights flashing over on Ältavägen, on the bridge across the inlet leading to Järlasjön. There are at least three police cars. The vehicles’ lights reflect off the metal struts of the bridge and across the crowns of the trees on both shores.

  The helicopter roars over the treetops again and he sinks quickly into the water. He holds his breath, but can clearly feel the change in the current as the helicopter passes. The water of the lake forms small waves radiating out in rapid circles.

  He carries on, further out, slipping down amongst the water lilies, between their long stalks and the slimy bottom of the lake. There he lets the bundle of clothes containing his phone fill with bubbling water and sink.

  In the other direction, beyond the dam, he can see that the bridge over the Sickla Channel has been blocked off. There are police cars everywhere. The tall fibreglass railings shimmer like huge plates of blue light. A helicopter is hovering above the ski slope.

  Erik starts to swim, taking big strokes, feeling the cold against his lips and the smell of seawater. It can’t be many hundred metres to the other side. Two jetties reach out into the water in front of the housing blocks erected by Atlas Copco after the war to house their guest-workers.

  115

  Erik swims, keeping his head low and trying not to disturb the surface of the lake too much. He’s already more than one hundred metres out. The water merely laps quietly as he takes his broad strokes, but thunders in his ears when he’s underwater.

  He raises his head enough to be able to look ahead. Drops of water sparkle on his eyelashes as he sees the two jetties before they disappear behind the swell. The current is pulling him a long way off to one side.

  High above the nature reserve the helicopter is clattering, but he can no longer hear any dogs.

  Erik swims, thinking about how he lied nine years ago, and stole Rocky’s whole life from him – and didn’t spare him a thought until now.

  He slows down, and treads water as he sees that he’s just fifty metres from the two protruding jetties. A few children in bathing costumes are running about on the damp wood. There are people sitting with picnic baskets, blankets and folding chairs in the late summer warmth.

  A motorboat appears to be approaching from the channel.

  Erik swims towards the shore, beyond the beach. At the far end gnarled weeping willows hang over the water. The tips of their bright green branches trail in the undulating water.

  The motorboat skims silently towards him, its prow striking the waves as the boat slows down.

  Erik takes aim for the trees, fills his lungs with air, then dives below the surface.

  He swims underwater with powerful strokes, feeling the coolness of the water against his face and eyes, its taste in his mouth, and the muffled sound as his ears fill.

  The dappled daylight shimmers on the bubbles rising from his arms.

  Beneath the water the motorboat makes a metallic buzzing sound.

  Erik’s shoulders are straining from the effort. It’s further to the shore than he thought. The water below him is completely black, but the surface looks like molten tin.

  His lungs feel tight. He has to breathe soon. The buzzing sound of the motorboat gets louder.

  He keeps swimming, but is getting closer to the surface, has no energy left, needs oxygen.

  Shimmering bubbles drift around him.

  He kicks out with his legs and feels his diaphragm tighten, cramping in an effort to force his lungs to breathe in some air.

  The water gets lighter, full of swirling sand. He can make out the bottom beneath him, rough blocks of stone and coarse sand. He takes one last stroke with his arms, then pulls himself forward across the stones with his hands.

  Erik breaks the surface, gasps for breath, coughs, puts his hand over his mouth, coughs again and spits out a mouthful of slime. He’s rocking with the swell from the boat. His vision goes dark and he gasps and wipes the water from his face with trembling hands.

  He makes his way up on to the rocks on unsteady legs, then collapses. His whole body shakes as he sits behind the curtain of branches. The police boat is moving along the lake, but its engine is no longer audible.

  Even if Nelly manages to leave her house and hire a car, it will be a while before she gets here. It makes sense to wait beneath the trees and dry off a bit before he makes his way to the meeting point.

  The sound of shouting, laughing children fades away as if in fog. In the distance the sirens are howling, and the helicopter goes on circling above the nature reserve on the other side of the lake.

  After half an hour or so Erik leaves his hiding place, climbs up the rocks, crosses the footpath and steps behind a large hazel bush. The ground in the shade beneath the branches is littered with toilet paper. He moves on towards the rust-red exterior of Sickla recreation centre.

  Suddenly the sound of a siren echoes loudly between the walls, and he stops abruptly, his heart pounding. People are sitting at an outdoor café a short distance away, eating and drinking, quite unconcerned. The vehicle disappears and Erik carries on walking. He’s just thinking that he needs to wait on the other side of the building, hidden by the bushes, when he catches sight of Nelly. She’s wearing a green floral-print dress, and her blonde hair is tied up with a scarf of the same colour.

  On the other side of the street is a black jeep. Nelly shades her face with one hand as she looks down towards the water.

  Erik walks across the grass and steps across some low bushes, and is just emerging on to the pavement when Nelly catches sight of him. Her lips part as though she were suddenly frightened. Erik looks round for traffic, then walks straight across the road in his wet underpants. Nelly looks him quickly up and down, then lifts her chin as if they were about to have a perfectly ordinary discussion about patients.

  ‘Original, but quite sexy,’ she smiles, quickly opening the back door. ‘Get under the blanket.’

  He huddles down on the floor behind the seat and pulls the red rug over himself. The sun-heated car smells of plastic and leather.

  Erik hears Nelly get in the driver’s seat and close the door. She starts the engine and pulls away to the left, bumping off the kerb and then speeding up, and he slides back towards the seat.

  ‘We know Rocky was wrongly convicted of the murder of Rebecka Hansson, but—’

  ‘Not now, Nelly,’ he interrupts.

  ‘But do we know he’s innocent of these new murders? I mean … What if he’s started copying the murder he was convicted of … just to put the blame on you?’

&n
bsp; ‘It’s not him, I hypnotised him, he saw the preacher and …’

  ‘But couldn’t he just have divided himself into different characters? So that he’s the unclean preacher when commits the murders?’

  Nelly falls silent and inserts a disc into the CD player. The car fills with Johnny Cash’s heavy voice: Wanted man in California, wanted man in Buffalo, wanted man in Kansas City, wanted man in Ohio … wanted man in Mississippi, wanted man in ol’ Cheyenne. Wherever you might look tonight, you might see this wanted man.

  Erik lies there with the blanket on top of him, smelling the sand on the mats on the floor, and can’t help smiling at the fact that Nelly is trying to be funny at a time like this.

  116

  Rocky is asleep on the passenger seat next to Joona. His big head lolls to the side when the road bends. The landscape is sparsely populated and desolate, almost abandoned.

  Joona is driving fast, thinking about the text message Lumi sent him earlier today. She wrote that she loves Paris, but misses their conversations up in Nattavaara.

  Just beyond Flen the road and railway come together on two narrow strips of land. A long goods train thunders past next to the car, closer and closer. The brown trucks reflect off the water. The road and rails converge at an arrowhead, the train passes beneath them and then appears alongside again before dark pine forest comes between them.

  The forest gradually grows thinner, and the landscape flattens into huge fields. Combine harvesters roll across the fields in clouds of dust, cutting off the stalks and separating wheat from chaff.

  Sköldinge is on route 55, not far from Katrineholm. Joona turns off to the right and sees a few red houses through the trees, then the sandy-coloured church with its pointed spire, rising from the plain.

  Sköldinge Church.

  An ordinary Swedish church out in the countryside, dating back to the twelfth century, surrounded by rune stones.

  The gravel crunches beneath the tyres as he pulls over and stops in front of the parish house.

  Maybe they have found the serial killer now. The preacher from Rocky’s nightmarish memories. The old priest with rouged cheeks and arms full of needle tracks.

  The church door is closed and the windows dark.

  Joona pulls his Colt Combat from its holster and notices that the tape is dirty and has started to peel off. He usually wraps sports tape round the lower part of the butt so that his hand doesn’t slip if he finds himself in a drawn-out firefight.

  He pulls out the magazine and checks that it’s full, presses it back in and feeds a bullet into the chamber even though he can’t really believe that the unclean preacher is just waiting for them inside the church.

  Nothing is that simple.

  The path has been raked, and the churchyard is well tended. The sun is filtering through the leaves of a huge oak.

  The preacher is an extremely dangerous man, a serial killer who never rushes, who takes his time, who watches and plans, down to the last detail, until something else takes over and he turns into a wild animal.

  His weakness is his arrogance, his narcissistic hunger.

  Joona glances towards the church, then across the fields. He has two extra magazines of ordinary parabellum bullets in one pocket, and one magazine of fully jacketed ammunition in the other.

  Even if the preacher isn’t here, he thinks, even if he’s never been here, this is the end of the road.

  If he can’t find something here that can convince Margot, then it’s over, Erik will be found guilty even though he’s innocent, just like Rocky was found guilty years ago of murdering Rebecka Hansson.

  And the serial killer will go free.

  Today is the day everything gets decided. Erik can’t keep on running, he’s got nowhere left to go, the hunters will drive him out of the forest.

  And he himself has broken an inmate out of jail, used violence against a prison officer, threatened his life.

  Disa would have said he was just under-stimulated, that he needs to get back to work. It’s too late for that now, but he had no choice, in which case the consequences are irrelevant.

  When Joona opens the door Rocky wakes up and looks at him with narrow, sleepy eyes.

  ‘Wait here,’ Joona says, and leaves the car.

  Rocky gets out and spits on the ground, leans against the roof of the car and draws a line in the dirt with his hand.

  ‘Do you recognise where we are?’ Joona asks.

  ‘No,’ Rocky says, looking up at the church. ‘But that doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘I want you to wait in the car,’ Joona repeats. ‘I don’t think the serial killer’s here, but it could still be a dangerous situation.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit,’ Rocky says bluntly.

  He follows Joona between the graves. The air is fresh, as if it had just been raining. They pass a man in jeans and a T-shirt standing outside the porch, smoking and talking on his mobile.

  The transition from bright sunlight leaves them almost completely blind when they walk into the darkness of the porch.

  Joona moves quickly to one side, ready to draw his pistol.

  He blinks and waits for his eyes to adapt before going in amongst the pews beneath the organ loft. Huge pillars hold up the roof and ornate frescos.

  There’s a knocking sound, and a shadow flits across the walls.

  There’s someone sitting in one of the front pews.

  Joona stops Rocky, draws his gun and holds it hidden beside his hip.

  A bird hits the window. It looks like a jackdaw that’s got caught in a piece of twine, and keeps hitting the window when it tries to fly off.

  The door to the sacristy is ajar. On the wall is a hazy cross in a circle.

  Joona slowly approaches the huddled figure from behind, and sees a wrinkled hand holding on to the back of the pew in front.

  The bird hits the window again. The shrunken figure slowly turns its head towards the sound.

  It’s an elderly Chinese woman.

  Joona carries on past her, still concealing his gun, and looks at her from the side. Her face is downcast, impassive.

  Beside the medieval font Mary sits like a child. Her wide, wooden dress falls in heavy folds around her feet.

  At the centre of the altarpiece Christ hangs on the cross against a sky of gold, just as Rocky described it under hypnosis.

  This was where he first met the unclean preacher, when the entire church was full of priests.

  Now he’s back.

  Rocky has stopped in the darkened doorway beneath the organ loft. The instrument’s pipes stick up above him like a row of quill pens.

  He’s standing still, irresolute. Like an apostate, he doesn’t look up at the altar, and just stares down at his big, empty hands.

  The Chinese woman stands up and walks out.

  Joona knocks on the door of the sacristy, nudges the door open slightly and peers into the gloom. A set of vestments is hanging ready, but the room looks empty.

  Joona steps aside and looks into the gap between the hinges, sees the uneven stone wall, like billowing fabric.

  He opens the door further and walks in, his pistol at his chest. He quickly looks round at the liturgical textiles. High above, pale daylight filters in through a deep alcove.

  Joona crosses the floor to the toilet and opens the door, but there’s no one there. There’s a wristwatch on the shelf above the hand-basin.

  He raises his pistol and opens the door to the wardrobe. Chasubles, cassocks and stoles hang side by side, different colours for different seasons of the religious calendar. Joona quickly pushes the clothes aside and looks towards the back of the wardrobe.

  There’s something on the floor in one corner. A pile of magazines about sports cars.

  Joona returns to the nave and walks past Rocky, who has sat down in one of the pews, and goes outside, where he asks the man by the door where the priest is.

  ‘That’s me,’ the man smiles, dropping his cigarette in the empty coffee mug by his fee
t.

  ‘I mean the other priest,’ Joona explains.

  ‘There’s only me here,’ he says.

  Joona has already looked at his arms, they’re free of injection scars.

  ‘When were you ordained?’

  ‘I was ordained as a curate in Katrineholm, and four years ago I was appointed as the priest here,’ the man replies amiably.

  ‘Who was here before you?’

  ‘That was Rickard Magnusson … and before him, Erland Lodin and Peter Leer Jacobson, Mikael Friis and … I can’t remember.’

  The man has cut his hand, there’s a grubby plaster across his palm.

  ‘This probably sounds like a strange question,’ Joona says. ‘But when would a church be full of priests … in the pews, like the congregation?’

  ‘When a priest is ordained, but that would be in a cathedral,’ the priest replies helpfully, picking his mug up off the ground.

  ‘But here?’ Joona persists. ‘Has this church ever been full of priests?’

  ‘That would be for a priest’s funeral … but that’s up to the family to decide, it depends who gets invited … there are no special rules for priests.’

  ‘Have you buried priests here?’

  The man looks out across the headstones, the narrow paths and neatly trimmed bushes.

  ‘I know that Peter Leer Jacobson is buried here in the churchyard,’ he says quietly.

  They go inside the porch, and the young priest’s arms get goose-bumps from the coolness of the stone.

  ‘When did he die?’ Joona asks.

  ‘Long before I got here. Fifteen years ago, maybe, I don’t know.’

  ‘Is there a record of who was here when he was buried?’

  The man shakes his head and thinks for a moment.

  ‘No record, but his sister would know, she still lives in the widows’ home owned by the parish … He was a widower, and looked after her …’

  Joona goes back inside the dimly lit church. Rocky is standing smoking beneath the medieval triumphal cross above the rood screen. Jesus and his entire emaciated body is dotted with red wounds, like an old heroin addict.