Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  Now she’s hiding in her wardrobe, with blankets, pillows and stuffed toys, and she doesn’t answer when Jackie tries to talk to her.

  I have to show her that she doesn’t have to be perfect, Jackie thinks. That I love her no matter what, that it’s unconditional.

  She walks along the cool hallway into the living room, which is flooded with sunlight from the windows. The light feels like streaks of hot water, and she knows the piano is going to feel as warm as a large animal.

  Out in the street some sort of engineering work is going on, she can feel the muffled vibration of large machines beneath her bare feet, and she can hear the old windowpanes rattle in their frames.

  In the middle of the parquet floor she feels something sticky beneath her heel. Maddy must have spilled some juice. There’s a fusty smell in the room, a smell of nettles and damp soil.

  An itchy, electric sense of danger flares up inside her, and she feels a shiver run up her spine to her neck.

  It’s hardly surprising that she’s shaken up after everything that’s happened, the things that are being said about Erik are terrible, she thinks as she wonders if she just heard something from the window facing the courtyard.

  She listens, and walks closer to the glass. Everything is quiet, but someone could easily be standing there looking at her when the curtains are open.

  She moves cautiously towards the window and puts her hand out to touch the glass.

  She closes the curtains, the hooks jangle on the rails, and then everything is quiet again, apart from the gentle sound of the curtains swaying against the wall.

  Jackie goes over to the piano, sits down on the stool, lifts the lid of the keyboard, settles more comfortably, lowers her hands and feels something lying across the keys.

  It’s a piece of fabric.

  She picks it up and feels it. It’s a cloth or scarf of some sort.

  Maddy must have put it there.

  It’s a piece of intricate embroidery. She follows the pattern of the stitches with her fingertips.

  It seems to be some sort of animal, with four legs, and wings or feathers on its back, and a man’s head with a curly beard.

  She stands up slowly as her whole body goes cold, as if she had just fallen straight through broken ice.

  There’s someone in the room.

  She felt it a moment ago, just now.

  The parquet floor creaks behind her back under the weight of an adult body.

  A feeling of absolute danger makes the world shrink to a compact point in which she is utterly alone with her terror.

  ‘Erik?’ she says without turning round.

  Something rustles slowly and the vibration from the floor makes the empty fruit-bowl on the table rattle.

  ‘Is that you, Erik?’ she asks as calmly as she can. ‘You can’t just turn up here like this …’

  She turns round and hears the sound of unfamiliar breathing, shallow and agitated.

  Jackie moves slowly towards the door.

  He stays where he is, but there’s a sort of squeaking sound, as if he were wearing plastic clothes, or rubber.

  ‘We can talk through everything,’ she says, with obvious fear in her voice. ‘I overreacted, I know I did, I wanted to call you …’

  He doesn’t answer, just shifts his weight from one foot to the other. The floor creaks beneath him.

  ‘I’m not cross any more, I think about you all the time … it’s going to be fine,’ she says weakly.

  She moves into the passageway leading to the hall, thinking that she has to get out, that she has to lure Erik out of the flat, away from Maddy.

  ‘Let’s go and sit in the kitchen – Maddy hasn’t come home yet,’ she lies.

  There’s a sudden thudding sound on the floor, he’s rushing towards her and she holds up a hand to stop him.

  Something strikes her raised arm. The pestle glances off her elbow and she staggers backwards.

  The adrenalin rushing through her veins means that she doesn’t even notice the pain in her arm.

  Jackie backs away, holding her injured arm up, turns and walks into the wall, hits her knees against the little table, grabs the glass bowl that Maddy usually uses for popcorn, and strikes out hard. She hits him and drops the bowl. He falls forward into her and Jackie hits her back against the bookcase.

  Jackie can feel his rain-clothes against her body. She pushes him away with both hands and smells his bitter breath on her face.

  Books crash to the floor.

  It isn’t Erik, she thinks.

  That isn’t his smell.

  She runs, with her hand against the wall, into the hall and reaches the front door, and starts to turn the lock with shaking hands.

  Heavy footsteps approach from behind.

  She opens the door, but something jangles and the door bounces back.

  The safety chain, she forgot the safety chain.

  She pulls the door shut, fumbles with the chain but she’s shaking too much and can’t unfasten it.

  The person who wants to kill her is coming closer, making a little purring sound in their throat.

  Jackie pushes the twisted chain sideways with her fingers and suddenly it comes loose, she opens the door and tumbles out into the stairwell. She almost falls, but manages to reach her neighbour’s door and bangs on it with the palm of her hand.

  ‘Open the door!’ Jackie screams.

  She feels movement behind her, turns round and puts her arms up in front of her face to shield it from the blow.

  Jackie falls against her neighbour’s door, blood runs down her cheek and she lets out a deep gasp as the next blow knocks her head sideways.

  A bitter flower blossoms and fills her mouth and nostrils, a warm flower with petals like thin feathers.

  123

  From where he’s lying, Erik can’t hear anything except the sound of the engine, the monotonous thrum of the tyres on the tarmac, and Nelly’s inadvertent little sighs as she concentrates on the traffic.

  After Sickla strand, she drove for twenty minutes around central Stockholm, with lots of traffic lights, turns and changes of lane. Then she stopped and got out of the car, and was gone for a long time. Erik lay there completely covered by the blanket, occasionally shifting position very carefully, waiting. He fell asleep in the heat of the car, but woke up abruptly to the sound of voices right outside the car.

  It sounded like two men quietly discussing something with each other. He tried to hear what they were saying, he thought they sounded like police, but wasn’t sure.

  He lay motionless with the heavy blanket over his back, trying to breathe carefully. The whole of his right side went numb, but he didn’t dare change position until long after the voices had gone.

  After another forty minutes or so Nelly came back. He heard her open the back of the car and lift some heavy luggage in with a groan. The car rocked, and then she got into the driver’s seat. She started the engine and Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms filled the car.

  When they emerged on to the motorway he dared to lift the blanket from his face. Nelly’s voice sounded cheerful when she called out to him over the music, saying she must be mad to be doing this, but that she went through a serious punk phase when she was sixteen and still wanted revenge on the cops and all the other fascist bastards.

  They’ve been driving for over an hour when she slows down, pressing Erik against the back of the driver’s seat in front of him.

  The large vehicle turns sharply into an uneven track. Small stones clatter against the underside of the chassis. She slows down even more, and Erik hears branches scraping against the roof and windows. The car rocks over lumps and potholes before coming to a halt. There’s a click as the handbrake is applied on, then silence.

  The driver’s door opens and when the cool air carrying a hint of diesel reaches him, he finally dares to sit up on the back seat. Dazed, he looks out across overgrown ruins and sees a white sky, leafy treetops and large fields that have been left fallow.
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  They’re deep in the countryside. Grasshoppers are chirruping in the tall grass. Nelly stands and looks at him with shining eyes. Her floral green dress is creased around her thighs, and strands of her blonde hair have escaped from the scarf round her head. One of her cheeks seems to be blushing oddly, as if she’s had a knock. Everything is so quiet and there’s so little wind that Erik can hear the charms on her bracelet jangle as she adjusts the glittery bag on her shoulder.

  He pushes the door open and climbs out carefully on to the grass. His vest has dried, and his whole body aches.

  Nelly has parked in an overgrown courtyard. A yellow two-storey house stands in the middle of the ruins of some sort of factory. A tall brick chimney rises from a sooty oven. The buildings are surrounded by weeds, and through the tall grass he can make out the remains of a huge grid of railway sleepers.

  ‘Come on, let’s go inside,’ Nelly says, licking her lips.

  ‘Is this Solbacken?’ Erik asks in surprise.

  ‘Nice, isn’t it?’ she says, and giggles.

  Broken glass shimmers in the courtyard, and there are bricks and soot-blackened sheets of corrugated tin lying in the tall grass. The foundations of some of the buildings have collapsed in on their cellars, and the shafts look like empty pools with weeds growing at the bottom, and brick arches leading to underground tunnels.

  An old washing machine stands in a clump of young elms, along with a few dirty plastic chairs and a couple of tractor tyres.

  ‘Now I want to show you the house, I love it,’ she says, tucking her hand under his arm with a contented smile.

  The whole of the main house is surrounded by dark green stinging nettles. The gutter has come loose and is resting on the roof of the veranda.

  ‘It’s really nice inside,’ she says, trying to pull him along.

  The ground sways and he feels suddenly sick, and he finds himself staring at a pool of brown water with a sheen of oil on its surface.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Nelly asks with an anxious smile.

  ‘It’s hard getting a grip on everything … that fact that I’m here now,’ he replies.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ she says, walking backwards towards the house without taking her eyes off him.

  ‘I hypnotised Rocky this morning,’ Erik tells her. ‘He remembered the person who murdered Rebecka Hansson, he said the name of the church where they met.’

  ‘We’ll have to try to tip the police off about that,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know … everything’s—’

  ‘Come on, let’s go in,’ she interrupts, and sets off towards the house.

  ‘I haven’t had any time to think, I’ve just been running,’ he says as he follows her across the yard.

  ‘Of course,’ she replies in a distant voice.

  A crow hops away and flaps up over the roof. The cable of a television aerial hangs down the front of the building into the weeds. Drifts of wet leaves lie beside an old drum of diesel with a grubby Shell logo on the side.

  ‘I need to find a way of handing myself in,’ Erik says.

  He follows her up a green path that has been trodden through the tall nettles.

  ‘They shot Nestor in front of me, I can’t believe it,’ he goes on.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They thought he was me, and they shot him through the window, using snipers, it was like an execution …’

  ‘You can tell me everything when we get inside,’ Nelly says with a little frown of impatience between her eyebrows.

  Resting against the wall among the nettles is a snow-shovel with a broken handle. The paint of the veranda is hanging off in large strips, and one of the windows is broken. There’s a piece of plywood covering the hole instead of glass.

  ‘Now you’re here, anyway,’ Nelly says. ‘You can feel safe. I mean, I’m happy for you to stay as long as you like.’

  ‘Maybe you could contact a defence lawyer once everything’s calmed down?’ Erik suggests.

  She nods and licks her lips again, then tucks a lock of hair behind her scarf.

  ‘Hurry up,’ she says.

  ‘What is it?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says quickly. ‘I just … you know … all this talk about everyone hunting you. And sometimes the neighbours call round when they see I’m here.’

  Erik glances along the narrow track at the edge of the field. There are no other houses in sight, just overgrown fields and a strip of forest.

  ‘Come on,’ she repeats with a tense smile, and takes his arm again. ‘You need something to drink, and some warm clothes.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agrees and follows her along the path through the nettles.

  ‘And I’ll make something nice to eat.’

  They go up the steps to the little veranda. There are grimy bags of rubbish leaning against the outside wall, next to a plastic tub filled with bottles and rainwater. Nelly turns the key in the lock, opens the front door and walks into the hall ahead of him. There’s a click but nothing more when she tries to turn the light on.

  ‘Need to check the fuse-box,’ she giggles.

  A set of blue overalls covered in oil-stains is suspended from a hanger beside a silver-coloured padded jacket. In the shoe-rack are a pair of worn wooden clogs and some rough boots with black stains on them. Above a small sofa hangs an embroidered sampler with a biblical quotation: For love is strong as death, Song of Solomon 8:6.

  A sweet smell of raw chicken and overripe fruit hangs in the air.

  ‘It’s an old house,’ she says softly.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, thinking that he’d really prefer to get away from here.

  Nelly stands and looks at him with a smile, so close that he can see that her face-powder has settled in rings around her eyes.

  ‘Do you want a shower before we eat?’ she asks without taking her eyes off him.

  ‘Do I look like I need one?’ he jokes.

  ‘You’re the best judge of how unclean you are,’ she replies seriously, and her bright eyes shine like glass.

  ‘Nelly, I’m incredibly grateful for everything you’ve—’

  ‘Anyway, here’s the kitchen,’ she interrupts.

  As she pushes at the heavy door beside the sofa Erik hears a creaking metallic sound.

  The noise rises a couple of notes, then stops abruptly.

  He follows her hesitantly into the gloomy kitchen. A stench of rotten food hits him. Weak light filters through the closed venetian blinds. It’s hard to see anything. Nelly has gone in and is turning the tap on.

  Erik stands inside the door and feels a shiver run down his spine. The whole kitchen is full of rusty tools and engine parts, blocks of firewood, crumpled plastic bags, shoes and pans of old food.

  ‘Nelly, what’s happened here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she says lightly as she fills a glass with water for him.

  ‘The whole kitchen,’ he says.

  She follows his gaze to the worktop and closed blinds. Three dark paraffin lamps are sticking up from an open kitchen drawer.

  ‘We must have had a break-in,’ she says, holding out the glass.

  He walks in and barely reaches her when the kitchen door shuts behind him with a loud slam.

  Erik spins round with his heart pounding in his chest. The powerful spring of an oversized self-closing mechanism is singing metallically.

  ‘God, that gave me a fright,’ he sighs.

  ‘Sorry,’ Nelly says, unconcerned.

  124

  Nelly switches on a torch and puts it down haphazardly on the worktop. The light shines at the layers of cobwebs on the venetian blinds.

  Erik stands still and tries to take in what he’s seeing. A large fly buzzes around the kitchen and lands on the door to the cellar. From one door-post hangs an iron bar that seems to function as a barrier across the door.

  ‘A woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised,’ Nelly whispers.

  ‘Nelly, I don’t really understand what all this is about.’ />
  There are two knives lying on the floor next to a rolled-up rag-rug, the gearbox of a car and a dirty hymnbook.

  ‘You’re home,’ she says with a smile.

  ‘Thanks, but I—’

  ‘There’s the door,’ she points.

  ‘There’s the door?’ he repeats, uncomprehendingly.

  ‘It’s better if you go down on your own,’ she says, holding out the glass of water.

  ‘Down where?’ Erik asks.

  ‘Now don’t argue,’ she giggles.

  ‘You think I ought to hide in the cellar?’

  She nods eagerly.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit over the top? I don’t think—’

  ‘Be quiet!’ she yells, and throws the glass of water at him.

  The glass hits the wall behind him, falls to the floor and shatters. He feels the water splash his legs and feet.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m just a bit stressed,’ she says, rubbing her forehead.

  He nods and walks over to the door to the hall and pulls the handle, but the powerful spring-loaded mechanism has locked the door. There’s no key in the hole. Adrenalin floods his body as he hears her approach from behind. He yanks at the door but it doesn’t move a millimetre.

  ‘I just want you to do as I say,’ Nelly explains.

  ‘Well, I’m not thinking of going down into some fucking—’

  Erik can’t understand what’s happening, but something hits him hard across the back and all the air goes out of him as his forehead hits the door. He stumbles sideways. It feels like he’s got cramp in his left shoulder, then realises that warm liquid is running down his back.

  He looks down and sees splashes of blood in the filth on the linoleum floor, turns to face Nelly and realises that she has hit him with a lump of wood, which is now lying on the floor by her feet.

  ‘Sorry, Erik,’ she all but laughs. ‘I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Nelly?’ he gasps. ‘You hurt me.’

  ‘Yes, I know, it’s not easy, but I’m helping you. Nothing to worry about,’ she says.

  ‘I didn’t do what they’re saying about me,’ he tries to explain.