Stalker

by Lars Kepler

  ‘Jackie?’ he says again.

  He knows she’d be dead now if the doorbell hadn’t rung. In spite of the silence, he knows it’s the police, it must be the police, they did hear his phone call.

  As long as they realise how serious it is, he thinks. As long as they’ve sent enough officers.

  He picks the stick up from the ground, reaches out with it and gently pokes Jackie with the blunt end.

  ‘Jackie?’

  She slowly moves one leg, turns her face and coughs weakly.

  Once again Erik explains what’s happened, what Nelly has done, how he got the blame, but that Joona knows the truth.

  She lifts one hand tiredly to the superficial wound on her neck.

  Erik has no idea how much she understands of what he’s saying, but he repeats that she needs to get away, that she needs to hurry.

  ‘You need to fight now, you won’t survive otherwise,’ he says.

  She doesn’t have long, he’s been listening for pistol shots, for voices, but can’t hear anything.

  ‘Jackie, try to stand up now,’ he pleads.

  Finally she sits up. Blood is running from her eyebrow, down over her cheek, and she’s gasping for breath.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ he says again. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? You need to run, Jackie. Can you stand up?’

  He says nothing about calling the police, doesn’t want to give her false hope. She needs to get away, because he doesn’t trust the police not to fall for Nelly’s lies.

  Jackie stands up, groans and spits blood on the floor. She lurches forward but stays on her feet.

  ‘You need to get away from here before she comes back,’ he repeats.

  Jackie stumbles towards his voice, breathing heavily, with her arms outstretched.

  ‘Go in the other direction,’ he says. ‘You have to get out of the ruins and away across the fields.’

  She makes her way carefully past the tins on the floor and reaches the cage with her hands.

  ‘I’m locked in a cage,’ he says.

  ‘Everyone’s saying you killed four women,’ she whispers.

  ‘It was Nelly … You don’t have to believe me, as long as you get away from here …’

  ‘I knew you didn’t do it,’ she says.

  He strokes the fingers clinging to the cage, she leans forward and rests her forehead on the rusty metal.

  ‘You’ve got to keep going a bit longer,’ he says, stroking her cheek. ‘Turn round, so that I can take a look. You’ve been wounded … Jackie, you’re seriously hurt, you need to get to a hospital. Hurry up and—’

  ‘Maddy’s still at home,’ she whimpers. ‘Thank God, she was hiding in her wardrobe when—’

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ Erik says. ‘She’ll be fine.’

  ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Jackie whispers, and her face crumples with anxiety.

  ‘How does it feel when you breathe?’ Erik asks. ‘Try to cough … You’ll be OK, your pleural cavity is probably damaged, but you were lucky, Jackie. Listen, there’s a little torch on the table, you can feel its warmth, you’ll know where it is.’

  She wipes her mouth, nods and tries to pull herself together.

  ‘Can you fetch it? There’s nothing between you and—’

  He breaks off when he hears a loud thud from upstairs. It’s the kitchen door slamming shut, thanks to the powerful spring.

  ‘What was that?’ she whispers, her lips quivering.

  ‘Hurry up, you can walk straight towards the torch, there’s nothing on the floor between you and the table.’

  She turns and walks towards the tiny source of heat, feels across the tabletop, picks up the torch and returns to Erik with it.

  ‘Do you know where the opening to the tunnel is?’ he asks.

  ‘More or less,’ she whispers.

  ‘It’s fairly narrow, it’s a small brick opening, no door,’ he explains as he hears someone scream up above. ‘You need to run away, get as far away as you possibly can … Take this stick, you can use it to feel your way.’

  She looks as if she’s about to break down. Her face is drained of colour, her lips already white with the shock to her circulation.

  ‘Erik, it won’t work—’

  ‘Nelly will kill you when she comes back … Listen, there’s a passageway … I don’t know what it looks like further along, it could be blocked, but you have to try to get out … the whole area is surrounded by ruins, and you’ll … you’ll be able to—’

  ‘I can’t,’ she whimpers, twisting her head back and forth in an anxious, repetitive pattern.

  ‘Please, just listen to me … When you reach the cellar with no ceiling, you’ll have to climb up to reach ground level …’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she whispers.

  ‘I can’t get out, Nelly’s got the key round her neck.’

  ‘But … how am I going to find my way?’

  ‘In the darkness, the blind man is king,’ he says simply.

  Her faces trembles as she turns round and starts to walk, feeling the ground in front of her with the stick.

  He holds the torch up and tries to guide her. The angled light makes the shadows stretch and shrink.

  ‘There’s a load of roof tiles on the floor ahead of you,’ he says. ‘Move a little to your right and you’ll be heading straight for the opening.’

  Then the pair of them hear the bar being lifted from the cellar door, as it jolts and scrapes back against the wall.

  ‘Hold your hand out now,’ Erik whispers. ‘You’ll be able to feel the wall on your left … just follow that …’

  Jackie walks into something that clatters, a tin of paint rolls away, and Erik sees her shrink with fear.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ he hisses. ‘You have to get home to Maddy.’

  The door above them opens, closes, and clicks, but there’s no sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  Jackie has reached the opening now, and Erik watches her carry on into the passage, holding one hand against the wall and sweeping the ground ahead of her with the stick.

  Erik points the torch at the floor and sees Nelly come down the stairs and step out into the middle of the cellar. Her yellow oilskin is smeared with blood and she’s clutching a smaller kitchen knife in her hand.

  Her eyes are staring straight at him.

  He doesn’t know how much she has time to see before he switches the torch off. Everything goes completely dark, as if someone had swept the whole world away from them.

  ‘Nelly, they’ll send more police officers,’ he says, holding his injured arm with his hand. ‘Do you understand? It’s over now …’

  ‘It’s never over,’ she replies, and stands quite still a metre or so away from him, just breathing.

  There’s a clattering sound from the tunnel. Nelly giggles and walks across the floor. Erik hears her hit the stack of tiles, go round them and carry on through the darkness towards the tunnel.

  134

  Jackie is heading along a narrow passageway as fast as she can. Her right hand is feeling its way along the wall, and she’s moving the stick to and fro in front of her.

  She needs to get as far away as she can, try to find a way out and then keep going until she finds help.

  Fear is washing over her, it’s almost like being burned, and she manages to kick a bottle lying on the floor that she missed with her stick. It tinkles as it rolls away across the rough floor.

  Her fingertips slip across the bricks and crumbling mortar, she notes that she’s passing a seventh vertical indentation in the wall. She keeps count automatically because it makes things easier if she has to find her way back.

  Jackie is having difficulty breathing, the pain in her back flares up like a beacon with every step she takes. Warm blood is still trickling from the wound, down between her buttocks and along her legs.

  She isn’t sure if Erik was telling the truth when he said she wasn’t seriously hurt, or if he was only trying to calm her down so that s
he would dare to escape.

  She coughs and feels a cramping pain from her injured lung, just below her shoulder-blade.

  Her stick isn’t quite quick enough.

  Her shin hits some sort of apparatus with sharp tin corners and dangling cables. She has to clamber over the machine and her legs are trembling with effort and fear. She has no way of knowing how long the passageway is, but she has a feeling that she’s inside a system of tunnels and cellars.

  She’s walking a little too fast the whole time, and knows there’s a serious risk that she’s going to trip over.

  She passes a room on her left, it’s there as a gap in the acoustics.

  Jackie decided to stop counting the indentations, she needs to concentrate on finding a way out.

  ‘Nelly’s coming!’ Erik calls from the basement room behind her. ‘She’s on her way now!’

  His voice sounds frightened, weakened by the long tunnel, but she hears him and understands his warning.

  Nelly’s coming after her.

  Jackie tries to move faster, makes her way round an armchair and carries on along the wall, her fingers brushing a number of shelves. Something rattles behind her and she almost cries out in fear.

  It’s getting harder and harder to breathe. Jackie holds her hand over her mouth and tries to cough quietly as she presses ahead. Mid-stride, her face hits something. An open cupboard door. It slams shut, and there’s a tinkling sound of glass objects rattling on shelves.

  Memories of the violence she has been subjected to flash past: the feeling of a sharp knife-blade being yanked out with a sigh, and the constricting pain in her back.

  Her breathlessness feels like a weight, she knows she’s breathing too hard, but it still doesn’t feel like she’s getting enough oxygen.

  She moves the stick quickly and lets the other hand brush over bricks and joints, past a thick cable, along bare brick again, then some old window frames that are stacked against the wall.

  She’s trying to read the space the whole time.

  Whenever she hears an opening, she stops for a few seconds and listens, to check if it’s another passageway or just an enclosed room.

  She keeps moving along the main passageway, seeing as the weak draught across the floor seems to be coming from up ahead.

  A protruding bolts tears the skin of her knuckles, and now she can hear her pursuer behind her.

  Nelly shouts something to her, but Jackie can’t make out the words.

  The voice makes panic bubble up inside her and the hand holding the stick is sweating.

  She trips over a brick, loses her balance and starts to fall. She throws her arm out, puts her hand through some thick spiders’ webs and hits the wall hard. Her back shrieks with pain, cutting through her like a javelin with the sudden contortion, and she can taste blood in her mouth.

  A crash from the tunnel behind her makes her ears ring. It sounded like the cupboard full of glass objects falling over. She hears a load of glass break, shattering and scattering across the floor.

  Jackie wipes her sweaty hand on her legs, takes a firm grip of the stick and carries on as fast as she can. The fingertips of her right hand have gone numb from the rough brick wall.

  She can hear footsteps behind her – much faster than her own.

  Jackie turns into a side-passage in panic.

  Her heart is pounding.

  This isn’t going to work, she thinks. Nelly knows her way round these tunnels, this is her territory.

  Jackie forces herself to go on. The passageway is narrower than the last one. She stumbles over some old fabric and feels something catch round her foot and drag along behind her.

  ‘Jackie?’ Nelly shouts. ‘Jackie!’

  She tries not to cough, feels herself pass a hole in the wall fairly close to the roof, and hears air streaming through it as something grabs at her clothes. It’s holding on to her blouse, pulling her backwards. She flails her arms in panic, and hears the fabric tear. She’s stuck, and is trying to pull free when she hears Nelly once more.

  She must have followed her into the side-passage.

  Jackie pulls at her blouse and turns round, puts her hand under her left arm and feels a thick pipe. She walked into a pipe that’s somehow hanging from the roof, it’s got caught in her clothes and she has to back up several metres to free herself.

  Nelly is close now, mortar is crunching under her boots and her clothes rustle as she moves.

  Breathing through her nose, Jackie carries on along the passageway, then she hears Nelly let out a whimper – she too has walked into the dangling pipe.

  A metallic clang echoes off the walls.

  Jackie hurries on and emerges into a large room with a slower echo.

  There’s a smell of stagnant water in the air, like an old aquarium. Jackie keeps moving, and almost immediately bumps into something and drops her stick.

  She’s breathing far too quickly, she bends over and feels a large trough filled with dusty soil, twigs and pieces of bark. The pain in her back almost makes her topple forwards, but she goes on searching beside the trough, feeling tentatively across old bottles, spiders’ webs and twigs.

  She hears Nelly call out to her, she’s nearer again.

  Jackie gives up looking for the stick, she’ll have to go on without it. With her arms outstretched she feels her way past a series of alcoves with brick walls dividing them.

  She stops in front of a large object that’s blocking the whole room. It’s a long, steel washbasin. She feels along it to one end, and has just made her way round it when she hears Nelly’s footsteps behind her.

  Jackie clicks her tongue loudly, the way she has learned to. The room around her reflects the sound as vague echoes that her brain turns into a three-dimensional map. She clicks again, but is far too scared for it to work well; she doesn’t have time to listen properly, can’t get any real sense of the room.

  Panting for breath, she moves on. Her whole body is shaking and she doesn’t know how to stop it. She turns her head and clicks again, and suddenly becomes aware of an opening off to her left.

  Jackie reaches the wall with her hands, follows it until she finds the opening, and once again feels the coolness of air from outside.

  It’s a narrow passageway, its floor covered with loose grit and what smells like the charred remains of wood and plastic. One foot treads straight through a windowpane lying on the ground, and it shatters with a loud crash. She knows she’s cut her foot, but stumbles on across the floor. As she reaches out to the wall her fingers dislodge crumbs of dry mortar, and then she hears Nelly stand on the glass.

  She’s right behind her.

  Jackie breaks into a run, with one hand against the wall and the other stretched out in front of her. She runs into a wooden trestle and falls over it, lands on her left shoulder and groans with pain. She tries to crawl but something hits the floor right beside her. It sounds like a plastic pipe, or a broom-handle.

  Jackie crawls forward and hits her head on the wall. She manages to get up onto her feet again, stumbles across some fallen bricks, and leans against the wall.

  135

  Jackie isn’t entirely sure of the direction of the passageway. She turns and follows the wall backwards for a metre or so, listens, but can no longer hear Nelly. Her own breathing is so laboured that she has to hold one hand over her mouth in an effort to stay quiet.

  Something rustles in front of her, down on the floor, moving slowly.

  It’s only a rat.

  Jackie stands completely still, breathing through her nose. She has no idea how to find her way out. Terror is preventing her from thinking, she’s too stressed to be able to interpret her surroundings correctly.

  A short distance away from her something creaks. It sounds like a heavy door, or even an old mangle. She desperately wants to hide, curl up on the floor with her arms over her head, but she forces herself to go on.

  Her feet crunch on stones, charred pieces of wood and drifts of sand and grit. The walls h
ave collapsed in places, completely blocking the corridor, and she has to clamber over the heaps. Stones roll down the slope behind her, and fragments of glass break into smaller pieces.

  Jackie hears air rushing through a small gap higher up, and keeps crawling, leaning on her hands. A broken plank scrapes her thigh and her feet slide across bricks and mortar.

  There’s a rustling sound behind her and she climbs faster until she hits her head on the roof. She can feel the breeze on her face, but can’t locate the opening. She fumbles desperately in front of her with her hands, trying to push through stones tangled in metal wire, sweeping aside loose mortar, and then she finds the narrow gap. Jackie puts her fingers through a piece of chicken-wire and pulls. She manages to loosen a large stone, digs the hole a bit larger, and cuts her palm. She shuffles forward and tries to crawl through. Groaning, she manages to push one arm and her head through, stones tumble away on the other side of the hole and she forces her way through, kicking with her legs and panicking that she’s going to get stuck.

  Jackie fumbles in front of her with her hand, trying to get a grip on anything to help her pull herself through the hole. She can’t hear Nelly behind her, has no idea if she’s scrambling up the heap of rumble with her knife raised.

  Jackie feels a piece of tape with her hand and starts to pull herself through as she pushes as hard as she can with her legs. Chicken-wire and stones scratch her back, but she makes it out. Taking a load of grit with her, she shuffles down the other side, catches her foot on the edge of the hole, pulls, then pushes her foot back, angles it differently and finally it comes loose.

  Jackie slides down the heap of rubble and reaches a floor. Without having any idea of where she is, she walks forward with her hands outstretched until she finds a wall, and begins to follow that instead.

  The bricks are colder here, and she realises she must be getting closer to a way out. She turns a corner and finds herself in a larger room. The ceiling is much higher here, noises rise and spread out, like a gentle sea.

  Jackie stops and rests for a moment, trying to catch her breath. She leans forward on her knees, her whole body shaking with exhaustion and shock.