by Bragelonne
This time around, the killer had abandoned the body on the ground, rather than burying it. Alexis was aware that this represented a change in the killer’s modus operandi; he was now becoming more audacious, more confident, mastering his art. It seemed inevitable that another new body would soon come to light.
Her mobile phone vibrated inside her handbag. It was her mother. She had totally forgotten to call her parents with any updates.
‘Hello, Mum.’
‘Alexis, I was worried to death! You sent me a text message from the airport confirming you had arrived safely, and since then, nothing. How are you? Are you managing to eat properly? Do you want us to fly over to see you?’
‘No, Mum. Everything’s OK, I’m fine.’
‘Are you outside? I can hear traffic.’
‘I’m in the West End, about to have lunch with a friend.’ Alexis cursed silently. But she’d already said too much.
‘A friend? Who?’
‘A friend from Sweden who’s passing through London.’
‘What’s his name? Where do you know him from?’
‘He’s a friend of Linnéa’s. His name is Stellan.’
‘Stella? Like the beer?’
‘Stellan, Mother, with an “n” at the end. It’s a Swedish name.’
‘I know that. You don’t have to explain it to me.’
There was a lengthy silence on the other end of the line – usually a bad sign.
‘Mum?’
‘I knew it, I knew it … I knew it was going to happen.’
‘What, Mum?’
‘That you’d travel so far away from us. As if it weren’t enough to have an ocean stretching between us! Now, you’re about to move thousands of kilometres away! And into the far north, too!’
‘Mum, what the hell are you talking about?’
‘You tell me you’re about to have lunch with “a friend”. I know what that means. Quite evidently, with your talent for adapting to new situations, as your dad puts it, you’re the one who’s likely to move there and not him come here! It’s hard enough to bring up kids with no parents around, Alexis, and I know what I’m talking about…’
‘Mother, please; stop worrying so much. Believe me, I’m not about to go to live in “the far north”. Look, I have to go, I’m almost there. Kiss Dad for me.’
Alexis sighed deeply as she hung up. The scenario hadn’t changed a single bit since her teenage years. As soon as she mentioned the name of any new man, her mother automatically planned her life for the next twenty years. Or, at any rate, she managed to enumerate every conceivable problem that could occur over the course of twenty long and chaotic years.
When she’d been eighteen, Alexis had enjoyed some memorable outbursts, chiding her mother for her ‘delirium’. Doors had been slammed, words spoken too fast and the reconciliations had proven painful. Now all she could do was avoid the arguments and pacify her mother. She knew she would think back to these ridiculous exchanges with affection once her mother was no longer around. As she neared forty, she had become calmer.
Alexis crossed Grosvenor Square and turned left on South Audley Street.
Her last meeting with Stellan had been at the ‘family dinner’, as Lena Bergström had referred to the occasion. An evening that had proven as unexpected as it had been pleasant. She had greatly enjoyed the lightness of the several hours spent with the Bergström-Eklunds. She had learned that the Kommissionar and his wife had two sons, aged twenty and twenty-two, both studying overseas – the eldest in London and the youngest in Madrid. They’d asked Alexis many questions about her work. She’d quickly shattered the myth of the dreamy writer waiting for inspiration to arrive like a bolt from the blue, then frenetically creating for hours on end and even through the night, to get as much done as possible before the muse escaped. Alexis’ daily routine, contrary to popular belief, had little in common with the wonderful Carrie Bradshaw’s: she did not write in bed, wearing just a nightie, elegantly puffing on a cigarette, fitting her work between shopping expeditions or lengthy two-hour telephone conversations. Absolutely not. Not that Alexis would have minded such a lifestyle.
Alexis walked into the 34 restaurant to see Stellan sitting at the back, talking on his phone.
He hung up and rose to greet her, embracing her, Nordic-style. She enjoyed the intimacy of the contact and parted from him with reluctance.
They sat down, boringly discussing the grey London weather, while they waited to get onto more interesting topics.
As they sipped their cream of pumpkin soup they talked about the project that had brought Stellan to London. One of their Stockholm clients had offered them a renovation project in Knightsbridge. Their first overseas job.
‘Isn’t it awkward to be working with your older sister?’ Alexis asked with a sly smile, as she bit into the tasty wagyu beef fillet.
‘We get on remarkably well and Lena is wonderfully patient. She knows how to handle me when I get irritable.’
‘How long have you been partners in the firm?’
‘As a matter of fact, we took over our father’s business. He and his partner did everything together: masonry, plumbing, electricity. Lena became an architect and, to my father’s delight, she took over the reins of the family business. I followed some twenty years later.’
‘And what is your role in it?’
‘I’m the boss!’ he joked, tapping his chest expansively. ‘I find the projects, plan the work, look after all the different craftsmen involved.’
‘But how can you switch from being a policeman to becoming a property developer?’
There was a hint of sadness in Stellan’s eyes.
Alexis cursed herself. The few seconds Stellan remained silent went on forever.
‘I think the more truthful explanation is that I never managed to get over the death of my police partner.’
‘I’m sorry, Stellan. Don’t feel obliged to tell me about it.’
He sighed softly, his whole body betraying his inner pain.
‘Don’t apologise; it’s been some time, now. I should be able to talk about it without sinking into despondency.’
He leaned back in his chair and took a mouthful of water, his gaze distant, as if he were trying to gather his errant thoughts.
‘My partner, his wife and his two daughters were killed in front of me.’
Alexis was taken aback by the extent of the information.
‘After that, it was difficult to keep on working.’ Stellan paused again. ‘Linnéa had often witnessed me help out my father on small jobs during the summer, doing the accounts, meeting up with clients. She was the one who suggested I join the family business. I briefly went back to being a cop, assisting my father and sister over the weekend and during vacations. A year and half later, I resigned from the force.’
A buzz sounded over the end of his sentence. As if sunk inside a bad dream, it took them a moment to realise it was Alexis’ phone. She was about to silence it when she noticed the call was from Emily.
The conversation lasted ten seconds, at most.
She hung up, excused herself to Stellan and left 34 like a thief, abandoning him to his pain.
But she had no choice.
Sunday, 19 January 2014
He is all over the press, the telly, the radio. Front-page headlines in three of the daily papers. They haven’t yet given him a name, but he’s out there. The subject of a million conversations.
His body is coursing with excitement. He has never envisaged sharing his work in this manner with the rest of the world. Why? Because the Other condemned him to ignorance. He condemned him to only perceive a particular side of reality. And to see just one side of his personality: the one that appeared in the mirror.
Had he known … had he known the joy all this publicity would give him, the attention he would attract, he would have freed himself, thrown off the yoke earlier. Which would have made his pleasure even more intense.
The idea occurred to him the other evening, w
hen he came across Alexis Castells on Hampstead Heath. Never before has he experienced such a state of exaltation. Never.
It made him wonder why he had been so intent on hiding what he was accomplishing. On the contrary, he should be showing it off! Reveal it, don’t conceal it! He has at last come to understand that his little prince and his crown of thorns had no need for a grave.
The only problem was that the Other was going to be furious. Because, as far as the Other is concerned, it is all a private matter. The Other feels no need to show off what he has accomplished. Nor share it with the world. He takes his satisfaction from the hunt and the transformation. Killing is just a fastidious act that allows him to proceed to the final phase. For the Other, killing is just a means.
Whereas for him, it’s a means to an end.
Falkenberg, April 1945
ERICH PULLED TOGETHER the flaps of the coat the Red Cross had given him. Spring here was the same as winter: a frozen kiss. Nature was barely awakening from its long sleep; trees naked; fields covered in eternal snow.
It was exceptionally cold this year, the waitress in the coffee house where he’d enjoyed breakfast had tried to reassure him. He would soon find out whether she was an incurable optimist or not, he reckoned, as he munched on the cinnamon pastry.
When he reached the beach, Erich immediately forgot the vagaries of the weather forecast. It was so damned beautiful, this beach – even more so than the one his parents had once taken him to when he had still been a child. It had an unexpected, savage form of beauty – curving rocks dotted the shore like the bloated stomachs of sleeping giants.
He’d ventured onto the sand in his oversized shoes, laces circling his ankles. He had then sat down and listened to the sound of the surf, like the romantic he no longer was. The monotony of the constant ebb and flow had triggered his anxiety. He’d risen and walked over to the lighthouse he’d noticed further north, on the coast. Later, he would visit the family-run guesthouse the waitress had mentioned to him. He planned to stay there a while. Then he would find a job and would finally be able to live alone, in his own house.
He blinked. The sound of the machine guns still echoed in his ears.
The madness had begun on the 7th of April, when two hundred SS had attempted to lead fourteen thousand unwilling prisoners from the blocks that Hermann Pister, the K-Z Kommandant of Buchenwald, had wanted to evacuate to prevent the inmates falling into the hands of the enemy. Everyone knew what being ‘evacuated’ meant: certain death – on the road, in the convoys; asphyxiation, thirst, exhaustion; or being battered into oblivion by the soldiers. The inmates had hidden, provoking the ire of the SS, who had still managed to corral almost six thousand men. On the 8th of April, Josias zu Waldeck und Pyrmont himself, the Waffen-SS General, had arrived at the camp to take over from the now disgraced KZ-Kommandant. Ten thousand inmates had been led away. It was just a question of dealing properly with the remaining twenty thousand survivors.
Then, on the 11th, a Wednesday, everything had changed.
The resistance had managed to hide a quantity of weapons in the coal cellar of Block 50, behind a false wall – a veritable arsenal. Erich had only learned about this later, listening to two German survivors speaking to each other about it. All he knew was that a few hundred prisoners armed to the teeth had taken possession of the command post and the Nazi quarters. The SS had fled in panic, genuinely taken by surprise by the attack, dropping their machine guns to escape more speedily. Out of breath and trembling, Hans had arrived at Block 46 to inform them of the situation, before disappearing himself with no sort of explanation. Large explosions could be heard in the distance.
After that, everything happened so fast, Erich found it difficult to recall the sequence of events. That was how he explained things to the American soldier who had liberated him. All Erich knew was that Doktor Fleischer was dead, his skull shattered by repeated blows from a shovel.
‘Did you kill him?’ the soldier had asked.
‘No,’ Erich quickly responded. ‘It was another inmate who assaulted him.’
Why the hell hadn’t he thought of that first? An inmate killing a Nazi – it was obvious, after all!
Erich had got himself on one of the International Red Cross lorries leaving for the Ravensbruck camp. They were going there to pick up the surviving female prisoners and drive them to a staging post in Switzerland first. Erich had swapped his striped, torn and malodorous uniform for warm clothing, socks and shoes. He had then joined the convoy of female prisoners from Ravensbruck leaving for Sweden.
Sweden would never be his homeland, but he would make it his country.
Erich stopped at the lighthouse and began walking back again, gazing tiredly at the sand and dirt mingling under his feet. He had abandoned Doktor Horst Fleischer, left him lying in a pool of blood. Like a dog.
He let out a savage roar, which was swallowed by the wind. He’d acted like a coward. He should have stayed. Had the courage to stand by his beliefs. Maybe if someone had seen their research, they would have listened to him. Doktor Fleischer should have died a hero, not a victim. The laboratory could have been his stepping stone to glory, not his grave.
His right hand began to tremble. He opened it, palm to the sun in an effort to loosen his muscles. This had been happening a lot since he had left the camp. It was a craving as imperious as thirst. As if his whole being had turned dry. He was missing the research work. He was missing Block 46. He missed the smell of formaldehyde. Missed letting his scalpel glide over supple skin, offering each child a share of eternity, as Doktor Fleischer used to put it.
Erich stopped. Wind whipped against his back, his legs, his face, as if trying to punish him for his stray thoughts. He began to cry.
He was weeping for the man who had entered Buchenwald and had never left.
He wept for the man he had become.
Ljungskile, Sweden
Monday, 20 January 2014, 09.00
EMILY’S GAZE SWEPT OVER the snow-covered forest. Huddled against each other, the trees reached so high into the sky, their crowns seemed to caress the clouds. Strangled by the canopy, the light barely reached the undergrowth, the dimness making this morning’s expedition even bleaker.
The previous afternoon, after returning from Katie Mansfield’s flat, Pearce had had a call from Bergström: the body of a young boy had been found in Ljungskile Forest, some one hundred and sixty kilometres north of Falkenberg. His eyes had been enucleated, his trachea sectioned and the letter Y had been carved into his left arm. The profiler and her boss had immediately caught a flight to Gothenburg.
Just an hour before, Bergström had brought them to the scene of the crime. Tomas Nilsson’s body had been taken away, but the undergrowth was bound to be still full of clues about what had had happened.
The Kommissionar had made a list of all the sexual delinquents in the Swedish police records. As soon as the examiner could supply an approximate time of death for little Tomas, they would be able to check the alibis of all those at large. It shouldn’t take long, as it wasn’t a huge list.
Emily noticed that Alexis was standing back, behind the plastic tape surrounding the crime scene. Frowning, her eyes almost closed, she was attentively taking in the area.
Ever since their first encounter, three years earlier, Emily had been conscious of the inner devils the writer was struggling against. Their presence was palpable even today, if not more so. In Alexis’ case, time had not healed; she was still a captive of the mourning process: she hadn’t even reached the anger stage.
Emily had thought that travelling here and following the investigation could well prove a form of therapy for the writer. Whatever Alexis’ involvement, hunting down the serial killer who had stolen her friend from her might help heal her wounds. She would know that justice had been accomplished. So, relying on her own intuition and not bothering to obtain Pearce’s approval, Emily had proposed that the young woman should accompany them on their journey to Sweden.
The
Chief Superintendent had flown into a predictable rage at Heathrow Airport. How could a professional like Emily take such risks and go against procedure? The profiler had quietly listened to Pearce’s loud arguments until he calmed down to the point where he had resigned himself to the situation and she knew she was finally absolved.
Pearce gave her a quizzical look, then nodded to Bergström. They had seen all there was to see at the crime scene and were now ready to journey back.
Just over an hour later, they were greeted at the Falkenberg police station by a nervy Olofsson, who guided them towards the conference room where coffee and kanelbullar awaited the visitors.
Bergström joined them a few minutes later, carrying a set of photographs of the victim, which he proceeded to pin up on the board set up by the window.
Even though violence had been a part of his everyday life for over twenty years, Pearce still wasn’t able to stomach these kind of pictures. It made him completely lose his appetite. Olofsson, on the other hand, didn’t have the same problem: he’d just managed to swallow two of the cinnamon buns, each in a single mouthful.
Bergström turned to his guests and gazed briefly at Emily and Pearce. ‘However sad it might be for little Tomas and his family, I suppose that Tomas’s murder does advance the investigation, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Emily said, nodding her head. ‘With four similar victim profiles – all male children between six and eight, all from singleparent or dysfunctional families – we can be certain of one thing: Linnéa’s murder doesn’t fit in; it must have been an accident. Maybe she surprised the killer … or killers—’
‘You think there are two of them?’ Olofsson interrupted, rocking back and forth on his chair, holding his cup.
Emily continued, not even looking back at him. ‘She might have come across the killer or killers by accident, and they eliminated her to protect their identity. She was mutilated in a similar way to the other victims, because these mutilations are their signature, or trademark – they’re the way they obtain a specific form of satisfaction from the act of killing.’
