by Kepler, Lars
Joona tried to find a way they could stay together. They could move, get new jobs and change identities, and live quietly somewhere.
Nothing mattered more than being with Summa and Lumi.
But as a police officer, he knew that protected identities aren’t secure. They just give a breathing space. The further away you got, the more breaths you would manage to take, but in the file of Jurek Walter’s suspected victims was a man who went missing in Bangkok, disappearing without trace from the lift in the Sukhothai Hotel.
There was no escape.
Eventually Joona was forced to accept that there was something that mattered more than him being together with Summa and Lumi.
Their lives mattered more.
If he ran away or disappeared with them, it would be a direct challenge to Jurek to try to track them down.
And Joona knew that once you start looking, sooner or later you are going to find your quarry, no matter how hard they might try to hide.
Jurek Walter mustn’t look, he thought. That’s the only way not to be found.
There was only one solution. Jurek and his shadow had to believe that Summa and Lumi were dead.
31
By the time Joona reaches the outskirts of Stockholm the traffic has built up. Snowflakes are swirling about before vanishing on the damp asphalt of the motorway.
He can’t bear to think about how he arranged Summa and Lumi’s deaths in order to give them a different life. Nils Åhlén helped him, but didn’t like it. He understood that they were doing the right thing, assuming the accomplice really did exist. But if Joona was wrong, this would be a mistake of incomprehensible proportions.
Over the years this doubt has settled over the pathologist’s slender figure as a great sorrow.
The railings of the Northern Cemetery flicker past the car and Joona remembers the day Summa and Lumi’s urns were lowered into the ground. The rain was falling on the silk ribbons on their wreaths, and pattering on the black umbrellas.
Both Joona and Samuel carried on looking, but not together; they were no longer in touch with each other. Their different fates had made them strangers to one another. Eleven months after his family disappeared, Samuel gave up searching and returned to duty. He lasted three weeks after abandoning hope. Early in the morning of a glorious March day, Samuel went to his summer house. He walked down to the beautiful beach where his boys used to swim, took out his service pistol, fed a bullet into the chamber and shot himself in the head.
When Joona got the call from his boss telling him that Samuel was dead, he felt a deep, unsettling numbness.
Two hours later he made his way, shivering, to the old clockmaker’s on Roslagsgatan. It was long past closing time, but the aged clockmaker with the magnifying glass over his left eye was still working amidst a sea of different clocks. Joona tapped on the glass window in the door and was let in.
When he left the clockmaker’s two weeks later he weighed seven kilos less. He was pale, and so weak he had to stop and rest every ten metres. He threw up in the park that would subsequently be renamed in honour of the singer Monica Zetterlund, then stumbled on to Odengatan.
Joona had never thought that he would be losing his family for ever. He had imagined being obliged to abstain from meeting them, seeing them, touching them for a while. He realised that it might take years, possibly several years, but he had always been convinced that he would find Jurek Walter’s accomplice and arrest him. He had assumed that one day he would uncover their crimes, let in the light on their deeds and calmly examine every detail, but after ten years he had progressed no further than he had done in the first ten days. There was nothing that led anywhere. The only concrete proof that the accomplice actually existed was the fact that Jurek’s prophecy for Samuel had been realised.
Officially there was no connection between the disappearance of Samuel’s family and Jurek Walter. It was regarded as an accident. Joona was the only person who still believed that Jurek Walter’s accomplice had taken them.
Joona was convinced that he was right, but had started to accept the impasse. He wasn’t going to find the accomplice, but his family was still alive.
He stopped talking about the case, but because it was impossible to ignore the likelihood that he was being watched, he was pretty much condemned to loneliness.
The years passed, and the fabricated deaths came to seem more and more real.
He truly had lost his wife and daughter.
Joona pulls up behind a taxi outside the main entrance of Södermalm Hospital, gets out and walks through the falling snow towards the revolving glass door.
32
Mikael Kohler-Frost has been moved from the emergency room of Södermalm Hospital to Ward 66, which specialises in acute and chronic cases of infection.
A doctor with tired eyes and a kind face introduces herself as Irma Goodwin, and is now walking across the shiny vinyl floor with Joona Linna. A light flickers above a framed print.
‘His general condition is very poor,’ she explains as they walk. ‘He’s malnourished, and he’s got pneumonia. The lab found the antigens for Legionnaires’ in his urine, and …’
‘Legionnaires’ disease?’
Joona stops in the corridor and runs his hand through his tousled hair. The doctor notices that his eyes have turned an intense grey, almost like burnished silver, and she hurriedly assures him that the disease isn’t contagious.
‘It’s linked to specific locations with—’
‘I know,’ Joona replies, and carries on walking.
He remembers that the man who was found dead in the plastic barrel had been suffering from Legionnaires’ disease. To contract the disease, you had to have been somewhere with infected water. Cases of infection in Sweden are extremely rare. The Legionella bacteria grow in pools, water tanks and pipes, but cannot survive if the temperature is too low.
‘Is he going to be OK?’ Joona asks.
‘I think so, I gave him Macrolide at once,’ she replies, trying to keep up with the tall detective.
‘And that’s helping?’
‘It’ll take a few days – he’s still got a high fever and there’s a risk of septic embolisms,’ she says, opening a door and ushering him through before following him into the patient’s room.
Daylight is passing through the bag on the drip-stand, making it glow. A thin, very pale man is lying on the bed with his eyes closed, muttering manically:
‘No, no, no … no, no, no, no …’
His chin is trembling and the beads of sweat on his brow merge and trickle down his face. A nurse is sitting beside him, holding his left hand and carefully removing tiny splinters of glass from a wound.
‘Has he said anything?’ Joona asks.
‘He’s been delirious, and it isn’t easy to understand what he’s saying,’ the nurse replies, taping a compress over the wound on his hand.
She leaves the room and Joona carefully approaches the patient. He looks at his emaciated features, and has no difficulty discerning the child’s face he has studied in photographs so many times. The neat mouth with the pouting top lip, the long, dark eyelashes. Joona thinks back to the most recent picture of Mikael. He was ten years old, sitting in front of a computer with his fringe over his eyes, an amused smile on his lips.
The young man in the hospital bed coughs tiredly, takes a few irregular breaths with his eyes closed, then whispers to himself:
‘No, no, no …’
There’s no doubt that the man lying in the bed in front of him is Mikael Kohler-Frost.
‘You’re safe now, Mikael,’ Joona says.
Irma Goodwin is standing silently behind him, looking at the emaciated man in the bed.
‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to.’
He shakes his head and jerks, tensing every muscle in his body. The liquid in the drip-bag turns the colour of blood. He’s trembling, and starts to whimper quietly to himself.
‘My name is Joona Linna, I’m a detective inspector,
and I was one of the people who looked for you when you didn’t come home.’
Mikael opens his eyes a little, but doesn’t seem to see anything at first, then he blinks a few times and squints at Joona.
‘You think I’m alive …’
He coughs, then lies back panting and looks at Joona.
‘Where have you been, Mikael?’
‘I don’t know, I just don’t know, I don’t know anything, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know anything …’
‘You’re in Södermalm Hospital in Stockholm,’ Joona says.
‘Is the door locked? Is it?’
‘Mikael, I need to find out where you’ve been.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ he whispers.
‘I need to find out—’
‘What the hell are you doing with me?’ he asks in a despairing voice, and starts to cry.
‘I’m going to give him a sedative,’ the doctor says, and leaves the room.
‘You’re safe now,’ Joona explains. ‘Everyone here is trying to help you, and—’
‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I can’t bear it …’
He shakes his head and tries to pull the drip from his arm with tired fingers.
‘Where have you been all this time, Mikael? Where have you been living? Were you hiding? Were you locked up, or—’
‘I don’t know, I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘You’re tired, and you’ve got a fever,’ Joona says gently. ‘But you have to try to think.’
33
Mikael Kohler-Frost is lying in his hospital bed, panting like a hare that’s been hit by a car. He’s talking quietly to himself, moistening his mouth and looking up at Joona with big, questioning eyes.
‘Can you be locked up in nothing?’
‘No, you can’t,’ Joona replies calmly.
‘Can’t you? I don’t get it, I don’t know, it’s so hard to think,’ the young man whispers quickly. ‘There’s nothing to remember, it’s just dark … it’s all a big nothing, and I get mixed up … I mix up what was before and how it was in the beginning, I can’t think, there’s too much sand, I don’t even know what’s dreams and …’
He coughs, leans his head back and closes his eyes.
‘You said something about how it was in the beginning,’ Joona says. ‘Can you try—’
‘Don’t touch me, I don’t want you to touch me,’ he interrupts.
‘I’m not going to.’
‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I can’t, I don’t want to …’
His eyes roll back and he tilts his head in an odd, crooked way, then shuts his eyes and his body trembles.
‘There’s no danger,’ Joona repeats.
After a while Mikael’s body relaxes again, and he coughs and looks up.
‘Can you tell me anything about how it was in the beginning?’ Joona repeats gently.
‘When I was little … we were huddled together on the floor,’ he says, almost soundlessly.
‘So there were several of you at the start?’ Joona asks, a shiver running up his spine and making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
‘Everyone was frightened … I was calling for Mum and Dad … and there was a grown-up woman and an old man on the floor … they were sitting on the floor behind the sofa … She tried to calm me down, but … but I could hear her crying the whole time.’
‘What did she say?’ Joona asks.
‘I don’t remember, I don’t remember anything, maybe I dreamed the whole thing …’
‘You just mentioned an old man and a woman.’
‘No.’
‘Behind the sofa,’ Joona says.
‘No,’ Mikael whispers.
‘Do you remember any names?’
He coughs and shakes his head.
‘Everyone was just crying and screaming, and the woman with the eye kept asking about two boys,’ he says, his eyes focused inwardly.
‘Do you remember any names?’
‘What?’
‘Do you remember the names of—’
‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to …’
‘I’m not trying to upset you, but—’
‘They all disappeared, they just disappeared,’ Mikael says, his voice getting louder. ‘They all disappeared, they all …’
Mikael’s voice cracks, and it’s no longer possible to make out what he’s saying.
Joona repeats that everything is going to be all right. Mikael looks him in the eye, but he’s shaking so much he can’t speak.
‘You’re safe here,’ Joona says. ‘I’m a police officer, and I’ll make sure that nothing happens to you.’
Dr Irma Goodwin comes into the room with a nurse. They walk over to the patient and gently put his oxygen mask back on. The nurse injects the sedative solution into the drip while calmly explaining what she’s doing.
‘He needs to rest now,’ the doctor says to Joona.
‘I need to know what he saw.’
She tilts her head and rubs her ring finger.
‘Is it very urgent?’
‘No,’ Joona replies. ‘Not really.’
‘Come back tomorrow, then,’ Irma says. ‘Because I think—’
Her mobile rings and she has a short conversation, then hurries out of the room. Joona is left standing by the bed as he hears her vanish down the corridor.
‘Mikael, what did you mean about the eye? You mentioned the woman with the eye – what did you mean?’ he asks slowly.
‘It was like … like a black teardrop …’
‘Her pupil?’
‘Yes,’ Mikael whispers, then shuts his eyes.
Joona looks at the young man in the bed, feeling his pulse roar in his temples, and his voice is brittle and metallic as he asks:
‘Was her name Rebecka?’
34
Mikael is crying as the sedative enters his bloodstream. His body relaxes, his sobbing grows more weary, then subsides completely seconds before he drifts off to sleep.
Joona feels oddly empty inside as he leaves the patient’s room and pulls out his phone. He stops, pauses for breath, then calls Åhlén, who carried out the extensive forensic autopsies on the bodies found in Lill-Jan’s Forest.
‘Nils Åhlén,’ he says as he takes the call.
‘Are you sitting at your computer?’
‘Joona Linna, how nice to hear from you,’ Åhlén says in his nasal voice. ‘I was just sitting here in front of the screen with my eyes closed, enjoying its warmth. I was fantasising that I’d bought a facial solarium.’
‘Elaborate daydream.’
‘Well, if you look after the pennies …’
‘Would you like to look up some old files?’
‘Talk to Frippe, he’ll help you.’
‘No can do.’
‘He knows as much as—’
‘It’s about Jurek Walter,’ Joona interrupts.
A long silence follows.
‘I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about that again,’ Åhlén says calmly.
‘One of his victims has turned up alive.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Mikael Kohler-Frost … He’s got Legionnaires’ disease, but it looks as though he’s going to pull through.’
‘What are the files you’re interested in?’ Åhlén asks with nervous intensity in his voice.
‘The man in the barrel had Legionnaires’ disease,’ Joona goes on. ‘But did the boy who was found with him show any signs of the disease?’
‘Why are you wondering that?’
‘If there’s a connection, it ought to be possible to put together a list of places where the bacteria might be present. And then—’
‘We’re talking about millions of places,’ Åhlén interrupts.
‘OK …’
‘Joona. You have to realise, even if Legionella was mentioned in the other reports, that doesn’t mean that Mikael was one of Jurek Walter’s victims.’
‘Yes, I found antibodies against the bacteria in the boy’s blood, so he’d probably had Pontiac fever,’ Åhlén says with a sigh. ‘I know you want to be right, Joona, but nothing you’ve said is enough to—’
‘Mikael Kohler-Frost says he met Rebecka,’ Joona interrupts.
‘Rebecka Mendel?’ Åhlén asks with a tremble in his voice.
‘They were held captive together,’ Joona confirms.
There is a long silence, then: ‘So … so you were right about everything, Joona,’ Åhlén says, sounding as if he’s about to start crying. ‘You’ve no idea how relieved I am to hear that.’
He gulps hard down the phone, and whispers that they did the right thing after all.
‘Yes,’ Joona says, in a lonely voice.
He and Åhlén had done the right thing when they arranged the car-crash for Joona’s wife and daughter.
Two dead bodies were cremated and buried in place of Lumi and Summa. Using fake dental records, Åhlén had identified the bodies. He believed Joona, and trusted him, but it had been such a big decision, so momentous, that he has never stopped worrying about it.
Joona daren’t leave the hospital until two uniformed officers arrive to guard Mikael’s room. On his way out along the corridor he calls Nathan Pollock and says they need to send someone to pick up the man’s father.
‘I’m sure it’s Mikael,’ he says. ‘And I’m sure he’s been held captive by Jurek Walter all these years.’
He gets in the car and slowly drives away from the hospital as the windscreen wipers clear the snow aside.
Mikael Kohler-Frost was ten years old when he disappeared – and he was twenty-three when he managed to escape.
Sometimes prisoners manage to escape, like Elisabeth Fritzl in Austria, who escaped after twenty-four years as a sex-slave in her father’s cellar. Or Natascha Kampusch, who fled her kidnapper after eight years.
Joona can’t help thinking that, like Elisabeth Fritzl and Natascha Kampusch, Mikael must have seen the man holding him captive. Suddenly a conclusion to all this seems possible. In just a few days, as soon as he is well enough, Mikael ought to be able to show the way to the place where he was held captive for so long.
