Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist

Benjamin had no idea where he had been for the first few days after the kidnapping. Possibly, Lydia had kept him at her house or at Marek’s, but he had been so dazed from the sedative with which he had been injected that he hadn’t really grasped what was going on. He might have been given further injections as he started to come round. Those first days were simply dark and lost.

It was in the car heading north that he had regained consciousness and found his mobile still around his neck. It was night when they’d taken him; it wouldn’t have occurred to them he would have one. Although he’d managed to call Erik, they’d heard his voice and the phone had been confiscated.

Then came a series of long, terrible days. Erik and Simone only managed to coax fragments from him. All they really knew was that he had been forced to lie on the floor of Jussi’s house with a dog collar and leash around his neck. Judging by his condition when he was admitted to the hospital, he had been given nothing to eat or drink for several days. He had managed to get away with the help of Jussi and Annbritt, he told them, then fell silent. Eventually he was able to explain how Jussi had saved him when he was trying to call home, and the terrible price he had paid for it; how Annbrit had attacked Lydia to allow him a chance to escape, and that he had heard Annbritt screaming as Lydia cut off her nose. Benjamin had hidden by crawling through an open window of one of the snow-covered buses. There he’d found some rugs and a mouldy blanket, which probably saved him from freezing to death. He’d curled up on a passenger seat and fallen asleep. He had been awakened a few hours later by the sound of his parents’ voices.

“I didn’t know I was alive,” whispered Benjamin.

Then he’d heard Marek threaten his parents. And he realized he was staring at a key in the ignition of the bus, and without even thinking, he’d clambered over the seat and turned it. And the headlights had come on, and the engine had roared furiously as he headed for the spot where he thought Marek was.

Benjamin stopped speaking, a few fat tears caught in his eyelashes.

After two days in the hospital at Umeå, Benjamin was strong enough to walk. He went with Erik and Simone to see Joona Linna, who was in the post-operative ward. His thigh had been badly damaged by Marek’s attack with the scissors, but three weeks’ rest would probably lead to a full recovery. A beautiful woman with her hair in a soft braid over her shoulder was sitting with him, reading aloud from a book, when they walked in. Putting it down, she rose and introduced herself as Disa, a friend of Joona’s for many years.

“We have a reading group, so of course I have to make sure he keeps up,” she said, in the same pleasing dialect as Joona’s.

Simone saw that she was reading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse .

“Mountain Rescue has lent me a small apartment,” said Disa with a smile.

“And you,” said Joona. “You’ll be given a police escort from Arlanda.”

Simone and Erik declined the offer. They wanted to be alone with their son rather than spend time with more police officers.

When Benjamin was discharged on the fourth day, Simone immediately booked tickets for the flight home. She went to get coffee for them all, but for the first time the hospital cafeteria was closed. In the day room there was nothing but a jug of apple juice and some biscuits. She went out in search of a café, but everything seemed strangely deserted. There was a peaceful calm over the whole town. She stopped by a railway line and followed the gleaming track with her eyes, seeing the snow covering the embankment. Far away in the darkness she could just make out the wide River Ume, striped with white ice and black water.

Only now did something inside her begin to relax. It was over. They had got Benjamin back.

Now they are standing uncertainly outside the Birger Jarl Hotel in Stockholm. Benjamin is wearing a tracksuit from the police Lost and Found that is far too big for him, a woolly hat- of the Sami tourist variety- that Simone bought for him at the airport, and a pair of mittens that are slightly too small. The city is deserted, with not a soul in sight. The underground station is closed, there are no buses, the restaurants are dark and silent.

Erik looks at his watch, perplexed. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. A woman hurries along, carrying a large bag.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Simone says suddenly. “Today is Christmas Eve.”

Benjamin looks at her in surprise.

“That would explain why people keep wishing us a Merry Christmas,” says Erik with a smile.

“What shall we do?” Benjamin asks.

“McDonald’s is open,” Erik says.

“Are you suggesting we have Christmas dinner at McDonald’s?” asks Simone.

A thin freezing rain begins to fall on them as they hurry towards the restaurant. It’s an ugly, squat building, pressing itself to the ground beneath the ochre-coloured rotunda of the library. A woman in her sixties is standing behind the counter. There are no other customers to be seen.

“I’d like a glass of wine,” says Simone. “But I guess that’s out of the question.”

“How about a milkshake?” says Erik.

“Vanilla, strawberry, or chocolate?” the woman asks sourly.

Simone looks as if she’s about to burst out laughing, but she pulls herself together. “Strawberry, of course.”

“Me too,” Benjamin chips in.

The woman taps in their order with small, angry movements. “Will that be all?” she asks.

“Get a selection,” Simone says to Erik. “We’ll go and sit down.” She and Benjamin thread their way among the empty tables. “A table by the window,” she whispers, smiling at Benjamin.

She sits down next to her son, puts her arm around him, and feels the tears running down her cheeks. Outside, a lone skateboarder whizzes along between the patches of ice with harsh scraping, rattling noises. A woman is sitting on her own on a bench on the edge of the playground behind the School of Economics, an empty shopping trolley beside her. The tyre seats on the children’s swings are blowing back and forth in the wind.

“Are you cold?” she asks.

Benjamin doesn’t reply; he just rests his face against her chest, allowing her to kiss his head over and over again.

Erik puts a tray down on the table and returns to the counter to fetch another before sitting down and beginning to distribute cartons, paper bags, and drinks around the table. “When you eat at McDonald’s, you need to go all the way.”

“Nice,” says Benjamin, sitting up.

“Wait,” Erik says. He holds out a Happy Meal toy. “Merry Christmas,” he says.

“Thanks, Dad.” Benjamin grins, looking at the plastic packaging.

Simone looks at her child. He’s lost so much weight. But there’s something else, she thinks. It’s as if he still has a weight within him, something that is pulling at his thoughts, worrying him and dragging him down. He’s not really with them; his gaze is turned inwards.

When she sees Erik reach out and pat his son on the cheek, she begins to cry again. She turns away with a whispered apology and sees a plastic bag whisked out of a rubbish bin by the wind and pressed against the window.

“Come on, dig in,” Erik says.

Benjamin is unwrapping a Big Mac when Erik’s phone rings. It’s Joona.

“Merry Christmas, Joona,” he says.

“Same to you, Erik,” says Joona. “Are you back in Stockholm?”

“We’re actually having Christmas dinner right now.”

“Do you remember I said we would find your son?”

“Yes, I remember.”