Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist

Someone is dragging Benjamin along the floor by his legs. His pyjama top has worked its way up, and his arms are windmilling slowly, in confusion. He tries to hold on to the doorframe but is too weak. His head bangs against the threshold. He looks Simone in the eye. He is terrified; his mouth is moving but no words come out. She reaches sluggishly for his hand but misses it. She tries to crawl after him but hasn’t the strength; her eyes roll back in her head; she can see nothing and blinks and perceives only brief fragments as Benjamin is dragged through the hallway and out onto the landing. The door is closed carefully. Simone tries to call for help, but no sound comes; her eyes close, she is breathing slowly, heavily, she can’t get enough air.

Everything goes black.

Simone’s mouth feels as if it is full of glass fragments. It hurts to breathe. Her tongue, when she tries to move it, feels monstrously large and clumsy. She tries to open her eyes, but her eyelids resist her efforts. Slowly lights appear, sliding past her, metal and curtains, a hospital bed.

Then Erik is sitting on a chair next to her, holding her hand. It’s impossible to tell how much time has passed. His eyes are sunken and exhausted; he stares dully into the middle distance. Simone tries to speak, but her throat feels completely raw.

“Where’s Benjamin?”

Erik gives a start. “Simone,” he says. “How do you feel?”

“Benjamin,” she whispers. “Where’s Benjamin?”

Erik closes his eyes, his lips pressed tightly together. He swallows and meets her gaze. “What have you done?” he asks quietly. “I found you on the floor, Sixan. You had almost no pulse, and if I hadn’t found you- ” He runs his hand over his mouth, speaking through his fingers. “What have you done?”

Breathing is hard work. She swallows several times. She understands that she has had her stomach pumped, but she doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t have time to explain that she didn’t try to take her own life. It’s not important what he thinks. Not right now.

“Where’s our son?” she whispers. “Is he missing?”

“What do you mean?”

Tears pour down her cheeks. “Is he missing?” she repeats.

“You were lying in the hallway, darling. Benjamin had already left when I got up. Did you have an argument?”

She tries to shake her head, but the movement makes nausea sweep through her. “Someone was in our apartment… and took him,” she says weakly.

“What?”

She is crying and whimpering at the same time.

“Benjamin?” asks Erik. “What about Benjamin?”

“Oh God,” she mumbles.

“What’s happened?” Erik is almost screaming.

“Someone’s taken him,” she replies. “I saw someone dragging Benjamin through the hall.”

“Dragging? What do you mean, dragging?” A wild expression has taken over Erik’s face but he stops himself, runs a trembling hand over his mouth, and then kneels on the floor at her bedside. “Simone, what happened last night?”

“I was woken during the night by a jab in my arm. I’d been injected. Somebody had given me- ”

“Where? Where were you injected?”

She tries to push up the sleeve of her hospital gown; he helps her and finds a small red mark on her upper arm. When he feels the swelling around the dot with his fingertips, his face loses all its colour.

“Somebody took Benjamin,” she says. “I couldn’t help him.”

“We need to find out what you’ve been given,” he says, pressing the call button.

“To hell with that, I don’t care. You have to find Benjamin.”

“I will,” he says.

A nurse comes in, is given brief instructions to run blood tests, then hurries out.

Erik turns back to Simone. “Are you sure you saw someone dragging Benjamin down the hall?”

“ Yes ,” she answers, in despair.

“But you didn’t see who it was?”

“He dragged Benjamin by the legs through the hall and out the door. I was lying on the floor… I couldn’t move.”

The tears begin to flow once more. He wraps his arms around her, and she sobs against his chest, exhausted and desperate, her body shaking. When she has calmed down a little, she pushes him gently away.

“Erik,” she says. “You have to find Benjamin.”

“Yes,” he says, and stumbles from the room.

A nurse takes his place. Simone closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to watch as four small containers fill with her blood.

Erik heads for his office in the hospital, thinking about the journey in the ambulance that morning, after he had found Simone on the floor with virtually no pulse. The rapid trip through the bright city, the rush-hour traffic giving way to the blaring siren of the ambulance. Simone’s stomach being pumped, the efficiency of the female doctor, her calm, speedy actions. The oxygen, the dark screen showing the irregular rhythm of the heart.

In the corridor, Erik checks his mobile phone and realizes it is turned off. He stops and listens to all his messages. Yesterday a police officer named Roland Svensson called four times to offer police protection. There is no message from Benjamin or from anyone who had anything to do with his disappearance.

He calls Aida, and feels a chilling wave of panic as her high voice, suffused with fear, tells him she has absolutely no idea where Benjamin might be.

“Could he have gone to that place in Tensta?”

“No,” she replies.

Erik calls David, Benjamin’s oldest friend from childhood. David’s mother answers. When she says she hasn’t seen Benjamin for several days, he simply cuts off the conversation in the middle of her flow of words.

He calls the path lab to check on their analysis, but they can’t tell him anything yet; Simone’s blood samples have only just arrived.

“I’ll hang on,” he says.

He can hear them working, and after a while they report that Simone was injected with “something containing alfentanil.”

“Alfentanil? The anaesthetic?”

“Somebody must have got hold of it, either from a hospital or a veterinary surgery. We don’t use it here much, it’s so bloody addictive. But it looks as if your wife was incredibly lucky.”

“What do you mean?” asks Erik.

“She’s still alive.”

Erik returns to Simone’s room to go through everything one more time but sees that she has fallen asleep. Her lips are cracked and sore after having her stomach pumped.

His phone rings in his pocket, and he moves into the corridor before answering. “Yes?”

“It’s Linnea at reception, Dr. Bark. You’ve got a visitor.”

It takes a few seconds for Erik to realize that the woman means reception here at the hospital, in the neurosurgical unit, and that she is the Linnea who has worked at the reception desk for four years.

“Dr. Bark?” she asks tentatively.

“A visitor? Who is it?”

“Joona Linna,” she replies.

Erik stands in the corridor, waiting for Joona, his mind racing. He thinks about his voicemail messages; Roland Svensson called over and over to offer him police protection. Has somebody threatened me? Erik asks himself; a chill runs through him as he realizes how unusual it is for a detective from the National CID to come and see him in person rather than contacting him by phone.

He wanders into the cafeteria, where a platter of cold cuts and bread has been left for the taking. A feeling of nausea twists and turns inside his body. His hands shake as he pours water into a scratched glass.

Joona has come to tell me they’ve found Benjamin’s body, he thinks. That’s why he’s here in person. He’s going to ask me to sit down; then he’s going to tell me Benjamin is dead.