Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist

The knocking comes again. Joona walks over, looks through the peephole, and admits two police officers. One of them is carrying a cardboard box.

“I think we found everything on the list,” he says. “Where do you want this?”

“Anywhere,” says Evelyn faintly, emerging from the kitchen.

“Would you sign here?”

He holds out a delivery receipt, and Evelyn signs it. Joona locks the door behind them when they leave. Evelyn hurries over to the door, checks that he’s locked up properly, and turns to face them.

“I asked if I could have some things from home.”

“Yes, you told us.”

Evelyn crouches down, pulls off the brown sticky tape, and opens the box. She takes out a silver money box in the shape of a rabbit and a framed picture of a guardian angel, but suddenly stops.

“My photo album,” she says, and Erik sees that her mouth has begun to tremble.

“Evelyn?”

“I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t say anything about it.”

She opens the album to the first page, revealing a large school photo of herself at about fourteen. She is wearing braces on her teeth and smiling shyly. Her skin glows; her hair is cut very short.

Evelyn turns the page, and a folded piece of paper falls out and lands on the floor. She picks it up, turns it over, and her face flushes deep red. “He’s at home,” she whispers, passing it to Erik.

He smooths out the paper, and he and Joona read it together:

I own you, you belong only to me, I’m going to kill the others, it’s your fault, I’m going to kill that fucking hypnotist and you will help me to do it, you will, you are going to show me where he lives, you are going to show me where you fuck and party, and then I will kill him and you will watch while I do it, then you will wash your cunt with plenty of soap and I will fuck you a hundred times, because then we will be even and we will start again just the two of us.

Evelyn pulls down the blinds and stands with her arms tightly wrapped around her body. Erik places the letter on the table and gets to his feet.

Josef is back home, he thinks quickly. He must be. If he could put the photo album and the letter in the box, he must be there.

“Where else would he go?” she replies quietly.

Joona is already on his cell phone in the kitchen, speaking to the duty officer at Central Control.

“Evelyn, the police have been conducting an exhaustive investigation at the house for almost a week now. Do you know how Josef could hide from them there?”

“The cellar,” replies Evelyn, looking up.

“What about the cellar?”

“There’s a… special room down there.”

“He’s down in the cellar,” Erik shouts in the direction of the kitchen.

On the other end of the phone, Joona can hear the slow rattle of a keyboard.

“The suspect is presumed to be in the cellar,” says Joona.

“Just hang on,” says the duty officer. “I have to- ”

“This is extremely urgent.”

After a pause, the duty officer says calmly, “We sent a car to the same address two minutes ago.”

“What? To Gärdesvägen eight in Tumba?”

“Yes. The neighbours called to say there was someone inside the house.”

Kennet Sträng stops and listens before slowly moving over to the staircase. He points his pistol at the floor, holding it close to his body. Daylight comes into the passageway from the kitchen. Simone follows her father, thinking that the murdered family’s house reminds her of the house where she and Erik lived when Benjamin was little.

There is a creaking sound from somewhere, the floor or deep inside the walls.

“Is it Josef?” whispers Simone.

The torch, house plans, and crowbar she balances are heavy and awkward. Her hands feel numb.

The house is completely silent now. The creaking and the muted banging have stopped.

Kennet jerks his head at her. He wants them to go down into the cellar. Every muscle in her body is telling her it’s a mistake, but she nods.

According to the plans, the best area for a hiding place is definitely the cellar. Kennet marked the drawings with a pen, showing how the wall of the section that houses the old boiler could be extended, creating a virtually invisible room. The other space Kennet marked on the plans was the innermost attic.

The cellar entrance is next to the staircase leading upstairs; it’s a narrow opening in the wall, with no door. There are still small hinges on the wall where a child safety gate has been attached. The iron steps leading down into the cellar look almost home-made; the welds are large and untidy, and the steps are covered in thick grey felt.

When Kennet clicks the light switch, nothing happens; he tries again, but the bulb has blown out.

“Stay here,” he says, in a low voice.

Simone feels a stab of pure terror. A heavy, dusty smell that makes her think of the stifling air inside a highway tunnel surges up from below.

“Give me the torch,” he says, holding out his hand.

Slowly Simone passes it over to her father. He smiles, takes the torch, switches it on, and sets off cautiously down the steps.

“Hello?” Kennet calls gruffly. “Josef? I need to speak to you.”

Not a sound comes from the cellar. Not a clatter, not a breath.

Simone clutches the crowbar and waits.

The beam of the torch illuminates little more than the walls and the ceiling of the staircase. The dense darkness below is untouched. Kennet continues down the stairs, the beam picking out individual objects: a white plastic bag, the reflector strip on an old buggy, the glass of a framed movie poster.

“I think I can help you,” calls Kennet, more quietly this time.

He reaches the bottom, sweeping the torch around to make sure no one is rushing out of a hiding place. The slanting beam moves across the floor and walls, jumping over objects close by and casting sloping, swinging shadows. Kennet begins again, searching the room calmly and systematically with the shaft of light.

Simone sets off down the steps, the metal construction clanging dully beneath her feet.

“There’s no one here,” says Kennet matter-of-factly.

“So what did we hear, then? It was definitely something,” she says.

Daylight seeps in through a dirty window just below the ceiling. Their eyes are growing accustomed to the dim light. The cellar is full of bicycles of various sizes, a buggy, sledges, skis, and a bread machine, Christmas decorations, rolls of wallpaper, and a stepladder spattered with white paint. On a box someone has written in a thick black felt-tip pen, Josef ’s comics .

A tapping noise comes from the ceiling, and Simone looks over at the stairs and then at her father. He doesn’t seem to hear the sound. He walks slowly toward a door at the far end of the room. Simone bumps into a rocking horse. Kennet opens the door and glances into a utility room containing a battered washing machine and dryer and an old-fashioned wringer. Next to a geothermal pump, a grubby curtain hangs in front of a large cupboard.

“Nobody here,” he says, turning to Simone.

She looks at him, seeing the grubby curtain behind him at the same time. It is completely motionless yet at the same time somehow alive.

“Simone?”

There is a damp mark on the fabric, a small oval, as if made by a mouth.

“Open up the plans,” says Kennet.

It seems to Simone that the damp oval suddenly caves inward. “Dad,” she whispers.

“What?” he replies, leaning against the door post as he puts his pistol back in his shoulder holster and scratches his head.

There is a sudden creaking noise. She wheels and sees that the rocking horse is still moving.