Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist

“Nicky is Aida’s younger brother,” says Simone.

“And Wailord?” asks Kennet, taking a deep breath. “Do you know about this?”

Simone shakes her head. The fear inside her is so dark, so dense, it feels as if it’s made of marble. What does she actually know about Benjamin’s life?

“I think Wailord is the name of a Pokémon character,” she says. Simone clicks on the sent folder and finds Benjamin’s agitated response:

Nicky has to stay indoors. Don’t let him go down to the sea. If Wailord is really angry, one of us is in trouble. We should have gone to the police straight away. I think it’s too dangerous to do it now.

“Fuck,” says Kennet.

“I don’t know if this is genuine or if it’s part of a game.”

“It doesn’t sound like a game.”

“No.”

Kennet lets out a long breath and scratches his stomach. “Aida and Nicky,” he says slowly. “What kind of people are they, then?”

Simone looks at her father and wonders how to answer him. He would never understand a person like Aida: a girl who always dresses in black, wears lots of make-up, has piercings and tattoos, and whose home circumstances are peculiar to say the least.

“Aida is Benjamin’s girlfriend,” says Simone. “And Nicky is her younger brother. There’s a picture of her and Benjamin somewhere.”

She finds Benjamin’s wallet and digs out the picture of Aida. Benjamin has his arm around her shoulders. Aida looks slightly uncomfortable, but Benjamin is laughing into the camera, his expression relaxed.

“But what kind of people are they?” asks Kennet stubbornly, looking at Aida’s face with its harsh make-up.

“What kind of people?” she says slowly. “I don’t really know. I just know that Benjamin is extremely fond of her. And she seems to take good care of her brother. I think he’s got some kind of learning disability.”

“Aggressive?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Benjamin writes about a real threat,” Kennet says, “but Wailord doesn’t really exist.”

Kennet folds his arms. He leans back and looks up at the ceiling. Then he straightens up and says in a serious tone, “So Wailord is a cartoon character?”

“A Pokémon,” she replies.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“If you have children of a certain age, you know about it whether you want to or not,” she says.

Kennet is looking blankly at her.

“Pokémon,” Simone repeats. “It’s a kind of game.”

“A game?”

“It was something Benjamin loved when he was younger. He used to collect the cards and talk about the different powers, about how the characters transformed themselves.”

Kennet shakes his head.

“He must have been into it for about two years,” she says.

“But not any more?”

“He’s a bit too old now.”

“I used to see you playing with dolls when you came home from riding camp.”

“Well, who knows, maybe he plays in secret,” she replies.

“So what’s it all about, this Pokémon?”

“How can I explain? It’s Japanese, originally. It became really popular in the nineties. A whole industry, really. The characters are pocket monsters. They’re animals but not real animals. They’re invented; they can look like insects or robots, something along those lines. Some of them are cute, others are just revolting. The person playing keeps them in his pocket; they can be rolled up and placed in little balls. The whole thing is really stupid. You compete against other players by arranging fights between your different Pokémons. Very violently, of course. Anyway, the goal is to beat as many as possible, because then you get money- the player gets money, the Pokémon character gets points.”

“And the one with the most points is the winner?” says Kennet.

“I don’t actually know. It never seems to end.”

“So this is a computer game?”

“It’s everything, Dad. Computer game, Nintendo, a TV show, a movie, stuffed toys, sweets, trading cards.”

“I don’t know if I’m really any the wiser,” he says.

“No,” she says hesitantly.

He studies her. “What are you thinking?”

“I’ve just realized that’s exactly the point: adults are to be excluded,” she says. “The kids are ignored, left to their own devices, because we can’t understand. We dismiss it, call it stupid, but really the Pokémon world is too big, too complex for us.”

“Do you think Benjamin has started playing again?” asks Kennet.

“Not in the same way. This must be something else,” she says, pointing at the screen.

“You think this Wailord is a real person,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Who has nothing to do with Pokémon?”

“I don’t know… Aida’s brother talked to me about Wailord as if he was talking about a Pokémon. Perhaps that’s just his way of talking. As I said, he’s a little… off. But everything is cast in a different light when Benjamin writes Don’t let Nicky go down to the sea .”

“It does sound as if Benjamin’s taking the threat seriously,” says Kennet.

“But the sea,” she says. “What sea? There is no sea here, it only exists in the game. The sea is pretend, but the threat is genuine,” she says thoughtfully.

“We have to find this Wailord.”

“It could be a Lunar,” she says hesitantly. “Or an Avatar, or some thing.”

He looks at her with a small smile. “I’m beginning to understand why it was time for me to retire.”

“Lunar is an identity on a chat page,” Simone explains, moving closer to the screen. “I’ll do a search for Wailord.”

The result gives 85,000 hits. Kennet goes into the kitchen, and she hears the sound of the police radio being turned up. Crackling and hissing is mixed with human voices.

She skims through page after page of Japanese Pokémon material.

Wailord is the largest of all identified Pokémon up to now. This giant Pokémon swims in the open sea, eating massive amounts of food at once with its enormous mouth.

“There’s your sea,” says Kennet quietly, reading over her shoulder. She didn’t hear him come back.

The text describes how Wailord chases its prey and herds them by making a gigantic leap and landing in the middle of the shoal. It is terrible, Simone reads, to see Wailord swallow its prey in one gulp.

She refines the search by requesting only pages written in Swedish and enters a forum where she finds a conversation:

Hi, how do you get a Wailord?

If you want to get a Wailord, the easiest thing is to catch a Wailmer somewhere out at sea.

OK, but where?

Almost anywhere, as long as you use Super Rod.

“Anything useful?” asks Kennet.

“This could take a while.”

“Go through all his messages, check the trash, and try to track down this Wailord.”

She looks up and sees that Kennet has his leather jacket on.

“I’m off,” he says briefly.

“Off where? Home?”

“I need to talk to Nicky and Aida.”

“Shall I come with you?” she asks.

Kennet shakes his head. “It’s better if you’re the one who goes through the computer.”

Kennet tries to summon up a smile as she walks to the door with him. He looks very tired. She gives him a hug before he goes, locks up behind him, and hears him press the button for the lift.

She walks into the kitchen and sees a brioche sitting on the flattened paper bag it came in, a slice cut from it. The coffee machine is still on, but there is only a dark sediment in the bottom of the pot.

The smell of burnt coffee mingles with a sense of panic over the feeling that her life has been divided into two acts and that the first act, the happy one, has just ended. She can’t bring herself to think about Act Two. Outside the window lies the December darkness. It looks windy. The traffic signals, suspended over the junctions, swing back and forth, and wet snowflakes are falling through the light.