Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist

Anja’s voice reveals a certain amount of pride as she tries to explain. “The coordination technique is very demanding. It’s all about a counter rhythm and- who cares?”

Anja straightens up contentedly, her large chest almost brushing Joona where he stands.

“Anyway,” he says, holding out the piece of paper, “I’d like you to do a search for me.”

Anja’s smile stiffens. “I should have known you wanted something, Joona. It was a bit too good to be true. You come along with that sweet smile, and I was almost beginning to think you were going to ask me out to dinner or something.”

“Oh, I will, Anja. All in the fullness of time.”

She shakes her head and snatches the piece of paper from him. “Is it urgent?”

“It’s extremely urgent, Anja.”

“So why are you standing here flirting with me?”

“Thought you liked it.”

Anja studies the piece of paper for a moment. “Eva Blau,” she says thoughtfully.

“There’s no guarantee that it’s her real name.”

Anja chews on her lip. “A made-up name,” she says. “It’s not much to go on. Haven’t you got anything else? An address or something?”

“Nothing. The only thing I know is that she was a patient of Erik Maria Bark at Karolinska University Hospital ten years ago, probably for just a few months. But you can check the electoral roll and all the other databases. Is there an Eva Blau who enrolled in a university course? If she bought a car, she’s registered to drive. Or has she ever applied for a visa? Does she have a library card… clubs, the temperance movement? I want you to look at witness protection programmes as well, victims of crimes- ”

“Yes, all right, all right. Now go away,” says Anja, “and let me get on with my work.”

Joona turns off the audio book; Per Myrberg is reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment with his own peculiar mixture of calm and intensity. He parks the car outside Lao Wai, an Asian vegetarian restaurant that Disa keeps nagging him to try. He glances in through the window and is struck by the ascetic, simple beauty of the wooden furniture, the absence of anything unnecessary, the lack of decorative bits and pieces within the restaurant.

Erik and Simone are waiting for him in their apartment. Joona runs through what he intends to do.

“We’re going to reconstruct the kidnapping as far as possible. The only one of us who was really there when it happened is you, Simone.”

She nods resolutely.

“So you will play yourself. I’ll be the kidnapper and you, Erik, can be Benjamin.”

“All right.”

Joona points to the clock. “Simone, what time do you think the break-in took place?”

She clears her throat. “I’m not sure… but the paper hadn’t come, so it was before five. I’d got up for a drink of water at about two… then I lay awake for a while… so sometime between half past two and five o’clock.”

“Good. I’ll set the clock at half past three, somewhere in the middle,” says Joona. “Now, I’m going to unlock the door, creep into Simone’s bedroom, and pretend to give her an injection. Then I’ll go into Benjamin’s room and inject you, Erik, and drag you out of the room. Is Benjamin a big boy?”

“Not particularly,” says Simone. “Why?”

“Erik’s heavier, then. When I drag him along the hall and through the front door, I’ll need to compensate by adding a minute or so to the time. Simone, try to move exactly the way you did that night. Lie down in the same position at the same time. I want to know what you could see and what you could only sense.”

Simone nods, her face pale. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for doing this.”

Joona looks at her with ice-grey eyes. “Believe me. We are going to find Benjamin.”

Simone rubs her hand rapidly over her forehead. “I’m going into the bedroom,” she says hoarsely, as Joona leaves the apartment with the keys in his hand.

She is lying under the duvet when Joona comes in. He moves quickly toward her, not in haste but with purpose. She feels a tickling sensation as he lifts her arm and pretends to inject her. Just as she meets Joona’s gaze as he bends over her, she remembers being woken by a distinct jab in her arm and seeing someone slip out through the doorway and into the hall. The memory alone makes her arm tingle unpleasantly where the needle went in. Joona disappears, and she sits, rubs her arm, and slowly gets up. She goes into the hallway, peers into Benjamin’s room, sees Joona bending over the bed- and suddenly she simply comes out with the words, as if they have been echoing in her memory.

“Benjamin? What’s going on?”

She moves hesitantly down the hallway. Her body seems to recall the sensations it felt that night; how quickly its strength faded. Her legs give way and she falls, banging her head. She remembers the feeling of sinking deeper and deeper into a black numbness, penetrated by ever briefer flashes of light. As she sits half propped up against the wall, she sees Joona dragging Erik along by his feet. Her memory replays the incomprehensible: Benjamin trying to cling to the doorframe, his head banging on the threshold, the slow windmilling of his hands growing weaker and weaker as he reaches out to her.

As Erik is dragged past Simone, it’s as if a figure made of mist or steam appears there in the hallway for a fraction of a second: she is looking at Joona’s face from below, and the image shifts: a glimmer of the kidnap-per’s face flashes through her mind: a shadowed face, a yellow hand around Benjamin’s ankle. Simone’s heart is pounding as she hears Joona drag Erik out onto the landing and close the door behind him.

An air of unpleasantness pervades the entire apartment. Simone cannot shake off the feeling that she has been drugged again; her limbs feel numb and slow as she gets to her feet and waits for them to come back.

As Joona drags Erik across the scratched marble floor of the landing, he looks around him the entire time, checking angles and vantage points, searching for unexpected places where an eyewitness might have had a good view of the incident. He moves toward the lift, whose doors he’s propped open in advance, and drags Erik inside. From there he can see the apartment door to his right, the letter box and name-plate made of brass, but to the left there is only a wall. From deeper inside, Joona looks over at the large mirror on the landing, but even by craning his neck he can see nothing new. The window on the stairwell is hidden the whole time. Nothing seems to reveal itself when he looks back over his shoulder. Then suddenly he discovers something unexpected. From a certain vantage point, from a smaller security mirror mounted at an angle, he can see reflected in the landing’s mirror the shining peephole in the door of an apartment that had seemed to be out of sight. Joona lets the lift doors shut and notes as they close that the mirror still allows him to stare straight at the door. If someone were standing inside that apartment looking out- roused, perhaps, by the commotion next door- that person would be able to see his face with absolute clarity right now. But if he moves his head just two inches in any direction, the view immediately disappears.

When they reach the ground floor, Joona helps Erik up and checks his watch. “Eight minutes.”

They return to the apartment. Simone is standing in the hallway; it’s obvious that she has been crying.

“He was wearing rubber gloves,” she says. “Yellow rubber gloves.”

“Are you sure?” asks Erik.

“Yes.”

“In that case, there’s no point in looking for fingerprints,” says Joona.