Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist

“Interesting,” she said, taking more notes. “I want to come back to that, but what I’d like to know now is how the perpetrator sees himself or herself during hypnosis- after all, you do put forward the idea that the victim often replaces the perpetrator with something else, like an animal.”

“I haven’t had time to investigate how perpetrators see themselves, and I don’t want to speculate.”

Maja leaned forward, lips pursed. “But you’ve got an idea?”

“I have a patient, for example, who- ” I fell silent, thinking of Jussi Persson, the man from Norrland who carried his loneliness like a dreadful self-imposed weight.

“What were you going to say?”

“Under hypnosis this patient returns to a hunting tower. It’s as if the gun is in control of him; he shoots deer and simply leaves them lying there.”

We sat in silence, looking at each other.

“It’s getting late,” I said.

“I still have a lot of questions.”

I waved my hand. “We’ll have to meet again.”

She looked at me. My body suddenly felt strangely hot as I noticed a faint flush rising on her pale skin. There was something mischievous between us, a mixture of seriousness and the desire to laugh.

“Can I buy you a drink to say thank you? There’s a really nice Leba nese- ”

She stopped abruptly as the telephone rang. I apologized and picked it up.

“Erik?” It was Simone, sounding stressed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I… I’m out in back, on the bike path. It looks like someone’s broken into our home.”

An ice-cold shudder ran through me. I thought about the ferrule that had been left outside our door, the old instrument of punishment.

“What happened?”

I heard Simone swallow hard. Some children were playing in the background; they might have been up on the soccer field. I heard the sound of a whistle and screams.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Nothing, a class of schoolchildren,” she said firmly. “Erik, Benjamin’s veranda door is open and the window has been smashed.”

Maja Swartling stood and pointed at the door, asking if she should go. I nodded briefly, with an apologetic shrug. She bumped into the chair, which scraped along the floor.

“Are you alone?” asked Simone.

“Yes,” I said, without knowing why I was lying.

Maja waved and closed the door soundlessly behind her. I could still smell her perfume.

“It’s just as well you didn’t go inside,” I went on. “Have you called the police?”

“Erik, you sound funny. Has something happened?”

“You mean apart from the fact that there might be a burglar inside our house right now? Have you called the police?”

“Yes, I called Dad.”

“Good.”

“He said he was on his way.”

“Move farther away from the house, Simone.”

“I’m standing on the bike path.”

“Can you still see the house?”

“Yes.”

“If you can see the house, anyone inside the house can see you.”

“Stop it!” she said.

“Please, Simone, go up to the soccer field. I’m on my way home.”

I stopped behind Kennet’s dirty Opel and got out of the car. Kennet came running toward me, his expression tense.

“Where the hell is Sixan?” he shouted.

“I told her to wait on the soccer field.”

“Good, I was afraid she’d- ”

“She would have gone inside otherwise, I know her; she takes after you.”

He laughed and hugged me tightly. “Good to see you, kid.”

We set off around the block, to get to the back. Simone was standing not far from our garden. Presumably she had been keeping an eye on the broken veranda door the whole time; it led straight to our shady patio. She looked up, left her bike, came straight over and gave me a hug, and looked over my shoulder. “Hi, Dad.”

“I’m going in,” he said, his tone serious. “I’m coming with you,” I said.

Simone sighed. “Women and children wait outside.”

All three of us stepped over the low potentilla hedge and walked across the grass to the patio, with its white plastic table and four plastic chairs.

Shards of glass covered the step and the doorsill. On the wall-to-wall carpet in Benjamin’s room, a large stone lay among fragments and shards. As we went in, I reminded myself to tell Kennet about the ferrule that we’d found outside our door.

Simone followed us and switched on the ceiling light. Her face was glowing, and her strawberry-blonde hair hung down in curls over her shoulders.

Kennet went into the hall, looked into the bedroom on the right, and into the bathroom. The reading lamp in the TV room was on. In the kitchen, a chair lay on its side on the floor. We went from room to room, but nothing seemed to be missing. In the downstairs bathroom, the toilet paper had been yanked violently off the roll and lay strewn across the floor.

Kennet looked at me with an odd expression. “Do you have any unfinished business with anyone?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not as far as I know,” I said. “Obviously, I meet a lot of damaged people in my work. Just like you.”

He nodded.

“They haven’t taken anything,” I said.

“Is that normal, Dad?” asked Simone.

Kennet shook his head. “It isn’t normal, not if they break a window. Somebody wanted you to know they’d been here.”

Simone was standing in the doorway of Benjamin’s room. “It looks as if someone has been lying in his bed,” she said quietly. “What’s the name of that fable? Goldilocks, isn’t it?”

We hurried into our bedroom and saw that somebody had been lying in our bed too. The bedspread had been pulled down and the sheets were crumpled.

“This is pretty weird,” said Kennet.

There was silence for a little while.

“The ferrule!” Simone exclaimed.

“Exactly. I thought about it and then I forgot,” I said. I went into the hall and got it from the stand.

“My God,” said Kennet. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was a boy.”

“It was outside our door yesterday,” said Simone.

“Let me have a look,” said Kennet.

“They used to use it for corporal punishment,” I said.

“I know what it is,” said Kennet, running his hand over it.

“I don’t like this at all. The whole thing feels creepy,” said Simone.

“Has anyone threatened you, or have you experienced anything that could be construed as a threat?”

“No,” she replied.

“But perhaps that’s how we should regard it,” I said. “Perhaps someone thinks we should be punished. I thought maybe it was just a bad joke, because we coddle Benjamin so much. I mean, if you didn’t know about Benjamin’s illness, we’d seem pretty neurotic.”

Simone went straight to the telephone and called Benjamin’s pre-school to check that he was all right.

That evening we put Benjamin to bed early; as usual, I lay down beside him and told him the entire plot of a children’s film about an African boy. Benjamin had watched it many times and almost always wanted me to tell him the story when he settled down to go to sleep. If I forgot the smallest detail he would remind me, and if he was still awake when I got to the end, Simone got to sing lullabies.

That night, he fell asleep easily. I made a pot of tea, and Simone and I settled down to watch a video. But neither of us could focus on the movie, so I paused the machine and we talked about the break-in, reassuring ourselves with the fact that nothing was stolen; someone had just unrolled the toilet paper and messed up our beds.

“Maybe it was some teenagers who wanted a place to screw around,” said Simone.

“No, I don’t think so. They would have left more of a mess if that were the case.”