Lars Kepler - The Hypnotist

“I’m familiar with the law,” Joona interjects. “If the crime under investigation would lead to more than two years’ imprisonment on conviction, then- ”

“Yes, yes,” says Langfeldt. The doctor turns his peculiar dead gaze on him.

“I can of course bring you in for questioning,” Joona says softly. “The prosecutor is currently preparing a warrant for Lydia Everson’s arrest. We will then request her patient notes, obviously.”

Dr. Langfeldt taps his fingers against one another and licks his lips. “It’s just…” he says, “I just want…” He pauses. “I just want a guarantee.”

“A guarantee?”

Langfeldt nods. “I want my name kept out of this business.”

Joona meets Langfeldt’s eyes and suddenly realizes that the lifeless expression is in fact suppressed fear.

“I can’t make that promise,” he says harshly.

“If I plead with you?”

“I’m a stubborn man,” Joona explains.

The doctor leans back, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly. It’s the only sign of nerves or any other kind of vitality he has shown so far. “What is it you want to know?” he asks.

Joona leans forward. “Everything. I want to know everything.”

An hour later, Joona leaves the doctor’s office. He glances down the corridor opposite in passing, but the woman in the long dress has disappeared, and as he hurries down the stone staircase he notices that it’s now completely dark. It’s impossible to see the park and the trellises any longer. Downstairs, the girl on reception has evidently finished for the day. The desk is vacant, its surface cleared, and the office door is locked. Nothing but silence, although Joona knows that the unit houses hundreds of patients.

He shivers as he gets into his car and pulls out of the parking lot. Something is bothering him, something he can’t put his finger on. He tries to remember the point at which the feeling began.

The doctor had taken out a file, identical to the other files filling the shelves. He had tapped it gently on the front and said, “Here she is.”

The photograph of Lydia showed quite a pretty woman with medium-length hennaed hair and a strange, smiling expression: rage seething beneath an appealing surface.

The first time Lydia had been admitted for treatment was when she was ten years old, after she had killed her younger brother, Kasper. She had smashed in his skull one Sunday with a block of wood. She had told the doctor that her mother was forcing her to raise her brother. Kasper had been Lydia’s responsibility when her mother was at work or sleeping, and it was her job to discipline him.

Lydia was taken into care; her mother was sent to prison for child abuse. Kasper Everson was three years old when he died.

“Lydia lost her family,” Joona whispers, switching on the windscreen wipers as a bus coming the other way drenches his car.

Dr. Langfeldt had treated Lydia only with powerful psychopharmaceuticals; she was not offered any kind of therapy. He felt that the killing had been committed under severe pressure from her mother. With his agreement, Lydia was placed in an open residential facility for young offenders. When she turned eighteen, she moved back to her old home and lived there with a boy she had met at the residential facility, disappearing from the records.

Five years later she turned up again, this time having been admitted to a secure psychiatric unit. Lydia had gone to a playground and picked out a boy of about five, lured him to an isolated area, and hit him. She repeated this behaviour several times before she was caught. The last incident had resulted in life-threatening injuries to the child.

Dr. Langfeldt met her for the second time, and she became his patient in a unit from which she could be discharged only with the permission of the courts.

“Lydia remained in the secure unit at Ulleråker for six years. She was under treatment throughout,” Langfeldt explained. “She was an exemplary patient. The only problem was that she constantly formed alliances with other inmates. She created groups around her, groups from whom she demanded unswerving loyalty.”

She was making her own family, Joona thinks, as he turns off toward Fridhemsplan. He suddenly remembers the staff Christmas party at Skansen and considers pretending that he forgot about it, but he knows he owes it to Anja to appear.

Langfeldt had closed his eyes and massaged his temples as he went on. “After six years without incident, Lydia was allowed to begin spending periods away from the secure unit.”

“No incidents at all?” asked Joona.

Langfeldt thought about it. “There was one thing, but it was never proven.”

“What was it?”

“A patient’s face was injured. She maintained she’d cut her own face, but the rumour was that Lydia Everson had done it. As far as I recall it was only gossip; there was nothing to it.”

Joona nodded, blank-faced. “Go on,” he said.

“She was allowed to move back to the family home. She was still under outpatient treatment, but she was looking after herself, and there was absolutely no reason,” said the doctor, “to doubt her assertion that she wanted to get better. After two years it was time for Lydia to complete her treatment. She chose a form of therapy that was very fashionable at the time. She joined a hypnosis group with- ”

“Erik Maria Bark,” Joona supplied.

Langfeldt nodded. “It seems as if the hypnosis didn’t do Lydia much good,” he said superciliously. “She ended up trying to commit suicide and came back to me for the third time.”

“Did she tell you about her breakdown?”

Langfeldt shook his head. “As I understand it, the whole thing was the fault of that hypnotist.”

“Are you aware that she told Dr. Bark she had a son named Kasper? That she told him she had imprisoned her son?” Joona asked sharply.

Langfeldt shrugged his shoulders. “I did hear that, but I presume a hypnotist can get people to admit to just about anything.”

“So you didn’t take her confession seriously?”

Langfeldt smiled thinly. “She was a wreck. It was impossible even to hold a conversation with her. I had to give her electroconvulsive therapy, heavy antipsychotic drugs- it was a major task to get her back together on any level.”

“So you didn’t even try to investigate whether there was any basis to her confession?”

“My assessment was that such statements arose from her feelings of guilt over having murdered her brother as a child,” Langfeldt replied sternly.

“When did you let her out?” Joona asked.

“Two months ago. She was definitely well.”

Joona stood up, and his gaze fell on the only picture in Dr. Langfeldt’s room, the childish drawing on the door. “That’s you,” said Joona, pointing at it. A walking head, he thought. Just a brain, no heart.

At five o’clock in December, the sun has been gone for two hours. The air is cold. The sparse streetlamps of Skansen provide a misty light. Down below, the city is just visible as smoky patches of light. Glassblowers and silversmiths are hard at work in the open-air museum. Joona walks through the Christmas market in Bollnäs Square. Fires are burning, horses are snorting, chestnuts are roasting. Children race through a stone maze, others drink hot chocolate. There is music everywhere, and families are dancing around a tall Christmas tree on the circular dance floor. As Joona walks toward one of the narrow gravel paths down to Solliden restaurant, he hears the laughter of children behind him and shudders.

His mobile rings. Joona answers it in front of a stall selling sausages and reindeer meat.