Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“She’s alive, tell me that,” Claudia whispers. “She must be alive.”

“I will find her,” Joona says. “I know that I will find her.”

“Tell me that Penelope is alive.”

Joona hesitates and then meets Claudia’s black eyes as a few lightning sensations sweep through his heart. A number of unseen connections click in his mind, and suddenly he hears his own voice answer, “She’s alive.”

“Yes,” Claudia whispers.

Joona looks down. He’s not able to recover the thought behind the certainty he’d felt that prompted him to ignore caution and tell Claudia that her eldest daughter was still among the living.

Joona follows Claudia Fernandez to the waiting taxi and helps her in. Afterward he stands motionless until the taxi disappears around a curve in the driveway. Only then does he dig in his pocket for his cell phone. When he realizes he must have forgotten it, he strides back to the forensic department and quickly enters The Needle’s office, takes The Needle’s phone, and sits in The Needle’s chair. He dials Erixson’s number and waits while the call goes through.

“Let people sleep,” Erixson drowsily answers. “It’s Sunday, you know.”

“Confess that you’re at the boat,” Joona says.

“Yes, I am,” Erixson confesses.

“So there was no explosive,” Joona says.

“Not your average bomb, no. But you were still correct. This boat could have gone up at any second.”

“What do you mean?”

“The power cables’ insulation is seriously damaged in one spot because of crimping. Someone stuffed an old ripped seat cushion behind the cables, too. Very flammable. So it’s not that the leads are making contact-that would trip the circuit breaker. But they are exposed. If you kept running the engine, eventually you’d cause a discharge, with an electric arc running between the two power cables.”

“What happens then?”

“The arc would reach a temperature above three thousand degrees Celsius and it would ignite the seat cushion back there,” Erixson continues. “Then the fire would find its way to the hose from the fuel pump, and bang!”

“A quick process?”

“Well, the arc could take ten minutes to form, maybe longer, but after that, everything would happen fast-fire, more fire, explosion-and then the broken boat would fill with water and sink, fast.”

“So if the motor was started, there would soon be a fire and an explosion sooner or later?”

“Yes, but the fire wouldn’t necessarily be considered arson.”

“So the cables were damaged by accident and the sofa cushion just happened to be lying there?”

“Of course.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“Not for a second.”

Joona pictures again the drifting boat. He clears his throat and says thoughtfully, “If the killer planned all this-”

“He’s not your normal killer,” Erixson finished.

Joona repeats the thought to himself once the conversation ends. Again he agrees. The average murderer is motivated by passion, by greed, by anger. Emotions are almost always involved even to the point of hysteria. Only later does he fumble to cover his tracks and fabricate an alibi. This time it appears the killer had followed a sophisticated strategy right from the start.

And still, something went wrong.

Joona stares into space, grabs a legal pad from The Needle’s desk, and writes Viola Fernandez on the first page. He circles her name and then writes Penelope Fernandez and Bjorn Almskog beneath it. The women are sisters. Penelope and Bjorn are in a relationship. Bjorn owns the boat. Viola asks if she can come with them at the last minute.

Joona feels the road to finding the motive behind this murder is long. He’s still internally convinced that Penelope Fernandez is alive. It’s not just a wild hope or an attempt to give comfort. It’s intuition. Based on what, he cannot say. He’d caught the thought in flight, but lost it again before he could capture it and pin it down.

If he followed the usual procedures put forth by the CID, suspicion would immediately fall on Viola’s boyfriend or perhaps on Penelope and Bjorn since they were on the boat. Speculation would include alcohol and drugs. Perhaps a fight. Perhaps a serious drama stemming from jealousy. Before too long, Leif G. W. Persson would be sitting on a couch in a television studio explaining that the suspect was a close acquaintance and probably a boyfriend or ex-boyfriend.

What is the point behind making the fuel tank explode? Where’s the logic behind this plan? Viola is already dead, drowned in the zinc tub on the afterdeck. The killer carries her downstairs and leaves her on the bed.

Joona realizes too many ideas are coming at once. He puts on mental brakes and begins to find structure in the evidence he’s gathered, tries to find questions that still need answers.

He circles Viola’s name again and starts over.

What he knows now is that she was drowned in a tub and placed on a bed in the forecabin and that Penelope Fernandez and Bjorn Almskog have still not been found.

But that’s not all, he tells himself, and flips to a new page.

He writes the word “Calm” on the paper.

There was no wind and the boat was found drifting near Dalaro Island.

The boat’s bow had been damaged in a serious collision. Joona expected the technicians had likely already found evidence, perhaps even making some plaster casts for possible matches.

Joona throws the legal pad against the wall and shuts his eyes.

“Perkele,” he swears in Finnish.

Something has slipped through his fingers again. He had been just about to grasp it. He’d instinctively realized something, almost understood something, but then-it was gone.

Viola, he thinks. You died on the afterdeck. Why were you moved after your death? Who moved you, the killer or someone else?

If someone were to find her lifeless on the deck, that person would still try to bring her back to life. They’d call in an SOS alarm-that’s what people do. And if they realized she was already dead and it was too late, that she wouldn’t be coming back to life, then they wouldn’t just leave her lying there. They’d want to carry her inside and put a blanket over her. However, a body is awkward to move, even with two people. Yet the distance was hardly more than five meters, just in through the glass doors and down the stairs.

Even one person could manage that. It’s possible.

But you don’t carry her down the stairs and through the narrow hallway and then set her on the bed in the cabin.

Someone would only do that to stage some sort of setup: that she’d be found drowned on her bed in a water-filled boat.

“Exactly,” Joona mumbles and stands up.

He looks out through the window and sees an almost blue beetle crawling along the white ledge. Raising his gaze, he sees a woman on a bicycle disappear behind the trees-and, suddenly, he recovers the missing element he’d dropped.

Joona sits back down and drums the table. It was not Penelope they’d found in the boat, but her sister, Viola. But Viola was not on her own bed. She was on Penelope’s. The murderer made the same mistake I did, Joona thinks as shivers travel down his spine.

He thought he’d killed Penelope Fernandez. That’s why he’d put her on the forecabin’s bed. This is the only explanation that makes sense.

Joona jumps as the office door bangs open. It’s The Needle, pushing it open with his shoulder and backing in with a long, flat box in his arms. On the front there’s the image of large flames and the text proclaims Guitar Hero.

“Frippe and I are going to-”

“Quiet!” Joona barks.

“What’s up?” The Needle asks.