Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

He eases open the door, then changes his mind and softly closes it again. He waves Erixson to the side. He’s not sure why. They hear the melody from an ice-cream truck outside. Erixson frowns and taps his cheek nervously. Joona’s arms feel cold, but then he calmly opens the door and steps inside. Newspapers, ads, and a letter from the Left Party litter the rug. The air is unmoving and smells stale. A velvet curtain hangs in front of a closet. There’s a hissing sound, perhaps from the pipes, and somewhere something’s ticking.

Joona has no idea why his hand is reaching for his holstered weapon. He touches it with his fingers where it’s resting underneath his jacket, but leaves it there. His eyes go to the bloodred curtain and then to the kitchen door. He holds his breath as he tries to look through the ribbed, glass-paned door to the living room.

Joona takes another step although his instinct is to turn around and leave. He feels he should have called for reinforcements. A dark shadow glides across the other side of the glass. A wind chime made with hanging rods sways soundlessly. Joona sees the dust specks in the air change direction in an unfelt breeze.

He is not alone in Penelope’s apartment.

There’s someone in the living room. He can feel it. He casts one look at the kitchen door and then everything happens at once. A floorboard creaks; a series of rapid clicks keeps a rhythm all its own. The door to the kitchen is half open and in the gap between the hinges Joona spots movement. He presses against the wall as if he were in a train tunnel, his heart beating fast. Someone else is sneaking along in the dark hallway; Joona sees a back, a shoulder, an arm. The figure slides closer and then whirls around. The knife is like a white tongue. It’s leaping up, piercing in an angle so unusual Joona can’t parry the blade. Its sharp edge slices through his clothes, hitting the leather of his holstered weapon. Joona swings at the person but hits thin air. Swish. He hears the knife a second time and throws his body to the side. The blade has come from directly above this time. Joona hits his head on the bathroom door. A long sliver of wood curls down as the knife hits the door.

Joona slides down and simultaneously releases a wide kick. He connects, perhaps on the intruder’s ankle. He rolls away, pulling out his pistol and releasing the safety in the same movement. The outer door is open now. Footsteps sound running down the stairs. Joona scrambles to his feet and is ready to chase after the man, but he stops. There’s a humming sound behind him. He knows immediately what is going on and runs into the kitchen. The microwave is on. Behind its glass door, it’s giving off sparks. The control knobs of the four burners on the old gas stove are turned fully open and gas is blasting into the room. With a feeling that the flow of time has slowed down, Joona leaps to the microwave. The timer clicks menacingly, the sparking sounds keep increasing. A spray can of insect poison is rotating inside the microwave.

Joona grabs the electric plug and yanks it out. The ticking stops. The gas hisses loudly until Joona turns off the stove. The chemical smell is nauseating. He yanks open the kitchen window and then looks in on the spray can in the microwave. Its belly is grotesquely swollen. Joona thinks it could still explode at the slightest touch.

He leaves the kitchen and quickly surveys the rest of the apartment. The other rooms are empty. The air is still heavy with gas.

Erixson’s lying on the floor beside the stairwell, a cigarette in his mouth.

“Don’t light that!” Joona yells.

With a smile and a weak wave of his hand, Erixson replies, “It’s chocolate.”

He coughs weakly and Joona can see that there’s a pool of blood beneath him.

“You’re bleeding,” Joona says.

“No big deal,” Erixson replies. “I’m not sure how he did it, but he sliced my Achilles tendon.”

Joona calls for an ambulance and then crouches next to Erixson, whose face is pale and whose cheeks glisten from sweat. He looks nauseated.

“He cut me while he ran past. It was so quick… like being attacked by a fucking spider.”

They fall silent. Joona remembers the lightning-fast movements behind the kitchen door and how the blade of the knife moved effortlessly, with a life of its own. He’d never seen anything like it before.

“Is she in there?” Erixson pants.

“No.”

Erixson smiles, relieved. Then he’s serious again.

“Was he going to blow the place to hell anyway?”

“Looks like it. He’s good at getting rid of evidence,” Joona answers sarcastically.

Erixson fumbles at the paper on his chocolate cigarette but drops it. He closes his eyes for a minute. By now his cheeks are ash-white.

“I take it you didn’t see his face either,” Joona says quietly.

“No,” Erixson mumbles. “We saw something, though. There’s always something we notice in spite of ourselves.”

The medical crew from the ambulance reassures Erixson that they’re not going to drop him.

“I can walk,” Erixson protests and shuts his eyes.

His chin shakes each step down.

Joona goes back into Penelope Fernandez’s apartment. He opens all the windows to clear the air and then sits down on the apricot-colored sofa. It is very comfortable.

If the apartment had exploded, it would have looked like an unfortunate accident caused by a gas leak. The case would have been closed.

Joona lets his memory expand. No fragment of observation ever completely disappears. It simply must be retrieved just like the seas heave flotsam and jetsam up onto the beach.

But what was it?

He had seen nothing. Just a quick, blurred movement and a knife blade.

That’s what I saw! Joona realizes. I saw nothing!

This lack is exactly what is nudging his intuition.

We’re dealing with a pro here, a contract killer, a hit man, a grob.

There aren’t many in the world.

This was not the first inkling he’s had, but now he’s thoroughly convinced. The killer in the hallway is the same man who murdered Viola. There was certainly time to do both. He’d planned to kill Penelope and sink the cruiser as if it were an accident; then he’d use the same method here. This is a killer who wants to remain invisible. He wants to kill under the radar of the police.

Joona looks around slowly. He tries again to assemble the parts of the puzzle into a whole.

He hears children playing in the apartment above his head. They’re rolling marbles over the floor. They’d have been in the middle of an inferno right now if Joona hadn’t been able to pull the plug in time.

This was a cold-blooded, driven attack, Joona thinks, and the man behind it was not some hate-filled right-wing activist. Penelope Fernandez might be involved in the peace movement, sure, and those groups did, ironically, resort to violence sometimes. But this man was different: a highly trained professional at a level well above any of the amateur groups.

So why were you here? Joona wonders. What does a hit man have to do with Penelope Fernandez? What is she mixed up in? What’s going on beneath the surface?

Joona reviews those unusual knife movements. The technique was obviously meant to circumvent the usual police and military defensive training. His skin prickles as he realizes that the first cut would have sliced into his liver if he hadn’t carried his pistol under his right arm. The second cut would have gone straight into his brain if he hadn’t thrown himself backward.

Joona gets up from the sofa and walks into the bedroom. He studies the well-made bed and the crucifix over the headboard.

A hit man believed he’d killed Penelope, and his intention was to make it seem like an accident… but the boat never sank.