Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

Either the killer was interrupted or he left the scene of the crime intending to return and complete his assignment. He must never have intended that the Coast Guard would find the boat adrift with the drowned girl on board. Something had gone wrong or the plans had to be drastically changed. Maybe he was given new orders. At any event, a day and a half after killing Viola, he was here in Penelope’s apartment.

You must have had a strong reason to come here. What was your motive behind this major risk? Is there something here that connects you or your client to Penelope?

You did something here. You got rid of fingerprints or you erased a hard drive or destroyed an answering machine or you came to get something.

That’s what you wanted, but then I showed up and wrecked your plan.

Or maybe your plan was to destroy something in the fire? That’s a possibility, Joona thinks.

Joona wishes he had Erixson with him now. He needs a forensic technician; he doesn’t have the right tools and might even destroy evidence if he searched the apartment on his own. He could contaminate DNA or miss invisible evidence.

Joona walks to the window and looks down at the street. He sees empty tables by a sandwich cafe.

He really must head back to the police station and talk to his boss, Carlos Eliasson. He must ask to be assigned as the leader of the investigation and call in another forensic technician now that Erixson will be on sick leave.

Joona’s telephone rings just as he’s made the decision to play by the rules and go talk to both Carlos and Jens Svanehjalm and put together an investigative group.

“Hi, Anja,” he says.

“I want to go to the sauna with you,” Anja says.

“Why the sauna?”

“Well, why not? Can’t we take a sauna together? You could show me how real Finns use the sauna.”

“Anja,” he replies slowly, “I’ve lived almost my entire life in Stockholm.”

Joona starts walking through the hallway to the outer door.

“I know, I know. You’re a Swede with Finnish heritage. How boring is that? Why couldn’t you be from El Salvador? Have you read any of Penelope Fernandez’s opinion essays in the newspaper? You should see her-the other day she scolded the entire Swedish weapons export industry on television!”

Joona can hear Anja’s light breaths in the receiver as he leaves Penelope Fernandez’s apartment. There are bloody marks on the stair from the ambulance crew’s shoes. A shiver runs down his back as he remembers his colleague sitting there, legs splayed, as the color drained from his face.

Joona believes the hit man is still under the impression he killed Penelope Fernandez, so he thinks that part of his contract is done. The other half was to get into the apartment for some reason. When the killer figures out Penelope’s still alive, he’ll be back on the hunt in a hurry.

“Bjorn and Penelope were not living together,” Anja is saying.

“I figured that out,” he replies.

“Even so, they could still be in love-just like you and me.”

Joona walks into strong sunshine. The air has grown heavier and even more humid.

“Can you give me Bjorn’s address?”

He hears Anja’s fingers fly over the keyboard. Small clicking sounds.

“Almskog, Pontonjargatan 47, third floor.”

“I’ll go there before I-”

“Wait a second!” Anja said. “Not possible. Listen to this… I’ve just cross-checked this address… there was a fire in the building on Friday.”

“Bjorn’s apartment?”

Anja replies, “Everything on that floor is gone.”

Detective Inspector Joona Linna walks up the stairs, then stops and stands still, looking into a completely black room. The acrid stench is sharp. Not much of the inner, non-weight-bearing wall is left. Black stalactites hang from the ceiling. Charcoaled stumps of shelves stick up among a wavy landscape of ashes. In several places there are holes straight through the double floors to the room beneath. It’s no longer possible to determine which part of this apartment floor had been Bjorn Almskog’s.

Plastic sheets in the windows keep out the sun and present a strange green face to the street.

Nobody had been injured in the fire at Pontonjargatan 47 because most people had been at work. The first call had come into Emergency Central at 11:05 a.m. Even though the Kungsholm fire station was relatively close-by, the fire had been so fierce that four apartments were completely destroyed.

Joona mulls over his conversation with Fire Inspector Hassan Sukur. Sukur had said it was “strongly indicated” that the fire had started in Lisbet Wiren’s apartment. She was Bjorn Almskog’s eighty-eight-year-old neighbor. She’d gone out to convert a small winning on a lottery ticket into two new tickets, and couldn’t remember if she’d left her iron on. The fire had spread rapidly, and all signs pointed back to her apartment and the iron on her ironing board.

Joona surveys all the blackened apartments on this level. Nothing is left of any of the furniture in the rooms except individual twisted metal fragments, parts of a refrigerator, a bed frame, a sooty bathtub.

Joona turns and walks back down. The walls and ceiling of the stairwell are smoke damaged. He stops at the police tape, turns, and looks back up at all the blackness.

As he bends to go under the plastic tape, he notices that the fire inspectors have dropped a few DUO bags, used for preserving volatile liquids, on the floor. He continues past the green-marble entrance hall and out the main door onto the street. As he heads toward the police station, he calls Hassan Sukur again. Hassan answers at once and turns down the background sound from his radio.

“Have you found traces of flammable liquids?” Joona asks. “You’d dropped some DUO bags on the floor and I was wondering-”

“Let me give you some facts. If you pour flammable liquid on something, that’s the first thing to burn-”

“I know, but it was-”

“I, on the other hand, I am one who always finds whatever there is to find,” Hassan continues. “It often runs into gaps between the floorboards or into the double floor, or the fiberglass, or the underside of the double floor, which might have survived the fire.”

“But not at this site,” Joona says as he continues walking down the hill on Handverkargatan.

“Nothing at all,” Hassan replies.

“But if you knew where traces of flammable liquid might collect, you might be able to avoid detection.”

“Of course… if I were a pyromaniac, I would never make a mistake like that,” Hassan says cheerfully.

“But in this case you’re sure the iron brought on this blaze?”

“Yes, it was an accident.”

“So,” Joona states, “case closed.”

The darkness of night is giving way to morning, even in the forest. Penelope and Bjorn move back toward the beach together but angle farther south, away from the house where the party had been. Away from their pursuer.

As far from their pursuer as they possibly can go.

Spotting another house between the trees, they start to run again. It’s about half a kilometer away, maybe even a little less. They hear the roar of a helicopter overhead somewhere but the sound fades as it moves on.

Bjorn looks dizzy; Penelope fears he won’t be able to keep running much longer. His bare feet are raw.

A branch breaks behind them. Perhaps underneath a human boot.

Penelope begins to run as fast as she can through the forest.

As the trees thin out more, she can see the house again. It’s just one hundred meters away. Lights in the window reflect on the red paint of a parked Ford.