Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

She often talks about their getting married once she’s old enough.

Axel Riessen lets her spin her fantasies of marriage because it makes her happy and calm. He convinces himself that he’s protecting her from the outside world, but he also knows that he’s using her. He’s ashamed, but can’t figure out any other alternative. He’s afraid of returning to relentless insomnia.

Beverly walks out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in her mouth. She nods toward the three violins hanging on the wall.

“Why don’t you ever play them?” she asks.

“I can’t,” he replies with a smile.

“Are they just going to hang there? Why don’t you give them to someone who can play them?”

“I like these violins. Robert gave them to me.”

“You hardly speak about your brother.”

“We have a complicated relationship.”

“I know he makes violins in his workshop,” she says.

“Yes, that’s what he does… he also plays in a chamber orchestra.”

“Maybe he can play for us at our wedding?” she asks as she wipes toothpaste from the corner of her mouth.

Axel looks at her and hopes that she doesn’t pick up on the mechanical way he answers as he says, “What a good idea.”

He feels exhaustion flowing over him like a wave, over his body and his brain. He walks past her and into the bedroom and sinks down on the edge of the bed.

“I’m very sleepy. I…”

“I feel very sorry for you,” she says in total seriousness.

Axel shakes his head.

“I just need to sleep,” he says. All at once, he feels as if he’ll burst into tears.

He stands up again and picks out a nightgown in pink cotton.

“Please, Beverly, why don’t you wear this one?”

“Sure, if you want me to.”

She pauses to look at a large oil painting by Ernst Billgren. A fox is wearing clothes and sitting in an armchair in some upper-middle-class home.

“I hate that picture,” she says.

“You do?”

She nods and starts to undress.

“Can’t you change in the bathroom?” he asks.

She shrugs and as she pulls off her pink top, Axel moves away so that he won’t see her nude. He walks over to the painting of the fox, looks at it, then takes it down to set it, facedown, on the floor.

Axel’s sleep is stiff and heavy, his jaw clenched. He’s held the girl very tightly. Suddenly he startles awake and lets her go. He sucks in air like a drowning man. He’s sweating and his heart is pounding from fear. He turns on the lamp on the nightstand. Beverly sleeps as relaxed as a child, mouth open and a little sheen on her forehead. Axel starts to think about Carl Palmcrona again. The last time they’d met, they mingled with the nobility at a meeting in Riddarhuset. Palmcrona had been drunk and aggressive. He’d gone on and on about the UN weapon embargoes and finished his tirade with those strange words: If everything goes to hell, I’ll pull an Algernon so I won’t reap my nightmare.

Axel turns off the lamp and lies down again while he tries to understand what Palmcrona meant by saying “pull an Algernon.” What was he talking about? What kind of nightmare was he thinking about? And did he really say that strange I won’t reap my nightmare?

What had happened to Carl-Fredrik Algernon? It was a mystery in Sweden. Up until his death, Algernon had been the military-equipment inspector for the Foreign Office. One January day he’d had a meeting with the CEO of Nobel Industries, Anders Carlberg. He’d told Carlberg that their investigation had turned up information that one of the members of the conglomerate had smuggled weapons to countries in the Persian Gulf. Later that same day, Carl-Fredrik Algernon had fallen in front of a subway train in Central Station in Stockholm.

Axel’s thoughts slip away and become increasingly blurred, circulating around accusations of arms smuggling and bribery concerning the Bofors Corporation. He sees a man in a trench coat falling backward in front of an oncoming train.

The man falls slowly, his coattails flapping.

Beverly’s soft breathing catches him up, calms him, and he turns toward her to wrap his arms around her again.

She sighs as he pulls her closer to him.

Sleep comes to him in the softness of a cloud. His thoughts fade away.

For the rest of the night, he still sleeps restlessly and wakes again at five in the morning. He’s been holding on so tightly to Beverly, his arms are cramped. Her stubbly hair tickles his lips. He wishes desperately that he could take his sleeping pills instead.

At seven in the morning, Axel walks out onto the terrace he shares with his brother. He has that eight o’clock meeting with Jorgen Grunlicht in Carl Palmcrona’s old office at the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products.

The air is already warm but not yet humid. His younger brother, Robert, has opened the French doors to his apartment and come out to sit on a lounge chair. Robert hasn’t shaved yet and just lies there with his arms hanging limply. He’s staring up into the chestnut tree’s foliage, still damp from the morning dew. He’s wearing his worn-out silk bathrobe, the same one their father used to wear every Saturday morning.

“Good morning,” Robert says.

Axel nods without looking at his brother.

“I’ve just repaired a Fiorini for Charles Greendirk,” Robert says in an attempt at conversation.

“He’ll be happy, I’m sure,” Axel says. He sounds down.

“Something bothering you?”

“Yes, a bit,” Axel admits. “I might be changing jobs.”

“Well, why not?” Robert says, though his thoughts are already elsewhere.

Axel looks at his brother’s kind face with its deep wrinkles, and at his bald head. So many things could have been different between them.

“How’s your heart?” he asks. “Still pumping away?”

Robert puts his hand on his chest before he answers. “Seems to be.”

“That’s good.”

“What about your poor old liver?”

Axel shrugs and turns back into his apartment.

“We’re going to play Schubert this evening,” his brother calls out.

“How nice.”

“Maybe you could…”

Robert falls silent and looks at his brother. Then he changes the subject.

“That girl in the room upstairs-”

“Her name is Beverly.”

“How long is she going to be living here?”

“I don’t know,” Axel says. “I’ve promised her that she can stay until she finds a student apartment.”

“You always want to rescue birds with broken wings.”

“She’s not a bird, she’s a human being,” Axel says.

Axel opens the tall French doors to his own apartment and watches the reflection of his face glide past on the curved glass surfaces as he steps inside. Once behind the curtain, he silently observes his brother. He watches Robert get up from his lounge chair, scratch his stomach, and walk down the stairs from the terrace to the small garden and workshop. As soon as Robert is gone, Axel returns to his room and gently wakes up Beverly, who is still asleep with her mouth wide open.

The National Inspectorate of Strategic Products is a government agency that was established in 1996 to take over responsibility for all matters concerning arms exports and dual-usage items. Its offices are on the sixth floor of a salmon-pink building located at Klarabergs Viaduct 90. After riding up in the elevator, Axel sees that Jorgen Grunlicht is already waiting for him, nodding impatiently. Grunlicht is a tall man with a blotchy face: irregular patterns of white patches contrast with his reddish skin.

Grunlicht slips his identification card in and keys in the code to admit Axel. They walk to Carl Palmcrona’s office. It’s a corner suite with two huge windows overlooking a cityscape of southbound roads behind Central Station and across from Lake Klara and the dark rectangle of city hall.