Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“Sudan.”

“Right.”

“How long has she been his adviser?”

“Fifteen years or so. I can’t really remember.”

“So what’s going on in this picture?” Joona muses.

“I have no idea. I mean… the fact that the four of them are meeting is not so strange. Perhaps they are discussing business proposals,” Saga speculates. “These kinds of meetings happen all the time. This could be a first encounter. You meet, explain your intentions, and maybe ask for ideas, even a preliminary decision, from Carl Palmcrona.”

“And his positive reaction could mean that the ISP will most likely give export permission in the end?”

“Exactly. It would be a good indication.”

“Does Sweden usually export war materiel to Sudan?” asks Joona.

“No, I don’t think so,” she answers. “We should ask an expert. I believe that China and Russia are the largest exporters to Sudan, but I’m not so sure anymore. There was a peace pact made in Sudan in 2005 and I imagine that the export market was opened after that.”

“So what does this picture tell us? Why would Carl Palmcrona take his own life because of it? I mean, they met in public in a concert-hall box.”

In silence they keep driving south on the dusty highway while Joona goes over the photograph again and again, turns it over, notices the torn corner, and thinks.

“So this actual photograph cannot be dangerous to anyone,” he states.

“Not if you ask me.”

“Did Palmcrona take his own life because he realized that the person who took this picture could expose something? Maybe the photograph is just a warning? Maybe Penelope and Bjorn are more important than the picture?”

“We don’t know a damn thing.”

“Yes, we do,” Joona says. “The problem is that we don’t know how to connect the dots. We’re still guessing at the orders for this hit man. It looks like he was only trying to find this photograph to destroy it and that he killed Viola because he thought she was Penelope.”

“Perhaps Penelope took the shot,” Saga suggests. “Even so, this killer wasn’t content with just her murder.”

“Exactly. We don’t know which one comes first: Is the picture a link to the photographer, who is the true threat? Or is the photographer the link to the photograph, the primary threat?”

“The first attack was on Bjorn’s apartment.”

They say nothing for a few minutes. They’ve almost gotten back to the police station when Joona takes another close look at the photograph. The four people in the box, the food, the four musicians onstage, the instruments, the heavy curtain, the champagne bottle, the champagne flutes.

“Looking at this photograph,” Joona says, “I see four faces. One of them must be behind the murder of Viola Fernandez.”

“Right. Palmcrona is dead, so we can probably exclude him. So that leaves three… and two of them are out of our reach, so we can’t question them.”

“We’ve got to interview Pontus Salman,” Joona says.

It is difficult to find a real human at Silencia Defense AB. All outside lines lead to the same labyrinth of automated menus and recorded information. Finally, Saga decides to bypass it all with the number 9 and the star key. She is connected to the company secretary. She ignores this person’s questions and goes right to what she wants. The secretary says nothing for a moment and then tells Saga that she must have gotten the wrong number and that everyone has gone out for lunch.

“Please call back tomorrow morning between nine and eleven and-”

“Tell Pontus Salman to be ready for a visit from Sapo at two this afternoon,” Saga says in a loud, firm voice.

“I’m sorry,” the secretary says. “He’s in meetings all day.”

“Not at two o’clock,” Saga answers sweetly.

“Yes, his appointment book says that-”

“Because at two o’clock, he is meeting with me,” Saga says.

“I will forward your request.”

“Thank you very much,” Saga replies. She meets Joona’s eyes across the desk.

“Two o’clock?” he confirms. “Yes, indeed.”

“Tommy Kofoed would like a look at that photo,” Joona says. “Let’s stop by his office after lunch, before we head out.”

–

While Joona is having lunch with Disa, the technicians at the National Forensic Laboratory are enlarging the photograph.

The face of one person in the box is specifically being blurred so as to be unrecognizable.

Disa is smiling to herself as she removes the inset from the rice cooker. She holds it out to Joona and watches him as he moistens his hands to check if the rice is cool enough to form into small patties.

“Did you know that Sodermalm used to have its own Calvary?”

“Calvary like Golgotha or cavalry like horses?”

“A place for executions.” Disa nods as she opens Joona’s kitchen cabinet, finds two glasses, pours white wine into one and water into the other.

Disa looks relaxed. Her freckles have turned darker and she’s put her disheveled hair into a loose braid. Joona washes his hands and takes out a new kitchen towel. Disa goes up to him and puts her arms around his neck. Joona answers her embrace by putting his face next to hers and breathing in the scent of her hair even as he feels her hands gently caressing his back and neck.

“Let’s go ahead,” she whispers. “Let’s try.”

“Maybe,” he says in a low voice.

She holds him tightly, very tightly, and then she eases from his arms.

“There are times I get really mad at you,” she mutters as she turns away.

“Disa, I am who I am, but I-”

“I am very happy that we’re not living together,” she says, and then she leaves the kitchen.

He hears her lock herself in the bathroom and wonders whether he should follow and knock on the door, but he also knows that she really wants to be left alone, so he just continues making lunch. He picks up a piece of fish, places it on his palm, and then spreads a line of wasabi onto it.

A few minutes later, Disa comes back. She stands in the doorway and watches him finish making the sushi.

“Do you remember,” she says, laughing, “how your mother always took the salmon off the sushi and fried it before she put it back on the rice?”

“Of course.”

“Should I set the table?”

“Please.”

Disa carries plates and chopsticks to the big room, stops next to the window, and looks down at Wallingatan. A grove of trees lights up the view with its green late-spring leaves. Her eyes wander over the pleasant area all the way to Norra Bantorget where Joona Linna has been living for the past year.

She sets the off-white dinner table, returns to the kitchen to take a sip of wine. The wine has lost the crispness from being chilled. She dismisses the sudden urge to sit down on the lacquered wooden floor under the table and have lunch, eating with their hands as if they were still children.

Instead, she says, “I’ve been asked out.”

“Asked out?”

She nods and feels she wants to be a little bit mean, even though she doesn’t really.

“Tell me about it,” Joona says calmly as he carries the tray with sushi to the table.

Disa picks up her glass and says in an easy tone, “It’s just that there’s a man at the museum who’s been asking me out to dinner for the last six months.”

“Do people still ask people out to dinner these days?”

Disa smiles somewhat crookedly. “Are you jealous?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a little,” Joona says as he walks over to her. “It’s always pleasant to be asked out to dinner.”

“That’s right.”

Disa pushes her fingers through a bit of Joona’s thick hair.