Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“Is he good-looking?”

“Actually, yes he is.”

“How nice.”

“But you know that I really don’t want to.” Disa smiles.

He doesn’t answer and turns his head away.

“You know what I want,” Disa says softly.

Joona’s face is now a little pale. She sees a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He slowly turns his face back to her. His eyes have darkened until they’re as black and hard as an abyss.

“Joona?” she asks. “Forget about it. I’m sorry-”

It looks like Joona starts to say something and begins to take a step when his legs buckle.

“Joona!” Disa cries and knocks her glass off the table as she hurries to his side. She holds him closely and whispers that it will be over soon.

After a few minutes, Joona’s face relaxes bit by bit from its tight expression of pain.

Disa gets up to sweep the broken glass off the floor. Then they sit at the table and eat in silence.

After a while, Disa says, “You’re not taking your medicine.”

“It makes me sleepy. I have to think. It’s important to think clearly right now.”

“You promised me that you’d continue with it.”

“I will, I will,” he reassures her.

“It’s dangerous not to. You know that,” she whispers.

“As soon as I’ve solved this case, I’ll start taking it again.”

“What if you never solve it?”

At a distance, the Nordic Museum appears to be a fancy image carved in ebony, despite being built of sandstone and limestone. It’s a Renaissance dream of elegance with its many towers and pinnacles. The museum was planned as an homage to the sovereignty of the Nordic peoples, but by the time it was inaugurated one rainy day in the summer of 1907, the union between Sweden and Norway had dissolved and the king was dying.

Joona walks swiftly through the enormous great hall of the museum and stops only after he’s climbed the stairs. He collects himself, then walks slowly past the lighted display cabinets. Nothing there catches his eye. He keeps going, his thoughts bound in memories and the sadness of loss.

The guard has seen him coming and has set a chair out for him next to one particular display case. Joona Linna takes his seat and lifts his eyes to the Sami bridal crown before him. The eight points of the crown are like linked hands, and the crown shines softly in the light behind the thin glass. Inside himself, Joona can hear a voice, and he sees a face smiling at him as he sits behind the wheel of his car. He is driving. It rained that day, but now the sun is reflecting in the puddles on the road so brightly, it’s as if they’re lit by fires below. He turns toward the backseat to make sure that Lumi has been buckled in properly.

The bridal crown appears to have been made from light branches of leather or braided hair. He drinks in its promise of love and joy and remembers how his wife looked: her serious smile, her sand-colored hair brushing her face.

“How are you doing today?” the guard asks.

Joona looks up at the guard in surprise. The man has been working here for many years. He’s middle-aged with stubble on his cheeks and tired eyes.

“I really don’t know,” Joona replies as he gets up from the chair.

Joona Linna and Saga Bauer are in the car on their way to the interview with Pontus Salman in Silencia Defense’s main office. They’re bringing the photograph that the technicians at the National Bureau of Investigation have enlarged. Quietly they travel south on Highway 73, which runs like a dirty track down to Nynashamn.

Two hours ago, Joona had been looking again at the four people sitting in the box: Raphael with his calm face and balding pate; Palmcrona with his weak smile and steel-framed glasses; Pontus Salman with his placid, almost boyish demeanor; and Agathe al-Haji with her wrinkled cheeks and intelligent, heavy gaze.

“I have an idea,” Joona had said slowly, catching Saga’s eye. “If we could reduce the picture quality and touch it up so that Pontus Salman is no longer identifiable…”

He falls silent as he follows his internal train of thought.

“What would we achieve?” asks Saga.

“He doesn’t know that we have a sharp original picture-right?”

“How could he? He’d expect us to make the photo more in focus, not the opposite.”

“Exactly. We’ve done all we could to identify the four people in the picture and we’ve figured out three. The fourth is somewhat turned away and the face is too blurry.”

“You’re thinking we should give him the chance to lie,” Saga says. “To claim that he wasn’t there and that he hasn’t met Palmcrona, Agathe al-Haji, and Raphael.”

“If he denies he was there, then the meeting itself was the secret.”

“And if he starts to lie, we have him in a trap.”

They pass Handen and then turn off at the Jordbrolanken exit. They roll into an industrial area surrounded by silent forest.

The head office for Silencia Defense is located in a dull-gray impersonal concrete building. Joona takes a good look at it, with its blacktinted windows. He thinks again about the four people in the photo, which unleashed a chain of violence leading to a dead young girl and the sorrow of her mother. Perhaps Penelope Fernandez and Bjorn Almskog are also dead by now because of this picture. Joona steps out of the car and his jaw tightens. Pontus Salman, one of the people in this enigmatic photograph, is inside this building right now.

The original photograph is safely in the hands of the National Forensic Laboratory in Linkoping. Tommy Kofoed has created a copy that appears old and worn like the original. One corner is missing and tape remains are seen on the others. Kofoed has rendered Pontus Salman’s face and hand blurry so that it appears that Salman was moving at the moment the photograph was taken.

Salman will think that he’s in luck-he alone is unrecognizable. Nothing connects him to the meeting with Raphael Guidi, Carl Palmcrona, and Agathe al-Haji. The only thing he needs to do is deny that it’s him. It’s not a crime to not recognize oneself in a blurry picture and to not remember meeting certain people.

They start toward the entrance.

If he denies it, we’ve caught him in a lie and we know he wants to keep something secret.

The air is oppressively hot and humid.

Saga nods seriously at Joona as they walk through the shiny, heavy entrance doors.

And if Salman starts to lie, Joona thinks, we’ll make sure he continues to lie until he’s so entangled he can’t get free.

The reception area is large and cold.

When Pontus Salman looks at the photograph and says that he can’t identify the people in it, we’ll say that it’s unfortunate that he can’t help us, Joona continues to think. We’ll get ready to leave and then we’ll stop and ask him to take one more look with a magnifying glass. The technician has left a signet ring visible on the hanging hand. We’ll ask Pontus Salman if he recognizes the clothes, the shoes, or the pinkie ring. He’ll be forced to lie again, and then we will have reason to bring him in for questioning and press him harder.

Behind the reception desk, there is a lighted red emblem emblazoned with the company name and a serpentine logo encircled by runes.

“ ‘He fought as long as he had a weapon,’ ” Joona says.

“Can you read runes now?” asks Saga skeptically.

Joona points at the sign with the translation as he walks to the reception desk. A pale man with thin, dry lips is ensconced behind the desk.

“Pontus Salman,” Joona says shortly.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Two o’clock,” Saga says.

The receptionist shuffles through some papers, flips to one, and reads.