Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“You’re not going to give us the phone, are you?”

“I promise I will. Rules are rules. You’ll get it after I get what I want.”

“You know we need help and you’re using that to-”

“Yes, of course, I’m using it!” he screams.

“All right, then, let’s say we strip for a while and then I get the phone.”

Penelope turns away from Ossian and pulls off the sweater and T-shirt. Her scrapes and wounds are discolorations in the strong light. Her body is covered in bruises and dried dirt. She turns around but keeps her arms over her breasts.

Bjorn claps and whistles although he looks sad.

Ossian’s face is sweaty, staring at Penelope. Then he stands in the lamplight in front of Bjorn. He rolls his hips and then whips off the loincloth and twirls it around. He lets it run between his legs before he throws it at Bjorn. Ossian kisses the air in front of Bjorn and makes an “I’ll call you” gesture.

Bjorn claps and whistles louder and keeps clapping as he sees Penelope edging near the fireplace to pick up the iron poker from its rack. The ash shovel next to it sways and clangs slightly against the large tongs.

Ossian is dancing in glittery gold underwear.

Penelope holds the poker with both hands as she walks up behind Ossian, who is rolling his hips at Bjorn.

“Get on your knees, Cutie,” Ossian whispers. “Get down and give it to me.”

Savagely Penelope brings up the heavy poker between his legs as hard as she can. There’s a loud smack and Ossian falls, screaming with an unearthly sound. He holds himself and writhes around on the floor, howling. Penelope walks over to the music system and gives it four vicious strokes, smashing it to bits while the music squeals to a stop.

Ossian is panting and moaning as he lies on the floor. Penelope walks over to him and he squints up at her with fearful eyes. She stands there looking impassively down. The heavy poker sways slightly in her right hand.

Penelope says calmly, “Mr. Hippo tells me that you’ll give me the phone and the PIN number right now.”

It’s extremely humid in Ossian Wallenberg’s summerhouse. Bjorn keeps getting up from a chair to look out the window at the ocean and the dock. Penelope is on the sofa with the phone in her hand, waiting for the police to call her back. They had taken her emergency call and had promised to call back once the maritime police boat got closer. Ossian is sitting in an armchair with a large whiskey glass in front of him. He watches them. He’s taken painkillers and says, depressed, that he’ll live.

Penelope keeps looking at the phone and notices that the signal is weaker but still strong enough to take a call. Anytime now they should be returning her call. She leans back. The humidity is suffocating. The T-shirt she’s wearing is damp with sweat. She closes her eyes and begins to think about the time she was in Darfur: the oppressive heat as she traveled to Kubbum by bus in order to join Jane Oduya and her work with Action Contre la Faim.

She’d been on her way to the barracks, which was the organization’s administration center, when she stopped. She’d glimpsed some children playing a strange game. It looked like they were putting clay figures in the road so that the passing vehicles would crush them. She walked closer. They laughed out loud whenever one of their clay figures was smashed.

“I killed another one! This one is an old man!”

“I killed another Fur!”

One of the children ran into the road and put out two clay figures. One was large and one was small. As a cart rolled past, the little one was crushed beneath its wheels.

“The kid died! That whore kid died!”

Penelope walked over to the children and asked them what they were doing. But they didn’t answer, just ran away instead. Penelope stared down at the clay fragments left on the burnt-orange dirt road.

The name Fur had been given to the people in the area of Darfur. This ancient African tribe was now being slaughtered because of the Janjaweed terror.

For centuries the African people had been farmers, and there had always been conflict between the farmers and the remaining nomadic tribes; that conflict seemed to have gone on since the beginning of time. But now oil had been discovered under the ground in Darfur, and the African tribes that farmed this soil seemingly forever were being shoved aside. Oil production drove everything-including the genocide. On paper, the old civil war was over, but the Janjaweed continued systematic raids. They would kill the men, rape the women, and then burn down the village.

Penelope watched the Arab children run away, and then she gathered up the remaining clay figures. Someone called out “Penny! Penny!”

She jumped, fearful, but then turned to see Jane Oduya standing and waving to her. Jane was fat and short. She wore faded jeans and a yellow jacket. Penelope could hardly recognize her. Her face had aged so much in just a few short years.

“Jane!”

They hugged each other tightly.

“Don’t talk to those children,” Jane said. “They’re like so many others. They hate us because we are black. I don’t understand it. They just hate black skin.”

Jane and Penelope walked toward the refugee camp. The odor of burned milk overlay the stench of latrines. The blue plastic UN tarps were everywhere and used for everything: curtains, windshields, blankets. Hundreds of the Red Cross’s white tents shook in the wind coming across the open land.

Penelope followed Jane into the large hospital tent. Jane cast a glance through the plastic window to the surgical unit.

“My nurses have become good surgeons,” she said. “They can now perform amputations and the easy operations on their own.”

Two thin boys, about thirteen years old, brought in a large box with material for dressing wounds and set it down carefully. As they approached Jane, she thanked them and asked them to assist the women who were just arriving. The women needed water to wash their wounds.

The boys were soon back with water in two large plastic jugs.

“They used to belong to the Arab militia, but everything is quiet now. Without ammunition and weapons parts, equilibrium has set in. People have time on their hands and some have decided to help out here. We have a school for boys, many of whom used to be part of the militia.”

A woman on a cot moaned. Jane went to her and stroked her face. She didn’t seem to be more than fifteen years old but was greatly pregnant. One of her feet had been amputated.

An African man of about thirty, with a beautiful face and muscular shoulders, hurried over to Jane with a small white bottle.

“Thirty new doses of antibiotics!”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded, beaming.

“Good work!”

“I’m going to go and lean on Ross some more. He said that we might get a box of blood-pressure cuffs this week.”

“This is Grey,” Jane said. “He’s actually a teacher, but I couldn’t keep going without him.”

Penelope extended her hand and met the man’s laughing eyes.

“Penelope Fernandez.”

“Tarzan,” he replied as he gave her a gentle handshake.

“He wanted to be called Tarzan the minute he came here,” said Jane, laughing.

“Tarzan and Jane.” He smiled. “I’m her Tarzan.”

“I finally agreed to let him call himself Greystoke,” Jane said. “Everyone found Greystoke too hard to pronounce, however, so now he has to be content with the name Grey.”

A truck honked outside the tent. They stepped quickly out. Reddish dust, kicked up by the tires, swirled in the air. On the bed of the truck lay seven wounded men. They’d been shot in a village farther west when a firefight broke out over a well.