Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

Surgery took up the rest of the day. One of the men died. At one point, Grey stopped Penelope and held out a water bottle to her. Penelope shook her head, but he smiled calmly and said, “You have time to drink.” She thanked him, drank the water, then helped him lift one of the wounded men onto a cot.

That evening, Penelope and Jane sat on the veranda of one of the living quarters of the barracks. The day had exhausted them. They’d eaten a late dinner. It was still fairly hot. They chatted and watched the road between the houses and the tents, watched the people going about the last chores of the day before nightfall.

Deep night brought an uneasy quiet. At first, Penelope could hear people going to bed: the rustling near the latrines and the small, almost silent movements in the darkness. Soon everything was totally quiet. Not even the sound of a crying baby.

“Everyone is still afraid that the Janjaweed will pass through here,” Jane said as she collected the plates.

They went inside, locked the door, and barricaded it. They said good night, and Penelope headed to the guest room farthest down the hallway.

Two hours later, she woke with a jerk. She’d fallen asleep, fully dressed, on the guest bed. She lay still, listening to the powerful night, not remembering what had awakened her. Her heart had begun to calm when she suddenly heard a scream outside. Penelope stood to one side of the barred window to look out into the night. The moon shone down over the road. She could hear angry voices. Three teenage boys walked in the middle of the street; without a doubt, they belonged to the Janjaweed militia. One had a pistol. Penelope grasped that they’d been yelling about killing slaves, about an old African man who usually grilled sweet potatoes and sold them for two dinars apiece while sitting on his blanket outside the UN storehouse.

The boys had gone up to the old man and spat in his face. Then the thin boy had raised his pistol and shot the old man in the face. The bang had reverberated eerily between the buildings. That’s what had jarred Penelope from her sleep. The boys had yelled, grabbed up some sweet potatoes, and eaten them while they kicked the rest into the dust beside the dead man.

They kept sauntering along the road, looking around. Then they headed for the barracks where Penelope and Jane lived. Penelope held her breath as she listened to them thump around the veranda, yelling excitedly as they banged on the door.

Penelope gasps for breath and opens her eyes. She must have fallen asleep on Ossian Wallenberg’s sofa.

Thunder rumbles in the background. The skies have turned dark.

Bjorn is standing at the window. Ossian is sipping his whiskey.

Penelope looks at the phone-no one has called.

The maritime police should have been here by now.

The claps of thunder are approaching. The ceiling light goes out and the fan in the kitchen stops. The power is out. The patter of rain starts gently on the roof and shutters, then increases until it seems the skies simply burst open and let the rain pour down.

All cell-phone coverage disappears.

Lightning flashes and lights the room for a second. A crash of thunder follows it.

Penelope leans back to listen to the rain. She feels the cooler air streaming inside through the windows and starts to doze off again when she hears Bjorn say something.

“What?” she asks.

“A police boat,” he repeats. “I see a police boat.”

Penelope quickly leaps up and looks out. The seawater seems to boil from the massive downpour. The large, official-looking launch is already close and heading for the dock. Penelope glances at the phone. No reception yet.

“Hurry up,” Bjorn says.

He tries to force the key in the lock of the French door. His hands are shaking. The police launch glides in next to the dock and blares a warning note.

“It doesn’t work,” Bjorn says. “This is the wrong key.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” Ossian smirks. He takes out his key chain. “Why don’t you try this one instead.”

Bjorn fumbles with the door key, gets it into the lock, turns it, and hears the tumblers click open.

It’s hard to see the police launch through the rain. It has already started to move away from the dock when Bjorn manages to open the door.

“Bjorn!” Penelope yells.

They can hear the motor thud and white water churns up behind the launch. Bjorn waves wildly and runs through the rain as fast as he can down the gravel pathway to the dock.

“Up here!” he yells. “We’re over here!”

Bjorn doesn’t even notice how drenched he’s getting as he races down onto the dock. There is an underwater thud as the launch reverses its engines. Bjorn can barely make out the figure of a police officer in the wheelhouse. A new flash of lightning brightens the sky. It looks like the police officer is talking into his sea-to-shore radio. Rain pounds down on the roof of the launch and waves beat against the beach. Bjorn waves both arms. The launch turns back and bumps gently leeward-side against the dock.

Bjorn grabs onto the wet ladder and climbs aboard onto the foredeck, then clatters down a set of stairs to a metal door. The launch rocks in a swell. Bjorn staggers a second and then opens the door.

A sweet metallic smell fills the wheelhouse-oil and sweat.

The first thing Bjorn spots is a police officer, tanned from his work, lying on the floor with a bullet hole between eyes that are wide open. The pool of blood beneath him has dried almost black. Bjorn gasps, stunned, and looks around at a normal-looking clutter of belongings, magazines, raincoats. He hears a voice outside. It’s Ossian: his voice carrying over the pounding engine. He’s limping along the gravel pathway, a yellow umbrella over his head. Bjorn’s blood pounds in his head. He’s made a mistake. This is a trap. He fumbles for the door handle, dazedly seeing the splatter of blood on the inside of the windshield. The stairs to the sleeping quarters behind him creak and Bjorn fatally freezes, staring back at his nemesis. His pursuer wears a uniform. His face is alert, even curious. It’s already much too late to flee, but Bjorn spots a screwdriver from above the instrument panel as a last-resort defense. The man climbs up casually, holding on to the railing, and blinks in the stronger light. He looks through the windshield to the beach. The rain pounds down. Bjorn stabs for his heart and stumbles, suddenly not comprehending what has just happened. The man’s blow has numbed his arm from the shoulder down. It feels as if his arm no longer exists. The screwdriver clatters uselessly down and rolls behind an aluminum toolbox. The man now holds on to Bjorn’s useless arm and pulls him forward. Then another blow folds Bjorn’s body in on itself and he kicks Bjorn’s feet out from under him. The killer guides his fall so that his face takes the full force of his momentum against the footrest at the steering wheel. Bjorn’s neck is snapped by the collision. He feels nothing at all but does see strange sparks-small lights that jump about in darkness and then slow down and become more and more pleasant to watch. A quiver passes over his face, which he does not feel, and then he is dead.

Penelope stands at the window. The skies flash bright from lightning and thunder rolls over the sea. The rain pours down. Bjorn has disappeared into the wheelhouse of the police launch. She watches Ossian limp down toward the water, a yellow umbrella over his head. The metal door of the wheelhouse opens and a uniformed police officer steps out onto the foredeck, hops onto the dock, and ties up the boat.

Not until the policeman begins to walk up the gravel path does Penelope see who it is.

Her pursuer does not bother to answer Ossian’s greeting. His left hand snakes out to clutch Ossian under the chin.