Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“Suicide?” asked Joona.

“No.”

“Murder?”

“Can’t you just come over?” John asked. “I can’t decide what I’m seeing. The body is hanging way too high above the floor, Joona.”

He’d taken Nathan Pollock and Tommy Kofoed along. Joona had just explained that this was a suicide when the doorbell had rung at Palmcrona’s home. In the darkness of the landing, a woman was standing and holding two plastic grocery bags in her large hands.

“So have you cut him down yet?” she asked.

“Cut him down?”

“Director Palmcrona,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Excuse me, I’m just a housekeeper and I thought…”

Obviously she was troubled, and she turned away to start walking down the stairs. She was stopped in her tracks by the answer to her first question.

“He’s still hanging there.”

“I see.” She turned toward him with a blank face.

Joona asked, “Did you see him earlier today?”

“No.”

“How did you come to ask whether we’d taken him down, then? Did you see anything unusual?”

“A noose from the ceiling in the small salon,” she answered.

“So you saw the noose?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“But you weren’t afraid that he might use it?”

“Dying’s not a nightmare.” She was holding back a smile.

“What did you just say?”

The woman just shook her head.

“How do you think he died, then?”

“I think he tightened the noose around his neck,” she replied in a low voice.

“How did he manage to get the noose around his neck?”

“I don’t know… maybe he needed help.”

“What kind of help?”

Her eyes rolled toward the back of her head and for an instant, Joona thought she was going to faint. Instead, she steadied herself with a hand on the wall and then she met his gaze.

Softly, she said, “There are always helpful people around.”

The police station’s swimming pool is large and blue, almost completely still. Lit from below, its light dances across the walls and ceiling of the natatorium, and all that breaks the stillness is the steady movement of Joona Linna swimming laps, one after the other.

While he swims, idle thoughts tumble over and over in his head: Disa’s face when she told him her teeth itched when she looks at him.

Joona touches the edge of the pool, turns underwater, and kicks off again. He doesn’t realize he’s picking up speed when the memory of Carl Palmcrona’s apartment on Grevgatan comes to him. Once again, he sees the hanging body, the pool of urine, and the flies on the body’s face. The dead man had been wearing his coat and shoes and yet had taken the time to turn on music.

Actions both impulsive and yet planned, not that unusual when it comes to suicide.

Joona’s swimming even faster now, picking up more speed as he kicks off another lap. He sees himself walking back through Palmcrona’s hallway and opening the door after the unexpected ringing of the doorbell. The tall woman in the darkness of the landing. The impression of her large hands. The fact she was hiding behind the door.

Breathing heavily, Joona pulls up to the edge of the pool and steadies himself, resting his arms on the plastic grille over the gutter. His breathing slows but he can feel the heavy increase of lactic acid in his shoulder muscles. A group of policemen in bathing suits walk into the pool area carrying two rescue dummies: one a child and the other an overweight adult.

Dying’s not a nightmare. The large woman had smiled when she said that.

Joona heaves himself out of the pool. He’s filled with nervous tension. The Carl Palmcrona case won’t leave him alone. For some reason, the empty, light-filled room keeps coming back into his mind: the languid violin music and the slow buzzing of the flies.

Joona knows in his gut that it is a suicide and is not a case for the CID. Still, he feels the urge to run back to the apartment, to take another look and examine it minutely to make sure he’s missed nothing.

Initially he’d thought that shock had confused the housekeeper, fogged her mind, and made her suspicious, causing her to speak in that strange, disjointed way. Now Joona tries thinking in reverse. Maybe she wasn’t confused at all. Maybe she wasn’t shocked in the least but was answering his questions as clearly as she could. Edith Schwartz had hinted that Carl Palmcrona may have had help with the noose: that there were helpful hands, helpful people. In any case, she’d insinuated he was not alone in meeting his death. He was not the only person responsible.

Something is not right.

But he can’t put his finger on why he thinks that.

Joona walks through the door to the changing room and unlocks his locker. He picks up his cell phone and calls Nils Ahlen, “The Needle.”

“I’m not done yet,” The Needle says instantly.

“It’s about Palmcrona. What was your first impression, even if-”

“I’m not done yet.”

“Even if you’re not done-”

“Come by on Monday.”

“I’m coming over now.”

“At five o’clock, me and the missus are going to check on a sofa at the furniture store.”

“I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes,” Joona says, and disconnects the phone before The Needle can protest again that it’s too soon.

After Joona has showered, dressed, and come out of the changing room, he can hear the laughter from the children’s swimming class.

He wonders what’s behind the death of a man as important as the general director for the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products. When it came to the export of military equipment in Sweden, this was the one person who made all the final decisions regarding Sweden’s export of arms, and now he’s found hanged.

What if I’m wrong? What if he really was murdered? Joona says to himself. I have to talk to Pollock before I go see The Needle. Maybe Pollock and Kofoed have had a chance to look at the material evidence by now.

Joona strides through the hallway, runs down a staircase, and calls his assistant, Anja Larsson, to see if Nathan Pollock is still at the station.

Joona’s thick hair is still wet as he opens the door to Lecture Hall 11 where Nathan Pollock is lecturing a special training group on handling hostage situations and rescue operations. Projected on the wall behind Pollock is the anatomy of a human body, and seven weapons are lined up on a table. They range from a small silver SIG Sauer P238 to a matte-black automatic carbine from Heckler amp; Koch equipped with a 40 millimeter grenade thrower. Pollock is demonstrating an attack technique on a young police officer. He holds a knife close to his body, then suddenly rushes the officer and marks his throat. He turns back to the group.

“The problem with a cut like this is that the enemy can still scream. He can still move, and since only one artery is cut, it’ll take some time for him to bleed to death,” Pollock tells them.

He walks up to the young officer again and puts his arm around the officer’s face so that his elbow covers the officer’s mouth.

“If I do this instead, I can cover the scream, control his head, and slice open both arteries with one cut.”

Pollock lets the young officer go just as Joona Linna enters the room. The young officer wipes his mouth and returns to his seat. With a big grin, Pollock tries to wave Joona over, but Joona shakes his head.

“I just need a word with you,” Joona says quietly.

A few of the police officers swivel their heads as Pollock walks over to Joona and shakes hands. The shoulders of Joona’s jacket are dark from the water dripping from his hair.