Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“Hello there,” Robert Riessen says as he sees Joona.

“Is Axel at home?”

“He should be, but I just got here,” Robert replies. “Has something happened?”

“I’ve been trying to reach him.”

“Me, too,” Robert says, and he lets Joona inside.

They walk up a half staircase and enter a large foyer dominated by an elaborate rose-colored glass-armed chandelier. Robert knocks on the door and then walks right into Axel’s residence. They both hurry up to the private apartment in silence.

“Axel!” Robert yells.

They look around, going from room to room. Everything appears normal-the stereo system is on but no sound comes out, and a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is lying open on the dictionary stand.

“Do you know if he was planning to travel?” Joona asks.

“No,” Robert replies, but there’s an odd exhaustion in his voice. “He does so many strange things.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You think you know somebody and… well, who knows.”

Joona walks into the bedroom and takes a quick look around. He sees a large oil painting leaning against the wall with its back facing the room and a puffy white dandelion past its bloom placed in a whiskey glass, and he notices an unmade bed and a book.

Robert has already left the room and started down the stairs. Joona follows him down and to the large kitchen.

Joona parks his car next to Kronoberg Park and walks to the police station while on the phone to the Sodertalje police. Something is nagging him; he wishes he had been part of the group to bring in Pontus Salman.

His worry intensifies when the Sodertalje officer explains that no one knows where Pontus Salman is.

“I’ll call you back,” the man says in a strong Gotland accent. “Just give me a few minutes.”

“But you did bring him in, didn’t you?” Joona asks.

“That was the plan,” the officer says doubtfully.

“I was very clear that he should be held.”

“No need to blame me,” the man says. “I’m sure all procedures were followed.”

He is heard to tap on his computer, mumble to himself, and then tap some more before he gives Joona the information: “Yes, he’s in custody here. We have also confiscated his weapon, a Winchester 490.”

“Good. Keep him there. We’ll send a car for him,” Joona says. The nearby Kronoberg Park swimming pool smells strongly of chlorine to Joona as he walks through the large glass doors.

He takes the elevator up and strides quickly through the corridor. He’s almost reached Carlos Eliasson’s office when his cell phone rings. It’s Disa. Time is very short, but he answers anyway.

“Hi,” Disa says. “Are you coming tomorrow?”

“You told me you didn’t want to celebrate your birthday.”

“I know, but I thought… just you and me.”

“Sounds good,” Joona says.

“I have something important to tell you, too,” she explains.

“Okay,” Joona says as he arrives at Carlos’s door.

“I-”

“Sorry, Disa, but I really can’t talk. I’m heading into an important meeting.”

“I have a surprise,” she says.

“Disa, I have to hang up now,” he says, and opens the door. “But-” Disa says.

“I’m really sorry, but I just can’t talk now.”

Joona walks into Carlos’s room, closes the door behind him, and sits down next to Saga on the sofa.

“We can’t reach Axel Riessen,” Carlos tells him immediately.

“We’re afraid these murders are all tied to the export authorization,” Joona says. “And we believe that Raphael Guidi is behind the whole thing. We need an arrest warrant for him as soon as possible-”

“Arrest warrant?” Carlos repeats, taken aback. “Just because Axel Riessen hasn’t answered his phone for two hours and has been delayed coming to work, you immediately assume he’s been kidnapped by Raphael Guidi-who, I might remind you, is a successful businessman with an unblemished record.” Carlos starts counting on his fingers. “Swedish police have nothing on him. Europol has nothing on him. Interpol has nothing. I’ve even talked to the police in France, Italy, and Monaco.”

“But I’ve talked to Anja.” Joona smiles smugly.

“You talked to Anja?”

Carlos falls silent before the entry of Anja Larsson, who closes the door behind her.

Without any introduction she begins. “During the past decade, Raphael Guidi’s name has come up six times. He was rumored to be involved in illegal arms deals, illegal money deals, and unexplained deaths.”

“Only preliminary investigations,” Carlos objects. “That doesn’t mean-”

“Should I go on or not?” Anja says.

“Please, go ahead.”

“All suspicions about Raphael Guidi were squashed at an early stage in almost every case and so he was never really investigated.”

“So you have nothing,” Carlos says.

“His business earned 123 million dollars on Operation Desert Storm by providing Nighthawk jets with AGM-65 Maverick missiles,” Anja continues. She glances at her notes to check her accuracy. “But one of his auxiliary corporations provided Serbian forces with artillery rockets capable of bringing down these same planes during the Kosovo war.”

Anja shows them a photograph of Raphael in sienna-tinted sunglasses. He’s in sharply pressed blue pants, with a more comfortable-looking blue shirt hanging out. He smiles broadly. He’s between two bodyguards, posing in front of a smoke-colored Lamborghini Diablo.

“Raphael’s wife was the well-known violinist Fiorenza Colini,” Anja tells them. “One year after their son, Peter, was born, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent all kinds of treatments, but died when their son was seven.”

She shows them a newspaper clipping from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Fiorenza Colini has a beautiful red violin at her shoulder with the entire orchestra of La Scala behind her. The conductor, Riccardo Muti, is poised beside her. His wavy hair shines in the spotlight. Fiorenza Colini’s slim body is a shimmering column in a gown of platinum trimmed with silver brocade and an edging of sparkling crystal. Her eyes smile beneath thick lashes. Her right elbow is lifted as if her bow is traveling down and her slender fingers are placed high on the fingerboard, searching for a difficult note.

Anja shows them another clipping, this one from Newsweek, in which Raphael Guidi, his newborn son in his arms, stands improbably and proudly next to the American rock star Alice Cooper. The headline reads BILLION DOLLAR BABY. And in yet another, Guidi, dressed in a soft, light-colored suit, chats with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi while three blond women in micro bikinis lounge beside a rose-marble pool shaped like a heart.

“Raphael Guidi supposedly lives in Monaco, but if you want him, you have to go to sea, as far as I can determine,” Anja says. “He spends almost all of his time these days on his mega yacht, Theresa. It’s easy to understand why. Lurssen built it in Bremen fifteen years ago with every luxury that could be devised.”

A shot of the yacht, white and arrow-shaped, accompanies a feature on Guidi in French Vogue. In the photo the ship looks like a porcelain spear, and the article, entitled “Lion en Cannes,” breathlessly details a lavish film-festival bash thrown on board: “A la ville comme a la mer: Raphael Guidi et sa femme, Fiorenza, prennent le temps de faire les presentations. Kevin Costner et Salma Hayek saluent Victoria Silvstedt, l’icone Playboy suedoise.”

The men wear tuxedos, the women wear little, and the ever-present bodyguards planted behind Guidi wear their habitual stolid expressions. The article takes special pains to describe the dining hall, which features toucans in birdcages hanging from the ceiling, and a male lion, pacing back and forth in a cage of his own.