Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

They hand the clippings back to Anja.

“Let’s listen now,” Anja says. “Belgian Intelligence has recorded a telephone conversation between an Italian prosecutor and Salvatore Garibaldi, who was a brigade general in the Esercito Italiano, the Italian army.”

She passes out copies of a hastily made translation, puts a USB flash drive into Carlos’s computer, leans over, and hits Play. The recording opens immediately with an official voice giving the circumstances, place, date, and time in French. Then a small metal click can be heard and a distant connecting tone. There’s a crackle, then a firm voice speaks.

“I’m listening and I’m ready to begin the preliminary investigation,” the prosecutor says.

“I can never testify against Raphael Guidi, not even under torture, not even…”

Salvatore Garibaldi’s voice disappears in a spurt of static. Then it appears again more weakly as if through a closed door.

“… med recoil brakes or completely recoilless rocket systems… and a hell of a lot of mines, antipersonnel mines, antivehicle mines, antitank mines… Raphael would never… like in Rwanda, he didn’t care. They used sticks and machetes-nothing with real money. But when the fight spilled over into the Congo, he wanted part of the action. He thought it would be a gold mine. First he armed the Rwanda Patriotic Front to be able to attack Mobutu forcefully. Then he turned around to pump heavy weaponry to the Hutus so that they could retaliate against the RPF.”

A strange peeping sound rises through the static. It hiccups and then his voice is clear again.

“The whole deal with the nightmare, I couldn’t really believe it. I was forced… forced to hold his sweaty hand… while I watched. My daughter, she was fourteen. She was so pretty, so beautiful… Raphael… he did it himself. He used the knife himself… he screamed at me that I was reaping my nightmare. He owned it… he owned my nightmare. I still… don’t ask me to think about it again… I can’t…”

There are strange sounds. Someone shouts in the background. Breaking glass can be heard. The sound recording sputters.

Salvatore Garibaldi is weeping. “How could anyone do anything like that… he took a fillet knife from his bodyguard… my daughter’s face… her beautiful, beautiful…” He continues to sob and then he screams that now he wants nothing more than to die. He wants to die.

More crackling and the recording ends. No one in Carlos Eliasson’s office says a word. Through the small windows facing Kronoberg Park’s green slope, a playful light falls into the office.

“This recording”-Carlos clears his throat-“proves nothing. Right from the start he said he would not testify, he was not going to be a witness. I imagine that made the case evaporate and made the prosecutor end the investigation.”

“Three weeks later, Salvatore Garibaldi’s head was found by a man walking his dog,” Anja says. “It was in a ditch by the Via Goethe, behind a racetrack in Rome.”

“What happened to his daughter?” Joona asks quietly. “Does anyone know?”

“Fourteen-year-old Maria Garibaldi is still missing,” Anja says shortly.

Carlos sighs and mutters to himself. He walks to his aquarium and contemplates his paradise fish for a long while before he turns back.

“What do you want me to do? You cannot prove that the ammunition is being diverted to Sudan. If Axel Riessen has disappeared, you cannot link it to Raphael Guidi. Give me the tiniest shred of proof,” he pleads, “and I will go to the prosecutor. But I need something concrete, not just-”

“I know it’s him,” Joona says.

“And I need more than Joona declaring that he knows,” Carlos responds.

“We need the authorities behind us to arrest Raphael Guidi for crimes against Swedish and international law,” Joona continues stubbornly.

“Not without proof,” Carlos says.

“We’ll find proof,” Joona says.

“You need to convince Pontus Salmon to testify.”

“We’ve already picked him up, but getting him to testify will be very tough. He’s already so frightened he was about to commit suicide,” Joona says.

“If we arrest Raphael, maybe he’ll feel free enough to talk. That is, if things ever calm down,” Saga says.

“We still can’t arrest someone as important as Guidi without any proof,” Carlos reiterates firmly.

“So what the hell can we do?” demands Saga.

“Lean on Pontus Salman-”

“We’ve got to hurry. I believe that Axel Riessen is in danger,” Joona says.

They are all interrupted as Jens Svanehjalm, the chief prosecutor, strides into the room.

Air-conditioning has chilled his car, but that’s not what makes Pontus Salman’s hands shake on the steering wheel. He’s already crossing the bridge to Lidingo Island. A ferry to Finland is leaving its dock and beyond Millesgarden someone is burning leaves.

A few hours ago, he’d been in his tiny flat-bottomed rowboat trying to hold a rifle barrel to his mouth. The metal taste is still on his tongue, and he can still hear the scraping sound it made against his teeth.

A woman in a straggly blue punk haircut was jogging onto the dock with the detective. She’d called him gently in her middle-aged voice to come closer. She had to tell him something important. She was wearing bright red lipstick. She’d brought him to a small gray room. He found out her name was Gunilla and she was a psychologist. She’d talked to him deeply about what he had intended to do when he rowed out onto the lake.

“Why do you want to die?” she’d asked plainly.

“I really don’t want to,” he’d answered truthfully, surprising her.

She was taken aback a moment and then they began to really talk. He’d answered all her questions and became more and more convinced that he did not want to die. He’d rather run and he began to plan where he could go. He’d just disappear and start a new life as someone else.

The car had crossed the bridge. Pontus Salman looks at his watch and feels tremendous relief that, by now, Veronique’s plane must have left Swedish airspace.

He’d told Veronique about French Polynesia and now he can fantasize: he sees her emerge from the airport carrying her light blue carry-on. She’s wearing a broad-brimmed hat, which she has to hold down in the breeze. Why couldn’t he escape, too?

The only thing he needs is his passport from his desk drawer.

I don’t want to die, Pontus Salman thinks as he watches traffic rush by.

He’d rowed out into the lake to flee having to reap his nightmare, but he just couldn’t pull the trigger.

I’ll take any plane at all, he thinks. Iceland, Japan, or Brazil. If Raphael Guidi really wants me dead, he’d have killed me already.

Pontus Salman drives up to his garage and gets out. He takes a deep breath to smell the warm stones under his feet, the car exhaust, the fresh smell of growing plants.

The street seems abandoned with everyone at work and even the children still in school for a few more days.

Pontus Salman unlocks the door and walks in. All the lights in the house are off and the curtains are drawn.

He has to go downstairs to get his passport from his office.

Once on the lower level, he pauses as he hears something strange, as if a wet blanket is being pulled across a tile floor.

“Veronique?” he asks in a strangled voice.

Pontus Salman can see light from the pool dapple against a white stone wall. With his heart racing, he slowly, silently, walks toward the pool.

Chief Prosecutor Jens Svanehjalm greets Saga Bauer, Joona Linna, and Carlos Eliasson quietly, gestures them to a seat, and then sits down. The material Anja Larsson collected is spread over the coffee table in front of him. Svanehjalm takes a sip of his soy coffee and looks at the top picture before he turns to Carlos.