Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“Well, I talked to Gunilla Sommer, our psychologist, who brought him into the psychiatric ward.”

“And?”

“She interviewed him and decided, without reservation, that he was no longer a candidate for suicide. She felt he should be free to go, so she released him. Hospital beds cost money, you know.”

“Send out a description and bring him in at once!” Saga demands immediately.

“For what? A halfhearted suicide attempt?”

“Just make sure you find him!” Saga snarls and hangs up.

She jogs toward the elevators when Goran Stone steps in front of her and blocks her with outspread arms.

“So you want to get Pontus Salman to talk to you-right?” he teases.

“Right,” she says, and tries to push past, but he doesn’t let her go.

“Just shake your ass a little,” he says. “Or toss your hair so that you’re-”

“Move!” Saga commands. She’s so angry, her forehead begins to flush.

“Okay, sorry, I just wanted to help.” Goran Stone laughs nastily. “But for your information, we’ve just sent four cars to Salman’s house on Lidingo.”

“What’s happened?” Saga asks quickly.

“The neighbors called the police.” Goran smiles. “They’d heard a little bang-bang and some screaming.”

Saga pushes Stone roughly away and begins to run.

“Thank you so much, Goran!” Goran calls after her. “You’re the best, Goran!”

As Saga drives to Lidingo, she tries to keep her mind blank. But she can’t forget the sounds on the recording of the broken man who, weeping, described what had been done to his daughter.

Saga tells herself that she’s going to exercise hard tonight and then go to bed early.

People have come out of their houses and filled the street around Roskullsvagen, so she has to park one hundred meters away from Salman’s house. Curious onlookers and reporters crowd outside the blue-and-white police tape trying to get a look inside the house. Saga excuses herself in a tight voice as she pushes her way through. The blue lights of the emergency vehicles flash across the green trees. Saga sees her colleague Magdalena Ronander leaning against the dark brown brick wall and vomiting. Pontus Salman’s white BMW is parked in front of his garage. Its roof window is missing. Small, bloody glass cubes are scattered over the ground and sparkle on the chassis. Through the blood-smeared side window, a man’s body can be seen slumped sideways.

She recognizes it as Pontus Salman’s.

Magdalena lifts a pale face to look at Saga tiredly. She wipes her mouth with a tissue. Then she blocks Saga from going to the door.

“No, no,” she says hoarsely. “You don’t want to go in there. Absolutely not.”

Saga stops and glances toward the large house. She turns to Magdalena to ask something but stops again. She understands, then, that the first thing she must do is call Joona right away to tell him they no longer have a witness.

Joona is jogging through the arrival hall of Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, located just outside of Helsinki, when his phone rings.

“Saga, what’s up?”

“Pontus Salman is dead. He was found in his car outside his house. It appears he shot himself.”

Joona exits the airport building and hails a taxi. He directs the driver to the harbor as he sprawls in the backseat.

“What did you say?” Saga asks.

“Nothing,” Joona says.

“We have no witness now,” Saga says anxiously. “What the hell do we do next?”

“I don’t know yet,” Joona says. He shuts his eyes for a moment.

He feels the rocking motion of the car surround him, gentle and soothing. The taxi leaves the airport behind and speeds up to merge with traffic on the highway.

“You cannot go out to Raphael’s boat without backup,” Saga states firmly.

“The girl,” Joona says abruptly.

“What?”

“There’s a girl. Axel Riessen was teaching her the violin,” Joona says, and he opens his gray eyes. “Maybe she’s seen something.”

“Why do you think that?”

“There was a dandelion ball in the whiskey glass.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Try to find her,” Joona says, and snaps off the phone.

He leans back against the seat and pictures how Axel was standing and holding a violin as the girl came with a bouquet of dandelion puffs. Then he thinks of the dandelion ball with its wilted stem drooping over the edge of the whiskey glass in Axel’s bedroom. She’d been in such an intimate part of the house… maybe she’d seen something.

Joona goes on board the gray Finnish Coast Guard vessel Kirku, which the Finnish navy had acquired from the Swedish Coast Guard six years before. As he shakes hands with the vessel’s captain, Pasi Rannikko, he is reminded of Lennart Johansson at Dalaro, the one who loved to surf and called himself Lance.

Like Lance, Pasi Rannikko is a young, tanned man with clear blue eyes. Unlike Lance, however, Pasi takes his duties extremely seriously. It’s obvious that this unexpected run beyond Finnish waters is troubling him.

“Nothing about this makes me happy,” Pasi Rannikko says with a frown. “But my boss is friends with your boss… and it appears that’s all that was needed.”

“I hope to have something from the prosecutor before we get there,” Joona says soothingly as he feels the vibration of the ship pulling away from the dock and smoothly heading out across the water.

“The second you get your arrest warrant, I’ll contact FNS Hanko. It’s a patrol boat with twenty officers and six soldiers.” He points at a blip on the radar. “She can reach thirty-five knots and it won’t take her more than twenty minutes to get to us.”

“That’s good.”

“Raphael Guidi’s yacht has passed Dago and is now just outside Estonia’s territorial waters. I hope you are aware that we can’t board a vessel in Estonian waters unless it’s an emergency or open criminal activity is observed.”

“I realize that,” Joona says.

The boat leaves the harbor with thudding engines.

“Here comes the entire crew,” Pasi Rannikko says with an ironic grin.

A broadly built man with a blond beard is climbing up to the captain’s bridge. He introduces himself as the first-and only-mate. “Niko Kapanen, like the hockey player.” He eyes Joona speculatively while scratching at his beard. Then he asks slowly, “So what’s this guy Guidi done?”

“Kidnapping, murder, murder of policemen, weapon smuggling,” Joona says.

“And Sweden sends a single policeman?”

“Right.” Joona smiles.

“While we contribute this old baby carriage of a boat.”

“As soon as we have the arrest warrant, we’ll almost be a platoon,” Pasi Rannikko says in a monotone. “Urho Saarinen on the Hanko can get here in twenty minutes if I just say the word.”

“An inspection,” Niko says abruptly. “I’m sure as hell that we can demand a surprise inspection-”

“Not in Estonian waters,” Pasi Rannikko protests.

“What the fuck…” mutters Niko.

“It will all work out,” Joona says mildly.

Axel Riessen lies fully dressed on a bed in the five-room suite he has been given on Raphael Guidi’s mega yacht. Next to him is a folder with complete information about a liver donor, a man in a coma after an unsuccessful operation. All the data is perfect-the tissue type matches Axel’s completely.

Axel concentrates so intently on the ceiling that he is startled by a knock on the door. It’s the man in the white uniform.

“Dinner.”

They walk together through a spa area. Axel glimpses low-lying green beds filled with empty bottles and cans. Plastic-wrapped towels are still stacked on white marble shelves, and behind glass doors frosted for privacy, he can make out a gym. A double door of matte-surfaced metal slides open as they walk past the relaxation room with its beige wall-to-wall carpeting, sofas, and chairs as well as a short but massive table of polished limestone. The lighting is odd-points of light and shadow slide across the walls and floor. Axel raises his eyes to realize they are beneath the yacht’s enormous swimming pool. The bottom of the pool is made of glass, and overhead Axel can see the bulk of garbage and broken furniture outlined by a pale sky.