Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

‘Nelly, I only want to be with you, no one else,’ Erik interrupts. ‘I only want to look at you, at your face, and—’

‘Do you hear that?’ Nelly screams at Jackie. ‘What’s wrong with you? He doesn’t want some fucking blind bitch. Got that? He doesn’t want you.’

Jackie says nothing, she just sinks to her knees, shielding her face and head with her arms and hands.

‘Nelly, that’s enough now,’ Erik says, no longer able to keep his voice steady. ‘She understands, she’s no threat to us, she—’

‘Get up, he says that’s enough, he wants to look at you... Show your face... your pretty little face.’

‘Nelly, please—’

‘Get up!’

Jackie slowly gets to her feet and Nelly lunges with full force, but the blade misses her neck. The knife slides over her shoulder, right next to her throat. Jackie screams and falls backwards. Nelly jabs again but hits nothing but thin air. She catches the blade on a shelf on the wall and some tins of food topple over and fall to the floor.

‘Nelly, stop it, you’ve got to stop!’ Erik cries, tearing at the mesh.

Jackie shoves her with both hands and Nelly staggers backwards, falls across the wooden sticks and drops the knife.

‘Bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle,’ Nelly whimpers in a high voice as she sweeps her hands across the floor.

She grabs hold of one of the tins, gets to her feet and hits Jackie with it, hard in her stomach, left breast and collarbone. Jackie screams and manages to knock the tin from Nelly’s hand, rolls over on to her side and tries to get to her feet.

Gasping, Nelly looks around at the dark shadows in the room, and finds her knife on the floor by the wall.

‘Now I’m going to take her face,’ Nelly mutters in a voice that sounds like she’s got a mouth full of saliva.

Jackie is on her knees with her face unprotected; blood pours down her back. She’s found a small screwdriver, and gets unsteadily to her feet, panting for air.

Nelly wipes the sweat from her eyes, her green dress is smeared with dark stains. Jackie turns away from her and finds the stairs.

Nelly smiles at Erik, then goes after Jackie. She raises the knife and stabs, but the blade misses and lands wrong, cutting a wound between Jackie’s neck and shoulder.

Jackie falls forward onto both knees, hits her forehead on the first step and collapses.

Nelly staggers back with the knife in her hand, and blows the hair from her eyes when a bell suddenly rings.

With the knife trembling in her hand, Nelly glares up at the stairs with a look of indecision on her face. The bell rings again and she says something to herself, goes quickly past Jackie and up the stairs, then closes and locks the door behind her.

The two police officers wait on the veranda, but they can’t hear anything. Just the wind in the trees and the chirruping of insects in the weeds.

‘What’s the difference between a ham sandwich with gherkins... and an old man with a cigarette in his arse?’ Olle asks, ringing the bell again.

‘I don’t know,’ George says.

‘OK, I’ll ask someone else to buy the sandwiches tomorrow.’

‘Dad... really...’

Olle laughs and shines his torch at the peeling door with its rusty handle. George knocks hard on the window next to them, then steps aside.

‘Let’s go in,’ Olle says, gesturing to his son to back away down the steps as he takes hold of the door handle.

He’s about to open it when a warm glow appears. The grey hall window suddenly looks welcoming. The door is opened by an elegant woman with a headscarf round her hair and a paraffin lamp in her hand. She’s in the process of buttoning a yellow raincoat over her chest, and looks at the two police officers with bemused surprise.

‘God, I thought it was the electrician — we’ve got a power cut,’ she says. ‘What’s happened?’

‘We received an emergency call from here,’ Olle replies.

‘What for?’ she says, looking at them.

‘Is everything OK?’ George asks.

‘Yes... I think so,’ she says anxiously. ‘What sort of emergency?’

The steps creak as George takes a step closer. The woman smells strongly of sweat and there’s a splash of something on her neck.

Without knowing why, he turns round and shines the torch out into the darkness along the front of the house.

‘It was a man who called — is there anyone else in the house?’

‘Only Erik... Did he call you? My husband has Alzheimer’s...’

‘We’d like to talk to him,’ Olle says.

‘Can’t you do that tomorrow? He’s just had his Donepezil.’

She raises her hand to brush the hair from her forehead. Her fingernails are black, as if she’s been digging in the earth.

‘It won’t take long,’ Olle says, taking a step inside.

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ she says.

The two police officers look into the hall. The wallpaper is brown and a homemade rag-rug covers the worn linoleum floor. On the wall is a framed biblical quotation, and a few outdoor clothes are hanging neatly on hangers. George watches his father go into the hall, shivers and glances back at the car. Insects have been drawn to the strong headlights and are swirling like captives in their beam.

‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to speak to your husband,’ Olle says.

‘Do we have to?’ his son asks quietly.

‘We received an emergency call,’ Olle tells the woman. ‘I’m sorry... but this is how it works, we have to come in.’

‘It won’t take long,’ George says.

They wipe their shoes carefully on the doormat. A curl of flypaper hangs in the same corner of the hall as the ceiling light. There are hundreds of flies covering the sticky paper, like black fur.

‘Can you just hold this?’ the woman says, passing the paraffin lamp to Olle.

The light from the lamp flickers across the walls. George waits behind his dad as the woman pushes the door to the dark kitchen open with both hands. A creak of metal echoes through the hall. George hears her talking about her husband’s illness as she walks into the darkness of the kitchen. The stench emerging through the open door hits them. Olle coughs and follows the woman, holding the lamp in his hand.

The yellow light plays over the chaos in the kitchen. There’s broken glass, saucepans and old tools everywhere. The filthy floor is smeared with fresh blood and the drips are splattered high up the cupboard doors.

Olle turns back to his son, who’s right behind him, when the door suddenly shuts with immense force. It hits George square in the face and he’s thrown backwards, hitting his head on the hall floor.

Olle simply stares at the door, sees the huge spring, then looks at his son’s foot sticking out between the door and the post.

When he turns round the woman is holding a long-handled axe over her shoulder, and before he has time to move she strikes. The blade enters his neck, from above and off to the side. The blow sends him reeling sideways and he sees his own blood spatter the woman’s raincoat. He gets jerked off balance as she pulls the axe free and takes a step forward to stop himself falling.

She calmly takes the paraffin lamp from his hand and sets it on the worktop before lifting the heavy axe over her shoulder again.

Olle wants to shout to his son but he has no voice, he’s on the point of losing consciousness, black clouds are billowing up in his field of vision. He puts one hand to his neck and feels blood running down inside his shirt as he tries to draw his pistol, but there’s no strength left in his fingers.

The woman strikes again and everything goes black.

Out in the hall George opens his eyes and looks around. He’s lying on his back, and his forehead is bleeding.