Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

Joona’s lungs are straining and burning, he’ll have to breathe soon, his heart is pounding desperately.

The end of one of the roof beams comes loose and falls like a heavy pendulum, crushing the kitchen table and embedding itself deep in the floor.

The linoleum floor is bubbling and the walls are rippling with fire.

A bucket of water is boiling.

The powerful spring mechanism has contorted out of shape, bending the door back on one hinge.

Joona steps over the dead police officer’s body. The hall is full of flames. The heat and howling roar wrap themselves around him and the child. He knows he needs oxygen desperately, but forces himself to fight the urge to take a breath.

Surrounded by fire, he fights his way forward and kicks the burning front door open. It comes loose from its hinges and crashes down the front steps.

Joona emerges on to the veranda with the girl in his arms. His face is black with soot and his clothes are burning. Police and paramedics rush towards them with fire-extinguishers and blankets.

Margot Silverman is forced to take a step back from the heat and lets out a gasp as a powerful contraction hits her, then feels her waters break and run down between her thighs.

The clattering downdraught from the helicopter’s rotor-blades sends rubbish and dust flying in a wide circle.

Erik is holding Maddy’s hand as the helicopter takes off. She’s lying strapped to a stretcher next to Jackie, and smiles up at him before closing her eyes.

They rise unsteadily into the air, and Erik sees Joona lying on all fours on the ground, coughing. He’s surrounded by police officers and paramedics. Margot is trying to resist as she is led away to a waiting ambulance.

The yellow glow of the burning house and the pulsating blue lights of the emergency vehicles fill the yard.

Joona slowly gets up, takes his pistol from its holster and throws it on the ground, then holds out both hands so he can be cuffed.

The helicopter turns, tilts forward and picks up speed.

Erik watches as the whole house collapses into the flames, and the smoke curls up into the sky like a black umbilical cord. The shadow of the tall chimney stretches jerkily across the ruins and neglected fields.

Erik Maria Bark is sitting in his sheepskin armchair, looking out at the white October sky through the tall windows. Detective Superintendent Margot Silverman is walking up and down across the polished oak floor, holding her baby daughter at her breast.

Erik and Rocky Kyrklund have both been cleared of suspicion of any involvement in the murders. Without apologising for anything, Margot is outlining the key points of the long reconstruction of events she has been working on since September.

Nelly probably began stalking Erik at the time of Rocky Kyrklund’s trial. She transferred her fixation to him, just as she had transferred her fixation to Rocky at her father’s funeral.

It turned out that Nelly once registered for a medical degree in the USA, but there’s no sign of any qualifications, employment history or specialist training. She probably taught herself everything on her own. Her house in Bromma contained hundreds of books about neurology, psychological trauma and disaster psychiatry.

There was nothing to suggest that her husband had any idea about her double life. She spied on Erik in secret, slowly getting closer to him and building up a collection of pictures of him in the house at the burned-out glassworks. After Erik’s divorce, she began to imagine that she and Erik were actually married.

Erik closes his eyes and hears gentle piano music through the walls as he listens to Margot’s voice.

In Nelly’s case, obsessive fixation syndrome was linked to a narcissistic personality disorder that led to her trying to resemble Erik, to become everything for him. And the more she felt she owned him, the more she needed to watch and control him.

She wanted him to see her, to love and desire her. Her need was insatiable, until in the end she was like a fire, growing and growing until everything was consumed.

Nelly was deeply marked by her religious upbringing, by the constant presence of the church and her father’s sermons. She had studied the Old Testament closely, and its jealous God convinced her that everything she felt was right.

She spied on the women she thought Erik was attracted to, and became fixated on their individual attributes. Driven by pathological jealousy, she filmed them to unmask their supposedly coquettish behaviour before stripping them of their beauty and attractiveness.

It isn’t easy to see how her jealousy was aroused, or how she selected her victims. The evidence suggests that each murder only served to accelerate the process. When there was no way back, she turned her hostility against Erik; she was like a rabid animal, prepared to attack anything and everything.

The build-up of stress led her to think that the police investigation was going too slowly, so she started to leave more clues. Tormented by jealousy, she murdered her rivals and at the same time set a trap for Erik, one that would end up leading him to her.

Nelly had killed her mother in front of her father, she had killed the woman Rocky claimed he loved in front of him, and she had been planning to kill Jackie in front of Erik.

She would have taken Madeleine as a trophy, leaving Jackie without a face, with her hand over her womb to illustrate her particular crime.

Margot falls silent, carefully moves her baby up towards her shoulder and strokes her back until she burps.

When Margot has left the house, Erik walks towards the gently rippling piano music and opens the double doors to the living room. The grand piano is standing in the middle of the floor, and appears to be playing itself. Only when he walks round the oversized instrument can he see the look of concentration on Madeleine’s face as her fingers dart across the keys.

Erik sits down quietly next to Jackie on the sofa and after a while she leans her head on his shoulder.

The paramedics managed to stabilise Jackie’s heart with a defibrillator before she was put in the helicopter. She was given emergency sedation, and underwent a seven-hour operation in the University Hospital in Uppsala.

For Erik everything feels like he’s woken up from a long nightmare, and, as Jackie laces her fingers between his, all he feels is a deep gratitude that they’re alive and that Cupid had another arrow in his quiver for him.

Madeleine lets the final notes fade before stopping the strings, then waits for silence to spread through the room before looking up and smiling at them.

Erik stands up and applauds, and doesn’t stop until Madeleine starts to adjust the stool. He walks over and sits down, changes the sheet-music, closes his eyes for a few seconds, then begins to play his étude.

On Friday, 24 October the protracted main hearing in Stockholm District Court comes to an end. The presiding judge and the three lay judges regard it as proven beyond reasonable doubt that Joona Linna is guilty of a number of serious crimes in connection to the jailbreak at Huddinge Prison.

The verdict should have been expected in spite of the extenuating circumstances, but when the sentence is pronounced Erik gets to his feet. Jackie and Madeleine stand up beside him, followed by Nils Åhlén, Margot Silverman and Saga Bauer.

Joona remains seated next to his defence lawyer, his head lowered, as the judge reads out the unanimous verdict.

‘The court finds Joona Linna guilty of violence against a public official, aggravated criminal damage, assisting a felon to escape from custody, alleging a public office, and aggravated theft... The defendant is sentenced to four years in prison.’