Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

‘Why did you split up?’

‘She met a Danish architect. I don’t blame her, I actually like John... And I’m genuinely happy for her.’

‘I don’t believe that.’ She smiles.

He laughs.

‘Sometimes you just have to pretend you’re grown up, and do what you’re supposed to, say the things that grown-ups say...’

He thinks about Simone, and their backwards ceremony where they gave their rings back to each other, retracted their vows, and then at the party afterwards had a divorce cake and a last dance.

‘Have you met anyone else?’ Jackie asks quietly.

‘I’ve had a few relationships since the divorce,’ he admits. ‘I met a woman at the gym, and...’

‘You go to the gym?’

‘You should see my muscles,’ he jokes.

‘Who was she?’

‘Maria... nothing came of it, she was probably a bit too advanced for me.’

‘But you’ve never slept with your professor?’

‘No,’ Erik laughs. ‘Almost, though. I did end up in bed with a colleague of mine.’

‘Oops.’

‘No, it was OK, actually... We were drunk, I was divorced and abandoned... she and her husband were taking a break, it wasn’t a big deal... Nelly’s wonderful, but I wouldn’t want to live with her.’

‘What about patients?’

‘Occasionally you find them attractive,’ Erik says honestly. ‘That’s unavoidable, it’s an extremely intimate situation... but attraction and seduction are merely a way for the patient to avoid thinking about anything painful.’

He thinks of how Sandra used to stop in the middle of a sentence and feel her beautiful, intelligent face with her fingertips as tears welled up in her forest-green eyes. She wanted him to hold her, and when he did she dissolved in his arms, as though they were making love.

He doesn’t know if it was premeditated, but he still asked Nelly to take her on instead. Sandra had already met her, and it seemed like the natural solution.

‘So who are you seeing at the moment?’ Jackie says.

Erik looks at her smile, the shape of her face in the soft light, her dark, short hair and white neck. Rocky Kyrklund suddenly feels a very long way away, and he can’t understand how he managed to get so worried.

‘I don’t know how serious it is, but... Well, we’ve only met a few times,’ he says. ‘But I feel happy whenever I’m with her...’

‘That’s good,’ Jackie mumbles, and blushes.

She picks up another piece of bread.

‘When I’m with her I never want to go home... And I already like her daughter, and I’m also learning to play the piano like a robot,’ he says, and puts his hand on hers.

‘You’ve got soft hands,’ she says, with a big smile.

He strokes her hands, wrists and lower arms, slides his fingers up to her face, following her skin. He leans forward and kisses her gently on the mouth, several times. He looks at her, her heavy eyelids, her chin, her long neck.

She smiles as she waits to be kissed again, and they kiss, open their mouths and feel each other’s tongues, tentatively, breathing tremulously, when the doorbell suddenly rings.

They both start, and sit perfectly still, trying to breathe quietly.

The bell rings again.

Jackie hurries to stand up and Erik does the same, but when she opens the door there’s no one there. The stairwell is completely dark.

‘Mummy!’ Madeleine calls from her room. ‘Mummy!’

Jackie reaches out her hand and touches Erik’s face.

‘You should probably go now,’ she whispers.

An old woman with plastic bags wrapped over her clothes casts an anxious glance at Joona Linna as he wobbles unsteadily beside her in the queue of homeless people.

He tried to get some rest on the green line of the underground, but met a Roma man who offered him somewhere to sleep. He’s been lying on the floor of a caravan out in Huddinge, wrapped in a blanket, with his eyes closed, waiting for sleep, but his thoughts won’t leave him alone.

He hasn’t eaten or slept since Lumi left. He gave her all his money, keeping only enough to cover the journey to see Nils Åhlén.

Lack of sleep means that his migraines are coming more and more frequently. The pain is like a burning needle behind one eye, and his hip is getting even worse.

An Iranian man with friendly eyes is patiently pouring coffee for the hungry and giving them sandwiches. Most of the people here have probably been sleeping in the Central Station or in the nearby multi-storey car parks.

Joona no longer feels hungry, it’s only there as a weight that makes his legs weak. When he’s handed his coffee and sandwich, he feels like he’s going to faint. He moves to one side, unwraps the bread, takes a bite and swallows it, but his stomach starts to cramp, trying to reject the food. He puts his hand over his mouth and turns his back on the others. Dizziness forces him to his knees. He spills his coffee on the ground, takes another bite, coughs and spits it out, and feels sweat break out on his forehead.

‘How are you doing?’ the Iranian man says, having seen what happened.

‘I haven’t got round to eating anything for a while,’ he replies.

‘A busy man.’ The Iranian smiles gently.

‘Yes,’ Joona says, coughing again.

‘Just let me know if you need help.’

‘Thanks, but I’m fine,’ Joona mutters, then picks up his stick and limps away.

‘At one o’clock the soup kitchen in St Clara Church opens,’ the man calls after him. ‘Come along, you could do with sitting down and getting warm.’

Joona crosses the bridge towards the City Hall, feeds the sandwich to the swans, and walks with heavy steps up the long slope of Hantverkargatan. He stops and rests for a while outside Kungsholmen Gymnasium School, fingering the little stone in his pocket, and then carries on towards the fire station before turning off into Kronoberg Park. The foliage high above is drenched in sunlight, but the grass beneath the trees is shady, a soft moss-green.

Joona walks slowly up the hill, leaning on his stick, loosens the wire inside the railings, opens the gate and enters the old Jewish Cemetery.

‘I’m sorry I look the way I do,’ he says, putting the stone down on Samuel Mendel’s family grave.

Joona pushes a sweet wrapper away with his stick and tells his former partner that Jurek Walter is dead at last. Then he stands in silence, listening to the wind through the trees, and the sound of the children in the nearby playground.

‘I’ve seen the evidence,’ he whispers, patting the headstone before he leaves.

Margot Silverman has asked Joona to attend an unofficial meeting today. She’s probably just trying to be nice to him, letting him play at being a detective for a while.

On his way down towards Fleminggatan Joona thinks about the orgies Maria Carlsson attended.

Saturnalias, carnivals, drunken binges — they have always been part of human life. Every breath takes us closer to death, and we console ourselves with work and routines, but every so often we have to turn our regulated lives upside down, if only to prove to ourselves that we are free.

Maria Carlsson had evidently been planning to attend a saturnalia the day she was murdered. It’s impossible to say if the orgies are the link between the victims, but on her calendar Susanna Kern had circled the same July Saturday that Maria Carlsson had booked for an orgy.

Childhood friends Filip Cronstedt and Eugene Cassel are joint owners of the company Croca Communication Ltd, which had a turnover of ninety-five million euros last year. Even though they’re both registered as living abroad, it’s very obvious that they spend most of their time in Sweden.

Neither of them has visited the office on Sibyllegatan in the past six months, and they haven’t attended a board meeting in a very long time. The managing director has been in touch with Eugene, most recently just last week, but he hasn’t heard from Filip since the start of the year.