Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

Linda Bergman said she was still in contact with Maria Carlsson when Filip suddenly withdrew from the saturnalias.

But the orgies went on, attended by both Maria and Eugene.

There seem to be a number of regular participants who attend every time, while a limited number of new people are invited along for a trial.

According to Linda, passcards for the hotel suite double as entrance tickets.

The investigative team have little expectation of finding Filip at the hotel, but they’re relatively confident that Eugene will be there.

According to Maria Carlsson’s Filofax, there’s an orgy planned for next Saturday, and another one in three weeks’ time. These two dates may be their only hope of finding Eugene and tracing Filip.

Adam, Margot and Joona are sitting at a table in the new part of The Doors bar. A football match is playing on the television. Margot is eating a large hamburger and drinking water. Adam and Joona are both drinking black coffee.

‘Filip doesn’t seem to have left Sweden,’ Adam says, arranging some printouts on the table. ‘He’s here, but he’s not registered as living here, and he doesn’t appear to have been in any of the homes owned by the company.’

Filip Cronstedt’s face looks up at them from the table. The photograph shows a man in his forties with back-combed blond hair and pale eyebrows. He looks like a friendly, considerate banker. His furrowed brow and the set of his cheeks and chin suggest hard-living, but that only makes him look more sympathetic.

‘I don’t know if I believe that he killed Maria Carlsson,’ Adam adds, pointing a finger at the picture. ‘It doesn’t make sense... I mean, he hasn’t got a history of violence, he’s got no criminal record, he’s never even been suspected of anything, and there’s no mention of him in Social Service records.’

‘He can afford good lawyers,’ Margot says.

‘Yes, but even so,’ Adam says.

A woman is dragging a fifty-litre barrel of beer across the floor. A family with three young girls walk past the scratched window overlooking Tulegatan.

‘All we know is that Filip Cronstedt started to get jealous of Maria,’ Margot says, and puts some French fries in her mouth. ‘He wanted her to stop going to the saturnalias, but she kept going... and now she’s dead, and that stud in her tongue is missing...’

‘Yes, but...’

‘I’m thinking,’ she goes on. ‘I’m thinking that he became obsessed with Maria Carlsson, stood on the sidelines watching her at the orgies... So far, so good — but is he a serial killer?’

‘Or a spree killer,’ Adam says. ‘We’ve only got two murders, and that’s not actually enough to—’

‘But we’re hunting a serial killer,’ she interrupts.

‘That doesn’t really matter,’ Joona says quietly. ‘But Margot’s right, because...’

He shuts his eyes as his migraine flares up behind his eye and he raises his hand slowly to his head. While the pain subsides he sits absolutely still and tries to remember what he was going to say about spree killers. The term refers to a murderer who has killed at least two people in different places, with barely any time between them. A spree killer doesn’t have the serial killer’s lifelong, sexualised attitude towards the dramaturgy of murder, but commits his murders as a direct response to a crisis.

‘OK,’ Adam says after a while.

‘It’s still too early to say anything about Filip,’ Margot says with her mouth full. ‘It could be him, I think that’s a possibility, but...’

‘In that case, the orgies form part of his fantasy about killing,’ Joona says, opening his eyes.

‘We’ll carry on with what we’ve got,’ Margot declares. ‘This evening is the only time we know where Eugene Cassel is going to be... and if anyone can tell us where Filip is, it’s Cassel.’

‘Mind you, we can’t just storm into a private orgy,’ Adam says with a grin.

‘Only one of us needs to go in. Find Eugene and talk to him, nice and calmly,’ Margot says, then takes a large bite of her hamburger.

‘You can’t work out in the field, seeing as you’re pregnant,’ Adam says.

‘Does it show?’ she asks as she chews.

‘OK, what the hell, I’ll do it,’ Adam says.

‘This isn’t a raid,’ Margot says. ‘There’s no obvious threat... We’ll call it a meeting with an anonymous informant, then we don’t need to run it past management beforehand.’

Adam sighs and leans back.

‘So now I’ve to go in among a load of...’

He falls silent, stares into space with glazed eyes, and shakes his head.

‘Obviously it’s a bit tricky, approaching people in a situation like that, but what can we do?’ Margot says.

‘I don’t get it... What sort of people would want to go to an orgy?’

‘I don’t know, I haven’t had group sex for at least ten years,’ Margot says, dipping some fries in ketchup.

Adam stares at her open-mouthed as she chews, a slight smile on her face. She wipes her fingers on a napkin and then looks up at him.

‘I was joking,’ she says with a grin. ‘I’m a nice girl, I promise, but I was actually involved in a raid on a swingers’ club when I worked in Helsingborg... As I recall, it was mostly just men in their sixties, with big bellies and skinny legs—’

‘Enough!’ Adam said, slumping down in his chair.

‘I’ll give your wife a call tomorrow and ask what time you got home, just so you know.’

‘Fine,’ Adam sighs, then grins.

‘Think of it as a job, nothing more,’ Joona says. ‘The other people are irrelevant, you just go straight in and talk to Eugene, get him to tell you where Filip is, and arrest him as soon as you’re sure you’ve got the information.’

‘Arrest him?’

‘To stop him warning Filip,’ Joona says, looking Adam in the eye.

‘If you find out anything about Filip,’ Margot says, ‘then...’

‘Then we call you,’ Adam fills in.

‘No, I’ll be asleep,’ she says, and puts the last of the food in her mouth. ‘If you find out anything, hand it over to the rapid-response unit.’

The two men remain seated at the table after Margot has left the pub. A few elderly patrons get up from their table and go outside to smoke.

‘Where are you staying?’ Adam asks, looking at Joona.

‘There’s a campsite on the outskirts of Huddinge.’

‘The Roma?’

Joona doesn’t reply, takes a sip of coffee and looks out of the window.

‘I’ve looked you up,’ Adam says. ‘I saw that... the year before you were injured you taught the Special Operations Unit in military Krav Maga... Sorry, but looking at you now, it’s hard to believe you were a paratrooper.’

Joona looks at his own hands and thinks that what he liked most was jumping from a great height, plummeting down into a terrible storm.

‘Have you ever been to Leeuwarden?’ he asks Adam.

Joona was the only Swede to be sent to the Netherlands to be trained in unconventional close combat and guerrilla warfare. That was at a base north of Leeuwarden. He used to go for long runs along the sandy beaches of the Wadden Sea when the tide had gone out.

The psychedelic room at the Birger Jarl Hotel that Linda Bergman described is actually known as ‘the Retro Room’, and can be booked just like any other room.

The hotel underwent a complete renovation at the turn of the millennium. All the rooms were gutted and the décor completely changed. Once the workmen had left, it turned out that room 247 had been forgotten.

The room had somehow been ignored during every refurbishment since the hotel was built in 1974.

It’s still intact, like a small time-capsule from a bygone age.