Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

A naked man pushes past and weaves into the bathroom. He urinates without closing the door, or so much as glancing at them.

Adam can’t help noticing that the leather strap between her legs is wet and slippery as he tries to adjust it. She stumbles again and leans her cheek against the wall, as the plastic clock sways on its hook.

A woman in the next room is whimpering, two men move through the passageway, and then he sees the beautiful woman with the boyish haircut in the doorway. She’s no longer wearing her pants. She’s walking slowly towards the next room when she catches sight of him. She raises her champagne glass towards him in a toast, and he sees pale lip-prints on the rim.

The woman in front of him leans her shoulder against the wall, then slides down on to the floor and rests her cheek on the carpet.

The woman with the boyish haircut comes over to Adam, her neck looks flushed, and she leans into him, pressing her forehead to his chest, then looks up at him with a smile.

Adam can’t help himself. He kisses her, and she responds, and he can feel her tongue-stud against his tongue.

He tells himself that he couldn’t help it. It’s wrong and he already knows that he’s going to regret it and will feel terrible afterwards, but all he wants right now is to have sex with her.

The woman on the floor mutters something about falling over, and pulls at his leg, making him sway.

When the woman with the boyish haircut opens his trousers, a wave of icy fear runs through him.

This is too easy, too tempting, he thinks.

But his hands are touching her breasts, they’re warm and tense and powdered with something rough and glittery.

He’s never seen such a beautiful woman.

He picks her up, pushes her back against the wall, and slides inside. Angst and lust spin through him. He groans, and sees her mouth open and Saturn sparkles on her tongue. Her body billows and her breasts quiver with his thrusts. She’s smiling, eyes closed, but she makes no noise, no groaning, and she doesn’t really seem interested in what’s happening, maybe she’s too drugged.

Two women come into the passageway and watch them for a while before they carry on.

The woman with the dildo has got to her feet, she’s standing behind him and her hands are suddenly under his T-shirt, caressing his waist and back. He tries to pull away and doesn’t know if she’s felt his gun, but she suddenly stops, moves away from him, mutters something and lurches into the bedroom.

Adam knows his cover may have been blown, but he can’t stop now. The woman says something to his neck, and he can smell a raspberry aroma from her mouth, she’s trying to get him to slow down, puts her hand on his chest, but he moves her hand away and pushes her hard against the wall.

When Adam enters the third room he immediately catches sight of Eugene Cassel. He’s wearing a black top hat, but nothing else. Five people are having sex with each other on the large bed. The shade of a table lamp is hanging askew and shaking in time with the movement of the bed. Eugene is on his knees behind a woman on all fours.

Her pearl necklace is swinging between her breasts.

The woman with the strap-on dildo comes staggering into the room after Adam. He watches her sit down on the edge of the bed, almost fall, then sit up again. Another woman takes hold of the dildo, says something and laughs. She replies, then coughs into her elbow.

‘What did you say?’

‘Tra-la-la-laa,’ she smiles.

‘OK.’

‘The cops are here, tra-la-laa,’ she repeats, and coughs again.

Eugene hears her words and stops, sits down on the bed and puts an arm on the woman’s backside, and then turns to look at Adam.

‘This is a private party,’ he says with a look of disappointment.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’ Adam says, showing his police ID.

‘Leave your card and I’ll get my lawyers to call you on Monday,’ Eugene says, and gets up from the bed.

Eugene is about forty years old, probably the oldest person in the suite of rooms. His naked, hairless body is in good shape, despite his protruding stomach. His erection has subsided. Beneath the rim of his hat a gold ring sparkles in his eyebrow, and his pupils are dilated.

‘I need to find Filip Cronstedt,’ Adam says.

‘Good luck,’ Eugene says, and raises his hat slightly. ‘He isn’t here, but I can give you a clue: follow the white rabbit.’

‘Listen,’ Adam says. ‘We can leave the hotel nice and quietly, but if I have to, I’ll put handcuffs on you in here and drag you all the way to the car.’

A woman with shimmering white skin and reddish-brown hair in two plaits over her breasts enters the room and comes over to Eugene.

‘Shall I order some food?’ she says, putting a joint to her lips.

‘Still hungry?’ he asks flirtatiously.

She nods and smiles, then exhales a narrow plume of smoke, and walks off towards the phone beside the bed.

‘OK, I’m going to have to arrest you according to chapter twenty-four, paragraph seven of the penal code,’ Adam says.

‘It’s not my fault you went to a bad school and ended up having to join the police,’ Eugene says sternly. ‘The world’s unfair, and—’

‘You know Maria Carlsson, don’t you?’ Adam butts in.

‘I love her,’ he replies slowly.

‘Give her a kiss,’ Adam says, pulling out a picture from the crime scene.

In the sharp light of the flash, the dead woman’s ravaged face, gaping mouth and broken jaw are brutally visible. Eugene whimpers, staggers backwards and knocks over a table lamp, and its brown ceramic base shatters.

Eugene Cassel has put his clothes back on, and Adam has called for a patrol car. They’re walking down the hotel corridor together.

‘I’m really sorry... I’m shocked, just tell me what I can do, I want to help, as a point of honour... but I have to speak to my lawyer first.’

Eugene has washed his face, but his cheeks are white and shiny with sweat.

‘I need to find Filip,’ Adam says.

‘He didn’t do this,’ Eugene says instantly.

‘Filip isn’t at any of the usual addresses, where is he?’

‘I know, he’s not doing too well,’ Eugene says, scratching his forehead with his hat. ‘Look, I’m not going to spread shit about Filip, but the way things are right now, I really don’t want anything to do with him. I’ve tried to get him to seek help, but...’

‘Help with what?’ Adam says.

The lift door opens and they step aside to let a woman in an orange trenchcoat get out before going in.

‘He’s been taking a bit too much,’ Eugene smiles, waving his hand towards his temple.

‘Is he an addict?’

‘Yes, but the problem with taking too much MDPV, MDPPP, MDPBP, MDAI... It doesn’t work, you just get fucking paranoid, and then you get the wrong sort of high and end up feeling so bad you want to die.’

‘Does it make you aggressive?’ Adam asks as they step out of the lift on the ground floor.

‘I mean, you’re terrified the whole time, but sort of ultra-focused at the same time. You think too quickly, don’t sleep at all... The last time I met Filip he was completely fucking manic, said he was on thousands of satellite pictures on Google, kept going on about Saturn being forced to eat his own children... He couldn’t stand still for a second, he kept ranting, waving this little knife around, he cut my hand and yelled that I should be grateful... and then he cut himself, right across the arm. He was dripping with blood as he ran off into the underground.’

They pass the lobby and walk out of the doors on to Tulegatan at the very moment a patrol car pulls up.