Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

‘I disappeared for a few seconds as I went round the corner of the building,’ she says.

‘No,’ he says calmly.

‘It felt like it,’ she insists.

He goes back to the image of her getting out of her car, flashing her underwear, follows her across the car park, and stops the recording as she walks round the corner of the building and disappears from that screen.

‘We’ve got a camera here that ought to...’

He enlarges another square, showing the end of the building, and lots of leaves, but not her. He plays the footage slowly, and she comes into view outside the entrance.

‘OK, you’re gone for a few seconds,’ he eventually says. ‘There are always going to be tiny gaps in the system.’

‘Could someone exploit them to escape?’

The technician leans back, and the wad of chewing tobacco beneath his lip slips down over one of his teeth as he shakes his head.

‘Not even theoretically,’ he says firmly.

‘How certain are you of that?’

‘Pretty much one hundred per cent,’ he replies.

‘OK,’ Margot says. She gets up laboriously from her chair and thanks him for his help.

If Rocky couldn’t have escaped, she’s going to have to think again. The murder he committed has to be linked to the recent killings.

There are no coincidences on that level.

The priest must have had someone helping him, an apprentice on the outside, she thinks to herself.

Unless they’re dealing with a completely independent copycat, or someone with whom Rocky Kyrklund has been communicating.

The technician leads her back through the deserted corridors to Neil Lindegren’s room. The head of security is talking to a woman in a white coat when Margot walks in.

‘I need to talk to Rocky Kyrklund,’ she says.

‘But it’s not even certain that he’ll be able to remember what he’s been doing today,’ Neil says, gesturing towards the doctor.

‘Kyrklund has a serious neurological injury,’ the doctor explains. ‘His memories only come back to him as tiny fragments... and sometimes he does things without being aware of them at all.’

‘Is he dangerous?’

‘He would already be getting prepared for rehabilitation back into society if he’d shown any indication that that’s what he wants,’ Neil says.

‘He doesn’t want to get out — is that what you’re saying?’ Margot asks.

‘We start socialising most of our inmates fairly early... they get a chance to meet people outside the hospital, have supervised excursions, but he mostly keeps to himself and won’t accept any visitors... He never phones anyone, writes no letters, and doesn’t use the Internet,’ the doctor says.

‘Does he talk to the other patients?’

‘Sometimes, as I understand it,’ Neil replies.

‘I need to know which patients have been discharged from Section D:4 during the time he’s been there,’ she says, sitting down on the chair she sat on earlier.

She looks round Neil’s tidy office while he searches his computer. He’s got no photographs on display, no books or ornaments.

‘Have you found anything?’ she asks, and can hear how anxious her voice sounds.

Neil turns the screen to show her.

‘Not much,’ he says. ‘That section has a very low turnover of patients. There are a few who have been moved to other psychiatric institutions, but we’ve only had two inmates discharged in the time Rocky has been here.’

‘Two in nine years?’

‘That’s normal,’ the doctor says.

Margot opens her leather bag, takes out her notebook and writes the names down.

‘Now I want to see Rocky Kyrklund,’ she says.

Two guards with emergency alarms, batons and tasers on their belts accompany Margot through the airlocks and into the corridor where Rocky Kyrklund’s section is located.

He’s sitting on the bunk in his room watching a Formula 1 race on a television fixed to the wall up near the ceiling.

The shimmering cars move round the track like dragonflies, with their bursts of speed and metallic colours.

‘My name is Margot Silverman, I’m a superintendent with the National Criminal Investigation Department,’ she explains, leaning back against his desk chair.

‘Adam fucked Eve and then she got pregnant and gave birth to Cain,’ Rocky says, looking at her stomach.

‘I’ve come here from Stockholm to talk to you.’

‘You’re not observing the day of rest,’ Rocky states, then looks back at the television.

‘Are you?’ she asks, pulling the chair out and sitting down. ‘What have you done today?’

His face is calm, his nose looks like it was broken at some point, his cheeks are covered by a grey beard, and there are folds in his thick neck.

‘Have you been out today?’ she asks, and waits a moment before going on. ‘You haven’t been out in the exercise yard — but perhaps there are other ways of getting out.’

Rocky Kyrklund shows no reaction. His eyes are following the cars on the screen. One of the guards by the door shifts his weight and the keys on his belt jangle.

‘Who have you been in contact with on the outside?’ she asks. ‘Friends, relatives, other patients?’

The turbo engines roar. They sound like chainsaws cutting through dry wood, over and over again.

Margot looks at his stockinged feet, the worn heels and clumsy darning of one sock.

‘I’ve been told that you don’t see any visitors?’

Rocky doesn’t answer. His stomach rises and falls calmly under his denim shirt. One hand is resting between his legs, and he’s leaning back against two pillows.

‘But you do have personal contact with the staff? Some of them have worked here for many years... you must have got to know each other. Haven’t you?’

Rocky Kyrklund remains silent.

On the television a Ferrari driver comes into the pits at speed. Before his car has even stopped the crew are ready to change his tyres.

‘You have your meals with patients from other sections, and you share the exercise yard... Who do you like best? If you had to say a name?’

A bible with about sixty bookmarks in the form of red thread is lying on the bedside table. Beside it stands a dirty milk-glass. Light filtered by the trees comes through the vertical bars on the window.

Margot shifts position uncomfortably on the chair and takes the notebook containing the names of the two discharged patients out of her bag.

‘Do you remember Jens Ramberg? Marek Semiovic?’ she asks. ‘You do, don’t you?’

One car collides with another and spins round in a cloud of smoke while parts of the car fly across the track.

‘Do you have any memory of what you were doing earlier today?’

She waits a while, then stands up again as the accident is replayed on the screen, its glow reflecting off Rocky’s face and chest.

The guards don’t meet her gaze as they leave the room together. Rocky doesn’t seem to notice her departure.

As she walks back towards the car park, she can feel the technician watching her on one of the thirty cameras.

Before she drives back, she sits in the car and reads through the material about the murder of Rebecka Hansson, and thinks that Rocky Kyrklund must be involved in the new murders in some way, if only as a sort of distant rodef .

Margot sees that Erik Maria Bark was part of the team that conducted the forensic psychiatric evaluation of Kyrklund. Their conclusions, which formed the basis of the sentence, were based upon long conversations between Erik and Rocky. Erik evidently managed to gain his trust. She notes that he has taken part in almost one hundred forensic psychiatric evaluations and has been called as an expert witness during forty trials.