Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

Adam Youssef is sitting in his car next to his wife Katryna. She’s massaging her hands, and the smell of her hand cream is spreading through the car. It’s starting to get dark, and the traffic on Valhallavägen is fairly light. They’ve been to the Dramatic Institute to watch her brother Fuad’s performance about post-punk group The Cure.

The middle-aged singer, Robert Smith, was depicted sitting without any make-up on a carousel horse, talking about his years at Notre Dame Middle School.

Adam stops at a red light and looks at Katryna. She’s plucked her eyebrows a bit too much, making her face look rather cruel.

‘You’re not saying anything,’ he says.

She shrugs her shoulders. He looks at her nails. She’s painted them in a colour that shifts from violet to pink at their tips. He ought to say something about them.

‘Katryna,’ he says. ‘What is it?’

She looks him in the eye with a seriousness that makes him scared.

‘I don’t want to have the baby,’ she explains.

‘You don’t?’

She shakes her head and the red light disappears from her face. He turns back towards the traffic light. It’s turned green, but he can’t bring himself to drive on.

‘I’m not sure I want children at all,’ she whispers.

‘You’ve only just got pregnant,’ he says helplessly. ‘Can’t you wait, see if you change your mind?’

‘I’m not going to,’ she says simply.

He nods and swallows. A car blows its horn a couple of times before overtaking on the right, and then the light goes red again. He looks at the switch for the hazard-warning lights, but can’t be bothered to press it.

‘OK,’ he says.

‘I’ve made up my mind, I’ve booked an appointment to have an abortion next week.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘There’s no need.’

‘But I could wait in the car while—’

‘I don’t want you there,’ she interrupts.

He stares at the cars driving across the junction in front of them, then at some black birds flying overhead; they’re describing a wide arc in front of Stockholm’s Olympic Stadium.

He’s losing her, it’s already happening.

Recently he’s been trying to show her he loves her every day. They love each other, after all, they really do. Or at least he thought they did.

What if she’s lying when she says she’s going out with her workmates at Sephora after work every Thursday? She never talks about it, and he hasn’t been interested enough to ask or go along.

The light goes green again and he moves his foot on to the accelerator and drives on. They’re approaching Sveavägen when his phone rings.

‘Can you look and see who it is?’

She picks up the phone from the pocket by the gearstick and turns it over.

‘It’s your boss.’

Adam looks away from the traffic for a moment before taking the phone.

‘Margot?’ he says in a weak voice.

‘It’s the same deer,’ she says.

The broken edge of the deer in Sandra’s room has been matched with the little head found in Susanna Kern’s hand, one hundred per cent.

‘It seemed completely mad when we saw it on the video,’ Margot says, sounding like she’s panting for breath. ‘But all it means is that the murders are planned long before they take place, that someone has recorded them and then waited — possibly for weeks.’

‘But why?’ Adam asks, feeling his hand sweating on the wheel.

The murders are following each other like a string of pearls, a ring of roses, he thinks. The order of death is ordained long before anyone pulls the trigger. That ought to give us more time, in theory, but not in practice, seeing as the murderer doesn’t upload the videos until it’s too late for us to identify the scene or the woman.

‘I’ve found some similarities with an old case,’ Margot says.

‘What did you say?’

‘Are you listening?’

‘Yes, sorry...’

He looks at Katryna’s face, turned away from him, as he listens to Margot tell him about the similarities with an old murder in Salem, about the priest who was found guilty, about Rebecka Hansson’s ravaged face and arranged posture.

She explains that she’s checked the security arrangements at Karsudden, and that it seems impossible that anyone could have got out without it being discovered.

‘So he must have an accomplice, a disciple... unless it’s a copycat.’

‘OK,’ Adam says hesitantly.

‘Do you think I’m making too much of this?’

‘Maybe,’ he says honestly.

‘I can understand that, but right now it doesn’t matter. You’ll see what I mean when you take a look.’

‘Do you want us to go and have a word with the priest?’ Adam asks.

‘I’m on my way back from there now.’

‘Weren’t you and Jenny supposed to be having some sort of big dinner today?’

‘That’s next weekend,’ she says curtly.

‘So what did he say, then?’

‘Nothing. He didn’t even look at me,’ she says. ‘It appears I’m completely devoid of interest.’

‘Nice,’ Adam says.

‘That seems to be par for the course with him,’ she says tolerantly. ‘That was why they brought Erik Maria Bark into the team conducting the forensic psychiatric examination, he gets people to talk...’

‘Apart from our witness,’ Adam points out.

‘Practically the entire investigation had its foundations in his conversations with Kyrklund,’ Margot explains. ‘It’s a huge amount of material, we’re going to have to get people to examine every last detail.’

‘How long’s that going to take?’

‘That’s why I’m on my way to see Erik Maria Bark now,’ Margot says.

‘Now?’

‘Well, I’m already in the car, so...’

‘So am I,’ Adam laughs. ‘But I’m certainly not thinking of—’

‘I have to say, it would be brilliant to have you there,’ she interrupts amiably.

Erik is sitting in his reading chair with a copy of the Swedish Psychiatric Association’s journal in his lap, thinking about dinner at Nelly and Martin’s. They invite him round fairly often to their huge modernist house with its curved windows and a terrace that looks like the bridge of an old sailing yacht.

After dinner Martin took off his tie and led them through the house clutching a glass of Calvados in his hand. In his study he had a fairly small oil painting he had just been given by his aunt in Westphalia. It was of a gloomy-looking angel. Nelly thought it was horrible and tried to offer it to Erik. Martin agreed with her, but Erik declined the offer because it was obvious that he wanted to keep it really.

When Martin had to take a call from Sydney, Erik and Nelly went to the billiard room. Nelly poured more wine, she was already fairly drunk. Her eyes were moist and she was leaning against the raised edge of the table.

‘Martin looks at porn,’ she slurred.

‘Why do you think that?’ Erik asked, rolling a ball across the green baize.

‘I don’t care, it’s nothing perverse.’

‘Does it make you sad?’

‘Not jealous, but... I don’t know, you should see the women... They’re young and beautiful and they do things I’d never dare to try,’ she said, reaching out and touching his lips.

‘Talk to him.’

‘Is youth the only thing that counts?’ she drawled.

‘Not to me.’

‘What does matter, then? What do you want? What does any man really want?’ she said, swaying slightly.

He helped her to her bedroom, but left before she took off her mocha-coloured dress.

When Nelly called him to discuss two Iranian patients from the unit for survivors of torture out in Danderyd, he took the opportunity to thank her for dinner. She just laughed and said he should be grateful she didn’t get too drunk and embarrassing.