Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

‘Get them!’ the blond man shouts.

Joona tries to pull himself free and the seams of his jacket creak. The tattooed man starts to walk round the caravan, through the rough undergrowth.

Erik slips hurriedly underneath again, crawls over to Joona and frees his jacket.

They roll sideways, crawl between the concrete blocks and emerge into the weeds, toss aside a rusty sheet of tin and take cover beside a shack.

The tattooed man comes round the caravan, slips on the wet ground, raises his gun and takes aim.

Erik pulls Joona out of his line of fire.

The man follows them with his gun raised. They crouch down beside a kitchen sink mounted between two trees.

The gun goes off and a stack of crockery on the draining board explodes. Broken shards rain down on them.

There’s shouting and voices echo through the trees now. Erik leads Joona in behind the shack. The tattooed man follows them, the broken crockery crunching beneath his feet. The gun sighs as he expels the cartridge and feeds in a new one.

Erik can feel his legs shaking as he pulls Joona after him into the forest.

They hurry across the uneven ground, pushing through tight thickets of pine scrub and getting caught on branches.

Joona’s back is wet with sweat, his hip is burning and he’s lost all feeling in one foot. He can’t focus properly and fever is rolling through him in waves, rushing icily through his veins and making him shiver with cold.

Erik is holding him firmly by the arm as they move through the edge of the woods towards the car. Between the trees they can see the flickering light of pocket torches, and a dozen migrants arguing after they disarm the tattooed man with the gun.

Joona has to rest for a while before he and Erik cross the road to the car.

His legs give out and he all but falls into the passenger seat and closes his eyes, coughing so badly that it makes his lungs burn.

Erik runs round the car, gets in and locks the doors as there’s a sudden thud on the windscreen. The blond man with the blood-smeared face is lit up by the headlights. He’s holding a heavy branch, and raises it again as Erik starts the engine and puts his foot down. The front wheel spins on the verge, and grit and small stones fly up beneath the car.

There’s another crash and the wing mirror comes loose and dangles from its wires as they lurch back onto the road. They can already hear the sound of emergency vehicles beyond the patch of woodland.

Erik took a double dose of pills that night to get to sleep, but still wakes early and gets up at first light. He thought he had hung a blue shirt over the back of the chair the night before in advance of his trip to Karsudden, but now he can’t find it, and has to get another one from his wardrobe.

The three new murders are reminiscent of the old one, but Rocky has been locked up the whole time and the police believe he had a partner, a disciple, who for some reason has become active again. Erik has been asked to find out what Rocky remembers, and ask him about the ‘unclean preacher’.

Joona is still asleep in the guestroom when he leaves the house, performs a makeshift repair on the wing mirror with some duct tape, and drives away.

As Erik overtakes a horsebox, he thinks about how he helped Joona take his clothes off, got him into the shower, then put him to bed in the guestroom. The towel ended up covered in blood as he cleaned the knife-wound to the Finn’s hand and taped the edges of the cut together. Joona was awake the whole time, looking at him calmly. Erik gave him an intramuscular tetanus injection, some more penicillin, intravenously, got him to drink a glass of water, and then examined the injury to his hip. The old wound had caused a lot of internal bleeding, which had run down into his leg beneath the skin. Nothing was broken. Erik injected some cortisone into the muscle just above his hip, and tucked him in.

On his way back from Karsudden Hospital he needs to stop at a chemist and pick up some topiramate for Joona’s migraines.

The roads are quiet, and it’s still early in the morning as he drives past Katrineholm and approaches the large institution.

Casillas is standing on the steps outside reception, tapping his pipe against the railing. He holds out his hand to greet Erik as he approaches along the path.

‘We’ve conducted numerous neurological examinations,’ he explains as they head towards the gloomy brick buildings. ‘This isn’t my area, but the experts have ruled out surgery. They say the damage to his brain tissue is permanent... he can function, but he just has to accept the blackouts and erratic memory.’

After checking in to Section D:4 they are met by a female member of staff with laughter lines around her eyes.

‘Rocky Kyrklund is waiting for you in the calm room,’ she says, shaking hands with Erik.

Regardless of the outcome of this meeting, Erik will tell Margot about the unclean preacher, the man Rocky tried to blame nine years ago.

They stop and Casillas explains to the guard that she should wait outside the calm room and then escort Erik to the exit when he’s finished.

Erik pushes the bead curtain aside and goes in. Rocky is sitting in the middle of one of the sofas with his arms stretched out along the back of it, as if he’s been crucified. There’s a mug of coffee and a cinnamon bun on the low table in front of him. Gentle classical music is streaming from two loudspeakers.

Rocky scratches the back of his head against the wall, then looks at Erik with a completely relaxed expression.

‘No cigarettes today?’ he says after a while.

‘I can arrange that,’ Erik replies.

‘Get me a pack of Mogadon instead,’ Rocky says, tucking his hair behind his ears.

‘Mogadon?’

‘Then Jesus will forgive you your sins.’

‘I can have a word with your doctor if—’

‘You’re on Mogadon,’ Rocky interrupts. ‘Or is it Rohypnol?’

Erik reaches into his inside pocket and gives him a whole blister-pack. Rocky presses one pill out and swallows it without drinking anything.

‘Last time I was here I asked you about someone, a colleague of yours,’ Erik says, sitting down in an armchair.

‘I don’t have any colleagues,’ Rocky says darkly. ‘Because God lost me somewhere along the way... and didn’t come back to look for me.’

He moves his white plastic mug and picks up a piece of pearl sugar on his index finger.

‘Do you have any memory of having an accomplice in the murder?’

‘Why are you asking?’ Rocky wonders.

‘We talked about it last time.’

‘Did I say I had an accomplice?’

‘Yes,’ Erik lies.

Rocky closes his eyes and nods slowly to himself.

‘You know... I can’t trust my memory,’ he says, and opens his eyes again. ‘I can wake up in the middle of the night and remember a day twenty years ago and write it all down, then when I read what I wrote a week later it feels like I made it all up, like it never happened... and of course I don’t really know... It’s the same thing with my short-term memory, half the days disappear, I take my medicine, play billiards, talk to some idiots, eat lunch, then it’s all gone.’

‘But you haven’t said if you had an accomplice when you murdered Rebecka.’

‘I don’t give a damn about that, you tell me you were here, but I’ve never met you before—’

‘I think you remember that I was here.’

‘Do you?’

‘And I think you lie sometimes,’ Erik says.

‘Are you saying I tell lies?’

‘Just now you referred to the cigarettes I gave you last time.’

‘I wanted to see if you were keeping up,’ Rocky says with a smile.

‘So what do you remember?’

‘Why should I tell you?’ he asks, taking a sip of coffee then licking his lips.