Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

Erik is standing with his back to the door, and raises his hands to hold Rocky back, but he doesn’t stand a chance of defending himself. Rocky just brushes his arms aside and punches him in the chest with his fist. The blow feels like a sledgehammer. All the air goes out of his lungs and he can’t breathe. The next punch strikes exactly the same place and Erik’s head slams back against the door with a dull thud.

He is struggling to stay upright. The zip on his jacket catches on the textured wallpaper as he moves sideways to get away. He raises a hand to fend Rocky off, coughs and tries to breathe.

‘Do you want me to look into your alibi?’ he hisses.

‘Liar!’ Rocky roars, grabbing Erik by the chin and pressing his mouth closed.

Rocky pulls him towards him and slaps the side of his head so hard that his vision goes black. Erik staggers to one side with the force of the blow, falls over the plastic chair and careers into the metal bed-frame with a force that makes his back creak. He pulls the covers off the bed as he slides down on to the floor, his cheek burning.

‘That’s enough, now,’ Erik gasps, shuffling backwards.

‘Shut up,’ Rocky yells, and shoves the plastic chair aside.

As he leans forward Erik kicks out at him and hits him in the chest. Rocky catches hold of his foot and Erik kicks out with the other one. His shoe comes off and Rocky stumbles back just as the guard comes in holding a taser.

‘Stand against the wall, Rocky! Hands behind your head, feet wide apart.’

Erik gets slowly to his feet and adjusts his clothes. He picks up the covers from the floor with trembling hands, and puts them back on the bed.

‘It might look a bit odd,’ he gasps, tasting blood in his mouth. ‘But I had cramp in my leg and Rocky was helping me take my shoes off.’

The guard stares at him.

‘Cramp?’

‘It feels better already.’

Rocky is standing quietly to the side with his fingers laced behind his neck. The back of his white vest is wet with sweat.

‘What have you got to say, Rocky?’

He lowers his hands and turns round slowly, scratches his beard and nods.

‘I was helping the doctor with his shoe,’ he says gruffly.

‘We did shout, but no one heard,’ Erik explains. ‘I tried lying down on the bed, but slipped off onto the floor.’

‘Is it feeling better now?’ Rocky asks, picking Erik’s shoe up from the floor.

‘Much better, thanks.’

The guard stands there with the taser in his hand, looks at them, then nods, although something obviously isn’t right.

‘The visit’s over,’ the guard says.

‘If you can just tell me Olivia’s surname, I can find her,’ Erik says, meeting Rocky’s gaze.

‘Her name is Olivia Toreby,’ he says simply.

Erik leaves with the guard, follows him along the corridor, and sees that Casillas is talking to the head of section in the dayroom.

‘Did it go OK?’ Casillas calls.

Erik stops in the doorway, his cheek still stinging from the force of the blow.

‘I have to say, you’ve done a remarkable job with the patient,’ he replies.

‘Thanks,’ Casillas smiles. ‘I’m pretty sure he’d have been released if he’d applied for parole... but he doesn’t seem to think he’s done his penance yet.’

Erik limps towards his car, gets out his phone and dials Margot’s number to tell her about Olivia Toreby.

Joona opens his eyes and looks up at the white ceiling. Daylight is filtering into the room around the edges of the dark-blue roller-blind. The window is open slightly, and fresh air is streaming in, cooling the clean sheets.

There are blackbirds singing in the garden.

He looks at the alarm clock and sees that he has slept for thirteen hours. Erik has left him a phone, and on the bedside table are two pink capsules and three tablets on top of a note saying ‘Eat us now, drinks loads of water, and have a look in the fridge’.

Joona swallows the drugs, empties the glass of water, then groans as he stands up. But he can at least bear to put some weight on his leg. The pain is still there, but it’s far from severe. The nausea and pain in his stomach have vanished as though they never existed.

He goes over to the window and looks out at the apple trees as he dials Lumi’s number.

‘It’s Dad,’ Joona says, feeling his heart tighten.

‘Dad?’

‘How are you getting on? Do you like Paris?’

‘It’s a bit bigger than Nattavaara,’ his daughter replies in a voice that could be Summa’s.

‘How’s college?’

‘I’m still finding it confusing, but I think it’s pretty good...’

Joona reassures himself that she’s got everything she needs, and Lumi tells him to shave off his beard and join the police again, and then they end the call.

Erik has left him a pair of black sweatpants and a white T-shirt. The clothes are too small, the trousers flutter round his calves and the T-shirt is tight across his chest. By the bed is a pair of white slippers, the sort you get in hotels.

Joona thinks that mysteries are only mysteries until you have discounted all the impossibilities.

When he was in hospital Margot told him that the videos had been recorded long before the murders took place.

Maria Carlsson owned nothing but black underwear, but the seams of the tights she was wearing when she died were different to the ones in the video. The spoon found in the tub of ice cream in Susanna Kern’s home wasn’t the same one that was in the video, and the post- mortem will probably show that Sandra Lundgren hadn’t injected herself with insulin in her thigh on the day she was murdered.

Classic stalking. The women have been watched and their behaviour mapped over a long period.

Joona leans against the walls as he walks through the house towards the kitchen. He tells himself that he’ll call the police in Huddinge and follow up the previous day’s events as soon as he’s had something to eat.

He drinks some more water, puts coffee on, and looks in the fridge, where he finds half a pizza and a tub of yoghurt.

On the kitchen table, next to Erik’s empty coffee cup, are printouts relating to an almost ten-year-old case that was tried in Södertälje District Court.

Joona eats the cold pizza as he reads the verdict, the post-mortem analysis and the entire preliminary investigation report.

The old murder has striking similarities to the recent ones.

The vicar of the parish of Salem, Rocky Kyrklund, was arrested and convicted for the murder of a woman called Rebecka Hansson.

Joona was pretty out of it yesterday when Erik was taking care of him, but he can remember what Erik said. Margot Silverman had asked him to go and talk to a guy who had been sentenced to secure psychiatric care. She wanted Erik to find out if he had any accomplices or disciples.

She must have meant Rocky Kyrklund.

Margot’s thinking along the right lines, Joona thinks, bracing his arms on the table as he stands up again. He walks barefoot into the back garden, sits down on the cushionless garden swing for a while, then walks over to the shed.

On one end is a water-damaged dartboard. Joona opens the door and gets out the cushions for the swing-seat. He goes back to the shed to close the door, but stops and looks at the neat arrangement of DIY tools and gardening implements on the wall.

In the turning circle at the end of the road an ice-cream van starts to play its jingle. Joona picks up an old Mora knife with a red wooden handle and tests its weight, then takes down a smaller knife in a plastic sleeve, walks out and shuts the door behind him.

He puts the smaller knife on the ground beside the swing-seat, then stands in the middle of the lawn and weighs the Mora knife in his right hand. He changes his grip, tries to find some sort of balance, a sense of lightness, puts the knife down by his hip and stretches out the other arm, feeling it tug at his wound.