Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

The corridor leads to a large storeroom with foil-covered ventilation pipes running across the ceiling.

In the flashing lights from a stage they can make out some thirty men and maybe ten women. There are sofas and armchairs everywhere. Along one wall is a row of plastic-wrapped pallets full of furniture.

It’s so dark that it’s difficult to discern any faces.

The throbbing music keeps repeating one particular musical phrase, over and over again.

On the stage a naked woman is dancing round a vertical metal pole.

Joona and Erik walk forward carefully in the weak light. The room smells of damp clothes and wet hair.

They keep an eye out for Rocky’s bulky frame. He ought to be visible against the light of the stage if he stands up.

They know this is a gamble. Rocky may already have been here and left. But if he managed to get hold of any money, he’s probably bought some heroin, in which case he could well still be here in the Zone.

A drunk is trying to negotiate a price with a woman, and one of the guards appears quickly and says something that leaves the man nodding.

The music changes, blending seamlessly into a different rhythm. The woman on the stage squats down with her thighs spread wide on either side of the pole.

A guard is standing by the bar, gazing out at the room with a motionless face.

Joona sees a black German Shepherd moving among the furniture; it looks accustomed to being there as it eats something from the floor, sniffs and moves on.

A large man emerges from the corridor. He blows his nose and heads towards the bar. Joona moves aside and tries to keep an eye on him.

‘It’s not him,’ Erik says.

They stop by the wall not far from the stage. It’s almost dark, but the reflected glow from the lights rigged up on the ceiling is illuminating an assortment of shirts and faces.

Right in front of the stage sits a man in black-rimmed glasses on a red armchair with a label hanging from its arm. On the back of the man’s hand is a tattoo of a cross with a shining star at its centre.

On a low table two bottles are clinking together with the rhythm of the bass. There are very few drugs in sight. Someone is snorting cocaine, a couple more slip pills between their lips, but sex is clearly the main commodity being traded here.

A young woman in a black latex bikini and a studded collar comes over to Erik, smiles and says something he can’t make out. She runs a hand through her short blonde hair as she bats her eyelids at him. When he shakes his head she moves on to the next man.

A film is showing on a television screen behind the bar: an aggressive man is walking round a room, hitting doors and pulling drawers open. A woman is shoved into the room, turns and tries to open the door again. The man goes over to her, pulls her backwards by her hair, and hits her face so hard that she falls to the floor.

Just off to one side of Erik and Joona stands a man with a coarse face and fleshy forehead. The shoulders of his grey jacket are wet with rain.

‘Anatoly? I handed my money over when I was searched,’ he says in a gruff voice.

‘I know, welcome,’ says a voice that sounds adolescent.

Joona moves sideways and sees that the voice belongs to a tall and very young man with yellowish skin and dark rings under his eyes.

‘I was thinking of going to the room — can I buy two wraps of brown?’

‘You can buy whatever you like,’ the young man replies. ‘We’ve got some top quality from southern Helmand, the usual from Iran, Tramadol, or...’

Their conversation tails off as they move away between the sofas and people.

The dog trots after them and licks the young man’s hand. Joona falls in behind them, and sees them turn off to the right at the side of the stage.

Erik manages to stumble into a low lounge table. A beer bottle topples over and rolls onto the floor. He goes a different way, stands on a wet umbrella and carries on round a leather sofa.

The guard by the stage watches him walk.

A young woman with round, pockmarked cheeks is sitting astride a man in a leather vest. He twines a lock of her dark hair around his index finger as he talks on his phone.

In the darkness Joona can no longer see the young man who was dealing heroin. There are too many people everywhere now. He looks round and sees the black dog slip through a swaying beaded curtain. The beads settle long enough to form the Mona Lisa’s face briefly before they part again and a young woman with bare breasts and a pair of tight leather trousers walks out.

The small beads tinkle as Erik and Joona pass through the Mona Lisa. The air is suddenly thick with sweet smoke, sweat and dirty clothes. All over the coarsely polished cement floor are worn and battered sofas and armchairs. The music from the stage is still audible, but only as the thud of the heavy bass.

Semi-naked people are sitting on the sofas or on the floor itself. Most of them look as though they’re asleep, while others move lethargically.

They’re all moving with ghostly slowness, drifting through the realm of the stoned.

They walk past a middle-aged woman sitting on a stained sofa with no cushions. She’s wearing jeans that are too big for her and a flesh-coloured bra.

Her face is thin and focused as she holds her lighter under a crumpled piece of tinfoil and then hurriedly inhales the smoke through a small plastic straw. A slender curl of smoke twines up towards the corrugated metal roof.

The cement floor is littered with cigarette butts, sweet wrappers, plastic bottles, syringes, condoms, empty packs of pills and a bundle of fabric samples.

Through the smoke Joona can see the man named Anatoly sitting with the new guest on a sofa that’s been sliced open, its stuffing hanging out.

Joona and Erik weave through the furniture.

A skinny man in his seventies is sitting on a stained flowery sofa with two young women.

On the floor behind it a man lies unconscious in just his underpants and white socks. He looks almost like a child, but his eyes and cheeks are sunken. The syringe is gone, leaving the needle with its little plastic end sticking out of a vein in the back of his hand. On an armchair beside him sits a woman with an apathetic expression on her face. After a while she bends forward and pulls the needle from his hand, but drops it on the floor.

Joona sees a guard dragging a man who has thrown up, and can’t help thinking that this place is the complete opposite of the rich kids’ saturnalias.

No wishes come true in the Zone. Here there are only prisoners and slaves, and the money only flows in one direction. Everyone is alone in their addiction, drained of all they have until they die.

He glances behind him and sees Anatoly stand up and walk through the room. The black dog follows him.

A fat man in camouflage trousers and a black jacket pushes away a woman in pink underwear and high heels. She goes back and tries to kiss his hands as she begs him for a fix. The man is impatient, tells her to pull herself together, that she hasn’t earned enough.

‘I can’t, they hurt me, they—’

‘Shut up, I don’t give a fuck — you need to do three more customers,’ he says.

‘But, darling, I don’t feel good, I need—’

She tries to stroke his cheek, but he grabs hold of her hand, pulls her little finger and bends it sharply backwards. It happens so quickly that at first the woman doesn’t seem to realise what’s going on. She stares wide-eyed at her broken finger.

A man with a salt-and-pepper moustache walks over to them, exchanges a few words with the other man, then pulls the sobbing woman through the room towards the curtain. She stumbles and loses a shoe, then he hits her and she falls over, dragging a standard lamp down with her.