Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

Erik turns round and sees that Nestor has stood up to point. The glass in front of Björn Borg’s smiling face explodes and the echo of a shot resounds between the buildings. Nestor is holding one hand against the side of his neck as a torrent of blood pulses out between his fingers.

Three of the flat’s windows shatter, and distraction grenades explode, flashing with such ferocity that time seems to stand still.

Erik staggers backwards.

The silence is like a sandy beach. Slow waves roll in, then pull back with a crackle.

He feels his way through the living room, unable to see anything but the freeze-frame image of the bedroom with Nestor’s silhouette against the window, and the drops of blood hanging in the air in front of the cupboard door with death hiding under a bridge.

Erik’s hearing has been knocked out, but he feels further blasts as waves of pressure against his chest. He walks straight into the battered sofa, and feels his way along its back.

Then the shock lifts, his eyes are working again, and he makes his way round the table and magazine rack, but he’s still as giddy as if he were very drunk.

Lights from guns sweep round the hall and kitchen.

His ears start to ring, but he still can’t hear anything around him.

He locates the extra door behind the curtain, unlocks it and creeps out into the back stairwell. He almost trips over the first step but grabs hold of the handrail.

He makes his way downstairs on unsteady feet, then walks until he reaches a metal door, and finds himself in the laundry room. He feels his way along the wall until his fingers make contact with the light switch, turns the lights on and hurries past washing machines, trolleys and bins full of empty bottles as he tries to remember what Nestor said.

His head feels strangely detached, as if none of this really concerns him.

His temporary blindness lingers as silvery spots. Any light source stronger than five million candelas activates all the photocells in the eye, meaning that everything you see after being dazzled seems to happen slightly out of synch.

At the end of the long corridor is a door, and he runs up a narrow flight of steps and finds himself in a different stairwell.

Erik walks out into the cool night air. There are no emergency vehicles on this side of the block. Presumably the rapid response unit are some distance away.

Erik hurries through the little park. In the cold he can feel that one of his ears is wet. He touches his cheek and realises that he’s bleeding. Without looking round he walks straight across Karlskronavägen and past a car park and some dirty recycling bins. Broken glass crunches beneath his feet.

The tarmacked schoolyard is empty. A beer can rolls in the wind, the basketball hoops on their posts have no nets.

High above a helicopter is approaching. The clatter of the rotors is audible across the rooftops, and Erik realises that his hearing is starting to come back.

He walks on, more slowly, gasping for breath, then creeps round the building and in amongst the trees. It’s almost pitch-black here. Erik holds his hands out in front of his face to protect himself from branches, until he sees the low church wall.

Fear is beginning to catch up with him as he follows the wall through tall nettles.

Deep within the forest there’s a sudden concentration of tiny graves, decorated by children. He sees headstones with dogs’ collars hanging off them, graves with squeezy toys, drawings, photographs and flowers, homemade crosses or painted stones, burned-out candles and sooty lanterns.

It’s past two o’clock in the morning, but Joona is standing in the middle of his room at the Hotel Hansson. The floor is covered with photographs from the crime scenes and post-mortems.

Because Erik’s house is out of bounds for the duration of the search, the police have sent him to a hotel.

His jacket and pistol are lying on the untouched bed. He’s had a Caesar salad in his room, the remains are under the shiny metal dome on the low coffee table.

As Joona reads the forensic experts’ analyses of the crime scenes he compares them with the pictures, post-mortem reports and test results from the National Forensics Laboratory.

Rocky’s nightmares were genuine memories, everything he said under hypnosis was true, the same murderer has returned — the unclean preacher has started killing again. After the murder of Rebecka Hansson the serial killer went into a long cooling-off period. He waited in a state of cold-storage until the next escalation began.

For a stalker, following someone is like a drug-addiction, it’s impossible to stop, he has to get closer, make contact, give gifts, and as time passes develops a real relationship with them inside his own head. Outwardly he can exhibit submissive gratitude, but in actual fact he is extremely resentful and jealous.

The police have a list of almost seven hundred names who fit the basic outline of the perpetrator profile: bishops, pastors, priests and members of their families, deacons, churchwardens, caretakers, undertakers, preachers and faith healers.

Joona believes that the perpetrator is intentionally trying to make it look like Erik is guilty of the murders, but he can’t find any connection between Erik and any of the men on the list.

What Joona is looking for now among the reports and analysis is something definite that will allow him to cross most of the names off the list.

There’s nothing that stands out in the material, but perhaps different elements could be combined in an unexpected way. Joona tries separating the pieces of the puzzle and seeing if there are other ways of putting them together.

He walks across to the pictures of the deer’s head and a tub of melted ice cream, and stops in front of the photograph of Sandra Lundgren’s murder weapon. The stained knife was photographed where it was found, on the floor beside her dead body. The flash from the camera shimmers like a dark sun in the brown blood.

He reads that it is a chef’s knife, with a stainless steel blade that’s twenty centimetres long, and then examines Erixon’s careful sketches attempting to reconstruct the brutal process of the attack from blood traces and spatter patterns.

The perpetrator has worn the same footwear each time: touring boots, size 43.

Joona tries to identify clues that have been missed, things that don’t match the overall picture. He pores over picture after picture, and stops in front of a photograph with the number 311: a blue pottery fragment that resembles a bird’s skull, with white bubbles along one edge, and a sharp point that’s smooth as ice.

He leafs forward to the item in Erixon’s report and reads that it was tucked between the cracks in Sandra’s floor, and was only found when low-level light was shone across the floor. According to the laboratory analysis, the tiny, two-millimetre-long fragment consists of glass, iron, sand and chamotte clay.

Joona moves to the report from Adam Youssef’s home. In spite of the gunfire, the murderer chose to go through with his plan, and according to the preliminary report Katryna was missing the false fingernails from both her hands.

The preacher takes trophies, then marks the places he’s taken them from with the victim’s hands, like a judgement in a trial.

At quarter past three Anja Larsson calls to say that she has just been informed about an imminent operation. The police have received a tip-off that is regarded as highly credible. A man claims that Erik is sleeping in the spare room in his flat. Erik had been his psychiatrist some years ago.

‘The man has been told to leave the flat.’

‘Who’s leading the operation?’ Joona asks.

‘Daniel Frick.’