Joona Linna Crime Series Books 1-3: The Hypnotist, The Nightmare, The Fire Witness. Lars Kepler

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      Empty of thoughts, Erik goes over to his desk and opens the top drawer. Among pens, rubbers, and paper clips are assorted boxes of pills. He presses three different ones into his hand and swallows them.

      He thinks about telling Daniella he hasn’t time to attend the morning briefing but forgets to do it. He leaves his office and hurries to the cafeteria, where he drinks a cup of coffee standing in front of the aquarium, following a shoal of neon tetras with his eyes as they search around a shipwreck made of plastic. Then he wraps a sandwich in several paper napkins and stuffs it into his pocket.

      In the lift to the ground floor he catches sight of himself in the mirror, meets the blank eyes. His face is sorrowful, almost absent. He thinks about the sensation in your stomach when you fall from a great height: the helpless, dizzying feeling coupled with a heady, almost sexual rush. He has hardly any strength left, but the pills lift him up onto a bright plane where all the contours are sharply defined. He can keep going a little longer, he thinks. All he needs to do is hold it together long enough to find his son again. Then everything can fall apart.

      As he drives to the meeting with Joona and Evelyn, he tries to retrace his steps over the past week. His keys could have been copied on several occasions. Last Thursday his jacket was hanging up in a restaurant in Södermalm, keys in the pocket, with nobody to keep an eye on it. It has been over the back of the chair in his office at the hospital, on a hook in the staff cafeteria, and in plenty of other places. The same is doubtless true of Simone and Benjamin’s keys.

      While manoeuvring through the chaos caused by the redevelopment around Fridhemsplan, he gets out his phone and calls Simone’s number.

      “Hello?” she answers, sounding stressed.

      “It’s me.”

      “Has something happened?” she asks anxiously.

      There is a roaring noise in the background, as if from a machine, then a sudden silence.

      “No, no. I was just thinking that you ought to check the computer, not just e-mails but everything: what he’s downloaded, what sites he’s visited, any temporary folders, if he’s been visiting chat rooms—”

      “Obviously.”

      “I’m sorry. I just wasn’t sure if you’d thought of it.”

      “We haven’t started on the computer yet,” she says.

      “The password is Dumbledore.”

      “I know,” she says. “I have to go.”

      Erik drives past police headquarters and sees its changing appearance: the smooth copper façade, the concrete extension, and finally the tall, original building in yellow plaster.

      “Simone,” he says, “have you told me the truth?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “About what happened. About the door being open the first time, about seeing someone dragging Benjamin through—”

      “What do you think?” she yells, ending the call.

      Erik hasn’t the energy to look for an empty parking space. A parking ticket has no meaning; it will be due in a completely different life. Without a second thought, he pulls up right in front of the police station. The tyres rumble and he stops at the foot of the enormous flight of steps facing the town hall.

      He hurries around the building and up the slope, heading towards the park and the entrance to the National Police Headquarters. A father walks along with three little girls, all wearing Lucia costumes over their snowsuits. The white dresses strain over the thick winter clothing. Perched on top of their hats, the children are wearing crowns with candles in them, and one of them holds a candle in a gloved hand. Erik suddenly remembers how Benjamin loved to be carried when he was little; he would cling tightly with his arms and legs and say, Carry me, you’re big and strong, Daddy.

      Erik is out of breath by the time he reaches the entrance, a tall, glowing glass cube. He crosses the white marble floor of the lobby to the reception area on the left, where a man sits behind the open wooden desk, speaking on the phone.

      Erik explains why he is there; the receptionist nods briefly, taps away on his computer, and picks up the phone. “Reception here,” he says, in a subdued tone. “Erik Maria Bark to see you …”

      Erik sits on a long bench of black creaking leather and gazes around him: at a work of art made of green glass, at the motionless revolving doors. Beyond the huge glass wall is another hallway made of glass leading through an open inner courtyard to the next building. Erik sees Joona Linna pass the waiting area to the right; he presses a button on the wall and walks through the revolving doors. He throws a banana peel into an aluminum waste bin, waves to the man on reception, and comes straight over to Erik.

      As they walk to Evelyn’s safe house, Joona summarises what has emerged during his interviews with her: the confirmation that she had intended to take her own life in the forest, the years of sexual abuse she suffered at Josef’s hands, his violence toward their younger sister if Evelyn refused him, his eventual demands for full sexual intercourse, Evelyn’s withdrawal to the summer cottage, Josef’s intimidation of her boyfriend, Sorab, to obtain her whereabouts.

      “When Josef showed up at Sonja’s cottage on his birthday, she refused once again to have intercourse with him, and he told her she knew what would happen and it would be her fault,” Joona explains. “It looks as if Josef planned to murder his father, at least. We don’t know why he chose that particular day. It may have been a matter of opportunity, the fact that his father was going to be alone somewhere away from home. In any event, last Monday, Josef Ek packed a change of clothing, two pairs of overshoes, a towel, his father’s hunting knife, a bottle of gasoline, and a box of matches in his gym bag and cycled over to the Rödstuhage playing field. After he’d killed his father and mutilated the body, he took the keys from his father’s pocket, went to the women’s locker room, showered and changed, locked up after himself, set fire to the bag containing the bloodstained clothes in a children’s playground, then bicycled home.”

      “And what happened next, at home, was more or less the way he described it under hypnosis?” asks Erik.

      “Not more or less—exactly, or so it seems,” says Joona, clearing his throat. “But the motive—what suddenly made him attack his little sister and his mother—that’s something we don’t know.” He looks at Erik, his expression troubled. “Perhaps he just had a feeling that he wasn’t finished, that Evelyn hadn’t been punished enough.”

      Joona stops outside an unremarkable house and calls to say that they’ve arrived. He taps in the code, opens the door, and lets Erik into the simple entrance hall.

       51

       sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): morning

      Two police officers are waiting outside the lift when they reach the third floor. Joona shakes hands with them and then unlocks an unmarked security door. Before he pushes the door open completely, he knocks.

      “Is it all right if we come in?” he asks, through the gap.

      “You haven’t found him, have you?”

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