The Hypnotist. Ларс Кеплер

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СКАЧАТЬ dresses quickly, then goes rummaging for something in the wardrobe. Next, she hears a metallic ping when he tosses the shoehorn back into the drawer. After a little while she hears the faint sound of the street door closing.

      She tries for a long time to get back to sleep, but without success. She doesn’t think it sounded as if Erik was talking to a police officer. He sounded too relaxed. Maybe, she tells herself, he was just tired.

      She gets up to pee, has a yoghurt drink, and goes back to bed. Then she starts to think about what happened ten years ago, and all chance of sleep is gone. She lies there for half an hour, and then, unable to resist her suspicions, switches on the bedside light, picks up the phone, and thumbs through the display to find the last incoming call. She stares at the number for a moment, knowing she ought to turn off the light and go back to sleep, but finally she calls the number anyway. It rings three times, there is a click, and she hears a woman laughing a short distance away from the phone.

      “Stop it, Erik,” says the woman happily, and then the voice is very close. “Daniella Richards. Hello?”

      Simone says nothing. The woman waits a bit, then says aloha in a wearily sarcastic voice before ending the call. Simone remains sitting there, telephone in hand. She tries to understand why Erik said it was a police officer, a male police officer, who rang. She wants to find a reasonable explanation, but she can’t stop her thoughts from finding their way back to that time ten years ago when she suddenly realised that Erik was deceiving her.

      It just happened to have been the same day Erik informed her that he was finished with hypnosis forever.

      Simone remembers that she hadn’t been at her newly opened gallery that day, a rare occasion; maybe Benjamin wasn’t in school, maybe she’d taken the day off, but at any rate she was sitting at the kitchen table in the terrace house in Järfälla going through the mail when she caught sight of a pale blue envelope addressed to Erik. The sender’s name on the back simply said: Maja.

      There are times when you know with every fibre of your being that something is wrong.

      Simone had been married to Erik for eight years when, fingers trembling, she opened the envelope from Maja. Ten colour photographs fell out onto the kitchen table. The pictures had not been taken by a professional photographer. Blurred close-ups: a woman’s breast, a mouth and a naked throat, pale green underwear, black hair in tight curls. Erik was in one of the pictures. He looked surprised and happy.

      Maja was a pretty, very young woman with dark, strong eyebrows and a large, serious mouth. In the only photo that showed her completely, she was lying on a narrow bed dressed in just her underwear, strands of black hair falling over her broad white breasts. She looked happy, too, a faint blush high on her cheeks.

      It is difficult to recall the feeling of being deceived. For a long time everything was just a sense of sorrow, a strange, empty craving in her stomach, a desire to avoid painful thoughts. And yet she remembers that the first thing she felt was surprise, a gaping, stupid surprise at being so comprehensively taken in by someone she had trusted completely. And then came the embarrassment, followed by a despairing sense of inadequacy, burning rage, and loneliness.

      Simone lies in bed as these thoughts go round and round in her head, spinning off in various painful directions. She remembers the way Erik looked into her eyes and promised he hadn’t had an affair with Maja—that he didn’t even know anyone named Maja. She had asked him three times, and each time he had sworn he didn’t know a Maja. Then she had pulled out the photos and thrown them at him, one by one.

      Slowly the sky grows light above the city. She falls asleep a few minutes before Erik returns. He tries to be quiet, but when he sits on the bed she wakes up. Erik says he’s going for a shower. Looking up at him, she can tell he’s taken a lot of pills again. Heart pounding, she asks him the name of the policeman who called during the night. When he doesn’t answer, she realises that he’s passed out in the middle of the conversation. Simone tells him she called the number, and did a policeman answer? No, it was some giggling woman called Daniella. But Erik just can’t keep awake; it’s infuriating. Then she yells at him, demands to know, accuses him of having destroyed everything, just when she had begun to trust him again.

      She’s sitting up in bed now, staring at him. He doesn’t seem to understand her agitation. She says the words that, no matter how many times she has thought them, seem no less painful, sad, or distant from her hopes.

      “It might be best if we separate.”

      That seems to get his attention momentarily. But Simone is already gathering her pillow and the duvet. Entering the guest room, she lies on the sofa and cries for a long time, then blows her nose. Now it’s really morning. She hasn’t the strength to deal with her family right now. She goes to the bathroom, washes, then creeps back to the bedroom. Erik is out like a light, so she collects an outfit and dresses in the guest room. She hastily puts on her makeup and leaves the apartment to have breakfast somewhere before she goes to the gallery.

      She reads in a café in Kungsträdgården for a long time before she can manage to get down the sandwich she ordered with her coffee. She puts her newspaper down for a moment and looks through the café’s big window, which overlooks a large stage. A dozen or so men are preparing for some kind of event. Pink tents have been erected. A barrier is placed around a small ramp. Suddenly something happens. The men stumble backwards, yelling at one another. There is a crackling noise and a rocket shoots up into the air. Simone leans forward to follow its flight. It rises into the bright morning sky, then bursts in a transparent blue glow, and the explosion reverberates between the buildings.

       19

       tuesday, december 8: morning

      Simone sits in the office of the gallery, taking in the large self-portrait of the artist Sim Shulman posing in a black ninja costume, a sword raised high above his head, when the phone in her bag begins to buzz.

      “Simone Bark,” she answers, forcing the sadness out of her voice.

      “Hello, it’s Siv Sturesson from Edsberg School,” says an older woman.

      “Oh,” says Simone hesitantly. “Yes?”

      “I’m just calling to see how Benjamin is.”

      “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

      “He’s not in school today,” says the woman, “and he hasn’t called in sick. We always get in touch with the parents in cases like this.”

      “Right,” says Simone. “I’ll call home and check. Both Benjamin and his father were still there this morning when I left. I’ll get back to you.”

      She rings off and immediately calls the apartment. It isn’t like Benjamin to oversleep or flout the rules.

      Nobody picks up at home. Erik is supposed to have the morning off. A fresh fear sinks its claws into her, before it occurs to her that Erik is probably lying there snoring with his mouth open, knocked out by his beloved pills, while Benjamin is listening to loud music. She tries Benjamin’s phone; no reply. She leaves a short message, then tries Erik’s mobile, but of course it’s switched off.

      She calls out to her assistant at the art gallery. “Yiva, I have to go home. I’ll be back soon.”

      Her assistant peers out of the office, a thick file in her hand, and calls out, with a smile, “Kiss-kiss!”

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