The Hypnotist. Ларс Кеплер

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      “Yes … The ambulance shows up, the dead man is identified, and it’s my responsibility to inform the next of kin. We’re a bit short-staffed, so I have to go alone. My boss says she doesn’t want to let Jan go out in this state; you can understand why.”

      Erik glances at the clock.

      “You have time to listen to this,” says Joona.

      The police officer goes on, his eyes lowered. “The deceased is a teacher at the high school in Tumba, and he lives in that development up by the ridge. I rang the bell three or four times, but nobody answered. I don’t know what made me do it, but I went round the whole block and shone my torch through a window at the back of the house.” The police officer stops, his mouth trembling, and begins to scrape at the arm of the chair with his fingernail.

      “Please go on,” says Joona.

      “Do I have to? I mean, I … I …”

      “You found the boy, the mother, and a little girl aged five. The boy, Josef, was the only one who was still alive.”

      “Although I didn’t think …” He falls silent, his face ashen.

      Joona relents. “Thank you for coming, Erland.”

      The police officer nods quickly and gets up, runs his hand over his dirty jacket in confusion, and hurries out of the room.

      “They had all been attacked with a knife,” Joona Linna says. “It must have been sheer chaos in there. The bodies were … they were in a terrible state. They’d been kicked and beaten. They’d been stabbed, of course, multiple times, and the little girl … she had been cut in half. The lower part of her body from the waist down was in the armchair in front of the TV.”

      His composure finally seems to give. He stops for a moment, staring at Erik before regaining his calm manner. “My feeling is that the killer knew the father was at the playing field. There had been a football match; he was a referee. The killer waited until he was alone before murdering him; then he started hacking up the body—in a particularly aggressive way—before going to the house to kill the rest of the family.”

      “It happened in that order?” asks Erik.

      “In my opinion,” replies the detective.

      Erik can feel his hand shaking as he rubs his mouth. Father, mother, son, daughter, he thinks very slowly, before meeting Joona Linna’s gaze. “The perpetrator wanted to eliminate the entire family.”

      Joona raises his eyebrows. “That’s exactly it … A child is still out there, the big sister. She’s twenty-three. We think it’s possible the killer is after her as well. That’s why we want to question the witness as soon as possible.”

      “I’ll go in and carry out a detailed examination,” says Erik.

      Joona nods.

      “But we can’t risk the patient’s life by—”

      “I understand that. It’s just that the longer it takes before we have something to go on, the longer the killer has to look for the sister.”

      Now Erik nods.

      “Why don’t you locate the sister, warn her?”

      “We haven’t found her yet. She isn’t in her apartment in Sundbyberg, or at her boyfriend’s.”

      “Perhaps you should examine the scene of the crime,” says Daniella.

      “That’s already under way.”

      “Why don’t you go over there and tell them to get a move on?” she says, irritably.

      “It’s not going to yield anything anyway,” says the detective. “We’re going to find the DNA of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in both places, all mixed up together.”

      “I’ll go in a moment and see the patient,” says Erik.

      Joona meets his gaze and nods. “If I could ask just a couple of questions. That might be all that’s needed to save his sister.”

       3

       tuesday, december 8: early morning

      Erik Maria Bark returns to the patient. Standing in front of the bed, he studies the pale, damaged face; the shallow breathing; the frozen grey lips. Erik says the boy’s name, and something passes painfully across the face.

      “Josef,” he says once again, quietly. “My name is Erik Maria Bark. I’m a doctor, and I’m going to examine you. You can nod if you like, if you understand what I’m saying.”

      The boy is lying completely still, his stomach moving in time with his short breaths. Erik is convinced that the boy understands his words, but the level of consciousness abruptly drops. Contact is broken.

      When Erik leaves the room half an hour later, both Daniella and the detective look at him expectantly. Erik shakes his head.

      “He’s our only witness,” Joona repeats. “Someone has killed his father, his mother, and his little sister. The same person is almost certainly on his way to the older sister right now.”

      “We know that,” Daniella snaps.

      Erik raises a hand to stop the bickering. “We understand it’s important to talk to him. But it’s simply not possible. We can’t just give him a shake and tell him his whole family is dead.”

      “What about hypnosis?” says Joona, almost offhandedly.

      Silence falls in the room.

      “No,” Erik whispers to himself.

      “Wouldn’t hypnosis work?”

      “I don’t know anything about that,” Erik replies.

      “How could that be? You yourself were a famous hypnotist. The best, I heard.”

      “I was a fake,” says Erik.

      “That’s not what I think,” says Joona. “And this is an emergency.”

      Daniella flushes and, smiling inwardly, studies the floor.

      “I can’t,” says Erik.

      “I’m actually the person responsible for the patient,” says Daniella, raising her voice, “and I’m not particularly keen on letting him be hypnotised.”

      “But if it wasn’t dangerous for the patient, in your judgment?” asks Joona.

      Erik now realises that the detective has been thinking of hypnosis as a possible shortcut right from the start. Joona Linna has asked him to come to the hospital purely to convince him to hypnotise the patient, not because he is an expert in treating acute shock and trauma.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ