by Lars Kepler
Suddenly Joona discovers a crack in Evelyn’s story. He has already nudged at the thought, but it slipped away. Now the crack is absolutely clear. When he spoke to Evelyn in her aunt’s cottage, she sat completely still on the corduroy couch with her hands clamped between her thighs. On the floor at her feet lay a photograph in a frame that looked like a toadstool. Evelyn’s little sister was in the picture, sitting between her parents with the sun glinting off her big glasses.
The little girl must have been four, perhaps even five years old in the picture. In other words, the photograph can be no more than a year or two old. Evelyn claimed that Josef hadn’t been to the cottage for years, but he accurately described the photo and the frame under hypnosis.
Of course, there could be several copies of the picture in other toad-stool frames, thinks Joona. There’s also the possibility that this particular one has been moved around. And Josef could have been in the cottage without Evelyn’s knowledge.
But it could also be a crack in Evelyn’s story.
“Evelyn,” says Joona, “I’m just wondering about something you said a little while ago.”
Jens Svanehjälm gets to his feet. The sudden movement startles Evelyn, and her body jerks. “Would you come with me for a minute, detective?” Outside, he turns to Joona. “I’m letting her go,” he says, in a low voice. “This is bullshit. We don’t have a thing, just an invalid interrogation with her comatose fifteen-year-old brother, who suggests that she— ”
Jens stops speaking as soon as he sees the look on Joona’s face.
“You’ve found something, haven’t you?” he says.
“I think so, yes,” Joona replies quietly.
“Is she lying?”
“I don’t know. She might be.”
Jens runs his hand over his chin, considering. “Give her a sandwich and a cup of tea,” he says eventually. “Then you can have one more hour before I decide whether we’re going to arrest her or not.”
“There’s no guarantee this will lead to anything.”
“But you’ll give it a go?”
Four minutes later, Joona places a Styrofoam cup of English breakfast tea and a sandwich on a paper plate in front of Evelyn and sits down on his chair. “I thought you might be hungry,” he says.
“Thanks,” she says, and a more cheerful expression momentarily sweeps across her features. Joona watches her carefully. Her hand shakes as she eats the sandwich and lifts the cup from the table to her lips.
“Evelyn, in your aunt’s cottage there’s a photograph in a frame that looks like a toadstool.”
Evelyn nods. “Aunt Sonja bought it up in Mora; she thought it would look nice in the cottage . . .” She stops and blows on her tea.
“Did she buy any more like that? For gifts, say?”
“Not that I know of.” She smiles. “I’ve never seen another like it.”
“And has the photograph always been in the cottage?”
“What do you mean?” she asks faintly.
“Well, I’m not sure. Maybe nothing. But Josef talked about this picture, so he must have seen it sometime. I thought perhaps you’d forgotten something.”
“No.”
“Well, that clears that up,” says Joona, getting up.
“Are you going?”
“Yes, I think we’re done here,” says Joona. He looks at her face, filled with anxiety, and acts on a hunch.
“Chances are you’ll be out of here— oh, in an hour or two.”
“Out of here?”
“Well, I don’t think we can hold you for anything.” He smiles.
She wraps her arms around herself. “You never answered my question.”
“Question?”
“Is Josef locked up?”
Joona looks her square in the eye. “No, Evelyn. Josef is in the hospital. We haven’t arrested him. I don’t know that we can.”
She begins to tremble, and her eyes fill with tears.
“What is it, Evelyn?”
She wipes the tears from her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “Josef did come to the cottage once. He took a taxi and he brought a cake,” she says, her voice breaking.
“On your birthday?”
“He . . . it was his birthday.”
“When was that?”
“On the first of November.”
“Just over a month ago,” says Joona. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” she says. “It was a surprise.”
“He hadn’t told you he was coming?”
“We weren’t in touch.”
“Why not?”
“I need to be on my own.”
“Who knew you were staying there?”
“Nobody, apart from Sorab, my boyfriend . . . well, actually, he broke up with me, and we’re just friends, but he helps me, tells everybody I’m staying with him, answers when Mum calls.”
“Why?”
“I need to be left in peace.”
“So you’ve said. Did Josef go out there again?”
“No.”
“This is important, Evelyn.”
“He didn’t come again,” she replies.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you lie about this?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
“What else have you lied about?”
Chapter 25
wednesday, december 9 : afternoon
Erik is walking between the brightly lit display cases in the NK department store’s jewellery department. A sleek saleswoman dressed in black murmurs persuasively to a customer. She slides open a drawer and places a few pieces on a velvet-covered tray. Erik pauses to study a Georg Jensen necklace: heavy, softly polished triangles, linked together like petals to form a closed circle. The sterling silver has the rich lustre of platinum. Erik thinks how beautifully it would lie around Simone’s slender neck and decides to buy it for her for Christmas.
As the assistant is wrapping his purchase in dark-red shiny paper, the cell phone in Erik’s pocket begins to vibrate, resonating against the little wooden box with the parrot and the native. He answers without checking the number on the display.
“Erik Maria Bark.”
There’s a strange crackling noise, and he can hear the distant sound of Christmas carols. “Hello?” he says.
A very faint voice can be heard. “Is that Erik?”
“Yes,” he replies.
“I was wondering . . .”
Suddenly Erik thinks it sounds as if someone is giggling in the background. “Who is this?” he asks sharply.
“Hang on, doctor. I need your expert advice,” says the voice, dripping with contempt. Erik is about to end the call when the voice on the phone suddenly bellows, “Hypnotize me! I want to be— ”
Erik snatches the phone away from his ear. He presses the button to end the conversation and tries to see who called, but it’s a withheld number. A beep tells him he has received a text message, also from a withheld number. He opens it and reads: can you hypnotize a corpse?
Bewildered, Erik takes his purchase in its red and gold bag and leaves the jewellery department. In the lobby he catches the eye of a woman in a bulky, black coat. She is standing underneath a suspended Christmas tree, three storeys high, and she is staring at him with a hostile expression. He has never seen her before.
With one hand he flips open the lid of the wooden box in his coat pocket, tips a codeine capsule into his hand, puts it in his mouth, and swallows it.
He goes outside into the cold air. People are crowded before a shop-window where Christmas elves are dancing around in a landscape made of candy. A toffee with a big mouth sings a Christmas song. Pre-schoolers dressed in yellow vests over thick snowsuits gaze in open-mouthed silence at the scene.
The mobile phone rings again, but this time he checks the number before answering. It’s a Stockholm number.
“Erik Maria Bark,” he says cautiously.
“Hi, there. My name is Britt Sundströ
m. I work for Amnesty Inter national.”
“Hi,” Erik says, puzzled.
“I’d like to know whether your patient had the opportunity to say no to the hypnosis.”
“What did you say?” asks Erik, as a huge snail drags a sledge full of Christmas presents across the window display. His heart begins to pound, and a burning acidity surges up through his gut.
“The CIA handbook for torture that leaves no trace does actually mention hypnosis as one of the— ”
“The doctor responsible for the patient made the judgment.”
“So you’re saying you bear no responsibility?”
“I have no comment,” he says.
“You’ve already been reported to the police,” she says curtly.
“I see,” he says feebly, and ends the call.
He begins to walk slowly toward Sergels Torg, with its shining glass tower and Culture House, sees the Christmas market, and hears a trumpeter playing “Silent Night.” He turns onto Sveavägen. Outside the 7-Eleven he stops and reads the display boards showing the headlines from the evening papers:
“I KILLED MUM AND DAD”
Hypnotist Dupes Boy into Confession
IN YOUR HEAD
Doctor Risks Boy’s Life to Coerce Admission
BARK WORSE THAN BITE
New Hypnosis Scandal for Tarnished Doc
OUTRAGE!
Stumped Cops Enlist Hypnodoc, Scapegoat Victim
Erik can feel his pulse begin to pound in his temples and hurries on, avoiding looking directly at those around him. He passes the spot where Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated back in 1986, walking home with his wife from the movies. Three red roses are lying on the grubby memorial plaque. Erik hears someone calling after him and slips into an exclusive electronics shop. Although just a few minutes ago he’d been so tired he felt almost drunk, that feeling has been replaced by a feverish mixture of nervousness and despair. His hands shake as he takes yet another strong painkiller. He feels a stabbing pain in his stomach as the capsule dissolves and the powder goes into the mucous membranes.
The radio in the shop is broadcasting a debate about the extent to which hypnosis should be banned as a form of treatment. A caller is telling the story of how he was once hypnotized into thinking he was Bob Dylan.
“I mean, like, I knew it wasn’t true,” he drawls, “but it was like I was kind of forced to say what I said, you know? I knew I was, like, being hypnotized. I could see my buddy was, like, sitting right there, like, waiting for me? But I still thought, like, I’m Dylan! I was even speaking English. Like, I couldn’t help it; I would’ve admitted just about any thing.”
The Minister for Justice says in his Småland accent, “There is absolutely no doubt that using hypnosis as a method of interrogation is a violation of the rights of the individual.”
“So Erik Maria Bark has broken the law?” the journalist asks sharply.
“We expect the Prosecutor’s Office to conduct a thorough investigation of the legality of his actions.”
Chapter 26
wednesday, december 9 : afternoon
By the time Erik reaches Luntmakargatan 73, sweat is pouring down his back. He punches in the code to open the door. With fumbling hands he finds his keys as the lift hums its way upwards. Once inside the apartment, he staggers into the living room and tries to take off his coat, but the pills have made him dizzy. He topples onto the couch and switches on the television.
There is the Chairman of the Swedish Society for Clinical Hypnosis sitting in a TV studio. Erik knows him very well; he has seen many colleagues affected by his arrogance and his ruthless ambition.
“We expelled Bark ten years ago and we won’t be welcoming him back,” the chairman says, with a tight smile.
“Does an incident like this affect the reputation of serious hypnosis?”
“All our members adhere to strict ethical rules,” he says superciliously. “Moreover, Sweden has laws against charlatans.”
Erik finally takes his outdoor clothes off with clumsy movements, piling them on the sofa beside him. He closes his eyes for a moment to rest but opens them immediately when he hears a familiar voice coming from the television. Benjamin is standing in a sunlit school playground. His brow is furrowed, the tip of his nose and his ears are red, his shoulders are hunched, and he looks very cold.
“So,” asks the reporter. “What’s it like living with the hypnodoc?”
“I don’t know,” says Benjamin.
“Has your dad ever hypnotized you?”
“What? No way.”
“How do you know?” the reporter persists. “If he had hypnotized you, there’s no guarantee that you’d be aware of it, is there?”
“I guess not,” replies Benjamin with a grin, surprised by the reporter’s pushy approach.
“How would you feel if it turned out he had hypnotized you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Pretty mad, I bet,” suggests the reporter.
“Yeah,” agrees Benjamin. His cheeks are flushed.
Erik turns off the television and goes into the bedroom, where he takes off his trousers and sits on the bed, placing the wooden box with the parrot on it in the drawer of the bedside table. He doesn’t want to think about the longing that was aroused in him when he hypnotized Josef Ek and followed him down into that deep blue sea. He lies down, reaches out for the glass of water by the bed, but falls asleep before he has time to drink.
Still half asleep, Erik thinks dreamily about his father when he used to appear at children’s parties, wearing his specially prepared suit, the sweat pouring down his cheeks. He would twist balloons into the shapes of animals and pull brightly coloured feather flowers out of a hollow walking cane. When he had moved from the house in Sollentuna to a nursing home, he would talk of putting an act together with Erik. He would be the gentleman thief and Erik would be the stage hypnotist, making people sing like Elvis and Zarah Leander.
Suddenly Erik is wide awake. He sees Benjamin in his mind’s eye, shivering under the scrutiny of the TV camera and the reporter, there in the school playground in front of his classmates and teachers. He sits up, feeling the searing pain in his stomach, reaches for the telephone, and calls Simone.
“Simone Bark’s gallery,” she replies.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Just a minute.”
He hears her walk across the wooden floor and close the office door behind her.
“What the hell’s going on?” she asks. “Benjamin called and— ”
“The media circus is in full swing.”
“The media circus? What are we, rock stars? Erik, what have you done? Why are reporters grilling our kid on television?”
“I haven’t done anything. I was asked to hypnotize the patient by the doctor who was responsible for his care.”
“I know that part. The whole world knows; it’s all over the news. You hypnotized some poor victimized kid and coerced a confession— ”
“Can you listen to me for a second?” he broke in. “Can you do that?”
“All right. Talk.”
“It wasn’t an interrogation,” Erik begins. “It doesn’t matter what you call it.” She falls silent. He can hear her breathing. “Sorry,” she says quietly. “Please finish.”
“It wasn’t an interrogation. We thought he was a victim. And the police needed a description, anything they could go on, because they thought a girl’s life depended on it.”
“But— ”
“The doctor who was responsible for the patient at the time judged that the risk was low. I wouldn’t’ve done it otherwise.” He pauses. “We were just trying to save his sister.” He stops speaking and listens to Simone breathing.
“What have you done?” she says shakily. “You . . . you promised me you wouldn’t practise hypnosis any more.”
“It’ll sort itself out. No harm done, Simone.”
“No harm done?” she snaps. “You broke your promise, but you don’t th
ink any harm has been done? Erik, all you do is lie and lie and lie.”
Simone stops herself, and falls silent.
Erik stands rock-still for a moment, hangs up the phone, then turns and enters the kitchen, where he mixes a soluble analgesic with antacid and swills the sweet liquid down.
Chapter 27
thursday, december 10 : evening
Joona looks out into the dark, empty corridor. It’s evening, almost eight o’clock, and he’s the only one left in the whole department. Advent star lamps shine from every window, and the electric Christmas candles create a soft, round, double glow, reflected in the black glass. Anja has placed a bowl of Christmas sweets on his desk, and he eats more than his fill as he writes up his notes on the interview with Evelyn.
On the basis of her having lied about Josef visiting the cottage, the prosecutor made the decision to arrest her. Joona knows perfectly well that Evelyn’s lie does not mean she is guilty of any crime, but it gives him three days to investigate what she is hiding and why.
He writes up the report, addresses it to the prosecutor, places it in the outgoing mail, checks that his pistol is safely locked away, and leaves the police headquarters in his car.
When he reaches Fridhemsplan, Joona hears his cell phone ringing, but it’s slipped through a hole in the lining of his pocket and he has to pull over in front of the Hare Krishna restaurant to shake it loose.
“Joona Linna.”
“Oh, good,” says police officer Ronny Alfredsson. “We have a problem. We don’t really know what to do.”
“Did you speak to Evelyn’s boyfriend?”
“Sorab Ramadani. That’s the problem.”
“Did you check where he works?”
“It’s not that,” says Ronny. “We located him easy. He’s right here in his apartment, but he won’t open the door. He doesn’t want to talk to us. He keeps shouting at us to clear off, that we’re disturbing the neighbours, and we’re harassing him because he’s a Muslim.”