by Lars Kepler
“Because you just want to tell me what to do,” she says.
Erik stops pacing the room and carefully composes his features into a reasonable expression. “Sixan, your father’s retired. There’s nothing he can do.”
“He has contacts,” she says.
“He thinks he has contacts, he thinks he’s still a detective, but he’s only an ordinary pensioner.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“Benjamin isn’t some kind of hobby for old men with too much time on their hands.”
“That’s it. I’m not interested in what you have to say.” She looks at the phone.
“I can’t stay here if he’s coming. You just want him to tell you I’ve done the wrong thing again, like he did when we found out about Benjamin’s illness; it’s all Erik’s fault, always Erik. I know that lets you off the hook— it’s always been very comfortable whenever you’ve needed someone to blame in a crisis— but for me it’s— ”
“Bullshit.”
“If he comes here, I’m leaving.”
“That’s your choice,” she says quietly.
His shoulders droop.
She is half turned away from him as she punches in the number.
“Don’t do this,” Erik begs. It’s impossible for him to be here when Kennet arrives. He looks around. There’s nothing he wants to take with him. He hears the phone ringing at the other end of the line and sees the shadow of Simone’s eyelashes trembling on her cheeks.
“Fuck you,” he says, and goes out into the hallway.
He hears Simone talking to her father. With her voice full of tears she begs him to come as quickly as he can. Erik takes his jacket from the hanger, leaves the apartment, closes the door, and locks it behind him. Halfway down the stairs, he stops. Maybe he ought to go back and say something. It isn’t fair. This is his home, his son, his life.
“Fuck it,” he says quietly, and continues down to the door and out into the dark street.
Chapter 45
saturday, december 12 : evening
Simone stands at the window, perceiving her face as a transparent shadow in the evening darkness. When she sees her father’s old Nissan Primera double-parked outside the door, she has to force back the tears. She is already standing in the hallway when he knocks on the door; she opens it with the security chain on, closes it again, unhooks the chain, and tries to smile.
“Dad,” she says, as the tears begin to flow.
Kennet puts his arms around her, and when she smells the familiar aroma of leather and tobacco from his jacket she is transported back to her childhood for a few seconds.
“I’m here now, darling,” says Kennet. He sits down on the chair in the hallway and perches Simone on his knee. “Isn’t Erik home?”
“We’ve separated.”
“Oh, my,” says Kennet.
He fishes out a handkerchief, and she slides off his knee and blows her nose several times. Then he hangs up his jacket, noticing that Benjamin’s outdoor clothes are untouched, his shoes are in the shoe rack, and his backpack is leaning against the wall by the front door.
He puts his arm around his daughter’s shoulders, wipes the tears from beneath her eyes with his thumb, and leads her into the kitchen. He sits her down on a chair, gets out a filter and the tin of coffee, and switches on the machine.
“Tell me everything,” he says calmly, as he gets out the mugs. “Start from the beginning.”
So Simone tells him in detail about the first night when she woke up and was convinced there was someone in the apartment. She tells him about the smell of cigarette smoke in the kitchen, about the open front door, about the misty light flooding out of the fridge and freezer.
“And Erik?” asks Kennet, his tone challenging. “What did Erik do?”
She hesitates before she looks her father in the eye. “He didn’t believe me. He said one of us must have been sleepwalking.”
“For God’s sake,” says Kennet.
Simone feels her face beginning to crumple again. Kennet pours them both a cup of coffee, makes a note of something on a piece of paper, and asks her to continue.
She tells him about the jab in her arm that woke her up the following night, how she got up and heard strange noises coming from Benjamin’s room.
“What kind of noises?” asks Kennet.
“Cooing,” she says hesitantly. “Whispering. I don’t know.”
“And then?”
“I asked what was happening, and that’s when I saw someone was there, someone leaning over Benjamin and— ”
“Yes?”
“Then my legs gave way, I couldn’t move; I just fell over. All I could do was lie there on the floor. I watched Benjamin being dragged out . . . Oh God, his face; he was so scared! He called out to me and tried to reach me with his hand, but I was completely incapable of moving by then.” She sits in silence, staring straight ahead.
“Do you remember anything else?”
“What?”
“What did he look like? The man who got in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you notice anything distinguishing about him?”
“He moved in a peculiar way, kind of stooping, as if he were in pain.”
Kennet makes a note. “Think,” he encourages her.
“It was dark, Dad.”
“And Erik?” Kennet asks. “What was he doing?”
“He was asleep.”
“Asleep?”
She nods. “He’s been taking a lot of pills over the past few years,” she says. “He was in the spare room, and he didn’t hear a thing.”
Kennet’s expression is full of contempt, and Simone suddenly understands, at least in part, why Erik has left.
“Pills?” says Kennet thoughtfully. “What kind? Do you know the name? Or names?”
She takes her father’s hands. “Dad, it’s not Erik who’s the suspect here.”
He pulls his hands away. “Violence against children is almost exclusively perpetrated by someone within the family.”
“I know that, but— ”
Kennet calmly interrupts her. “Let’s look at the facts. The perpetrator clearly has medical knowledge and access to drugs.”
She nods.
“You didn’t see Erik asleep in the spare room?”
“The door was closed.”
“But you didn’t see him, did you? And you aren’t certain that he took sleeping pills that night, are you?”
“No,” she has to admit.
“All we can do is look at the facts and try to ascertain a kind of truth from them. I’m just looking at what we know, Sixan,” he says. “We know that you didn’t see him asleep. He might have been, but we don’t know that.”
Kennet gets up, pulls out a loaf of bread, and takes butter and cheese from the fridge. He makes a sandwich and hands it to Simone. After a while he clears his throat. “Why would Erik open the door for Josef Ek?”
She stares at him. “What do you mean?”
“If he did it, what would his reasons be?”
“I think this is a stupid conversation.”
“Why?”
“Erik loves Benjamin.”
“Yes, but maybe something went wrong. Perhaps Erik just wanted to talk to Josef, get him to call the police or— ”
“Stop it, Dad.”
“We have to ask these questions if we’re going to find Benjamin.”
She nods, feeling that her face is torn to shreds; then she says, almost inaudibly, “Perhaps Erik thought it was someone else at the door.”
“Who?”
“I think he’s seeing a woman called Daniella,” she says, without meeting her father’s gaze.
Chapter 46
sunday, december 13 (feast of st. lucia): morning
Simone wakes at five o’clock. Kennet must have carried her to bed and tucked her in. She goes straight to Benjamin’s room with a flicker of hope in her chest, but the feeling is swept away as she stands in the doo
rway, gazing at the empty bed.
She doesn’t cry, but she thinks that the taste of tears and fear has permeated everything, as a single drop of milk turns clear water cloudy. She tries to take control of her thoughts, to not think about Benjamin, not properly, to not let the fear in.
The light is on in the kitchen. Kennet has covered the table with bits of paper. On the counter, the police radio is making a murmuring, buzzing noise. Kennet stands completely still, staring into thin air; then he runs his hand over his chin a couple of times.
“I’m glad you managed to get some sleep,” he says.
She shakes her head.
“Sixan?”
“Yes,” she mumbles; she goes over to the sink and splashes her face with cold water. As she dries herself with the kitchen towel she sees her reflection in the window. It is still dark outside, but soon the dawn will come with its net of winter cold and December darkness.
Kennet scribbles on a scrap of paper, moves another sheet, and makes a note of something on a pad. She sits down opposite her father and tries to analyze how Josef Ek got into their apartment and where he might have taken Benjamin.
“Son of the Right Hand,” she whispers.
“What, dear?” asks Kennet, still writing.
“Nothing.”
She was thinking that Son of the Right Hand is the Hebrew meaning of Benjamin. In the Old Testament, Rachel was the wife of Jacob. He worked for fourteen years so he could marry her. She bore him two sons: Joseph, who interpreted the dreams of the pharaoh, and Benjamin, the Son of the Right Hand.
Simone’s face contracts with suppressed tears. Without a word, Kennet leans over and squeezes her shoulder. “We’ll find him,” he says.
She nods.
“I got this just before you woke up,” he says, tapping a folder that is lying on the table.
“What is it?”
“You know, the house in Tumba where Josef Ek . . . This is the crime-scene investigator’s report.”
“I thought you’d retired?”
“I have my ways.” He smiles and pushes the folder over to her; she opens it and reads the systematic analysis of fingerprints, handprints, marks showing where bodies have been dragged, strands of hair, traces of skin under fingernails, damage to the blade of a knife, marrow from a spinal cord on a pair of slippers, blood on the television, blood on the lamp, on the rag rug, on the curtains.
Photographs fall out of a plastic pocket. Simone tries not to look, but her brain still manages to capture the image of a horrific room: everyday objects, bookshelves, a music system, all black with blood.
On the floor there are mutilated bodies and body parts.
She stands up abruptly and leans over the sink, retching.
“Sorry,” says Kennet. “I wasn’t thinking . . . Sometimes I forget that not everyone is a policeman.”
She closes her eyes and thinks of Benjamin’s terrified face and a dark room with cold, cold blood on the floor. She leans forward and throws up. Slimy strings of mucus and bile land among the coffee cups and spoons. She clings to the counter and breathes steadily, calming herself. Above all, she fears losing control of her emotions, lapsing into a state of helpless hysteria. She rinses her mouth, her pulse beating loudly in her ears, and turns to look at Kennet.
“I’m fine,” she says faintly. “I just can’t connect all this with Benjamin.”
Kennet gets a blanket and wraps it around her, gently guiding her back to her chair.
“I’m not sure if I can do this,” she says.
“You’re doing fine. Now, I need you to listen to me. If Josef Ek has taken Benjamin, he must want something. He hasn’t done anything like this before. It’s not an escalation, which is what we might typically expect from a serial killer when he changes his MO. No, I think Josef Ek was looking for Erik, but when he didn’t find him, he took Benjamin instead. Perhaps to do an exchange.”
“In that case, he must be alive, mustn’t he?”
“Absolutely,” says Kennet. “We just have to figure out where Ek’s hidden him, where Benjamin is.”
“Anywhere. He could be anywhere.”
“On the contrary,” says Kennet.
She looks at him.
“It’s almost exclusively a question of his home or a summer cottage.”
“But this is his home,” she says, raising her voice and tapping the plastic pocket of photographs with her finger.
Chapter 47
sunday, december 13 (feast of st. lucia): morning
Kennet repeats to himself the words “his home,” takes the file with the photos and the write-up from the forensic investigation of the house, hides them underneath his notepad, and turns around to face his daughter.
“Dutroux,” he says.
“What?” asks Simone.
“Do you remember the case of Marc Dutroux?”
“No.”
In his matter-of-fact fashion, Kennet tells her about Dutroux, who kidnapped and tortured six girls in Belgium. Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo starved to death while Dutroux was serving a short prison sentence for stealing a car. Eefje Lambrecks and An Marchal were buried alive in the garden.
“Dutroux had a house in Charleroi,” he goes on. “In the cellar he had built a storeroom with a secret door weighing over four hundred pounds. It was impossible to detect the room by knocking to find a hollow space. The only way to find it was to measure the house; the measurements inside and outside didn’t match. Sabine Dardenne and Laetitia Delhez were found alive.”
Simone tries to get to her feet. Her heart is beating peculiarly, hammering her chest from inside. She cannot believe there are men driven by a need to wall people in, men calmed by the fear of their victims down in the darkness, behind silent walls.
“Benjamin needs his medication,” she whispers.
Simone watches her father go over to the telephone. He dials a number, waits for a moment, then says quickly, “Charley? Listen, there’s something I need to know about Josef Ek . . . No, it’s about his house, the house in Tumba.”
There is silence for a while; then Simone can hear someone speaking in a rough, deep voice.
“Yes,” says Kennet. “I realize you’ve checked it out. I’ve had a look at the report.”
The other person continues talking. Simone closes her eyes and listens to the hum of the police radio, which becomes part of the muted bumblebee buzz of the voice on the phone.
“But you haven’t measured the house?” she hears her father ask. “No, of course not . . .”
She opens her eyes and suddenly feels a brief adrenaline rush chase away the tiredness.
“Yes, that would be good . . . Can you send the plans over here by messenger?” says Kennet. “And any planning applications . . . Yes, the same address . . . Thanks a lot.” He ends the call.
“Could Benjamin really be in that house? Could he, Dad?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“Well, come on then,” she says impatiently. “Charley’s sending the plans over.”
“Plans? I don’t give a shit about the plans. What are you waiting for? We need to get over there. I can smash down every little— ”
“That’s not a good idea. I mean, it’s urgent, but I don’t think we’ll gain any time by going over there and starting to knock down walls.”
“But we have to do something.”
“That house has been crawling with police for the past few days,” he explains. “If there was anything obvious they would have found it, even if they weren’t looking for Benjamin.”
“But— ”
“I need to look at the plans to see where it might be possible to build a secret room, get some measurements so I can compare them with the actual measurements when we’re in the house.”
“But what if there is no room? Then where can he be?”
“The Ek family shared a summer cottage outside Bollnäs with the father’s brothers. I have a friend there who promised to drive over. He knows the
area very well. It’s in the older part of a development.” Kennet looks at his watch and dials a number. “Svante? Kennet here, I was just wondering— ”
“I’m there now,” his friend says.
“Where?”
“Inside the house,” says Svante.
“But you were only supposed to take a look.”
“The new owners let me in; they’re called Sjölin.” Someone says something in the background. “Sorry, Sjödin.” He corrects himself. “They’ve owned the house for over a year.”
“I see. Well, thanks for your help.” Kennet ends the call. A deep furrow appears in his forehead.
“What about the cottage where his sister was?” asks Simone.
“We’ve had people there several times. But you and I could drive out and take a look anyway.”
They fall silent, their expressions thoughtful, introverted. The letter box rattles; the morning paper is pushed through and thuds onto the hall floor. Neither of them moves. They hear the rattle of more letter boxes on the next floor down; then the outside door opens.
Kennet suddenly turns up the volume of the police radio. A call has gone out. Someone answers, demanding information. In the brief exchange, Simone picks up something about a woman hearing screams from a neighbouring apartment. A car is dispatched. In the background, someone laughs and launches into a long explanation about why his younger brother still lives at home and has his sandwiches made for him every morning. Kennet turns the volume down again.
“I’ll make some more coffee,” says Simone.
From his khaki bag, Kennet removes a pocket atlas of Greater Stockholm. He takes the candlesticks from the table and places them in the window before opening it. Simone stands behind him, contemplating the tangled network of roads, rail, and bus links crisscrossing one another in shades of red, blue, green, and yellow. Forests and geometric suburban systems.
Kennet’s finger follows a yellow road south of Stockholm, passing Älvsjö, Huddinge, Tullinge, and down to Tumba. Together they stare at Tumba and Salem. It is a pale map showing an old and once-isolated community that was saved from decay and irrelevance when a commuter train station was built there, creating a new town centre. The detailed map indicates a post-war boom: new construction of high-rise apartments and shops, a church, a bank, and a state-owned liquor store has brought suburban convenience and comfort to the old town. Terrace houses and residential areas branch out from a central core. There are a few fields the colour of yellow straw just north of the community; after a few miles these give way to forests and lakes.