by Lars Kepler
23
Joona stared at the motionless figure. He could feel the weight of his semi-automatic pistol and the chill of the night air on his fingers. He could hear Samuel’s breathing beside him.
The situation was beginning to seem slightly absurd when, without warning, the man took a step forward. They could see he was holding a bag in one hand.
Afterward, it was hard to pinpoint what it was that had convinced them both that they had found the man they were looking for.
The man just looked up at the window of Roseanna’s bedroom, then vanished into the bushes. The snow covering the grass crunched beneath their feet as they crept after him. They followed the fresh footprints through the forest until they reached an old railroad line.
Far off to the right, they could see the figure on the track. He passed below an electrical tower, crossing the tangle of shadows thrown by its frame. It was a railroad line that was still used, running from Värta Harbor through Lill-Jan’s Forest.
Joona and Samuel followed, sticking to the deep snow beside the tracks to avoid being seen. The railroad continued beneath a viaduct and into the expanse of forest. Suddenly everything became much quieter and darker.
The black trees stood close together.
Joona and Samuel silently sped up, so as not to lose sight of him.
When they emerged from the curve around Uggleviken Marsh, the railroad stretching ahead of them was empty. The skinny man had left the track somewhere and gone into the forest.
They climbed up onto the rails and looked out over the white landscape, then started to walk back. The recent snow was largely untouched. They found a set of footprints they had missed earlier. Ten minutes before, they had been white and impossible to see in the weak light, but the ground beneath the snow was wet, and the prints left by his shoes were now as dark as lead.
They followed the tracks into the forest, toward the large reservoir. It was almost pitch-black among the trees. The murderer’s footprints were crossed three times by the lighter tracks of a rabbit. At one point, it was so dark that they lost his trail again. They stopped, then spotted the tracks and hurried on.
Suddenly they began to hear high-pitched whimpering sounds, like an animal crying, but like nothing Joona and Samuel had ever heard before. They followed the footprints and drew closer to the source of the sounds.
What they saw between the tree trunks was something out of a grotesque medieval story. The man they had followed was standing in front of a shallow grave. The ground around him was covered with freshly dug earth. An emaciated, filthy woman was trying to get out of the coffin, crying and struggling to clamber up over the edge. But each time she was on her way up, the man pushed her down again.
For a couple of seconds, Joona and Samuel could only stand there, staring; then they took the safety catches off their weapons and rushed in.
The man wasn’t armed, and Joona knew he should aim at his legs, but he couldn’t help aiming at his heart. They ran over the dirty snow, forced the man onto his stomach, and cuffed both his wrists and feet.
Samuel stood panting, pointing his pistol at the man as he called Emergency Control. Joona could hear the sob in his voice.
They had caught a previously unknown serial killer. His name was Jurek Walter.
Joona carefully helped the woman up out of the coffin and tried to calm her down. She lay on the ground, gasping. When Joona explained that help was on the way, he caught a glimpse of movement through the trees. Something large was running away. A branch snapped, fir trees swayed, and snow fell softly like cloth.
Perhaps it was a deer.
Joona realized later that it must have been Jurek Walter’s accomplice, but right then all they could think about was saving the woman and getting the man into custody in Kronoberg Remand Prison.
It turned out that the woman had been in the coffin for almost two years. Jurek Walter had regularly supplied her with food and water, then covered the grave over again. The woman had gone blind and was severely undernourished. Her muscles had atrophied, and compression sores had left her deformed. Her hands and feet were frostbitten.
At first, they assumed that she was merely traumatized, but as time passed, it became clear that she had suffered severe brain damage because of the cold and malnutrition.
24
Joona locked the door when he returned home at half past four that morning. His heart thudding with trepidation, he moved Lumi’s warm, sweaty body closer to the middle of the bed before putting his arm around both her and Summa. He realized he wasn’t going to be able to sleep but just needed to lie down with his family.
He was back in Lill-Jan’s Forest by seven o’clock. The area had been cordoned off and was under guard, but the snow around the grave was already so churned up by the police, dogs, and paramedics that there was no point trying to find the tracks of a potential accomplice.
By ten o’clock, a police-dog unit had identified a location close to the Uggleviken reservoir, just two hundred meters from the woman’s grave. A team of forensics experts and crime-scene analysts was called in, and a couple of hours later, the remains of a middle-aged man and a boy of about fifteen had been exhumed. They were both squashed into a blue plastic barrel, and forensic examination indicated that they’d been buried almost four years before. They hadn’t survived many hours in the barrel, even though there was a tube supplying them with air.
Jurek Walter was registered as a resident of Björnö Road, part of a large housing project built in the early 1970s, in the Hovsjö district of Södertälje. It was the only address in his name. According to the records, he hadn’t lived anywhere else since he arrived in Sweden from Poland in 1994 and was granted a work permit. He had taken a job as a mechanic for a small company, Menge’s Engineering Workshop, where he repaired train gearboxes and renovated diesel engines. All the evidence suggested that he lived a solitary, peaceful life.
Joona and Samuel and the other officers didn’t know what they might find in Jurek Walter’s apartment: a torture chamber or trophy cabinet, jars of formaldehyde, freezers containing body parts, shelves bulging with photographic documentation?
The police had cordoned off the immediate vicinity of the apartment complex, and the whole of the second floor. They put on protective clothing, opened the door, and started to set out boards to walk on so that they wouldn’t ruin any evidence.
Jurek Walter lived in a two-room apartment measuring thirty-three square meters.
There was a pile of junk mail below the mail slot. The hall was completely empty. There were no shoes or clothes in the closet beside the front door.
They moved farther in.
Joona was prepared for someone to be hiding inside, but everything was perfectly still, as if time had abandoned the place.
The blinds were drawn. The apartment smelled of sunshine and dust.
There was no furniture in the kitchen. The fridge was open and switched off. Nothing to suggest it had ever been used. The pans on the stove had rusted slightly. Inside the oven, the operating instructions were still taped to the side. The only food they found in the cupboards was two cans of sliced pineapple.
In the bedroom was a narrow bed with no sheets, and inside the closet, one clean shirt hung from a metal hanger.
That was all.
Joona tried to work out what the empty apartment signified. It was obvious that Jurek Walter didn’t live there. Perhaps he used it only as a postal address. There was nothing in the flat to lead them anywhere else. The only fingerprints belonged to Jurek himself.
He had no criminal record and had never been suspected of a crime. Jurek Walter had no private insurance and had never taken out a loan. His tax was deducted directly from his wages, and he had never claimed any tax credits.
There were many different registries—more than three hundred of them, all covered by the Personal Records Act. Jurek Walter was listed only in the ones that no citizen could avoid.
Otherwise, he was invisible.
&n
bsp; He had never taken a sick day, had never sought help from a doctor or dentist.
He wasn’t in the firearms registry or the vehicle registry. There were no school records, no registered political or religious affiliations.
It was as if he had lived his life with the express intention of being as invisible as possible. The few people he had been in contact with at his workplace knew nothing about him. They could only report that he never said much but was a very good mechanic.
When National Crime received a response from the Policja, their Polish counterparts, it turned out that Jurek Walter had been dead for many years. Because this Jurek Walter had been found murdered in a public restroom at the central station, Kraków Główny, they were able to supply photographs and fingerprints.
Neither pictures nor prints matched the Swedish serial killer. Presumably, he had stolen the identity of the real Jurek Walter.
The man they had captured in Lill-Jan’s Forest was becoming more and more of an enigma. They combed the forest for another three months, but after the man and boy in the barrel, no more of Jurek Walter’s victims were found.
Not until Mikael Kohler-Frost turned up, walking across a bridge, heading for Stockholm.
25
A prosecutor took over the responsibility for the preliminary investigation, but Joona and Samuel led the interviews, from the custody proceedings to the principal interrogation. Jurek Walter didn’t confess to anything, but he didn’t deny any crimes, either. Instead, he philosophized about death and the human condition. Because of the lack of supporting evidence, it was the circumstances surrounding his arrest, his failure to offer an explanation, and the forensic psychiatrist’s evaluation that led to his conviction in the Stockholm Court House. His lawyer appealed the conviction, and while they were waiting for the case to be heard in the Court of Appeal, more interviews were held in Kronoberg Prison.
The staff at the prison were unfazed by most circumstances, but Jurek Walter’s presence troubled them. He made them feel uneasy. Wherever he was, conflicts would suddenly flare up; on one occasion, two guards started fighting, and one of them ended up in the hospital. A crisis meeting was held, and new security procedures were agreed upon. Jurek Walter would no longer be allowed to come into contact with other inmates or use the exercise yard.
Samuel had called in sick, so Joona found himself walking alone down the corridor, past the row of white thermos flasks, one outside each of the green doors. The shiny linoleum floor had long black tears in it.
The door to Jurek Walter’s cell was open. The walls were bare and the window was barred. The morning light reflected off the worn plastic-covered mattress on the fixed bunk and the stainless-steel sink.
Farther along the corridor, a policeman in a dark-blue sweater was talking to a Syriac Orthodox priest.
“They’ve taken him to Interview Room Two,” the officer called to Joona.
A guard was waiting outside the interview room, and through the window Joona could see Jurek Walter sitting on a chair, looking down at the floor. In front of him stood his legal representative and two guards.
“I’m here to listen,” Joona said when he went in.
There was a short silence; then Jurek Walter exchanged a few words with his lawyer. He spoke in a low voice and didn’t look up as he asked the lawyer to leave.
“You can wait in the corridor,” Joona told the guards.
When he was on his own with Jurek Walter in the interview room, he moved a chair and pulled it so close that he could smell the man’s sweat.
Jurek Walter sat still on his chair, his head drooping forward.
“Your defense lawyer claims that you were in Lill-Jan’s Forest to free the woman,” Joona said in a neutral voice.
Jurek stared at the floor for another couple of minutes, then, without the slightest movement, said, “I talk too much.”
“The truth will do,” Joona said.
“But it really doesn’t matter to me if I’m found guilty of something I didn’t do,” Jurek said.
“You’ll be locked up.”
Jurek looked up at Joona and said thoughtfully: “I lost my life a long time ago. I’m not scared of anything. Not pain. Not loneliness or boredom.”
“But I’m looking for the truth,” Joona said, intentionally naïve.
“You don’t have to look for it. It’s the same with justice, or gods. You choose what serves your purposes.”
“But you don’t choose the lies,” Joona said.
Jurek’s pupils contracted. “In the Court of Appeal, the prosecutor’s description of my actions will be regarded as proved beyond all reasonable doubt,” he said, without the slightest hint of a plea in his voice.
“You’re saying that’s wrong?”
“I’m not going to get hung up on technicalities, because there isn’t really any difference between digging a grave and refilling it.”
When Joona left the interview room that day, he was more convinced than ever that Jurek Walter was an extremely dangerous man. At the same time, he couldn’t help considering the idea that Jurek had been trying to say that he was being punished for someone else’s crimes. Of course he understood that it had been Jurek Walter’s intention to sow a seed of doubt, but he couldn’t ignore the possibility that there was actually a flaw in the prosecution’s case.
26
The day before the appeal, Joona, Summa, and Lumi went to dinner with Samuel and his family. The sun had been shining through the linen curtains when they started eating, but it was now evening. Rebecka lit a candle on the table and blew out the match. The light quivered over her luminous eyes, and her one strange pupil. She had once explained that it was a condition called dyscoria, and that it wasn’t a problem: she could see just as well with that eye as with the other.
The relaxed meal concluded with a dark honey cake. Joona borrowed a kippah for the prayer, Birkat Hamazon.
That was the last time he saw Samuel’s family.
The boys played quietly for a while with little Lumi before Joshua immersed himself in a video game and Reuben disappeared into his room to practice his clarinet.
Rebecka went outside for a cigarette, and Summa kept her company with her glass of wine.
Joona and Samuel cleared the table. As soon as they were alone they started talking about work and the following day’s appeal.
“I’m not going to be there,” Samuel said seriously. “I don’t know, it’s not that I’m frightened, but it feels like my soul gets dirty—that it gets dirtier every second I spend in his vicinity.”
“I’m sure he’s guilty,” Joona said.
“But?”
“I think he has an accomplice.”
Samuel sighed and put the dishes in the sink.
“We’ve stopped a serial killer,” he said. “A lone lunatic who—”
“He wasn’t alone at the grave when we got there,” Joona interrupted.
“Yes, he was.” Samuel started to rinse the dishes.
“It’s not unusual for serial killers to work with other people,” Joona objected.
“No, but there’s nothing that suggests that Jurek Walter belongs to that category,” Samuel said. “We’ve done our job. We’re finished.”
27
The sun was shining through the mottled glass in the windows of the Wrangelska Palace. Jurek Walter’s lawyer explained that his client had been so badly affected by the trial that he couldn’t bear to explain why he had been at the crime scene when he was arrested.
Joona was called as a witness, and described their surveillance work and the arrest. Then the defense lawyer asked if Joona could see any reason at all to suspect that the prosecutor’s account of events was based on a false assumption. “Could my client have been found guilty of a crime that someone else committed?”
Joona met the lawyer’s anxious gaze, and in his mind’s eye saw Jurek Walter calmly pushing the woman back into the coffin every time she tried to get out.
“I’m asking you, becau
se you were there,” the defense lawyer went on. “Could Jurek Walter actually have been trying to rescue the woman in the grave?”
“No,” Joona replied.
After deliberating for two hours, the Chair of the Court declared that the verdict of the Stockholm Court House was upheld. Jurek Walter’s face didn’t move a muscle as the more rigorous sentence was announced. He was to be held in a secure psychiatric clinic with extraordinary conditions applied to any eventual parole proceedings. Seeing as he was closely connected to numerous ongoing investigations, he was also subject to unusually extensive restrictions.
When the Chair of the Court had finished, Jurek Walter turned toward Joona. His face was covered with fine wrinkles, and his pale eyes looked straight into Joona’s.
“Now Samuel Mendel’s two sons are going to disappear,” Jurek said in a measured voice. “And Samuel’s wife, Rebecka, will disappear. But…No, listen to me, Joona Linna. The police will look for them, and when the police give up, Samuel will go on looking, but when he eventually realizes that he’ll never see his family again, he’ll kill himself.”
Joona stood up to leave the courtroom.
“And your little daughter,” Jurek Walter went on, looking down at his fingernails.
“Careful now,” Joona said.
“Lumi will disappear,” Jurek whispered. “And Summa will disappear. And when you realize that you’re never going to find them…you’re going to hang yourself.”
He looked up and stared directly into Joona’s eyes. His face was calm, as if things had already been settled the way he wanted.
Ordinarily, convicts are taken back to a holding cell until their destination and transportation to their permanent facility have been organized. But the staff at Kronoberg were so keen to be rid of Jurek Walter that they had arranged transport directly from the Wrangelska Palace to the Secure Criminal Psychology Unit, twenty kilometers north of Stockholm.