by Lars Kepler
“Poor Saga,” Corinne whispers.
“She should have positioned the microphone,” Johan Jönson mutters.
“She didn’t have a chance.”
“But if she blows her cover, then—”
“She won’t,” Corinne says.
“Jurek’s said nothing so far,” Pollock says, glancing over at Joona.
“What if he stays silent? All this will have been in vain,” Jönson sighs.
Joona says nothing, but he’s thinking that something was conveyed in the brief section of the recording. For several minutes, it was as if he could feel the physical presence of Jurek, as if Jurek was in the dayroom, even though he hadn’t said anything.
“Let’s listen to it one more time,” he says, checking the clock.
“Are you going somewhere?” Corinne asks, raising her neat black eyebrows.
“I’m meeting someone,” Joona says, returning her smile.
“Finally, a bit of romance, huh?”
88
Joona walks into a white-tiled room with a long sink against one wall. Water is running from an orange hose into a drain in the floor. The body from the hunting cabin in Dalarna is lying on a plastic-covered autopsy table. Its sunken brown chest has been sawed open, and yellow liquid is trickling into the stainless-steel trough.
“Tra-la-la-la-laa—we’d catch the rainbow,” the Needle sings to himself. “Tra-la-la-la-laa—to the sun…”
He pulls out a pair of latex gloves and is blowing into them when he sees Joona standing in the doorway.
“You should record an album with everyone in Forensics.” Joona smiles.
“Frippe’s a very good guitar player,” the Needle replies.
The light from the powerful lamps in the ceiling reflects off his aviator glasses. He’s wearing a white polo under his doctor’s coat.
They hear footsteps in the corridor; moments later, Carlos Eliasson strolls in, wearing pale-blue shoe covers on his feet. “Have you managed to identify the body?” he asks, stopping abruptly when he catches sight of the corpse on the table.
The raised edges make the autopsy table look like a draining rack where someone has left a piece of dried meat, or some strange, blackened root. The corpse is desiccated and distorted, its severed head placed above the neck.
“There’s no doubt that it’s Jeremy Magnusson,” the Needle replies. “Our forensic dentist compared the body’s oral characteristics with Magnusson’s dental records.”
The Needle leans over, takes the head in his hands, and opens the wrinkled black hole that was Jeremy Magnusson’s mouth.
“He had an impacted wisdom tooth, and—”
“Please,” Carlos says, beads of sweat glinting on his forehead.
“The palate is gone,” the Needle says, forcing the mouth open a bit farther. “But if you feel with your finger—”
“Fascinating,” Carlos interrupts, then looks at his watch. “Do we have any idea how long he was hanging there?”
“The drying process would probably have been impeded slightly by the low temperatures,” the Needle replies. “But if you look at the eyes, the conjunctiva dried out very quickly, as did the undersides of the eyelids. The parchmentlike texture of the skin is uniform, apart from around the neck, where it was in contact with the rope.”
“Which means?” Carlos says.
“The postmortal process forms a sort of diary, an ongoing life after death, as the body changes. And I would estimate that Mr. Magnusson hanged himself—”
“Thirteen years, one month, and five days ago,” Joona says.
“Good guess,” the Needle says.
“I just got a scan of his goodbye note from Forensics,” Joona says, taking out his phone.
“Suicide,” Carlos says.
“Everything points to that, even if Jurek Walter could feasibly have been there at the time,” the Needle replies.
“Jeremy Magnusson was on the list of Jurek’s most likely victims,” Carlos says. “And if we can write off his death as suicide…”
A thought is flitting through Joona’s mind. It’s as if there’s some sort of hidden association tucked away but resonating with this conversation—one he can’t quite grasp.
“What did he say in the note?” Carlos asks.
“He hanged himself just three weeks before Samuel and I found his daughter, Agneta, in Lill-Jan’s Forest,” Joona says, bringing up the image of the note.
I don’t know why I’ve lost everyone. My children, my grandson, and my wife.
I’m like Job, but with no restitution.
I have waited, and that waiting must end.
He took his life in the belief that everyone he loved had been taken from him. If he had only put up with loneliness for a little longer, he would have gotten his daughter back.
89
Reidar Frost has ordered food from the noodle house to be delivered to the hospital. Steam is rising from beef-and-cilantro dumplings, spring rolls that smell strongly of ginger, rice noodles with chopped vegetables and chili, fried pork chops, and chicken soup. He’s ordered eight different dishes, because he doesn’t know what Mikael likes anymore.
Just as he emerges from the elevator and starts walking along the corridor, his phone rings.
Reidar puts the bags down by his feet, sees that the call is from a private number, and hurries to answer, “Reidar Frost.”
The phone is silent apart from a crackling sound.
“Who is this?” he asks.
Someone groans in the background.
“Hello?”
He’s on the point of ending the call when someone whispers, “Daddy?”
“Hello?” he repeats. “Who is this?”
“Daddy, it’s me,” a strange, high voice whispers. “It’s Felicia.”
The floor starts to spin under Reidar’s feet.
“Felicia?”
It’s almost impossible to hear her voice now.
“Daddy? I’m so scared, Daddy….”
“Where are you? Please, darling?”
He hears giggling and feels a shiver run through his whole body.
“Darling Daddy, give me twenty million kronor.”
It’s obvious now that it’s a man disguising his voice and trying to make it sound higher.
“Give me twenty million and I’ll sit in your lap and—”
“Do you know anything about my daughter?” Reidar asks.
“You’re such a bad writer it makes me sick.”
“Yes, I am. But if you know anything about—”
The call ends, and Reidar’s hands are shaking so much that he can’t tap in the number for the police. He tries to pull himself together and tells himself that he’s going to report the call, even though it won’t lead anywhere, and the police are bound to think he has only himself to blame.
90
It’s evening, but Anders Rönn is still at the hospital. Leif has gone home, and a muscular woman named Pia Madsen is working the evening guard shift. She doesn’t say much, mostly sits there reading thrillers and yawning. Anders wants to check up on the third patient, the young woman.
She arrived directly from Karsudden Hospital, and shows no sign of wanting to communicate with the staff. Her medication is extremely conservative, considering the results of the psychiatric evaluation. She is regarded as dangerous and an escape risk. The crimes she was convicted of in the District Court are deeply unpleasant.
As Anders watches her, he can’t believe the reports are true, even though he knows they must be.
Anders finds himself staring at the new patient on the screen again.
She’s as slim as a ballet dancer, and her shaved head makes her look fragile.
She’s astonishingly beautiful.
Maybe she was only prescribed Trilafon and Stesolid at Karsudden Hospital because she’s so beautiful.
After his meeting with hospital management, Anders has almost complete authority over the secure unit.
For the foreseeable
future, he is making the decisions about the patients.
He has consulted with Dr. Maria Gomez in Ward 30. Usually, an initial period of observation would be advisable, but he could go in and give her an intramuscular injection of Haldol now. The thought makes him tingle, and he is filled with a heady, unfamiliar sense of anticipation.
Pia Madsen returns from the bathroom. A bit of toilet paper is stuck to one of her shoes and is trailing after her. She’s approaching along the corridor with shuffling steps, her face lethargic. Her eyelids are half closed, until she looks up and meets his gaze. “I’m not that tired,” she says with a laugh. She removes the toilet paper and throws it in the trash, then sits down at the control desk next to him and looks at the time. “Shall we sing a lullaby?” she sighs, before logging on to the computer and switching out the lights in the patients’ rooms.
The image of the three patients stays on Anders’s retina for a while. Just before everything went dark, Jurek was already lying on his back in bed, Bernie was sitting on the floor holding his bandaged hand to his chest, and Saga was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking angry and vulnerable in equal measure.
“They’re already part of the family,” Pia says, then opens her book.
91
At nine o’clock, the staff turns out the ceiling light. Saga is sitting on the edge of her bed. The microphone is still tucked into the cuff of her pants. It seems safest to keep it close until she’s able to position it. Without the microphone, the whole mission will be pointless. She waits, and a short while later, a gray rectangle becomes visible through the darkness. It’s the thick glass window in the door. The shapes in the room glow in a foggy landscape. Saga gets up and goes over to the darkest corner, lies down on the cold floor, and starts doing sit-ups. After three hundred, she rolls over, gently stretches her abdominal muscles, and starts doing push-ups.
Suddenly she gets the feeling that she’s being watched. Something’s different. She stops and looks up. The glass window is darker, shaded. In a hurry, she sticks her fingers into the cuff of her pants and takes the microphone out, but drops it on the floor.
She hears steps, then a metallic scraping sound against the door.
Saga sweeps her hands quickly over the floor, finds the microphone, and puts it in her mouth just as the lamp in the ceiling comes on.
“Stand on the cross,” a woman says in a stern voice.
Saga is still on all fours with the microphone in her mouth. Slowly she gets to her feet as she tries to gather saliva.
“Hurry up.”
She takes her time walking toward the cross, looking up at the ceiling, then down at the floor again. She stops on the cross, turns her back nonchalantly toward the door, raises her eyes to the ceiling, and swallows. Her throat hurts badly as the microphone slips down.
“We met earlier,” a man says in a drawling voice. “I’m in charge here, and I’m responsible for your medication.”
“I want to see a lawyer,” Saga says.
“Take your top off and walk slowly over to the door,” the first voice says.
She takes her blouse off, lets it fall to the floor, turns, and walks toward the door in her washed-out bra.
“Stop. Hold both your hands up, turn your arms around, and open your mouth wide.”
The metal hatch opens and she expects to receive the little cup with her pills.
“I’ve changed your medication, by the way,” the man with the drawling voice says.
Saga sees the doctor fill a syringe with a milky-white emulsion, and suddenly grasps the full significance of what it means to be under these people’s power.
“Stick your left arm through the hatch,” the woman says.
She realizes she can’t refuse, but her pulse quickens as she obeys. A hand grabs her arm and the doctor rubs his thumb over the muscle in her forearm. She suppresses the panicked instinct to fight her way free.
“I understand that you’ve been getting Trilafon,” the doctor says, giving her a look she can’t read. “Eight milligrams, three times a day. But I was thinking of trying—”
“I don’t want to,” she says.
She tries to pull her arm back, but the guard is holding it tight, and Saga can tell that she’s capable of breaking it. The guard forces her arm down, making her stand on tiptoe.
Saga wills herself to breathe evenly. What are they going to give her? A clouded drop is hanging from the point of the needle. She tries to pull her arm back again. A finger strokes the thin skin over the muscle. There’s a prick, and the needle slides in. She can’t move her arm. A chill spreads through her body. She looks at the doctor’s hands as the needle is withdrawn and a small compress stops the bleeding. She pulls her arm free and retreats from the two figures behind the glass.
“Now go sit on the bed,” the guard says in a hard voice.
Her arm stings where the needle went in, as if it had burned her. An immense weariness spreads through her body. She doesn’t have the energy to pick up her shirt from the floor, just stumbles and takes a step toward the bed.
“I’ve given you Stesolid to help you relax,” the doctor says.
The room lurches, and she fumbles for support but can’t reach the wall with her hand.
“Shit,” Saga gasps.
Tiredness sweeps over her. Just as she’s thinking that she needs to lie down on the bed, her legs give way. She collapses and hits the floor, the jolt running through her body and jerking her neck.
“I’ll be coming in shortly,” the doctor continues. “I was thinking we might try a neuroleptic drug that sometimes works very well. It’s called Haldol Depot.”
“I don’t want to,” she says quietly, trying to roll onto her side.
She opens her eyes and blinks through the dizziness. One hip is throbbing from the fall. A tingling sensation rises from her feet, making her more and more drowsy. She doesn’t have the energy to get up. Her thoughts are slowing. She tries again to raise her head but is completely impotent.
92
Her eyelids are heavy, but she forces herself to look. The light from the lamp in the ceiling is strangely clouded. The metal door opens, and a man in a white coat comes in. It’s the young doctor. He’s holding something in his slender hands. The lock on the door clicks behind him. She blinks her dry eyes and sees the doctor put two vials of yellow oil on the table. Carefully, he opens the plastic packaging of a syringe. Saga tries to crawl under the bed, but she’s too slow. The doctor grabs hold of her ankle and starts to pull her out. She tries to cling on, and rolls onto her back. Her bra slides up, uncovering her breasts as he drags her out.
“You look like a princess,” she hears him whisper.
“What?”
She looks up to see his moist gaze, and tries to cover her breasts, but her hands are too weak.
She shuts her eyes again and just lies there waiting.
Suddenly the doctor rolls her over onto her stomach. He pulls her pants and underwear down. She fades out and is awoken by a sharp prick on the top of her right buttock, then another, lower down.
* * *
—
Saga wakes up in the darkness on the cold floor and realizes that she’s been covered with a blanket. Her head hurts, and she has little feeling in her hands. She sits up, adjusts her bra, and remembers the microphone in her stomach.
There’s very little time.
She could have been asleep for hours.
She crawls over to the drain in the floor, sticks two fingers down her throat and throws up some acrid liquid. She gulps hard and tries again. Her stomach cramps, but nothing comes up.
“Shit.”
She has to have the microphone tomorrow so she can place it in the dayroom. She can’t let it disappear. She gets up on wobbly legs and drinks some water from the tap, then kneels and tries again. The water comes back up, but she keeps her fingers in her throat. The meager contents of her stomach trickle down her forearm. Gasping for breath, she sticks her fingers in deeper, setting off the gag
reflex. She throws up bile until her mouth is filled with the bitter taste. She coughs and sticks her fingers down once more. This time, she finally feels the microphone come up through her throat and into her mouth. She catches it in her hand and hides it, even though the room is dark, then stands up, washes it under the tap, and tucks it into the cuff of her pants again. She spits out a mixture of bile and slime, rinses her mouth and face, spits again, drinks some water, and lies down on the bed.
Her feet and fingertips are cold. She has a vague itch in her toes. As Saga adjusts her pants, she realizes that her underwear is inside out. She isn’t sure if she put them on wrong herself, or if something else happened. She curls up under the blanket and carefully slides one hand down to her crotch. It isn’t sore, but it feels strangely numb.
93
Mikael Kohler-Frost is sitting at a table in the dining room of his hospital ward. One hand is wrapped around a cup of warm tea as he speaks to Magdalena Ronander of the NCID. Reidar is too agitated to sit, but he stands by the door and watches his son for a while before going down to the entrance to meet Veronica Klimt.
Magdalena smiles at Mikael, then gets out the bulky interview protocols and puts them on the table. They fill four spiral-bound folders. She leafs through to the bookmarked page, then asks if he’s ready to continue.
“I only ever saw the inside of the capsule,” Mikael explains, as he’s done so many times before.
“Can you describe the door again?” she asks.
“It’s made of metal, and it’s completely smooth. In the beginning, you could pick little flakes of paint off with your fingernails. There’s no keyhole and no handle.”
“What color is it?”
“Gray, as I remember.”
“And there was a hatch that—”
She breaks off when she sees him wipe the tears from his cheeks and turn his face away.
“I can’t tell Dad,” he says, his lips trembling. “But if Felicia doesn’t come back…”
Magdalena pauses and goes around the table, hugs him, and says that everything is going to be okay.