by Lars Kepler
“Hi, it’s Daniella Richards.”
“Are you still at the hospital? It’s quarter past eight.”
“I know. I’m exhausted.”
“Go home.”
“No chance,” says Daniella calmly. “You have to come back. That detective is on his way. He seems even more convinced that the perpetrator is after the older sister. He says he has to talk to the boy.”
Erik feels a sudden dark weight behind his eyes. “That’s a bad idea, given his condition.”
“I know. But what about the sister?” she interrupts him. “I’m considering giving the detective the go-ahead to question Josef.”
“It’s your patient. If you think he can cope with it,” says Erik.
“Cope? Of course he can’t cope with it. His condition is critical. His family has been murdered, and he’ll find out about it under questioning from a policeman. But I can’t just sit and wait. I don’t want to let the police at him, but there’s no doubt that his sister is in danger.”
“It’s your call,” Erik says again.
“A murderer is looking for his older sister!” Daniella breaks in, raising her voice.
“Presumably.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m in such a state about this,” she says. “Maybe because it isn’t too late. Something could actually be done. I mean, it isn’t often the case, but this time we could save a girl before she—”
“What do you want from me?” asks Erik.
“You have to come in and do what you’re good at.”
Erik pauses, then answers carefully. “I can talk to the boy about what’s happened when he’s feeling a little better.”
“That’s not what I mean. I want you to hypnotise him,” she says seriously.
“No.”
“It’s the only way.”
“I can’t. I won’t.”
“But there’s nobody as good as you.”
“I don’t even have permission to practise hypnosis at Karolinska.”
“I can arrange that.”
“Daniella,” Erik says, “I’ve promised never to hypnotise anyone again.”
“Can’t you just come in?”
There is silence for a little while; then Erik asks, “Is he conscious?”
“He soon will be.”
He can hear the rushing sound of his own breathing through the telephone.
“If you won’t hypnotise the boy, I’m going to let the police see him.” She ends the call.
Erik stands there holding the receiver in his trembling hand. The weight behind his eyes is rolling in towards his brain. He opens the drawer of the bedside table. The wooden box with the parrot and the native on it isn’t there. He must have left it in the car.
The apartment is flooded with sunlight as he walks through to wake Benjamin.
The boy is sleeping with his mouth open. His face is pale and he looks exhausted, despite a full night’s sleep.
“Benni?”
Benjamin opens his sleep-drenched eyes and looks at him as if he were a complete stranger, before he smiles the smile that has remained the same ever since he was born.
“It’s Tuesday. Time to wake up.”
Benjamin sits up yawning, scratches his head, then looks at the mobile phone hanging round his neck. It’s the first thing he does every morning: he checks whether he’s missed any messages during the night. Erik takes out the yellow bag with a puma on it, which contains the factor concentrate desmopressin, acetyl spirit, sterile cannulas, compresses, surgical tape, painkillers.
“Now or at breakfast?”
Benjamin shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.”
Erik quickly swabs his son’s skinny arm, turns it towards the light coming through the window, feels the softness of the muscle, taps the syringe, and carefully pushes the cannula beneath the skin. As the syringe slowly empties, Benjamin taps away at his cell phone with his free hand.
“Shit, my battery’s almost gone,” he says, then lies back as his father holds a compress to his arm to stop any bleeding.
Gently Erik bends his son’s legs backwards and forwards; then he exercises the slender knee joints and massages the feet and toes. “How does it feel?” he asks, keeping his eyes fixed on his son’s face.
Benjamin grimaces. “Same as usual.”
“Do you want a painkiller?”
Benjamin shakes his head, and Erik suddenly remembers the unconscious witness, the boy with all those knife wounds. Perhaps the murderer is looking for the older daughter right now.
“Dad? What is it?”
Erik meets Benjamin’s gaze. “I’ll drive you to school if you like,” he says.
“What for?”
13
tuesday, december 8: morning
The rush-hour traffic rumbles slowly along. Benjamin is sitting next to his father, the stop-and-go progress of the car making him feel drowsy. He gives a big yawn and feels a soft warmth still lingering in his body after the night’s sleep. He thinks about the fact that his father is in a hurry but that he still takes the time to drive him to school. Benjamin smiles to himself. It’s always been this way, he thinks: when Dad’s involved in something awful at the hospital, he gets worried that something’s going to happen to me.
“Oh, no!” Erik says suddenly. “We forgot the ice skates.”
“Right.”
“We’ll go back.”
“Doesn’t matter,” says Benjamin.
Erik tries switching lanes, but another car stops him from cutting in. Forced back, he almost collides with a dustbin lorry.
“We’ve got time to turn around and—”
“Just, like, forget the skates. I couldn’t care less,” says Benjamin, his voice rising.
Erik glances at him in surprise. “I thought you liked skating.”
Benjamin doesn’t know what to say. He can’t stand being interrogated, doesn’t want to lie. He turns away to look out of the window.
“Don’t you?” asks Erik.
“What?”
“Like skating?”
“Why would I?” Benjamin mutters. “It’s boring.”
“We bought you brand new—”
Benjamin’s only reply is a sigh.
“Fine,” says Erik. “Forget the skates.” He concentrates on the traffic for a moment. “So skating is boring. Playing chess is boring. Watching TV is boring. What do you actually enjoy?”
“Don’t know,” Benjamin says.
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“Movies?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” Erik smiles.
“Yes,” replies Benjamin.
“I’ve seen you watch three or four movies in a night,” says Erik cheerily.
“So what?”
Erik goes on, still smiling. “I wonder how many movies you could get through if you really liked watching them. If you loved movies.”
“Give me a break.” Despite himself, Benjamin smiles.
“Maybe you’d need two TVs, zipping through them all on fast forward.” Erik laughs and places his hand on his son’s knee. Benjamin allows it to remain there.
Suddenly they hear a muffled bang, and in the sky a pale blue star appears, with descending smoke-coloured points.
“Funny time for fireworks,” says Benjamin.
“What?” asks his father.
“Look,” says Benjamin, pointing.
A star of smoke hangs in the sky. For some reason, Benjamin can see Aida in front of him, and his stomach contracts at once; he feels warm inside. Last Friday they sat close together in silence on the sofa in her narrow living room out in Sundbyberg, watching the movie Elephant while her younger brother played with Pokémon cards on the floor, talking to himself.
As Erik is parking outside the school, Benjamin suddenly spots Aida. She’s standing on the other side of the fence waiting for him. When she catches sight of him she waves. Benjamin grabs his bag and, sliding out the car door, says, “’Bye, Dad. Thanks
for the lift.”
“Love you,” says Erik quietly.
Benjamin nods.
“Want to watch a movie tonight?” asks Erik.
“Whatever.”
“Is that Aida?” asks Erik.
“Yes,” says Benjamin, almost without making a sound.
“I’d like to say hello to her,” says Erik, climbing out of the car.
“What for?”
They walk across to Aida. Benjamin hardly dares to look at her; he feels like a kid. He doesn’t want her to think he needs his father to approve of her or anything. He doesn’t care what his father thinks. Aida looks nervous; her eyes dart from son to father. Before Benjamin has time to say anything by way of explanation, Erik sticks out his hand.
“Hi, there.”
Aida shakes his hand warily. Benjamin sees his father take in her tattoos: there’s a swastika on her throat, with a little Star of David next to it. She’s painted her eyes black, her hair is done up in two childish braids, and she wears a black leather jacket and a wide black net skirt.
“I’m Erik, Benjamin’s dad.”
“Aida.”
Her voice is high and weak. Benjamin blushes and looks nervously at Aida, then down at the ground.
“Are you a Nazi?” asks Erik.
“Are you?” she retorts.
“No.”
“Me neither,” she says, briefly meeting his eyes.
“Why have you got a—”
“No reason. I’m nothing. I’m just—”
Benjamin breaks in, his heart pounding with embarrassment over his father. “She was hanging out with these people a few years ago,” he says loudly. “But she thought they were idiots, and—”
“You don’t need to explain,” Aida interrupts, annoyed.
He doesn’t speak for a moment.
“I … I just think it’s brave to admit when you’ve made a mistake,” he says eventually.
“Yes, but I would interpret it as an ongoing lack of insight not to have it removed,” says Erik.
“Just leave it!” shouts Benjamin. “You don’t know anything about her!”
Aida simply turns and walks away. Benjamin hurries after her.
“Sorry,” he pants. “Dad can be so embarrassing.”
“He’s right, though, isn’t he?” she asks.
“No,” replies Benjamin feebly.
“I think maybe he is,” she says, half smiling as she takes his hand in hers.
14
tuesday, december 8: morning
The Department of Forensic Medicine is located in a redbrick building in the middle of the huge campus of the Karolinska Institute. And inside the department is the glossy white and pale matt grey office of Nils Åhlén, Chief Medical Officer, aka The Needle.
After giving his name to a girl at reception, Joona Linna is allowed in.
The office is modern and expensive and comes with a designer label. The few chairs are made of brushed steel, with austere white leather seats, and the light comes from a large sheet of glass suspended above the desk.
The Needle shakes Joona’s hand without getting up. He is wearing white aviator-framed glasses and a white turtleneck under his white lab coat. His face is clean-shaven and narrow, the grey hair is cropped, his lips are pale, his nose long and uneven.
“Good morning,” he says, in a hoarse voice.
On the wall hangs a faded colour photograph of The Needle and his colleagues: forensic pathologists, forensic chemists, forensic geneticists, and forensic dentists. They are all wearing white coats, and they all look happy. They are standing around a few dark fragments of bone on a bench; the caption beneath the picture states that this is a find from an excavation of ninth-century graves outside the trading settlement of Birka on the island of Björkö.
“New picture,” says Joona.
“I have to stick photos up with tape,” says The Needle discontentedly. “In the old pathology department they had a picture sixty feet square.”
“Wow,” replies Joona.
“Painted by Peter Weiss.”
“The writer?”
The Needle nods; the light from the desk lamp reflects off his aviators. “Yes. He painted portraits of all the staff in the forties. Six months’ work, and he was paid six hundred kronor, or so I’ve heard. My father is in the picture among the pathologists; he’s down at the end.” The Needle tilts his head to one side and returns to his computer. “I’m just working on the postmortem report from the Tumba murders,” he says.
“Yes?”
The Needle peers at Joona. “Carlos rang up to hassle me this morning.”
Joona smiles sweetly. “I know.”
The Needle pushes his glasses back. “I gather it’s important to establish the time of death of the different victims.”
“Yes, we need to know the order.”
The Needle searches on the computer, his lips pursed. “It’s only a preliminary assessment, but—”
“The man died first?”
“Exactly. I based that purely on the body temperature,” he says, pointing at the screen. “Erixon says both locations, the locker room and the house, were roughly the same temperature, so my estimate was that the man died just over an hour before the other two.”
“And have you changed your mind now?”
The Needle shakes his head and gets up with a groan. “Slipped disc,” he mutters, as he sets off down the hall.
Joona follows him as he limps slowly toward the postmortem unit. They pass a room containing a freestanding dissection table made of stainless steel; it looks like a draining board but with rectangular sections and a raised edge all round it. They enter a cool room where bodies being examined by the forensic unit are preserved in drawers at a temperature of forty degrees Fahrenheit. The Needle stops and checks the number, pulls out a large drawer, and sees that it’s empty.
“Gone,” he says, and they return to the corridor. As they walk, Joona notices that the floor is marked with thousands of scuffs from the wheels of trolleys. They reach another room and The Needle holds the door open for Joona.
They are in a well-lit white-tiled room with a large hand basin on the wall. Water is trickling into a drain in the floor from a bright yellow hose. On the long dissection table, which is covered in plastic, lies a naked, colourless body marked with hundreds of black wounds.
“Katja Ek,” states Joona.
The dead woman’s face is remarkably calm; her mouth is half open and her eyes have a serene look about them. She looks as if she is listening to beautiful music, but her peaceful expression is at odds with the long, vicious slashes across her forehead and cheeks. Joona allows his gaze to roam over Katja Ek’s body, where a marbled veining has already begun to appear around her neck.
“We’re hoping to get the internal examination done this afternoon.”
Joona sighs. “God, what a mess.”
The other door opens and a young man with an uncertain smile comes in. He has several rings in his eyebrows, and his dyed black hair hangs down the back of his white coat in a ponytail. With a little smile, The Needle raises one fist in a hard rock greeting, pinkie and index finger aloft like devil’s horns, which the young man immediately reciprocates.
“This is Joona Linna from National CID,” The Needle explains. “He comes to visit us now and again.”
“Frippe,” says the young man, shaking hands with Joona.
“He’s specialising in forensic medicine,” says The Needle.
Frippe pulls on a pair of latex gloves, and Joona goes over to the table with him; the air surrounding the woman is cold and smells unpleasant.
“She’s the one who was subjected to the least amount of violence,” The Needle points out. “Despite multiple cuts and stab wounds.”
They contemplate the dead woman. Her body is covered in large and small punctures.
“In addition, unlike the other two, she has not been mutilated or hacked to pieces,” he goes on. “The actual cause of death is not t
he wound in her neck but this one, which goes straight into the heart, according to the computer tomography.” He indicates a relatively unimpressive-looking wound on her sternum.
“But it is a little difficult to see the bleeds on the images,” says Frippe.
“Naturally, we’ll check it out when we open her up,” The Needle says to Joona.
“She fought back,” says Joona.
“In my opinion she actively defended herself at first,” replies The Needle, “based on the wounds on the palms of her hands, but then she tried to escape and simply tried to protect herself.”
The young doctor studies The Needle intently.
“Look at the injuries on the outer arms,” says The Needle.
“Defensive wounds,” mutters Joona.
“Exactly.”
Joona leans over and looks at the brownish-yellow patches that are visible in the woman’s open eyes.
“Are you looking at the suns?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t see them until a few hours after death; sometimes it can take several days,” The Needle says to the young doctor. “They’ll turn completely black in the end. It’s because the pressure in the eye is dropping.”
He picks up a reflex hammer and asks Frippe to see if any idiomuscular contractions remain. The young doctor taps the middle of the woman’s biceps and feels the muscle with his fingers, checking for contractions.
“Minimal,” he says to The Needle.
“They usually stop after thirteen hours,” The Needle explains.
“The dead are not completely dead,” says Joona, shuddering as he detects a ghostly movement in Katja Ek’s limp arm.
“Mortui vivis docent—the dead teach the living,” replies The Needle, smiling to himself as he and Frippe ease her onto her stomach.
He points out the blotchy reddish-brown patches on her buttocks and the small of her back and across her shoulder blades and arms.
“The hypostasis is faint when the victim has lost a lot of blood.”
“Obviously,” says Joona.
“Blood is heavy, and when you die there is no longer any internal pressure system,” The Needle explains to Frippe. “It might be obvious, but the blood runs downward and simply collects at the lowest points; it’s most often seen on surfaces that have been in contact with whatever the body was lying on.”