by Lars Kepler
“Yes?”
“I’ve got an answer,” says Anja.
“That was quick.”
“Did you give me any choice? Anyway, they said they’ve had technical problems, but they called Kennet Sträng an hour ago and told him the base station was in Gävle.”
“In Gävle,” he repeats.
“They said they haven’t quite finished yet. In a day or two, or this week at any rate, they’ll be able to say exactly where Benjamin was when he made the call.”
“You could have come to my office to tell me, I mean, it’s only four steps away.”
“I am not your servant.”
“No.”
71
tuesday, december 15: morning
Joona writes Gävle on a blank page on the pad in front of him and picks up the phone again.
“Erik Maria Bark,” comes the immediate answer.
“Hi, it’s Joona.”
“How’s it going? Have you found anything out?”
“I’ve just been given an approximate location for the call.”
“Where was he?”
“The only thing we’ve got so far is that the base station is in Gävle.”
“Gävle?”
“Slightly north of—”
“I know where the place is. I just don’t understand.”
Joona can hear Erik moving around the room. “We’ll get a more precise location sometime this week,” he says.
“Sometime?”
“Tomorrow, hopefully.”
“So will you take over the case?” Erik asks, his voice full of tension.
“I’m taking over the case, Erik,” says Joona firmly. “I will find Benjamin.”
“Thank you.” Erik clears his throat, and goes on, once his voice is steady again. “I’ve been giving some thought to who could have done this, as you suggested, and I have the name of a person I’d like you to trace. Eva Blau. She was a patient of mine about ten years ago.”
“Blau? Like blue in German?”
“Yes.”
“Had she threatened you?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“I’ll do a search right away.” Joona writes the name on a pad. “One other thing. I’d really like to see you and Simone as soon as possible.”
“All right. What’s up?”
“Nobody did a reconstruction of the crime, did they?”
“No.”
“To remind Simone of exactly what she saw. And there may have been witnesses. It’ll help us figure out who may have had the opportunity to see the crime take place. Will you be home in half an hour?”
“I’ll call Simone,” says Erik. “We’ll wait for you there.”
“Good.”
“Joona,” says Erik.
“Yes?”
“I know it’s usually a matter of hours if the perpetrator is caught. I know it’s the first twenty-four hours that count. And now it’s—”
“Don’t you believe we’re going to find him?”
“It’s … I don’t know,” Erik whispers.
“I’m not usually wrong,” Joona replies quietly, but with a sharpness in his voice. “And I believe we’re going to find your son.”
Joona hangs up. He takes the piece of paper with Eva Blau’s name on it and goes to see Anja again. There is a strong smell of oranges in her office. A bowl of assorted citrus fruit stands next to the computer with its pink keyboard; on one wall hangs a large shiny poster showing a muscular Anja swimming the butterfly in Barcelona, at the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Joona smiles. “I was the safety officer when I was doing my military service. I could swim ten kilometres with a signal flag. But I’ve never been able to do butterfly.”
“It’s a waste of energy, that’s what it is.”
“Oh, not at all. I think it’s beautiful—you looked like a mermaid, swimming along,” says Joona.
Anja’s voice reveals a certain amount of pride as she tries to explain. “The coordination technique is very demanding. It’s all about a counter rhythm and—who cares?”
Anja straightens up contentedly, her large chest almost brushing Joona where he stands.
“Anyway,” he says, holding out the piece of paper, “I’d like you to do a search for me.”
Anja’s smile stiffens. “I should have known you wanted something, Joona. It was a bit too good to be true. You come along with that sweet smile, and I was almost beginning to think you were going to ask me out to dinner or something.”
“Oh, I will, Anja. All in the fullness of time.”
She shakes her head and snatches the piece of paper from him. “Is it urgent?”
“It’s extremely urgent, Anja.”
“So why are you standing here flirting with me?”
“Thought you liked it.”
Anja studies the piece of paper for a moment. “Eva Blau,” she says thoughtfully.
“There’s no guarantee that it’s her real name.”
Anja chews on her lip. “A made-up name,” she says. “It’s not much to go on. Haven’t you got anything else? An address or something?”
“Nothing. The only thing I know is that she was a patient of Erik Maria Bark at Karolinska University Hospital ten years ago, probably for just a few months. But you can check the electoral roll and all the other databases. Is there an Eva Blau who enrolled in a university course? If she bought a car, she’s registered to drive. Or has she ever applied for a visa? Does she have a library card … clubs, the temperance movement? I want you to look at witness protection programmes as well, victims of crimes—”
“Yes, all right, all right. Now go away,” says Anja, “and let me get on with my work.”
72
tuesday, december 15: morning
Joona turns off the audio book; Per Myrberg is reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment with his own peculiar mixture of calm and intensity. He parks the car outside Lao Wai, an Asian vegetarian restaurant that Disa keeps nagging him to try. He glances in through the window and is struck by the ascetic, simple beauty of the wooden furniture, the absence of anything unnecessary, the lack of decorative bits and pieces within the restaurant.
Erik and Simone are waiting for him in their apartment. Joona runs through what he intends to do.
“We’re going to reconstruct the kidnapping as far as possible. The only one of us who was really there when it happened is you, Simone.”
She nods resolutely.
“So you will play yourself. I’ll be the kidnapper and you, Erik, can be Benjamin.”
“All right.”
Joona points to the clock. “Simone, what time do you think the break-in took place?”
She clears her throat. “I’m not sure … but the paper hadn’t come, so it was before five. I’d got up for a drink of water at about two … then I lay awake for a while … so sometime between half past two and five o’clock.”
“Good. I’ll set the clock at half past three, somewhere in the middle,” says Joona. “Now, I’m going to unlock the door, creep into Simone’s bedroom, and pretend to give her an injection. Then I’ll go into Benjamin’s room and inject you, Erik, and drag you out of the room. Is Benjamin a big boy?”
“Not particularly,” says Simone. “Why?”
“Erik’s heavier, then. When I drag him along the hall and through the front door, I’ll need to compensate by adding a minute or so to the time. Simone, try to move exactly the way you did that night. Lie down in the same position at the same time. I want to know what you could see and what you could only sense.”
Simone nods, her face pale. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for doing this.”
Joona looks at her with ice-grey eyes. “Believe me. We are going to find Benjamin.”
Simone rubs her hand rapidly over her forehead. “I’m going into the bedroom,” she says hoarsely, as Joona leaves the apartment with the keys in his hand.
She is lying under the duvet when Joona comes in. He moves quickly towards he
r, not in haste but with purpose. She feels a tickling sensation as he lifts her arm and pretends to inject her. Just as she meets Joona’s gaze as he bends over her, she remembers being woken by a distinct jab in her arm and seeing someone slip out through the doorway and into the hall. The memory alone makes her arm tingle unpleasantly where the needle went in. Joona disappears, and she sits, rubs her arm, and slowly gets up. She goes into the hallway, peers into Benjamin’s room, sees Joona bending over the bed—and suddenly she simply comes out with the words, as if they have been echoing in her memory.
“Benjamin? What’s going on?”
She moves hesitantly down the hallway. Her body seems to recall the sensations it felt that night; how quickly its strength faded. Her legs give way and she falls, banging her head. She remembers the feeling of sinking deeper and deeper into a black numbness, penetrated by ever briefer flashes of light. As she sits half propped up against the wall, she sees Joona dragging Erik along by his feet. Her memory replays the incomprehensible: Benjamin trying to cling to the doorframe, his head banging on the threshold, the slow windmilling of his hands growing weaker and weaker as he reaches out to her.
As Erik is dragged past Simone, it’s as if a figure made of mist or steam appears there in the hallway for a fraction of a second: she is looking at Joona’s face from below, and the image shifts: a glimmer of the kidnapper’s face flashes through her mind: a shadowed face, a yellow hand around Benjamin’s ankle. Simone’s heart is pounding as she hears Joona drag Erik out onto the landing and close the door behind him.
An air of unpleasantness pervades the entire apartment. Simone cannot shake off the feeling that she has been drugged again; her limbs feel numb and slow as she gets to her feet and waits for them to come back.
As Joona drags Erik across the scratched marble floor of the landing, he looks around him the entire time, checking angles and vantage points, searching for unexpected places where an eyewitness might have had a good view of the incident. He moves toward the lift, whose doors he’s propped open in advance, and drags Erik inside. From there he can see the apartment door to his right, the letter box and nameplate made of brass, but to the left there is only a wall. From deeper inside, Joona looks over at the large mirror on the landing, but even by craning his neck he can see nothing new. The window on the stairwell is hidden the whole time. Nothing seems to reveal itself when he looks back over his shoulder. Then suddenly he discovers something unexpected. From a certain vantage point, from a smaller security mirror mounted at an angle, he can see reflected in the landing’s mirror the shining peephole in the door of an apartment that had seemed to be out of sight. Joona lets the lift doors shut and notes as they close that the mirror still allows him to stare straight at the door. If someone were standing inside that apartment looking out—roused, perhaps, by the commotion next door—that person would be able to see his face with absolute clarity right now. But if he moves his head just two inches in any direction, the view immediately disappears.
When they reach the ground floor, Joona helps Erik up and checks his watch. “Eight minutes.”
They return to the apartment. Simone is standing in the hallway; it’s obvious that she has been crying.
“He was wearing rubber gloves,” she says. “Yellow rubber gloves.”
“Are you sure?” asks Erik.
“Yes.”
“In that case, there’s no point in looking for fingerprints,” says Joona.
“What now?” she asks.
“The police have already carried out door-to-door inquiries,” Erik says gloomily, as Simone brushes dirt and dust off his back.
Joona takes out a sheet of paper. “Yes, I’ve got a list of the people they’ve spoken to. Needless to say, they concentrated on this floor and the apartments directly below. There are five people they haven’t spoken to yet.”
He checks the list and sees that the apartment diagonally behind the lift has been crossed out. That was the door he could see via the two mirrors.
“One apartment has been crossed out,” he says. “The one on the far side of the lift.”
“They were away,” says Simone. “They still are. They’ve gone to Thailand for six weeks.”
Joona looks at them, his expression serious. “Time for me to knock on some doors,” he says.
The nameplate on the door says ROSENLUND. This was the apartment ignored by the officers carrying out door-to-door inquiries, since it was hidden from view and was empty.
Joona bends down and peers in through the letter box. He can’t see any mail or advertising leaflets on the doormat. Suddenly he hears a faint noise from further inside. A cat comes padding out of one of the rooms and into the hallway. It stops dead and stares at Joona, peering through the slot.
“Nobody leaves a cat for six weeks,” Joona says slowly to himself.
The cat is listening, its whole body alert.
“You don’t look as if you’re starving,” Joona says to the animal.
The cat gives an enormous yawn, jumps up onto a chair in the hallway, and curls itself into a ball.
Joona straightens up and glances at the paper in his hand. The apartment directly opposite the lift is occupied by a couple, but when the police called, only Alice Franzén was at home. The first person Joona wants to speak to is her husband.
Joona rings the doorbell and waits. He remembers being young, going around ringing doorbells with May Day flowers or an occasional charity collection box. The feeling of strangeness at looking into someone else’s home, the expression of distaste in the eyes of those who open the door.
He rings again. A woman in her thirties answers. She looks at him with a watchful, reserved expression that makes him think of the cat in the empty apartment.
“Yes?”
“My name is Joona Linna,” he says, showing her his ID. “I’d like to speak to your husband.”
She glances over her shoulder. “I’d like to know what it’s about first. He’s actually very busy at the moment.”
“It’s about the early morning of Saturday, 12th December.”
“We’ve already answered all your questions,” the woman says irritably.
“My colleagues spoke to you but not to your husband.”
The woman sighs. “I don’t know if he’s got time.”
Joona smiles. “It’ll only take a minute, I promise.”
The woman shrugs her shoulders, then yells, “Tobias! It’s the police!”
After a while a man appears with a towel wound around his hips. His skin looks as if it’s burning; he’s leathery and very tanned. “Hi. I was on the sun bed.”
“Nice,” says Joona.
“No, it isn’t,” Tobias Franzén replies. “There’s an enzyme missing from my liver. I have to spend two hours a day on that thing.”
“That’s quite another matter, of course,” Joona says dryly.
“You wanted to ask me something.”
“I want to know if you saw or heard anything unusual in the early morning of Saturday, 12th December.”
Tobias scratches his chest. His fingernails leave white marks on his sunburned skin.
“Let me think, last Friday night. I’m sorry, but I really can’t remember anything in particular.”
“OK, thank you very much, that’s all,” says Joona, inclining his head.
Tobias moves to close the door.
“Correction. One more thing. The Rosenlunds,” he remembers.
“They’re very nice people.” Tobias smiles. “I haven’t seen them for a while.”
“No, I understand that they’re away. Do you know if they have a cleaner or anything like that?”
Tobias shakes his head. He is now shivering and pale beneath his tan.
“Sorry, I’ve no idea.”
73
tuesday, december 15: morning
Joona moves on to the next name on the list: Jarl Hammar, on the floor below Erik and Simone. A pensioner who wasn’t at home when the police called.
&n
bsp; Jarl Hammar is a thin man who is clearly suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He is neatly dressed in a cardigan, with a handkerchief knotted around his neck.
“Police?” he repeats in a hoarse, almost inaudible voice as his eyes, cloudy with cataracts, look Joona up and down. “What do the police want with me?”
“I just want to ask a question,” says Joona. “Did you by any chance see or hear anything unusual in this building or on the street in the early morning of 12th December?”
Jarl Hammar tilts his head to one side and closes his eyes. After a brief moment he opens them again and shakes his head. “I’m on medication,” he says. “It makes me sleep very heavily.”
Joona catches sight of a woman further inside the apartment.
“And your wife?” he asks. “Could I have a word with her?”
Jarl Hammar gives a wry smile. “My wife was a wonderful woman. But unfortunately she is no longer with us; she died almost thirty years ago.” He turns and waves a shaky arm at the dark figure behind him. “This is Anabella. She helps me out with the cleaning and so on. Unfortunately she doesn’t speak Swedish, but apart from that she’s beyond reproach.”
The shadowy figure moves into the light when she hears her name. Anabella looks as if she’s from South America; she is in her twenties, with noticeable pockmarks on her face. Her hair is caught up in a loose black braid, and she is very short.
“Anabella,” Joona says softly. “Soy comisario de policía, Joona Linna.”
“Buenos días,” she replies in a lisping voice, looking at him with black eyes.
“¿Tu limpias más departamentos aquí, en este edificio?”
She nods, yes, she does clean other apartments in this building.