by Lars Kepler
I noted that Eva Blau had not arrived yet, and then I went over to the tripod and started adjusting the camera. I checked the wide-angle view and zoomed in; I saw Sibel wipe away tears, or so I thought. I tested the microphone through my headphones. I heard Lydia cheerfully exclaim, “Exactly! That’s always the way with children! Kasper doesn’t talk about anything else anymore; it’s just Spider-Man, Spider-Man, all the time!”
And I heard Charlotte respond, “I’ve gathered they’re all crazy about him at the moment.”
“Kasper doesn’t have a daddy. Perhaps Spider-Man acts as his male role model,” said Lydia, laughing so loudly that my headphones reverberated. “But we’re fine,” she went on. “We laugh a lot, even if we’ve had a few problems lately.” She dropped her voice confidentially. “It’s as if he’s jealous of everything I do, he wants to destroy my things, he doesn’t want me to talk on the phone, he throws my favourite book down the toilet, he yells at me … I think something must have happened, but he just won’t tell me.”
Jussi began to talk about his haunted house: his parents’ home up in Dorotea, in southern Lapland. They owned a lot of land close to an area where the Sami people lived in their traditional huts, even as late as the 1970s. “I live very close to a lake, Djuptjärnen,” he explained. “The last part of the route is old wooden tracks. In the summer, kids come there to swim. They love the myths about Nächen, the water sprite.”
“The water sprite?” I asked.
“People have seen him sitting and playing his fiddle by Djuptjärnen for over three hundred years.”
“But not you?”
“No,” he said, with a grin.
“But what do you do up there in the forest all year?” asked Pierre, half smiling.
“I buy old cars and buses, fix them up, and sell them; the place looks like a scrapyard.”
“Is it a big house?” Lydia asked.
“No, but it’s green. My dad painted the place one summer, a kind of peculiar pale green. I don’t know what he was thinking; someone must have given him the paint.” He laughed, then fell silent. It was time for a break.
Lydia produced a tin of saffron-scented biscuits that she offered around. “They’re totally organic,” she said, urging Marek to take some.
Charlotte smiled and nibbled a tiny bit from one edge.
“Did you make them yourself?” asked Jussi with an unexpected grin, which brought a gentle light to his heavy face.
“I almost didn’t have time,” said Lydia, shaking her head and smiling. “I almost got into a quarrel at the playground.”
Sibel sniggered and ate her biscuit in a couple of fierce bites.
“It was Kasper.” Lydia sighed. “We’d gone to the playground as usual this morning, and one of the mothers came over and said Kasper had hit her little girl on the back with a shovel.”
“Shit,” whispered Marek.
“I went completely cold when she said that,” said Lydia.
“What do you do in a situation like that?” Charlotte asked politely.
Marek took another biscuit and listened to Lydia with an unusually focused expression on his face, as if he were studying her as much as listening to her. For the first time, I wondered if he had a crush on her.
“I don’t know. I told the mother that I took it very seriously. I think I was quite upset, actually. Even though she said it was nothing to worry about, and she thought it had been an accident.”
“Of course,” said Charlotte. “Children play with such wild enthusiasm.”
“But I promised to speak to Kasper. I told her I would deal with it,” Lydia went on.
“Good.” Jussi nodded.
“She said Kasper seemed to be a really sweet boy,” Lydia added with a smile.
I sat down on my chair and flicked through my notes; I was anxious to get the second session under way as quickly as possible. It was Lydia’s turn again.
She met my eyes and smiled tentatively. Everyone was silent, expectant, as I began. The room was quiet with our breathing. A dark silence, growing more and more dense, followed our heartbeats. With each exhalation, we sank more deeply. After the induction my words led them downward, and after a while I turned to Lydia.
“You are moving deeper, sinking gently; you are very relaxed. Your arms are heavy, your legs are heavy, your eyelids are heavy. You are breathing slowly and listening to my words without question; you are surrounded by my words, you feel safe and compliant. Lydia, right now you are very close to the thing you do not want to think about, the thing you never talk about, the thing you turn away from, the thing that always lies hidden to the side of the warm light.”
“Yes,” she answered, with a sigh.
“You are there now,” I said.
“I am very close.”
“Where are you at this moment?”
“At home.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
I looked at her. Reflections and flashes of light passed across her high, smooth forehead, her neat little mouth, and her skin, so pale it was almost sickly. I knew she had turned thirty-seven two weeks ago. She hadn’t gone far back in time like the others, but just a few days instead.
“What’s happening? What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The telephone …”
“What about the telephone?”
“It rings, it rings again, I pick up the receiver and put it down straight away.”
“You are perfectly calm, Lydia.”
She looked tired, troubled perhaps.
“The food will get cold,” she said. “I’ve made lentil soup and I’ve baked bread. I was going to eat in front of the TV, but of course that won’t be possible.”
Her chin quivered, then stopped.
“I wait a while, look out into the street through the blinds. There’s no one there. I can’t hear anything. I sit down at the kitchen table and eat a little bit of warm bread with butter, but I have no appetite. I go down to the cellar, it’s cold down there as usual, and I sit on the old leather sofa and close my eyes. I have to compose myself. I have to gather my strength.”
She fell silent. Strips of seaweed drifted past and came between us.
“Why do you have to gather your strength?” I asked.
“So I’ll be able to get up and walk past the red rice-paper lantern with the Chinese symbols and the tray of scented candles and polished stones. The floorboards sag and creak beneath the plastic mat.”
“Is anyone there?” I asked Lydia quietly, but immediately regretted it.
“I pick up the stick and push down the bubble in the mat with my foot so I can open the door and go in and switch on the light,” she said. “Kasper’s blinking in the light, but he doesn’t sit up. He’s peed in the bucket. It smells very strong. He’s wearing his pale blue pyjamas. He’s breathing hard. I poke him with the stick through the bars. He makes pitiful noises, moves away a fraction, and sits up. I ask if he’s changed his mind and he nods, so I push a plate of food into the cage. The cod’s shrivelled up and turned a dark colour. He crawls over and eats it and I’m pleased, and I’m just about to tell him how happy I am that we understand each other when he throws up on the mattress.”
Lydia’s face contorted in a wry grimace. “And there I was”—her lips were taut, the corners of her mouth turning down—“I thought we were done.” She shook her head and licked her lips. “Do you understand how this makes me feel? He says sorry. I repeat that it’s Sunday tomorrow; I slap my face and scream at him to look.”
Charlotte was looking at Lydia through the water with frightened eyes.
“Lydia,” I said, “you are going to leave the basement now, without being frightened or angry; you are going to feel calm and collected. I am going to lift you slowly out of this deep relaxation, up to the surface, up to clarity, and together we are going to talk about what you’ve said, just you and I, before I bring the others out of their hypnosis.”
She snarled quietly, tiredly.
/>
“Lydia, are you listening to me?”
She nodded.
“I’m going to count backwards, and when I reach one you will open your eyes and be fully awake and aware: ten, nine, eight; you are rising gently to the surface, your body feels completely relaxed and comfortable; seven, six, five, four; soon you are going to open your eyes but remain seated on your chair; three, two, one … now open your eyes. You are fully awake.”
Our eyes met. Lydia’s face looked somehow shrivelled, dried up. This was not something I had expected. I still felt cold because of what she had told me. If the rule of confidentiality had to be weighed against the duty of disclosure, this was a case in which it was crystal clear that the obligation to remain silent no longer applied, since a third party was obviously in danger.
“Lydia,” I said quietly, “you understand that I have to contact Social Services?”
“Why?”
“What you told me leaves me no choice.”
“In what way?”
“Don’t you see?”
Lydia drew back her lips. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You described how—”
“Shut your mouth,” she snapped. “You don’t know me, you have nothing to do with my life, and you have no right to meddle in what I do in my own home.”
“I have reason to suspect that your child—”
“Shut your mouth!” she screamed, and left the room.
I’d parked next to a high fir hedge three hundred feet from Lydia’s large wooden house in Rotebro. The social worker had agreed to my request to accompany her on the first home visit. My report to the police had been received with a certain amount of scepticism but had, of course, led to a preliminary investigation.
A red Toyota drove past me and stopped outside the house. I got out of the car, walked over, and introduced myself to the short, stocky woman who stood outside the car.
Sodden advertising leaflets were sticking out of the letter box. The low gate stood open. We went up the path to the house. I noticed there were no toys in the neglected garden. No sandpit, no swing in the old apple tree, no bike on the path. It was a sunny day, but all the blinds were closed. The hanging baskets were full of dead plants. A flight of rough stone steps led up to the door. I thought I sensed a movement behind the yellow opaque glass. The social worker rang the bell. We waited, but there was no answer, no sound except birdsong and the intermittent noise of distant traffic. She yawned, looked at her watch, rang the bell again, and tried the handle. The door was not locked. She opened it. We were looking into a small hallway.
“Hello?” she shouted. “Lydia?”
We walked in, took off our shoes, and continued through a door into a passageway with pink wallpaper and pictures of people meditating, with bright light around their heads. There was a pink telephone on the floor next to a hall table.
“Lydia?”
I opened a door and saw a narrow staircase leading to the basement.
“It’s down here,” I said.
The social worker followed me down the stairs and into the playroom, which contained an old leather sofa and a table, the top of which was made up of brown tiles. On a tray stood several scented candles among polished stones and pieces of glass. A deep red rice-paper lantern with Chinese characters on it hung from the ceiling. A plastic mat lay over the floorboards. Against one wall was a door. My heart was pounding as I moved over to it. When I tried to open it, the door got stuck on a large bubble in the plastic mat. I pushed down the bubble with my foot and went inside.
There was no cage. Instead, an upturned bicycle stood in the middle of the floor with the front wheel removed. A repair kit lay beside a blue plastic box: rubber patches, glue, monkey wrenches. One of the shiny hooks had been inserted under the edge of the tyre and braced against the spokes. Suddenly there was a creaking sound from the ceiling, and we realised someone was walking across the floor of the room above. Without exchanging a word we hurried up the stairs. The kitchen door was ajar. I noticed there were slices of bread and crumbs on the yellow linoleum floor.
“Hello?” the social worker called out.
I went in and saw that the fridge door was open. Lydia was standing in the pale glow of the light, her eyes gazing at the floor. Only after a few seconds did I see the knife in her hand. It was a long bread knife with a serrated edge. Her arm was hanging loosely by her side. The knife blade glimmered beside her thigh as her hand shook.
“I don’t want you here,” she hissed, suddenly looking at me.
“All right,” I said, moving backwards towards the doorway.
“Shall we sit down and have a little chat?” said the social worker, keeping her tone neutral.
I pushed open the door and saw that Lydia was slowly moving closer.
“Erik,” she said. I started to close the door, and Lydia sprang forward. I raced down the hall, but the door at the end was locked. Lydia kept pace, making a strange wailing noise as she ran. I yanked open another door and stumbled into a TV room. Lydia followed me in. I bumped into an armchair as I made for the balcony door, but it was impossible to turn the handle. Lydia flew at me with the knife, and I took cover behind a large oval table.
“It’s your fault,” she said, as she chased me this way, that way, around the table.
The social worker ran into the room. She was completely out of breath. “Lydia,” she said sharply. “Stop this right now.”
“It’s all his fault,” said Lydia.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What’s my fault?”
“This,” said Lydia, drawing the knife across her throat. She looked into my eyes as the blood splashed down over her dress and her bare feet. Her mouth was trembling. The knife fell to the floor. One hand groped for support, but she sank down to the floor, coming to rest, balanced on one hip, like a mermaid.
Annika Lorentzon’s smile was troubled. Rainer Milch leaned across the table and poured a glass of mineral water with a hiss of carbon dioxide. His cuff links flashed royal blue and gold.
“I’m sure you understand why we wanted to speak to you as soon as possible,” said Peter Mälarstedt, adjusting his tie.
I opened the folder they had handed to me. Identical materials sat before each board member. The contents of the folder stated that Lydia had made a complaint against me. She claimed that I had driven her to attempt suicide by coercing her to confess to things that had not taken place. She accused me of having used her for the purposes of my experiments and implanted false memories in her mind during deep hypnosis, and she said I had persecuted her ruthlessly and cynically in front of the others until she was completely shattered and had suffered severe emotional distress.
I looked up from the papers. “Is this some kind of joke?” I said.
Annika Lorentzon looked away. Svein Holstein’s face was completely expressionless as he said, “She’s your patient, and these are serious accusations.”
“I don’t want to accuse a very disturbed patient of lying,” I said angrily, “but she’s either lying or she’s delusional. It’s impossible to implant memories during hypnosis. I can lead them to a memory, but I can’t create one. I lead them up to doors, but I can’t open those doors on my own.”
Rainer Milch looked at me, his expression grave. “The suspicion alone could destroy all your research, Erik, so I’m sure you realise how critical this is.”
I shook my head irritably. “Under hypnosis, she related events concerning herself and her son that I considered so serious I felt I had no choice but to contact Social Services. The fact that she would react in this way was—”
Ronny Johansson interrupted me sharply. “But she hasn’t even got any children. It says so here.” He tapped on the folder with a long finger. I snorted and got a strange look from Annika.
“Erik, being arrogant in this situation is not particularly helpful,” she said quietly.
“From the very first day she walked into this hospital, her relationship with her son has been the foc
us of almost every remark,” I said, with an irritable smile. “And not only in a therapeutic context. Whenever she chats with the others, she—”
Annika leaned over the table. “Erik,” she said slowly, “she has no son. She’s never had any children.”
“She hasn’t got any children?”
“No.”
The room fell silent.
I watched the bubbles in the mineral water rising to the surface.
“I don’t understand. She still lives in her childhood home.” I attempted to explain as calmly as I could. “All the details matched. I can’t believe—”
“You can’t believe,” Milch broke in, “but you were wrong.”
“They can’t lie like that under hypnosis.”
“Are you certain she was under hypnosis?”
“I’d stake my reputation on it.”
“In a way, you have, Erik. But it doesn’t matter now. The damage is already done.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, half to myself. “Perhaps she was talking about her own childhood; it’s nothing I’ve come across, but perhaps she was working through a memory of her own.”
“It could be exactly as you say,” Annika interjected. “It could be a number of things. But the fact remains that your patient made a suicide attempt for which she blames you. We suggest you take a leave of absence while we investigate the matter.” She smiled wanly at me. “This will all sort itself out, Erik, I’m sure of it,” she said gently. “But right now you have to step aside until we’ve looked into everything. We simply can’t afford to let the press wallow in this.”
I thought about Charlotte, Marek, Jussi, Sibel, Pierre, and Eva. We’d all worked to establish trust, a rapport. All individual progress had been the hard-won result of the specific chemistry we’d achieved as a group. My abandonment of them would leave them feeling betrayed and let down.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” I said.
Annika patted my hand. “It will sort itself out. Lydia Everson is obviously unstable and confused, but the most important thing now is to do things by the book. You will request a leave of absence from your activities involving hypnosis while we conduct an internal investigation into these events. I know you’re a good doctor, Erik. I’m sure you’ll be back with your group in no more than”—she shrugged her shoulders—“six months.”