by Lars Kepler
Björn stiffens when he hears the signal. Penelope glances at the display.
“It’s Viola,” she says reassuringly before answering. “Hola, Sis.”
A car horn blares over the line as her sister yells in its direction. “Fucking idiot.”
“Viola, what’s going on?”
“It’s over. I’ve dumped Sergei.”
“Not again!” Penelope says.
“Yes, again,” says Viola, noticeably depressed.
“Sorry,” Penelope says. “I can tell you’re upset.”
“Well, I’ll be all right I guess. But … Mamma said you were going out on the boat and I thought … maybe I could come, too, if you don’t mind …”
A moment of silence.
“Sure, you can come, too,” Penelope says, although she hears her own lack of enthusiasm. “Björn and I need some time to ourselves, but …”
2
the pursuer
Penelope stands at the helm. An airy blue sarong is wrapped around her hips and there’s a peace sign on the right breast of her white bikini top. Spring sunlight pours through the windshield as she carefully rounds Kungshamn lighthouse and maneuvers the large motorboat into the narrow sound.
Her younger sister, Viola, gets up from the pink recliner on the afterdeck. For the past hour, she’s been lying back in Björn’s cowboy hat and enormous sunglasses, languidly smoking a joint.
Five times she tries to pick up a matchbox from the floor with her toes. Penelope can’t help smiling. Viola walks into the cockpit and offers to take the wheel for a while. “Otherwise, I’ll go downstairs and make myself a margarita,” she says, as she continues down the stairs.
Björn is lying on the foredeck, a paperback copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses put to use as his pillow. Penelope notices that the railing near his feet is rusting. The boat was a present from his father for his twentieth birthday, but Björn hasn’t had the money to keep it up. It was the only gift his father ever gave him, except one time when his father paid for a trip. When Björn’s father turned fifty, he invited Björn and Penelope to one of his finest properties, a five-star hotel called Kamaya Resort on the east coast of Kenya. Penelope endured the resort for two days before she took off to join Action Contre la Faim at the refugee camp in Kubbum, Darfur.
Penelope reduces speed from eight to five knots as they reach the bridge at Skuru Sound. They’ve just glided into the shadows when Penelope notices the black rubber boat. Pressed against the concrete foundation, it’s the same kind the military uses for their coastal rangers: an RIB with a fiberglass hull and extremely powerful engines. Penelope has almost passed beneath the bridge when she notices a man hunched in the darkness, his back turned. She doesn’t know why her pulse starts to race at the sight of him; something about his neck and the black clothes he wears bothers her. She feels he’s watching her even though he sits turned away.
Back into sunshine, she starts to shiver; goose bumps cover her arms. She guns the boat to fifteen knots. The two inboard engines drone powerfully, and the wake streams white behind them as the boat takes off over the smooth surface of the water.
Penelope’s phone rings. It’s her mother. For a moment Penelope fantasizes that she’s calling to tell Penelope how wonderful she’d been on TV earlier, but she snaps back to reality.
“Hi, Mamma.”
“Ay, ay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My back. I’ll have to go to the chiropractor,” Claudia says, loudly filling a glass with tap water. “I just wanted to learn if you’ve talked to your sister.”
“She’s on the boat with us,” Penelope replies, listening to her mother gulp the water down.
“She’s with you … how nice. I thought it would be good for her to get out.”
“I’m sure it is,” Penelope says quietly.
“What do you have to eat?”
“Pickled herring and potatoes, eggs—”
“Viola doesn’t like herring. What else do you have?”
“I’ve made a few meatballs,” Penelope says patiently.
“Enough for everyone?”
Penelope falls silent as she looks out over the water. “I can always skip them myself,” she says, collecting herself.
“Only if there aren’t enough,” her mother says. “That’s all I’m trying to say.”
“I understand.”
“Am I supposed to be feeling sorry for you now?” her mother demands with irritation.
“It’s just that … Viola is not a child—”
“I remember all the years I made you meatballs for Christmas and Midsummer and—”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten them.”
“All right then,” her mother says sharply. “If that’s the way you want it.”
“I’m just trying to say—”
“You don’t have to come for Midsummer,” Claudia snaps.
“Oh, Mamma, why do you have to—”
Her mother has hung up. Penelope shakes with frustration.
The stairs from the galley creak and a moment later Viola appears, a margarita in hand. “Was that Mamma?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Worried I wouldn’t get enough to eat?” Viola can’t hide a smile.
“Believe me, we have food on board,” Penelope says.
“Mamma doesn’t believe I can take care of myself.”
“She worries about you.”
“She never worries about you,” Viola points out.
“I can take care of myself.”
Viola takes a sip of her drink and looks out through the windshield.
“I saw you on TV,” she says.
“This morning? When I met Pontus Salman?”
“No, it was … last week,” Viola replies. “You were talking to that arrogant man with the aristocratic name—”
“Palmcrona,” Penelope says.
“Palmcrona, right.”
“You can’t believe how angry he made me! I could feel my face turning beet red, and the tears strated coming and I couldn’t stop them. I felt like jumping up and reciting Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’ to his face, or like running out and slamming the studio door behind me.”
Viola’s only half listening. She watches Penelope stretch as she opens the roof window. “I didn’t realize you’ve started to shave your armpits,” she says.
“Well, these days I’ve been in the media so much that—”
“Vanity, pure vanity!” Viola says with a laugh.
“I didn’t want people to dismiss me as a dogmatist just because I have some pit hair.”
“What about your bikini line, then?”
“Well, that’s not going so well …”
Penelope pulls aside her sarong and Viola laughs out loud.
“Björn likes it,” Penelope says with a little smile.
“He can’t talk, not with those dreads of his.”
“I imagine you shave everywhere you have to,” Penelope says sharply. “Just to please your married men and your big-muscled idiots and—”
“I know I have bad taste in men.”
“You have good taste in most other areas.”
“I’ve never amounted to much, though.”
“If you’d just finished school, gotten good grades …”
Viola shrugs. “I actually got my equivalency.”
The boat plows gently through the water, green now, reflecting the surrounding hillsides. Seagulls follow overhead.
“So, how did it go?”
“I thought the exam was easy,” Viola says, licking salt from the edge of her glass.
“So it went well?”
Viola nods and puts her glass down.
“How well?” Penelope nudges her sister in her side.
“One hundred percent.” Viola looks down modestly.
Penelope laughs with happiness and hugs her sister hard.
“Do you realize what this means? Now you can be anything you want! You can go to whichever university yo
u want and study anything you like! You can pick anything at all! Business, medicine, journalism!”
The sisters laugh and their cheeks flush. Penelope hugs her sister so hard that the cowboy hat falls off. She smoothes Viola’s hair and pats it into place just as she used to do when they were small. She removes the clip with the peace dove from her hair and slides it into her sister’s, smiling contentedly.
3
a boat adrift in jungfrufjärden bay
With roaring engines, Penelope steers toward the bay. The bow arches up; white, frothy water parts behind the stern.
“You’ve lost your mind, girl!” Viola yells as she pulls the hair clip loose, just as she used to do when she was little and her mother almost had her hair done.
Björn wakes up when they stop at Goose Island for an ice cream. Viola insists on a round of miniature golf, too, so it’s late in the afternoon when they set out again.
On their port side, the bay spreads out like a grand stone floor. It is breathtaking. The plan is to anchor at Kastskär, a long, uninhabited island with a narrow waist. On the southern side, there is a lush cove where they’ll anchor the boat and swim, grill, and spend the night.
Viola yawns. “I’m going below to take a nap.”
“Go ahead.” Penelope smiles.
Viola walks down the companionway as Penelope stares ahead. She reduces the speed and keeps her eye on the depth sounder as they glide in toward Kastskär. The water is shoaling quickly from forty meters to five.
Björn enters the cockpit and kisses Penelope’s neck.
“Would you like me to start dinner?” he asks.
“Viola needs to sleep for an hour or so.”
“You sound just like your mother right now,” he says softly. “Has she called you yet?”
Penelope nods.
“Did you have a fight?”
Tears spring to her eyes and she brushes them from her cheeks with a smile.
“Mamma told me I wasn’t welcome at her Midsummer celebration.”
Björn hugs her.
“Ignore her.”
“I do.”
Slowly and gently, Penelope maneuvers the boat into the innermost part of the cove. The engines rumble softly. The boat is so close to land now that she can smell the island’s damp vegetation. They anchor, let it drag, and go in toward the shore. Björn jumps onto the steep, rocky ground holding the line, which he ties around a tree trunk.
The ground is covered in moss. He stands and looks at Penelope. A few birds in the treetops lift off as the anchor winch clatters.
Penelope pulls on her jogging shorts and her white sneakers, jumps on land, and takes Björn’s hand.
“Want to check out the island?”
“Isn’t there something you want to convince me about?” she asks hesitatingly.
“The advantages of our Swedish general-access rights,” he says.
She smiles and nods as he pushes her hair off her face and lets his finger run over her high cheekbone and her thick black eyebrows.
“How can you be so beautiful?”
He kisses her lightly on the mouth and begins to lead her inland, until they reach a small meadow surrounded by tight clumps of high wild grasses. Butterflies and small bumblebees flit over the wildflowers. It’s hot in the sun and the water shimmers between the trees on the north side. Björn and Penelope stand still, hesitate, study each other with shy smiles, then turn serious.
“What if someone comes?” she asks.
“We’re the only ones on this island.”
“Are you sure?”
“How many islands exist in Stockholm’s archipelago? Thirty thousand? Probably more,” he says.
Penelope slips out of her bikini top, kicks off her shoes, and pulls off her shorts and bikini bottom at the same time so that she’s standing completely naked in the grass. Her initial feeling of embarrassment gives way to pure joy. There’s something remarkably arousing about the cool sea air against her skin and the warmth that simultaneously arises from the earth.
Björn looks at her and mumbles that he’s not sexist, but he does want to just look at her for another second. She’s tall; her arms are muscular yet still have a soft roundness to them. Her narrow waist and sinewy thighs make her look like a playful ancient goddess.
Björn’s hands shake as he pulls off his T-shirt and his flower-patterned swimming trunks. He’s younger than she is. His body is still boyish, almost hairless.
“Now I want to look at you,” she says.
He blushes and walks over to her with a smile.
“So I can’t look at you?”
He shakes his head and hides his face in her neck and hair.
They begin to kiss standing still. They hold each other tightly. Penelope is so happy she has to force a huge grin from her face so that she can keep kissing. She feels Björn’s warm tongue in her mouth, his erection, his heart beating faster and faster. They find a spot between the tufts of grass and stretch out. With his tongue he searches for her breasts and their brown nipples. He kisses her stomach, he opens her thighs. As he looks at her, it strikes him that their bodies have begun to glow in the evening sun, as if illuminated. Everything now is gentle. She’s wet and swollen as he licks her slowly and softly until she has to move his head away. She whispers to him, pulls him to her, steers him with her hand until he slides inside her. He’s breathing heavily into her ear and she stares straight up at the rosy sky.
Afterward, she stands up, naked in the warm grass, and arches toward the sky. She takes a few steps and peers between the trees.
“What is it?” Björn asks, his voice thick.
She looks back at him, sitting naked on the ground and smiling up at her.
“You’ve burned your shoulders.”
“Happens every year.”
He gently touches the pink spots.
“Let’s go back—I’m hungry,” she says.
“Let me swim for a bit.”
She pulls her bikini bottom and shorts back on, puts on her sneakers, then stands with her bikini top in her hand. She allows her gaze to wander over his hairless chest, his strong arms, the tattoo on his shoulder, his careless sunburn … and his light, playful look.
“Next time, you’re on the bottom,” she says.
“Next time,” he repeats cheerfully. “You’re stuck on me—I knew it!”
She laughs and waves at him dismissively. She hears him whistle to himself as she walks through the forest toward the tiny, steep beach where they’ve anchored.
She stops for a moment to put on her bikini top before she continues down to the boat.
On board, Penelope wonders whether Viola is still sleeping in the aft cabin. She thinks she should start a pot of fresh potatoes and some crowns of dill and then wash up and change for the evening. Strangely, the deck near the stern is totally damp as if from a rain shower. Viola must have swabbed the deck for some reason. The boat feels different somehow. Penelope can’t say what it is, but all at once she has goose bumps. The birds suddenly stop singing and everything is silent. Penelope is now aware of every one of her movements. She walks down the stairs. The door is open to the guest cabin and the lamp is lit, but Viola is not there. Penelope notices her hand shakes as she knocks on the door to the tiny toilet. She peers inside and returns to the deck. Looking ashore, she can see Björn walking down to the water. She waves to him, but he’s not looking her way.
Penelope opens the glass doors to the salon.
“Viola?” she calls softly.
She goes down to the galley, takes out a pot, puts it on the element, and returns to the search. She peers into the large bathroom, then the main cabin where she sleeps with Björn. Looking around in the dark cabin, at first she thinks that she sees herself in a mirror.
Viola is sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand resting on the pink pillow from the Salvation Army.
“What are you doing in here?”
As Penelope hears her own voice, she’s also realizing that no
thing is as it should be. Viola’s face is cloudy white and wet; her hair hangs down in damp streams.
Penelope takes Viola’s face in her hands. She moans softly, then screams right into her sister’s face, “Viola? What’s wrong? Viola!”
But she already understands what’s out of place and what’s wrong. Her sister is not breathing, her sister’s skin is not giving off warmth. There is nothing left of Viola. The light of life has been snuffed out.
The narrow room tightens around Penelope. Her voice is a stranger’s. She wails and stumbles backward, knocking her shoulder hard on the doorpost as she turns to run up the stairs.
Up on the aft deck, she gulps down air as if she’s suffocating. She glances about, ice-cold terror filling her bones. One hundred meters away on the beach, she spots a man in black. Somehow Penelope understands how things fit together. She knows this is the man who was underneath the bridge in the military inflatable. This was the man who had his back turned when she passed by. And she knows this is the man who killed Viola—and is not finished.
From the beach, the man waves to Björn, who’s now swimming twenty meters from shore. He’s yelling something to Björn. Penelope rushes to the steering console and rummages in the tool drawer. She finds a Mora knife and races back to the stern.
She sees Björn’s slow swimming strokes and the water rings around him. He’s looking at the man in confusion. The man is waving, motioning for him to come over. Björn smiles an uncertain smile and begins to swim toward land.
“Björn!” Penelope screams as loud as she can. “Swim to sea!”
The man on the beach turns toward her and begins to run toward the boat. Penelope cuts off the rope, slips on the wet stern deck, leaps back up, and runs to the steering console and starts the motor. Without looking around, she raises the anchor and engages the gear in reverse at the same time.
Björn must have heard her, because he turns away from land and starts to swim toward the boat instead. As Penelope steers in his direction, the man in black changes course and starts running toward the other side of the island. Intuitively, she knows that’s where he’s pulled his inflatable ashore, at the northern inlet.