by Kepler, Lars
‘No.’
‘Fucking weird.’
‘I sat in my room watching television.’
‘There aren’t any televisions in the rooms there, you’re fucking lying, you’re a—’
‘There are in isolation,’ she interrupts.
She can’t tell whether he knew that. He’s breathing hard and staring at her, grinning all the while. Then he licks his lips and comes closer.
‘You’re my slave,’ he says slowly. ‘Fucking hell, that’s brilliant … you lie there, sucking my toes …’
Saga gets off the running machine and returns to her cell. She lies on her bunk and hears Bernie standing by her door for a while, calling for her, before he settles back down on the sofa.
‘Shit,’ she whispers.
She’ll have to be quick out tomorrow, sit down on the edge of the running machine, adjust her shoes and attach the microphone. She’ll walk on the machine with long strides, she won’t look at anyone, and when Jurek comes out she’ll simply get off the machine and leave the dayroom.
Saga thinks about the sofa and the angle of the wall adjacent to the reinforced glass covering the television. The camera’s view must be partially obscured by the protruding section. She’ll have to watch out for that blind spot. That’s where she was standing when Bernie pinched her nipple. That was why the staff didn’t react.
She has been in the Löwenströmska unit for just over five hours, and already she’s exhausted.
The metal-walled room feels more enclosed now. She shuts her eyes and thinks about why she’s here. In her mind’s eye she can see the girl in the photograph. All of this is for her sake, for Felicia.
87
The Athena group sit completely still and listen to the broadcast from the dayroom in real time. The sound quality is bad, muffled and distorted by loud scraping noises.
‘Is it going to sound like this the whole time?’ Pollock asks.
‘She hasn’t positioned the microphone yet. Maybe it’s in her pocket,’ Johan Jönson replies.
‘As long as she doesn’t get searched …’
They listen to the recording again. They can hear the rasping of Saga’s trousers, her shallow breathing, the sound of steps on the running machine and the drone of the television. Like a group of blind people, the members of Athena Promacho are being guided through the closed world of the secure unit with the help of hearing alone.
‘Obrahiim,’ a slurred voice says.
The entire group are suddenly very focused. Johan Jönson raises the volume slightly and adds a filter to reduce the hissing.
‘There he is,’ the man continues. ‘I’d turn him into my slave, my skeleton slave.’
‘I thought that was Jurek to start with,’ says Corinne.
‘Fucking hell,’ the voice goes on. ‘Look at those lips … I’d …’
They listen in silence to the other patient’s aggressive torrent of words, and hear a guard come in and break up the confrontation. After the intervention there’s a short period of silence. Then the patient starts to interrogate Saga about Karsudden in a very thorough, suspicious way.
‘She’s handling it well,’ Pollock says through clenched teeth.
Eventually they hear Saga leave the dayroom without having managed to position the microphone.
She swears quietly to herself.
She’s surrounded by silence until the electronic lock on the door clicks shut.
‘Well, at least we know that the technology seems to work,’ Pollock says.
‘Poor Saga,’ Corinne whispers.
‘She should have positioned the microphone,’ Johan Jönson mutters.
‘It must have been impossible.’
‘But if she gets found out, then …’
‘She won’t be,’ Corinne says.
She smiles, then throws out her arms, spreading the pleasant scent of her perfume through the room.
‘No Jurek so far,’ Pollock says, glancing over at Joona.
‘What if he’s being held in total isolation? All this will have been in vain,’ Jönson sighs.
Joona says nothing, but he’s thinking that something was being conveyed by the recording. For several minutes it was as if he could feel the almost physical presence of Jurek. As if Jurek were in the dayroom even though he hadn’t said anything.
‘Let’s listen to it one more time,’ he says, looking at 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 …’
88
Joona walks into a white-tiled room with a long wash basin along one wall. Water is running from an orange hose into a drain on the floor. The body from the hunting cabin in Dalarna is lying on a plastic-covered autopsy table. Its sunken brown chest has been sawn open and yellow liquid is trickling slowly down into the stainless-steel trough.
‘Tra la la la laa – we’d catch the rainbow,’ Nils Åhlén sings to himself. ‘Tra la la la laa – to the sun …’
He pulls out a pair of latex gloves and is just blowing into them when he sees Joona standing in the doorway.
‘You ought to record a forensic album,’ Joona smiles.
‘Frippe’s a very good bassist,’ Åhlén replies.
The light from the powerful lamps in the ceiling reflects off his pilot’s glasses. He’s wearing a white polo-neck under his doctor’s coat.
They hear rustling footsteps from the corridor, and moments later Carlos Eliasson comes in, with pale-blue shoe covers on his feet.
‘Have you managed to identify the dead man?’ 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 board where someone’s 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,’ Åhlén replies. ‘Our forensic dentist – who plays the guitar, by the way – has compared the body’s oral characteristics with Magnusson’s dental records.’
Åhlén 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 has gone,’ Åhlén says, forcing the mouth open a bit further. ‘But if you feel with your finger—’
‘Fascinating,’ Carlos interrupts, then looks at the time. ‘Do we have any idea how long he was hanging there?’
‘The drying process would probably have been impeded slightly by the low temperatures,’ Åhlén replies. ‘But if you look at the eyes, the conjunctiva dried out very quickly, as did the undersides of the eyelids. The parchment-like texture of the skin is uniform, apart from round the neck where it was in contact with the rope.’
‘Which means …?’ Carlos says.
‘The post-mortal process forms a sort of diary, an ongoing life after death, as the body changes … And I would estimate that Jeremy Magnusson hanged himself …’
‘Thirteen years, one month and five days ago,’ Joona says.
‘Good guess,’ Åhlén says.
‘I just got a scan of his farewell note from Forensics,’ Joona says, taking out his mobile.
‘Suicide,’ Carlos says.
‘Everything points to that, even if Jurek Walter could feasibly have been there at the time,’ Åhlén replies.
‘Jeremy Magnusson was on the list of Jurek’s most likely victims,’ Carlos says slowly. ‘And if we can write off his death as suicide …’
An indefinable thought is flitting through Joona’s mind. It’s as if there were some sort of hidden association tucked away in this conversation – one he can’t quite grasp.
‘What did he say in the note?’ Carlos asks.
‘He hange
d 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 dated note that Forensics had sent him.
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 got his daughter back. Agneta Magnusson lived on for several more years before her heart finally stopped. She was cared for in a long-stay ward at Huddinge Hospital, under constant supervision.
89
Reidar Frost has ordered food from Noodle House, and had it delivered to the foyer of Södermalm Hospital. Steam is rising from mince and coriander dim sum, spring rolls that smell of ginger, rice noodles with chopped vegetables and chilli, fried pork fillet and chicken soup.
Because he doesn’t know what Mikael likes, he’s ordered eight different dishes.
Just as he emerges from the lift and starts walking along the corridor, his phone rings.
Reidar puts the bags down by his feet, sees that the caller has withheld their number, and hurries to answer:
‘Reidar Frost.’
The phone is silent, nothing but 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 …?’
Suddenly he hears giggling, and he 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, even though they’re bound to think he has only himself to blame.
90
Anders Rönn is still at the hospital, even though it’s evening now. He wants to check up on the third patient, the young woman.
She’s come direct from Karsudden Hospital, and shows no sign of wanting to communicate with the staff. Her medication is extremely conservative, considering the findings of the psychiatric evaluation.
Leif has gone home and a well-built woman named Pia Madsen is working the evening shift. She doesn’t say much, mostly sits there reading thrillers and yawning.
Anders finds himself staring at the new patient on the screen again.
She’s astonishingly beautiful. Earlier in the day he stared at her for so long that his eyes started to dry out.
She is regarded as dangerous and an escape risk, and the crimes she was convicted of in the District Court were deeply unpleasant.
As Anders watches her, he can’t believe it’s true, even though he knows it must be.
She’s as slight as a ballet dancer, and her shaved head makes her look fragile.
Maybe she was only prescribed Trilafon and Stesolid at Karsudden Hospital because she’s so beautiful.
After his meeting with hospital management, Anders almost has a senior consultant’s authority over the secure unit.
For the foreseeable future he makes the decisions about the patients.
He has consulted 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 heavy, remarkable sense of anticipation.
Pia Madsen returns from the toilet. Her eyelids are half-closed. A bit of toilet paper has got stuck to one of her shoes and is trailing after her. She’s approaching along the corridor with shuffling steps, her face lethargic.
‘I’m not that tired,’ she laughs, meeting his gaze.
She removes the toilet paper and throws it in the bin, then sits down at the control desk next to him and looks at the time.
‘Shall we sing a lullaby?’ she asks, 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 roughly equal measure.
‘They’re already part of the family,’ Pia yawns, then opens her book.
91
At nine o’clock the staff turn out the ceiling light. Saga is sitting on the edge of her bed. She’s got the microphone tucked into the lining of her trousers again. It seems safest to keep it close until she’s able to put it in position. Without the microphone, the whole mission will be pointless. She waits, and a short while later a grey rectangle becomes visible through the darkness. It’s the thick glass window in the door. Shortly after that the shapes of the room appear as 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, slowly stretches her stomach 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. Hurriedly she sticks her fingers in the lining of her trousers, takes the microphone out, but drops it on the floor.
She hears steps and movement, 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 towards the cross, looks up at the ceiling, then down at the floor again. She stops on the cross, turns her back nonchalantly towards the door, raises her eyes to the ceiling and swallows. Her throat hurts badly as the microphone slowly slips down.
‘We met earlier,’ a man says in a drawling voice. ‘I’m the Senior Consultant 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 towards the door in her washed-out bra.
‘Stop and hold both your hands up, turn your arms round and open your mouth wide.’
The metal hatch opens and she holds out her hand to take the little cup with her pills.
‘I’ve changed your medication, by the way,’ the Senior Consultant with the drawling voice says.
Saga suddenly grasps the full significance of being in these people’s power as she sees the doctor fill a syringe with a milky-white emulsion.
‘Stick your left arm through the hatch,’ the woman says.
She realises 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. A panic
ked desire to fight her way free bubbles up inside her.
‘I understand that you’ve been getting Trilafon,’ the doctor says, giving her a look that 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, she’s capable of breaking it. The guard is heavy and forces her arm down, making her stand on tiptoe.
Saga forces herself to breathe calmly. 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 sees the doctor’s hands as the needle is withdrawn and a small compress stops the bleeding. Then they let go of her. She pulls her arm free and retreats from the door and the two figures behind the glass.
‘Now go and 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 hasn’t got the energy to pick up her blouse from the floor, just stumbles and takes a step towards 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, and, just as she’s thinking that she’d better lie down on the bed, her legs give way. She collapses and hits the floor, the jolt running through her body and jarring her neck.
‘I’m going to be coming in shortly,’ the doctor goes on. ‘I was thinking we might try a neuroleptic drug that sometimes works very well, Haldol depot.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she says quietly, trying to roll onto her side.
She opens her eyes and tries to overcome the dizziness. One hip hurts after the fall. A tingling sensation rises from her feet, making her more and more drowsy. She attempts to get up, but doesn’t have the energy. Her thoughts are getting slower. She tries again, but is completely impotent.