by Kepler, Lars
A tall woman with a dirty face rushes out with a knife in her hand, and Joona instinctively aims his pistol at her torso.
‘Watch out!’ Eliot cries.
It’s a matter of no more than a second, but Joona still has time to decide not to shoot. Without thinking he moves towards her, stepping quickly aside as she lunges. He blocks her arm, grabs it and lets his shoulders carry on moving, hitting the left side of her neck with his lower right arm. The blow is so hard and sudden that it knocks her backwards.
Joona is holding the arm holding the knife. There’s a cracking sound, like two stones knocking together underwater, as her elbow breaks. The woman falls to the floor, howling with pain.
The knife clatters to the ground. Joona kicks it away, then aims his pistol towards the boiler room.
113
A middle-aged man is half-lying over the geo-energy pump. He’s been tied up with rope and duct tape, and there’s a rag in his mouth.
Eliot Sörenstam cuffs the woman to a water pipe as Joona cautiously approaches the man, explains that he’s a police officer, and removes the gag.
‘The girls,’ the man gasps. ‘They ran out, you mustn’t hurt the girls, they’re—’
‘Is there anyone else here?’
Eliot’s already run up the concrete steps.
‘Only the girls.’
‘How many?’
‘Two … Susanne gave them the shotgun, they’re just scared, they’ve never used a gun, you mustn’t hurt them,’ the man pleads desperately. ‘They’re just scared …’
Joona runs up the steps and out into the back garden. Behind him the man calls out over and over again, telling them not to hurt the girls.
Footsteps lead across the garden and straight into the forest. A beam of light is flickering among the trees.
‘Eliot,’ Joona shouts. ‘There’s only children out here!’
He follows the tracks into the forest and feels the sweat on his face cooling.
‘They’re armed!’ Joona calls.
He runs towards the light between the trees. Twigs snap beneath the snow under his weight. Ahead of him he can see Eliot pushing through the snow with his pistol and torch.
‘Wait!’ Joona shouts, but Eliot doesn’t seem to hear.
Loose snow falls from a tree with soft thumps.
In the weak light he can make out the children’s tracks among the trees, at different angles, then the straight line of Eliot’s steps following them.
‘They’re just children!’ Joona cries again, trying to gain on him by sliding down a steep slope.
He slips onto one hip, bringing down loose stones and pine cones, and scrapes his back on something, but gets to his feet again as he reaches the bottom.
Through the dense foliage he can make out the searching beam of the torch, and close by a skinny girl is standing next to a tree, holding the shotgun in both hands.
Joona runs straight through the thicket of dry twigs. He tries to shield his face, but his cheeks still get scratched. He sees Eliot’s frame moving between the tree trunks, then the little girl behind the tree steps out and fires the gun at the policeman.
The cloud of shot hits the snow just a metre or so in front of the end of the barrel. The butt jerks back and the girl’s thin frame is shaken by the recoil. She falls and Eliot spins round and aims his pistol at her.
‘Wait!’ Joona shouts, trying to force his way through the branches.
He ends up with snow all over him and inside his coat, but the branches give way and he emerges on the other side, and stops abruptly.
Eliot Sörenstam is sitting on the ground, with his arms round the sobbing girl. A few steps away her little sister is standing and staring at them.
114
Susanne Hjälm’s arms are cuffed behind her back. Her broken elbow juts out at an odd angle. She’s screaming hysterically and putting up fierce resistance as two uniformed police officers drag her up the cellar steps. The blue lights from the various emergency vehicles make the snowy landscape ripple like water. Neighbours are watching events from a distance, like silent ghosts.
Susanne stops screaming when she sees Joona and Eliot emerge from the forest. Joona is carrying the younger girl, and Eliot is holding the other one by the hand.
Susanne’s eyes open wide and she breathes hard in the ice-cold winter night. Joona puts the girl on the ground so she can go over to her mother with her sister. They hug for a long time, and she tries to calm them.
‘It’s going to be all right now,’ she says in a broken voice. ‘Everything’s going to be all right …’
An older female officer starts talking to the girls, trying to explain that their mother needs to go with the police.
The father is led out of the cellar by the paramedics, but he’s so weak that he has to be put on a stretcher.
Joona follows as the officers lead Susanne through the deep snow towards one of the police cars in the drive. They put her in the back seat while a senior officer talks to a prosecutor over the phone.
‘She needs to go to hospital,’ Joona says, stamping the snow from his shoes and trousers.
He walks over to Susanne Hjälm. She’s sitting quietly in the car, her face turned towards the house as she tries to catch a glimpse of her daughters.
‘Why did you do this?’ Joona asks.
‘You’d never understand,’ she mumbles. ‘No one could understand.’
‘Maybe I could,’ he says. ‘I was the person who arrested Jurek Walter thirteen—’
‘You should have killed him,’ she interrupts, looking him in the eye for the first time.
‘What happened? After so many years working as a psychiatrist in the secure unit …’
‘I should never have spoken to him,’ she says through gritted teeth. ‘We’re not supposed to, but I never imagined …’
She falls silent and looks up at the house again.
‘What did he say?’
‘He … demanded that I post a letter,’ she whispers.
‘A letter?’
‘There are loads of restrictions limiting what he’s allowed to do, so I couldn’t … but I, I …’
‘You couldn’t send it? So where’s the letter now?’
‘Maybe I should talk to a lawyer,’ she says.
‘Have you still got the letter?’
‘I burned it,’ she says, then turns away again.
Tears start to trickle down her exhausted, filthy face.
‘What did it say in the letter?’
‘I want to see a lawyer before I answer any more questions,’ she says resolutely.
‘This is important, Susanne,’ Joona persists. ‘You’re going to get medical treatment now, and you can see a lawyer, but first I need to know where the letter was to be sent … Give me a name, an address.’
‘I don’t remember … it was a PO box.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t remember … there was a name,’ she says, shaking her head.
Joona watches the eldest daughter being carried towards an ambulance on a stretcher. She looks scared, and is trying to undo the straps holding her on.
‘Do you remember the name?’
‘It wasn’t Russian,’ Susanne whispers. ‘It was—’
The daughter suddenly panics in the ambulance and starts screaming.
‘Ellen!’ Susanne cries. ‘I’m here, I’m here!’
Susanne tries to get out of the car, but Joona forces her to stay where she is.
‘Leave me alone!’
She struggles to pull free and get out. The doors of the ambulance close and everything is quiet again.
‘Ellen!’ she calls.
The ambulance drives off and Susanne turns her head away with her eyes closed.
115
When Anders Rönn gets home from the parents’ meeting organised by the Autism and Asperger Association, Petra is sitting at the computer paying bills. He goes over and kisses her on the back of the neck, but she shrugs him off.
He tries to smile, and pats her cheek.
‘Stop it,’ she says.
‘Can we try to be friends?’
‘You went far too far,’ she tells him wearily.
‘I know, sorry, I thought you wanted—’
‘Well, stop thinking it,’ she interrupts.
Anders looks her in the eye, nods and then goes off to Agnes’s room. She’s sitting by her dolls’ house with her back to him. He can see that she’s got the hairbrush in her hand, she’s brushed all the dolls and has piled then on top of each other in one of the beds in the dolls’ house.
‘You’ve made it very nice,’ Anders says.
Agnes turns, shows him the brush and meets his gaze for a few seconds.
He sits down next to her and puts his arm around her thin shoulders. She pulls slowly away.
‘Now they’re all lying asleep together,’ Anders says cheerily.
‘No,’ she says in her monotonous voice.
‘What are they doing, then?’
‘They’re looking.’
She points at the dolls’ painted eyes, wide open.
‘You mean they can’t sleep if they’re looking? But you can pretend—’
‘They’re looking,’ she interrupts, her head starting to move anxiously.
‘I can see that,’ he says in a soothing voice. ‘But they’re lying in bed, just like they should be, and that’s really good—’
‘Ow, ow, ow …’
Agnes is moving her head jerkily, then she quickly claps her hands three times. Anders holds her in his arms and kisses her head, and whispers that she’s done really well with the dolls. In the end her body relaxes again and she starts lining up pieces of Lego along the floor.
The doorbell rings and Anders leaves the room, glancing at Agnes one last time before going to answer it.
The outside light shows a tall man in a suit, with wet trousers and a torn pocket. The man’s hair is curly and messed up. His cheeks are dimpled, and his eyes look serious.
‘Anders Rönn?’ he says with a Finnish accent.
‘Can I help you?’ Anders says in a neutral tone of voice.
‘I’m from the National Criminal Investigation Department,’ he says, showing his police ID. ‘Can I come in?’
116
Anders stares at the tall man outside the door. For a fleeting moment he feels chill with fear. He opens the door to let the man in, and as he asks whether his guest would like coffee, a thousand thoughts are going through his fevered mind.
Petra’s called a women’s helpline and talked.
Brolin has fabricated some sort of complaint against him.
They’ve worked out that he isn’t really qualified to work in the secure unit.
The tall detective says his name is Joona Linna, and politely declines the offer of coffee. He goes into the living room and sits down on an armchair. He gives Anders a friendly, appraising look that makes him feel like a guest in his own home.
‘You’re standing in for Susanne Hjälm in the secure unit,’ the detective inspector says.
‘Yes,’ Anders replies, trying to work out what the man is after.
‘What’s your opinion of Jurek Walter?’
Jurek Walter, Anders thinks. Is this just about Jurek Walter? He relaxes, and manages to bring a dry tone to his voice:
‘I can’t discuss individual patients,’ he says sternly.
‘Do you speak to him?’ the man asks, with a sharp look in his grey eyes.
‘We have no conversational therapy in the secure unit,’ Anders says, running a hand through his short hair. ‘But obviously, the patients talk …’
Joona Linna leans forward:
‘You’re aware that the Supreme Court applied specific restrictions to Jurek Walter because he’s deemed to be extremely dangerous?’
‘Yes,’ Anders says. ‘But everything becomes a matter of interpretation, and as a responsible doctor I’m always having to weigh restrictions and treatment against each other.’
The detective nods a couple of times, then says:
‘He asked you to send a letter – didn’t he?’
Anders loses his grip for a moment, then reminds himself that he’s the one with the responsibility, the one who takes decisions regarding the patients.
‘Yes, I posted a letter for him,’ he replies. ‘I considered it an important way of building up trust between us.’
‘Did you read the letter before you sent it?’
‘Yes, of course … he knew I would, it was nothing remarkable.’
The detective’s grey eyes darken as his pupils expand.
‘What did it say?’
Anders doesn’t know if Petra’s come in, but it feels like she’s standing behind his back watching them.
‘I don’t remember exactly,’ he says, uncomfortably aware that he’s blushing. ‘It was a formal letter to a legal firm … something I consider to be a human right.’
‘Yes,’ the detective says, without taking his eyes off him.
‘Jurek Walter wanted a lawyer to come and see him in the unit, to help him understand the possibilities of getting a retrial in the Supreme Court … that was more or less what he wanted … and that he … if there was to be a retrial, wanted a private defence lawyer to represent him.’
The living room is silent.
‘What address?’ the detective inspector asks calmly.
‘Rosenhane Legal Services … a PO box in Tensta.’
‘Would you be able to reconstruct the exact wording of the letter?’
‘I actually only read it once, and like I said, it was very formal and polite … even if there were a number of spelling mistakes.’
‘Spelling mistakes?’
‘More like dyslexic errors,’ Anders explains.
‘Did you discuss the letter with Roland Brolin?’
‘No,’ Anders replies. ‘Why would I do that?’
117
Joona goes back to his car and sets off towards Stockholm. He calls Anja and asks her to check for Rosenhane Legal Services.
‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’
‘The time,’ he repeats, suddenly thinking that it’s only been a few hours since Marie Franzén was shot and killed. ‘I … sorry, let’s do it tomorrow.’
He realises that she’s already ended the call. A couple of minutes pass before she calls him back.
‘There’s no Rosenhane,’ she says. ‘No law firm, and no solicitor either.’
‘There was a PO box address,’ Joona insists.
‘Yes, in Tensta, I found that,’ she replies gently. ‘But it’s been closed down and the lawyer who was renting it doesn’t exist.’
‘I see …’
‘Rosenhane is the name of an extinct aristocratic family,’ she says.
‘Sorry I called so late.’
‘I was joking, you can call me whenever you like. I mean, we’ll soon be married and everything …’
The address is a trail that doesn’t lead anywhere, Joona is thinking. No PO box, no law firm, no name.
It suddenly occurs to him how strange it was for Anders Rönn to call Jurek Walter dyslexic.
I’ve seen his writing, Joona thinks.
What Anders Rönn interpreted as dyslexia was probably just the result of long-term medication.
Once again his thoughts go to Marie Franzén, murdered by Susanne Hjälm. Now there’s a child waiting for a parent who’ll never be coming home.
She shouldn’t have rushed forward, but he knows he could easily have made the same mistake if his operational training wasn’t ingrained so deeply – and then he would have been killed, just like his own father.
Maybe Maria Franzén’s daughter has been told the news by now. The world will never be the same again. When he was eleven his father was shot and killed with a shotgun. His father, also a police officer, had only gone to a flat where there had been reports of a domestic disturbance. Some time that day Joona remembers sitting in his classroom when the headmast
er came in and got him. The world was never the same again.
118
It’s morning, and Jurek is striding along on the running machine. Saga can hear his heavy, ponderous breathing. On the television a man is making his own rubber balls. Colourful spheres are floating in various glasses of water.
Saga is feeling a mixture of emotions. Her self-preservation instinct is telling her she ought to avoid all contact with Jurek, but every conversation she has with him increases her colleagues’ chances of finding Felicia.
The man on television is warning viewers against using too much glitter, because it can spoil the ball’s ability to bounce.
Slowly Saga walks over to Jurek. He steps off the running machine and gestures to her to take over.
She thanks him, gets up and starts walking. Jurek stands alongside watching her. Her legs are still tired and her joints sore. She tries to speed up, but is already breathing laboriously.
‘Have you had your injection of Haldol?’ Jurek asks.
‘Had it the first day,’ she replies.
‘From the doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he come in and pull your trousers down?’
‘I was given Stesolid first,’ she replies quietly.
‘Was he inappropriate?’
She shrugs her shoulders.
‘Has he been in your room more times?’
Bernie comes into the dayroom and walks straight over to the running machine. His broken nose has been fixed up with white fabric tape. One eye is closed by a dark grey swelling. He stops in front of Saga, looks at her and coughs quietly.
‘I’m your slave now … fucking hell … I’m here, and I shall follow you for all eternity, like the pope’s butler … until death do us part …’
He wipes the sweat from his top lip and seems unsteady.
‘I shall obey every—’
‘Sit down on the sofa,’ Saga interrupts without looking at him.
He burps and swallows several times.
‘I shall lie on the floor and warm your feet … I am your dog,’ he says, and sinks to his knees with a sigh. ‘What do you want me to do?’