The Disciple

by Michael Hjorth

Dormer window. Shelves along the walls, containing books and films. Four doors. Two open, two closed. From the top of the stairs Holst could see the dead woman’s legs in the bedroom. On the bed. Which meant that Riksmord would have to be informed, he thought as he quickly went into the second room with an open door: a study. Empty. The two closed doors led to a bathroom and a dressing room. Both empty. Holst put away his gun and approached the bedroom. He stopped in the doorway.

  A directive from Riksmord had been circulated a week or so earlier. They were to be informed in cases of death which fulfilled certain criteria.

  If the victim was found in the bedroom.

  If the victim was tied up.

  If the victim’s throat had been cut.

  The sound of Torkel’s mobile interrupted the last line of ‘Happy Birthday to You’, and he answered as he withdrew into the kitchen, leaving the sound of cheering behind him.

  It was Vilma’s birthday party.

  Thirteen.

  A teenager.

  Her birthday was actually the previous Friday, but she had wanted to go out for a meal with her girlfriends and to see a film. Her older, more boring relatives, such as her father, could come on a weekday evening. Torkel and Yvonne had bought their daughter a mobile phone for her birthday. A new one – not her older sister’s cast-off, or an old one of his or Yvonne’s when they got a new one through work. Now she had a brand-new model – with Android, Billy had said when Torkel asked him for help in choosing it. According to Yvonne, Vilma had more or less been sleeping with it since last Friday.

  The kitchen table was covered in presents this evening. Vilma’s older sister had bought her mascara, eye shadow, lip gloss and foundation. Vilma had been given her gifts on Friday, but had laid everything out again to show off the total haul. Torkel picked up the mascara, which promised lashes up to ten times longer, as he listened to the information being fed into his ear.

  A murder. In Tumba. A woman whose throat had been cut, tied up in the bedroom.

  Torkel thought Vilma was far too young to be wearing makeup, but it had been made very clear to him that she was the only one in her year group who didn’t wear make-up, and that the idea of turning up at school next year without it was out of the question. Torkel didn’t put up a great deal of resistance. Times were changing, and he knew he should be grateful that he hadn’t had to engage in this discussion with Vilma two years ago. Some of her friends’ parents had been in that position, and had clearly lost the battle.

  All the indications pointed to the fact that this was the third victim.

  Torkel ended the call, put down the mascara and went back to the living room.

  Vilma was talking to her maternal grandparents. He called her over, and she didn’t look too unhappy at having to break off the conversation with the oldies. She came towards Torkel with an expectant look on her face, as if she thought he’d been out in the kitchen organising some kind of surprise.

  ‘I have to go, sweetheart.’

  ‘Is it because of Kristoffer?’

  It took Torkel a few seconds even to understand the question. Kristoffer was Yvonne’s new partner. They had got together a few months ago, but Torkel had met him for the first time this evening. He was a high school teacher. Aged about fifty. Divorced with kids. Seemed like a nice bloke. It had never occurred to Torkel that their meeting might be seen as difficult, uncomfortable or in any way a problem. Vilma obviously interpreted the delay in his response as confirmation that she was right.

  ‘I told her not to invite him,’ she went on, a sullen expression on her face.

  Torkel was filled with tenderness for his daughter. She wanted to protect him. Thirteen years old, and she wanted to shield him from heartache. In her world it was obviously an extremely awkward situation. No doubt she wouldn’t have wanted to see her ex-boyfriend together with someone else. If she’d ever had a boyfriend. Torkel wasn’t sure. He gently stroked her cheek.

  ‘I have to work. It’s got nothing to do with Kristoffer.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Absolutely. I would have to leave even if there were just the two of us here. You know how it is.’

  Vilma nodded. She had lived with him for long enough.

  ‘Has someone died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Torkel had no intention of telling her any more. He had decided long ago that he wasn’t going to try to gain his children’s attention by passing on exciting and grotesque details relating to his work. Vilma knew that. So she didn’t ask any more questions, she simply nodded. Torkel looked at her, his expression serious.

  ‘I think it’s really good that Mum has met someone.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not? Just because she’s not with me anymore, it doesn’t mean she has to be alone.’

  ‘Have you met someone?’

  Torkel hesitated for a second. Had he? For a long time he had been involved in some kind of relationship with Ursula, his married colleague, but they had never really defined what it actually was. They slept with one another when they were working away. Never in Stockholm. They never had dinner together, they never had those ordinary conversations about their private lives. Sex and talk about work. That was all. And not even that much at the moment. A few months ago, Torkel had brought his former colleague Sebastian Bergman into an investigation, and since then his and Ursula’s relationship had been restricted to nothing more than work. This bothered Torkel, more than he was willing to admit. It wasn’t the fact that everything was so obviously conducted on Ursula’s own terms – he could live with that – but he missed her. More than he would have thought. It annoyed him. And on top of everything else, it seemed as if she had grown closer to her husband Mikael recently. They had even been to Paris for the weekend not long ago.

  So had he met someone?

  Probably not, and he certainly wasn’t about to explain the complexities of his dealings with Ursula to Vilma, who had only just become a teenager.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t met anyone. And now I really do have to go.’

  He gave her a hug. A big one.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ he whispered. ‘Love you.’

  ‘Love you too,’ she replied. ‘And my mobile.’ She pressed her freshly glossed lips gently to his cheek.

  Torkel still had a smile on his face as he got in the car and set off for Tumba. He called Ursula. She was already on her way.

  As he drove, Torkel had caught himself hoping that this would turn out to be something else. Someone else. That there wouldn’t be a link to the other dead women. But as soon as he looked into the bedroom he could see his hopes had been futile.

  The nylon stockings. The nightdress. The arrangement.

  This was the third victim.

  ‘From ear to ear’ was an inadequate description of the gaping neck wound. It was, rather, from one side of the spinal column to the other. Like opening a tin and leaving a little bit so that you can bend back the lid. The woman’s head had almost been severed from her body. A considerable amount of strength would have been required to inflict such an injury. There was blood everywhere, high up the walls and all over the floor.

  Ursula was already busy taking pictures. She moved around the room carefully, making sure she didn’t step in the blood. She was always first on the scene if possible. She looked up, nodded a greeting and carried on with her photographs. Torkel asked the question, even though he already knew the answer.

  ‘Same?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘I spoke to Lövhaga again on my way over. He’s still in there, exactly where he’s supposed to be.’

  ‘But we knew that, didn’t we?’

  Torkel nodded.

  He didn’t like this case, he thought as he stood by the bedroom door looking at the dead woman. He had stood in other doorways looking into other bedrooms, he had seen other women in nightdresses, their hands and feet bound with nylon stockings, raped and with their throats cut. They had found the first one in 1995. Then t
here had been three more before they managed to catch the murderer in the late spring of ’96.

  Hinde was sentenced to life imprisonment in Lövhaga.

  He didn’t even appeal.

  And he was still in there.

  But these new victims were identical copies of Hinde’s. Hands and feet bound in the same way. Excessive violence used to cut the throat. Even the blue tinge in the white nightdresses was the same. This meant that the person they were looking for wasn’t just a serial killer, but also a copycat. Someone who was copying murders from fifteen years ago, for some reason. Torkel looked down at his notebook and turned to Ursula again. She had been involved in the original case in the nineties. Ursula, Sebastian and Trolle Hermansson, who had reluctantly retired since then.

  ‘The husband said he got a reply to a text message at around nine o’clock this morning, but no reply to a message at one o’clock.’

  ‘She’s been dead for more than five hours, less than fifteen.’

  Torkel knew that Ursula was right. If he had asked she would have pointed out that rigor mortis had not yet reached the legs, that there was no indication of autolysis, that the initial signs of tache noire had begun to appear, and other technical terms relating to forensics which he still hadn’t bothered to learn in spite of all the years he had spent in the police service. If you asked, someone would always explain in plain language.

  Ursula wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. It was several degrees warmer up here than downstairs. The July sun had been shining in all day. Flies were buzzing around the room, attracted by the blood and the process of decay, as yet invisible to the human eye.

  ‘The nightdress?’ Torkel wondered after surveying the bed one last time.

  ‘What about it?’ Ursula lowered the camera and gazed at the old-fashioned item of clothing.

  ‘It’s been pulled down.’

  ‘Could have been the husband. Wanting to cover her up.’

  ‘I’ll ask him whether he touched her.’

  Torkel left his place by the door and returned to the inconsolable husband in the kitchen. He really didn’t like this case at all.

  The tall man had slept for a few hours. He had come home and gone straight to bed. That was what he always did. Rituals. The adrenaline had been surging through his body. He didn’t really know what happened, but afterwards it always felt as if he had used up a week’s reserves of energy during the short period of activity. But now he was awake. The alarm clock had gone off. It was time to get to work. Again. He got out of bed. So much still to do. And it was vital that everything was done in the right way. At the right time. In the right order.

  Rituals.

  Without them there would be nothing but chaos and fear. Rituals created control. Rituals made the bad stuffless bad. The pain less painful. Rituals kept the darkness at bay.

  The man linked his Nikon camera to the computer and quickly uploaded the thirty-six pictures.

  The first one showed the woman weeping, her arms crossed protectively over her breasts as she stood waiting for him to give her the nightdress to put on. Blood was trickling from one nostril, down to her lower lip. Two drops had splashed her right breast on their way to the floor, leaving red marks like rain on a window pane. She had refused to get undressed at first. Thought her clothes might somehow protect her. Save her.

  In the thirty-sixth and final picture she was staring blankly straight into the camera. He had squatted down by the bed and leaned in close, so close that he had felt the warmth of the blood seeping from the gaping wound in her throat. By that time most of the blood had left her body, and had been largely absorbed by the bedclothes and the mattress.

  He quickly checked the pictures in between. Nightdress on. The nylon stockings. The knots. Knickers off. Before the act. After the act. The knife and its work.

  The fear.

  The realisation.

  The result.

  Everything looked good. He would be able to use all thirty-six. That was the best outcome. In spite of the almost unlimited capacity of the digital camera, he wanted to stick to the confines of an old-fashioned roll of film. Thirty-six pictures. No more. No less.

  The ritual.

  Billy was kneeling by the front door examining the lock as Torkel walked down the stairs. He turned to his boss.

  ‘No sign of forced entry as far as I can see. The indications are that he was let in.’

  ‘The patio door was open when we got here,’ Torkel informed him.

  ‘The husband opened it when he got home,’ Billy said. ‘According to him, it was locked.’

  ‘Is he sure about that? He seemed pretty much out of it with shock . . .’

  ‘He sounded sure.’

  ‘I’ll ask him again. Where’s Vanja?’

  ‘Outside. She just got here.’

  ‘There’s a computer in the study upstairs. Take it with you and see if you can find anything. Preferably something that links her to the others.’

  ‘So she’s the third?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Are we bringing anyone in, or . . .’

  Billy left the question hanging in the air. Torkel knew that what he really meant was: Are we bringing in Sebastian Bergman? The same thought had occurred to Torkel, but he had immediately dismissed it. The drawbacks were obvious and significantly outweighed the advantages – but that was before tonight.

  Before the third victim.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘I mean, bearing in mind who he’s copying . . .’

  ‘As I said, we’ll see.’

  The tone of voice told Billy it was time to stop asking questions. He nodded and got to his feet. Billy understood Torkel’s frustration. They had no evidence – or, to be more accurate, they had plenty. Footprints, fingerprints, semen and hairs, but in spite of all this they were no closer to making an arrest than twenty-nine days ago when they had found the first woman bound and murdered in the same way. The almost nonchalant way the perpetrator left behind forensic evidence indicated that the person in question knew he wasn’t on any police register. He was far too organised for this to be mere carelessness. Therefore, he had no previous convictions, at least not for any serious crime. But he was willing to take risks. Or forced to do so. Both possibilities were alarming; in all probability, he would strike again.

  ‘Take Vanja back with you and go through everything again.’

  If they could just find a connection between the victims, it would be a great help. They would be able to learn something about the perpetrator and start to close in on him. The worst-case scenario was that the killer was choosing women at random, that he saw someone in town, followed her, noted where she lived, made plans and waited for the right opportunity. If that was how he was selecting his victims, they wouldn’t catch him until he made a mistake. And so far he hadn’t put a foot wrong.

  Billy took the stairs in a few rapid strides, glanced into the bedroom where Ursula was still working, and went into the study. Quite small, perhaps six square metres. A desk in one corner, with an office chair. A sheet of Perspex under the chair so that the wheels wouldn’t damage the parquet flooring. A low bench housing a printer, modem, router, papers, files and office supplies. On the wall above the desk there was a long picture frame with space for eight photographs. The victim – Katharina – was alone in one picture, smiling into the camera beneath an apple tree; dark hair, straw hat, white summer dress. Like an advertisement for the Swedish summer. Österlen, perhaps. The husband – Richard – also appeared alone in another photograph, in the prow of a sailboat. Sunglasses, tanned, focused. All the other pictures showed both of them. Close together, arms around each other, smiling. It seemed as if they did a lot of travelling. There was a white sandy beach with palm trees in the background, and Billy was able to identify New York and Kuala Lumpur. No children, evidently.

  So at least no one had lost their mother this time. He stood there for a while, staring at the pictures. Gazing at the
couple’s loving smiles. They had their arms around each other in every photograph. Perhaps they always posed for the camera like that. Perhaps it was just a pretence, to show the world how happy they were. But it didn’t look that way; it looked as if they were genuinely in love, standing there wrapped around each other. Somehow Billy couldn’t tear himself away from the images of the man and the woman. There was something about their happiness that affected him intensely. They looked so full of joy. So in love. So alive. Things didn’t usually touch Billy like this. He had no difficulty in maintaining a professional distance between himself and the victims. Obviously he was always affected to a certain extent; he suffered with the relatives, but the sorrow didn’t usually pierce so deeply. He knew exactly why it was different this time. He had just met someone whose happy expression and inviting smile reminded him of the woman in the pictures. It made the tragedy real. He thought about Maya, pulling up the covers and hugging him sleepily this morning. She had tried to get him to stay for just a little bit longer and a little bit longer and a little bit longer, until the whole morning had gone. The image of a smiling Maya fitted perfectly with the romantic photographs in front of him, but not with the grotesquely contorted, bound and raped woman in the room next door. And yet for a second he had seen Maya lying there face down in a huge pool of blood. He turned his head away and closed his eyes. He had never felt this fear before. Never.

  And he must never let it happen again. He knew that. He must never let in the violence and the terror and allow it to poison him. It would destroy love. Make him fearful and constantly anxious. The importance of keeping his private life and his work completely separate was crystal clear to him; without that distance he could lose everything. He could hug Maya, hold her tight, but he could never share that feeling. It was too dark and bottomless to be brought into their relationship. He would hold her for a long time when he got home. She would ask him why. He would lie. He didn’t want to reveal the truth to her. Billy turned around, picked up the laptop from the desk and went downstairs to find Vanja.