Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (16 page)

“We don’t,” she says.

“Yeah, right.”

“What makes you think we do?”

He doesn’t reply.

“Are you thinking about what I said in the taxi from—”

“I’m thinking about a whole load of things,” he says loudly.

“There’s no need to shout at me.”

He sighs. “Forget I said anything.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen between me and Dad. It’s not that simple,” she says. “Maybe we’re only fooling ourselves, but that’s not the same as lying.”

“According to you,” he says quietly.

“Is something else bothering you?”

“How come there aren’t any pictures of me when I was little?”

“Of course there are,” she answers with a smile.

“Not when I was first born,” he says.

“Well, you know I had had a miscarriage … it’s just that we were so happy when you were born, we forgot to take photographs. I know exactly what you looked like. You had wrinkled ears and—”

“Stop it!” yells Benjamin, and storms off to his room.

Erik comes into the kitchen and drops an analgesic into a glass of water. “What’s up with Benjamin?” he asks.

“I have no idea.”

Erik drinks from the glass over the sink.

“He says we lie about everything,” says Simone.

“All teenagers feel that way. Comes with the territory.” Erik burps silently.

“I did mention to him that we were going to separate,” she tells him.

“How the hell could you do something so stupid?”

“I … I just said what I was feeling at the time.”

“For fuck’s sake, you can’t just think about yourself!”

“Me? I’m not the one who’s screwing students. I’m not the one taking a shitload of pills because—”

“Shut the fuck up!” he yells. “You don’t know anything!”

“I know you’re on serious painkillers.”

“And what’s that got to do with you?”

“Tell me, Erik: are you
in pain
?”

“I’m a doctor. I think I’m in a slightly better position to evaluate—”

“Oh, stop trying to fool me.”

“What do you mean?” he says.

“You’re an addict, Erik. We never have sex any more because you’re always zonked.”

“Maybe I don’t want to have sex with you,” he breaks in. “Why would I, when you’re so god-damn miserable with me all the time?”

The acrimony hangs in the air between them, nearly palpable. Is this really what saying the unsayable feels like? It should be more liberating, more profound; it should boil down to something more substantial.

“Then it is best if we separate,” she says.

“Fine.”

She can’t look at him; she just walks slowly out of the kitchen, feeling the tension and the pain in her throat, the tears springing to her eyes.

Benjamin has closed his bedroom door, and his music is so loud that the walls and doors are rattling. Simone locks herself in the bathroom, switches off the light, and weeps.

“Fucking hell!”
she hears Erik yell from the hallway before the front door opens and shuts again.

It isn’t quite 7:00 a.m. when Joona Linna gets a call from Dr Daniella Richards. She explains that in her opinion Josef is now able to cope with a short interview.

As Joona gets into his car to drive to the hospital, he feels a dull ache in his elbow. He thinks back to the previous evening, how the blue light from the radio cars had swept over the façade of Sorab Ramadani’s apartment block near Tantolunden. The man with the boyish hair had been spitting blood and muttering thickly about his tongue as he was guided into the backseat of the patrol car. Ronny Alfredsson and his partner had been discovered in the shelter down in the basement of the apartment block. They had been threatened with knives and locked in and then the men had driven their patrol car to another building and left it in the visitors’ car park.

Joona had gone back inside, rung Sorab’s doorbell, and, speaking once again through the letter box, told him that his bodyguards had been arrested and that the door to his apartment would be broken down unless he opened it immediately.

After a moment, Sorab had let him in. He was a pale man, wearing his hair in a ponytail. He was anxious, his eyes darting around the room, but he asked Joona to take a seat on the blue leather sofa, offered him a cup of camomile tea, and apologised for his friends.

“I’m sorry about all this, really. I’ve been having some problems lately. Worried about my safety. That’s why I got myself some bodyguards.”

“What makes you worry about your safety?” asked Joona, sipping at the hot tea.

“Someone’s out to get me.” He stood up and peered out the window.

“Who?” asked Joona.

Sorab kept his back to Joona, and said tonelessly that he didn’t want to talk about it. “Do I have to?” he asked. “Don’t I have the right to remain silent?”

“You have the right to remain silent,” admitted Joona.

Sorab shrugged his shoulders. “There you go, then.”

“I might be able to help you if you talk to me,” Joona had ventured. “Has that occurred to you?”

“Thank you very much,” said Sorab, still facing the window.

“Is it Evelyn’s brother who—”

“No.”

“Wasn’t it Josef Ek who came here?”

“He’s not her brother.”

“Not her brother? Who is he, then?”

“How should I know? But he’s not her brother. He’s something else.”

After that, Sorab became cagey and nervous again, giving only the most evasive answers to Joona’s questions. When he left, Joona wondered what Josef had said to Sorab. What had he done? How had he managed to frighten him into revealing where Evelyn was?

Joona parks in front of the neurosurgical unit, walks through the main entrance, takes the lift to the fifth floor, continues through the corridor, greets the policeman on duty, and proceeds into Josef’s room. An attractive woman sits in the chair beside the bed. She looks at Joona with an expression he finds appealing as she rises to introduce herself:

“Lisbet Carlén,” she says. “I’m a social worker. I’ll be Josef’s advocate during the interview.”

“Excellent,” says Joona, shaking her hand.

“Are you leading the interrogation?” she asks with interest.

“Yes. Forgive me. My name is Joona Linna, and I’m from the National CID. We spoke on the telephone.”

At regular intervals there is a loud bubbling noise from the Bülow drainage tube connected to Josef’s punctured pleura. The drain replaces the pressure that is no longer-naturally present, enabling his lung to function.

Lisbet Carlén says quietly that the doctor has explained that Josef must lie absolutely still, because of the risk of new bleeds in the liver.

“I have no intention of putting his health at risk,” says Joona, placing the tape recorder on the table next to Josef’s face.

He gestures inquiringly at the recorder and Lisbet nods. He starts the machine and begins by describing the situation: It is Friday, 11
^th
December, at 8:15 in the morning, and Josef Ek is being questioned to try to elicit information. He then lists the people present in the room.

“Hi,” says Joona.

Josef looks at him with heavy eyes.

“My name is Joona. I’m a detective.”

Josef closes his eyes.

“How are you feeling?”

The social worker looks out the window.

“Can you sleep with that thing bubbling away?” he asks.

Josef nods slowly.

“Do you know why I’m here?”

Josef opens his eyes. Joona waits, observing his face.

“There’s been an accident,” says Josef. “My whole family was in an accident.”

“Hasn’t anybody told you what’s happened?” asks Joona.

“Maybe a little,” he says faintly.

“He refuses to see a psychologist or a counsellor,” says the social worker.

Joona thinks about how different Josef’s voice was under hypnosis. Now it is suddenly fragile, almost non-existent, yet pensive.

“I think you know what’s happened.”

“You don’t have to answer that,” Lisbet Carlén says quickly.

“You’re fifteen years old now,” Joona goes on.

“Yes.”

“What did you do on your birthday?”

“Can’t remember,” says Josef.

“Did you get any presents?”

“I watched TV,” Josef replies.

“Did you go to see Evelyn?” Joona asks in a neutral tone.

“Yes.”

“At her apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Was she there?”

“Yes.” Silence. “No, she wasn’t,” says Josef hesitantly, changing his mind.

“Where was she, then?”

“At the cottage,” he replies.

“Is it nice there?”

“Not really … It’s cosy, I guess.”

“Was she happy to see you?”

“Who?”

“Evelyn.” Silence. “Did you take anything with you?”

“A cake.”

“A cake? Was it good?”

He nods.

“Did Evelyn like it?” Joona goes on.

“Only the best for Evelyn,” he says.

“Did she give you a present?”

“No.”

“But maybe she sang to you.”

“She didn’t want to give me my present,” he says, in an injured tone.

“Is that what she said?”

“Yes, she did,” he answers quickly.

“Why?” Silence. “Was she angry with you?” asks Joona.

He nods.

“Was she trying to get you to do something you didn’t want to do?” asks Joona calmly.

“No, she—” Josef whispers the rest.

“I can’t hear you, Josef.”

He continues to whisper, and Joona leans close, trying to hear the words. “That fucking bastard!” Josef yells in his ear.

Joona jumps back and rubs his ear as he walks around the bed. He tries to smile.

Josef’s face is ash-grey. “I’m going to find that fucking hypnotist and bite his throat; I’m going to hunt him down, him and his—”

The social worker moves over to the bed quickly and tries to switch off the tape recorder. “Josef! You have the right to remain silent—”

“Keep out of this,” Joona interrupts.

She looks at him with an agitated expression and says in a trembling voice, “Before the interview began, you should have informed—”

“Wrong. There are no laws governing this kind of interrogation,” says Joona, raising his voice. “He has the right to remain silent, that’s true, but I am not obliged to inform him of that right.”

“In that case, I apologise.”

“No problem,” mumbles Joona, turning back to Josef. “Why are you angry with the hypnotist?”

“I don’t have to answer your questions,” says Josef, attempting to point at the social worker.

Erik runs down the stairs and through the door. He stops outside and feels the sweat cooling on his back. A chill is in the air; not far away, a man sleeps under a thick mound of blankets. After a moment of indecisiveness, he walks slowly up toward Odenplan and sits down on a bench outside the library. He feels sick with fear. How can he be so stupid, pushing Simone away because he feels hurt?

After a while, Erik gets up and sets off for home, stopping to buy bread at the stone oven bakery and a
caffè macchiato
for Simone. He hurries back and, not wanting to wait for the lift, jogs up the stairs, but as soon as he unlocks the door he realises the apartment is empty. With effort, Erik pushes aside the feeling of desolation the empty apartment fills him with. No matter what, he intends to prove to Simone that she can trust him. However long it takes, he will convince her once again. He thinks this, then drinks her coffee standing up in the kitchen; no sense letting it go to waste. It upsets his stomach, and he takes a Prilosec.

It is still only nine o’clock in the morning, and his shift at the hospital doesn’t start for several hours. He takes a book to the bedroom with him and lies on top of the unmade bed in his stockinged feet. But instead of reading, he starts to think about Josef Ek; he wonders if Joona Linna will be able to get anything out of him.

The apartment is silent, deserted. A gentle calm spreads through his stomach from the medication.

Nothing that is said under hypnosis can be used as evidence, but Erik knows Josef was telling the truth about having killed his family, even if the actual motive is invisible. He closes his eyes. Evelyn must have known her brother was dangerous from an early age. Over the years she learned to live with his inability to control his impulses, gauging the risk of inciting his violent rage against her desire to live normally and independently. The family as a whole would have dealt with his violence, gradually making hundreds of infinitesimal adjustments and compromises in an effort to live with his hostility and keep it at bay. But nothing discouraged his impulses: not discipline, not punishment, not appeasement. They never really appreciated the seriousness of the situation. His mother and father might have thought that his aggressive behaviour was simply because he was a boy. Possibly they blamed themselves for letting him play brutal video games or watch slasher films.

Evelyn had escaped as soon as she could, found a job and a place of her own, but she’d sensed the increasing threat and was suddenly so afraid that she hid herself away in her aunt’s cottage, carrying a gun to protect herself.

Had Josef threatened her?

Erik tries to imagine Evelyn’s fear in the darkness at night in the cottage, with the loaded gun by her bed. He thinks about what Joona Linna told him after interviewing her. What happened when Josef turned up with a cake? What did he want from her? How did she feel? Was it only then that she became afraid and got the gun? Was it after his visit that she began to live with the fear that he would kill her?

Erik pictures Evelyn as she appeared on the day he met her at the cottage: a young woman in a silver-coloured down vest, a grey knitted sweater, scruffy jeans, and running shoes. She is walking through the trees, her ponytail swinging; her face is open, childlike. She carries the shotgun lazily, dragging it along the ground, bouncing it gently over the blueberry bushes and moss as the sun filters down through the branches of the pine trees.

Suddenly Erik realises something crucial. If Evelyn had been afraid, if the gun had been to defend herself against Josef, she would have carried it differently. Erik recalls that her knees were wet, and dark patches of earth clung to her jeans.