Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (18 page)

“Thanks, Nils,” says Joona.

“You’ll have my full report in the morning.”

Joona tries to remember what Evelyn had said about her mother’s C-section while slumped on the floor against the wall in the interview room, talking about Josef’s pathological jealousy of his little sister.

“There’s something wrong inside Josef’s head,” she had whispered. “There always has been. I remember when he was born, Mum was really sick. I don’t know what it was, but they had to do an emergency C-section.” Evelyn shook her head and sucked in her lips before continuing. “Do you know what an emergency C-section is?”

“More or less,” Joona replied.

“Sometimes … sometimes there can be complications when you give birth that way.” Evelyn looked at him shyly.

“You mean the baby can be starved of oxygen, that kind of thing?” Joona asked.

She shook her head and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I mean, not with the baby. The mother can have psychological problems. I read about it. A woman who’s gone through a difficult labour and is then suddenly anaesthetised for a C-section sometimes has problems later.”

“Post-natal depression?”

“Not exactly,” said Evelyn, her voice thick and heavy. “My mother developed a psychosis after she gave birth to Josef. They didn’t realise on the maternity ward; they just let her take him home. I was only eight, but I noticed right away. Everything was wrong. She didn’t pay any attention to him at all, she didn’t touch him, she just lay in bed and cried and cried and cried. I was the one who took care of him.”

Evelyn looked at Joona and whispered the rest.

“Mum would say he wasn’t hers. She’d say her real child was dead. In the end, she had to be hospitalised.”

Evelyn smiled wryly when she mentioned the vast psychiatric unit.

“Mum came home after about a year. She pretended everything was back to normal, but in reality she continued to deny his existence.”

“So you don’t think your mother had really recovered?” Joona asked tentatively.

“She was fine, because when she had Lisa, everything was different. She was so happy about Lisa; she did everything for her.”

“And you did everything for Josef.”

“I took care of him—someone had to—but he started saying that Mum should have given birth to him properly. For him, what explained the unfairness of it all was that Lisa had been born
through her cunt
and he hadn’t. That’s what he said all the time: Mum should have given birth to him through her cunt …”

Evelyn’s voice died away. She turned her face to the wall, and Joona looked at her tense, hunched shoulders without daring to touch her.

For once it is not totally silent in the intensive care unit at Karolinska University Hospital when Joona arrives. Someone has switched the television on in the common room, and Joona can hear the clink of tableware on dinner plates. The aroma of institutional food permeates the ward.

He thinks about Josef cutting open the old C-section scar on his mother’s stomach: his passage into life, one that had condemned him to a motherless existence.

The boy must have realised from an early age that he was not like the other children. Joona considers the endless loneliness of a boy rejected by his mother. A person who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of the conqueror, but the opposite results not only in an absence of this feeling but also the presence of an active darkness. The only one who gave Josef love and care was Evelyn, and he couldn’t cope with being rejected by her; the slightest indication that she was distancing herself from him plunged him into despair and rage, his fury directed increasingly at the beloved younger sister.

Joona nods at Sunesson, the officer on guard, who is standing outside the door of Josef Ek’s room, then glances in at the boy. A heavy drip stand right next to the bed is supplying him with both fluid and blood plasma. The boy’s feet protrude from beneath the pale blue blanket; the soles are dirty, hairs and bits of grit and rubbish are stuck to the surgical tape covering the stitches. The television is on, but he doesn’t appear to be watching it.

The social worker, Lisbet Carlén, is already in the room. She hasn’t noticed Joona yet; she is standing by the window adjusting a barrette in her hair.

Josef is bleeding anew from one of his cuts; the blood runs along his arm and drips to the floor. An older nurse leans over the boy, tending to his dressings. She loosens the compress, tapes the edges of the wound together once again, wipes the blood away, and leaves the room.

“Excuse me,” says Joona, catching up with her in the hallway.

“Yes?”

“How is he? How is Josef getting on?”

“You’ll have to speak to the doctor in charge,” the nurse replies, setting off once again.

“I will,” says Joona with a smile, hurrying after her. “But there’s something I’d like to show him. Would it be possible for me to take him there—in a wheelchair, I mean?”

The nurse stops dead and shakes her head. “Under no circumstances is the patient to be moved,” she says sternly. “What a ridiculous idea. He’s in a great deal of pain, he can’t move, there could be new bleeds, and he could begin to haemorrhage if he were to sit up.”

Joona returns to Josef’s room, walking in without knocking, and turns off the TV. He switches on the tape recorder, mutters the date and time and those present, and sits down. Josef opens his heavy eyes and looks at him with a mild lack of interest. The chest drain emits a pleasant, low-pitched, bubbling noise.

“You’ll be discharged soon,” says Joona.

“Good,” says Josef faintly.

“Although you’ll immediately be transferred to police custody.”

“What do you mean? Lisbet said the prosecutor isn’t prepared to take any action,” says Josef, glancing over at the social worker.

“That was before we had a witness.”

Josef closes his eyes gently. “Who?”

“We’ve talked quite a bit, you and I,” says Joona. “But you might want to change something you’ve already said or add something you haven’t said.”

“Evelyn,” he whispers.

“You’re going to be inside for a very long time.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, Josef, I’m telling the truth. Trust me. You’ll be arrested, and you now have the right to legal representation.”

Josef attempts to raise his hand but doesn’t have the strength. “You hypnotised her,” he says with a smile.

Joona shakes his head.

“It’s her word against mine,” he says.

“Not exactly,” says Joona, contemplating the boy’s clean, pale face. “We also have forensic evidence.”

Josef clamps his jaws tightly together.

“I haven’t got a lot of time, but if there’s anything you want to tell me, I can stay for a little while longer,” says Joona pleasantly.

He allows half a minute to pass, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair, and then gets to his feet, picks up the tape recorder, and leaves the room with a brief nod to the social worker.

In the car outside the hospital, Joona considers whether he should have confronted Josef with Evelyn’s story, just to see the boy’s reaction. There is a simmering arrogance in Josef Ek that might lead him to incriminate himself if he were sufficiently provoked.

He considers going back inside for a moment, but he doesn’t want to be late for dinner with his girlfriend. Josef Ek will keep until next time.

It is dark and misty when he parks the car outside Disa’s cream-coloured building on Lützengatan. He feels frozen as he makes his way to the front door, glancing at the frosty grass, the black branches of the trees.

He tries to recall Josef, lying there in his bed, but all he can remember is the chest drain, bubbling and rattling away. Yet he has the feeling he saw something important without comprehending it. The sense that something isn’t right continues to nag at him as he takes the lift up to Disa’s apartment and rings the bell. While he waits, Joona can hear someone on the landing up above, sighing spasmodically or weeping quietly.

Disa opens the door looking stressed, wearing only her bra and panty-hose.

“I assumed you’d be late,” she explains.

“Well, I’m slightly early instead,” says Joona, kissing her lightly on the cheek.

“Perhaps you could come inside and shut the door before all the neighbours see my ass.”

The welcoming hall smells of food. The fringe of a pink lampshade tickles the top of Joona’s head.

“I’m doing sole with almonds and new potatoes,” says Disa.

“With melted butter?”

“And mushrooms, and parsley.”

“Delicious.”

The one-bedroom apartment is rather shabby, but with an inherent elegance; high ceilings with varnished wood panelling, a beautifully varnished parquet floor, and graceful windows framed in teak.

Joona follows Disa into her bedroom, still trying to remember what it was that he saw in Josef’s room. Disa’s laptop is in the middle of her unmade bed, with books and sheets of paper strewn around.

He settles into an armchair and waits for her to finish dressing. Without a word she turns her back to him so he can zip up a close-fitting, simply cut dress.

Joona glances at one of Disa’s open books and spies a large, black-and-white photo of a graveyard. A group of men, archaeologists, dressed in clothing from the 1940s, are walking along towards the back of the picture, peering at the photographer. It looks as if the site has just begun to be excavated; the surface of the ground is marked with dozens of small flags.

“Those are graves,” she says quietly. “The flags show the location of the graves. The man who conducted the dig on this site was called Hannes Müller; he died a while ago, but he was at least a hundred years old. Stayed on at the institute until the end. He looked like a sweet old tortoise.”

She stands in front of the long mirror, weaves her straight hair into two thin braids, and turns to face him.

“How do I look?”

“Lovely,” says Joona.

“Yes,” she replies sadly. “How’s your mum?”

Joona catches hold of her hand. “She’s fine,” he whispers. “She sends you her love.”

“That’s nice. What else did she say?”

“She said you shouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

“No,” says Disa gloomily. “She’s right, of course.”

Slowly she runs her fingers through his thick, tousled hair. She smiles at him suddenly, then goes over to the laptop, switches it off, and puts it on the chest of drawers.

“Did you know that, according to pre-Christian law, newborn babies were not regarded as fully valid individuals until they had been put to the breast? It was permissible to place a newborn child out in the forest during the period between birth and the first feed.”

“So you became a person through the choice of others,” says Joona slowly.

Disa opens her wardrobe, lifts out a shoebox, and takes out a pair of dark brown sandals with soft straps and beautiful heels, made up of strips of different kinds of wood.

“New?” asks Joona.

“Sergio Rossi. They were a present to myself, because I have such an unglamorous job,” she says. “I spend entire days crawling around in a muddy field.”

“Are you still out in Sigtuna?”

“Yes.”

“What have you actually found?”

“I’ll tell you while we’re eating.”

He points to her shoes. “Very nice,” he says, getting up from the armchair.

Disa turns away with a wry smile. “I’m sorry, Joona,” she says over her shoulder, “but I don’t think they make them in your size.”

He suddenly stops dead. “Hang on,” he says, reaching out to the wall to support himself.

Disa is looking at him inquiringly. “It was just a joke,” she explains.

“No, no, it’s his feet!”

Joona pushes past her into the hallway, pulls his phone out of his overcoat pocket, calls Central Control, and calmly informs them that Sunesson needs immediate backup at the hospital.

“What’s happening?” asks Disa.

“His feet were really dirty,” Joona tells her. “They told me he can’t move, but he’s been out of bed. He’s been out of bed, walking around.”

Joona calls Sunesson, and when no one answers he pulls on his jacket, whispers an apology, and races down the stairs.

At approximately the same time as Joona is ringing Disa’s doorbell, Josef Ek sits up in bed in his room at the hospital.

Last night he checked to see if he could walk: he eased his feet to the floor and stood still for a long time with his hands resting on the bed-frame, as the pain from his many wounds washed over him like boiling oil and the agonising stab from his damaged liver made everything go black. But he could walk. He had stretched out the tubes from the drip and the chest drain, checked what was in the store cupboard, and climbed back into bed.

It is now thirty minutes since the nurse on the night shift came in to see him. The hall is almost silent. Josef slowly pulls out the IV in his wrist, feels the sucking of the tube as it leaves his body. A small amount of blood trickles down onto his knee.

It doesn’t hurt as much when he gets out of bed this time. He moves stiffly over to the cupboard with the scalpels and syringes he’d seen amid the compresses and rolls of gauze bandage. He pushes a few syringes into the wide, loose pocket of his hospital gown. With trembling hands he breaks open the packaging of a scalpel and slices through the chest drain tube. Slimy blood runs out, and his left lung slowly deflates. He can feel the ache behind one shoulder blade and coughs slightly, but he isn’t really aware of the difference, the reduced lung capacity.

Suddenly he hears footsteps out in the corridor, rubber soles against the vinyl flooring. With the scalpel in his hand, Josef positions himself behind the door, peers through the pane of glass, and waits.

The nurse stops to chat with the police officer on guard. Josef can hear them laughing about something.

“But I’ve quit smoking,” she says.

“If you’ve got a nicotine patch I wouldn’t say no,” the police officer goes on.