Let the right one in (38 page)

And Benny had chosen what he thought was the right one, even though it was hard. He had said good-bye, with the promise of meeting up again Sunday night, then got into his car and driven home to Bromma while he sang "Can't Help Falling in Love" out loud.

So Benny was not someone who had any energy to spare for complaining about, or even noticing, the miserable state of the Traneberg Bridge this Sunday morning. For him it was simply the bridge to paradise, to love.

He had just arrived at the end of the bridge on the Traneberg side and started in on the refrain for perhaps the tenth time when a blue figure turned up in the beam of his headlights, in the middle of the road. He had time to think:
Don't jump on the brakes!
before he took his foot off the accelerator and jerked the steering wheel to the side, swerving to the left when there were only about five meters between him and the person. He caught a glimpse of a blue coat and a pair of white legs before the corner of the car banged into the concrete barrier between the lanes.

The scraping sound was so loud it deafened him as the car was pressed up against and forced down along the barrier. The side view mirror was torn off and fluttered away, and the car door on his side was pushed in until it touched his hip before the car was flung out into the middle of the road again.

He tried to ward it off, but the car skidded over to the other side and hit the railing of the pedestrian walkway. The other side view mirror was knocked off and flew away over the bridge railing, reflecting the lights of the bridge up into the sky. He braked carefully and the next skid was less violent; the car only nudged up against the concrete barrier. After approximately a hundred meters he managed to stop the car. He exhaled, sat still with his hands in his lap and the engine running. He had a bloody taste in his mouth, had bitten his lip.

What kind of lunatic was that back there?

He looked up into the rearview mirror and in the yellowish light of the street lamps he could see the person stagger on down in the middle of the lane as if nothing had happened. That made him angry. A nutcase, sure, but there were limits, damn it.

He tried to open the door on his side, but couldn't. The lock must have gotten smashed in. He took off his seat belt and crawled over onto the passenger side. Before he wriggled out of the car he turned on the hazard lights. He stood next to the car, his arms folded, waiting.

Saw that the person making his way across the bridge was dressed in some kind of hospital gown and nothing more. Bare feet, bare legs. Would have to see if it was possible to talk any sense into him. Him?

The figure got closer. The slush splashed up around the bare feet; he walked as if he had a thread attached to his chest, inexorably pulling him along. Benny took a step toward him and stopped. The person was maybe ten meters away now and Benny could clearly see his .. . face. Benny gasped, and steadied himself against the car. Then he quickly wriggled back into it through the passenger side, put the car in first gear and drove away so fast the slush sprayed out from his back wheels and probably hit. . . that thing on the road.

Once he was back in his apartment, he poured himself a good-sized whisky, drank about half. Then he called the police. Told them what he had seen, what had happened. When he had drunk the last of the whisky and started to lean towards hitting the hay after all, the mobilization was in full swing.

+

They were searching all of Judarn forest. Five police dogs, twenty officers. Even one helicopter, unusual for this type of search. One wounded, dazed man. A single canine unit should have been able to track him down.

But the stakes were raised in part because of the high media profile of the case (two officers had been assigned simply to handle all the reporters crowding around Weibull's nursery next to the Akeshov subway station) and they wanted to demonstrate that the police were putting in the maximum effort even on a Sunday morning.

And in part it was because they had found Benke Edwards.

That is to say, they assumed it was Benke Edwards, since they had found a wedding band with the name Gunilla engraved on it.

Gunilla was Benke's wife; his coworkers knew that. No one could bring themselves to call her. Tell her that he was dead, but that they still could not be completely sure it was him. Ask her if she knew of any defining bodily characteristics on, say . . . the lower half of his body?

The pathologist who had arrived at seven o'clock in the morning in order to work on the body of the ritual killer found himself with a new case. If he had been presented with Benke Edwards' remains without knowing any of the circumstances he would have guessed that the body had lain outside for one or two days in severe cold, during which time it would appear the body had been mutilated by rats, foxes, perhaps wolverines and bears—if "mutilate" is even the appropriate word to use in the context of animals. At any rate, larger predators could have torn off pieces of flesh in this way, and rodents could have been responsible for damage to protrusions such as nose, ears, and fingers.

The pathologist's hasty, preliminary assessment that went out to the police was the other reason for the considerable mobilization on their part. The offender was determined to be extremely violent, in official terms.

Completely fucking crazy, in other words.

That the man was still alive was nothing short of a miracle. Not a miracle of the kind the Vatican would want to wave their incense at, but a miracle nonetheless. He had been a vegetable before the fall from the tenth story. Now he was up and walking and worse.

But he couldn't exactly be in great shape. The weather was a little milder now, of course, but it was only a few degrees above freezing and the man was dressed in a hospital gown. He had no accomplices as far as the police knew, and it was simply not possible for him to remain hidden in the forest for more than a few hours.

The telephone call from Benny Molin had come in almost an hour after he had seen the man on the Traneberg Bridge. But a few minutes later they had received an additional call from an older woman.

She had been out for a morning walk with her dog when she had spotted a man in a hospital gown in the vicinity of the Akeshov stables where the King's sheep were housed in the winter. She had immediately gone home and called the police, thinking the sheep were potentially in danger.

Ten minutes later the first patrol car had turned up and the first thing the officers did was check the stables, nervous, their guns out and ready. The sheep had become restless and before the officers were done combing the building the whole place was a seething mass of anxious, woolly bodies, loud bleating, and an inhuman screeching that drew even more police.

During their search of the sheep pen, a number of sheep escaped into the walkway in the middle, and when the police finally determined that the place was clean and left the building—their ears ringing—a ram managed to slip out the front door. An older officer with farmers in the family threw himself over the ram and grabbed him by his horns, dragging him back to the pen. It was only after he had finished coaxing the animal back that he realized some of the bright flashes he had seen out of the corner of his eye during his quick action had been photoflashes. He had made the erroneous assumption that the matter was too serious for the press to want to use such a picture. Shortly thereafter, however, they managed to erect a base for the media, outside the perimeter of the search area. It was now half past seven in the morning and dawn was creeping in under dripping trees. The search for the lone lunatic was well-organized and in full swing. The police felt assured of a resolution before lunchtime.

Another couple of hours would go by with negative results from the infrared camera of the helicopter, and from the secretions-sensitive noses of the dogs, before the speculation started that the man was no longer alive. That they were searching for a corpse.

+

When the first pale dawn light trickled in through the tiny gaps in the blinds and struck Virginia's palm like a burning hot light bulb, she only wanted one thing: to die. Even so she instinctively pulled her hand away and crawled further back into the room.

Her skin was cut in more than thirty places. There was blood all over the apartment.

Several times during the night she had sliced her arteries in order to drink but had not had time to suck or lick everything that ran out. It had landed on the floor, on the table, chairs. The large rug in the living room looked like someone had butchered a deer on it.

The degree of satisfaction and relief lessened each time she opened a new wound, each time she drank a mouthful of her own rapidly thinning blood. Towards morning she was a whimpering mass of abstinence and anguish. Anguish because she knew what had to be done if she was to live.

The realization had come to her gradually, grown to certainty. Another person's blood would make her . . . healthy. And she couldn't manage to take her own life. Probably it was not even possible; the cuts she made in her skin with the fruit knife healed with unnatural swiftness. However hard and deep she cut, the bleeding stopped within a minute. After an hour the scar tissue was already visible.

And anyway . . .

She had sensed something.

It was toward morning, when she was sitting on a kitchen chair and sucking blood from a cut in the crook of her arm—the second one in the same spot—that she was suddenly pulled into the depths of her body and caught sight of it.

The infection.

She didn't really
see
it, of course, but suddenly she had an everincreasing perception of what it was. It was like being pregnant and getting an ultrasound, looking at the screen showing you how your belly was filled with, in this case, not a child but a large, writhing snake. That this was what you were carrying.

Because what she had realized at that moment was that the infection had its own life, its own force, completely independent of her body. That the infection would live on even if she did not. The mother-to-be could die of shock at the ultrasound but no one would notice anything because the snake would take control of the body instead.

Suicide would make no difference.

The only thing the infection seemed to fear was sunlight. The pale light on her hand had hurt more that the deepest cut.

For a long time she sat curled up in a corner of the living room, watching how the dawn light through the slats of the blinds laid a grate over the soiled rug. Thought about her grandson Ted. How he had crawled over to that place where the afternoon sun shone in onto the floor and fallen asleep in the pool of sunlight with his thumb in his mouth. The naked, soft skin, the tender skin that you would only have to ...
What am I thinking!

Virginia flinched, staring vacantly into space. She had seen Ted, and she had imagined that she . . .

No!

She hit herself in the head. Hit and hit until the picture was crushed. But she would never see him again. Could never see anyone she loved ever again.

I am never again to see anyone I love.

Virginia forced her body to straighten up, crawled slowly over to the sun-grate. The infection protested and wanted to pull her back, but she was stronger, still had control over her own body. The light stung her eyes, the bars of the grate burned her corneas like glowing-hot steel wire.

Burn! Burn up!

Her right arm was covered in scars, dried blood. She stretched it into the light.

She could not have imagined it.

What the light had done to her on Saturday was a caress. Now a blowtorch started up, directed at her skin. After one second the skin was chalk-white. After two seconds it started to smoke. After three seconds a blister formed, blackened, and burst with a hiss. The fourth second she pulled her arm back and crawled sobbing into the bedroom.

The stench of burnt flesh poisoned the air. She didn't dare look at her arm as she slithered up into her bed.

Rest.

But the bed ...

Even with the blinds drawn there was too much light in the bedroom. Even if she pulled the covers over her she felt too exposed on the bed. Her ears perceived every smallest morning noise coming from the house around her, and every noise was a potential threat. Someone walked over a floor above her. She flinched, turned her head in the direction of the sound, listened. A drawer was pulled out, the clinking of metal one floor up.

Coffee spoons.

She knew from the delicateness of the sound that it was ... coffee spoons. Saw before her the velvet-clad case with silver coffee spoons that had been her grandmother's and that she had been given when her mother moved into the nursing home. How she had opened that case, looked at the spoons, and realized that
they had never been used.

Virginia thought about that now as she slid down out of bed, pulled the covers off with her, crawled over to the double closet, opened its doors. On the floor of the closet there was an extra duvet and a couple of blankets.

She had felt a kind of sadness, looking at the spoons. Spoons that had been lying in their case for perhaps sixty years without anyone ever picking them up, holding them, using them.

More sounds around her, the building coming to life. She didn't hear them anymore when she pulled out the duvet and the blankets and wrapped them around her, crawled into the closet and shut the doors. It was pitch black in there. She pulled the duvet and blankets over her head, curling up like a caterpillar in a double cocoon.

Never ever.

On parade, standing at attention in their velvet bed, waiting. Fragile little coffee spoons of silver. She rolled over with the fabric of the blankets tight over her face.

Who will get them now?

Her daughter. Yes. Lena would get them, and she would use them to feed Ted. Then the spoons would be happy. Ted would eat mashed potatoes from the spoons. That would be good. She lay completely still, like a stone, calm spreading through her body. She had time to formulate one last thought before she sank into rest.
Why isn't it hot?