Stalker (35 page)

The house at Bultvägen 5 only has three rooms, but the kitchen has a nice dining area and there’s a basement, and a small garden that backs on to a patch of forest. They bought it fairly cheaply and were able to move closer to the city, but the house won’t make it through many more winters without some serious renovation work.

Katryna Youssef is sitting on the white sofa in front of the television. She’s wearing her soft blue Hollister sweatpants and a pink T-shirt.

She knows the varnish on her new nails dried a long while ago, but she still spreads her fingers out as she reaches for her glass of wine. Seeing as Adam isn’t home, she’s taken the opportunity to do her nails. Otherwise he goes out and sits in the car to avoid getting a headache.

She takes a sip, then looks down at the iPad in her lap. Caroline hasn’t updated her status yet. She hasn’t said anything for an hour now, and she can’t have been in the shower all that time, surely?

Katryna is watching an old film called
Face/Off
on television, but is finding it rather far-fetched.

She’s got to work tomorrow, so shouldn’t really sit up and wait for Adam.

I’m not going to either, she thinks, and glances at the window as a bush in the garden brushes hard against the glass.

She slips her hand inside her loose sweatpants and starts to masturbate, shuts her eyes for a few seconds, then stares out at the garden through the window, still masturbating, but stops when it occurs to her that their neighbour might bring back the rake he borrowed earlier that evening. She can’t be bothered to close the curtains, and anyway, she’s more bored than horny.

Katryna yawns and scratches her ankle. Even though she ate a tuna salad earlier she’s hungry again. She carries on looking at the iPad, scrolls back and reads her own comments, then writes another one.

With peculiar persistence she looks at the latest pictures of Caroline Winberg, the woman she’s practically stalking.

Caroline was discovered on an underground train on her way to football practice, and is now a supermodel. It’s rumoured that she won’t get out of bed for less that 25,000 dollars.

Katryna follows her on all the forums there are, and always knows where she is and what she’s doing.

It’s just turned out that way.

She reaches for the glass of wine again and shivers when she realises that the garden lights aren’t working. The bushes look black against the glass. She’s not sure if the lights have worked at all that evening. It’s not the first time they’ve gone wrong. Adam will have to check the fuse-box. There’s no way she’s going down into the cellar. Not after the break-in.

She sees her own reflection in the dark window, drinks some more wine and looks at her nails.

Someone broke in last Thursday when she and Adam were both at work, and now the lock on the cellar door is broken. They’ve tied a piece of rope around it so it feels locked if you pull it. Nothing of value was stolen, not the home cinema centre, the stereo or games console.

Maybe they realised that Adam is in the police and changed their minds? It’s possible that they saw his framed diploma from the Police Academy and got out as fast as they could.

Adam thinks it was just some bored youngsters.

But it’s still a bit odd, Katryna thinks. They could have taken their whisky and wine, or her jewellery. The Prada clutch-bag that Adam gave her two years ago was lying out in the bedroom.

She’s only discovered one missing object. A little cloth embroidered by her grandmother. Adam doesn’t believe her, he reckons it will turn up, and refused to mention it in the police report.

Lamassu, the protective deity that her grandmother embroidered in pale red thread on white fabric, has always sat on the bookcase next to the silver crucifix on a stand.

Katryna knows someone has taken it.

When she was little she didn’t like the embroidery at all. Her mum said that Lamassu watched over their home, but she could only see a monster. The close-stitched cloth depicted a man with a plaited beard, with the body of a bull and enormous angel’s wings arching out from his back.

Once again she thinks of the rope that Adam wound round the handle of the cellar door and then tied to the water pipe leading to the washing machine. She’s made him look through the house several times.

Apart from the cellar, the part of the house she finds creepiest is the large cleaning cupboard between the living room and the kitchen.

It’s like a dressing room, with two unusually thick wooden doors. It used to be locked from the outside with a revolving wooden catch, but that’s come loose. Now she and Adam just push the doors shut, but they move, rubbing against each other and opening slightly, as if someone’s trying to peer out.

A car’s headlights reflect off the gilded icon on the bedroom wall, then the glass covering Adam’s framed match jersey.

Every home has its creepy corners, she thinks with a shudder. Rooms and corners that have stored up childhood fears of the dark over the ages.

She drinks the last of the wine and gets up to go to the kitchen.

Katryna moves the wine-box to the edge of the worktop, then fills her glass under the little tap, splashing some tiny red droplets on her hand.

The wind is rattling the kitchen air vent. Through the glass door she can see the empty street through the branches of the viburnum.

The two wooden doors of the cleaning cupboard in the hall leading to the living room knock against each other, then close tighter.

She puts her glass down on an advert from Sephora, sucks the drops of wine from the back of her hand, looks at the glass, at the blonde woman on the flyer, and decides to keep the baby and not go through with the abortion.

Katryna leaves her wine glass in the kitchen, thinks that she should send Adam a text message telling him she’s changed her mind. She walks slowly, keeping her eyes on the heavy wooden doors the whole time. She feels almost compelled to look at them, and stops when the far one starts to open slightly. Katryna takes a deep breath and hurries past. She forces herself not to run, but can feel the movement of the door as a shiver down her spine.

She sits on the sofa and carries on watching the film.

John Travolta has swapped faces with Nicolas Cage, but they just look like themselves.

She can’t help thinking about their neighbour. He gave her a funny look when he borrowed the rake, and she wonders if he knew she was at home on her own.

Her iPad has gone dark, and she puts her finger on the screen and finds herself pointing straight at Caroline’s smiling face when the screen comes back to life.

Katryna knows that if she turns her head to the left she can see the cupboard doors reflected in the window at the back of the house.

She needs to stop this, it’s turning into an obsession.

What if it was their neighbour who broke in and stole the cloth and a pair of her pants from the washing basket?

If you knew that the cellar door was only held shut by a rope, you could get in without making any noise at all.

Katryna stands up and goes over to the window, and is drawing the curtains when she thinks she can see someone running across the grass.

She leans closer.

It’s hard to see in the dark.

A deer, it must have been a deer, she thinks, and closes the curtain with her heart pounding.

She sits down on the sofa, switches the television off and starts to text Adam. In the middle of a sentence her phone rings, scaring her so much that she jumps.

She doesn’t recognise the number.

‘Katryna,’ she says warily.

‘Hello, Katryna,’ a man says quickly. ‘I’m one of Adam’s colleagues at National Crime, and—’

‘He’s not—’

‘Listen now,’ the man interrupts. ‘Are you at home?’

‘Yes, I’m—’

‘Go to the front door and leave the house, don’t worry about clothes or shoes, just go straight out into the street and carry on walking.’

‘Can I ask why?’

‘Are you on your way out?’

‘I’m going now.’

She stands up and starts to walk through the room, looking towards the cupboard doors as she goes round the sofa and turns towards the front door.

A person wearing yellow rain-clothes is standing on the doormat with their back to her, closing the front door behind them.

Katryna quickly moves backwards, goes round the corner and stops.

‘There’s someone in here,’ she whispers. ‘I can’t get out.’

‘Lock yourself in somewhere, and leave your phone on.’

‘God, there’s nowhere to—’

‘Don’t speak unless you absolutely have to, go to the bathroom.’

She’s walking on unsteady legs towards the kitchen when she sees that the doors to the cleaning cupboard have slid open slightly. She can’t think straight, and opens one of the doors, slips quickly inside and stands beside the vacuum cleaner, and pulls the door closed behind her.

It’s hard to close it properly when her fingers won’t fit in the gap. She tries to get hold of the edge with her nails and pull it towards her.

Katryna holds her breath when she hears footsteps outside the cupboard. They move off in the direction of the kitchen, the doors knock against each other the other door slips open a couple of millimetres.

She stands in the darkness with her eyes open wide, and hears a kitchen drawer being opened. There’s a metallic clattering sound, and she’s breathing in short gasps, and suddenly thinks about the relic in the church in Södertälje. Adam didn’t want to go in with her, but she went and looked at it anyway. It was a fragment of bone belonging to Thomas, one of the apostles. The priest claimed that the Holy Spirit was still present in the relic, in the yellow fragment of bone inside the glass tube on the marble table.

She reaches out her hand and tries to close the door, but can’t get any grip, her nails just slide over the wood. She moves carefully to the side, but the mop and bucket are in the way. The handle of the mop touches her winter coat, and a few empty hangers rattle softly on the rail.

She manages to pull the door closed, but loses her grip again. It swings open slightly and she can see a dark figure standing right outside the cupboard.

The door is yanked open and a man with a pistol steps backwards. His mouth is half-open and his dark brown eyes are staring at her. A smell of sweat reaches her. She registers every detail at that moment. His worn jeans with turned-up cuffs, the grass stain on his right knee, his padded black nylon jacket, and the logo of the New York Yankees sewn badly on to his cap.

‘I’m a police officer,’ he says in a gasp, and lowers his gun.

‘Oh, God,’ she whispers, and feels tears begin to flow.

He takes her hand and leads her towards the hall as he reports back to control on his radio:

‘Katryna is unharmed but the suspect fled through the kitchen door … yes, get the road-blocks set up and send some dog-units over here …’

She walks beside the police officer, leaning her hand against the wall, brushing against her diploma from her make-up course.

‘Give me a moment,’ the officer says, and opens the front door to secure their exit.

Katryna bends down to put her trainers on as a cascade of blood sprays across the hall mirror. Then she hears the sharp crack of the gun and the echo from the house on the other side of the road.

The plain-clothes officer throws his arm out, manages to grab the coats and pulls them with him as he falls. He collapses on his back among the shoes. The hangers rattle as blood pulses from the bullet-hole in his black jacket.

‘Hide,’ he gasps. ‘Go and hide again …’

Two further shots ring out and Katryna moves backwards. Someone is screaming like an animal outside. She stares at the wounded police officer, and at the blood seeping along the cracks in the tiled floor. A window pane shatters as another shot echoes through the neighbourhood.

Katryna runs at a crouch through the living room, slipping on the Tabriz rug and hitting her shoulder against the wall, but she manages to keep her balance, carries on out into the passageway and opens one of the cleaning cupboard doors. The mop handle falls out, pulling the red bucket with it, and the strainer comes loose and clatters on to the floor. Katryna picks the mop up and tries to get it to stand up among the clothes. A jacket falls down and the thick hose of the vacuum cleaner pushes the other door open.

She hears two more shots, leaves the cupboard and carries on towards the kitchen. She sees the glass door and the darkness outside, opens the cellar door and starts to go down the steep staircase.

She’s so frightened she can barely breathe, and can only think that this is an organised hate-based crime, that the racists have found them, that they’re upset about Adam buying a new Jaguar.

She can hear police cars through the stone walls, and thinks that she can hide in the boiler room until the police have caught the intruder.

Her anxiety increases as she heads down into the darkness.

She clings on to the cool handrail, blinks and opens her eyes wide, but can hardly see a thing.

The air smells of stone, damp pipes and oil from the boiler.

She’s treading carefully, but the steps still creak under her weight. Finally she reaches the tiled floor. She blinks and can make out the washing machine as a paler shape in the darkness next to the door with the rope around its handle. She turns round and moves in the opposite direction, past Adam’s old pinball machine, and into the boiler room. She carefully closes the door behind her and hears a whining sound.

Katryna stands still with her fingers on the door handle, listening. The pipes are clicking faintly, but otherwise everything is quiet.

She moves further in, away from the door, thinking that she’ll just sit here, it won’t be long, not now that the police have arrived.

She hears the whimpering sound again. Very close to her.

She turns her head but can’t see anything.

The whimpering becomes a weak wheezing sound.

It’s coming from the safety valve of the hot-water tank.

Katryna feels her way forward and finds the paint-stained stepladder standing against the wall.

She unfolds it in silence and moves it to the wall beneath the window up by the ceiling.

Someone has stolen Lamassu, she thinks. The embroidered cloth with her protective deity, her protector, that’s why this is happening.

She can’t stay in the house, she never wants to come back here again. She twists the two catches of the window and is pushing the little window against the weeds when she feels a cold draught around her ankles.

Someone’s coming up behind her, she’s convinced of it.

Someone’s got in through the cellar door, they’ve cut the rope holding it closed and are on their way inside.

It’s impossible to open the window properly. She tries again, but it keeps hitting something. Panting for breath, she reaches out with her arm, through the weeds, and feels that the lawnmower is parked too close.

She tries to push it away with her hand, pushing even though she can feel the stepladder slide backwards beneath her. She turns the wheel of the lawnmower by hand and manages to roll it a few centimetres.

The window slides open and she starts to crawl out as the door to the boiler room bursts open and the light is switched on. The old starter switch makes the fluorescent tube flicker. Katryna tries to scramble out as the steps are yanked away from beneath her and clatter to the floor. Her legs thud against the wall, her knees sting, but she clings on to the frame and fights to pull herself up.

The first stab of the knife hits her back so hard that she hears the point scrape the concrete wall in front of her.