The Disciple (22 page)

Her head is turned away as she opens the door of the windowless cupboard under the stairs. He goes in and sits down on the cold floor. There is no point in crying or begging to be let off. That will just make it worse. He will be in there for even longer. He wraps his arms around his knees. She closes the door without a word. She has not spoken since she made those noises into the pillow. And he isn’t even sure if those were words. It is dark. He never knows how long he sits there. He can’t tell the time. No one has taught him. They have just started learning in school. He knows the hour and half past and quarter past and quarter to. But it doesn’t matter, because he has no watch to look at anyway. Sometimes he thinks that’s a good thing. If he had a watch, he would know how long he has been locked up for, and he might panic. Think she had forgotten about him. Or gone away. Left him. As it is, the time and the darkness flow into one. His teacher once told him that dogs have no concept of time. They don’t know if they have been alone for an hour, or a whole day. In the darkness he is a dog. He loses all concept of time. Is it five hours or two days? He never really knows. He is just happy when the door opens. Like a dog.

He doesn’t understand. He will never understand. He does everything she tells him to do, and yet he ends up here. In the darkness and the cold. It is never his suggestion that they should do what they do. Never his idea. She is the one who shouts for him. The one who pushes his hand down the bed. And yet she cannot look at him afterwards. She thinks he is dirty. Ugly. He gets hungry, but the hunger disappears. The thirst is worse. He pees on the floor. He would prefer not to. He knows he will have to clean it up afterwards. When she opens the door. When the punishment is over. Sometimes he defecates as well. If he’s in there for a long time. He can’t help it. When she doesn’t open the door for a long time . . .

‘Eventually he was let out. He was forgiven, but it wasn’t over. He must be reminded of his sins, and so that he wouldn’t repeat them she would attach one of those big bulldog clips to his foreskin. And
there it would stay until she gave him permission to remove it.’

Everyone in the room grimaced, Billy and Torkel perhaps with a little more feeling.

‘I don’t buy it.’ Billy again. ‘How is it possible for someone to go through all this without anyone noticing? He must have had a fair amount of time off school.’

‘She rang and said that he was ill. Asthma and migraine. Otherwise he was very successful in school. In spite of everything he got through junior school, high school and university. Top grades all the way. Afterwards he got a low-grade job, just to make enough to live on. He was obviously overqualified, but lied on his CV. He had superficial contacts. Colleagues. His IQ was somewhere in the region of a hundred and thirty, so he was certainly intelligent enough to play “normal”, but he was completely incapable of forming deeper relationships which required empathy or any kind of genuine emotion. He might be found out if something like that happened.’

Sebastian paused and drank a glass of water.

‘His mother died in 1994. Just over a year later, Edward began to seek out other women. His first victim was a colleague at the National Board of Health and Welfare, who was obviously interested in him and sometimes tried to chat to him.’

He is waiting. In one hand he holds the bag containing the nightdress and the stockings. He knows that she wants him. She is planning to take over. She wants to continue what his mother used to do. She wants to do the dirty thing. The bad thing. She wants to make him do things that will lead to the punishment. The pain. The darkness and the humiliation. They all do. But he does not intend to allow it. Not this time.

He rings the doorbell. She smiles. He knows why. He knows what she wants, but she is going to get a surprise. This time he is going to take control. She barely has time to invite him in when he hits her. Hard. Twice. He forces her to show him the bedroom. Off with her clothes. On with the nightdress. Down on her stomach. He ties her up with the stockings. When she cannot move, he leaves the bedroom. He takes the bag containing his supplies and the empty bottle into which he intends to urinate. He searches for the place. The place where she will lock him up. He finds it in the cellar. A lock on the outside. Dark on the inside. He arranges the things he has brought with him on the floor. Now he will be able to get through the punishment. Afterwards.

‘But there is no afterwards. He cuts their throats, just to escape the punishment.’

Torkel’s mobile rang. They all jumped as the sound broke the dense silence. Torkel turned away and took the call.

‘But surely he must have known they weren’t going to survive?’ Vanja took up the thread once more. ‘Why did he put the food there?’

‘A safety measure. Just in case she did survive against all expectations, and he was punished. He didn’t want to starve. But as we know, he never needed to make use of his supplies.’

Torkel ended the brief conversation and turned back to the team. The look on his face told them it wasn’t good news.

‘We have a fourth victim.’

Vanja’s car was first on the scene. The uniformed patrol who had found the body had already cordoned off the area outside the grey apartment block, following procedure to the letter. Vanja jumped out of the car and hurried over to the officer standing behind the blue and white tape. Sebastian remained by the car, looking up at the building. Once again he had irritated her by taking it for granted that his place was by her side in the front seat, but Vanja had decided it would be inappropriate to get into an argument with him when they were out on a job. He could be childish. She wasn’t going to be. She was working. But when all this had calmed down a little, she was going to make it very clear to Torkel that Sebastian Bergman could travel with someone else from now on. Torkel himself would be a suitable alternative. After all, he was the one who had insisted on dragging Sebastian back in. The officer by the door nodded to her in recognition. She recognised him too; Erik something-or-other. She remembered him as a good officer, well organised and always calm. After he had briefed her in just a few sentences, she saw no reason to revise her opinion. Following instructions, he and his colleague had immediately alerted Riksmord as soon as they entered the apartment on the third floor and found the woman bound and murdered. They had tried to avoid touching anything, and had immediately left the scene in order to cordon off both the apartment itself and the main entrance, with the aim of avoiding any contamination of the scene of the crime. Vanja thanked Erik and went over to meet Ursula, Billy and Torkel, who had just arrived.

‘The scene has been secured. Third floor. Billy, can you take a detailed statement from Erik? He was the first to arrive.’ She pointed to the uniformed officer by the cordon.

‘Can’t you do that?’

Vanja stared at him in astonishment. ‘Why, what are you going to do?’

‘I can go up to the apartment.’

‘Have a word with Erik, then come up,’ Torkel intervened.

Billy quickly swallowed a protest. It was one thing to remind Vanja that they were equals within the team, something she sometimes forgot, but another thing altogether to question the boss’s orders.

‘Okay.’ He headed towards Erik while the other three went inside.

Sebastian was still standing by the car. He could see Billy waving to him, but couldn’t decide what to do: stand there worrying, or find out if his whirling thoughts might be right. It didn’t seem possible. This was a large building. Absolutely, totally and completely impossible. There were lots of buildings that looked exactly the same. And yet he couldn’t shake off the feeling, couldn’t make his legs work. Billy waved to him again. Annoyed.

‘Come on!’

Sebastian couldn’t put it off any longer. Although a part of him didn’t want to do this, he needed to know for certain. He managed to get his legs moving and set off towards Billy. He would let him take the lead. Follow his energy.

They went into the apartment block and up the stone steps. Billy was moving quickly. Sebastian was moving more and more slowly. It was an ordinary grey stairwell. There were thousands, tens of thousands like this. Anonymous, identical, they all looked exactly the same. Why should this particular stairwell be anything special? Feverishly he searched for details that might suppress the feeling of rising panic.

He heard Billy reach the third floor. Heard him talking to someone up there. A uniformed officer, he saw as he rounded the corner of the stairs. They were standing in front of an open door. He could just see Torkel inside the apartment, in the hallway. Took a few more steps, then sank to his knees, breathing heavily.

He pulled himself together sufficiently to glance inside the apartment once more, in a final desperate hope that he was wrong.

He wasn’t.

He could see it lying on the floor of the living room.

A brown teddy bear wearing a red rosette with writing on it. ‘To the best mum in the world.’

Torkel had put on shoe protectors, but had avoided entering the living room where the bed was located. There was no doubt whatsoever that they were dealing with the same murderer. The nightdress, the bound arms and legs, the gaping wound in the throat – everything pointed to one conclusion. He felt both impotence and rage. Yet another victim they had been unable to protect. Ursula was standing in the middle of the room, methodically photographing the scene. No doubt it would be several hours before she had finished her preliminary investigation. He and the others could start talking to the neighbours. He was intending to begin with the woman who had called the police a few hours earlier. Suddenly he heard Sebastian’s voice behind him.