Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (111 page)

“Axel is not a paedophile,” Beverly says.

“Why would you want to defend him? He doesn’t deserve it.”

“He doesn’t touch me like that. He never has.”

“What does he do, then?”

“He hugs me,” Beverly answers.

“Hugs you!” Robert exclaims. “You’ve just said—”

“He hugs me so he can sleep,” she explains in her frank, clear voice.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s nothing ugly about what he does,” Beverly says. “At least not as far as I can tell.”

Robert sighs and says she’ll have to explain everything to the police. He wonders if he’s doing the right thing.

“It’s all about his insomnia,” Beverly explains slowly. “He can’t sleep unless he takes his pills. But he can’t take his pills anymore. But when I’m there, he calms down and he—”

“But you’re underage!” Robert says.

Beverly looks through the windscreen at the light green leaves on the trees, which flutter in the warm breeze. A few pregnant women are chatting on the pavement. An elderly woman is standing still with her face turned towards the sun.

“Why?” Robert asks. “Why can’t Axel sleep at night?”

“He says he’s always been like that.”

“I know that he wrecked his liver by taking all those pills.”

“He told me all about why he can’t sleep. It was when we were still in the hospital together,” Beverly says. “Something sad happened to him.”

Robert stops at a pedestrian crossing. A child drops his dummy in the street and his mother doesn’t notice but keeps walking. The child rips himself away from his mother and dashes back. The mother screams horribly but then notices that Robert has observed the scene and understood that the child would run back. The mother picks up her child and carries him to the pavement while he shrieks.

“He knew a girl who died,” Beverly says.

“Who was it?”

“He only told me about it once, while we were at the hospital. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

Beverly twists her fingers together.

“Tell me what he told you,” Robert says. There’s tension in his voice.

“They were in love and they slept together and then the next day she killed herself.” Beverly glances at Robert. “I kind of look like her, right?”

“You do,” Robert answers.

“When he was in the hospital, he told me that he was the one who killed her,” Beverly whispers.

Robert jerks and turns to her.

“What are you talking about?”

“He said there’s something he did that made her want to kill herself.”

Robert’s mouth drops open. “He said that? He said it was his fault?”

Beverly nods.

“He said it was his fault because they were supposed to be practicing together, and instead they had sex and she thought he’d lured her into it so he could win the violin competition.”

“None of that was his fault,” Robert says.

“Of course it was. He said so.”

Robert sinks behind the wheel and rubs his face with his hands.

“Oh, good Lord,” he says. “There’s something I have to tell him.”

Robert stops the car and the car behind him honks. Beverly looks at him with worry.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

Robert starts to turn the car around.

“There’s … there’s something very important I must tell him. I was behind the stage right before Axel was going to go on and I know what really happened. Greta had already played right before he was supposed to go on because she was first on the programme and—”

“You were there?”

“Just a minute,” Robert says. “I heard everything that happened. I know that Greta’s death had nothing to do with Axel.”

Robert is so upset that he has to stop the car again. His face is pale as ash as he says to Beverly, “Please, forgive me, but I really have to—”

“Do you know that for sure?” Beverly asks.

“What?” Robert looks at her in confusion.

“Are you absolutely sure that it wasn’t Axel’s fault that Greta died?”

“Of course!”

“But what happened?”

Robert wipes a tear from his cheek. He opens the car door.

“Just a second,” he says. “I have to … I must speak to him.”

Robert gets out of the car and stands on the pavement.

The enormous linden trees on Sveavägen are shedding their seeds, which dance in the sunshine. Robert has a big smile on his face as he reaches for his mobile phone and punches in Axel’s number. After three rings, his smile disappears, and he starts to walk back to the car with his phone to his ear. Only when he breaks off the call and attempts to redial the number does he notice that his car is empty. Beverly is gone. He looks around but can’t see her anywhere. City traffic is picking up. Students in their cars are rushing down to Sergel’s Square.

Robert shuts the door, starts his car, and begins to drive slowly as he looks for Beverly.

Axel Riessen doesn’t know how long he’s been standing at the window. He’d watched Robert and Beverly drive away until they were out of sight. His thoughts had gone back into the past. He forces himself to stop remembering and walks over to his music system and puts on the first side of David Bowie’s
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
. He jacks up the volume.

Pushing through the market square …

Axel walks over to his bar and takes out one of the most expensive whisky bottles in his collection. It’s a Macallan 1939, from the first year of the Second World War. He pours himself half a glass and then goes to the sofa and sits down. He listens to the music with his eyes closed. Bowie’s young voice and the sloppy piano playing. He sniffs the aroma of oak barrels, heavy reservoirs and dark cellars, straw and citrus. He drinks and the strong alcohol burns his lips as it fills his mouth. Guarding its precious taste, this whisky has been waiting through decades: generations, changes of government, war and peace.

Now Axel is thinking that maybe what just happened is a good thing. Maybe Beverly will finally get the help she needs. He has a sudden impulse to call his brother and tell him that he loves him, but frowns at the pathetic thought. He won’t be killing himself—he’s just going to meet what’s coming to him soon enough and try to die on his feet.

He takes the whisky to his bedroom and stares at the unmade bed. He’s able to hear the sound of vibrations coming from his jacket, which is hanging over the back of a chair. Just then, he also hears the sound of footsteps behind him. He whirls around.

“Oh, it’s you, Beverly,” he says in surprise.

Her face is dusty and she’s holding a white dandelion ball in her hand.

“I didn’t want to talk to the police,” she says.

“Where’s Robert?”

“I hitchhiked home,” she says. “It wasn’t hard. I got a ride right away.”

“Why do you hitchhike? You might have been—”

“Don’t be mad. I really didn’t do anything wrong. But there’s something very important that I have to tell you.”

The telephone in his jacket starts to vibrate again.

“Just a moment, Beverly, I have to get this,” he says.

He searches through his jacket pockets and finds his mobile phone. He answers, “Axel Riessen here.”

A voice that seems to come from far away says, “Hello?”

“Hello,” Axel says.

“This is Raphael Guidi.” The voice is deep and the English is accented. “Please excuse the noise on the line. At the moment, I’m at sea, on my way to Latvia. I’m afraid that once we get out on the Baltic, we may lose our connection altogether.”

“I can hear you,” Axel says politely while Beverly walks over to the bed and sits.

“Let me get down to business,” Raphael Guidi says. “I’m calling you because I need to know that your signature is on the export authorisation. I’d already thought that the container ship would have been able to leave the harbour by now.”

Axel holds the phone close to his ear. He walks into the library but can’t hear much besides his own breathing. He thinks about the photograph with Raphael Guidi, Carl Palmcrona, Agathe al-Haji, and Pontus Salman. He remembers how Palmcrona had raised his champagne glass and was laughing so that his teeth shone.

“Are you still there?” asks Raphael Guidi on the crackling line.

“I am not going to sign the authorisation form,” Axel replies shortly, and shivers run up and down his spine.

“Maybe there’s a way I can convince you to change your mind,” Raphael Guidi says. “Think whether or not there’s something I can offer you that would help—”

“You have nothing I want.”

“I believe you may be wrong about that. Whenever I sign a contract, I—”

Axel hangs up. He slides the phone back into his jacket pocket. He’s filled with discomfort, almost a premonition, and begins to walk to the hallway door leading to the staircase. As he looks through the window, he spies movement in the park: shadows among the bushes heading towards his house. Axel whirls and looks out the other window but sees nothing.

There’s a clink from the bottom floor, as if one of the small panes of glass broke in the sunshine. Axel thinks the whole thing is absurd and at the same time realises what’s going on. His body fills with adrenaline, and he has heightened awareness of his surroundings. Heart racing, he moves as swiftly as he can without running. He heads straight towards Beverly in his bedroom. Beautiful sunlight is flooding in through the gaps in the venetian blinds and landing at Beverly’s feet. Beverly has got undressed and crawled back into the unmade bed. She has the volume of Dürrenmatt on her stomach.

“Axel,” she says, “I came back because I have to tell you some really good news—”

“Don’t be afraid, now.” He interrupts her. “Just do as I say. Hide underneath the bed right now. Don’t move or make a sound. Stay there for one hour.”

Beverly does what he says without question. She crawls beneath the bed.

Axel hears the stomping of feet coming up the stairs.
There’s at least two of them
, he thinks. Beverly’s jeans and T-shirt are on a chair. He picks them up and throws them under the bed.

His heart is pounding and his thoughts are whirling as he looks around, not knowing what to do.

He grabs his telephone from his jacket and runs out of the bedroom and into the library. He can hear the sound of feet in the hallway, also heading to the library.

His hands are shaking as he tries to punch a number into his phone. He hears the floor creak as someone rushes into the room. There’s no time to call. He tries to head over to the window so he can yell into the street for help, but someone grabs his right wrist while jamming a cool instrument against his throat. He doesn’t realise it’s a stun gun; 69,000 volts of electricity pulse through his body.

The sparking of electricity can be heard in the room, but Axel only feels heavy blows, as if someone were beating his throat with an iron pipe. He doesn’t even hear himself screaming. His brain shuts down and the world around him disappears.

The man who attacked him has already taped his mouth shut by the time Axel starts coming to. Axel finds he’s lying on the floor and his body is jerking in spasms. His arms and legs are flailing. A burning bite on his throat hits him with pain. He has no chance to defend himself.

The men brusquely move Axel’s arms and legs so that they can wrap him in white plastic. The plastic crackles softly and he believes that he’s going to suffocate. However, air is able to come through to him. The men tape up the plastic and then lift him like a rug. Axel tries to struggle, but he’s no longer in control of his own muscles. The two men carry him down the staircase, out through the front door, and into a waiting rubbish truck.

Joona tries to call Pontus Salman back to shore. The rowing boat glides farther away. Joona runs from the dock to the meet the psychologist and the two colleagues from Södertälje. He accompanies them back to the dock and tells them to be careful, but he doesn’t believe that Pontus Salman is a danger to himself or others.

“But keep him in custody,” Joona says. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.” He hurries back to his car.

As Joona drives over the bridge over Fittjaviken, he reflects on Pontus Salman and how Salman sat in the rowing boat and told Joona how he was convinced that Axel Riessen would want to sign the Paganini contract.

Joona had asked Salman if Riessen could refuse, but he said that Riessen would not want to.

As he dials the number for Axel Riessen, Joona can see Veronique Salman in his mind’s eye. The disappointed expression around her mouth and the fear in her eyes as she described how once one had kissed Raphael Guidi on the hand, there was no way out.

Those words, the ‘nightmare’
,
keep returning, Joona thinks. Palmcrona’s housekeeper had used it. Veronique Salman had said that Raphael made sure that everyone would tell him their worst nightmare and Pontus Salman had said that Palmcrona had avoided his nightmare by committing suicide.

Pontus had said,
He was able to escape reaping his nightmare.

Joona reflects on the fact that Stefan Bergkvist never knew that Carl Palmcrona was his father. He thinks about the unbearable heat that burned the flesh right off the bones and made the blood boil—the heat that burst the boy’s skull.

You can’t break a Paganini contract even if you die.

Joona tries again to reach Axel Riessen on the phone and then tries the direct number to the ISP.

“Can you connect me to Axel Riessen?” he asks quickly.

“I’m sorry. He is not reachable at the moment,” the receptionist replies.

“I’m a detective with the police and I need to speak to him right away.”

“I understand, but—”

“Interrupt him if he’s in a meeting.”

“He’s not here,” she replies, raising her voice. “He hasn’t come in this morning, and we haven’t been able to reach him by phone.”

“Now I know,” Joona says while hanging up.

Joona parks his Volvo on Brahegatan outside the gate to Axel Riessen’s mansion. The massive front door is just swinging shut as he approaches, and he races to ring the bell. The lock rattles and the door is reopened.