Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (31 page)

This garden is better protected from prying eyes, he thinks.

A car passes by along the road, the headlights picking out a few trees, and Erik thinks about Aida’s strange photograph. The yellow grass and the bushes. He moves closer to the big wooden building and notices that it looks as if a blue fire is burning in one of the rooms.

The building has tall, heavily barred windows and a projecting roof that looks like crocheted lace. The view over the lake must be magnificent. A taller hexagonal tower at one end and two bay windows with pointed gables make the house look like a miniature wooden castle. The walls are mainly made up of horizontal planks, but the line is broken by a false panel, creating a multi-dimensional impression. The door is surrounded by ornate carvings: wooden columns and a beautiful pointed roof.

When Erik reaches the window he sees that the blue light is coming from a television. Someone is watching figure skating. The cameras track sweeping leaps across the ice, and the blue light flickers across the walls of the room. A fat man in grey tracksuit bottoms sits on the sofa. He seems to be alone in the room. Only one cup sits on the table. Erik moves to the next window and peers into the adjacent room. Something is rattling faintly inside the glass. He sees into a bedroom with an unmade bed and a closed door. Crumpled tissues lie next to a glass of water on the bedside table. A map of Australia hangs on the wall. Water is dripping onto the window ledge. Erik moves along to the next window. The curtains are drawn. It is impossible to see between them, but he hears the strange rattling again, along with a kind of clicking noise.

He continues around the corner of the hexagonal tower and finds himself looking into a dining room. A table and chairs made of dark wood stand in the middle of the polished wooden floor. Something tells Erik it is very rarely used. A black object is lying on the floor in front of a display cupboard—a guitar case, he thinks. The rattling noise comes again. Erik leans into the glass and sees a huge dog racing towards him across the floor. It thuds against the window and rears up, barking and pawing at the glass. Erik jumps back, stumbles over a pot, and quickly moves to the back of the house, where he waits with a pounding heart.

The dog stops barking after a while; the outside light is switched on, then off again.

This was a bad idea, Erik thinks. He has no idea what he’s doing here, peeping into strangers’ windows. He realises it’s best if he returns to his office at Karolinska Hospital, so he sets off toward the front of the haunted house and the drive down which he parked.

As he turns the corner he sees someone standing in the light from the doorway. It’s the fat man, wearing a padded jacket. He looks frightened when he catches sight of Erik. Perhaps he had been expecting a deer or some children messing about.

“Good evening,” says Erik.

“This is private property,” the man shouts in a shrill voice.

The dog begins to bark behind the closed front door. Erik keeps walking. A yellow sports car is parked in the drive. It has only two seats, and the boot is obviously too small to accommodate Benjamin.

“Is that your Porsche?”

“Yes.”

“Is it your only car?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“My son has disappeared,” Erik says.

“It’s my only car,” the man says. “All right?”

Erik writes down the number.

“I’d like you to leave now.”

“Sure,” says Erik, heading for the gate.

He stands out in the road in the darkness for a while, looking at the haunted house, before returning to his car. He takes out the little wooden box with the parrot and the native, shakes a number of small tablets into the palm of his hand, counts them with his thumb, round and smooth, and then tips them into his mouth.

After a brief hesitation, he dials Simone’s number. It rings and rings, each purring tone a serrated gash in the silence between them. She’s probably at Kennet’s, eating salami sandwiches with pickled gherkins. Erik pictures their apartment in the darkness, the hallway with their coats and winter gear, the candle sconces on the wall, the kitchen with its oak table and chairs. The mail is lying on the doormat, a pile of newspapers, bills, and advertising circulars encased in plastic. When the tone sounds, he does not leave a message but simply ends the call and begins driving toward Stockholm.

He has no one to turn to, he thinks, and at the same time he sees the irony. After spending so many years researching group dynamics and collective psychotherapy, he suddenly finds himself isolated and alone, without one single person he can rely on, no one he wants to talk to. And yet it was the power of groups that drove him on in his profession. He had tried to understand why people who had survived war together found it much easier to deal with their trauma than those who had faced the same kind of outrage alone. He wanted to discover why individuals in a group who had been tortured or raped or had seen their families killed were able to heal their wounds more easily than those who had suffered alone. What is it about community that heals us? Is it reflection, channelling, the very normalization of trauma? Or is it in fact solidarity?

Under the yellow lights of the motorway he calls Joona’s cell phone.

“Joona here,” a distracted voice responds.

“Hi, it’s Erik. You haven’t found Josef Ek?”

“No.” Joona sighs.

“He seems to be following a pattern all his own.”

“I’ve said it before and I intend to keep on saying it, Erik. You ought to accept protection.”

“I have other priorities.”

“I know.” Silence. “Benjamin hasn’t been in touch again?” Joona asks.

“No.” Erik can hear a voice in the background, possibly from a television. “Kennet was going to try and trace the call.”

“Yes, I heard about that. But it can take time,” says Joona. “I don’t know if he made you any promises.”

“Not me,” says Erik.

“Simone.”

“More than likely.”

“In any case, you have to send a technician out to those particular exchanges, that particular base station.”

“But then at least they know which station it is.”

“I think they can find that out straight away,” Joona replies.

“Can you get that information for me? The base station?”

There is a brief silence. Then he hears Joona’s neutral voice.

“Why don’t you talk to Kennet?”

“I can’t get hold of him.”

Joona sighs faintly. “I’ll check it out, but don’t get your hopes up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only that it’s probably a base station in Stockholm, and that won’t tell us anything until a technician can pin down the position.”

Erik can hear him doing something; it sounds as if he’s unscrewing the lid of a jar.

“I’m making my mother a cup of green tea,” Joona says. There is the sound of a tap running and then being turned off.

Erik holds his breath for a second. He knows Joona has to prioritise Josef Ek’s disappearance. He knows that to the police Benjamin’s case is in no way unique; a teenage boy going missing from his home is a long way from the kind of work the National CID usually does. But he has to ask; he can’t simply let it go.

“Joona, I want you to take the case of Benjamin’s abduction. I really want you to take it on.”

He stops. His jaws are aching; he’s been grinding his teeth without even realising it.

“We both know this isn’t an ordinary disappearance. He didn’t run away. He hasn’t simply forgotten to call. Someone injected Simone and Benjamin with an anaesthetic normally used in surgery. I know your priority is the hunt for Josef Ek, and I realise Benjamin is no longer your case, now that the link to Josef has disappeared, but something even worse might have happened.”

He stops again, feeling himself growing upset, and takes a moment to collect himself.

“I’ve told you about Benjamin’s illness,” he eventually manages to say. “Tomorrow he’ll need to receive an injection to help his blood coagulate. Without it, within a week the blood vessels will be under so much strain that he could be paralysed, or have a brain haemorrhage, or a bleed in the lungs if he so much as coughs.”

“He has to be found,” says Joona.

“Can’t you help me?”

Erik sits there with his plea hanging defencelessly in the air. It doesn’t matter. He would sink to his knees and beg for help. The hand holding the phone is wet and slippery with sweat.

“I can’t just take over a preliminary investigation from the Stockholm police,” says Joona.

“His name is Fredrik Stensund. He seems very nice, but he’s not going to leave his cosy warm office.”

“I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Erik says evenly. “As far as Stensund’s concerned, Benjamin’s just another runaway.”

“I don’t think I can take the case,” Joona says heavily. “There’s nothing I can do about that. But I would like to try and help you. You need to sit down and think about who could have taken Benjamin. It could be someone whose attention you got when you were in the papers. It happens. But it could also be someone you know. If you don’t have a suspect, you have no case, nothing. You need to think, go through your life, over and over again, everyone you know, everyone Simone knows, everyone Benjamin knows. Neighbours, relatives, colleagues, patients, rivals, friends. Is there anyone who threatened you? Who threatened Benjamin? Try to remember. It could be an impulsive action, or it could have been planned for many years. Think very carefully, Erik. Then get back to me.”

Erik opens his mouth to ask Joona once again to take the case, but before he can speak he hears a click on the other end of the line. He sits there in his car watching the traffic racing along on the motorway, his eyes burning.

It is cold and dark in his office at the hospital. Erik kicks off his shoes, catching the smell of damp greenery on his coat as he hangs it up. He is shivering as he boils some water on the hot plate, makes a cup of tea, takes two strong tranquillisers, and sits down at his desk. There are no lights on except the desk lamp. He stares into the deep black darkness of the windowpane, where he can glimpse an outline of himself, framed by the light. Who hates me? he wonders. Who envies me? Who wants to punish me, take everything I have away from me, take my life, take what lives within me? Who wants to crush me?

Erik switches on the main light and begins to pace back and forth. Incapable of gathering his thoughts, he reaches for the phone on his desk and knocks over a plastic cup of water. He watches without interest for a moment as a thin stream slowly heads towards one of his medical journals. Without another thought, he dials Simone’s mobile number, leaves a short message about wanting to look at Benjamin’s computer again, and then falls silent, unable to say anything else.

“Sorry,” he says quietly, and tosses the phone back on the desk.

The lift rumbles in the corridor. He hears the doors
ping
and glide open, then the sound of someone pushing a squeaking hospital trolley to his door.

The pills are beginning to work; he feels the calm rise through his body like warm milk, a memory, a movement inside him, a dip in the pit of his stomach. Like falling from a great height, first through clear cold air, then down into warm oxygen-rich water.

“Come on,” he says to himself. Someone has taken Benjamin; someone has done this to me; there has to be a key to this somewhere in my memory.

“I will find you,” he whispers.

Erik contemplates the sodden pages of his medical journal. In one photograph, the new director of the Karolinska Institute is leaning over a desk. The ink has run, blurring and darkening her face. When Erik peels the magazine from his desktop, the back pages stick to its surface, leaving behind random letters, so he begins to scratch off the bits of paper with his thumbnail. Suddenly he stops and stares at a combination of letters: e v A.

Up from the depths of his memory rolls a slow wave, full of reflections and facets; then comes the clear image of a woman who refuses to give back what she has stolen. Her name is Eva. Her mouth is tense, with flecks of froth on the narrow lips. She is screaming at him in outraged fury.
You’re the one who takes! You take and take! What the fuck would you say if I took things from you? How do you think that would feel?
She hides her face in her hands and says she hates him; she repeats it over and over again, perhaps a hundred times, before she calms down. Her cheeks are white, her eyes red-rimmed; she looks at him, uncomprehending and exhausted.

He remembers her; he remembers her very well: Eva Blau. Right from the start, he knew he’d made a mistake in accepting her as a patient.

It was many years ago, when he was using hypnosis as a strong, effective element in therapy. Eva Blau. The name comes from the other side of time, before he swore off hypnosis. Before he promised never to use it again.

Why did Eva Blau become his patient? He can no longer-remember the source of her pain. He’d met so many people, people with devastating histories, often aggressive, always afraid, compulsive, paranoid, sometimes with self-mutilation and suicide attempts in their background. Many came with only the thinnest of barriers separating them from psychosis or schizophrenia. They had been systematically abused and tortured; they had suffered mock executions; they had lost their children; they had been subjected to incest and rape; they had witnessed terrible things or been forced to participate in them.

What was it she stole? Erik asks himself. I accused her of stealing, but what was it she stole?

He can’t quite pin down the memory. He takes a few steps, stops, and closes his eyes. Something else happened, but what? Did it have anything to do with Benjamin? He remembers explaining to Eva Blau that he wanted to find a different therapy group for her. Why can’t he remember what happened? Had she begun to threaten him?

What comes quite clearly is an early meeting here in his office. Eva Blau had shaved off all her hair and made up only her eyes. She sat down on his sofa, unbuttoned her blouse, and showed him her breasts in a matter-of-fact manner.