Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (34 page)

“Not particularly,” says Simone. “Why?”

“Erik’s heavier, then. When I drag him along the hall and through the front door, I’ll need to compensate by adding a minute or so to the time. Simone, try to move exactly the way you did that night. Lie down in the same position at the same time. I want to know what you could see and what you could only sense.”

Simone nods, her face pale. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for doing this.”

Joona looks at her with ice-grey eyes. “Believe me. We are going to find Benjamin.”

Simone rubs her hand rapidly over her forehead. “I’m going into the bedroom,” she says hoarsely, as Joona leaves the apartment with the keys in his hand.

She is lying under the duvet when Joona comes in. He moves quickly towards her, not in haste but with purpose. She feels a tickling sensation as he lifts her arm and pretends to inject her. Just as she meets Joona’s gaze as he bends over her, she remembers being woken by a distinct jab in her arm and seeing someone slip out through the doorway and into the hall. The memory alone makes her arm tingle unpleasantly where the needle went in. Joona disappears, and she sits, rubs her arm, and slowly gets up. She goes into the hallway, peers into Benjamin’s room, sees Joona bending over the bed—and suddenly she simply comes out with the words, as if they have been echoing in her memory.

“Benjamin? What’s going on?”

She moves hesitantly down the hallway. Her body seems to recall the sensations it felt that night; how quickly its strength faded. Her legs give way and she falls, banging her head. She remembers the feeling of sinking deeper and deeper into a black numbness, penetrated by ever briefer flashes of light. As she sits half propped up against the wall, she sees Joona dragging Erik along by his feet. Her memory replays the incomprehensible: Benjamin trying to cling to the doorframe, his head banging on the threshold, the slow windmilling of his hands growing weaker and weaker as he reaches out to her.

As Erik is dragged past Simone, it’s as if a figure made of mist or steam appears there in the hallway for a fraction of a second: she is looking at Joona’s face from below, and the image shifts: a glimmer of the kidnapper’s face flashes through her mind: a shadowed face, a yellow hand around Benjamin’s ankle. Simone’s heart is pounding as she hears Joona drag Erik out onto the landing and close the door behind him.

An air of unpleasantness pervades the entire apartment. Simone cannot shake off the feeling that she has been drugged again; her limbs feel numb and slow as she gets to her feet and waits for them to come back.

As Joona drags Erik across the scratched marble floor of the landing, he looks around him the entire time, checking angles and vantage points, searching for unexpected places where an eyewitness might have had a good view of the incident. He moves toward the lift, whose doors he’s propped open in advance, and drags Erik inside. From there he can see the apartment door to his right, the letter box and nameplate made of brass, but to the left there is only a wall. From deeper inside, Joona looks over at the large mirror on the landing, but even by craning his neck he can see nothing new. The window on the stairwell is hidden the whole time. Nothing seems to reveal itself when he looks back over his shoulder. Then suddenly he discovers something unexpected. From a certain vantage point, from a smaller security mirror mounted at an angle, he can see reflected in the landing’s mirror the shining peephole in the door of an apartment that had seemed to be out of sight. Joona lets the lift doors shut and notes as they close that the mirror still allows him to stare straight at the door. If someone were standing inside that apartment looking out—roused, perhaps, by the commotion next door—that person would be able to see his face with absolute clarity right now. But if he moves his head just two inches in any direction, the view immediately disappears.

When they reach the ground floor, Joona helps Erik up and checks his watch. “Eight minutes.”

They return to the apartment. Simone is standing in the hallway; it’s obvious that she has been crying.

“He was wearing rubber gloves,” she says. “Yellow rubber gloves.”

“Are you sure?” asks Erik.

“Yes.”

“In that case, there’s no point in looking for fingerprints,” says Joona.

“What now?” she asks.

“The police have already carried out door-to-door inquiries,” Erik says gloomily, as Simone brushes dirt and dust off his back.

Joona takes out a sheet of paper. “Yes, I’ve got a list of the people they’ve spoken to. Needless to say, they concentrated on this floor and the apartments directly below. There are five people they haven’t spoken to yet.”

He checks the list and sees that the apartment diagonally behind the lift has been crossed out. That was the door he could see via the two mirrors.

“One apartment has been crossed out,” he says. “The one on the far side of the lift.”

“They were away,” says Simone. “They still are. They’ve gone to Thailand for six weeks.”

Joona looks at them, his expression serious. “Time for me to knock on some doors,” he says.

The nameplate on the door says
ROSENLUND
. This was the apartment ignored by the officers carrying out door-to-door inquiries, since it was hidden from view and was empty.

Joona bends down and peers in through the letter box. He can’t see any mail or advertising leaflets on the doormat. Suddenly he hears a faint noise from further inside. A cat comes padding out of one of the rooms and into the hallway. It stops dead and stares at Joona, peering through the slot.

“Nobody leaves a cat for six weeks,” Joona says slowly to himself.

The cat is listening, its whole body alert.

“You don’t look as if you’re starving,” Joona says to the animal.

The cat gives an enormous yawn, jumps up onto a chair in the hallway, and curls itself into a ball.

Joona straightens up and glances at the paper in his hand. The apartment directly opposite the lift is occupied by a couple, but when the police called, only Alice Franzén was at home. The first person Joona wants to speak to is her husband.

Joona rings the doorbell and waits. He remembers being young, going around ringing doorbells with May Day flowers or an occasional charity collection box. The feeling of strangeness at looking into someone else’s home, the expression of distaste in the eyes of those who open the door.

He rings again. A woman in her thirties answers. She looks at him with a watchful, reserved expression that makes him think of the cat in the empty apartment.

“Yes?”

“My name is Joona Linna,” he says, showing her his ID. “I’d like to speak to your husband.”

She glances over her shoulder. “I’d like to know what it’s about first. He’s actually very busy at the moment.”

“It’s about the early morning of Saturday, 12
^th
December.”

“We’ve already answered all your questions,” the woman says irritably.

“My colleagues spoke to you but not to your husband.”

The woman sighs. “I don’t know if he’s got time.”

Joona smiles. “It’ll only take a minute, I promise.”

The woman shrugs her shoulders, then yells, “Tobias! It’s the police!”

After a while a man appears with a towel wound around his hips. His skin looks as if it’s burning; he’s leathery and very tanned. “Hi. I was on the sun bed.”

“Nice,” says Joona.

“No, it isn’t,” Tobias Franzén replies. “There’s an enzyme missing from my liver. I have to spend two hours a day on that thing.”

“That’s quite another matter, of course,” Joona says dryly.

“You wanted to ask me something.”

“I want to know if you saw or heard anything unusual in the early morning of Saturday, 12
^th
December.”

Tobias scratches his chest. His fingernails leave white marks on his sunburned skin.

“Let me think, last Friday night. I’m sorry, but I really can’t remember anything in particular.”

“OK, thank you very much, that’s all,” says Joona, inclining his head.

Tobias moves to close the door.

“Correction. One more thing. The Rosenlunds,” he remembers.

“They’re very nice people.” Tobias smiles. “I haven’t seen them for a while.”

“No, I understand that they’re away. Do you know if they have a cleaner or anything like that?”

Tobias shakes his head. He is now shivering and pale beneath his tan.

“Sorry, I’ve no idea.”

Joona moves on to the next name on the list: Jarl Hammar, on the floor below Erik and Simone. A pensioner who wasn’t at home when the police called.

Jarl Hammar is a thin man who is clearly suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He is neatly dressed in a cardigan, with a handkerchief knotted around his neck.

“Police?” he repeats in a hoarse, almost inaudible voice as his eyes, cloudy with cataracts, look Joona up and down. “What do the police want with me?”

“I just want to ask a question,” says Joona. “Did you by any chance see or hear anything unusual in this building or on the street in the early morning of 12
^th
December?”

Jarl Hammar tilts his head to one side and closes his eyes. After a brief moment he opens them again and shakes his head. “I’m on medication,” he says. “It makes me sleep very heavily.”

Joona catches sight of a woman further inside the apartment.

“And your wife?” he asks. “Could I have a word with her?”

Jarl Hammar gives a wry smile. “My wife was a wonderful woman. But unfortunately she is no longer with us; she died almost thirty years ago.” He turns and waves a shaky arm at the dark figure behind him. “This is Anabella. She helps me out with the cleaning and so on. Unfortunately she doesn’t speak Swedish, but apart from that she’s beyond reproach.”

The shadowy figure moves into the light when she hears her name. Anabella looks as if she’s from South America; she is in her twenties, with noticeable pockmarks on her face. Her hair is caught up in a loose black braid, and she is very short.

“Anabella,” Joona says softly. “
Soy comisario de policía,
Joona Linna.”

“
Buenos días,
” she replies in a lisping voice, looking at him with black eyes.

“
¿Tu limpias más departamentos aquí, en este edificio?
”

She nods, yes, she does clean other apartments in this building.

“
¿Qué otros?
” asks Joona.

“
Espera un momento
,” says Anabella, thinking for a moment before beginning to count on her fingertips: “
Los pisos de Lagerberg, Franzén, Gerdman, y Rosenlund, y el piso de Johansson también
.”

“Rosenlund,” says Joona. “
¿Rosenlund es la familia con un gato, no es verdad?
”

Anabella smiles and nods. She cleans the apartment where the cat lives. “
Y muchas flores
,” she adds.

“Lots of flowers,” says Joona, and she nods.

Joona asks in a serious tone whether she noticed anything unusual four nights earlier, when Benjamin disappeared. “
¿Notabas alguna cosa especial hace cuatros días? Por la mañana temprano
.”

Anabella’s face stiffens. “
No
,” she says quickly, trying to retreat into Jarl Hammar’s apartment.

“
De verdad
,” Joona says quickly. “
Espero que digas la verdad, Anabella
. I expect you to tell me the truth.” He repeats that this is very important, it’s about a child who has disappeared.

Jarl Hammar, who has been listening the whole time, holds up his violently trembling hands and says, in his hoarse, shaky voice, “Be nice to Anabella, she’s a very good girl.”

“She has to tell me what she saw,” Joona explains firmly, turning back to Anabella. “
La verdad, por favor
.”

Jarl Hammar looks helpless as fat tears begin to fall from Anabella’s dark, shining eyes.

“
Perdón
,” she whispers. “
Perdón, señor
.”

“Don’t get upset, Anabella,” says Jarl Hammar. He waves at Joona. “Come in. I can’t have her standing here on the doorstep crying.”

They go inside and sit down at a spotless dining room table; Hammar gets out a tin of Christmas biscuits as Anabella quietly explains that she has nowhere to live, she has been homeless for three months but has managed to hide in storage rooms belonging to the people she cleans for. When the Rosenlunds gave her a key to their apartment so she could look after the plants and feed the cat, she was finally able to sleep safely and take care of her personal hygiene. She repeats over and over again that she isn’t a thief, she hasn’t taken any food, she hasn’t touched anything, she doesn’t sleep in the beds, she sleeps on a rug in the kitchen.

Then Anabella looks at Joona, her expression serious, and tells him that she’s been a very light sleeper ever since she was a little girl responsible for her younger siblings. Early on Saturday morning she woke up when she heard a noise from the landing. It was strange enough to frighten her, so she gathered her things together, crept to the front door, and looked out through the peephole.

The lift door was open, she says, but she didn’t see anything. Suddenly she heard noises and slow footsteps; it was as if an old, heavy person were moving along.

“But no voices?”

She shakes her head. “
Sombras
.”

When Anabella tries to describe the shadows she saw moving across the floor, Joona nods and asks, “What did you see in the mirror?
¿Qué viste en el espejo?
”

“In the mirror?”

“You could see into the lift, Anabella.”

She thinks, then says slowly that she saw a yellow hand. “And then,” she adds, “after a little while I saw her face.”

“Her face? It was a woman?”

“
Sí, una mujer
.” Anabella explains that the woman was wearing a hood that obscured much of her face, but for a brief moment she saw the cheek and the mouth. “
Sin duda era una mujer
,” she repeats. It was definitely a woman.

“How old?”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t know.