Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (62 page)

Simone, Erik, and Benjamin return to a grey Stockholm beneath a sky that is already dark. The air is heavy with rain, and the city is enveloped in a purplish mist. Everywhere, colourful lights are shining, on Christmas trees and garland-looped balcony railings. Advent stars glow in virtually every window. Santa and his elves are everywhere.

The taxi driver who drops them at the Birger Jarl Hotel has his Santa hat on. He waves at them gloomily in the rear-view mirror; they notice he even has a plastic Santa on his roof.

Simone glances at the lobby and the dark windows of the hotel restaurant, and says it feels odd to be staying in a hotel when they’re only a few hundred feet away from home.

“But I really don’t want to go back to our apartment,” she says.

“No, of course not,” Erik agrees.

“Not ever again.”

“Me neither,” says Benjamin.

“What shall we do?” Erik asks. “How about the cinema?”

“I’m hungry,” Benjamin says quietly.

By the time the helicopter arrived at the hospital in Umeå, the bullet had gone straight through Erik’s left shoulder muscle, causing only superficial damage to the outer part of his upper arm. Once they stabilised his condition, he underwent surgery. Afterwards, he shared a room with Benjamin, who had been admitted for observation and rehydration, so his medication could be regulated. After only one day in the hospital, Benjamin started to ask about going home.

The psychologist assigned to assess Benjamin’s condition seemed unable to grasp the level of danger to which Benjamin had been exposed. After talking to Benjamin for forty-five minutes, she met with Erik and Simone and blandly announced that the boy seemed fine, under the circumstances; they should just keep an eye on him and give him time.

Did the woman just want to reassure them? His parents realised that Benjamin was going to need real help; they could already see him searching among his memories, as if he had already decided to ignore some of them, and they sensed that if he were left alone he would close up around what had happened like bedrock around a fossil.

“I know two really good specialists in adolescent psychology,” said Erik. “We’ll call them as soon as we get back to Stockholm.”

“Good.” Simone shuddered.

“And how are
you
feeling?” he asked her.

“There’s this hypnotist I’ve heard about,” Simone said.

“Just be careful of him.”

“I will.” Simone smiled.

“But seriously,” Erik said. “All of us are going to need to work through this.”

She nodded, and her expression grew very thoughtful.

“Little Benjamin,” she said softly.

Erik went and lay down again in the bed next to Benjamin’s, and Simone sat on a chair between the two. They looked at their son, lying there so pale and thin. They never tired of gazing at his face, as if he were their newborn baby.

“How are you feeling, little man?” Erik asked him tentatively.

Benjamin stared out the window. The darkness outside turned the glass into a vibrating reflection as the wind pushed and tapped at the pane.

Benjamin had just scrambled up onto the roof of the bus when he’d heard the second shot. He’d slipped and almost fallen into the water. At the same moment he had seen Simone in the darkness on the edge of the huge hole in the ice. She’d yelled to him that the bus was sinking and he had to get onto the ice. Spotting the orange life belt bobbing in the black water behind the bus, he’d jumped, grabbed hold of it, slipped it over his arms, and kicked toward the edge of the ice, even as he’d felt his legs growing numb. Lying flat on the ice, Simone had reached out towards the freezing water to find his hand and pulled him out, then dragged him a little way from the edge. She’d taken off her jacket and wrapped it around him, hugging him and telling him that a helicopter was on the way.

Benjamin sobbed. “Dad’s still in there!”

The bus had sunk quickly, disappearing beneath the surface with a groan, and they had been left in darkness. They could hear the splash of the churned-up water and the clucking of huge air bubbles, the sheets of ice shifting back into place. Simone held Benjamin tightly, shivering, trying to keep from screaming. All of a sudden, he had been yanked out of her arms. He’d tried to get up but had slipped and fallen. The line attached to the life belt lay taut across the ice, running down into the water, and Benjamin was being pulled towards the hole in the ice. He was struggling, sliding on his bare feet, and screaming. Simone had grabbed hold of him, and together they slithered inexorably toward the edge.

“It’s Dad!” Benjamin had suddenly shouted. “He had the rope around his waist!”

Simone’s face suddenly became hard and resolute. She grabbed hold of the life belt, hooked both arms through it, and dug in her heels. Benjamin grimaced with pain as they edged closer and closer to the water. The line was so tight it made a singing sound as it scraped over the edge of the ice, like a bow being drawn across the taut string of a violin. Then suddenly the tug-of-war shifted: it was still hard work, but they were able to move backwards, step by step, away from the water. And then there was almost no resistance at all. They hauled Erik up through the opening in the roof, and now he floated free of the doomed vehicle. A few seconds later, Simone was able to drag him up onto the ice. He lay there face down, coughing and breathing hard as a red stain spread beneath him.

When the police and paramedics arrived at Jussi’s house, they found Joona lying in the snow with a provisional pressure bandage around his thigh, his gun trained on a bellowing, handcuffed Marek. Jussi’s frozen corpse lay at the bottom of the porch steps with an axe in the chest. One survivor was found in the house: Annbritt had been hiding in the wardrobe in the bedroom. She was covered in blood, curled up behind the clothes like a child. The paramedics carried her out to the helicopter on a stretcher and gave her emergency treatment during the flight.

Two days later, Mountain Rescue divers went down into the lake to recover Lydia’s body. The bus stood solidly on its six wheels at a depth of two hundred feet, as if it had just stopped to pick up some passengers. One diver entered through the front door and shone his torch around the empty seats. The gun was on the floor at the back of the aisle. It was only when he directed the beam upwards that the diver saw Lydia. She lay with her back pressed against the ceiling of the bus, her arms dangling down and her neck bowed. The skin on her face had already begun to loosen and come away. Her hennaed hair billowed gently with the movement of the water, her mouth was calm, her eyes were closed as if she was asleep.

Benjamin had no idea where he had been for the first few days after the kidnapping. Possibly, Lydia had kept him at her house or at Marek’s, but he had been so dazed from the sedative with which he had been injected that he hadn’t really grasped what was going on. He might have been given further injections as he started to come round. Those first days were simply dark and lost.

It was in the car heading north that he had regained consciousness and found his mobile still around his neck. It was night when they’d taken him; it wouldn’t have occurred to them he would have one. Although he’d managed to call Erik, they’d heard his voice and the phone had been confiscated.

Then came a series of long, terrible days. Erik and Simone only managed to coax fragments from him. All they really knew was that he had been forced to lie on the floor of Jussi’s house with a dog collar and leash around his neck. Judging by his condition when he was admitted to the hospital, he had been given nothing to eat or drink for several days. He had managed to get away with the help of Jussi and Annbritt, he told them, then fell silent. Eventually he was able to explain how Jussi had saved him when he was trying to call home, and the terrible price he had paid for it; how Annbrit had attacked Lydia to allow him a chance to escape, and that he had heard Annbritt screaming as Lydia cut off her nose. Benjamin had hidden by crawling through an open window of one of the snow-covered buses. There he’d found some rugs and a mouldy blanket, which probably saved him from freezing to death. He’d curled up on a passenger seat and fallen asleep. He had been awakened a few hours later by the sound of his parents’ voices.

“I didn’t know I was alive,” whispered Benjamin.

Then he’d heard Marek threaten his parents. And he realised he was staring at a key in the ignition of the bus, and without even thinking, he’d clambered over the seat and turned it. And the headlights had come on, and the engine had roared furiously as he headed for the spot where he thought Marek was.

Benjamin stopped speaking, a few fat tears caught in his eyelashes.

After two days in the hospital at Umeå, Benjamin was strong enough to walk. He went with Erik and Simone to see Joona Linna, who was in the post-operative ward. His thigh had been badly damaged by Marek’s attack with the scissors, but three weeks’ rest would probably lead to a full recovery. A beautiful woman with her hair in a soft braid over her shoulder was sitting with him, reading aloud from a book, when they walked in. Putting it down, she rose and introduced herself as Disa, a friend of Joona’s for many years.

“We have a reading group, so of course I have to make sure he keeps up,” she said, in the same pleasing dialect as Joona’s.

Simone saw that she was reading Virginia Woolf’s
To the Lighthouse
.

“Mountain Rescue has lent me a small apartment,” said Disa with a smile.

“And you,” said Joona. “You’ll be given a police escort from Arlanda.”

Simone and Erik declined the offer. They wanted to be alone with their son rather than spend time with more police officers.

When Benjamin was discharged on the fourth day, Simone immediately booked tickets for the flight home. She went to get coffee for them all, but for the first time the hospital cafeteria was closed. In the day room there was nothing but a jug of apple juice and some biscuits. She went out in search of a café, but everything seemed strangely deserted. There was a peaceful calm over the whole town. She stopped by a railway line and followed the gleaming track with her eyes, seeing the snow covering the embankment. Far away in the darkness she could just make out the wide River Ume, striped with white ice and black water.

Only now did something inside her begin to relax. It was over. They had got Benjamin back.

Now they are standing uncertainly outside the Birger Jarl Hotel in Stockholm. Benjamin is wearing a tracksuit from the police Lost and Found that is far too big for him, a woolly hat—of the Sami tourist variety—that Simone bought for him at the airport, and a pair of mittens that are slightly too small. The city is deserted, with not a soul in sight. The underground station is closed, there are no buses, the restaurants are dark and silent.

Erik looks at his watch, perplexed. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. A woman hurries along, carrying a large bag.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Simone says suddenly. “Today is Christmas Eve.”

Benjamin looks at her in surprise.

“That would explain why people keep wishing us a Merry Christmas,” says Erik with a smile.

“What shall we do?” Benjamin asks.

“McDonald’s is open,” Erik says.

“Are you suggesting we have Christmas dinner at McDonald’s?” asks Simone.

A thin freezing rain begins to fall on them as they hurry towards the restaurant. It’s an ugly, squat building, pressing itself to the ground beneath the ochre-coloured rotunda of the library. A woman in her sixties is standing behind the counter. There are no other customers to be seen.

“I’d like a glass of wine,” says Simone. “But I guess that’s out of the question.”

“How about a milkshake?” says Erik.

“Vanilla, strawberry, or chocolate?” the woman asks sourly.

Simone looks as if she’s about to burst out laughing, but she pulls herself together. “Strawberry, of course.”

“Me too,” Benjamin chips in.

The woman taps in their order with small, angry movements. “Will that be all?” she asks.

“Get a selection,” Simone says to Erik. “We’ll go and sit down.” She and Benjamin thread their way among the empty tables. “A table by the window,” she whispers, smiling at Benjamin.

She sits down next to her son, puts her arm around him, and feels the tears running down her cheeks. Outside, a lone skateboarder whizzes along between the patches of ice with harsh scraping, rattling noises. A woman is sitting on her own on a bench on the edge of the playground behind the School of Economics, an empty shopping trolley beside her. The tyre seats on the children’s swings are blowing back and forth in the wind.

“Are you cold?” she asks.

Benjamin doesn’t reply; he just rests his face against her chest, allowing her to kiss his head over and over again.

Erik puts a tray down on the table and returns to the counter to fetch another before sitting down and beginning to distribute cartons, paper bags, and drinks around the table. “When you eat at McDonald’s, you need to go all the way.”

“Nice,”
says Benjamin, sitting up.

“Wait,” Erik says. He holds out a Happy Meal toy. “Merry Christmas,” he says.

“Thanks, Dad.” Benjamin grins, looking at the plastic packaging.

Simone looks at her child. He’s lost so much weight. But there’s something else, she thinks. It’s as if he still has a weight within him, something that is pulling at his thoughts, worrying him and dragging him down. He’s not really with them; his gaze is turned inwards.

When she sees Erik reach out and pat his son on the cheek, she begins to cry again. She turns away with a whispered apology and sees a plastic bag whisked out of a rubbish bin by the wind and pressed against the window.

“Come on, dig in,” Erik says.

Benjamin is unwrapping a Big Mac when Erik’s phone rings. It’s Joona.

“Merry Christmas, Joona,” he says.