Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (96 page)

“Forgive me, Mamma.”

Her face stiffened, seemed to pull in on itself. “Never,” she replied, and she turned away from Axel and walked out of the concert hall.

Axel went to the dressing room for his coat, but he was met by Herbert Blomstedt outside the dressing-room door.

“That was remarkable, my boy,” he said in a very sad voice. “Until you began to pretend you could no longer play.”

The house reverberated with silence when Axel returned home. It was already late at night. He trudged up to the top-floor apartment, in through his music room, and then to his bedroom. He shut the door behind him. He still heard the music in his head, how it had sounded until he began to drop notes, slow the tempo unexpectedly, break off the piece in the middle.

He had stopped. Over and over he had stopped.

Axel let himself down on the bed and fell asleep with his violin case beside him.

The next morning, he woke to the sound of the telephone.

Someone walked across the dining-room floor. It always creaked.

A moment later, there were steps on the stairs. His mother walked right into his bedroom without knocking.

“Sit up,” Alice commanded.

Axel was frightened the moment he saw her. Her face was still wet from her tears.

“Mamma, please—”

“Be quiet!” she says in a low voice. “I’ve just got a call from your principal—”

“He’s unhappy with me because—”

“Can you be quiet!” Alice yelled.

He stopped talking. She held a trembling hand to her mouth. New tears began to stream down her cheeks.

“It’s about Greta,” she finally was able to say. “She committed suicide last night.”

Axel stared at her and tried to understand what she’d said.

“No! … Because I—”

“She was ashamed,” Alice says. “They said she felt she let everyone down, that she should have practised more. You promised to help. I knew it, though, I knew. She never should have come here, she … I’m not saying it’s your fault, Axel, because it isn’t. She was disappointed in herself because when everything was riding on her playing, she couldn’t deal with it, and she couldn’t bear that—”

“But, Mamma, I—”

“Be quiet,” she said. “All of this is over.”

Alice left. Axel got out of bed in a gathering fog. He swayed, but steadied himself. He took his beautiful violin out of its case and banged it violently against the floor. The neck broke and the bridge flopped over under the loose strings. Axel stamped on it and pieces of wood flew in all directions.

“Axel! What are you doing?”

Robert rushed into the room and tried to stop him. Axel pushed him away. Robert fell on his back against the wardrobe behind him, but he started back again.

“Axel, so you messed up, so what?” Robert said. “Greta did, too. I met her in the hallway and she’d also … everyone—”

“Shut up!” Axel screamed. “Don’t ever say her name to me again!”

Robert stared while Axel continued to stamp on the wooden pieces until there was nothing left that resembled a violin. Robert then left the room.

Shiro Sasaki won the Johan Fredrik Berwald Competition. Greta had chosen the easier Beethoven piece, but she’d been unable to play it perfectly, a demand she had made upon herself. As soon as she’d got home, she’d locked herself in her bedroom and must have taken a huge amount of sleeping pills. She’d been found in bed the next morning when she’d been missed at breakfast.

Axel’s memory sinks away as if it were a forgotten life down in the depths of the sea. He looks at Beverly. It’s like Greta’s big eyes looking back at him. He looks at the cloth in his own hand and the liquid on the table and the shining intarsia with the woman playing the
erhu
.

Light slides across the curve of Beverly’s head as she turns to look at the violins hanging on the wall.

“I wish I knew how to play one,” she says.

“Let’s take a class together,” he says, gently smiling.

“I’d like that,” she answers in all seriousness.

He sets the cloth down on the table and feels the terrible exhaustion inside his body. The recording of the piano’s echoing music fills the room. It’s being played without a damper and the notes flow dreamily into one another.

“Poor Axel, you want to sleep,” she says.

“I have to work.”

“This evening, then,” she says, and gets up.

Detective Inspector Joona Linna is at his desk at CID. He’s reading Carl Palmcrona’s memoir. Five years ago, Palmcrona recorded how he’d traveled to Västerås to watch his son graduate from primary school. He’d stood at a distance as everyone gathered in the school yard and sang “Den blomstertid nu kommer” while standing in the rain holding umbrellas. Palmcrona described his son’s white jeans and jacket, his long blond hair, and wrote that ‘the boy had a family resemblance in his nose and eyes, which made me want to cry.’ He’d driven back to Stockholm and wrote that his son was worth everything he’d done up to now and everything that he would ever do.

The phone rings. Joona picks it up immediately. It’s Petter Näslund calling from the police bus on Dalarö.

“They’ve got Penelope Fernandez. I’ve just been in contact with the helicopter group, and they’re flying back over Erstavik Bay right now,” he tells Joona. His voice still sounds hunted.

“She’s alive?” Joona asks, and is overwhelmed by a feeling of relief.

“She was swimming in the open ocean when they found her,” Petter explains.

“How’s she doing? Is she all right?”

“It appears so. They’re heading towards Söder Hospital.”

“Too dangerous,” Joona says abruptly. “Fly her to the police station instead. We’ll bring a team of doctors from Karolinska Hospital.”

Petter says he’ll contact the helicopters.

“What about the others?” Joona asks.

“It’s complete chaos. We’ve lost people, Joona. It’s crazy over here.”

“What about Björn Almskog?”

“We haven’t found him, but … right now we really know nothing, and it’s hard to find out what went on.”

“What about the killer?”

“We’ll catch him. This is a small island. We’ve got men all over it along with help from the Coast Guard and the naval police.”

“Good,” Joona says.

“You don’t think we’ll get him?” Petter asks grimly.

“If you didn’t catch him right away, he’s probably slipped through.”

“You’re saying it’s my fault?”

“Petter,” Joona says quietly and softly. “If you hadn’t been so fast on the uptake, Penelope would be dead, and without her, we’d have no leads at all.”

An hour later, two doctors from Karolinska converge in a protected room deep underneath the National Police Board headquarters. Penelope lies unmoving in their care. They’re bandaging her wounds, setting up an IV for rehydration and nutrition, and giving her tranquilisers.

Petter Näslund reports to Carlos Eliasson that the remains of their colleagues, Lennart Johansson and Göran Sjödin, have been found in the wreckage of the police launch along with another unidentified body, which is probably the remains of Björn Almskog. Ossian Wallenberg’s body was found outside his house, and divers are on the way to the area where the helicopter crashed. Petter fears that all on board are lost.

The police have not caught the suspect, but Penelope Fernandez is still alive.

Flags are lowered to half-mast in front of the police station. Chief of Police Margareta Widding and the head of CID, Carlos Eliasson, are holding a sorrowful press conference in the glass-enclosed press-room. Detective Inspector Joona Linna does not take part in the press conference. Instead, he and Saga Bauer are on the lift down to the lowest level of the building to meet Penelope Fernandez.

Five floors beneath the police station’s most modern addition is an area with two apartments, eight guest rooms, and two sleeping areas. It has been created to guarantee security for leaders of the department during crises and catastrophes. For the past decade, the guest rooms have also been used for witness protection. The walls are a cheerful yellow, and pleasant-looking books line a nice bookshelf. It’s obvious that the people staying in these rooms have plenty of time to read. There are no windows, but light behind a sheer curtain mimics one and tries to distract the mind from the thought of being deep underground in a bunker.

Penelope Fernandez lies on a hospital bed here, chilled. They tell her it’s because the IV-drip speed into her arm is being increased.

“We’re giving you liquids and nutritional supplements,” Daniella Richards, the doctor, tells her. In a soft voice, Dr Richards continues to explain what she’s doing as she tapes the catheter to the inside of Penelope’s elbow.

Penelope’s wounds have been cleaned. Her injured left foot has been stitched and bandaged and the gash on her back has been washed clean and taped shut, while the deep wound on her hip got the eight stitches it needed.

“I now want to give you a bit of morphine for the pain.”

“Mamma,” Penelope says. “I want to talk to Mamma.”

“I understand,” the doctor replies.

Warm tears run along Penelope’s cheeks and into her hair and ears. She hears the doctor ask the nurse to prepare an injection of 0.5 millilitres of morphine. The friendly Dr Richards tells Penelope they will let her rest now, but if she needs anything, she can push the glowing red button.

“There’s always going to be someone with you, if you want something or just for a bit of company,” she says.

Now Penelope Fernandez can feel a sense of peace in the room. She closes her eyes as the morphine’s warmth spreads through her body and pulls her down into sleep.

There’s a slight crunch when a woman wearing a black niqab crushes two small figures of sun-dried clay under her sandalled foot. A girl and her little brother turn to fragments and dust. The veiled woman is walking along carrying a heavy load of grain and doesn’t even notice what she’s doing. Two boys whistle and point and cry out that the slave children are dead and soon only infants will be left. All the Fur will die.

Penelope forces the memory of Kubbum away, but before she can fall into sleep again, for an instant she feels the weight of the tons of stone, earth, clay, and cement above her. It feels as if she just keeps falling and falling and falling, falling into the centre of the earth.

Penelope Fernandez wakes up abruptly. She can’t open her eyes. The morphine has made her body too heavy. But she knows she’s in a hospital bed in a protected bunker deep beneath the police station. She doesn’t need to flee any longer. Her relief is followed by a massive wave of pain and sorrow. She doesn’t know how long she’s slept, or if she should just let herself drift off again. She opens her eyes anyway.

She blinks, but sees nothing. Not even the alarm button next to the bed is lit. There must have been a power cut. She’s about to scream, but forces herself to be quiet when the door to the hallway clicks open. She stares into the darkness and hears her own heart pounding. Her body tenses and her muscles are ready to leap. Someone touches her hair. Almost unnoticeable. She lies completely still and feels someone do it again, stealthily, fingers twisting slowly into her locks. She is about to say a prayer when the person near her jerks her out of her bed by the hair. She screams as he throws her into the wall so that the framed pictures break and the IV stand falls over. She falls onto the floor surrounded by shards of glass. He keeps hold of her hair and pulls her back up, flips her over, and bangs her face against the bed’s locked wheels. Then he pulls out a knife with a black blade.

Penelope wakes up. She’s fallen out of bed. A nurse is rushing to her. All the lights are on and Penelope realises that she’s had a nightmare. She is helped back into bed, the nurse speaking calmly. Then rails are pulled up around the bed to keep her from falling out again.

The sweat on her body cools off after a while. She doesn’t want to move. She is lying on her back with the alarm button clutched in her hand and she stares at the ceiling. There’s a knock at the door. A young woman comes in. She has a colourful band plaited into her long hair, and she looks at Penelope with a gentle seriousness. Behind her is a tall man with spiked blond hair and a friendly, symmetrical face.

“My name is Saga Bauer,” the woman says. “I’m from the Security Service. This is my colleague, Joona Linna, from CID.”

Penelope looks at them without expression and then looks down at her bandaged arms, all her scabs and bruises and the catheter in her arm.

“We’re so sorry for all you’ve been through the past few days,” the woman says. “And we can understand you might want to simply be left alone now. But we can’t do that just yet. We need some information from you.”

Saga Bauer pulls the chair from the tiny desk and then sits down beside the bed.

“He’s still after me, isn’t he?” Penelope asks.

“You’re safe here,” Saga answers.

“Tell me he’s dead.”

“Penelope, we must—”

“You couldn’t stop him,” she says weakly.

“We’ll catch him. I promise,” Saga says. “But you have to help us.”

Penelope shuts her eyes.

“This must be so hard, but we do need a few answers,” Saga continues softly. “Do you have any idea why this might be happening?”

“Ask Björn,” she mumbles. “Maybe he knows.”

“What did you say?”

“I said you have to ask Björn,” Penelope whispers. She slowly opens her eyes. “Ask him. Maybe he knows.”

Spiders and insects must have gotten on her body from the woods. They’re running over her body. She tries to scratch her forehead, but Saga calmly stops her hands.

“He was hunting you,” Saga says. “I can’t even imagine how terrible it must have been. But did you recognise the person after you? Have you ever met him before?”

Penelope shakes her head so slightly it’s hardly noticeable.

“We didn’t think so either,” Saga says. “But perhaps you can give us a good description of him, or something recognisable such as a tattoo or a special mark?”