The Hypnotist (47 page)

Joona has turned onto the little street where Johan Samuelsson’s parents still live. He spots their place at once, an eighteenth-century house painted Falun red, with a saddle roof. A shabby playhouse stands in the garden. Beyond the Samuelssons’ hilly plot it is just possible to glimpse the black, heavy water of the Baltic Sea.

“I have to go, Anja.”

He pulls his car into a raked gravel drive neatly edged with cobblestones and runs his hands over his face before getting out. He walks up to the door and rings the bell, waits, rings again. Eventually he hears someone shouting inside.

“Coming!”

The lock rattles and a teenage girl pushes open the door. Her eyes are heavily made up with kohl, and she has dyed her hair purple.

“Hey,” she says.

“My name is Joona Linna,” he says. “I’m from the National CID. Are your parents at home?”

The girl nods and turns to shout to them. But a middle-aged woman is already standing in the hallway, staring at Joona. “Amanda,” she says in a frightened voice, “ask him . . . ask him what he wants.”

Joona shakes his head. “I’d prefer not to say on the doorstep what I came to say,” he says. “May I come in?”

“Yes,” whispers the mother.

Joona steps inside and closes the door. He looks at the girl, whose lower lip has begun to tremble. Then he looks at Isabella Samuelsson. Her hands are pressed to her breast, and her face is deathly pale.

Joona takes a deep breath and explains quietly. “I’m so very, very sorry. We’ve found Johan’s remains.”

The mother presses her clenched fist to her mouth, making a faint whimpering sound. She leans on the wall but slips and sinks to the floor.

“Dad!” yells Amanda. “Dad!”

A man comes running down the stairs. When he sees his wife weeping on the floor, he slows down. It’s as if every vestige of colour disappears from his face. He looks at his wife, his daughter, then Joona. “It’s Johan,” is all he says.

“We’ve found his remains,” says Joona, his voice subdued.

They sit in the living room. The girl puts her arm around her mother, who is weeping inconsolably. The father still seems strangely calm. Joona has seen it before, these men— and sometimes women, though this is less common— who show very little reaction, who continue to talk and ask questions, whose voices take on a peculiarly vacant tone as they ask about the details. Joona knows this is not indifference but a battle, a desperate attempt to put off the moment when the pain comes.

“How did you find him?” the mother whispers, between bouts of weeping. “Where was he?”

“We were looking for another child at the home of a person suspected of kidnapping,” says Joona. “Our dog picked up the scent and led us to a spot in the garden.”

“In the garden?”

Joona swallows. “Johan has been buried there for ten years, according to the forensic pathologist.”

Joakim Samuelsson looks up. “Ten years?” He shakes his head. “It’s thirteen years since Johan disappeared,” he whispers.

Joona nods, feeling utterly drained as he explains. “We have reason to believe that the person who took your child held him captive— ” He looks down, making an enormous effort to sound calm when he looks up again. “Johan was held captive for three years,” he goes on. “Before the perpetrator killed him. He was five when he died.”

At this point the father’s face breaks. His iron-hard façade is shattered into countless fragments, like a thin pane of glass. It is very painful to watch. His face crumples and tears begin to pour down his cheeks. Rough, dreadful sobs rend the air.

Joona looks around the room at the framed photographs on the walls. Recognizes the picture from the folder of little two-year-old Johan in his police uniform. Sees a confirmation photo of the girl. A picture of the parents, laughing and holding up a newborn baby. He swallows and waits. It isn’t over yet.

“There’s one more thing I have to ask you,” he says, after giving them a moment to compose themselves. “I have to ask if you’ve ever heard of a woman named Lydia Everson.”

The mother shakes her head in confusion. The father blinks a couple of times, then says quickly, “No, never.”

Amanda whispers, “Is she . . . is she the one who took my brother?”

Joona looks at her, his expression serious. “We believe so.”

When he gets up, his palms are wet with perspiration and he can feel the sweat trickling down the sides of his body.

“My condolences,” he says. “I really am very, very sorry.” He places his card on the table in front of them, along with the telephone numbers of a counsellor and a support group. “Call me if you think of anything, or if you just want to talk.”

He is on his way out when the father suddenly gets to his feet. “Wait . . . I have to know. Have you caught her? Have you caught her yet?”

Joona clamps his jaws together. “No, we haven’t caught her yet. But we’re on her trail. We’ll have her soon, I promise.”

He calls Anja as soon as he gets in the car. She answers immediately. “Did it go well?”

“It never goes well,” Joona replies steadily.

There is a brief silence at the other end of the phone.

“Did you want anything in particular?” Anja asks hesitantly.

“Yes,” says Joona.

“You do know it’s Saturday.”

“The father is lying,” Joona goes on. “He knows Lydia. He said he’d never heard of her, but he was lying.”

“How do you know he was lying?”

“Something about his eyes when I asked. I’m right about this.”

“I believe you. You’re always right, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And if we doubt you, we have to put up with you saying, ‘What did I tell you?’ ”

Joona smiles to himself. “You’ve come to know me well, Anja.”

“Did you want to tell me anything else, apart from the fact that you were right?”

“Yes, I’m going over to Ulleråker.”

“Now? You know it’s our Christmas dinner tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Joona,” Anja says chidingly. “It’s our staff Christmas party, dinner at Skansen. You can’t have forgotten?”

“Do I have to come?” asks Joona.

“Yes, you do,” Anja replies firmly. “And you’re sitting next to me.”

“As long as you don’t get carried away after a few drinks.”

“You can cope.”

“If you will be an angel and ring Ulleråker, make sure there’ll be someone there I can talk to about Lydia, you can do more or less whatever you like with me,” says Joona.

“Oh my God, in that case I’m already on it,” says Anja cheerfully, hanging up.

The psychiatric clinic at Ulleråker is one of a very few still in operation in Sweden, the result of huge cuts in allocations for psychiatric care that took place in the 1990s. A complex of pale buildings set amid dark groves of trees, fields, and gardens once tended by patients, and with its own cemetery, the hospital is a world unto itself. Joona passes through an old-fashioned porte–cochère at the entrance and pulls up before the main building, an elegant old structure topped by a clock tower set directly in the centre of the complex.

Anja has done a good job as usual. When Joona walks in through the main entrance, he can see from the expression of the girl on reception that he is expected.

“Joona Linna?”

He nods and shows his ID.

“Dr. Langfeldt is waiting for you. Up the stairs, first room on the right along the hall.”

Joona thanks her and begins to climb the wide stone staircase. He can hear thuds, shouts, the sound of a television coming from somewhere in the distance. There is a smell of cigarette smoke. Outside, the clinic is surrounded by an ornamental garden that resembles a churchyard, the bushes blackened and bowed down by the rain, trellises damaged by dampness with spindly climbers clinging to them. It looks gloomy, Joona thinks. A place like this isn’t really aimed at recovery, it’s a place for containment. He reaches the landing and looks around. To the left, through a glass door, is a long, narrow corridor. He wonders briefly where he has seen it before, then realizes it’s an almost identical copy of the holding cells at Kronoberg: rows of locked doors with metal handles. An elderly woman in a long dress emerges from one of the doors. She stares at him through the glass. Joona nods to her, then opens the door leading to the other corridor. It smells strongly of bleach and antiseptic.

Dr. Langfeldt is already waiting.

“Police?” he asks rhetorically, holding out a broad, meaty hand. His handshake is surprisingly soft, perhaps the softest Joona has ever felt, and his expression gives nothing away as he says with a minimal gesture, “Please come in.”

The office is large but almost entirely functional. Heavy bookshelves filled with identical files cover the walls. There are no paintings or photographs; the room is entirely free of ornamentation. The only picture is what appears to be a child’s drawing in green and white chalk pinned to the door; a round face with eyes, nose, and mouth, legs and arms attached directly to it. Children of about three tend to draw adults in this way. This can be seen either as an indication that the figure has no body or that the head itself is the body.

Dr. Langfeldt goes over to his desk, which is almost entirely covered in piles of paper. He moves an old rotary telephone off the visitor’s chair and makes another small gesture in Joona’s direction; Joona interprets this as an invitation to sit down.

The doctor regards him thoughtfully; his face is heavy and furrowed, and there is something lifeless about his features, almost as if he is suffering from some kind of facial paralysis.

“Thank you for taking the time— ” Joona begins.

“I know what you want to see me about,” the doctor says. “You want information about Lydia Everson. My patient.”

Joona opens his mouth, but the doctor holds up a hand to stop him.

“I presume you’ve heard of professional security and the confidentiality of information relating to patient records,” Langfeldt continues. “In addition— ”

“I’m familiar with the law,” Joona interjects. “If the crime under investigation would lead to more than two years’ imprisonment on conviction, then— ”

“Yes, yes,” says Langfeldt. The doctor turns his peculiar dead gaze on him.

“I can of course bring you in for questioning,” Joona says softly. “The prosecutor is currently preparing a warrant for Lydia Everson’s arrest. We will then request her patient notes, obviously.”

Dr. Langfeldt taps his fingers against one another and licks his lips. “It’s just . . .” he says, “I just want . . .” He pauses. “I just want a guarantee.”

“A guarantee?”

Langfeldt nods. “I want my name kept out of this business.”

Joona meets Langfeldt’s eyes and suddenly realizes that the lifeless expression is in fact suppressed fear.

“I can’t make that promise,” he says harshly.

“If I plead with you?”

“I’m a stubborn man,” Joona explains.

The doctor leans back, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly. It’s the only sign of nerves or any other kind of vitality he has shown so far. “What is it you want to know?” he asks.

Joona leans forward. “Everything. I want to know everything.”

An hour later, Joona leaves the doctor’s office. He glances down the corridor opposite in passing, but the woman in the long dress has disappeared, and as he hurries down the stone staircase he notices that it’s now completely dark. It’s impossible to see the park and the trellises any longer . Downstairs, the girl on reception has evidently finished for the day. The desk is vacant, its surface cleared, and the office door is locked. Nothing but silence, although Joona knows that the unit houses hundreds of patients.

He shivers as he gets into his car and pulls out of the parking lot. Something is bothering him, something he can’t put his finger on. He tries to remember the point at which the feeling began.

The doctor had taken out a file, identical to the other files filling the shelves. He had tapped it gently on the front and said, “Here she is.”

The photograph of Lydia showed quite a pretty woman with medium-length hennaed hair and a strange, smiling expression: rage seething beneath an appealing surface.

The first time Lydia had been admitted for treatment was when she was ten years old, after she had killed her younger brother, Kasper. She had smashed in his skull one Sunday with a block of wood. She had told the doctor that her mother was forcing her to raise her brother. Kasper had been Lydia’s responsibility when her mother was at work or sleeping, and it was her job to discipline him.

Lydia was taken into care; her mother was sent to prison for child abuse. Kasper Everson was three years old when he died.

“Lydia lost her family,” Joona whispers, switching on the windscreen wipers as a bus coming the other way drenches his car.

Dr. Langfeldt had treated Lydia only with powerful psychopharmaceuticals; she was not offered any kind of therapy. He felt that the killing had been committed under severe pressure from her mother. With his agreement, Lydia was placed in an open residential facility for young offenders. When she turned eighteen, she moved back to her old home and lived there with a boy she had met at the residential facility, disappearing from the records.

Five years later she turned up again, this time having been admitted to a secure psychiatric unit. Lydia had gone to a playground and picked out a boy of about five, lured him to an isolated area, and hit him. She repeated this behaviour several times before she was caught. The last incident had resulted in life-threatening injuries to the child.

Dr. Langfeldt met her for the second time, and she became his patient in a unit from which she could be discharged only with the permission of the courts.

“Lydia remained in the secure unit at Ulleråker for six years. She was under treatment throughout,” Langfeldt explained. “She was an exemplary patient. The only problem was that she constantly formed alliances with other inmates. She created groups around her, groups from whom she demanded unswerving loyalty.”

She was making her own family, Joona thinks, as he turns off toward Fridhemsplan. He suddenly remembers the staff Christmas party at Skansen and considers pretending that he forgot about it, but he knows he owes it to Anja to appear.

Langfeldt had closed his eyes and massaged his temples as he went on. “After six years without incident, Lydia was allowed to begin spending periods away from the secure unit.”

“No incidents at all?” asked Joona.

Langfeldt thought about it. “There was one thing, but it was never proven.”

“What was it?”

“A patient’s face was injured. She maintained she’d cut her own face, but the rumour was that Lydia Everson had done it. As far as I recall it was only gossip; there was nothing to it.”

Joona nodded, blank-faced. “Go on,” he said.

“She was allowed to move back to the family home. She was still under outpatient treatment, but she was looking after herself, and there was absolutely no reason,” said the doctor, “to doubt her assertion that she wanted to get better. After two years it was time for Lydia to complete her treatment. She chose a form of therapy that was very fashionable at the time. She joined a hypnosis group with— ”

“Erik Maria Bark,” Joona supplied.

Langfeldt nodded. “It seems as if the hypnosis didn’t do Lydia much good,” he said superciliously. “She ended up trying to commit suicide and came back to me for the third time.”

“Did she tell you about her breakdown?”

Langfeldt shook his head. “As I understand it, the whole thing was the fault of that hypnotist.”

“Are you aware that she told Dr. Bark she had a son named Kasper? That she told him she had imprisoned her son?” Joona asked sharply.

Langfeldt shrugged his shoulders. “I did hear that, but I presume a hypnotist can get people to admit to just about anything.”

“So you didn’t take her confession seriously?”

Langfeldt smiled thinly. “She was a wreck. It was impossible even to hold a conversation with her. I had to give her electroconvulsive therapy, heavy antipsychotic drugs— it was a major task to get her back together on any level.”

“So you didn’t even try to investigate whether there was any basis to her confession?”

“My assessment was that such statements arose from her feelings of guilt over having murdered her brother as a child,” Langfeldt replied sternly.

“When did you let her out?” Joona asked.

“Two months ago. She was definitely well.”

Joona stood up, and his gaze fell on the only picture in Dr. Langfeldt’s room, the childish drawing on the door. “That’s you,” said Joona, pointing at it. A walking head, he thought. Just a brain, no heart.