She switches on the computer and the screen flashes; the lights come on with a click, the fans begin to whir, and the hard drive issues its command. When she hears the welcome melody from the operating system, it feels as if something of Benjamin has come back.
Father and daughter each pull out a chair and sit down. Simone clicks on the miniature picture of Benjamin’s face to log in.
“We need to take this slowly and methodically,” says Kennet. “Let’s start with his e-mails.” But the computer demands a password. “Try his name,” says Kennet. She types BENJAMIN, but is denied access. She tries AIDA, turns the names around, puts them together. She tries BARK, BENJAMIN BARK, blushes as she tries SIMONE and SIXAN, tries ERIK, tries the names of the artists Benjamin listens to: SEXSMITH, ANE BRUN, RORY GALLAGHER, JOHN LENNON, TOWNES VAN ZANDT, BOB DYLAN.
“This is no good,” says Kennet. “We need to get someone over here who can hack in for us.”
She tries a few film titles and directors that Benjamin talks about, but she gives up after a while; it’s impossible.
“We should have gotten the plans by now,” says Kennet. “I’ll call Charley and see what’s happening.”
They both jump at the knock on the front door. Simone stays at the computer and watches, her heart pounding, as Kennet goes into the hallway and turns the latch.
48
sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): morning
The December sky is as pale as sand; the temperature is a few degrees above zero as Kennet and Simone drive into the part of Tumba where Josef Ek was born and grew up and where, at the age of fifteen, he slaughtered his family. The house looks just like the other houses on the street: neatly kept, unremarkable. If not for the black-and-yellow police tape, nobody would suspect that a week ago this house was the scene of two of the country’s most long-drawn-out and merciless murders.
A bicycle with training wheels sits near a sandpit at the front of the house. One end of the police tape has come loose and blown about, finally getting stuck in the letter box opposite. Kennet doesn’t stop but drives past slowly. Simone peers in the windows. The curtains are drawn and the place looks completely deserted. The whole row of houses seems to have been abandoned. Could she live on a street where something like this had happened? She shudders. They roll to the end of the cul-de-sac, swing around, and are approaching the scene of the crime once more when Simone’s phone suddenly rings.
She answers quickly—“Hello?”—and listens for a moment. “Has something happened?”
Kennet stops the car, turns off the engine, and gets out. From the capacious boot he takes a crowbar, a tape measure, and a torch. He hears Simone say that she has to go before he slams the boot shut.
“What do you think?” Simone yells into the phone.
Kennet can hear her through the car windows and carefully gauges her distressed expression as she gets out of the passenger seat with the house plans in her hand. Without speaking they walk together towards the white gate in the low fence. It squeaks slightly as it opens. Kennet tips a key out of an envelope, continues to the door, and unlocks it. Before he goes in he turns back to look at Simone and he nods briefly, noting the resolute look on her face.
As soon as they walk into the hallway they are hit by the sickening smell of rancid blood. For a brief moment Simone feels panic rising in her chest: the stench is rotten, sweet, not unlike excrement. She glances at Kennet. He doesn’t seem troubled, just focused, his movements carefully considered. They go past the living room. From the corner of her eye Simone has an impression of the bloodstained walls and soapstone fireplace, the overwhelming chaos, the fear lifting from the floor.
They can hear a strange creaking noise from somewhere inside the house. Kennet stops dead, calmly takes out his former service pistol, removes the safety catch, and checks that it is loaded.
They hear something else: a swaying, heavy, dragging noise. It doesn’t sound like footsteps. It sounds more like someone slowly crawling.
49
sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): morning
Erik wakes in the narrow bed in his office at the hospital. It’s the middle of the night. Glancing at the clock on his mobile, he sees it’s almost three. He takes another pill and lies shivering under the covers until the tingling spreads through his body and the darkness comes sweeping back in.
When he wakes up several hours later, he has a splitting headache. He takes a painkiller, goes over to the window, and lets his eyes roam over the gloomy façade with its hundreds of windows. The sky is white, but every window is still in darkness.
He puts his phone down on the desk and gets undressed. The small shower stall smells of disinfectant. The warm water flows over his head and the back of his neck, and thunders against the Plexiglas.
When he has dried himself he wipes off the mirror, moistens his face, and covers it with shaving foam. He is thinking about the fact that Simone said the front door of the apartment had been open the night before Josef Ek ran away from the hospital. She was awake, and she went and closed it. But it couldn’t have been Josef Ek on that occasion. Erik tries to understand what happened during the night, but there are too many unanswered questions. How did Josef get in? Did he simply knock on the door until Benjamin woke up and opened it?
Erik imagines the two boys standing there regarding each other in the faint light from the stairwell. Benjamin is barefoot, his hair on end; he is wearing his childish pyjamas and blinking with tired eyes at the taller boy. You could say they are not unlike each other, except that Josef has murdered his parents and his younger sister, has just killed a nurse at the hospital with a scalpel, and seriously injured a man at the Northern Cemetery.
“No,” Erik says to himself. “I don’t believe this. It doesn’t make sense.”
Who would be able to get in, who would Benjamin open the door to, who would Simone or Benjamin trust with a key? Perhaps Benjamin was expecting a nocturnal visit from Aida. Not unheard of; Erik has to think of everything. Perhaps Josef was working with someone who helped him with the door, perhaps Josef had actually intended to come on the first night but couldn’t manage to get away, and his partner had left the door open for him in accordance with their plans.
Erik finishes shaving and brushes his teeth, picks up the phone, checks the time, and calls Joona.
“Good morning, Erik,” says the hoarse voice that’s distinctively Joona’s. He must have recognised Erik’s number from the display.
“Did I wake you?”
“No.”
“Sorry to call again.” Erik coughs.
“Has something happened?” asks Joona.
“You haven’t found Josef?”
“We need to speak to Simone, go through everything properly.”
“But you don’t believe it was Josef who took Benjamin?”
“No, I don’t,” Joona replies. “But I’d like to take a look at the apartment, make door-to-door inquiries, try to find some witnesses.”
“Shall I ask Simone to call you?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
A drop of water falls from the tap, landing in the basin with a brief, truncated ping.
“I still think you should accept police protection,” says Joona.
“I’m staying at Karolinska Hospital. I don’t think Josef will come back here of his own free will.”
“And what about Simone?”
“Ask her. It’s possible she might have changed her mind,” says Erik. “Even though she already has a protector.”
“Oh, yes, so I hear,” says Joona dryly. “Can’t imagine what it must be like to have Kennet Sträng as a father-in-law.”
“Neither can I,” replies Erik.
Joona laughs.
“Did Josef try to run away the day before yesterday?” asks Erik.
“There’s nothing to suggest that,” replies Joona. “Why do you ask?”
“Somebody opened our front door the previous night, just like last night.”
“I didn’t know that. But I’m pretty sure Josef ran because he found out he was going to be arrested, and he was given that information only yesterday,” Joona says slowly.
Erik shakes his head and runs his thumb over his mouth. “This doesn’t make sense.” He sighs.
“Did you see the open door?” asks Joona.
“No, it was Sixan—Simone—who got up.”
“Would she have any reason to lie?”
“It hadn’t occurred to me.”
“You don’t need to answer now.”
50
sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): morning
Erik looks into his own eyes in the mirror. He no longer knows what to think. What if Josef had someone helping him? Someone to lay the groundwork the night before the kidnapping? Perhaps the accomplice described everything to Josef: the layout, what the rooms looked like, who slept where. That would explain why Josef didn’t find me, thinks Erik, because on the first night I was sleeping in my usual place, in bed next to Simone.
Or maybe this second person was sent just to see if the copied key worked, but then overstepped the mark and went into the apartment, unable to resist sneaking in and looking at the sleeping family. The situation would have given him a pleasurable feeling of control, and he might have decided to play a joke on the family by leaving the fridge and freezer open.
“Was Evelyn at the police station last Wednesday?” asks Erik.
“Yes.”
“All day and all night?”
“Yes.”
“Is she still there?”
“She’s moved into one of our safe apartments. But she’s got a double guard.”
“Has she been in touch with anyone?”
“You have to let the police do their job,” says Joona.
“I’m just doing my job,” says Erik quietly. “I need to talk to Evelyn.”
“What are you going to ask her?”
“Whether Josef has any friends, someone who might be able to help him.”
“I can ask her that.”
“What their names are.”
“I can ask her that, too.”
“Where they live, who he might be able to work with.”
Joona sighs. “You know perfectly well I can’t allow you to carry out a private investigation, Erik. Even if I personally might think it’s in order.”
“Can’t I be there when you talk to her?” asks Erik. “I’ve worked with traumatised people for many years.”
There is silence between them for a few seconds.
“Meet me in an hour in the National Police Headquarters lobby,” says Joona eventually.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Fine, twenty minutes,” says Joona, ending the call.
Empty of thoughts, Erik goes over to his desk and opens the top drawer. Among pens, rubbers, and paper clips are assorted boxes of pills. He presses three different ones into his hand and swallows them.
He thinks about telling Daniella he hasn’t time to attend the morning briefing but forgets to do it. He leaves his office and hurries to the cafeteria, where he drinks a cup of coffee standing in front of the aquarium, following a shoal of neon tetras with his eyes as they search around a shipwreck made of plastic. Then he wraps a sandwich in several paper napkins and stuffs it into his pocket.
In the lift to the ground floor he catches sight of himself in the mirror, meets the blank eyes. His face is sorrowful, almost absent. He thinks about the sensation in your stomach when you fall from a great height: the helpless, dizzying feeling coupled with a heady, almost sexual rush. He has hardly any strength left, but the pills lift him up onto a bright plane where all the contours are sharply defined. He can keep going a little longer, he thinks. All he needs to do is hold it together long enough to find his son again. Then everything can fall apart.
As he drives to the meeting with Joona and Evelyn, he tries to retrace his steps over the past week. His keys could have been copied on several occasions. Last Thursday his jacket was hanging up in a restaurant in Södermalm, keys in the pocket, with nobody to keep an eye on it. It has been over the back of the chair in his office at the hospital, on a hook in the staff cafeteria, and in plenty of other places. The same is doubtless true of Simone and Benjamin’s keys.
While manoeuvring through the chaos caused by the redevelopment around Fridhemsplan, he gets out his phone and calls Simone’s number.
“Hello?” she answers, sounding stressed.
“It’s me.”
“Has something happened?” she asks anxiously.
There is a roaring noise in the background, as if from a machine, then a sudden silence.
“No, no. I was just thinking that you ought to check the computer, not just e-mails but everything: what he’s downloaded, what sites he’s visited, any temporary folders, if he’s been visiting chat rooms—”
“Obviously.”
“I’m sorry. I just wasn’t sure if you’d thought of it.”
“We haven’t started on the computer yet,” she says.
“The password is Dumbledore.”
“I know,” she says. “I have to go.”
Erik drives past police headquarters and sees its changing appearance: the smooth copper façade, the concrete extension, and finally the tall, original building in yellow plaster.
“Simone,” he says, “have you told me the truth?”
“What do you mean?”
“About what happened. About the door being open the first time, about seeing someone dragging Benjamin through—”
“What do you think?” she yells, ending the call.
Erik hasn’t the energy to look for an empty parking space. A parking ticket has no meaning; it will be due in a completely different life. Without a second thought, he pulls up right in front of the police station. The tyres rumble and he stops at the foot of the enormous flight of steps facing the town hall.
He hurries around the building and up the slope, heading towards the park and the entrance to the National Police Headquarters. A father walks along with three little girls, all wearing Lucia costumes over their snowsuits. The white dresses strain over the thick winter clothing. Perched on top of their hats, the children are wearing crowns with candles in them, and one of them holds a candle in a gloved hand. Erik suddenly remembers how Benjamin loved to be carried when he was little; he would cling tightly with his arms and legs and say, Carry me, you’re big and strong, Daddy.
Erik is out of breath by the time he reaches the entrance, a tall, glowing glass cube. He crosses the white marble floor of the lobby to the reception area on the left, where a man sits behind the open wooden desk, speaking on the phone.
Erik explains why he is there; the receptionist nods briefly, taps away on his computer, and picks up the phone. “Reception here,” he says, in a subdued tone. “Erik Maria Bark to see you …”
Erik sits on a long bench of black creaking leather and gazes around him: at a work of art made of green glass, at the motionless revolving doors. Beyond the huge glass wall is another hallway made of glass leading through an open inner courtyard to the next building. Erik sees Joona Linna pass the waiting area to the right; he presses a button on the wall and walks through the revolving doors. He throws a banana peel into an aluminum waste bin, waves to the man on reception, and comes straight over to Erik.
As they walk to Evelyn’s safe house, Joona summarises what has emerged during his interviews with her: the confirmation that she had intended to take her own life in the forest, the years of sexual abuse she suffered at Josef’s hands, his violence toward their younger sister if Evelyn refused him, his eventual demands for full sexual intercourse, Evelyn’s withdrawal to the summer cottage, Josef’s intimidation of her boyfriend, Sorab, to obtain her whereabouts.
“When Josef showed up at Sonja’s cottage on his birthday, she refused once again to have intercourse with him, and he told her she knew what would happen and it would be her fault,” Joona explai
ns. “It looks as if Josef planned to murder his father, at least. We don’t know why he chose that particular day. It may have been a matter of opportunity, the fact that his father was going to be alone somewhere away from home. In any event, last Monday, Josef Ek packed a change of clothing, two pairs of overshoes, a towel, his father’s hunting knife, a bottle of gasoline, and a box of matches in his gym bag and cycled over to the Rödstuhage playing field. After he’d killed his father and mutilated the body, he took the keys from his father’s pocket, went to the women’s locker room, showered and changed, locked up after himself, set fire to the bag containing the bloodstained clothes in a children’s playground, then bicycled home.”
“And what happened next, at home, was more or less the way he described it under hypnosis?” asks Erik.
“Not more or less—exactly, or so it seems,” says Joona, clearing his throat. “But the motive—what suddenly made him attack his little sister and his mother—that’s something we don’t know.” He looks at Erik, his expression troubled. “Perhaps he just had a feeling that he wasn’t finished, that Evelyn hadn’t been punished enough.”
Joona stops outside an unremarkable house and calls to say that they’ve arrived. He taps in the code, opens the door, and lets Erik into the simple entrance hall.
51
sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): morning
Two police officers are waiting outside the lift when they reach the third floor. Joona shakes hands with them and then unlocks an unmarked security door. Before he pushes the door open completely, he knocks.
“Is it all right if we come in?” he asks, through the gap.
“You haven’t found him, have you?”
The light is behind Evelyn, so it is impossible to make out her features clearly, only a dark oval surrounded by sunlit hair.
“No,” replies Joona.
She comes to the door to usher them in and locks it quickly behind them, checking the lock; when she turns around, Erik sees she is breathing heavily.