The Nightmare. Ларс Кеплер

sun sparkled in their glasses and reflected off Disa’s unusually dark eyes.

      ‘I said I didn’t think that would work, and then she told me to leave you and never look back, never come back.’

      He nodded, but didn’t know what to say.

      ‘And then you’d be all alone,’ Disa went on. ‘A big, lonely Finn.’

      He stroked her fingers.

      ‘I don’t want that.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘To be a big, lonely Finn,’ he said softly. ‘I want to be with you.’

      ‘And I want to bite you, quite hard, actually. Can you explain that? My teeth always start to tingle when I see you,’ Disa smiled.

      Joona reached out his hand to touch her. He knew he was already late for the meeting with Carlos Eliasson and the National Homicide Commission, but went on sitting where he was, chatting and simultaneously thinking that he ought to go to the National Museum to look at the Sami bridal crown.

      While he was waiting for Joona Linna, Carlos Eliasson had told the National Homicide Commission about the young woman who had been found dead in a motor cruiser in the Stockholm archipelago. In the minutes of the meeting Benny Rubin noted that the case wasn’t urgent, and that they were going to wait for the marine police’s own investigation.

      Joona arrived late for the meeting, and barely had time to sit down before Police Constable John Bengtsson called him. They had known each other for years, and had played indoor hockey against each other for over a decade. John Bengtsson was a likeable man, but when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer almost all of his friends vanished. Nowadays John Bengtsson was completely well again, but, like many people who had felt death breathing down their neck, there was something sensitive and hesitant about him.

      Joona stood in the corridor outside the conference room listening to John Bengtsson’s protracted account of what he had found. His voice was full of the weariness that arises in the minutes following extreme stress. He described how he had just found the director general of the Inspectorate for Strategic Products hanging from the ceiling in his own home.

      ‘Suicide?’ Joona asked.

      ‘No.’

      ‘Murder?’

      ‘Can’t you just come over?’ John asked. ‘Because I can’t make sense of this. The body’s floating above the floor, Joona.’

      Together with Nathan Pollock and Tommy Kofoed, Joona had just concluded that they were dealing with a case of suicide when the doorbell of Palmcrona’s home rang. In the darkness of the landing stood a tall woman holding shopping bags in her large hands.

      ‘Have you taken him down?’ she asked.

      ‘Taken down?’ Joona repeated.

      ‘Mr Palmcrona,’ she said matter-of-factly.

      ‘What do you mean, taken down?’

      ‘I’m sorry, I’m only the housekeeper, I thought …’

      The situation clearly troubled her, and she started to walk down the stairs, but stopped abruptly when Joona replied to her initial question:

      ‘He’s still hanging there.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said, and turned to him with a completely neutral expression on her face.

      ‘Did you see him hanging there earlier today?’

      ‘No,’ she replied.

      ‘What made you ask if we’d taken him down? Had something happened? Did you notice anything unusual?’

      ‘A noose from the lamp-hook in the small drawing room,’ she replied.

      ‘You saw the noose?’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘But you weren’t worried that he might use it?’ Joona asked.

      ‘Dying isn’t such a nightmare,’ she replied with a restrained smile.

      ‘What did you say?’

      But the woman merely shook her head.

      ‘What do you imagine his death looked like?’ Joona asked.

      ‘I imagine that the noose tightened round his throat,’ she replied in a low voice.

      ‘And how did the noose get to be round his neck?’

      ‘I don’t know … perhaps it needed help,’ she said quizzically.

      ‘What do you mean by help?’

      Her eyes rolled back and Joona thought she was going to faint before she reached out for the wall with one hand and met his gaze again.

      ‘There are helpful people everywhere,’ she said weakly.

       8

       Nils Åhlén

      The swimming pool at Police Headquarters is silent and empty, the glass wall dark and there’s no one in the cafeteria. The large blue pool is almost perfectly still. The water is illuminated from below and the glow undulates gently across the walls and ceiling. Joona Linna swims length after length, maintaining a steady speed and controlling his breathing.

      As he swims, memories tumble through his consciousness. Disa’s face as she told him her teeth tingled when she looked at him.

      Joona reaches the edge of the pool, turns beneath the water and kicks off. He isn’t aware that he is swimming faster when his thoughts suddenly focus on Carl Palmcrona’s apartment on Grevgatan. Once again he is looking at the hanging body, the pool of urine, the flies on the face. The dead man had been wearing his outdoor clothes, his coat and shoes, but had still taken the time to put some music on.

      The whole thing had given Joona the impression of being both planned and impulsive, which is far from unusual with suicides.

      He swims faster, turns and speeds up even more, and in his mind’s eye sees himself crossing Palmcrona’s hall to open the door when the bell rang. He sees the tall woman with big hands standing concealed behind the door, in the darkness of the stairwell.

      Joona stops at the edge of the pool, breathing hard, and rests his arms on the plastic grille covering the overspill channel. His breathing soon calms down, but the heaviness of the lactic acid in his muscles is still increasing. A group of police officers in gym clothes come into the hall. They’re carrying two life-saving dummies, one representing a child, the other someone badly overweight.

      Dying isn’t such a nightmare, the tall woman had said with a smile.

      Joona climbs out of the pool with an odd feeling of unease. He doesn’t know what it is, but the case of Carl Palmcrona’s death won’t leave him alone. For some reason he keeps seeing the bright, empty room, hearing the gentle violin music along with the dull buzzing of the flies.

      Joona knows they’re dealing with a suicide, and tries to tell himself that it’s no concern of the National Crime Unit. But he still feels like running back to the scene of the discovery again and examining it more thoroughly, searching every room, just to see if he missed anything.

      During his conversation with the housekeeper he had imagined that she was confused, that shock had settled around her like dense fog, making her answers opaque and incoherent. But now he tries to look at it the other way round. Perhaps she wasn’t at all shocked or confused, and had answered his questions as accurately as she could. In which case the housekeeper, Edith Schwartz, was claiming that Carl Palmcrona had help with the noose, and there were helping