The Hypnotist. Ларс Кеплер

off the main road, loose gravel begins to rattle against the bottom of the chassis as they pass an old sawmill.

      Erik peers out the windscreen, waiting while Joona speaks quietly over the police radio with his colleagues, who are also on their way to Värmdö.

      “I was thinking,” says Erik, after Joona has replaced the transmitter.

      “Yes?”

      “I said Josef Ek couldn’t run away from the hospital, but if he could inflict all those knife wounds on himself, maybe we can’t be too sure.”

      “I was thinking the same thing,” Joona replies, “so I’ve got somebody outside the room.”

      “It’s probably completely unnecessary,” says Erik.

      “Yes.”

      They pull to the side of the road where three cars have stopped next to a telephone pole, one behind the other. Joona momentarily joins four police officers who stand talking in the white light, putting on their bullet-proof vests and pointing at a map. The sunlight flashes on the glass of an old greenhouse nearby.

      Joona gets back in the car, carrying the cold air on his clothes. He drums the fingers of one hand pensively on the steering wheel as he waits for the others to return to their cars.

      Suddenly a rapid sequence of notes comes from the police radio, then a loud crackling that stops abruptly. Joona switches to another channel and checks that everyone in the team is in contact, exchanging a few words with each one before turning the key in the ignition.

      The cars continue alongside a ploughed field, past a grove of birch trees and a large, rusty silo.

      “Stay in the car when we get there,” says Joona quietly.

      “Fine,” says Erik.

      A flock of crows struts across the surface of the road, suddenly taking flight and flapping away as the cars approach.

      “Are there any negative aspects to hypnosis?” Joona asks abruptly.

      “What do you mean?”

      “You were one of the best in the world, but you stopped.”

      “People sometimes have good reasons for keeping things hidden,” Erik says.

      “Of course, but—”

      “And those reasons are very difficult to judge when it comes to hypnosis.”

      Joona gives him a sceptical look. “Why do I think that’s not why you gave it up?”

      “I don’t want to talk about it,” says Erik.

      Tree trunks flash by at the side of the road. As they drive deeper into the forest, it grows darker. Gravel clatters against the undercarriage of the car. Turning off onto a narrow forest track, they pass a number of summer cottages and finally come to a stop. Far away among the fir trees, Joona can see a small brown wooden house in a shady glade.

      “I’m trusting you to stay put,” he tells Erik before he leaves the car.

      As Joona walks towards the house where the other police officers are already waiting, he thinks once again about Josef under hypnosis. The words that just poured out between his flaccid lips. A little boy describing bestial aggression with remote clarity. The memory must have been perfectly clear to him: his little sister’s feverish cramps, the surge of rage, the choice of knives, the euphoria at crossing the line. But towards the end of the session, Josef’s account had become confused, and it was more difficult to understand what he meant, what he was really perceiving, whether his older sister, Evelyn, had actually forced him to carry out the murders.

      Gathering the four officers around him, Joona outlines the gravity of the situation and provides guidelines for the use of firearms. Any shots that might be fired must be directed at the legs, whatever the circumstances.

      “I want all of you to proceed with caution so as not to frighten the girl,” he says. “She may be afraid, she may be injured, but at the same time don’t forget for one second that we may be dealing with a dangerous person.”

      They all study the house for a moment. Its chocolate brown façade is made up of overlapping shingles; the window and doorframes are white, the front door is black. The windows are covered with pink curtains. No smoke comes from the chimney. On the porch there is a broom and a yellow plastic bucket full of pine cones. Joona sends one patrol of three officers round the house and away from the garden so they can approach the back of the house from a safe distance.

      They set off along the forest track; one of them stops and inserts a plug of snuff under his top lip.

       22

       tuesday, december 8: afternoon

      Joona watches the patrol spread out around the house at a reasonable distance, weapons drawn. A twig snaps. In the distance he can hear the tapping of a woodpecker echoing through the forest. Joona slowly approaches the house, trying to see something through the pink curtain fabric. He signals to Police Constable Kristina Andersson, a young woman with a pointed chin, to stop on the path. Her cheeks are red, and she nods without taking her eyes off the house. With an air of total calm, she draws her service pistol and moves a few steps to the side.

      The house is empty, Joona thinks. Gingerly, he places one foot on the porch steps. They creak under his weight. He watches the curtains for sudden movements as he knocks on the door. Nothing happens. He waits for a while and then stiffens, thinking he’s heard something, and scans the forest, beyond the brush and the tree trunks. He draws his pistol, a heavy Smith & Wesson that he prefers to the standard-issue Sig Sauer, removes the safety catch, and checks the cartridges. Suddenly there is a loud rustling at the edge of the forest and a deer dashes between the trees. Kristina Andersson gives Joona a strained smile when he glances over at her. He points at the window, moves forward cautiously, and looks in through a gap to one side of a curtain.

      In the dim interior he can see a cane table with a scratched glass surface and a tan corduroy sofa. On the back of a red wooden chair, two pairs of white pants have been hung up to dry. In the pantry there are several cans of instant macaroni, jars of pesto, canned foods, and a bag of apples. He catches the glint of various pieces of cutlery on the floor in front of the sink and under the kitchen table. He signals to Kristina that he’s going in, then tries the door. The knob turns in his hand; he pushes it open and steps quickly out of the firing line, looking to Kristina for the all-clear. She nods, gesturing for him to enter. He looks inside and steps over the threshold.

      From the car, Erik has only a vague sense of what is happening. He sees Joona Linna disappear into the little brown house, followed by another officer. Erik’s eyes are dry and sensitive—a side effect of his codeine capsules. He peers out at the brown house and the policemen, with their careful movements and the dark glimmer of their drawn guns. It is quiet. The trees are bare in the sterile December chill. The light and the colours make Erik think of school trips when he was a child: the smell of rotting tree trunks, the funkiness of mushrooms in the wet earth.

      His mother had worked part-time as a school nurse at the high school in Sollentuna and was convinced of the benefits of fresh air. It was Erik’s mother who had wanted him to be called Erik Maria; she had once taken a language course in Vienna and had gone to the Burgtheater to see Strindberg’s The Father with Klaus Maria Brandauer in the lead. She’d been so taken with the performance that she’d carried the actor’s name with her for years. As a kid, Erik always tried to hide his middle name; as a teenager, he saw himself in the Johnny Cash song ‘A Boy Named Sue.’

      Some gal would giggle and I’d get red,

      And some guy’d laugh and I’d bust his head,

      I tell ya, life ain’t easy for a boy named Sue.

      Erik’s father had worked for the National Insurance Office. But he’d really had only one genuine interest in life. In his spare time, he was a magician and would dress