The Nightmare. Ларс Кеплер

      They got food from the buffet and went and sat at one of the outdoor tables. Joona had noticed she was wearing nail varnish. As a senior archaeologist, Disa’s fingernails were usually short and rather dirty. He looked away from her hands, across the fruit garden.

      Disa started to eat, and said with her mouth full:

      ‘Queen Christina was given a leopard by the Duke of Courland. She kept it out here on Djurgården.’

      ‘I didn’t know that,’ Joona said calmly.

      ‘I read in the palace accounts that the Treasury paid forty silver riksdaler to help cover the funeral costs of a maid who was killed by the leopard.’

      She leaned back and picked up her glass.

      ‘Joona Linna, stop talking so much,’ she said sarcastically.

      ‘Sorry,’ Joona said. ‘I …’

      He tailed off and suddenly felt as if all the energy were draining from his body.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Please, keep talking about the leopard.’

      ‘You look sad …’

      ‘I was thinking about Mum … It was exactly a year ago yesterday that she died. I went and left a white iris on her grave.’

      ‘I miss Ritva a lot,’ Disa said.

      She put her knife and fork down and sat quietly for a while.

      ‘Do you know what she said the last time I saw her? She took my hand,’ Disa said. ‘And then she said I ought to seduce you, and make sure I got pregnant.’

      ‘I can imagine,’ Joona laughed.

      The 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