Stalker

105

It’s past two o’clock in the morning, but Joona is standing in the middle of his room at the Hotel Hansson. The floor is covered with photographs from the crime scenes and post-mortems.

Because Erik’s house is out of bounds for the duration of the search, the police have sent him to a hotel.

His jacket and pistol are lying on the untouched bed. He’s had a Caesar salad in his room, the remains are under the shiny metal dome on the low coffee table.

As Joona reads the forensic experts’ analyses of the crime scenes he compares them with the pictures, post-mortem reports and test results from the National Forensics Laboratory.

Rocky’s nightmares were genuine memories, everything he said under hypnosis was true, the same murderer has returned – the unclean preacher has started killing again. After the murder of Rebecka Hansson the serial killer went into a long cooling-off period. He waited in a state of cold-storage until the next escalation began.

For a stalker, following someone is like a drug-addiction, it’s impossible to stop, he has to get closer, make contact, give gifts, and as time passes develops a real relationship with them inside his own head. Outwardly he can exhibit submissive gratitude, but in actual fact he is extremely resentful and jealous.

The police have a list of almost seven hundred names who fit the basic outline of the perpetrator profile: bishops, pastors, priests and members of their families, deacons, churchwardens, caretakers, undertakers, preachers and faith healers.

Joona believes that the perpetrator is intentionally trying to make it look like Erik is guilty of the murders, but he can’t find any connection between Erik and any of the men on the list.

What Joona is looking for now among the reports and analysis is something definite that will allow him to cross most of the names off the list.

There’s nothing that stands out in the material, but perhaps different elements could be combined in an unexpected way. Joona tries separating the pieces of the puzzle and seeing if there are other ways of putting them together.

He walks across to the pictures of the deer’s head and a tub of melted ice cream, and stops in front of the photograph of Sandra Lundgren’s murder weapon. The stained knife was photographed where it was found, on the floor beside her dead body. The flash from the camera shimmers like a dark sun in the brown blood.

He reads that it is a chef’s knife, with a stainless steel blade that’s twenty centimetres long, and then examines Erixon’s careful sketches attempting to reconstruct the brutal process of the attack from blood traces and spatter patterns.

The perpetrator has worn the same footwear each time: touring boots, size 43.

Joona tries to identify clues that have been missed, things that don’t match the overall picture. He pores over picture after picture, and stops in front of a photograph with the number 311: a blue pottery fragment that resembles a bird’s skull, with white bubbles along one edge, and a sharp point that’s smooth as ice.

He leafs forward to the item in Erixon’s report and reads that it was tucked between the cracks in Sandra’s floor, and was only found when low-level light was shone across the floor. According to the laboratory analysis, the tiny, two-millimetre-long fragment consists of glass, iron, sand and chamotte clay.

Joona moves to the report from Adam Youssef’s home. In spite of the gunfire, the murderer chose to go through with his plan, and according to the preliminary report Katryna was missing the false fingernails from both her hands.

The preacher takes trophies, then marks the places he’s taken them from with the victim’s hands, like a judgement in a trial.

At quarter past three Anja Larsson calls to say that she has just been informed about an imminent operation. The police have received a tip-off that is regarded as highly credible. A man claims that Erik is sleeping in the spare room in his flat. Erik had been his psychiatrist some years ago.

‘The man has been told to leave the flat.’

‘Who’s leading the operation?’ Joona asks.

‘Daniel Frick.’

‘He’s one of Adam’s best friends.’

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Anja says. ‘But I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, because this operation is still being led by the National Response Unit.’

Joona goes over to the window and looks down at the hire car he’s left parked on the pavement rather than in the hotel’s garage. It’s a gun-metal grey Porsche with six cylinders and 560 horsepower.

‘Where’s the flat?’

‘Because everyone knows that I’m loyal to you, Margot has decided that I should be kept outside the current investigation… and she’s got a point, because if I knew the address I’d tell you.’

Anja doesn’t know where the operation is going to take place, but she’s worked out that it must be somewhere south of Stockholm. She says the response unit has been given permission to use pump-action shotguns, assault rifles, repeaters and PSG 90 sniper rifles.

After the call Joona stands and gazes at the floor of the hotel room. Hundreds of pictures, lined up in rows, from wall to wall, with the floor lamp reflecting off the glossy surface of the photographs.

He carries on reading Erixon’s crime scene analysis, but his mind keeps wandering to Erik and the impending operation.

Joona walks to the other side of the room, looks at a picture of a fragment of yellow fibre, then reads a lab report about a piece of trampled leaf left on the kitchen floor in Maria Carlsson’s home. It turned out to be a fragment of stinging nettle.

He looks at the enlargement on the photograph. The tiny piece of leaf fills the whole sheet of paper, like a spiky green tongue. The hairs look like crystal needles, or fragile pipettes.

Dawn comes and the sky in the east grows paler. Narrow streaks of sunlight filter past chimneys and gables, over the roofs and copper ornaments of Vasastan.

The operation must be over by now, Joona thinks, and calls Erik on his new phone.

He tries a second time, but gets no answer.

Even though it’s only half past five in the morning, he decides to call Margot. He has to know if they’ve caught Erik, but can’t ask straight out about the operation because he doesn’t want to get Anja in trouble.

‘Have you managed to arrest an innocent suspect yet, then?’

‘Joona, I’m asleep…’

‘I know, but what’s going on?’

‘What’s going on? You’re not actually allowed to ask, but a former patient of Erik’s called and said that Erik was in his flat,’ she replies in a tired voice.

‘Can I have a name?’

‘Confidential, I can’t talk to you, I told you that.’

‘Just say if it’s something I ought to know about.’

‘The patient told the police he’d left Erik alone in the flat… The National Response Unit went in, saw an armed man and shot live ammunition… it turned out that the person in the window was the patient, who had returned to the flat.’

‘And Erik wasn’t there?’

He can hear her trying to sit up in bed.

‘We don’t even know if he’d been there at all, and the patient’s on an operating table right now and can’t be interviewed or-’

‘What if he’s the preacher?’ Joona interrupts.

‘Erik’s guilty… But maybe the patient knows where he is. We’ll question him as soon as we can.’

‘You should station armed guards at the hospital.’

‘Joona, we’ve found blood in Erik’s car, it might not mean anything, but it’s been sent for analysis.’

‘Have you looked for a set of yellow rain-clothes in the patient’s flat?’

‘We didn’t find anything special,’ she replies.

‘Are there stinging nettles outside the flat?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says in a bemused tone.