Stalker

40

When Adam enters the third room he immediately catches sight of Eugene Cassel. He’s wearing a black top hat, but nothing else. Five people are having sex with each other on the large bed. The shade of a table lamp is hanging askew and shaking in time with the movement of the bed. Eugene is on his knees behind a woman on all fours.

Her pearl necklace is swinging between her breasts.

The woman with the strap-on dildo comes staggering into the room after Adam. He watches her sit down on the edge of the bed, almost fall, then sit up again. Another woman takes hold of the dildo, says something and laughs. She replies, then coughs into her elbow.

‘What did you say?’

‘Tra-la-la-laa,’ she smiles.

‘OK.’

‘The cops are here, tra-la-laa,’ she repeats, and coughs again.

Eugene hears her words and stops, sits down on the bed and puts an arm on the woman’s backside, and then turns to look at Adam.

‘This is a private party,’ he says with a look of disappointment.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’ Adam says, showing his police ID.

‘Leave your card and I’ll get my lawyers to call you on Monday,’ Eugene says, and gets up from the bed.

Eugene is about forty years old, probably the oldest person in the suite of rooms. His naked, hairless body is in good shape, despite his protruding stomach. His erection has subsided. Beneath the rim of his hat a gold ring sparkles in his eyebrow, and his pupils are dilated.

‘I need to find Filip Cronstedt,’ Adam says.

‘Good luck,’ Eugene says, and raises his hat slightly. ‘He isn’t here, but I can give you a clue: follow the white rabbit.’

‘Listen,’ Adam says. ‘We can leave the hotel nice and quietly, but if I have to, I’ll put handcuffs on you in here and drag you all the way to the car.’

A woman with shimmering white skin and reddish-brown hair in two plaits over her breasts enters the room and comes over to Eugene.

‘Shall I order some food?’ she says, putting a joint to her lips.

‘Still hungry?’ he asks flirtatiously.

She nods and smiles, then exhales a narrow plume of smoke, and walks off towards the phone beside the bed.

‘OK, I’m going to have to arrest you according to chapter twenty-four, paragraph seven of the penal code,’ Adam says.

‘It’s not my fault you went to a bad school and ended up having to join the police,’ Eugene says sternly. ‘The world’s unfair, and-’

‘You know Maria Carlsson, don’t you?’ Adam butts in.

‘I love her,’ he replies slowly.

‘Give her a kiss,’ Adam says, pulling out a picture from the crime scene.

In the sharp light of the flash, the dead woman’s ravaged face, gaping mouth and broken jaw are brutally visible. Eugene whimpers, staggers backwards and knocks over a table lamp, and its brown ceramic base shatters.