Stalker

51

The police have only had the third film for eighty minutes when the emergency call centre receives a phone call from a woman who says in a monotone that her daughter has been murdered.

The time is quarter to five when Margot parks her Lincoln Towncar in front of the fluttering tape of the police cordon.

The policeman who went inside to see if the victim could be saved is sitting on the step of the neighbouring doorway. His face is grey, and there’s a dark look in his eyes. A paramedic puts a blanket round his shoulders and checks his blood pressure as Adam talks to him. The woman who found her daughter is in hospital with her sister. Margot makes a mental note to go and talk to her later, once the tranquillisers have softened the burning layer of pain and shock.

While Margot was driving to Hägersten she’d called Joona at the hospital to tell him about the third murder. He sounded very tired, but listened to everything she told him, and for some strange reason that made her feel calmer.

Margot passes the inner cordon and enters the hallway of the block of flats. Floodlights illuminate the stairwell, reflecting off the glass covering the list of residents’ names.

Margot pulls on some shoe-protectors and carries on past the forensics officers who are setting out stepping-plates in silence.

She stops in the harsh glare of the floodlights. The metal clicks as it heats up. The smell of warm blood and urine is overpowering and acrid. A forensics officer is filming the room according to a set procedure. On the linoleum floor sits a woman with an utterly ravaged face, her chest split open. Her glasses have fallen off into the pool of blood beside the table.

She’s lying with her hand over her left breast. Her soft skin shimmers pearly white beneath her blood-blackened hand.

She has evidently been placed in that position after death, but it doesn’t look particularly sexual.

Margot stands there for a few moments, looking at the devastating scene, at the display of brutality, the blood sprayed out by a stabbing knife, the arterial spatter on the smooth door of a kitchen cupboard, and the smeared blood left by the victim’s struggle and the spasmodic jerking of her body.

They know far too little about the second murder, but this one seems to follow the pattern of the first exactly. The level of brutality is inconceivable, and appears to extend far beyond the moment of death.

Once the fury of the attack subsided, the body was arranged slightly before being left at the scene of the murder.

In the first case the victim’s fingers had been inserted into her mouth, and this time her hand is covering her breast.

Margot steps aside to make way for one of the forensic officers who is laying out boards on the floor.

With her hand on her protruding stomach, she carries on into the bedroom and looks down into the open drawer at the porcelain deer, chestnut-brown, except for the break where the head should be. After a while she returns to the victim.

She stares once again at the carefully staged arrangement of the hand on her chest, and a thought flits through her head and vanishes.

There’s something she recognises.

Margot stands for a while and thinks before leaving the flat and going back to her car. She starts the engine and holds one hand on the wheel and the other on her stomach, moves it down to counter the baby’s rapid movements with her fingertips, the small nudges from the other side, from the beginning.

She tries to make herself more comfortable, but the steering wheel presses against her stomach.

What is it I can’t quite remember? she thinks. It could have been five years ago, in a different police district, but I definitely read something.

Something about the hands, or the deer.

She can’t help thinking that she won’t get any sleep tonight if she doesn’t work out what it is.

Margot turns into Polhemsgatan and pulls up beside the rock face.

Her phone rings and Margot sees the picture of Jenny in her cowboy hat from Tucson on the screen.

‘National Crime,’ Margot answers.

‘I need to report a crime,’ Jenny says.

‘If it’s urgent you should call 112,’ she says, parking more neatly. ‘But otherwise-’

‘This is about a crime against public decency,’ Jenny interrupts.

‘Can you be a bit more specific?’ Margot asks, opening the car door.

‘If you come here, I can show you…’

Margot has to take the phone from her ear as she gets out of the car and locks it.

‘Sorry, what did you say?’

‘I just called to find out where you’d got to,’ Jenny says in a different tone of voice.

‘I’m on Kungsholmen, I’ve got to-’

‘You haven’t got time – you need to come home straight away,’ she cuts in.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Seriously, Margot… this is hopeless. For God’s sake, you were the one who picked Sunday, they’ll all be here any minute-’

‘Don’t be cross with me… I just can’t let go of this case before-’

‘You’re not coming?’ Jenny interrupts. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I thought it was next weekend,’ Margot replies.

‘How the hell could you think that?’

Margot had completely forgotten about dinner with her family. The idea was for her and Jenny to thank everyone for their support during the Pride festival. Everyone who had marched with banners saying ‘Proud Parents and Families’.

‘You’ll just have to explain that I’ll be a bit late,’ she says, stopping ten metres from the entrance to Police Headquarters.

‘Look… this isn’t on,’ Jenny says, then takes a deep breath. ‘I’m actually feeling pretty let down… You got a career opportunity, and I was happy to support you, and…’

‘Look after the children while I worked – and now I’m working, just like-’

‘But you’re working the whole bloody time, and-’

‘That was what we agreed,’ Margot interrupts.

She starts walking towards the entrance as a colleague comes out and unlocks the heavy chain around the rear wheel of a motorbike.

‘OK… that was what we agreed,’ Jenny says quietly.

‘I’ve got to go now, but I’ll be home as soon as-’

Margot stops when she realises that Jenny has hung up on her. She carries on into the lobby, passes the security doors and heads towards the lifts.

Maria Carlsson, the first victim, had her hand in her mouth, Margot thinks once more.

That wasn’t enough for her to discern a pattern. But when she saw Sandra Lundgren lying there with her hand over one breast, she had a fleeting sense of a connection.

It didn’t look natural, it was arranged.

She walks along the empty corridor to her office, closes the door behind her and sits down at the computer, and searches for arranged bodies.

She can hear sirens from emergency vehicles somewhere.

Margot kicks off her shoes as she clicks through the results. Nowhere does she find any similarity to her murders. Her stomach feels tight and she undoes her belt altogether.

She expands the search to cover the whole country, and when the list of results appears she knows she’s found what she was looking for.

A murder in Salem.

The victim was found with her hand round her own neck.

She had been arranged like that after she died.

The preliminary investigation had been conducted by the Södertälje Police District.

As she read, she remembered more details. Far too much had leaked to the press. The extreme level of brutality had been focused primarily on the victim’s face and upper body.

The dead woman had been found in her bathroom with her hand around her own throat.

The victim’s name was Rebecka Hansson. She had been wearing pyjama bottoms and a sweater, and according to the post-mortem she had not been subjected either to rape or attempted rape.

Margot’s heart is pounding in her chest as she finds the information about Rocky Kyrklund, a priest. She reads that an arrest warrant was issued for him in his absence, and he was subsequently apprehended in connection with a traffic accident. The forensic evidence against him was compelling. Rocky Kyrklund underwent a forensic psychiatric examination and was consigned to Karsudden District Hospital with specific restrictions placed on any parole application.

I’ve found the murderer, Margot thinks, and her hand is trembling as she reaches for the phone and calls Karsudden Hospital.

When she finds out that Rocky Kyrklund is locked up and that he has never been let out on licence, she demands an immediate meeting with the head of security.

Barely two hours later Margot is sitting in the office of the head of security, Neil Lindegren, in the gleaming white main building, discussing the security arrangements for Section D:4.

Neil is a thickset man with a fleshy forehead and neat, stubby hands. He leans back in his chair as he explains the secure perimeter fences, the alarm system, the airlock and passcards.

‘That all sounds very good,’ Margot says when Neil falls silent. ‘But the question is: could Rocky Kyrklund have managed to get out anyway?’

‘You’re welcome to meet him, if that would make you feel any better,’ he smiles.

‘You’re absolutely sure you’d have noticed if he escaped and came back the same day?’

‘No one’s escaped,’ Neil says.

‘But hypothetically,’ Margot goes on. ‘If he got out immediately after you did your round at eight o’clock – when would he have to be back today in order for his absence not to be noticed?’

Neil’s smile fades and his hands fall to his lap.

‘Today is Sunday,’ he says slowly. ‘He wouldn’t need to be back before five o’clock, but you know… the doors are locked and alarmed, and the whole area is covered by surveillance cameras.’