Stalker

69

Erik’s mouth is completely dry as he sits in the meeting room and stares at the large colour photograph. It’s a recent picture, and he can see that Sandra is struggling to look happy. The light is reflecting off her glasses, but her green eyes are clearly visible. Her dark blonde hair is slightly longer, settling on her shoulders.

‘God,’ he repeats. ‘She was in a car accident… her boyfriend was killed and… We were a bit late starting her treatment… she was very badly depressed, survivor’s guilt, kept having panic attacks…’

‘She was your patient?’ Margot says slowly.

‘To start with… but one of my colleagues took over.’

‘Why?’

He forces himself to tear his eyes from Sandra Lundgren’s symmetrical face and looks up at Margot again.

‘That often happens,’ he tries to explain. ‘It’s to do with different stages of the treatment.’

He turns over the next photograph and his heart starts beating faster when he sees Maria Carlsson. He recognises her too. Before he met Jackie, he had a brief fling with Maria. She used to go to the same gym as him, they started walking to the bus stop together, went to the cinema, and slept together once. He remembers her pierced tongue, and the hoarse laugh he found so attractive.

A sudden lump of discomfort makes it hard for him to breathe and he knows that if he hadn’t taken a Mogadon earlier his hands would be shaking and he wouldn’t be able to hide how upset he is.

‘I… I think I’ve seen her too, at the gym… This feels a bit creepy,’ he says, and tries to smile at Margot.

‘Which gym do you go to?’ Adam asks, taking out a notebook.

‘SATS, on Mäster Samuelsgatan,’ he replies, and swallows hard, but the lump of anxiety keeps growing.

Adam looks at him with a blank expression.

‘And you’d seen her there?’ he says, pointing at the picture of Maria Carlsson.

‘I’ve got a good memory for faces,’ Erik says hollowly.

‘It’s a small world,’ Margot says, without taking her eyes off him.

‘Have you met Susanna Kern as well?’ Adam asks, reaching for the last photograph.

‘No,’ Erik laughs.

But when Adam turns the picture he’s sure he’s seen her before somewhere. He doesn’t know where. The name Susanna Kern meant nothing to him when he heard it, but he recognises her face.

Erik shakes his head and tries to make sense of this. He was brought in to talk to her husband after her murder. He hypnotised Björn Kern and went with him into his memories of the blood-soaked villa, but he never saw a picture of her.

‘Are you sure?’ Adam says, holding up the photograph.

‘Yes,’ Erik replies.

The picture of Susanna smiling folds back over Adam’s hand. Erik takes it and looks at her face, then shakes his head as his mind races and the room shrinks around him.

He realises that he’s on the verge of a panic attack. His mouth is getting drier, and he slowly puts both hands on his lap to stop them shaking.

‘Tell me about… about the perpetrator profile,’ Erik says in a voice that sounds like it belongs to someone else.

He forces himself to sit still while they explain that the evidence suggests that the perpetrator is divorced, with a relatively high socioeconomic status.

He tries to concentrate on what they’re saying, but his heart is pounding and thoughts are racing through his head in an attempt to find some sort of pattern, some sort of sense.

How is this possible? he asks himself, trying to see any kind of system in this. He had a brief affair with Maria Carlsson, Sandra Lundgren was his patient, and he knows he’s met Susanna Kern.

Three pictures of three women he’s met.

It’s like a recurring dream; he can’t work out what it is that he recognises in this terrible situation. Across the table Margot picks up her ringing mobile. Adam stands and walks over to the window. Someone’s left a coffee cup on the windowsill.

Suddenly Erik realises that the feeling of similarity is to do with Rocky.

During hypnosis Rocky described how the unclean preacher had shown pictures of Tina and Rebecka.

Rocky had blamed himself, bellowing with pain and repeating words from the Bible: I should pluck out my eye, for it has offended me.

And now he’s lied to the police again. It felt impossible to say that he’d met all three of them.

When Erik feels he can control his voice and body, he stands up.

‘I have to go, I’ve got an appointment with a patient now,’ he says quietly.

‘When can you next talk to Rocky?’ Margot asks, looking at him.

‘Tomorrow, I think.’

‘Don’t forget the pictures,’ Adam reminds him, passing them to him.

As Erik reaches out his hand to take the photographs from Adam he sways slightly, as it strikes him that he’s a mirror-image of Rocky. Damnation brushes past him like a wind presaging a storm, and for a moment he sees himself gazing out through the six-metre-high fence surrounding the exercise yard at Karsudden.