Stalker

86

The fat man shouts at him to stop, but Erik carries on, weaving quickly between the sofas. The man yells at Joona to move out of the way. An armchair gets shoved backwards, making a scraping sound on the floor.

‘Pydään anteeksi,’ Joona says in Finnish, stopping him again.

The man brushes Joona’s hand away, steps back and pulls out a projectile taser.

‘Nyt se pian sattuu,’ Joona goes on with a smile.

He takes a step forward, sliding out of the line of fire, pushes the taser aside with his hand and kicks the man in the knee, making his leg buckle. The man gasps and two projectiles with spiral wires slam into the back of a sofa. Joona twists the taser out of the man’s hand and hits him in the collarbone with it, then wraps the wires round his neck and pulls. The man collapses to the floor, rolls over and tries to get up again. Joona forces him back down with his foot, winds the wires round his hand and pulls them tighter until the man loses consciousness and slumps to the floor.

Erik disappears through the bead curtain beside the stage.

The door of the staffroom at the other end of the room opens. A broad-shouldered man in a shiny jacket emerges with a phone to his ear, and looks round.

Joona sits down to stay out of sight, but knows he has to stop the man from going after Erik.

Rocky still has his eyes closed, but he’s now got a cigarette between his lips.

The prostitute with the studded collar pushes a used tissue between the cushions of a sofa and walks over to Joona in her high heels.

‘Shall we go to a room? I can show you a good time,’ she says, moving closer.

‘Stay out of the way,’ he replies abruptly.

She wipes her mouth and starts to walk towards the beaded curtain.

The man in the shiny jacket has seen Joona. He heads towards him, pushing a chair over as he approaches. Joona stands up and sees that the man is hiding a weapon by his hip, a high-calibre pistol with a short barrel.

The fat man is lying on his back, untangling the wires from his neck, coughing and trying to get up.

The man in the shiny jacket stops in front of Joona, with the flowery sofa between them, and screws a silencer on to his Sig Pro.

‘I’ll shoot you in both knees unless you come with me,’ he says.

Joona holds up one hand in a calming gesture and tries to back away, but the fat man on the floor grabs hold of his legs.

‘I didn’t know this was a private club,’ Joona says, trying to pull his legs free.

The armed man has finished fitting the silencer, raises the gun and squeezes the trigger. Joona throws himself aside, lands on his shoulder and hits his temple on the floor.

There’s no sound as the gun goes off, but the powder is hanging in the air, and a naked man behind Joona stands up with blood streaming from a bullet hole in his stomach. A woman screams and hurries to move away from him, and falls on all fours.

‘Time to die,’ the man with the gun pants, climbing up on to the sofa to see over the back of it.

Joona grabs hold of the toppled lamp and swings the heavy base in a semi-circle. It hits the man in the shoulder and he staggers to one side. The cable clatters on the floor as it snakes along behind. The man leans against the back of the sofa and Joona reaches him before he has time to fire, knocking the pistol aside and punching him squarely in the throat.

He grabs the warm barrel of the gun and feels a heavy blow to his cheek as he bends the weapon upwards.

The man recoils, clutching his throat. He can’t breathe and saliva is dribbling from his gaping mouth.

Joona takes a step back as he twists the gun round and shoots the man through his right lung.

The only sound is a sharp click, instead of a loud bang.

The empty shell bounces off the cement floor.

The man staggers, trying to cover the entry hole with his hand, coughs, then slumps back onto the sofa.

The fat man gets unsteadily to his feet with a knife in his hand. One of his shoulders is drooping and the taser is still dangling from the wires around his neck.

Joona moves away and glances quickly towards the bead curtain.

The man takes a couple of steps and jabs with the knife. Joona backs into a table as he feels the tip of the blade touch his jacket. He follows the knife as it moves, holds it aside with the pistol, twists his body and rams his right elbow into the man’s cheek with immense force. His head snaps sideways, spraying droplets of sweat in the direction of the blow. Joona moves with him, takes a long stride to keep his balance and feels a stab of pain from his hip.

As the man slumps unconscious to the floor, Joona moves out of the way and scans the room.

Very soon it will be impossible to get out. Crouching down, Joona moves towards the curtain with the pistol pointing at the floor.

The new customer who bought heroin from Anatoly is lying lifeless beside his sofa. His lips are grey and his eyes open.

Joona steps round a low glass table and sees the woman in the studded collar heading towards him between the sofas.

‘Take me away from here with you,’ she whispers, with a desperate look in her eyes. ‘Please, I’m begging you, I have to get away from here…’

‘Can you run?’

She smiles at him and then her head suddenly jerks. A cascade of blood squirts from her temple.

Joona spins round as a bullet slams into the back of the chair next to him and stuffing sprays out across the floor. The man with the grey moustache is approaching between two women with a raised pistol.

Smoke rising from the barrel.

Joona takes aim, lowers the barrel a couple of millimetres, then fires three times. It sounds like the gun isn’t loaded, but a cloud of blood explodes behind the man.

The man takes another two steps before collapsing on top of the two women, dropping his pistol and putting his hand out towards a footstool.

The woman in the studded collar is still standing. Blood is pumping from her temple and running down her body. She looks at Joona and her mouth opens as if she’s trying to speak.

‘I’ll get help,’ he says.

Bewildered, she touches her bloody hair, then falls sideways on to an armchair and curls up as if she wants to sleep.

In the distance a round-shouldered man is approaching at a crouch, using the sofas as cover. Joona runs the last part of the way. A bullet hits the wall beside him, throwing out a shower of plaster. He ducks through the curtain, tucks his gun close to his body and walks as fast as he can towards the passageway.

A fat man is dancing on the stage with his shirt outside his trousers.

There’s no sign of Erik, and Joona starts running as soon as he reaches the narrow corridor.

He can hear his pursuers behind him as he enters the changing room and quickly locks the door. Someone is in the shower, and the plastic tray creaks with their weight. Joona runs past two women standing in front of the make-up table.

In the kitchen a short man is frying frozen meatballs on the stove. He barely has time to snatch up a knife before Joona shoots him in the thigh.

The man falls to the floor and Joona hears him scream as he runs across the old cardboard boxes in the waste-storage room and emerges out of the back of the building. He runs round the warehouse as fast as he can, through tall weeds, then out through the gates, along a barbed-wire fence and round a van before he sees that Erik’s car has gone. He sets off at a limp towards Högdalsplan to alert the police and emergency services.