Stalker

87

There’s barely any traffic, and Erik is taking care to keep a safe distance between him and the car in front all the way through the industrial estate and up on to Älvsjövägen. The preacher is driving a blue Peugeot which is so dirty it’s impossible to see what the registration number is. Erik has no other plan beyond following it as long as he can without being seen.

The amber glow of the streetlights fills the car, then vanishes between the lampposts, like slow breathing.

Erik wonders if the preacher was at the Zone to buy drugs or to meet Rocky.

Concern about what has happened to Joona flutters in his chest. Erik didn’t look back, just did what he had to do: he left the room full of addicts, passed through the bead curtain and carried on through the crowd.

The heavy bass of the music grew louder as the beat was turned up and the throb of the music reached deep inside his body.

In the flickering light from the stage he suddenly caught sight of the yellow raincoat. The preacher was heading for the exit and Erik followed him. A woman tried to stop him, but he just shook his head and forced his way past.

No one gave him a second glance as he passed the search area and hurried on through the metal door and out onto the loading bay.

Joona seemed so sure of what he had said that the only thing on Erik’s mind was that he mustn’t lose the preacher now that they were so close.

The yellow oilskin glinted in the darkness over by the cars, and Erik followed as quickly as he could without being heard. The preacher walked out through the gates and stopped in front of the blue car.

He has now been following the red tail-lights for quarter of an hour, and keeps telling himself that he mustn’t let too much of a gap form. He speeds up a little on a long straight past a bare-grit football pitch and a school. The sparse lights of a large housing estate flicker through the greenery.

A night bus pulls out from a stop and Erik has to slow down. He loses sight of the preacher, puts his foot down and overtakes the bus on the wrong side of a central reservation.

A set of traffic lights ahead turns red. Erik speeds up, swerves and just makes it past the back of a car crossing his path.

It’s already too late, though, as he realises that the blue Peugeot has turned off to the right. He sees its lights flickering between the houses.

There’s no time to think if he isn’t to lose the preacher altogether.

Erik turns into the next road, and in the boot a bag of empty bottles for recycling falls over. He’s trying to double-guess the other car’s likely direction as he drives past lush gardens and dark houses.

He brakes and turns left, glancing the side of a letterbox and accelerating hard past a number of villas, then realises that there’s a dead end up ahead, beyond the next junction, and brakes hard, sending the tyres skidding across the tarmac, jerks the wheel and swerves sharply to the right.

The back wheels lose their grip and there’s a crash as the rear wing hits an electricity pole. The bottles in the boot shatter as Erik lurches out on to the main road again.

He accelerates hard up a hill, reaches the top and just manages to spot the preacher driving into the tunnel under the motorway bridge.

He slows down and feels his hands shaking on the steering wheel. The wing mirror has come loose again and is dangling from its wires.

Someone has sprayed the words ‘Another world is possible’ on the concrete walls of the tunnel.

Everything goes dark, then a moment later he emerges into an area of attractive four-storey buildings.

The blue Peugeot passes a bin lorry emptying dustbins with measured mechanical movements, and Erik wonders if the preacher lives here in Hökmossen.

Even though he has a reasonable grasp on reality, the idea of the preacher having an ordinary life seems incredible: a man who stabs knives into the faces of his victims long after they’re dead, then goes home to his lovely villa with apple trees and lawn-sprinklers and sits down to watch television with his family.

Erik follows the blue car as it turns right off Korpmossevägen and into Klensmedsvägen.

The preacher slows down and stops just after the third side-street.

Without changing his speed, Erik drives past the blue car and looks in the rear-view mirror as the light inside the car goes out. He passes a small patch of woodland, turns into the next road, stops and hurries back. The yellow raincoat is disappearing into the forest to the left of the road, and Erik stops on the pavement and realises how badly his legs are shaking.