Stalker

95

When Joona gets back to his old room early the next morning, Margot is sitting behind her desk wearing a T-shirt with the text ‘Guys with trucks are not lesbians’. Her thick plait has almost come unravelled, she has dark rings under her eyes and deep lines around her mouth.

‘I’ve been to an emergency meeting of senior officers,’ she tells him, helping herself to a bag of sweets. ‘The regional police chief, Carlos, Annika from the National Police Board. The preliminary investigation is now top priority, we’re getting a lot more resources… A national alert has been issued, and they’re preparing for a press conference tomorrow.’

‘How’s Adam?’ Joona asks.

‘I don’t know, he’s been relieved of duty, doesn’t want to see a counsellor… he’s got his family round him, but…’

‘Terrible,’ Joona says.

Joona hopes Erik has taken his advice to destroy his phone immediately after their conversation.

During the large police and emergency services operation at Sofa Zone in Högdalen they had to charter a bus to take all the people they’d apprehended to the custody unit in Huddinge while they waited for a decision from the prosecutor about arrests. The high number of dead and injured were assumed to be the victims of a bloody power-struggle in the criminal underworld.

One of the men taken into custody for possession of narcotics was Rocky Kyrklund. He had eleven capsules each containing 250 milligrams of 30 per cent heroin hidden in his clothes.

‘We saw the murderer at the Zone. Erik followed him to Katryna,’ Joona says, leaning forward.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Erik didn’t do it,’ Joona says.

‘Joona,’ Margot sighs. ‘You can discuss this with me. I know the two of you are friends, but be careful when you see the others.’

‘They need to know that he’s innocent.’

‘You don’t want it to be Erik, but perhaps he’s been deceiving you,’ she says patiently.

‘I saw a man in a yellow raincoat at the Zone, and remembered what Filip Cronstedt said about yellow oilskins… Erik followed him, and ended up at Adam’s.’

‘So how do you explain the fact that he knew all the victims, including Katryna?’ Margot says, holding his gaze.

‘When did he meet her?’

‘She was with us one time when Adam and I were round at his,’ she replies. ‘And Susanna Kern worked at the Karolinska as a nurse, she was on a course where Erik was one of the lecturers… We’ve got security camera footage of him talking to her.’

Joona gestures with his hand as if to say that the information is irrelevant.

‘So why would Erik be known as the preacher?’ he asks.

‘He’s smart, he’s tricked you… he can make Rocky remember anything he wants him to.’

‘Why?’

‘Joona, I don’t know everything yet, but Erik has been close to the investigation, and has been hampering our progress… We’ve finally got a witness statement from Björn Kern and it’s very clear that Erik didn’t tell us that Susanna’s body was posed with her hand over her ear.’

‘Did he see that when he was hypnotised?’

‘Erik knew the information about the ear would lead us to Rocky, and then to him, and-’

‘That doesn’t make sense, Margot.’

‘And Erik visited Rocky at Karsudden a few days before I asked him to go.’

Joona’s eyes turn cold as ice as he puts his hand on the folder.

‘This isn’t evidence,’ he says. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘It’s enough to bring him into custody, and enough for a search warrant, enough for a national alert,’ she replies stiffly.

‘It sounds to me like he’s been conducting his own investigations, and the rest is just coincidence.’

‘He fits the perpetrator profile. He’s divorced, single, has a history of substance abuse, and-’

‘So have half the police force,’ Joona interrupts.

‘The murders are extremely voyeuristic… we know that Erik is obsessed with filming his patients, even under hypnosis, when they don’t know anything about it.’

‘That’s just to stop him having to take notes.’

‘But he’s got thousands of hours in his archive, and… and a stalker is almost always slow, methodical… The investment in time is part of the ownership process, part of the quasi-relationship that develops.’

‘Margot, I hear what you’re saying, but could you at least entertain the possibility that Erik is innocent?’ Joona asks.

‘That’s possible, certainly,’ she replies honestly.

‘In which case you also have to consider the possibility that we’re losing sight of the real murderer, the one we’re calling the preacher.’

She forces herself to look away from him and glances at the time.

‘The meeting’s about to start,’ she says, getting to her feet.

‘I can find the preacher if you want me to,’ Joona says.

‘We’ve already got him,’ she replies.

‘I need my gun, I need all the material, the reports from the crime scenes, the post-mortems.’

‘I really shouldn’t agree to that,’ she says, opening the door.

‘And can you arrange for me to see Rocky Kyrklund in prison?’ Joona asks.

‘You don’t give up, do you?’ she says with a smile.

They walk slowly along the corridor together. Margot stops Joona outside the meeting room.

‘Bear in mind that the people waiting in here are Adam’s colleagues,’ she says with her fingers on the door handle. ‘The tone of the meeting is likely to be pretty tough, they need to vent their anger. It’s their way of showing their support for him, and the force as a whole.’