The Hypnotist

Chapter 109

Benjamin had just scrambled up onto the roof of the bus when he’d heard the second shot. He’d slipped and almost fallen into the water. At the same moment he had seen Simone in the darkness on the edge of the huge hole in the ice. She’d yelled to him that the bus was sinking and he had to get onto the ice. Spotting the orange life belt bobbing in the black water behind the bus, he’d jumped, grabbed hold of it, slipped it over his arms, and kicked toward the edge of the ice, even as he’d felt his legs growing numb. Lying flat on the ice, Simone had reached out toward the freezing water to find his hand and pulled him out, then dragged him a little way from the edge. She’d taken off her jacket and wrapped it around him, hugging him and telling him that a helicopter was on the way.

Benjamin sobbed. “Dad’s still in there!”

The bus had sunk quickly, disappearing beneath the surface with a groan, and they had been left in darkness. They could hear the splash of the churned-up water and the clucking of huge air bubbles, the sheets of ice shifting back into place. Simone held Benjamin tightly, shivering, trying to keep from screaming. All of a sudden, he had been yanked out of her arms. He’d tried to get up but had slipped and fallen. The line attached to the life belt lay taut across the ice, running down into the water, and Benjamin was being pulled towards the hole in the ice. He was struggling, sliding on his bare feet, and screaming. Simone had grabbed hold of him, and together they slithered inexorably toward the edge.

“It’s Dad!” Benjamin had suddenly shouted. “He had the rope around his waist!”

Simone’s face suddenly became hard and resolute. She grabbed hold of the life belt, hooked both arms through it, and dug in her heels. Benjamin grimaced with pain as they edged closer and closer to the water. The line was so tight it made a singing sound as it scraped over the edge of the ice, like a bow being drawn across the taut string of a violin. Then suddenly the tug-of-war shifted: it was still hard work, but they were able to move backwards, step by step, away from the water. And then there was almost no resistance at all. They hauled Erik up through the opening in the roof, and now he floated free of the doomed vehicle. A few seconds later, Simone was able to drag him up onto the ice. He lay there face down, coughing and breathing hard as a red stain spread beneath him.

When the police and paramedics arrived at Jussi’s house, they found Joona lying in the snow with a provisional pressure bandage around his thigh, his gun trained on a bellowing, handcuffed Marek. Jussi’s frozen corpse lay at the bottom of the porch steps with an axe in the chest. One survivor was found in the house: Annbritt had been hiding in the wardrobe in the bedroom. She was covered in blood, curled up behind the clothes like a child. The paramedics carried her out to the helicopter on a stretcher and gave her emergency treatment during the flight.

Two days later, Mountain Rescue divers went down into the lake to recover Lydia’s body. The bus stood solidly on its six wheels at a depth of two hundred feet, as if it had just stopped to pick up some passengers. One diver entered through the front door and shone his torch around the empty seats. The gun was on the floor at the back of the aisle. It was only when he directed the beam upward that the diver saw Lydia. She lay with her back pressed against the ceiling of the bus, her arms dangling down and her neck bowed. The skin on her face had already begun to loosen and come away. Her hennaed hair billowed gently with the movement of the water, her mouth was calm, her eyes were closed as if she was asleep.

Benjamin had no idea where he had been for the first few days after the kidnapping. Possibly, Lydia had kept him at her house or at Marek’s, but he had been so dazed from the sedative with which he had been injected that he hadn’t really grasped what was going on. He might have been given further injections as he started to come round. Those first days were simply dark and lost.

It was in the car heading north that he had regained consciousness and found his mobile still around his neck. It was night when they’d taken him; it wouldn’t have occurred to them he would have one. Although he’d managed to call Erik, they’d heard his voice and the phone had been confiscated.

Then came a series of long, terrible days. Erik and Simone only managed to coax fragments from him. All they really knew was that he had been forced to lie on the floor of Jussi’s house with a dog collar and leash around his neck. Judging by his condition when he was admitted to the hospital, he had been given nothing to eat or drink for several days. He had managed to get away with the help of Jussi and Annbritt, he told them, then fell silent. Eventually he was able to explain how Jussi had saved him when he was trying to call home, and the terrible price he had paid for it; how Annbrit had attacked Lydia to allow him a chance to escape, and that he had heard Annbritt screaming as Lydia cut off her nose. Benjamin had hidden by crawling through an open window of one of the snow-covered buses. There he’d found some rugs and a mouldy blanket, which probably saved him from freezing to death. He’d curled up on a passenger seat and fallen asleep. He had been awakened a few hours later by the sound of his parents’ voices.

“I didn’t know I was alive,” whispered Benjamin.

Then he’d heard Marek threaten his parents. And he realized he was staring at a key in the ignition of the bus, and without even thinking, he’d clambered over the seat and turned it. And the headlights had come on, and the engine had roared furiously as he headed for the spot where he thought Marek was.

Benjamin stopped speaking, a few fat tears caught in his eyelashes.