The Hypnotist

Chapter 64

Erik Maria Bark is sitting at the desk in his office. A pale light finds its way in through the window that faces the empty inner courtyard. A take-away container holds the remains of a salad, and a warm two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola sits next to the desk lamp with its pink shade. Erik is studying a printout of the photo Aida sent to Benjamin. Despite having looked at it dozens of times, he cannot grasp what the subject of the picture really is.

He considers calling Simone and having her read out Aida’s message and Benjamin’s reply word for word, but then tells himself that Simone doesn’t need to hear from him at this point. He can’t understand why he was so nasty, why he told her he was having an affair with Daniella. Perhaps it was only because he longed to be forgiven by Simone while she found it so easy to distrust him.

Suddenly he hears Benjamin’s voice in his mind once again, calling from the boot of the car. Erik takes a pink capsule out of the wooden box and washes it down with the Coke. His hand has started to shake so much that he has difficulty replacing the bottle on the desk.

Benjamin was trying so hard to be grown up, not to sound afraid. But the boy must be terrified, thinks Erik, shut in the boot of a car in the dark.

How long can it take for Kennet to trace the call? Erik is irritated with himself for handing the job over to the old man, but if his father-in-law can find Benjamin, nothing else is of any importance.

He picks up the phone. He needs to call the police and get them to hurry it up. He must find out if they’ve traced the call, if they have any suspects yet. When he calls and explains why he’s calling, he’s put through to the wrong extension. He has to call again. He’s hoping to speak to Joona Linna but is put through to a detective named Fredrik Stensund, who confirms that he is involved in the preliminary investigation into the disappearance of Benjamin Bark. He is very understanding and says he has teenage children himself.

“You worry all night when they’re out, you know you have to let go, but- ”

“Benjamin is not out partying,” Erik says firmly.

“No, we have had certain information which contradicts- ”

“He’s been kidnapped.”

“I understand how you must be feeling- ”

“But the search for my son is obviously not a priority,” Erik retorts.

There is a silence; Stensund takes several deep breaths before continuing. “I am taking what you say very seriously, and I can promise you that we are doing our best.”

“Make sure you trace the call, then,” says Erik.

“We’re working on that right now,” replies Stensund, sounding less amenable.

“Please,” Erik begs, a weak conclusion.

He sits there with the phone in his hand. They have to trace the call, he thinks. We have to have a location, a circle on a map, a direction; that’s all we have to go on. The only thing Benjamin could say was that he heard a voice.

As if it were coming from under a blanket, thinks Erik, but he isn’t sure if he’s remembering correctly. Did Benjamin really say he’d heard a voice, a mushy voice? Perhaps it was just a murmur, a sound that reminded him of a voice, without words, without meaning. Erik rubs a hand over his mouth, looks at the photograph, his eyes sweeping across the overgrown grass, the hedge, the back of the fence, the plastic basket, all enhanced, distorted by the photographer’s powerful flash. He can’t see anything new. What’s in that basket? When he leans back and closes his eyes, the image remains: the hedge and the brown fence flash in shades of pink and the yellowish-green hillock is dark blue, slowly drifting. Like a piece of fabric against a night sky, Erik thinks, and at the same moment he realizes that Benjamin told him that the mushy voice had said something about a house, a haunted house.

He opens his eyes and gets to his feet. How could he have forgotten? That was what Benjamin said before the car stopped.

As he pulls on his coat he tries to remember where he has seen haunted houses, the kind you see in horror films. There aren’t that many. He recalls one north of Stockholm, over the ridge, past the collective, down to Lake Mälaren. Before you reach the ship mound at Runsa stronghold, the building is on the left-hand side, facing the water. A kind of miniature castle built of wood, with towers, verandas, and over-the-top ornamentation.

Erik leaves his office and walks quickly along the corridor, trying to remember the trip. Benjamin had been in the car with them. They had looked at the ship barrow, one of the largest Viking burial sites in Sweden. They stood in the middle of the ellipse, large grey stones in green grass. It was late summer and very hot. Erik remembers the stillness of the air and the butterflies fluttering over the gravel in the parking lot as they got into the hot car and set off for home with the windows down.

In the lift down to his car, Erik remembers that after a few miles he pulled over to the side of the road, stopped, pointed at the building, and jokingly asked Benjamin if he would like to live there.

“Where?”

“In the haunted house,” he had said, but he no longer recalls Benjamin’s response.

The sun is already setting; the slanting light flashes on the frozen puddles in the neurological unit visitors’ car park, and the gravel on the asphalt crunches under his tyres as he heads for the main exit. Erik realizes it is unlikely that Benjamin was referring to this particular haunted house, but it isn’t impossible. He heads north as dwindling light blurs the contours of the world and blinks to help himself see better. Only when the shades of blue begin to dominate does his brain understand that it is actually getting dark.

Half an hour later he is approaching the haunted house. He has tried to get hold of Kennet four times to see if he has managed to trace Benjamin’s call, but Kennet has not answered his phone and Erik has not left a message.

Above the vast lake the sky still retains a faint glow, while the forest is completely black. He drives slowly along the narrow road into the small community that has gradually grown up around the water. The headlights pick out spanking new homes, small summer cottages, and comfortable houses from the turn of the century. Rounding a curve, they sweep across a tricycle left behind in a driveway. He slows down and sees the silhouette of the haunted house behind a tall hedge. He drives past a few more houses and then parks on the side of the road. Getting out of the car, he sets off back down the road on foot; as quietly as possible he opens the garden gate of a house made of dark brick, padding across the lawn and around the back. A cable is whipping against a flagpole. Erik climbs over the fence into the next garden and walks past a swimming pool with a creaking plastic cover. The big windows of the low villa facing the lake are in darkness, and the stone terrace is covered with sodden leaves. Erik speeds up; he senses the haunted house on the other side of the fir hedge and pushes his way through.

This garden is better protected from prying eyes, he thinks.

A car passes by along the road, the headlights picking out a few trees, and Erik thinks about Aida’s strange photograph. The yellow grass and the bushes. He moves closer to the big wooden building and notices that it looks as if a blue fire is burning in one of the rooms.