The Hypnotist

Chapter 95

The psychiatric clinic at Ulleråker is one of a very few still in operation in Sweden, the result of huge cuts in allocations for psychiatric care that took place in the 1990s. A complex of pale buildings set amid dark groves of trees, fields, and gardens once tended by patients, and with its own cemetery, the hospital is a world unto itself. Joona passes through an old-fashioned porte-cochère at the entrance and pulls up before the main building, an elegant old structure topped by a clock tower set directly in the centre of the complex.

Anja has done a good job as usual. When Joona walks in through the main entrance, he can see from the expression of the girl on reception that he is expected.

“Joona Linna?”

He nods and shows his ID.

“Dr. Langfeldt is waiting for you. Up the stairs, first room on the right along the hall.”

Joona thanks her and begins to climb the wide stone staircase. He can hear thuds, shouts, the sound of a television coming from somewhere in the distance. There is a smell of cigarette smoke. Outside, the clinic is surrounded by an ornamental garden that resembles a churchyard, the bushes blackened and bowed down by the rain, trellises damaged by dampness with spindly climbers clinging to them. It looks gloomy, Joona thinks. A place like this isn’t really aimed at recovery, it’s a place for containment. He reaches the landing and looks around. To the left, through a glass door, is a long, narrow corridor. He wonders briefly where he has seen it before, then realizes it’s an almost identical copy of the holding cells at Kronoberg: rows of locked doors with metal handles. An elderly woman in a long dress emerges from one of the doors. She stares at him through the glass. Joona nods to her, then opens the door leading to the other corridor. It smells strongly of bleach and antiseptic.

Dr. Langfeldt is already waiting.

“Police?” he asks rhetorically, holding out a broad, meaty hand. His handshake is surprisingly soft, perhaps the softest Joona has ever felt, and his expression gives nothing away as he says with a minimal gesture, “Please come in.”

The office is large but almost entirely functional. Heavy bookshelves filled with identical files cover the walls. There are no paintings or photographs; the room is entirely free of ornamentation. The only picture is what appears to be a child’s drawing in green and white chalk pinned to the door; a round face with eyes, nose, and mouth, legs and arms attached directly to it. Children of about three tend to draw adults in this way. This can be seen either as an indication that the figure has no body or that the head itself is the body.

Dr. Langfeldt goes over to his desk, which is almost entirely covered in piles of paper. He moves an old rotary telephone off the visitor’s chair and makes another small gesture in Joona’s direction; Joona interprets this as an invitation to sit down.

The doctor regards him thoughtfully; his face is heavy and furrowed, and there is something lifeless about his features, almost as if he is suffering from some kind of facial paralysis.

“Thank you for taking the time- ” Joona begins.

“I know what you want to see me about,” the doctor says. “You want information about Lydia Everson. My patient.”

Joona opens his mouth, but the doctor holds up a hand to stop him.

“I presume you’ve heard of professional security and the confidentiality of information relating to patient records,” Langfeldt continues. “In addition- ”

“I’m familiar with the law,” Joona interjects. “If the crime under investigation would lead to more than two years’ imprisonment on conviction, then- ”

“Yes, yes,” says Langfeldt. The doctor turns his peculiar dead gaze on him.

“I can of course bring you in for questioning,” Joona says softly. “The prosecutor is currently preparing a warrant for Lydia Everson’s arrest. We will then request her patient notes, obviously.”

Dr. Langfeldt taps his fingers against one another and licks his lips. “It’s just…” he says, “I just want…” He pauses. “I just want a guarantee.”

“A guarantee?”

Langfeldt nods. “I want my name kept out of this business.”

Joona meets Langfeldt’s eyes and suddenly realizes that the lifeless expression is in fact suppressed fear.

“I can’t make that promise,” he says harshly.

“If I plead with you?”

“I’m a stubborn man,” Joona explains.

The doctor leans back, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly. It’s the only sign of nerves or any other kind of vitality he has shown so far. “What is it you want to know?” he asks.

Joona leans forward. “Everything. I want to know everything.”

An hour later, Joona leaves the doctor’s office. He glances down the corridor opposite in passing, but the woman in the long dress has disappeared, and as he hurries down the stone staircase he notices that it’s now completely dark. It’s impossible to see the park and the trellises any longer. Downstairs, the girl on reception has evidently finished for the day. The desk is vacant, its surface cleared, and the office door is locked. Nothing but silence, although Joona knows that the unit houses hundreds of patients.

He shivers as he gets into his car and pulls out of the parking lot. Something is bothering him, something he can’t put his finger on. He tries to remember the point at which the feeling began.

The doctor had taken out a file, identical to the other files filling the shelves. He had tapped it gently on the front and said, “Here she is.”

The photograph of Lydia showed quite a pretty woman with medium-length hennaed hair and a strange, smiling expression: rage seething beneath an appealing surface.

The first time Lydia had been admitted for treatment was when she was ten years old, after she had killed her younger brother, Kasper. She had smashed in his skull one Sunday with a block of wood. She had told the doctor that her mother was forcing her to raise her brother. Kasper had been Lydia’s responsibility when her mother was at work or sleeping, and it was her job to discipline him.

Lydia was taken into care; her mother was sent to prison for child abuse. Kasper Everson was three years old when he died.

“Lydia lost her family,” Joona whispers, switching on the windscreen wipers as a bus coming the other way drenches his car.

Dr. Langfeldt had treated Lydia only with powerful psychopharmaceuticals; she was not offered any kind of therapy. He felt that the killing had been committed under severe pressure from her mother. With his agreement, Lydia was placed in an open residential facility for young offenders. When she turned eighteen, she moved back to her old home and lived there with a boy she had met at the residential facility, disappearing from the records.

Five years later she turned up again, this time having been admitted to a secure psychiatric unit. Lydia had gone to a playground and picked out a boy of about five, lured him to an isolated area, and hit him. She repeated this behaviour several times before she was caught. The last incident had resulted in life-threatening injuries to the child.

Dr. Langfeldt met her for the second time, and she became his patient in a unit from which she could be discharged only with the permission of the courts.

“Lydia remained in the secure unit at Ulleråker for six years. She was under treatment throughout,” Langfeldt explained. “She was an exemplary patient. The only problem was that she constantly formed alliances with other inmates. She created groups around her, groups from whom she demanded unswerving loyalty.”

She was making her own family, Joona thinks, as he turns off toward Fridhemsplan. He suddenly remembers the staff Christmas party at Skansen and considers pretending that he forgot about it, but he knows he owes it to Anja to appear.

Langfeldt had closed his eyes and massaged his temples as he went on. “After six years without incident, Lydia was allowed to begin spending periods away from the secure unit.”

“No incidents at all?” asked Joona.

Langfeldt thought about it. “There was one thing, but it was never proven.”

“What was it?”

“A patient’s face was injured. She maintained she’d cut her own face, but the rumour was that Lydia Everson had done it. As far as I recall it was only gossip; there was nothing to it.”

Joona nodded, blank-faced. “Go on,” he said.

“She was allowed to move back to the family home. She was still under outpatient treatment, but she was looking after herself, and there was absolutely no reason,” said the doctor, “to doubt her assertion that she wanted to get better. After two years it was time for Lydia to complete her treatment. She chose a form of therapy that was very fashionable at the time. She joined a hypnosis group with- ”

“Erik Maria Bark,” Joona supplied.

Langfeldt nodded. “It seems as if the hypnosis didn’t do Lydia much good,” he said superciliously. “She ended up trying to commit suicide and came back to me for the third time.”

“Did she tell you about her breakdown?”

Langfeldt shook his head. “As I understand it, the whole thing was the fault of that hypnotist.”

“Are you aware that she told Dr. Bark she had a son named Kasper? That she told him she had imprisoned her son?” Joona asked sharply.

Langfeldt shrugged his shoulders. “I did hear that, but I presume a hypnotist can get people to admit to just about anything.”

“So you didn’t take her confession seriously?”

Langfeldt smiled thinly. “She was a wreck. It was impossible even to hold a conversation with her. I had to give her electroconvulsive therapy, heavy antipsychotic drugs- it was a major task to get her back together on any level.”

“So you didn’t even try to investigate whether there was any basis to her confession?”

“My assessment was that such statements arose from her feelings of guilt over having murdered her brother as a child,” Langfeldt replied sternly.

“When did you let her out?” Joona asked.

“Two months ago. She was definitely well.”

Joona stood up, and his gaze fell on the only picture in Dr. Langfeldt’s room, the childish drawing on the door. “That’s you,” said Joona, pointing at it. A walking head, he thought. Just a brain, no heart.