The Nightmare

104

Axel feels nauseous. His eyes are drawn back to the photograph of Beverly.

Raphael dips his greasy fries into a pool of ketchup on his plate.

Axel looks up to see a young man standing in the doorway, watching them. He looks very tired and worried. He’s holding a cell phone.

“Peter!” Raphael calls jovially. “Come on in!”

“Please, no,” Peter answers in a gentle voice.

“That wasn’t a request.” Raphael smiles, but anger quirks his mouth.

The boy walks over and shyly says hello to Axel.

“This is my son.” Raphael introduces them as if they were at a normal dinner party.

“Hello,” Axel says in his usual friendly way.

One of the men from the helicopter is now standing next to the bar. He’s throwing peanut shells toward a happy, ragged dog. His gray hair looks like metal and his glasses flash white.

“Nuts make him sick,” Peter remonstrates weakly.

“When our dinner is through, could you bring out your violin?” asks Raphael in a suddenly tired voice. “Our guest is interested in music.”

Peter nods. He is very pale. There is a sheen of sweat on his face and the rings around his eyes are almost violet.

Axel makes an attempt to smile.

“What kind of violin do you have?”

Peter shrugs. “It’s much too good for me. It’s an Amati that belonged to my mother. She was a musician.”

“An Amati?”

“Which one do you think is best?” Raphael breaks in. “Amati or Stradivarius?”

“It depends on who’s playing it,” Axel replies.

“You’re Swedish,” Raphael says. “There are four violins made by Stradivarius that now reside in Sweden. None of them were played by Paganini, however, and I imagine-”

“I believe you,” Axel says.

“I collect stringed instruments that can still remember how-No.” He interrupts himself. “Let me reformulate that… If these instruments are handled properly, you are able to hear the longing and sadness of a lost soul.”

“I see,” Axel says noncommittally.

“I make sure people can hear that sorrow when we sign a contract.” Raphael smiles without joy. “We gather together, we listen to music, we hear that unique, sorrowful voice, and then we sign the contract. Just in the air. Our desires and our nightmares become part of the contract… I call it a Paganini contract.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” Raphael smiles. “It is a contract even beyond death. You can never be released from it. Even a man who turns to suicide must understand his worst nightmare will still come true. I own it, but he reaps his nightmare.”

“What do you want me to say?” Axel asks.

“I’m just saying… consider this contract to be unbreakable. And I… how should I put it?” he asks, hesitating. “It would not help my business if you mistook me for a kind man.”

Raphael goes over to the huge television mounted on the wall. He takes a shining DVD from a pocket in his shorts, removes the cover, slides it into the player. Peter perches on the edge of the sofa. He looks around from under his brows at the other men in the room. He has very pale coloring and is fine-limbed, with a sensitive face that seems to show every emotion. His build does not resemble the broad, compact body of his father at all.

The picture flickers on the screen and then gray streaks fill it. Axel feels a gut-wrenching fear as he watches three people walking out of the door of a brick family home. He recognizes two of them immediately: Detective Inspector Joona Linna and Saga Bauer. The third person is a woman with Latin American features.

Axel watches Joona Linna take out a cell phone and make a call. He doesn’t seem to get an answer. The three people have closed, stern expressions as they get into a car and drive away.

The camera moves shakily toward the door. It’s pushed open, light disappears, and then the automatic viewfinder adjusts to the darkness. Two large suitcases stand in the hallway. The camera moves along to the kitchen, then to the left and down some stairs, through a tiled hallway, and finally into a room with a swimming pool. One woman in a bathing suit is lounging in a poolside chair and another, her hair in a stylish pageboy, stands and talks into a phone.

The camera pulls stealthily back and waits for the phone call to end, hidden until she finishes. Then it moves forward again. Footsteps are heard, and the woman with the phone turns her tired, unhappy face toward the camera and stiffens. An expression of naked fear crosses her face.

“I don’t really want to see any more of this, Pappa,” the son says in his gentle voice.

“Now, now, it’s just getting started!” Raphael replies, and the boy doesn’t move.

The TV goes dark for a minute because the camera has been turned off. The picture returns a moment later, jiggles, and stabilizes as if the camera is now steady on a tripod. Both of the women are found sitting on the floor with their backs against the tiled wall. Pontus Salman faces them, sitting on a chair, but his body writhes and he breathes rapidly.

The time on the camera shows that the recording was made less than an hour ago. A man dressed in black with his face covered by a ski mask walks over to Veronique and forces her face toward the camera.

“Forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive me!” mocks Raphael in a squeaky voice from his seat on the sofa.

Axel looks at Raphael in amazement, just as Veronique Salman’s voice pipes up: “Forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive me!”

Her voice is shot through with terror.

“I had no idea!” mocks Raphael, and points at the television.

“I had no idea!” pleads Veronique. “I took the picture but I didn’t mean to harm anyone! I didn’t know how stupid I was being, I just thought that-”

“You have to choose,” the man in the ski mask says. “Who should I shoot in the knee? Your wife or your sister?”

“Please, don’t do this,” Pontus whispers.

“Who should I shoot?” the man repeats.

“My wife,” whispers Pontus. His voice is practically inaudible.

“Pontus, please!” His wife is pleading. “Please, don’t let him-”

Pontus begins to sob shrilly and piercingly.

“It’s going to hurt when I shoot her,” the man warns.

“Don’t let him shoot me!” screams Veronique, panicked.

“Do you want to change your mind? Should I shoot your sister instead?”

“No,” Pontus mumbles.

“Beg me to.”

“What did you say?” Pontus’s expression is that of a broken man.

“Beg me nicely to shoot her.”

There’s a moment of silence and then Axel Riessen hears Pontus say, “Please be so kind as to… shoot my wife in the knee.”

“I’ll do both her knees, since you’ve been so polite,” the man says, and places the barrel of his pistol against Veronique’s knee.

“Please don’t let him do this!” she screams. “Please, Pontus!”

The man shoots. A short bang is heard. Veronique’s leg jumps. Blood spatters over the tiles. Veronique screams so loudly her voice breaks. He shoots again. The recoil makes the gun jerk. The second knee is hit and bends at an impossible angle.

Veronique screams again, hoarse and distant. Her body spasms in pain and blood begins to pour over the tile floor beneath her.

Pontus Salman has started to vomit and the man in the ski mask watches him in a wondering, dreamy gaze.

Veronique pulls herself to one side, panting, and she’s trying to reach her injured legs with her hands. The woman next to her appears to be in shock. Her face has turned green and her eyes are nothing but big black holes.

“Your sister is mentally ill, right?” the man asks curiously. “Do you think she even realizes what’s going on?”

He pats Pontus on the head comfortingly. Then he says, “Do you want me to rape your sister or shoot your wife again?”

Pontus doesn’t answer. His eyes are rolling backward. The man slaps him across the face.

“Answer me! You want me to shoot your wife again or rape your sister?”

Pontus Salman’s sister shakes her head.

“Rape her!” whispers Veronique between heavy breaths. “Please, please, Pontus. Tell him to rape her instead.”

“Rape her,” Pontus whispers.

“I didn’t hear you!”

“Rape my sister!”

“All right. Soon enough,” the man says.

Axel looks down at the floor between his feet. He’s trying to close his ears to the wailing and the prayers and the raw, horrific screams. He tries to fill his mind with the music of Bach, tries to reach for spaces within his music, spaces filled with light and heavenly rays.

Finally there is no more sound. Axel looks up at the television. The women are both lying dead against the wall. He sees the man in the ski mask stand, panting, with a bloody knife in one hand and a gun in the other.

“You’ve reaped your nightmare-you may kill yourself now,” the man says, and throws the pistol down at Pontus’s feet as he walks out of the frame and around the camera.