Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (120 page)

She remembers that Dr Saxéus assured her that things would go well.

I’ve had a long talk with your father
, the doctor had said.
He really wants you to come home.

Beverly is now walking across a dusty square. She pictures herself as she was two years ago: vomiting on the square because some boys had forced her to drink illegal booze. They’d taken shameful pictures of her and then dropped her off on the square. Her pappa did not want her at home after that incident.

She keeps walking. Her stomach ties in knots when she sees the country road open before her. The road leads to her farm three kilometres away. Cars used to pick her up on this road. Now she doesn’t remember why she would agree to go with them. She’d imagined she had seen something in their eyes: a special shine.

Beverly shifts her heavy suitcase to her other hand.

Down the road, dust flies up from an approaching car.

She thinks,
I know that car.

She smiles and waves.

Pappa is coming! Pappa is coming!

Roslags-Kulla is a small church made of reddish wood. But it has a tall, beautiful clock tower. The church is in the quiet countryside near the Vira factory, just a bit further away than the heavily trafficked roads in the Österåker district. The sky is clear and blue and the air is clean. The wind blows the scent of wildflowers over the peaceful cemetery by the church.

Yesterday Björn Almskog was buried at Norra Cemetery, and today four men in black suits are carrying Viola Maria Liselott Fernandez’s coffin to her final resting place. Following the pallbearers, two uncles and two cousins from El Salvador, Penelope Fernandez and her mother, Claudia, walk with the priest.

They gather around the open grave. One of the cousin’s children, a girl of about nine, looks at her father questioningly. When he nods to her, she lifts up her recorder and begins to play Hymn 97 while the coffin is lowered into the ground.

Penelope Fernandez holds her mother’s hand while the priest reads a passage from the book of Revelation.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death.

Claudia looks at Penelope and straightens her collar. She pats her cheek as if Penelope were still a small child.

As they return to their cars, Penelope’s phone buzzes. It’s Joona Linna. Penelope disengages her hand from her mother’s and walks to the shade underneath the large trees to talk in private.

“Hello, Penelope,” Joona says in his characteristic voice, singsong but serious.

“Hello, Joona,” Penelope replies.

“I thought you would want to know that Raphael Guidi is dead.”

“And the ammunition to Darfur?”

“We’ve stopped the shipment.”

“That’s good.”

Penelope looks around at her relatives and friends; her mother, who stands where she left her. Her mother, who won’t let her out of her sight.

“Thanks,” she says.

She goes back to her mother who watches her anxiously. She takes her mother’s hand again, smiles, and they walk together to the cars. She stops and turns round. For a second she’d thought she heard her sister’s voice right beside her. She shivers and a shadow passes over the neatly mown grass. Her young cousin with the recorder is standing between the gravestones looking at her. Her hairband has slipped free and her hair is loose in the summer breeze.

These summer days never end: the nights glow like mother-of-pearl until dawn.

The National Police Board is having a party for employees near Drottningholm Palace.

Joona Linna sits with his colleagues at a long table beneath a big tree.

In front of a Falun-red dance platform, a band dressed in white suits is playing the traditional Swedish folk song “Hårgalåten.”

Petter Näslund is dancing the
slängpolska
with Fatima Zanjani from Iraq. He’s saying something and laughter lights up her face. Whatever he’s saying, he seems to be making Fatima very happy.

The song is about a time when the Devil came to play the violin. He played so well that the young people never wanted to stop dancing. Finally they were so exhausted, they started to weep. Their shoes wore out, their feet wore out, and soon only their heads were left hopping to the Devil’s music.

Anja is nearby on a camp chair. She wears a flower-patterned blue dress and stares morosely at the dancing couples. However, when she sees Joona get up from the table, her round face flushes.

“Happy summer, Anja,” he says.

Saga Bauer is dancing over the grass between the trees. She’s chasing soap bubbles with Magdalena Ronander’s twins. Her flowing blond hair with its entwined coloured ribbons shines in the sun. Two middle-aged women pause to admire her.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says the leader of the band after the applause dies down. “We have a special request.”

Carlos Eliasson smiles and looks at someone behind the stage.

The singer smiles. “I have my roots in Oulu, and I am going to sing a special Finnish song for you. It’s a tango called ‘Satumaa.’?”

Magdalena Ronander is wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair as she heads towards Joona and tries to catch his eye. Anja stares at her feet. The band starts playing the tango.

Joona has already turned to Anja and he bows slightly. He asks quietly, “May I have the honour?”

Anja’s face, and even her neck, blushes bright red. She looks up at him and nods seriously.

“Yes, yes you may.”

She puts her fingers on Joona’s arm and throws a proud glance at Magdalena. She steps onto the dance platform with her head high.

Anja concentrates on her steps at first, a furrow on her brow, but soon she relaxes and her face is calm and happy. She had fashioned an elaborate arrangement of her hair on the back of her neck, even sprayed it heavily to keep it in place, but now it looks just right. She follows Joona’s lead, and her steps become lighter and lighter.

As the sentimental song nears its end, Joona feels a nip on his shoulder, which doesn’t hurt.

Anja gives him another nip, a bit harder, and he feels forced to ask, “What are you doing?”

Her eyes are shining brightly like glass.

“I just felt like it,” she says honestly. “I wanted to see what would happen. You never know unless you try …”

At that moment, the music ends. Joona releases her and thanks her for the dance. Before he can escort her away, Carlos hurries over and asks Anja for the next dance.

Joona steps to one side and watches his colleagues dance, and others, dressed in summer white, gather on picnic blankets, eating and drinking happily. He decides to head to his car.

Reaching the car park, Joona Linna opens the door to his Volvo. In the backseat, there’s a huge bouquet waiting, wrapped in gift paper. Joona climbs into the car and phones Disa. The call goes to voice mail.

Disa sits in front of her computer. She’s in her apartment on Karlaplan. She’s wearing her reading glasses and has a throw draped over her shoulders. Her mobile phone is on her desk next to a cup of cold coffee and a partially eaten cinnamon bun.

The photo of a worn cairn of stones in the middle of a green meadow is on her screen. The stones mark a mass grave of cholera victims near Skanstull in Stockholm.

She’s tapping notes into a document on her computer. She stretches her back and lifts her coffee mug halfway to her lips and then thinks better of it. She gets up to brew a new pot of coffee when the telephone on the desk buzzes.

Without reading the name of the caller, she shuts it off. She stands by the window, looking out. She sees dust dancing in the sunlight. Disa feels a tightness in her throat. She sits back down at her computer. She intends never to speak to Joona Linna again.

There’s a festive feeling in the air as Midsummer draws near. The traffic is light on Tegnérgatan as Joona slowly walks along. He’s stopped trying to reach Disa. She’s turned off her phone and it’s obvious she wants to be left alone. Joona passes the Blue Tower and then turns down Drottninggatan, which is lined with antique stores and small shops. At the new occult bookstore Aquarius, an old woman pretends to admire the display. As Joona passes by, she gestures towards the glass and then begins to follow him.

It takes a few moments for him to realise that he’s being followed.

He stops at the black fence by Adolf Fredrik Church and turns around. The woman is ten metres behind him. She’s about eighty years old. She peers at him and holds out a card.

“This is you, isn’t it?” she says as she shows it. “And here is the crown, the bridal crown.” She holds out another.

Joona walks over to her and takes the cards from her hand. They’re playing cards from one of the oldest card games in all of Europe, tarokt.

“What do you want from me?” Joona asks calmly.

“Nothing at all,” says the old woman. “But I have a message for you from Rosa Bergman.”

“You must be mistaken. I don’t know anyone by—”

“She’s wondering why you pretend that your daughter is dead.”

It’s early autumn in Copenhagen. The air is clear and cool when a group of men, discreetly transported in four separate limousines, arrives at the Glyptotek Museum. The men walk up the stairs and enter. They walk past the fruitful winter garden beneath its high glass ceiling. Their footsteps echo on the stone hallway floor as they pass antique sculptures and enter the magnificent concert hall.

The audience is already seated. The Tokyo String Quartet is in its place on the low stage. The musicians hold their legendary Stradivarius instruments, the ones once played by Niccolò Paganini himself.

The four late-arriving guests find their seats around a table in the colonnades to one side of the hall. The youngest is still almost a boy, a fine-limbed blond man whose name is Peter Guidi. The other men wear expressions that are determined but also one step from fear; they are prepared to enslave themselves. They are all soon going to kiss his hand.

The musicians nod to one another and start to perform the Schubert String Quartet no. 14. It begins with great pathos, a deep emotion held in check, a power restrained. A violin calls, painfully and beautifully. The music takes a breath one last time and then it all pours out. The melody seems happy, but the instruments have, at the same time, an underlying tone of sorrow as if it were breath left behind from many lost souls.

Every single day, thirty-nine million bullets are made. Worldwide military spending, at the lowest estimate, is $1,226 trillion a year. In spite of the fact that enormous amounts of armaments are manufactured, the demand never lessens and it is impossible to estimate the volume. The nine largest exporters of weapons in the world are the United States, Russia, Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and China.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Blue Door

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Blue Door 2012

Copyright © Lars Kepler 2010

Translation copyright © Laura A. Wideburg 2012

All rights reserved

Originally published in 2010 by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Sweden, as
Paganinikontraktet

Lars Kepler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EPub Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007488087

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following previously published material: “Starman,” “Life on Mars,” and “Ziggy Stardust,” written by David Bowie, reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation and Tintoretto Music admin. by RZO Music, Inc.; Pablo Neruda, “Soneto XLV,”
Cien sonetos de amor
, © Fundación Pablo Neruda, 2012

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

ELISABET GRIM IS fifty-three years old. She has grey strands in her hair. Her eyes are happy and when she smiles, one of her two front teeth juts out a bit more than the other.

Elisabet works as a nurse at Birgittagården, a home instituted by a state plan for wayward youth, north of Sundsvall. The home is a privately-owned registered residence for care of special cases and has eight girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen.

Many of the girls are drug addicts when they arrive. Almost all of them have issues with self-injury, including eating disorders, and many of them are fairly violent.

For these girls, there is no alternative to the closed home, with its alarms, barred windows and double locked doors. The next step would be adult jail or forced psychiatric confinement. Birgittagården, on the other hand, is a hopeful place – hope that these girls can be guided back into open care.