The Hypnotist (4 page)

Joona Linna stepped out into the cold wind, over the shivering black-and-yellow crime tape, and into his car. The boy is alive, he thought. I have to meet the surviving witness.

From his car, Joona traced Josef Ek to the neurosurgical unit at Karolinska University Hospital in Solna. The forensic technicians from Linköping had supervised the securing of biological evidence taken from the boy’s person. His condition had since deteriorated.

It was after one in the morning when Joona headed back to Stockholm, arriving at the intensive care section of Karolinska Hospital just past two. After a fifteen-minute wait, the doctor in charge, Daniella Richards, appeared.

“You must be Detective Linna. Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Daniella Richards.”

“How is the boy, doctor?”

“He’s in circulatory shock,” she said.

“Meaning?”

“He’s lost a lot of blood. His heart is attempting to compensate for this and has started to race— ”

“Have you managed to stop the bleeding?”

“I think so, I hope so, and we’re giving him blood all the time, but the lack of oxygen could taint the blood and damage the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys.”

“Is he conscious?”

“No.”

“It’s urgent that I get a chance to interview him.”

“Detective, my patient is hanging on by his fingernails. If he survives his injuries at all, it won’t be possible to interview him for several weeks.”

“He’s the sole eyewitness to a multiple murder,” said Joona. “Is there anything you can do?”

“The only person who might possibly be able to hasten the boy’s recovery is Erik Maria Bark.”

“The hypnotist?” asked Joona.

She gave a big smile, blushing slightly. “Don’t call him that if you want his help. He’s our leading expert in the treatment of shock and trauma.”

“Do you have any objections if I ask him to come in?”

“On the contrary. I’ve been considering it myself,” she said.

Joona searched in his pocket for his phone, realized he had left it in the car, and asked if he could borrow Daniella’s. After outlining the situation to Erik Maria Bark, he called Susanne Granat at Social Services and explained that he was hoping to be able to talk to Josef Ek soon. Susanne Granat knew all about the family. The Eks were on their register, she said, because of the father’s gambling addiction, and because they had had dealings with the daughter three years ago.

“With the daughter?” asked Joona.

“The older daughter,” explained Susanne.

“So there is a third child?” Joona asked impatiently.

“Yes, her name is Evelyn.”

Joona ended the conversation and immediately called his colleagues in the Reconnaissance Division to ask them to track down Evelyn Ek. He emphasized repeatedly that it was urgent, that she risked being killed. But then he added it was also possible that she was dangerous, that she could actually have been involved in the triple homicide in Tumba.

Detective Joona Linna orders a large sandwich with Parmesan, bresaola, and sun-dried tomatoes from the little breakfast bar called Il Caffè on Bergsgatan. The café has just opened, and the girl who takes his order has not yet had time to unpack the warm bread from the large brown bags in which it’s been delivered from the bakery.

Having inspected the crime scenes in Tumba late the night before, and in the middle of the night visited the hospital in Solna and spoken to the two doctors Daniella Richards and Erik Maria Bark, he had called Reconnaissance once more. “Have you found Evelyn?” he’d asked.

“No.”

“You realize we have to find her before the murderer does.”

“We’re trying, but— ”

“Try harder,” Joona had growled. “Maybe we can save a life.”

Now, after three hours of sleep, Joona gazes out the steamed-up window, waiting for his breakfast. Sleet is falling on the town hall. The food arrives. Joona grabs a pen on the glass counter, signs the credit slip, and hurries out.

The sleet intensifies as he makes his way along Bergsgatan, the warm sandwich in one hand and his indoor hockey stick and gym bag in the other.

“We’re playing Recon Tuesday night,” Joona had told his colleague Benny Rubin. “We have no chance. They’re going to kill us.”

The National CID indoor hockey team loses whenever they play the local police, the traffic police, the maritime police, the national special intervention squad, the SWAT team, or Recon. But it gives them a good excuse to drown their sorrows together in the pub, as they like to say, afterwards.

Joona has no idea as he walks alongside police headquarters and past the big entrance doors that he will neither play hockey nor go to the pub this Tuesday. Someone has scrawled a swastika on the entrance sign to the courtroom. He strides on towards the Kronoberg holding cells and watches the tall gate close silently behind a car. Snowflakes are melting on the big window of the guardroom. Joona walks past the police swimming pool and cuts across the yard toward the gabled end of the vast complex. The façade resembles dark copper, burnished but underwater. Flags droop wetly from their poles. Hurrying between two metal plinths and beneath the high frosted glass roof, Joona stamps the snow off his shoes and swings open the doors to the National Police Board.

The central administrative authority in Sweden, the National Police Board is made up of the National Criminal Investigation Department, the Security Service, the Police Training Academy, and the National Forensic Laboratory. The National CID is Sweden’s only central operational police body, with the responsibility for dealing with serious crime on a national and international level. For nine years, Joona Linna has worked here as a detective.

Joona walks along the corridor, taking off his cap and shaking it at his side, glancing in passing at the notices on the bulletin board about yoga classes, somebody who’s trying to sell a camper, information from the trade union, and scheduling changes for the shooting club. The floor, which was mopped before the snowstorm began, is already soiled with bootprints and dried, muddy slush.

The door of Benny Rubin’s office is ajar. A sixty-year-old man with a grey moustache and wrinkled, sun-damaged skin, he is involved in the work around communication headquarters and the change-over to Rakel, the new radio system. He sits at his computer with a cigarette behind his ear, typing with agonizing slowness.

“I’ve got eyes in the back of my head,” he says, all of a sudden.

“Maybe that explains why you’re such a lousy typist,” jokes Joona.

Benny’s latest find is an advertising poster for the airline SAS: a fairly exotic young woman in a minute bikini suggestively sipping some kind of fruit-garnished cocktail from a straw. Benny was so incensed by the ban on calendars featuring pin-up girls that most people thought he was going to resign, but instead he has devoted himself to a silent and stubborn protest for many years. Technically, nothing forbids the display of advertisements for airlines, pictures of ice princesses with their legs spread wide apart, lithe and flexible yoga instructors, or ads for underwear from H & M. On the first day of each month, Benny changes what he has on the wall. The variety of ways that he avoids the ban is dazzling. Joona remembers a poster of the short-distance runner Gail Devers, in tight shorts, and a daring lithograph by the artist Egon Schiele that depicted a red-haired woman sitting with her legs apart in a pair of fluffy bloomers.

Moving on, Joona stops to say hello to his assistant, Anja Larsson. She sits at the computer with her mouth half open, her round face wearing an expression of such concentration that he decides not to disturb her. Instead, he hangs up his wet coat just inside the door of his office, switches on the Advent star in the window, and glances quickly through his in box: a message about the working environment, a suggestion about low-energy lightbulbs, an inquiry from the prosecutor’s office, and an invitation from Human Resources to a Christmas meal at Skansen.

Joona leaves his office, goes into the meeting room, and sits in his usual place to unwrap his sandwich and eat.

Petter Näslund stops in the corridor, laughs smugly, and leans on the doorframe with his back to the meeting room. A muscular, balding man of about thirty-five, Petter is a detective with a position of special responsibility and Joona’s immediate boss. Everyone knows that Joona is eminently more qualified than Petter. But they know, too, that he is also singularly disinterested in administrative duties and the rat race involved in climbing the ranks.

For several years Petter has been flirting with Magdalena Ronander without noticing her troubled expression and constant attempts to switch to a more businesslike tone. Magdalena has been a detective in the Reconnaissance Division for four years, and she intends to complete her legal training before she turns thirty.

Lowering his voice suggestively, Petter questions Magdalena about her choice of service weapon, wondering aloud how often she changes the barrel because the grooves have become too worn. Ignoring his coarse innuendoes, she tells him she keeps a careful note of the number of shots fired.

“But you like the big rough ones, don’t you?” says Petter.

“No, not at all, I use the Glock Seventeen,” she replies, “because it can cope with a lot of the defence team’s nine-millimetre ammunition.”

“Don’t you use the Czech?”

“Yes, but I prefer the M39B,” she says firmly, moving around him to enter the meeting room. He follows, and they both sit and greet Joona. “And you can get the Glock with gunpowder gas ejectors next to the sight,” she continues. “It reduces the recoil a hell of a lot, and you can get the next shot in much more quickly.”

“What does our Moomintroll think?” asks Petter, with a nod in Joona’s direction.

Joona smiles sweetly and fixes his icily clear grey eyes on them. “I think it doesn’t make any difference. I think other elements decide the outcome,” he says.

“So you don’t need to be able to shoot.” Petter grins.

“Joona is a good shot,” says Magdalena. “Good at everything.” Petter sighs.

Magdalena ignores Petter and turns to Joona instead. “The biggest advantage with the compensated Glock is that the gunpowder gas can’t be seen from the barrel when it’s dark.”

“Quite right,” says Joona.

Wearing a pleased expression, she opens her black leather case and begins leafing through her papers. Benny comes in, sits down, looks around at everyone, slams the palm of his hand down on the table, then smiles broadly when Magdalena flashes at him in irritation.

“I took the case out in Tumba,” Joona starts.

“That’s got nothing to do with us,” says Petter.

“I think we could be dealing with a serial killer here, or at least— ”

“Just leave it, for God’s sake!” Benny interrupts, looking Joona in the eye and slapping the table again.

“It was somebody settling a score,” Petter goes on. “Loans, debts, gambling . . .”

“A gambling addict,” Benny says.

“Very well known at Solvalla. The local sharks were into him for a lot of money, and he ended up paying for it,” says Petter, bringing the matter to a close.

In the silence that follows, Joona drinks some water and finishes the last of his sandwich. “I’ve got a feeling about this case,” he says quietly.

“Then you need to ask for a transfer,” says Petter with a smile. “This has nothing to do with the National CID.”

“I think it has.”

“If you want the case, you’ll have to go and join the local force in Tumba,” says Petter.

“I intend to investigate these murders,” says Joona calmly.

“That’s for me to decide,” replies Petter.

Yngve Svensson comes in and sits down. His hair is slicked back with gel, he has blue-grey rings under his eyes and reddish stubble, and, as always, he’s in a creased black suit.

“
Yngwie
,” Benny says happily.

Not only is Yngve Svensson in charge of the analytical section but he’s also one of the leading experts on organized crime in the country.

“Yngve, what do you think about this business in Tumba?” asks Petter. “You’ve just been having a look at it, haven’t you?”

“Strictly a local matter,” he says. “A loan enforcer goes to the house to collect. Normally, the father would have been home, but he’d stepped in to referee a soccer match at the last minute. The enforcer is presumably high, both speed and Rohypnol, I’d say; he’s unbalanced, he’s stressed, something sets him off, so he attacks the family with some kind of SWAT knife to try and find out where the father is. They tell him the truth, but he goes completely nuts anyway and kills them all before he goes off to the playing field.”

Petter sneers. He gulps some water, belches into his hand, and turns to Joona. “What have you got to say about that?”

“If it wasn’t completely wrong it might be quite impressive,” says Joona.

“What’s wrong with it?” asks Yngve aggressively.

“The murderer killed the father first,” Joona says calmly. “Then he went over to the house and killed the rest of the family.”

“In which case it’s hardly likely to be a case of debt collection,” says Magdalena Ronander.

“We’ll just have to see what the postmortem shows,” Yngve mutters.

“It’ll show I’m right,” says Joona.

“Idiot.” Yngve sighs, tucking two plugs of snuff under his top lip.

“Joona, I’m not giving you this case,” says Petter.

“I realize that.” He sighs and gets up from the table.

“Where do you think you’re going? We’ve got a meeting,” says Petter.

“I’m going to talk to Carlos.”

“Not about this.”

“Yes, about this,” says Joona, leaving the room.

“Get back in here,” shouts Petter, “or I’ll have to— ”

Joona doesn’t hear what Petter will have to do, he simply closes the door calmly behind him and moves along the hall, saying hello to Anja, who peers over her computer screen with a quizzical expression.

“Aren’t you in a meeting?” she asks.

“I am,” he says, continuing toward the lift.