The Hypnotist (6 page)

The rush-hour traffic rumbles slowly along. Benjamin is sitting next to his father, the stop-and-go progress of the car making him feel drowsy. He gives a big yawn and feels a soft warmth still lingering in his body after the night’s sleep. He thinks about the fact that his father is in a hurry but that he still takes the time to drive him to school. Benjamin smiles to himself.
It’s always been this way
, he thinks:
when Dad’s involved in something awful at the hospital, he gets worried that something’s going to happen to me
.

“Oh, no!” Erik says suddenly. “We forgot the ice skates.”

“Right.”

“We’ll go back.”

“Doesn’t matter,” says Benjamin.

Erik tries switching lanes, but another car stops him from cutting in. Forced back, he almost collides with a dust cart.

“We’ve got time to turn around and— ”

“Just, like, forget the skates. I couldn’t care less,” says Benjamin, his voice rising.

Erik glances at him in surprise. “I thought you liked skating.”

Benjamin doesn’t know what to say. He can’t stand being interrogated, doesn’t want to lie. He turns away to look out the window.

“Don’t you?” asks Erik.

“What?”

“Like skating?”

“Why would I?” Benjamin mutters. “It’s boring.”

“We bought you brand new— ”

Benjamin’s only reply is a sigh.

“Fine,” says Erik. “Forget the skates.” He concentrates on the traffic for a moment. “So skating is boring. Playing chess is boring. Watching TV is boring. What do you actually enjoy?”

“Don’t know,” Benjamin says. “Nothing?”

“No.”

“Movies?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Erik smiles.

“Yes,” replies Benjamin.

“I’ve seen you watch three or four movies in a night,” says Erik cheerily.

“So what?”

Erik goes on, still smiling. “I wonder how many movies you could get through if you
really
liked watching them. If you
loved
movies.”

“Give me a break.” Despite himself, Benjamin smiles.

“Maybe you’d need two TVs, zipping through them all on fast forward.” Erik laughs and places his hand on his son’s knee. Benjamin allows it to remain there.

Suddenly they hear a muffled bang, and in the sky a pale blue star appears, with descending smoke-coloured points.

“Funny time for fireworks,” says Benjamin.

“What?” asks his father.

“Look,” says Benjamin, pointing.

A star of smoke hangs in the sky. For some reason, Benjamin can see Aida in front of him, and his stomach contracts at once; he feels warm inside. Last Friday they sat close together in silence on the sofa in her narrow living room out in Sundbyberg, watching the movie
Elephant
while her younger brother played with Pokémon cards on the floor, talking to himself.

As Erik is parking outside the school, Benjamin suddenly spots Aida. She’s standing on the other side of the fence waiting for him. When she catches sight of him she waves. Benjamin grabs his bag and, sliding out the car door, says, “ ’Bye, Dad. Thanks for the lift.”

“Love you,” says Erik quietly.

Benjamin nods.

“Want to watch a movie tonight?” asks Erik.

“Whatever.”

“Is that Aida?” asks Erik.

“Yes,” says Benjamin, almost without making a sound.

“I’d like to say hello to her,” says Erik, climbing out of the car.

“What for?”

They walk across to Aida. Benjamin hardly dares to look at her; he feels like a kid. He doesn’t want her to think he needs his father to approve of her or anything. He doesn’t care what his father thinks. Aida looks nervous; her eyes dart from son to father. Before Benjamin has time to say anything by way of explanation, Erik sticks out his hand.

“Hi, there.”

Aida shakes his hand warily. Benjamin sees his father take in her tattoos: there’s a swastika on her throat, with a little Star of David next to it. She’s painted her eyes black, her hair is done up in two childish braids, and she wears a black leather jacket and a wide black net skirt.

“I’m Erik, Benjamin’s dad.”

“Aida.”

Her voice is high and weak. Benjamin blushes and looks nervously at Aida, then down at the ground.

“Are you a Nazi?” asks Erik.

“Are you?” she retorts.

“No.”

“Me neither,” she says, briefly meeting his eyes.

“Why have you got a— ”

“No reason. I’m nothing. I’m just— ”

Benjamin breaks in, his heart pounding with embarrassment over his father. “She was hanging out with these people a few years ago,” he says loudly. “But she thought they were idiots, and— ”

“You don’t need to explain,” Aida interrupts, annoyed.

He doesn’t speak for a moment.

“I . . . I just think it’s brave to admit when you’ve made a mistake,” he says eventually.

“Yes, but I would interpret it as an ongoing lack of insight not to have it removed,” says Erik.

“Just leave it!” shouts Benjamin. “You don’t know anything about her!”

Aida simply turns and walks away. Benjamin hurries after her.

“Sorry,” he pants. “Dad can be so embarrassing.”

“He’s right, though, isn’t he?” she asks.

“No,” replies Benjamin feebly.

“I think maybe he is,” she says, half smiling as she takes his hand in hers.

The Department of Forensic Medicine is located in a redbrick building in the middle of the huge campus of the Karolinska Institute. And inside the department is the glossy white and pale matt grey office of Nils Åhlén, Chief Medical Officer, aka “The Needle.”

After giving his name to a girl at reception, Joona Linna is allowed in.

The office is modern and expensive and comes with a designer label. The few chairs are made of brushed steel, with austere white leather seats, and the light comes from a large sheet of glass suspended above the desk.

The Needle shakes Joona’s hand without getting up. He is wearing white aviator-framed glasses and a white turtleneck under his white lab coat. His face is clean-shaven and narrow, the grey hair is cropped, his lips are pale, his nose long and uneven.

“Good morning,” he says, in a hoarse voice.

On the wall hangs a faded colour photograph of The Needle and his colleagues: forensic pathologists, forensic chemists, forensic geneticists, and forensic dentists. They are all wearing white coats, and they all look happy. They are standing around a few dark fragments of bone on a bench; the caption beneath the picture states that this is a find from an excavation of ninth-century graves outside the trading settlement of Birka on the island of Björkö.

“New picture,” says Joona.

“I have to stick photos up with tape,” says The Needle discontentedly. “In the old pathology department they had a picture sixty feet square.”

“Wow,” replies Joona.

“Painted by Peter Weiss.”

“The writer?”

The Needle nods; the light from the desk lamp reflects off his aviators. “Yes. He painted portraits of all the staff in the forties. Six months’ work, and he was paid six hundred kronor, or so I’ve heard. My father is in the picture among the pathologists; he’s down at the end.” The Needle tilts his head to one side and returns to his computer. “I’m just working on the postmortem report from the Tumba murders,” he says.

“Yes?”

The Needle peers at Joona. “Carlos rang up to hassle me this morning.”

Joona smiles sweetly. “I know.”

The Needle pushes his glasses back. “I gather it’s important to establish the time of death of the different victims.”

“Yes, we need to know the order.”

The Needle searches on the computer, his lips pursed. “It’s only a preliminary assessment, but— ”

“The man died first?”

“Exactly. I based that purely on the body temperature,” he says, pointing at the screen. “Erixon says both locations, the locker room and the house, were roughly the same temperature, so my estimate was that the man died just over an hour before the other two.”

“And have you changed your mind now?”

The Needle shakes his head and gets up with a groan. “Slipped disc,” he mutters, as he sets off down the hall.

Joona follows him as he limps slowly toward the postmortem unit. They pass a room containing a freestanding dissection table made of stainless steel; it looks like a drain board but with rectangular sections and a raised edge all around. They enter a cool room where bodies being examined by the forensic unit are preserved in drawers at a temperature of forty degrees Fahrenheit. The Needle stops and checks the number, pulls out a large drawer, and sees that it’s empty.

“Gone,” he says, and they return to the corridor. As they walk, Joona notices that the floor is marked with thousands of scuffs from the wheels of trolleys. They reach another room and The Needle holds the door open for Joona.

They are in a well-lit white-tiled room with a large hand basin on the wall. Water is trickling into a drain in the floor from a bright yellow hose. On the long dissection table, which is covered in plastic, lies a naked, colourless body marked with hundreds of black wounds.

“Katja Ek,” states Joona.

The dead woman’s face is remarkably calm; her mouth is half open and her eyes have a serene look about them. She looks as if she is listening to beautiful music, but her peaceful expression is at odds with the long, vicious slashes across her forehead and cheeks. Joona allows his gaze to roam over Katja Ek’s body, where a marbled veining has already begun to appear around her neck.

“We’re hoping to get the internal examination done this afternoon.” Joona sighs. “God, what a mess.”

The other door opens and a young man with an uncertain smile comes in. He has several rings in his eyebrows, and his dyed black hair hangs down the back of his white coat in a ponytail. With a little smile, The Needle raises one fist in a hard rock greeting, pinkie and index finger aloft like devil’s horns, which the young man immediately reciprocates.

“This is Joona Linna from National CID,” The Needle explains. “He comes to visit us now and again.”

“Frippe,” says the young man, shaking hands with Joona.

“He’s specializing in forensic medicine,” says The Needle.

Frippe pulls on a pair of latex gloves, and Joona goes over to the table with him; the air surrounding the woman is cold and smells unpleasant.

“She’s the one who was subjected to the least amount of violence,” The Needle points out. “Despite multiple cuts and stab wounds.”

They contemplate the dead woman. Her body is covered in large and small punctures.

“In addition, unlike the other two, she has not been mutilated or hacked to pieces,” he goes on. “The actual cause of death is not the wound in her neck but this one, which goes straight into the heart, according to the computer tomography.” He indicates a relatively unimpressive-looking wound on her sternum.

“But it is a little difficult to see the bleeds on the images,” says Frippe.

“Naturally, we’ll check it out when we open her up,” The Needle says to Joona.

“She fought back,” says Joona.

“In my opinion she actively defended herself at first,” replies The Needle, “based on the wounds on the palms of her hands, but then she tried to escape and simply tried to protect herself.”

The young doctor studies The Needle intently.

“Look at the injuries on the outer arms,” says The Needle.

“Defensive wounds,” mutters Joona.

“Exactly.”

Joona leans over and looks at the brownish-yellow patches that are visible in the woman’s open eyes.

“Are you looking at the suns?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t see them until a few hours after death; sometimes it can take several days,” The Needle says to the young doctor. “They’ll turn completely black in the end. It’s because the pressure in the eye is dropping.”

He picks up a reflex hammer and asks Frippe to see if any idiomuscular contractions remain. The young doctor taps the middle of the woman’s biceps and feels the muscle with his fingers, checking for con tractions.

“Minimal,” he says to The Needle.

“They usually stop after thirteen hours,” The Needle explains.

“The dead are not completely dead,” says Joona, shuddering as he detects a ghostly movement in Katja Ek’s limp arm.

“
Mortui vivis docent
— the dead teach the living,” replies The Needle, smiling to himself as he and Frippe ease her onto her stomach.

He points out the blotchy reddish-brown patches on her buttocks and the small of her back and across her shoulder blades and arms.

“The hypostasis is faint when the victim has lost a lot of blood.”

“Obviously,” says Joona.

“Blood is heavy, and when you die there is no longer any internal pressure system,” The Needle explains to Frippe. “It might be obvious, but the blood runs downward and simply collects at the lowest points; it’s most often seen on surfaces that have been in contact with whatever the body was lying on.”

He presses a patch on her right calf with his thumb until it almost disappears.

“There, you see . . . you can press them and make them disappear up to twenty-four hours after death.”

“But I thought I saw patches on her hips and chest,” says Joona hesitantly.

“Bravo,” says The Needle, regarding him with a faintly surprised smile. “I didn’t think you’d notice those.”

“So she was lying on her stomach when she was dead, before she was turned over,” says Joona.

“For two hours, I’d guess.”

“So the perpetrator stayed for two hours. Or he came back to the scene. Or somebody else turned her over.”

The Needle shrugs his shoulders. “I’m a long way from finishing my assessment at this stage.”

“Can I ask something? I noticed that one of the wounds on the stomach looks like a C-section.”

“A C-section,” says The Needle, smiling. “Why not? Shall we have a look at it?” The two doctors turn the body once again. “This one, you mean?” The Needle is pointing to a large cut extending about six inches downward from the navel.

“Yes,” replies Joona.

“I haven’t had time to examine every injury yet.”

“
Vulnera incisa
,” says Frippe.

“Yes, it does look like an incision,” says The Needle.

“Not a stab wound,” says Joona.

Frippe leans over so that he can see.

“In view of the fact that it’s a straight line and the surface of the surrounding skin is intact.” The Needle pokes inside the wound with his fingers. “The walls,” he goes on. “They’re not particularly blood-soaked, but— ”

“What is it?” asks Joona.

The Needle is looking at him very strangely. “This cut was made after her death,” he says. He pulls off his gloves. “I need to look at the computer tomography,” he says worriedly; he walks over, opens up the computer on the table by the door, clicks through the three-dimensional images, stops, moves on, and alters the angle. “The wound appears to go into the womb,” he whispers. “It looks as if it follows old scars.”

“Old scars? What do you mean?” asks Joona.

“You’re the one who called it.” The Needle smiles faintly. “An emergency C-section scar.”

He points at the vertical wound. As Joona looks more closely, he can see that all along one side there is a thin thread of old, pale-pink scar tissue, from a C-section that healed long ago.

“But she wasn’t pregnant?” asks Joona.

“No.” The Needle laughs, pushing his aviators back.

“Are we dealing with a murderer who has surgical skills?” asks Joona.

The Needle shakes his head; Joona thinks about the fact that someone killed Katja Ek in a frenzy, with considerable violence, and came back two hours later, turned her over, and carefully cut open her old C-section scar.

“See if there’s anything similar on the other bodies.”

“Do you want us to make that a priority?” asks The Needle. “Yes, I think so.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“So you want us to prioritize everything.”

“More or less.” Joona is smiling as he leaves the room.

But as Joona gets into his car, he starts to shiver. He starts the engine, pulls out into Retzius Väg, turns up the heater, and keys in the number for Chief Prosecutor Jens Svanehjälm.

“Svanehjälm.”

“Joona Linna.”

“Ah. Good morning. I’ve just been talking to Carlos. He said you’d be in touch.”

“It’s a little difficult to say what we’re dealing with here,” says Joona. “I’ve just left the forensic unit, and I’m thinking of heading to the hospital; I really need to question the surviving witness.”

“Carlos explained the situation to me,” says Jens. “Have you got the profiling group started?”

“A profile won’t be enough,” replies Joona.

“No, I know; I agree. If we’re to have any chance of protecting the older sister, we absolutely have to speak to the boy.”

Joona suddenly sees a firework explode in complete silence: a pale blue star, far away above the roofs of Stockholm. He clears his throat. “I’m in touch with Susanne Granat at Social Services, and I was thinking of having Erik Maria Bark, the psychiatrist, with me during questioning. He’s an expert in the treatment of shock and trauma.”

“That’s perfectly in order,” says Jens reassuringly.

“In that case I’ll go straight to the neurosurgical unit.”

“Good idea.”