The Nightmare (25 page)

“Perhaps Penelope took the shot,” Saga suggests. “Even so, this killer wasn’t content with just her murder.”

“Exactly. We don’t know which one comes first: Is the picture a link to the photographer, who is the true threat? Or is the photographer the link to the photograph, the primary threat?”

“The first attack was on Björn’s apartment.”

They say nothing for a few minutes. They’ve almost gotten back to the police station when Joona takes another close look at the photograph. The four people in the box, the food, the four musicians onstage, the instruments, the heavy curtain, the champagne bottle, the champagne flutes.

“Looking at this photograph,” Joona says, “I see four faces. One of them must be behind the murder of Viola Fernandez.”

“Right. Palmcrona is dead, so we can probably exclude him. So that leaves three … and two of them are out of our reach, so we can’t question them.”

“We’ve got to interview Pontus Salman,” Joona says.

48

the bridal crown

It is difficult to find a real human at Silencia Defense AB. All outside lines lead to the same labyrinth of automated menus and recorded information. Finally, Saga decides to bypass it all with the number 9 and the star key. She is connected to the company secretary. She ignores this person’s questions and goes right to what she wants. The secretary says nothing for a moment and then tells Saga that she must have gotten the wrong number and that everyone has gone out for lunch.

“Please call back tomorrow morning between nine and eleven and—”

“Tell Pontus Salman to be ready for a visit from Säpo at two this afternoon,” Saga says in a loud, firm voice.

“I’m sorry,” the secretary says. “He’s in meetings all day.”

“Not at two o’clock,” Saga answers sweetly.

“Yes, his appointment book says that—”

“Because at two o’clock, he is meeting with me,” Saga says.

“I will forward your request.”

“Thank you very much,” Saga replies. She meets Joona’s eyes across the desk.

“Two o’clock?” he confirms.

“Yes, indeed.”

“Tommy Kofoed would like a look at that photo,” Joona says. “Let’s stop by his office after lunch, before we head out.”

*   *   *

While Joona is having lunch with Disa, the technicians at the National Forensic Laboratory are enlarging the photograph.

The face of one person in the box is specifically being blurred so as to be unrecognizable.

*   *   *

Disa is smiling to herself as she removes the inset from the rice cooker. She holds it out to Joona and watches him as he moistens his hands to check if the rice is cool enough to form into small patties.

“Did you know that Södermalm used to have its own Calvary?”

“Calvary like Golgotha or cavalry like horses?”

“A place for executions.” Disa nods as she opens Joona’s kitchen cabinet, finds two glasses, pours white wine into one and water into the other.

Disa looks relaxed. Her freckles have turned darker and she’s put her disheveled hair into a loose braid. Joona washes his hands and takes out a new kitchen towel. Disa goes up to him and puts her arms around his neck. Joona answers her embrace by putting his face next to hers and breathing in the scent of her hair even as he feels her hands gently caressing his back and neck.

“Let’s go ahead,” she whispers. “Let’s try.”

“Maybe,” he says in a low voice.

She holds him tightly, very tightly, and then she eases from his arms.

“There are times I get really mad at you,” she mutters as she turns away.

“Disa, I am who I am, but I—”

“I am very happy that we’re not living together,” she says, and then she leaves the kitchen.

He hears her lock herself in the bathroom and wonders whether he should follow and knock on the door, but he also knows that she really wants to be left alone, so he just continues making lunch. He picks up a piece of fish, places it on his palm, and then spreads a line of wasabi onto it.

A few minutes later, Disa comes back. She stands in the doorway and watches him finish making the sushi.

“Do you remember,” she says, laughing, “how your mother always took the salmon off the sushi and fried it before she put it back on the rice?”

“Of course.”

“Should I set the table?”

“Please.”

Disa carries plates and chopsticks to the big room, stops next to the window, and looks down at Wallingatan. A grove of trees lights up the view with its green late-spring leaves. Her eyes wander over the pleasant area all the way to Norra Bantorget where Joona Linna has been living for the past year.

She sets the off-white dinner table, returns to the kitchen to take a sip of wine. The wine has lost the crispness from being chilled. She dismisses the sudden urge to sit down on the lacquered wooden floor under the table and have lunch, eating with their hands as if they were still children.

Instead, she says, “I’ve been asked out.”

“Asked out?”

She nods and feels she wants to be a little bit mean, even though she doesn’t really.

“Tell me about it,” Joona says calmly as he carries the tray with sushi to the table.

Disa picks up her glass and says in an easy tone, “It’s just that there’s a man at the museum who’s been asking me out to dinner for the last six months.”

“Do people still ask people out to dinner these days?”

Disa smiles somewhat crookedly. “Are you jealous?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a little,” Joona says as he walks over to her. “It’s always pleasant to be asked out to dinner.”

“That’s right.”

Disa pushes her fingers through a bit of Joona’s thick hair.

“Is he good-looking?”

“Actually, yes he is.”

“How nice.”

“But you know that I really don’t want to.” Disa smiles.

He doesn’t answer and turns his head away.

“You know what I want,” Disa says softly.

Joona’s face is now a little pale. She sees a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He slowly turns his face back to her. His eyes have darkened until they’re as black and hard as an abyss.

“Joona?” she asks. “Forget about it. I’m sorry—”

It looks like Joona starts to say something and begins to take a step when his legs buckle.

“Joona!” Disa cries and knocks her glass off the table as she hurries to his side. She holds him closely and whispers that it will be over soon.

After a few minutes, Joona’s face relaxes bit by bit from its tight expression of pain.

Disa gets up to sweep the broken glass off the floor. Then they sit at the table and eat in silence.

After a while, Disa says, “You’re not taking your medicine.”

“It makes me sleepy. I have to think. It’s important to think clearly right now.”

“You promised me that you’d continue with it.”

“I will, I will,” he reassures her.

“It’s dangerous not to. You know that,” she whispers.

“As soon as I’ve solved this case, I’ll start taking it again.”

“What if you never solve it?”

*   *   *

At a distance, the Nordic Museum appears to be a fancy image carved in ebony, despite being built of sandstone and limestone. It’s a Renaissance dream of elegance with its many towers and pinnacles. The museum was planned as an homage to the sovereignty of the Nordic peoples, but by the time it was inaugurated one rainy day in the summer of 1907, the union between Sweden and Norway had dissolved and the king was dying.

Joona walks swiftly through the enormous great hall of the museum and stops only after he’s climbed the stairs. He collects himself, then walks slowly past the lighted display cabinets. Nothing there catches his eye. He keeps going, his thoughts bound in memories and the sadness of loss.

The guard has seen him coming and has set a chair out for him next to one particular display case. Joona Linna takes his seat and lifts his eyes to the Sami bridal crown before him. The eight points of the crown are like linked hands, and the crown shines softly in the light behind the thin glass. Inside himself, Joona can hear a voice, and he sees a face smiling at him as he sits behind the wheel of his car. He is driving. It rained that day, but now the sun is reflecting in the puddles on the road so brightly, it’s as if they’re lit by fires below. He turns toward the backseat to make sure that Lumi has been buckled in properly.

The bridal crown appears to have been made from light branches of leather or braided hair. He drinks in its promise of love and joy and remembers how his wife looked: her serious smile, her sand-colored hair brushing her face.

“How are you doing today?” the guard asks.

Joona looks up at the guard in surprise. The man has been working here for many years. He’s middle-aged with stubble on his cheeks and tired eyes.

“I really don’t know,” Joona replies as he gets up from the chair.

49

the blurred face

Joona Linna and Saga Bauer are in the car on their way to the interview with Pontus Salman in Silencia Defense’s main office. They’re bringing the photograph that the technicians at the National Bureau of Investigation have enlarged. Quietly they travel south on Highway 73, which runs like a dirty track down to Nynäshamn.

Two hours ago, Joona had been looking again at the four people sitting in the box: Raphael with his calm face and balding pate; Palmcrona with his weak smile and steel-framed glasses; Pontus Salman with his placid, almost boyish demeanor; and Agathe al-Haji with her wrinkled cheeks and intelligent, heavy gaze.

“I have an idea,” Joona had said slowly, catching Saga’s eye. “If we could reduce the picture quality and touch it up so that Pontus Salman is no longer identifiable…”

He falls silent as he follows his internal train of thought.

“What would we achieve?” asks Saga.

“He doesn’t know that we have a sharp original picture—right?”

“How could he? He’d expect us to make the photo more in focus, not the opposite.”

“Exactly. We’ve done all we could to identify the four people in the picture and we’ve figured out three. The fourth is somewhat turned away and the face is too blurry.”

“You’re thinking we should give him the chance to lie,” Saga says. “To claim that he wasn’t there and that he hasn’t met Palmcrona, Agathe al-Haji, and Raphael.”

“If he denies he was there, then the meeting itself was the secret.”

“And if he starts to lie, we have him in a trap.”

They pass Handen and then turn off at the Jordbrolänken exit. They roll into an industrial area surrounded by silent forest.

The head office for Silencia Defense is located in a dull-gray impersonal concrete building. Joona takes a good look at it, with its black-tinted windows. He thinks again about the four people in the photo, which unleashed a chain of violence leading to a dead young girl and the sorrow of her mother. Perhaps Penelope Fernandez and Björn Almskog are also dead by now because of this picture. Joona steps out of the car and his jaw tightens. Pontus Salman, one of the people in this enigmatic photograph, is inside this building right now.

The original photograph is safely in the hands of the National Forensic Laboratory in Linköping. Tommy Kofoed has created a copy that appears old and worn like the original. One corner is missing and tape remains are seen on the others. Kofoed has rendered Pontus Salman’s face and hand blurry so that it appears that Salman was moving at the moment the photograph was taken.

Salman will think that he’s in luck—he alone is unrecognizable. Nothing connects him to the meeting with Raphael Guidi, Carl Palmcrona, and Agathe al-Haji. The only thing he needs to do is deny that it’s him. It’s not a crime to not recognize oneself in a blurry picture and to not remember meeting certain people.

They start toward the entrance.

If he denies it, we’ve caught him in a lie and we know he wants to keep something secret.

The air is oppressively hot and humid.

Saga nods seriously at Joona as they walk through the shiny, heavy entrance doors.

And if Salman starts to lie
, Joona thinks,
we’ll make sure he continues to lie until he’s so entangled he can’t get free.

The reception area is large and cold.

When Pontus Salman looks at the photograph and says that he can’t identify the people in it, we’ll say that it’s unfortunate that he can’t help us
, Joona continues to think.
We’ll get ready to leave and then we’ll stop and ask him to take one more look with a magnifying glass. The technician has left a signet ring visible on the hanging hand. We’ll ask Pontus Salman if he recognizes the clothes, the shoes, or the pinkie ring. He’ll be forced to lie again, and then we will have reason to bring him in for questioning and press him harder.

Behind the reception desk, there is a lighted red emblem emblazoned with the company name and a serpentine logo encircled by runes.

“‘He fought as long as he had a weapon,’” Joona says.

“Can you read runes now?” asks Saga skeptically.

Joona points at the sign with the translation as he walks to the reception desk. A pale man with thin, dry lips is ensconced behind the desk.

“Pontus Salman,” Joona says shortly.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Two o’clock,” Saga says.

The receptionist shuffles through some papers, flips to one, and reads.

“Yes, that’s right,” he says as he raises his eyes. “Unfortunately, Pontus Salman sends his regrets. He cannot make this meeting.”

“We received no notice of a cancellation,” Saga says. “We must talk to him—”

“I am very sorry.”

“Please call him. Tell him we’re here,” Saga says.

“I’ll try, but I believe … he’s in a meeting.”

“On the fourth floor,” Joona inserts.

“The fifth,” the receptionist corrects automatically.

Saga sits down in one of the reception chairs. The sun streams in through the windows and spreads like fire in her hair. Joona remains standing as the receptionist lifts his phone to his ear and taps a number. The busy signal sounds and the receptionist shakes his head.