The Nightmare (9 page)

People were sitting at a table outside a beautiful summerhouse painted Falun red. Penelope wondered if it was the middle of the night. The sky was still light, but dinner must have ended a while ago. Wineglasses and coffee cups were scattered about along with crumpled napkins and empty potato-chip bowls.

A few partygoers were singing together, while others refilled their glasses from boxes of red wine and chatted. Tendrils of wavy warm air still rose from the grill. Any children must have already been put to bed, snuggled in the house underneath cozy blankets. To Björn and Penelope, they seemed like denizens of another planet—a planet where calm, happy people lived safely together under a giant glass dome.

Only one person stood outside of that charmed circle. He lurked at the side, facing the forest as if he expected visitors. Penelope stopped dead and silently gripped Björn’s hand. They dropped to the ground and crept behind a low spruce. Björn’s eyes were scared and uncomprehending, but Penelope was absolutely sure what she’d seen. Their pursuer had read their minds and gotten ahead of them. He knew they couldn’t resist the lights and the sounds of the party. Like moths to a flame, they’d be drawn here. So he’d waited. He’d want to catch them just inside the darkness of the trees. He hadn’t worried about any screams. He knew the people at the party wouldn’t think to investigate anything so strange until it would be too late.

When Penelope dared look up again, the man was gone. She shook from shock. Perhaps he’d changed his mind and believed he’d made a mistake. She searched around with her eyes. Maybe he’d gone somewhere else.

Hope had just started to creep into her mind. Then she saw him again, closer.

He was a dark form blending into a tree trunk not far from them.

He was calmly unpacking a set of black binoculars with green lenses.

Penelope pressed closer to Björn and fought her mindless instinct to leap up and start running again. Instead, she coolly watched the man as he lifted his binoculars to his eyes. He must have night-vision goggles or a heat sensor, she thought.

When the man’s back was turned, Penelope pressed Björn’s hand and, bent double, she pulled him away from the house and the music and back deep into the forest. After a while, she felt safe enough to straighten up. They began to run diagonally across a slope, a gently rounded reminder of the ancient glaciers that once ground northern Europe under ice. They kept going—through tangled bushes, behind a huge boulder, over a rocky crest. Björn grabbed a thick branch and hurried as carefully as he could down the slope. Penelope’s heart thudded in her chest and her thigh muscles screamed. She tried to breathe quietly, but could not. She slid down a rocky cliff, pulling damp moss with her, and landed on the ground next to the deep shade of a spruce. She looked at Björn. All he had on were his knee-length swimming trunks. His body was a pale blur and his lips almost disappeared in his white face.

15

the identification

It sounds as if someone is bouncing a ball against the wall beneath Chief Medical Officer Nils Åhlén’s window. The Needle is waiting with Joona Linna for Claudia Fernandez. They don’t have much to say, so they keep quiet. Claudia Fernandez had been asked to appear at the department of forensic medicine early that Sunday morning to identify the body of a dead woman.

When Joona had to phone to tell her they feared her daughter, Viola, was dead, Claudia’s voice sounded unnaturally calm.

“No, that can’t be. Viola is out in the archipelago with her sister,” she’d said.

“On Björn Almskog’s boat?” Joona asked.

“Yes. I called Penelope and asked her to take her sister with them. I thought Viola needed to get away for a while.”

“Was there anyone else on the boat?”

“Björn, of course.”

Joona had fallen silent and waited a few seconds to force away the heaviness in his heart. Then he’d cleared his throat and said, very softly, “Mrs. Fernandez, I would like you to come to the department of forensic medicine’s pathology office in Solna.”

“Why?” she’d asked.

Now Joona is sitting on an uncomfortable chair in the office of the chief medical officer. Wedged in the corner of the frame of The Needle’s wedding picture is a tiny photo of Frippe. From a distance they keep hearing the ball thud against the wall. It is a lonely sound. Joona remembers how Claudia Fernandez had caught her breath when she finally understood that her daughter might indeed not be alive. They’d arranged for a taxi to pick her up from her town house in the Gustavsberg neighborhood. She should arrive here any minute.

The Needle had tried for some small talk but gave up when Joona did not respond. Both of them wish this moment would soon be over.

Hearing steps in the hallway, they rise from their chairs.

To see the dead body of a loved one is merciless—everyone’s worst fear. The experts say it is a necessary step in the process of grief. Joona has read that once an identification is made, there’s a certain kind of liberation. One can no longer sustain wild fantasies that the person is still alive. These kinds of fantasies and hopes only lead to frustration and emptiness.

Those are nothing but empty words
, Joona thinks.
Death is horrible and it never gives you anything back.

Claudia Fernandez is now in the doorway. She’s a woman of about sixty, frightened. Traces of worry are etched on her face. She huddles as if chilled.

Joona greets her gently.

“Hello. My name is Joona Linna and I’m a detective inspector. We spoke on the phone earlier.”

The Needle introduces himself almost soundlessly as he briefly shakes the woman’s hand and then turns away to shuffle through some folders and files. It must seem he is a cold person, but Joona knows he’s deeply moved.

“I’ve been calling and calling, but I can’t reach my girls,” Claudia says. “They should—”

“Shall we go in?” The Needle interrupts, as if he hadn’t heard her words.

Silently they walk through the familiar hallway. With each step Joona feels as if air is being squeezed from his body. Claudia is in no rush. She walks slowly a few paces behind The Needle, whose tall silhouette precedes them. Joona turns and tries to smile at Claudia, but then he has to turn away from the expression in her eyes. The panic, the pleading, the prayers—her attempts to make a bargain with God.

It feels as if she is being dragged in their wake as they enter the morgue.

The Needle mumbles something to himself in an angry tone. Then he bends down and unlocks the stainless-steel locker and pulls out the drawer.

The young woman’s body is covered with a white cloth except for her head. Her eyes are dull and half closed, her cheeks a little sunken, but her hair is still a black crown about her beautiful face. A small, pale hand is half uncovered along her side.

Claudia Fernandez reaches out her hand, carefully touches the hand of her daughter, and begins to whimper. It comes from deep within, as if in this moment part of her is breaking to pieces.

She begins to shake. She falls to her knees. She holds her daughter’s lifeless hand to her lips.

“No, no,” she’s crying. “Oh God, dear Lord, not Viola. Not Viola…”

From a few feet behind, Joona watches her shoulders shake as she cries; he hears her despairing wail crescendo and then gradually fall away.

She wipes at the tears streaming down her face, breathing shakily as she slowly gets back up on her feet.

“Can you positively confirm that this is Viola Fernandez?” The Needle says gruffly.

His voice stops and he quickly clears his throat, angry at himself.

Claudia nods her head and gently moves her fingertips over her daughter’s cheek.

“Viola, Violita…”

She draws back her shaking hand and Joona slowly says, “I’m very, very sorry for your loss.”

Claudia looks faint but reaches out a hand to the wall for support. She turns her face away and whispers to herself.

“We were going to the circus on Saturday. I bought tickets as a surprise for Viola…”

They all look at the dead woman: her pale lips and the arteries in her throat.

“I’ve forgotten who you are,” Claudia says in confusion. She looks at Joona.

“Joona Linna,” he says.

“Joona Linna,” the woman says with a thick voice. “Let me tell you about my daughter Viola. She is my little girl, my youngest, my happy little…”

Claudia looks at Viola’s white face and it seems as if she might fall to one side. The Needle pulls over a chair, but Claudia waves it away.

“Please forgive me,” she says. “It’s just that … my eldest daughter, Penelope, had to endure so many terrible things in El Salvador. When I think about what they did to me in that jail, when I remember how frightened Penelope was, how she’d cry and scream for me … hour after hour … but I couldn’t answer her, I couldn’t protect her…”

Claudia meets Joona’s eyes and takes a step toward him. Gently he puts an arm around her, and she leans heavily against his chest, trying to catch her breath. She moves away again, not looking at her daughter’s body, gropes for the chair back, and then sits down.

“My greatest joy was that Viola was born here in Sweden. She had a nice room with a pink lamp in the ceiling, toys and dolls. She went to school. She watched Pippi Longstocking on television … I don’t know if you can understand, but I was proud that she never needed to be hungry or afraid. Not like us, not like Penelope and me. We wake up at night and are frightened that someone will come into our house and hurt us…”

She falls silent and then whispers, “Viola was happy, just happy…”

Claudia leans forward to hide her face in her hands as she weeps. Joona lays a hand gently on her back.

“I’ll go now,” she says, even though she’s still crying.

“There’s no hurry.”

She manages to contain herself, but then her face twists again into tears.

“Have you talked to Penelope?” she asks.

“We haven’t been able to reach her,” Joona says in a low voice.

“Tell her that I want her to call me because—”

She stops suddenly. Her face turns pale. Then she looks up again.

“I just thought that she might not be answering me when I call because I … I was … I said some horrible things, but I didn’t mean anything, I didn’t mean anything—”

“We have already started a helicopter search for Penelope and Björn Almskog, but—”

“Please, tell me that she’s alive,” she whispers. “Tell me that, Joona Linna.”

Joona’s jaw muscles tense as he reassures her by the pressure of his hand and says, “I will do everything I can to—”

“She’s alive, tell me that,” Claudia whispers. “She must be alive.”

“I will find her,” Joona says. “I know that I will find her.”

“Tell me that Penelope is alive.”

Joona hesitates and then meets Claudia’s black eyes as a few lightning sensations sweep through his heart. A number of unseen connections click in his mind, and suddenly he hears his own voice answer, “She’s alive.”

“Yes,” Claudia whispers.

Joona looks down. He’s not able to recover the thought behind the certainty he’d felt that prompted him to ignore caution and tell Claudia that her eldest daughter was still among the living.

16

the mistake

Joona follows Claudia Fernandez to the waiting taxi and helps her in. Afterward he stands motionless until the taxi disappears around a curve in the driveway. Only then does he dig in his pocket for his cell phone. When he realizes he must have forgotten it, he strides back to the forensic department and quickly enters The Needle’s office, takes The Needle’s phone, and sits in The Needle’s chair. He dials Erixson’s number and waits while the call goes through.

“Let people sleep,” Erixson drowsily answers. “It’s Sunday, you know.”

“Confess that you’re at the boat,” Joona says.

“Yes, I am,” Erixson confesses.

“So there was no explosive,” Joona says.

“Not your average bomb, no. But you were still correct. This boat could have gone up at any second.”

“What do you mean?”

“The power cables’ insulation is seriously damaged in one spot because of crimping. Someone stuffed an old ripped seat cushion behind the cables, too. Very flammable. So it’s not that the leads are making contact—that would trip the circuit breaker. But they are exposed. If you kept running the engine, eventually you’d cause a discharge, with an electric arc running between the two power cables.”

“What happens then?”

“The arc would reach a temperature above three thousand degrees Celsius and it would ignite the seat cushion back there,” Erixson continues. “Then the fire would find its way to the hose from the fuel pump, and
bang
!”

“A quick process?”

“Well, the arc could take ten minutes to form, maybe longer, but after that, everything would happen fast—fire, more fire, explosion—and then the broken boat would fill with water and sink, fast.”

“So if the motor was started, there would soon be a fire and an explosion sooner or later?”

“Yes, but the fire wouldn’t necessarily be considered arson.”

“So the cables were damaged by accident and the sofa cushion just happened to be lying there?”

“Of course.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“Not for a second.”

Joona pictures again the drifting boat. He clears his throat and says thoughtfully, “If the killer planned all this—”

“He’s not your normal killer,” Erixson finished.

Joona repeats the thought to himself once the conversation ends. Again he agrees. The average murderer is motivated by passion, by greed, by anger. Emotions are almost always involved even to the point of hysteria. Only later does he fumble to cover his tracks and fabricate an alibi. This time it appears the killer had followed a sophisticated strategy right from the start.

And still, something went wrong.

Joona stares into space, grabs a legal pad from The Needle’s desk, and writes
Viola Fernandez
on the first page. He circles her name and then writes
Penelope Fernandez
and
Björn Almskog
beneath it. The women are sisters. Penelope and Björn are in a relationship. Björn owns the boat. Viola asks if she can come with them at the last minute.