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This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
1
Copyright © Lars Kepler 2010
Translation copyright © Neil Smith 2018
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
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photography © Jill Battaglia/Trevillion Images
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
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2018 ISBN: 9780007488087
SOURCE ISBN: 9780008241827
Version: 2019-03-04
International Praise for Lars Kepler:
‘A terrifying and original read’ Sun
‘A rollercoaster ride of a thriller full of striking twists’ Mail on Sunday
‘Sensational’ Lee Child
‘An international book written for an international audience’ Huffington Post
‘Ferocious, visceral storytelling that wraps you in a cloak of darkness. It’s stunning’ Daily Mail
‘One of the best – if not the best – Scandinavian crime thrillers I’ve read’ Sam Baker, Red
‘A creepy and compulsive crime thriller’ Mo Hayder
‘Intelligent, original and chilling’ Simon Beckett
‘Mesmerizing … a bad dream that takes hold and won’t let go’ Wall Street Journal
‘One of the most hair-raising crime novels published this year’ Sunday Times
‘Grips you round the throat until the final twist’ Woman & Home
‘A serious, disturbing, highly readable novel that is finally a meditation on evil’ Washington Post
‘A genuine chiller … deeply scarifying stuff’ Independent
‘Far above your average thriller … you’ll be terrified’ Evening Standard
‘A pulse-pounding debut that is already a native smash’ Financial Times
‘The cracking pace and absorbing story mean it cannot be missed’ Courier Mail
‘Utterly outstanding’ Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, Denmark
‘Disturbing, dark and twisted’ Easy Living
‘Creepy and addictive’ She
‘Brilliant, well written and very satisfying. A superb thriller’ De Telegraaf, Netherlands
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
International Praise for Lars Kepler:
Preface
Chapter 1: A premonition
Chapter 2: The pursuer
Chapter 3: A boat is left adrift in Jungfrufjärden
Chapter 4: The floating man
Chapter 5: National Homicide Commission
Chapter 6: How death came
Chapter 7: Helpful people
Chapter 8: Nils Åhlén
Chapter 9: About close combat
Chapter 10: Drowned
Chapter 11: In the front cabin
Chapter 12: Unusual death
Chapter 13: Reconstruction
Chapter 14: A late-night party
Chapter 15: Identification
Chapter 16: The mistake
Chapter 17: A very dangerous man
Chapter 18: The fire
Chapter 19: An undulating landscape of ash
Chapter 20: The house
Chapter 21: The Security Police
Chapter 22: Incomprehensible
Chapter 23: Forensics
Chapter 24: The object
Chapter 25: The child on the stairs
Chapter 26: The palm of a hand
Chapter 27: Extremists
Chapter 28: The Brigade
Chapter 29: The SWAT team
Chapter 30: Pain
Chapter 31: The message
Chapter 32: Proper police work
Chapter 33: The search
Chapter 34: Dreambow
Chapter 35: Erased material
Chapter 36: The connection
Chapter 37: Collaboration
Chapter 38: Saga Bauer
Chapter 39: Further away
Chapter 40: The successor
Chapter 41: No sleep
Chapter 42: The Inspectorate for Strategic Products
Chapter 43: A cloned computer
Chapter 44: The emails
Chapter 45: The motorway
Chapter 46: The photograph
Chapter 47: The fourth person
Chapter 48: The bridal crown
Chapter 49: The indistinct face
Chapter 50: The hiding place
Chapter 51: Winner takes all
Chapter 52: The courier
Chapter 53: The signature
Chapter 54: The competition
Chapter 55: The police
Chapter 56: The helicopter
Chapter 57: The police
Chapter 58: The beneficiary
Chapter 59: When life gets new meaning
Chapter 60: A little more time
Chapter 61: What he always thinks
Chapter 62: Sweet sleep
Chapter 63: The Johan Fredrik Berwald Contest
Chapter 64: The lift down
Chapter 65: What these eyes have seen
Chapter 66: Without Penelope
Chapter 67: Where the money goes
Chapter 68: Something to celebrate
Chapter 69: The string quartet
Chapter 70: A feeling
Chapter 71: Seven million choices
Chapter 72: The riddle
Chapter 73: One last question
Chapter 74: A perfect plan
Chapter 75: Bait
Chapter 76: The secure apartment
Chapter 77: The operation
Chapter 78: The market-hall
Chapter 79: When it happens
Chapter 80: The pressure wave
Chapter 81: The German Embassy
Chapter 82: The face
Chapter 83: The perpetrator
Chapter 84: The fire
Chapter 85: Hunt of the hunted
Chapter 86: The white trunk of the birch
Chapter 87: The dead end
Chapter 88: The visitor
Chapter 89: The meeting
Chapter 90: The photographer
Chapter 91: A final way out
Chapter 92: Exposed
Chapter 93: Greta’s death
Chapter 94: White, rustling plastic
Chapter 95: Missing
Chapter 96: Raphael Guidi
Chapter 97: Escape
Chapter 98: The prosecutor
Chapter 99: Missing
Chapter 100: Pontus Salman
Chapter 101: The girl with dandelions
Chapter 102: The other side of the picture
Chapter 103: Closer
Chapter 104: The nightmare
Chapter 105: The witness
Chapter 106: The father
Chapter 107: The empty room
Chapter 108: Loyalty
Chapter 109: The contract
Chapter 110: On board
Chapter 111: Traitor
Chapter 112: Automatic fire
Chapter 113: The knife-blade
Chapter 114: The final struggle
Chapter 115: Conclusion
Axel Riessen
Beverly Andersson
Penelope Fernandez
Saga Bauer and Anja Larsson
Disa Helenius
Joona Linna
Epilogue
Read on for an exclusive extract from the next Joona Linna thriller, The Fire Witness:
KEEP READING…
About the Author
Also by Lars Kepler
About the Publisher
Preface
There’s no wind when the large leisure cruiser is found drifting in Jungfrufjärden in the southern part of the Stockholm archipelago one light evening. The water is a sleepy bluish-grey colour, and is moving as gently as fog.
The old man in a rowing boat calls out a couple of times even though he has a feeling he’s not going to get any answer. He’s been watching the boat from shore for almost an hour as it’s been drifting slowly backwards on the offshore current.
The man angles his rowing boat so that the side butts up against the motor cruiser. He pulls the oars in, ties the rowing boat to the swimming platform, climbs up the metal steps and over the railing. In the middle of the aft-deck is a pink sun-lounger. When he can’t hear anything he opens the glass door and goes down a few steps into the saloon. The large windows are casting a grey light across the polished teak interior and dark-blue upholstery of the sofa. He carries on down the steep wooden steps, past the dark galley and bathroom and into the large cabin. Pale light is filtering through the narrow windows up by the ceiling, illuminating the arrow-shaped double bed. Towards the top of the bed a young woman in a denim jacket is sitting against the wall in a limp, slumped posture with her legs wide apart and one hand resting on a pink cushion. She’s looking the old man straight in the eye with a bemused, anxious smile on her face.
It takes a moment for the man to realise that the woman is dead.
In her long, dark hair there’s a clasp in the shape of a dove, a peace dove.
When the old man goes over and touches her cheek, her head topples forward and a thin stream of water trickles out of her mouth and down her chin.
The word ‘music’ actually refers to the artistry of the muses, and comes from the Greek myth of the nine muses. All nine were the daughters of the great god Zeus and the titan Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. The muse of music itself, Euterpe, is usually depicted with a double-flute between her lips, and her name means ‘bringer of joy’.
The talent known as musicality has no generally accepted definition. There are people who lack the ability to discern shifting frequencies of notes, and there are people who are born with an extensive musical memory and the sort of perfectly attuned hearing that enables them to identify any given note without any points of reference whatsoever.
Through the ages a number of exceptionally talented musical geniuses have emerged, some of whom have become extremely famous, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who toured the courts of Europe from the age of six, and Ludwig van Beethoven, who composed many of his greatest works after he had become totally deaf.
The legendary Nicolò Paganini was born in 1782 in the Italian city of Genoa. He was a self-taught violinist and composer. To this day there have been very few violinists capable of playing Paganini’s fast, complicated compositions. Up to his death Paganini was pursued by rumours that he had only acquired his unique talent by signing a contract with the devil.
1
A premonition
A shiver runs down Penelope Fernandez’s spine. Her heart suddenly starts to beat faster and she glances quickly over her shoulder. Perhaps at that moment she has a premonition of what is going to happen to her later that same day.
In spite of the heat in the studio Penelope’s face feels cool. It’s a lingering after-effect from the make-up room, where the cool cream-powder sponge was pressed to her skin, the clasp with the dove removed from her hair as the mousse was rubbed in to gather her hair into twining locks.
Penelope Fernandez is chairperson of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society. She is now being ushered silently into the news studio, and sits down in the spotlight opposite Pontus Salman, who is the managing director of Silencia Defence Ltd, an arms manufacturer.
The news anchor, Stefanie von Sydow, moves on to a new item, looks into the camera and starts to talk about the redundancies that have followed the purchase of the Swedish company Bofors by British defence manufacturer BAE Systems Ltd, then she turns to Penelope:
‘Penelope Fernandez, in a number of debates now you have been highly critical of Swedish arms exports. Recently you drew a comparison with the Angolagate scandal in France, in which senior politicians and businessmen were accused of bribery and weapons smuggling, and have now been given long prison sentences. We haven’t seen anything like that in Sweden, though, surely?’
‘There are two ways of looking at that,’ Penelope Fernandez replies. ‘Either our politicians work differently, or our judicial system does.’
‘As you’re well aware,’ Pontus Salman says, ‘we have a long tradition of …’
‘According to Swedish law,’ Penelope interrupts. ‘According to Swedish law, all manufacture and export of military equipment is illegal.’
‘You’re wrong, of course,’ Salman says.
‘Paragraphs 3 and 6 in the Military Equipment Act, 1992,’ Penelope specifies.
‘But Silencia Defence has been given positive advance notification,’ he smiles.
‘Yes, because otherwise we’d be talking about large-scale weapons offences, and …’
‘Like I said, we have a permit,’ he interrupts.
‘Don’t forget what military equipment is …’
‘Hold on a moment, Penelope,’ news anchor Stefanie von Sydow says, nodding to Pontus Salman who has raised a hand to indicate that he hasn’t finished.
‘Naturally, every deal is examined beforehand,’ he explains. ‘Either directly by the government, or by the Inspectorate for Strategic Products, if you’re aware of them?’
‘France has an equivalent body,’ Penelope replies. ‘Even so, military equipment worth eight billion kronor was able to reach Angola in spite of the UN arms embargo, and in spite of an absolutely binding ban on …’
‘We’re talking about Sweden now.’
‘I understand that people don’t want to lose their jobs, but I’d still be interested to hear how you can justify the export of huge quantities of ammunition to Kenya? A country which …’
‘You haven’t got anything,’ he interrupts. ‘Nothing, not a single instance of wrongdoing, have you?’
‘Unfortunately I’m not in a position to …’
‘Do you have any concrete evidence?’ Stefanie von Sydow interrupts.
‘No,’ Penelope Fernandez replies, and lowers her gaze. ‘But I …’
‘In which case I think an apology is in order,’ Pontus Salman says.
Penelope looks him in the eye, feels anger and frustration bubbling up inside her, but forces herself to stay quiet. Pontus Salman gives her a disappointed smile and then goes on to talk about their factory in Trollhättan. Two hundred jobs were created when Silencia Defence was given permission to start manufacture. He explains what positive advance notification means, and how far they have got with production. He slowly expands on his point to the extent that there’s no time left for his co-interviewee.
Penelope listens and tries to suppress the pride in her heart. Instead she thinks about the fact that she and Björn will soon be setting off on his boat. They’ll make up the arrow-shaped bed in the fore, fill the fridge and little freezer. In her mind’s eye she can see the sparkle of the frosted vodka glasses when they’re eating pickled herring, potatoes, boiled eggs and crispbread. They’ll lay the table on the aft-deck, drop anchor by a small island in the archipelago and sit and eat for hours in the evening sun.
Penelope Fernandez leaves Swedish Television’s studios and starts to walk towards Valhallavägen. She spent almost two hours waiting for a follow-up interview on a different programme before the producer said they were going to have to drop her to make room for five easy tips for a flat stomach this summer.
Over on the grassy expanse of Gärdet she can see the colourful tents of the Circus Maximum. One of the keepers is washing two elephants with a hose. One of them reaches into the air with its trunk to catch the hard jet of water in its mouth.
Penelope is only twenty-four, and she has dark, curly hair that reaches just past her shoulders. She has a short silver chain around her neck with a small crucifix from when she was confirmed. Her skin is a silky golden colour, like virgin olive oil or honey, as one boy wrote when they had to describe each other in a high-school exercise. Her eyes are large and serious. More than once she has been told that she bears a striking resemblance to film star Sophia Loren.
Penelope takes out her phone and calls Björn to say she’s on her way, and is about to catch the underground from Karlaplan.
‘Penny? Has something happened?’ he asks, sounding stressed.
‘No – why?’
‘Everything’s ready, I left you a message. You’re the only thing missing.’
‘There’s no desperate rush, is there?’
As Penelope is standing on the long, steep escalator down to the underground platform her heart starts to beat faster with vague unease, and she closes her eyes. The escalator grows steeper and narrower, the air cooler and cooler.
Penelope Fernandez comes from La Libertad, which is one of the largest regions of El Salvador. Penelope’s mother Claudia Fernandez was imprisoned during the civil war and Penelope was born in a cell where fifteen other interned women did their best to help. Claudia was a doctor, and had been active in the campaign to educate the population. The reason she ended up in one of the regime’s notorious prisons was because she continued to campaign for the right of the indigenous people to form trades unions.
Penelope only opens her eyes when she reaches the bottom of the escalator. The feeling of being shut in vanishes. She thinks once more about Björn, waiting at the marina on Långholmen. She loves swimming naked from his boat, diving into the water and not being able to see anything but sea and sky.
The underground train shakes as it rushes through the tunnel, then sunlight streams through the windows when it reaches Gamla stan station.
Penelope Fernandez hates war and violence and military might. It’s a burning conviction which led her to study for a master’s degree at Uppsala University in Peace and Conflict Studies. She has worked for the French aid organisation Action Contre la Faim in Darfur alongside Jane Oduya. She wrote an acclaimed article for Dagens Nyheter about the women in the refugee camps and their attempts to recreate a semblance of normal life after every assault on them. Two years ago she succeeded Frida Blom as chair of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society.