The Nightmare
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‘Revenge? Jealousy?’
Joona tilts his head and says thoughtfully:
‘This isn’t any ordinary murderer. Maybe the perpetrator wanted information from her, to get her to say or admit to something, before finally holding her underwater until she could no longer resist the urge to breathe in.’
‘What does our pathologist say?’ Svanehjälm asks.
The Needle shakes his head.
‘If she was drowned,’ he says, ‘then I’d have found signs of violence on her body, bruises and …’
‘Can we wait with the objections?’ Joona interrupts. ‘Because I’d like to start by showing what I think happened, the way it looks in my head. And then, once I’m done, I’d like us all to go and look at the body, and see if there’s any basis for my theory.’
‘Why can’t you ever do anything the way it’s supposed to be done?’ Petter asks.
‘I do need to go home soon,’ the prosecutor warns.
Joona looks at him with an ice-grey glint in his pale eyes. There’s a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his eyes, a smile that does nothing to detract from the seriousness of his look.
‘Penelope Fernandez,’ he begins. ‘She had been sitting on deck just before, smoking a joint. It was a warm day and she felt tired, so went down to rest on her bed for a while, and fell asleep wearing her denim jacket.’
He gestures towards The Needle’s young assistant, who is waiting in the doorway.
‘Frippe has agreed to help with the reconstruction.’
Frippe smiles and takes a step forward. His dyed black hair is hanging in clumps down his back, and his worn leather trousers are studded with rivets. He carefully fastens his leather jacket over his black T-shirt with a picture of the pop-group Europe on it.
‘Look,’ Joona says quietly, and demonstrates how with one hand he can take a firm grip of both sleeves of the jacket to lock Frippe’s arms behind his back, allowing him to grab hold of his long hair with the other hand.
‘I’ve got complete control of Frippe now, and there won’t be a single bruise on him.’
Joona raises the young man’s arms behind his back. Frippe whimpers and leans forward.
‘Take it easy,’ he laughs.
‘Obviously, you’re much bigger than the victim, but I still think I could push your head down in the wash-tub.’
‘Be careful with him,’ The Needle says.
‘I’m only going to spoil his hair.’
‘Forget it,’ Frippe says with a smile.
It’s a silent tussle. The Needle looks worried, Svanehjälm uncomfortable. Petter swears. Without any great difficulty Joona manages to push Frippe’s head down into the water and hold him there for a few moments before letting go and backing away. Frippe wobbles as he straightens up and Nils hurries forward with a towel.
‘You could have just described it, surely?’ he says irritably.
Once Frippe has finished drying himself they go silently into the next room, where the cool air is heavy with the stench of decay. One wall is covered with three layers of stainless steel fridge doors. Nils opens compartment 16 and pulls out the tray. The young woman is lying on the narrow bunk, naked and drained of colour, with brown, spidery veins around her neck. Joona points at the thin, curved line over her chest.
‘Take your clothes off,’ he says to Frippe.
Frippe unbuttons his jacket and pulls off his black T-shirt. Across his chest is a faint pink mark made by the edge of the wash-tub, a curved line, like a smiling mouth.
‘Bloody hell,’ Petter says.
The Needle goes over and inspects the roots of the dead woman’s hair. He takes out a small torch and points it at the pale skin under her hair.
‘I don’t need a microscope for this. Someone’s held her very tightly by her hair.’
He turns the torch off and puts it back in the pocket of his white coat.
‘In other words …’ Joona says.
‘In other words, you’re right, of course,’ The Needle says, and claps his hands.
‘Murder,’ Svanehjälm sighs.
‘Impressive,’ Frippe says, wiping some eye-liner that has smeared across one cheek.
‘Thanks,’ Joona says distantly.
Nils looks at him quizzically:
‘What is it, Joona? What have you seen?’
‘It’s not her,’ he says.
‘What?’
Joona meets Nils’s gaze, then points at the body in front of them.
‘This isn’t Penelope Fernandez. It’s someone else,’ he says, and looks at the prosecutor. ‘The dead woman isn’t Penelope. I’ve seen her driver’s licence, and I’m certain this isn’t her.’
‘But what …’
‘Maybe Penelope Fernandez is dead too,’ he says. ‘But if she is, we haven’t found her yet.’
14
A late-night party
Penelope’s heart is still beating horribly fast – she’s trying to breathe quietly, but the air shudders in her throat. She slides down the rough rocks, pulling the damp moss down with her, and ends up under cover of the branches of the fir tree. She’s so terrified that she’s shaking. She creeps closer to the trunk where the night’s darkness is at its most dense. She hears herself start to whimper when she thinks of Viola. Björn is sitting motionless in the darkness under the branches with his arms wrapped tightly around him, muttering to himself over and over again.
They’ve been running in panic, not looking back, have stumbled and fallen and got back up, they’ve clambered over fallen trees, scraping their legs, knees and hands, but they’ve kept rushing on.
Penelope no longer has any sense of how close their pursuer is, if he’s already caught sight of them again or if he’s given up and decided to wait.
They’ve been running, but Penelope has no idea why. She can’t understand why they’re being hunted.
Maybe it’s all a mistake, she thinks. A terrible mistake.
Her racing pulse starts to slow down.
She feels sick, and almost throws up, but swallows hard instead.
‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ she keeps whispering to herself. ‘This is impossible, we have to get help, someone ought to find the boat soon and start looking for us …’
‘Shhh,’ Björn hisses with fear in his eyes.
Her hands are shaking. A series of rapid-fire images plays in her mind. She tries to blink them away, tries to look at her white trainers, at the brown fir needles on the ground, at Björn’s dirty, bloody knees, but the images keep forcing their way through: Viola is dead, sitting on the bed with her eyes wide open, the look in them unreadable, her face blotchy and white and wet, her hair lank and dripping.
Somehow Penelope had understood that the man standing on the shore beckoning Björn to swim back to land was the person who had killed her sister. She could feel it. She put the few pieces she had together and interpreted the image in an instant. If she hadn’t they would all be dead.
Penelope had screamed at Björn. They were losing time, it was going too slowly, and she hurt him with the end of the boathook before she managed to get him on board.
The black inflatable boat had appeared round the end of Kastskär and picked up speed on the flat, open water.
She had steered straight for an old wooden jetty, then hit reverse and switched the engine off as the hull hit a post. They’d slid sideways with a great creaking sound, then just fled from the boat in panic. They didn’t take anything, not even a phone. Penelope slipped on the rocks and had to cling on with her hands, then turned and saw the man in black quickly tying the inflatable to the jetty.
Penelope and Björn ran into the forest, rushing along side by side, swerving round trees and dark rocks. Björn groaned when his bare feet trod on sharp twigs.
Penelope pulled him along after her, their pursuer wasn’t far behind.
They had no thoughts, no plan, they were just rushing in panic, deep into dense ferns and blueberry bushes.
Penelope heard herself sob as she ran, sobbing in a voice she had never heard herself use before.
A thick branch caught her sharply in the thigh and she had to stop. Her breathing was ragged as she pushed the branch away with trembling hands. Björn was running towards her. Her thigh muscle was throbbing painfully. She started running again, then speeded up. She could hear Björn behind her as she ran deeper and deeper into the dense forest without looking back.
Something happens to your mind when you’re seized by panic. Because the panic isn’t constant – every so often it shatters and is replaced by purely rational reasoning. It’s like switching a horrible noise off and finding yourself surrounded by silence and a sudden overview of the situation. Then the fear comes back again, your thoughts go back to being one-track, chasing round in circles, and all you want to do is run, get away from whoever is chasing you.
Penelope thought plenty of times that they needed to find other people, there must be hundreds of them on Ornö that evening. They needed to find the inhabited parts of the island, further south, they had to get help, get hold of a phone and call the police.
They hid under cover of some fir trees, but after a while the fear became unbearable and they raced on.
As she was running Penelope could feel his presence again, thought she could hear his long, quick steps. She knew he hadn’t stopped running. He’d catch up with them if they didn’t get help soon, if they didn’t reach the inhabited part of the island.
The ground was rising again, stones came loose beneath their feet and rolled down the slope.
They had to find some people, there must be some houses somewhere near. A wave of hysteria ran through her, a desire to just stand still and scream, call for help, but she forced herself to keep going, to keep climbing.
Björn coughed behind her, gasped for breath and then coughed again.
What if Viola wasn’t dead, what if she just needed help? Fear chased through her head. On some level Penelope was aware that she was thinking things like that because the reality was so much worse. She knew Viola was dead, but it was incomprehensible, just a big, black void. She didn’t want to understand, couldn’t understand, didn’t even want to try.
They scrambled up another steep cliff, past pines with scratchy branches, rocks and lingonberry bushes. Using her hands to support her, she made it to the top. Björn was right behind her, he tried to say something but was too out of breath, he just pulled her on – and down again – with him. On the other side of the ridge the forest sloped down towards the western shore of the island. Between the dark trees they could see the pale surface of the water. It wasn’t far away. They carried on down the slope. Penelope slipped and slid part of the way, hitting the ground hard. She hit her mouth on her knees, got her breath back and started to cough.
She tried to get to her feet, wondering if she’d broken something, then suddenly she heard music, followed by loud voices and laughter. Leaning against the damp rock-face, she stood up, wiped her lips and looked at her bleeding hand.
Björn appeared beside her and pulled her along, pointing to where they should go: there was a party somewhere up ahead of them. Taking each other’s hands they started to run. Between the dark trees they could see coloured garlands of lights wound through a wooden veranda overlooking the water.
They walked on warily.
There was a group of people sitting around a table in front of a beautiful rust-red summerhouse. Penelope realised it must be the middle of the night, but the sky was still bright. The meal was long since over, the table was strewn with glasses and coffee cups, napkins and empty bowls of crisps.
Some of the people at the table were singing, others were talking and topping up glasses from wine-boxes. The barbecue was still radiating heat. There were probably children asleep inside the house. To Björn and Penelope, they all looked like they were from a completely different world. Their faces were bright and calm. The obvious friendship between them sealed them off like a glass dome.
Only one person was outside the circle. He was standing off to one side with his face towards the forest, as if expecting visitors. Penelope stopped abruptly and clutched Björn’s hand. They sank to the ground and crept behind a low fir tree. Björn looked frightened, uncomprehending. But she was sure of what she had seen. Their pursuer had figured out which way they were heading and had got to the house ahead of them. He had realised how irresistible the lights and sounds of the party would be to them. So he waited, watching for them among the dark trees, keen to head them off at the edge of the forest. He wasn’t worried that the people at the party would hear their screams; he knew they wouldn’t dare to enter the forest until it was too late.
When Penelope eventually risked a look up again he was gone. She was trembling from the adrenalin coursing through her blood. Maybe their pursuer thought he’d made a mistake, she wondered, looking around.
Perhaps he’d run off in a different direction.
She was just starting to think that their flight might finally be over, that she and Björn could go down to the party and alert the police, when she suddenly caught sight of him again.
He was standing beside a tree-trunk, not far away at all.
With measured movements their pursuer raised a pair of binoculars with pale green lenses.
Penelope huddled down next to Björn, trying to fight the urge to flee, to just run and run. She could see the man through the trees, raising the binoculars to his eyes, and realised that they probably had night vision, or heat-seeking sights.
Penelope took Björn by the hand and, crouching low, pulled him away from the house with her, away from the music, backwards into the forest. After a while she dared to straighten up. They started to run across a scree-slope formed by the kilometre-thick glaciers that once covered northern Europe. They carried on through thorny bushes, behind a large rock and across a sharp ridge. Björn grabbed hold of a thick branch and slowly started to slide down the other side. Penelope’s heart was thudding hard in her chest, her thigh muscles were aching, and she was trying to breathe quietly, even though she was far too breathless. She slipped down the rough rocks, pulling damp moss and loose stones down with her until she reached the ground under the dense canopy of fir branches. Björn was wearing nothing but his knee-length board-shorts, his face was pale and his lips almost white.
15
Identification
It sounds like someone is repeatedly throwing a ball at the wall below senior pathologist Nils Åhlén’s window. He and Joona Linna are waiting for Claudia Fernandez in silence. She’s been asked to come to the Department of Forensic Medicine early this Sunday morning to help identify the dead woman.
When Joona called her to say that they feared her daughter Viola had died, Claudia’s voice had sounded strangely calm.
‘No, Viola’s out in the archipelago with her sister,’ she had said.
‘On Björn Almskog’s boat?’ Joona asked.
‘Yes, I was the one who suggested she call Penelope and ask if she could go with them, I thought it would do her good to get away for a bit.’
‘Was anyone else going with them?’
‘Well, Björn, obviously.’
Joona fell silent, and several seconds passed as he tried to shift the weight that had settled inside him. Then he cleared his throat and said very gently:
‘Claudia, I’d like you to come to the Department of Forensic Medicine in Solna.’
‘What for?’ she asked.
Now Joona is sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the senior pathologist’s room. The Needle has slipped a small picture of Frippe into the bottom of his framed wedding photograph. They can hear the sound of the ball thudding against the wall, a hollow, lonely sound. Joona thinks back to how Claudia’s breathing changed when she finally realised that it might actually be her daughter that they’d found dead. Joona had carefully explained the circumstances to her: that a woman they feared was her younger daughter had been found dead on an abandoned motor cruiser in the Stockholm archipelago.
He booked a taxi to collect Claudia Fernandez from her terraced house in Gustavsberg. She should be with them within the next few minutes.
The Needle makes a half-hearted attempt at small-talk, but gives up after a while when he realises Joona isn’t going to respond.
They both just want this to be over. A positive identification is always a traumatic moment: any lacerating relief afforded by the end of uncertainty is mixed with the absolute agony of all hope being lost.
They can hear footsteps in the corridor. They both get to their feet at the same time.
Seeing the dead body of a family member is a merciless confirmation of all our worst fears. But at the same time it’s an important, necessary part of the grieving process. Joona has read plenty of claims that identification also constitutes a form of liberation. There’s no longer any opportunity for wild fantasies that the loved one is actually still alive, fantasies which can only bring emptiness and frustration.
Joona can’t help thinking that’s just hollow nonsense. Death is never anything but terrible, and never gives anything back.
Claudia Fernandez is standing in the doorway, a frightened-looking woman in her sixties. Her face bears traces of tears and anxiety, and her body looks frozen and hunched.
Joona gently introduces himself:
‘Hello, my name is Joona Linna. I’m a detective superintendent – it was me you spoke to on the phone.’
The Needle introduces himself very quietly as he shakes hands with the woman, then immediately turns his back on her and pretends to sort through some files. He appears very brusque and dismissive, but Joona knows that he’s really very upset.
‘I’ve tried calling them, but I can’t get hold of either of my girls,’ Claudia whispers. ‘They ought …’
‘Shall we go?’ Nils interrupts, as if he hasn’t heard her.
They move silently through the familiar corridors. With each step Joona can’t help thinking that the air is getting thinner. Claudia Fernandez is in no hurry to get to what lies ahead. She walks slowly, several metres behind Nils, whose tall, sharply defined figure hurries off ahead of them. Joona Linna turns and tries to smile at Claudia. But he has to steel himself against the look in her eyes: panic, pleading, prayer, desperate attempts to do a deal with God.
It feels like they’re dragging her into the cold room where the bodies are kept.
Nils mutters something, sounding almost angry, then he bends over, unlocks one of the stainless steel doors and pulls out the drawer.
The young woman comes into view. Her body is covered with a white sheet. Her eyes are dull, half-closed, her cheeks sunken.
Her hair lies like a black wreath around her beautiful head.
A small, pale hand is visible beside her hip.
Claudia Fernandez is breathing fast. She reaches out and cautiously touches the hand, then lets out a whimpering moan. It comes from deep within her, as if she is breaking apart at that moment, her soul shattering.
Claudia’s body starts to shake and she sinks to her knees, pressing her daughter’s lifeless hand to her lips.
‘No, no,’ she sobs. ‘Oh God, dear God, not Viola. Not Viola …’
Joona is standing a few steps behind Claudia, sees her back shake with weeping, hears her voice, as her desperate sobbing gets gradually louder, then slowly dies away.
She wipes the tears from her face, but is still breathing fitfully as she gets up from the floor.
‘Can you confirm that this is her?’ The Needle says curtly. ‘Is this Viola Fernandez, your …’
His voice tails off and he clears his throat quickly and angrily.
Claudia shakes her head and gently strokes her daughter’s cheek with her fingertips.
‘Viola, Violita …’
Very shakily, she pulls her hand back, and Joona says gently:
‘I’m so very, very sorry.’
Claudia almost falls, but reaches out to the wall for support, turns away and whispers to herself:
‘We’re going to the circus on Saturday, it’s a surprise for Viola …’
They look at the dead woman, her pale lips, the veins on her neck.
‘I’ve forgotten your name,’ Claudia says helplessly, looking at Joona.
‘Joona Linna,’ he says.
‘Joona Linna,’ the woman repeats in a thick voice. ‘I’ll tell you about Viola. She’s my little girl, my youngest, my happy little …’
Claudia glances over at Viola’s white face and sways sideways. The Needle pulls up a chair, but she just shakes her head.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s just that … my elder daughter, Penelope, she went through so many terrible things in El Salvador. When I think about what they did to me in that prison, when I remember how frightened Penelope was, she cried and called out for me … hour after hour, but I couldn’t go to her, I couldn’t protect her …’
Claudia looks Joona in the eye and takes a step towards him, and he gently puts his arm round her. She leans heavily against his chest, catches her breath, then pulls away and fumbles for the back of the chair without looking at her dead daughter, and sits down.
‘My proudest achievement … was making sure that little Viola was born here in Sweden. She had a lovely room, with a pink lampshade, and lots of toys and dolls, she went to school, watched Pippi Longstocking … I don’t suppose you can understand, but I was so proud that she never had to be hungry or afraid. Not like us … like Penelope and me, who still wake up in the middle of the night, ready for someone to break in and do terrible things …’
She falls silent, then whispers:
‘Viola has known nothing but happiness and …’
Claudia leans forward and hides her face in her hands, and weeps softly. Joona very gently puts his hand on her back.
‘I’ll go now,’ she says, still crying.
‘There’s no hurry.’
She calms down, but then her face contorts into another fit of tears.
‘Have you spoken to Penelope?’ she asks.
‘We haven’t been able to get hold of her,’ Joona says quietly.
‘Tell her I want her to call me, because …’
She stops herself, the colour drains from her face again and then she looks up.
‘I just thought maybe she wasn’t answering because she saw it was me calling, because I … I was … I said a horrible thing, but I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean …’
‘We’ve started to look for Penelope and Björn Almskog with a helicopter, but …’
‘Please, tell me she’s alive,’ she whispers to Joona. ‘Tell me that much, Joona Linna.’
Joona’s jaw muscles tense as he strokes Claudia’s back, then he says:
‘I’m going to do everything I can to …’
‘She’s alive. Say it!’ Claudia interrupts. ‘She has to be alive.’
‘I’m going to find her,’ Joona says. ‘I know I’m going to find her.’
‘Say that Penelope’s alive.’
Joona hesitates, then meets Claudia’s clouded gaze, and different thoughts flash through his head, linked in fleeting combinations, and suddenly he hears himself say:
‘She’s alive.’
‘Yes,’ Claudia whispers.
Joona lowers his eyes; he can no longer grasp the thoughts that passed through his consciousness just moments before, which made him change his mind and tell Claudia that her eldest daughter is alive.
16
The mistake
Joona goes with Claudia Fernandez to the waiting taxi, helps her in, and then waits by the turning circle until the car is out of sight before he starts to search his pockets for his phone. When he realises he must have put it down somewhere, he hurries back inside the Department of Forensic Medicine, walks straight into Nils Åhlén’s office, picks up The Needle’s phone as he sits down behind the desk, dials Erixon’s number and waits as the call goes through.