Simone drive into the part of Tumba where Josef Ek was born and grew up and where, at the age of fifteen, he slaughtered his family. The house looks just like the other houses on the street: neatly kept, unremarkable. If not for the black-and-yellow police tape, nobody would suspect that a week ago this house was the scene of two of the country’s most long-drawn-out and merciless murders.
A bicycle with training wheels sits near a sandpit at the front of the house. One end of the police tape has come loose and blown about, finally getting stuck in the letter box opposite. Kennet doesn’t stop but drives past slowly. Simone peers in the windows. The curtains are drawn and the place looks completely deserted. The whole row of houses seems to have been abandoned. Could she live on a street where something like this had happened? She shudders. They roll to the end of the cul-de-sac, swing around, and are approaching the scene of the crime once more when Simone’s phone suddenly rings.
She answers quickly—“Hello?”—and listens for a moment. “Has something happened?”
Kennet stops the car, turns off the engine, and gets out. From the capacious boot he takes a crowbar, a tape measure, and a torch. He hears Simone say that she has to go before he slams the boot shut.
“What do you think?” Simone yells into the phone.
Kennet can hear her through the car windows and carefully gauges her distressed expression as she gets out of the passenger seat with the house plans in her hand. Without speaking they walk together towards the white gate in the low fence. It squeaks slightly as it opens. Kennet tips a key out of an envelope, continues to the door, and unlocks it. Before he goes in he turns back to look at Simone and he nods briefly, noting the resolute look on her face.
As soon as they walk into the hallway they are hit by the sickening smell of rancid blood. For a brief moment Simone feels panic rising in her chest: the stench is rotten, sweet, not unlike excrement. She glances at Kennet. He doesn’t seem troubled, just focused, his movements carefully considered. They go past the living room. From the corner of her eye Simone has an impression of the bloodstained walls and soapstone fireplace, the overwhelming chaos, the fear lifting from the floor.
They can hear a strange creaking noise from somewhere inside the house. Kennet stops dead, calmly takes out his former service pistol, removes the safety catch, and checks that it is loaded.
They hear something else: a swaying, heavy, dragging noise. It doesn’t sound like footsteps. It sounds more like someone slowly crawling.
49
sunday, december 13 (feast of st lucia): morning
Erik wakes in the narrow bed in his office at the hospital. It’s the middle of the night. Glancing at the clock on his mobile, he sees it’s almost three. He takes another pill and lies shivering under the covers until the tingling spreads through his body and the darkness comes sweeping back in.
When he wakes up several hours later, he has a splitting headache. He takes a painkiller, goes over to the window, and lets his eyes roam over the gloomy façade with its hundreds of windows. The sky is white, but every window is still in darkness.
He puts his phone down on the desk and gets undressed. The small shower stall smells of disinfectant. The warm water flows over his head and the back of his neck, and thunders against the Plexiglas.
When he has dried himself he wipes off the mirror, moistens his face, and covers it with shaving foam. He is thinking about the fact that Simone said the front door of the apartment had been open the night before Josef Ek ran away from the hospital. She was awake, and she went and closed it. But it couldn’t have been Josef Ek on that occasion. Erik tries to understand what happened during the night, but there are too many unanswered questions. How did Josef get in? Did he simply knock on the door until Benjamin woke up and opened it?
Erik imagines the two boys standing there regarding each other in the faint light from the stairwell. Benjamin is barefoot, his hair on end; he is wearing his childish pyjamas and blinking with tired eyes at the taller boy. You could say they are not unlike each other, except that Josef has murdered his parents and his younger sister, has just killed a nurse at the hospital with a scalpel, and seriously injured a man at the Northern Cemetery.
“No,” Erik says to himself. “I don’t believe this. It doesn’t make sense.”
Who would be able to get in, who would Benjamin open the door to, who would Simone or Benjamin trust with a key? Perhaps Benjamin was expecting a nocturnal visit from Aida. Not unheard of; Erik has to think of everything. Perhaps Josef was working with someone who helped him with the door, perhaps Josef had actually intended to come on the first night but couldn’t manage to get away, and his partner had left the door open for him in accordance with their plans.
Erik finishes shaving and brushes his teeth, picks up the phone, checks the time, and calls Joona.
“Good morning, Erik,” says the hoarse voice that’s distinctively Joona’s. He must have recognised Erik’s number from the display.
“Did I wake you?”
“No.”
“Sorry to call again.” Erik coughs.
“Has something happened?” asks Joona.
“You haven’t found Josef?”
“We need to speak to Simone, go through everything properly.”
“But you don’t believe it was Josef who took Benjamin?”
“No, I don’t,” Joona replies. “But I’d like to take a look at the apartment, make door-to-door inquiries, try to find some witnesses.”
“Shall I ask Simone to call you?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
A drop of water falls from the tap, landing in the basin with a brief, truncated ping.
“I still think you should accept police protection,” says Joona.
“I’m staying at Karolinska Hospital. I don’t think Josef will come back here of his own free will.”
“And what about Simone?”
“Ask her. It’s possible she might have changed her mind,” says Erik. “Even though she already has a protector.”
“Oh, yes, so I hear,” says Joona dryly. “Can’t imagine what it must be like to have Kennet Sträng as a father-in-law.”
“Neither can I,” replies Erik.
Joona laughs.
“Did Josef try to run away the day before yesterday?” asks Erik.
“There’s nothing to suggest that,” replies Joona. “Why do you ask?”
“Somebody opened our front door the previous night, just like last night.”
“I didn’t know that. But I’m pretty sure Josef ran because he found out he was going to be arrested, and he was given that information only yesterday,” Joona says slowly.
Erik
