Stalker

She tries to roll over on to her side, but the intruder grabs her by the chin and suddenly jabs the knife into her face. It no longer hurts. But a sense of unreality is spinning in her head. Shock and an abstract sense of dislocation blur with the precise and intimate feeling of being cut in the face.

The blade enters her neck and chest and face again. Her lips and cheeks fill with warmth and pain.

Susanna realises that she’s not going to make it. Ice-cold anguish opens up like a chasm as she stops fighting for her life.

6 (#u6eac72a4-6874-5b24-86fa-ce89bca53a5d)

Psychiatrist Erik Maria Bark is leaning back in his pale grey sheepskin armchair. He has a large study in his home, with a varnished oak floor and built-in bookcases. The dark brick villa is in the oldest part of Gamla Enskede, just to the south of Stockholm.

It’s the middle of the day, but he was on call last night and could do with a few hours’ sleep.

He shuts his eyes and thinks about when Benjamin was small and used to like to hear how Mummy and Daddy met. Erik would sit down on the edge of his bed and explain how Cupid, the god of love, really did exist.

He lived up amongst the clouds and looked like a chubby little boy with a bow and arrow in his hands.

‘One summer’s evening Cupid gazed down at Sweden and caught sight of me,’ Erik explained to his son. ‘I was at a university party, pushing my way through the crowd on the roof terrace when Cupid crept to the edge of his cloud and fired an arrow down towards the Earth.

‘I was wandering about at the party, talking to friends, eating peanuts and exchanging a few words with the head of department.

‘And at the exact moment that a woman with strawberry blonde hair and a champagne glass in her hand looked in my direction, Cupid’s arrow hit me in the heart.’

After almost twenty years of marriage Erik and Simone had agreed to separate, but she was probably the one who agreed the most.

As Erik leans forward to switch his reading-lamp off, he catches a glimpse of his tired face in the narrow mirror by the bookcase. The lines on his forehead and the furrows in his cheeks are deeper than ever. His dark-brown hair is flecked with grey. He ought to get a haircut. A few loose strands are hanging in front of his eyes and he flicks them away with a jerk of his head.

When Simone told him that she had met John, Erik realised it was over. Benjamin was pretty relaxed about the whole thing, and used to tease him by saying it would be cool to have two dads.

Benjamin is eighteen years old now, and lives in the big house in Stockholm with Simone and her new man, his stepbrothers and sisters, and the dogs.

On Erik’s old smoking table is the latest edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry and a copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with a half-empty blister-pack of pills as a bookmark.

Outside the leaded windows the rain is falling on the drenched vegetation of the garden.

Erik pulls the tablets from the book and pops one sleeping-pill into his hand, trying to work out how long it would take his body to absorb the active substance, but he has to start again, then gives up. Just to be sure, he breaks the tablet in half along the little groove, blows the loose powder off to get rid of the bitter taste, then swallows one half.

The rain streams down the windows as the muted tones of John Coltrane’s ‘Dear Old Stockholm’ flow from the speakers.

The tablet’s chemical warmth spreads through his muscles. He shuts his eyes and enjoys the music.

Erik Maria Bark is a trained doctor, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, specialising in psychological trauma and disaster counselling, and worked for the Red Cross in Uganda for five years.

He spent four years leading a ground-breaking research project into group therapy involving deep hypnosis at the Karolinska Institute. He is a member of the European Society of Hypnosis, and is regarded as a leading international authority on clinical hypnotherapy.

At the moment Erik is part of a small team specialising in acutely traumatised and post-traumatic patients. They are regularly called in to help the police and public prosecutors with complex interviews of crime victims.

He often uses hypnosis to help witnesses relax, so that they can get to grips with their memories of traumatic situations.

He’s got three hours before he needs to be at a meeting at the Karolinska Institute, and he’s hoping to spend most of that time asleep.

But he’s not allowed to.

He’s dragged straight into deep sleep, and starts dreaming that he’s carrying an old, bearded man through a very small house.

Simone is shouting at him from behind a closed door when the phone rings. Erik jumps, and fumbles for the smoking-table. His heart is beating hard from the sudden anxiety of being yanked out of a state of deep relaxation.

‘Simone,’ he answers groggily.

‘Hello, Simone … I’m not sure, but maybe you should try to give up those French cigarettes?’ Nelly jokes in her laconic way. ‘Sorry to have to say this, but you almost sound like a man.’

‘Almost.’ Erik smiles, feeling the heaviness of the sleeping pill in his head.

Nelly laughs, a fresh, tinkling laugh.

Nelly Brandt is a psychologist, Erik’s closest colleague in the specialist team at the Karolinska Hospital. She’s extremely competent, works very hard, but is also very funny, often in a rather earthy way.

‘The police are here, they’re really agitated,’ she says, and only now does he hear how stressed she sounds.

He rubs his eyes to get them to focus, and tries to listen to what Nelly is telling him about the police rushing in with an acutely shocked patient.

Erik squints towards the window facing the street, as water streams down the glass.

‘We’re checking his somatic status and running the routine tests,’ she says. ‘Blood and urine … liver status, kidney and thyroid function …’

‘Good.’

‘Erik, the superintendent has asked for you specifically … It’s my fault, I happened to let slip that you were the best.’

‘Flattery doesn’t work on me,’ he says, getting to his feet somewhat unsteadily. He rubs his face with his hand, then grabs hold of the furniture as he makes his way towards the desk.

‘You’re standing up,’ she says cheerily.

‘Yes, but I …’

‘Then I’ll tell the police that you’re on your way.’

Beneath the desk are a pair of black socks with dusty soles, a long, thin taxi receipt and a mobile phone charger. As he bends over to grab the socks the floor comes rushing up to meet him, and he would have fallen if he hadn’t put his hand out to stop himself.

The objects on the desk merge and spread out in double vision. The silver pens in their holder radiate harsh reflections.

He reaches for a half-empty glass of water, takes a small sip and tells himself to get his act together.

7 (#u6eac72a4-6874-5b24-86fa-ce89bca53a5d)

The Karolinska University Hospital is one of the largest in Europe, with more than fifteen thousand members of staff. The Psychology Clinic is located slightly apart from the vast hospital precinct. From above, the building looks like a Viking ship from an ancient burial site, but when approached through the park it doesn’t look out of place among the other buildings. The nicotine-yellow stucco of the façade is still damp from the rain, with rust-coloured water running down the drainpipes. The front wheel of a bicycle is dangling from a chain in the bike-rack.

The car tyres crunch softly as Erik turns into the car park.

Nelly is standing on the steps waiting for him with two mugs of coffee. Erik can’t help smiling when he sees her happy grin and the consciously disinterested look in her eyes.