Stalker

Nelly is fairly tall, thin, and her bleached hair is always perfect, her make-up tasteful.

Erik often sees her and her husband Martin socially. There’s no real need for Nelly to work, seeing as her husband is the main shareholder of Datametrix Nordic.

As she watches Erik’s BMW pull into the car park she walks over to him, blowing on one of the mugs and taking a cautious sip before putting it on the roof of the car and opening the back door.

‘I don’t know what this is about, but we’ve got a superintendent who seems pretty wound up,’ she says, passing him one of the mugs between the seats.

‘Thanks.’

‘I explained that we always have the best interest of our patients at heart,’ Nelly says as she gets in and closes the car door behind her. ‘Shit! God, sorry … have you got any tissues? I’ve spilled some coffee on the seat.’

‘Don’t worry.’

‘Are you cross? You’re cross,’ she says.

The smell of coffee spreads through the car and Erik closes his eyes for a moment.

‘Nelly, just tell me what they said.’

‘I don’t seem to be getting on very well with that fucking … I mean, that lovely policewoman.’

‘Is there anything I ought to know before I go inside?’ he asks, opening the door.

‘I told her she could wait in your office and go through your drawers.’

‘Thanks for the coffee … both mugs,’ he says, as they get out of the car.

Erik locks up, puts the keys in his pocket, runs a hand through his hair and starts to walk towards the clinic.

‘I didn’t actually say that bit about the drawers,’ she calls after him.

Erik walks up the steps, turns right and runs his passcard through the reader, taps in his code, then carries on along the next corridor to his room. He still feels groggy, and it occurs to him that he really must get the tablets under control soon. They make him sleep too deeply. It’s almost like drowning. His drugged dreams have started to feel claustrophobic. Yesterday he had a nightmare about two dogs that had grown into each other, and last week he fell asleep here at the clinic and had a sexual dream about Nelly. He can’t really remember it, but she was on her knees in front of him handing him a cold, glass ball.

His thoughts dissipate when he sees the superintendent sitting on his office chair with her feet resting on the edge of the waste-paper bin. She’s holding her huge stomach with one hand and a can of Coke in the other. Her brow is furrowed, her chin has fallen open and she’s breathing through her half-open mouth.

Her ID badge is lying on his desk, and she gestures wearily towards it as she introduces herself.

‘Margot Silverman … National Crime.’

‘Erik Maria Bark,’ he says, shaking her hand.

‘Thanks for coming in at such short notice,’ she says, moistening her lips. ‘We’ve got a traumatised witness … Everyone tells me I should have you in the room with me. We’ve already tried to question him four times …’

‘I have to point out that there are five of us here in our specialist unit, and that I never usually sit in on interviews of perpetrators or suspected perpetrators myself.’

The light from the ceiling lamp reflects off her pale eyes. Her curly hair is trying to escape from her thick plait.

‘OK, but Björn Kern isn’t a suspect. He works in London, and was on a plane home when someone murdered his wife,’ she replies, squeezing the Coke-can and making the thin metal creak.

‘OK, then,’ Erik says.

‘He got a taxi from Arlanda, and found her dead,’ the superintendent goes on. ‘We don’t know exactly what he did after that, but he was certainly busy. We’re not sure where she was lying to start with, we found her tucked up in bed in the bedroom … He cleaned up as well, wiped away the blood … he doesn’t remember anything, he says, but the furniture had been moved, and the blood-soaked rug was already in the washing machine … he was found more than a kilometre away from the house, a neighbour almost ran him over on the road, he was still wearing his blood-soaked suit, no shoes.’

‘I’ll certainly see him,’ Erik says. ‘But I must say at the outset that it would be wrong to try to force information from him.’

‘He has to talk,’ she says stubbornly, squeezing the can tighter.

‘I understand your frustration, but he could enter a psychosis if you push too hard … Give him time, he’ll tell you what you need.’

‘You’ve helped the police before, haven’t you?’

‘Many times.’

‘But this time … this is the second murder in what looks like a series,’ she says.

‘A series,’ Erik repeats.

Margot’s face has turned grey and the thin lines round her eyes are emphasised by the light from the lamp.

‘We’re hunting a serial killer.’

‘OK, I get that, but the patient needs—’

‘This murderer has entered an active phase, and isn’t going to stop of his own accord,’ she interrupts. ‘And Björn Kern is a disaster from my point of view. First he goes round and rearranges everything at the crime scene before the police get there … and now we can’t get him to tell us what it looked like when he arrived.’

She drops her feet to the floor, whispers to herself that they need to get going, then sits there stiff-backed, panting for breath.

‘If we put pressure on him now, he may clam up for good,’ Erik says, unlocking his birchwood cabinet and removing the fake-leather case containing his camera.

She gets to her feet, puts the can down on the desk at last, picks up her badge and walks heavily towards the door.

‘Obviously I realise that this is seriously bloody awful for him, given what’s happened, but he’s going to have to pull himself together and—’

‘Yes, but it’s a lot more than awful … it might actually be impossible for him to think about it at the moment,’ Erik replies. ‘Because what you’ve described sounds like a critical stress response, and—’

‘Those are just words,’ she interrupts, her cheeks flushing with irritation.

‘A mental trauma can be followed by an acute blockage—’

‘Why? I don’t believe that,’ she says.

‘As you may know, our spatial and temporal memories are organised by the hippocampus … and that information is then conveyed to the prefrontal cortex,’ Erik replies patiently, pointing to his forehead. ‘But that all changes at times of extreme arousal, and in cases of shock … When the amygdala identifies a threat, both the autonomous nervous system and what’s known as the cortisol axis are activated, and—’

‘OK, what the hell, I get it. Loads of stuff happens in the brain.’

‘The important thing is that this degree of stress means that memories aren’t stored as they usually are, but at an effective distance … they’re frozen, like ice-cubes, separately … closed off.’

‘I get it, you’re saying he’s doing his best,’ Margot says, putting her hand on her stomach. ‘But Björn may have seen something that can help us stop this serial killer. You have to get him to calm down, so he starts talking.’