Stalker

Erik stands up and lowers the seat by spinning it a few times.

‘We’ll start with your right hand, but we’ll pick out some notes with your left.’

He looks at her fair face, with its straight nose and half-open mouth.

‘Don’t look at me, look at the notes and the keyboard,’ she says, reaching over his shoulder and putting her little finger gently on one of the black keys. A high note echoes inside the piano.

‘This is E flat … We’ll start with the first formation, which consists of six notes, six sixteenths,’ she says, and plays the notes.

‘OK,’ Erik mutters.

‘Where did I start?’

He presses the key, producing a hard note.

‘Use your little finger.’

‘How did you know …’

‘Because it’s natural – now, play,’ she says.

He struggles through the lesson, concentrating on her instructions, stressing the first note of the six, but loses his way when he has to add a few notes with his left hand. A couple of times she touches his hand again and tells him to relax his fingers.

‘OK, you’re tired, let’s stop there,’ Jackie says in a neutral voice. ‘You’ve done some good work.’

She gives him notes for the next lesson, then asks the girl to show him to the door. They pass a closed door with ‘No entry!’ scrawled in childish writing on a large sign.

‘Is that your room?’ Erik asks.

‘Only Mummy’s allowed in there,’ the child says.

‘When I was little I wouldn’t even let my mummy come into my room.’

‘Really?’

‘I drew a big skull and hung that on the door, but I think she went in anyway, because sometimes there were clean sheets on the bed.’

The evening air is fresh when he steps outside. It feels like he’s hardly been breathing during the course of the lesson. His back is so tense that it hurts, and he still feels strangely embarrassed.

When he gets home he has a long, hot shower, then he calls the piano teacher.

‘Yes, this is Jackie.’

‘Hello, Erik Maria Bark here. Your new pupil, you know …’

‘Hello,’ she says, curious.

‘I’m calling to … to apologise. I wasted your whole evening and … well, I can see it’s hopeless, it’s too late for me to …’

‘You did some good work, like I said,’ Jackie says. ‘Do the exercises I gave you and I’ll see you again soon.’

He doesn’t know what to say.

‘Goodnight,’ she says, and ends the call.

Before he goes to bed he puts on Chopin’s opus 25, to hear what he’s aiming at. When he hears the pianist Maurizio Pollini’s bubbling notes, he can’t help laughing.

11 (#ulink_8e4ba6e3-4d07-5166-b5d8-c716b47d7a24)

The sun is high above the trees, and the blue-and-white plastic tape is fluttering in the breeze. A transparent shadow of the tape dances on the tarmac.

The police officers posted at the cordon let through a black Lincoln Towncar, and it rolls slowly along Stenhammarsvägen as a reflection of the green gardens runs across the black paint like a forest at night.

Margot Silverman pulls over to the kerb and glides smoothly to a halt behind the command vehicle, and sits there for a while with her hand on the handbrake.

She’s thinking about how hard they worked to try to identify Susanna Kern before time ran out, then, once an hour had passed and they realised it was too late, carried on anyway.

Margot and Adam had gone down to see their exhausted IT experts, and had just been told that it wasn’t possible to trace the video clip when the call came in.

Shortly after two o’clock in the morning the forensics team were at the scene, and the entire area between Bromma kyrkväg and Lillängsgatan had been cordoned off.

Throughout the day the arduous task of examining the crime scene continued as further attempts were made to question the victim’s husband, with the help of psychiatrist Erik Maria Bark.

The police have carried out door-to-door inquiries in the neighbourhood, they’ve checked recordings from nearby traffic-surveillance cameras, and Margot has booked a meeting for herself and Adam to see a forensics expert called Erixon.

She takes a deep breath, picks up her McDonald’s bag, and gets out of the car.

Outside the cordon blocking off Stenhammarsvägen is a growing pile of flowers, and there are now three candles burning. A few shocked neighbours have gathered in the parish hall, but most of them have stuck to their plans for the weekend.

They have no suspects.

Susanna’s ex-husband was playing football at Kristineberg sports club with their son when the police caught up with him. They already knew that he had an alibi for the time of the murder, but took him to one side to tell him.

Margot has been told that after he was informed, he went back in goal and saved penalty after penalty from the boy.

This morning Margot drew up a plan for the initial stages of the investigation in the absence of any witnesses or forensic results.

Paying particular attention to people convicted of sex crimes who have either been released or given parole recently, they’re planning to track down anyone who’s been institutionalised or attended a clinic for obsessive disorder therapy in the past couple of years, and then work closely with the criminal profiling unit.

Margot crumples the paper bag in her hand while she’s still chewing, then hands it to a uniformed officer.

‘I’m eating for five,’ she says.

Wearily she lifts the crime-scene tape over her head, then walks heavily towards Adam, who is waiting outside the gate.

‘Just so you know, there’s no serial killer,’ she says sullenly.

‘So I heard,’ he replies, and lets her go through the gate ahead of him.