Stalker

‘Björn, listen to my voice, I’m going to count from—’

‘She’s sitting with her hand over her ear, and there’s blood dripping from her elbow,’ he says, panting for breath.

Erik feels an icy chill as adrenalin fills his veins for a few seconds, the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up. With his heart pounding he glances towards the closed door of the treatment room and hears a trolley rattle as it moves away.

‘Look at your own hands,’ he says, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘You’re looking at your own hands and you’re breathing slowly. With each breath you’re feeling calmer—’

‘I don’t want to,’ Björn whispers.

Erik can feel that he’s forcing him, but he has to know the position Björn’s wife was sitting in when he found her.

‘Before I wake you up, we need to go deeper,’ he says, swallowing hard. ‘Beneath the house that you’re in is another house, identical to the other one … but down there is the only place you can see Susanna clearly. Three, two, one, and now you’re there … She’s sitting on the floor in the pool of blood, and you can look at her without feeling frightened.’

‘Her face is almost gone, it’s just blood,’ Björn says sluggishly. ‘And her hand is stuck to her ear …’

‘Keep going,’ Erik says, glancing at the door again.

‘Her hand is tangled up in … in the cord of her kimono.’

‘Björn, I’m going to bring you up now … to the house above, and the only thing you know there is that Susanna is dead and that there was nothing you could have done to save her … That’s the only thing you’re going to take with you when I wake you up, you’re going to leave everything else behind.’

16 (#ulink_2df98046-b4ff-5772-b070-b48aa3d1cbba)

Erik closes his office door and goes over to his desk. He feels that his back is wet with sweat when he sits down.

‘It’s nothing,’ he whispers anxiously to himself.

He moves the mouse to wake his computer up, then logs in. With his hand trembling he pulls open the top drawer, presses a Mogadon out of a blister-pack and swallows it without water.

He quickly signs into the database of patients, and notices how cold his fingers are as he waits to be able to perform a search.

He jumps when Superintendent Margot Silverman opens the door without knocking. She walks in and stops in front of him with her hands clasped round her stomach.

‘Björn Kern says he can’t remember what you talked about.’

‘That’s natural,’ Erik replies, minimising the document.

‘How did you get on with the hypnosis, then?’ she asks, running her hand over the wooden elephant from Malaysia.

‘He was definitely receptive …’

‘So you were able to hypnotise him?’ she smiles.

‘I’m afraid I forgot to start the camera,’ Erik lies. ‘Otherwise I could have shown you, he went into a trance almost instantly.’

‘You forgot to start the camera?’

‘You know that this wasn’t an official interview,’ he says, a touch impatiently. ‘This was a first step towards what we call affective stabilisation, so that—’

‘I don’t give a damn about that,’ she cuts him off.

‘So that you can have a functional witness later on,’ he concludes.

‘How much later? Will he be able to say anything later today?’

‘I think he’s going to realise what happened fairly quickly, but talking about it is another matter.’

‘So what happened? What did he say? He must have said something, surely?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘No fucking oath of confidentiality bollocks now,’ she interrupts. ‘I have to know, otherwise people will die.’

Erik goes over to the window and leans on the sill. Far below a patient is standing smoking, thin and bent-backed in his hospital gown.

‘I took him back,’ Erik says slowly. ‘Into the house … it was rather complicated, because it was very recent, and full of fragments of terrible memories.’

‘But he saw everything … could he see everything?’

‘It was only to make him understand that he couldn’t have saved her.’

‘But he saw the murder scene, and his wife? Did he?’

‘Yes, he did,’ Erik replies.

‘So what did he say?’

‘Not much … he talked about blood … and the wounds to her face.’

‘Was she in a particular position? A posture with sexual implications?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Was she sitting up or lying down? How did her mouth look, where were her hands? Was she naked? Violated?’

‘He said very little,’ Erik replies. ‘It can take a long time to reach details of that sort …’

‘I swear, if he doesn’t start talking I’ll take him into custody,’ she says in a loud voice. ‘I’ll drag him off to headquarters and watch him like a hawk until—’

‘Margot,’ Erik interrupts in a friendly voice.

She looks at him with a subdued expression, nods and breathes through her mouth, then pulls out a business card and puts it down on his desk.

‘We don’t know who his next victim’s going to be. It could be your wife. Think about that,’ she says, and leaves the room.

Erik feels his face relax. He walks slowly back to his desk. The floor is starting to feel soft beneath his feet. As he sits down in front of his computer there’s a knock on the door.

‘Yes?’