Stalker

Nelly sits down on Erik’s sofa while he talks to the doctor, and smiles at him when he looks at her as he exchanges the usual pleasantries and when he ends the conversation by repeating that the consultant’s article in Swedish Psychiatry really was excellent.

The sun passes behind a cloud and darkness falls across the room, as if a huge figure were standing in front of the building.

‘Rocky is still in Ward D:4,’ Erik says. ‘And he’s never been let out on parole.’

‘Does that feel better?’

‘No,’ he whispers.

‘Are you losing your grip?’ she asks, so seriously that he can’t help smiling.

He sighs and puts his hands to his face, then slowly lowers them, feeling his fingertips press gently against his eyelids and down his cheeks before he looks at Nelly again.

Her back is straight as she looks at him carefully. A tiny, sharp little wrinkle has appeared between her thin eyebrows.

‘OK, listen,’ Erik says. ‘I know this is completely wrong, but in one of the last conversations I had with Rocky, he claimed he had an alibi for the night of the murder, but I didn’t want him to be released simply because he’d bought himself a witness.’

‘What are you trying to say?’ she asks quietly.

‘I never passed that information on.’

‘No way,’ she says.

‘He could have been released—’

‘Bloody hell, you can’t do that!’ she interrupts.

‘I know, but he was guilty and he would have killed again.’

‘That’s not our business, we’re psychologists, we’re not detectives, and we aren’t judges …’

She takes a few agitated steps, then stops and shakes her head.

‘Fucking hell,’ she gasps. ‘You’re mad, you’re completely—’

‘I can understand you being angry.’

‘Yes, I am angry. I mean, you know, if this gets out you’d lose your job.’

‘I know what I did was wrong, it’s tormented me ever since, but I’ve always been utterly convinced that I stopped a murderer.’

‘Shit,’ she mutters.

He picks up the business card from his desk and begins to dial the superintendent’s number.

‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

‘I need to tell her about Rocky’s alibi, and the whole business about the hand and the ear, and—’

‘Go ahead,’ she interrupts. ‘But what if you were right, what if his alibi wasn’t real? Then any similarities are just coincidence.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Then ask yourself what you’re going to do with the rest of your life,’ she says. ‘You’ll have to give up being a doctor, you’ll lose your income, you might even face charges, all the scandal and gossip in the papers—’

‘It’s my own fault.’

‘Find out if the alibi checks out first – if it does, then I’ll report you myself.’

‘Thanks,’ he laughs.

‘I’m being serious,’ she says.

18 (#ulink_4800de22-8cbd-5fb3-a08c-29192de10d1a)

Erik leaves the car in front of the garage, hurries up the path to his dark house, unlocks the door and goes inside. He turns the light on in the hall but doesn’t take his outdoor clothes off, just carries on down the steep staircase to the cellar that contains his extensive archive.

In the locked steel cabinets he keeps all the documents from his years in Uganda, from the major research project at the Karolinska Institute, and about his patients at the Psychology Clinic. All the written material is collected in the form of logbooks, personal journals and extensive notes. The recordings of his sessions have been saved on eight external hard-drives.

Erik’s heart is thumping as he unlocks one of the cabinets and searches back in time to the year when his life crossed paths with that of Rocky Kyrklund.

He pulls the file out of a black box and hurries upstairs to his study. He switches the lamp on, glances at the black window, removes the elastic band round the file, and opens it on the desk in front of him.

It was nine years ago, and life was very different. Benjamin was still in primary school, Simone was writing her dissertation in art history, and he himself had just started working at the Crisis and Trauma Centre with Professor Sten W Jakobsson.

He no longer remembers the exact details of how he was contacted and invited to join a team for a forensic psychology project. He had actually decided not to take part in anything like that again but, given the particular circumstances, changed his mind when his colleague Nina Blom asked for his help.

Erik remembers spending the evening in his new office, reading the material the prosecutor had sent over. The man who was going to be evaluated was a Rocky Kyrklund, and he was vicar of the parish of Salem. He was being held in custody on suspicion of having murdered Rebecka Hansson, a forty-three-year-old woman who had attended Mass and then stayed behind to speak to him in private on the Sunday before she was murdered.

The murder had been extremely aggressive, fuelled by hatred. The victim’s face and arms had been destroyed. She was found lying on the linoleum floor of her bathroom, with her right hand around her neck.

There was fairly persuasive forensic evidence. Rocky had sent her a number of threatening text messages, and his fingerprints and strands of his hair were found in her home, and traces of Rebecka’s blood were found on his shoes.

An arrest warrant was issued and he was eventually picked up seven months later in conjunction with a serious traffic accident on the motorway at Brunnby. He had stolen a car at Finsta and was heading for the airport at Arlanda.

In the accident Rocky Kyrklund suffered serious brain damage which led to epileptic seizures in the frontal and temporal lobes of his brain.

He would suffer recurrent bouts of automatism and memory loss for the rest of his life.

When Erik met Rocky Kyrklund, his face was criss-crossed with red scars from the accident, his arm was in plaster, and his hair had just started to grow again after several operations. Rocky was a large man with a booming voice. He was almost two metres tall, broad-shouldered, with big hands and a thick neck.

Sometimes he would faint, falling off his chair, knocking over the flimsy table holding glasses and a jug of water, and hit his shoulder on the floor. But sometimes his epileptic attacks were almost invisible. He just seemed a bit subdued and distant, and afterwards he couldn’t remember what they had been talking about.

Erik and Rocky got on fairly well. The priest was undeniably charismatic. He somehow managed to give the impression of speaking straight from the heart.

Erik leafs through the private journal in which he made notes during their conversations. The various subjects can be traced from one session to the next.

Rocky had neither admitted nor denied the murder; he said he couldn’t remember Rebecka Hansson at all, and couldn’t explain why his fingerprints had been found in her home, or how her blood came to be on his shoes.