The Nightmare

‘Obviously, you’re much bigger than the victim, but I still think I could push your head down in the wash-tub.’

‘Be careful with him,’ The Needle says.

‘I’m only going to spoil his hair.’

‘Forget it,’ Frippe says with a smile.

It’s a silent tussle. The Needle looks worried, Svanehjälm uncomfortable. Petter swears. Without any great difficulty Joona manages to push Frippe’s head down into the water and hold him there for a few moments before letting go and backing away. Frippe wobbles as he straightens up and Nils hurries forward with a towel.

‘You could have just described it, surely?’ he says irritably.

Once Frippe has finished drying himself they go silently into the next room, where the cool air is heavy with the stench of decay. One wall is covered with three layers of stainless steel fridge doors. Nils opens compartment 16 and pulls out the tray. The young woman is lying on the narrow bunk, naked and drained of colour, with brown, spidery veins around her neck. Joona points at the thin, curved line over her chest.

‘Take your clothes off,’ he says to Frippe.

Frippe unbuttons his jacket and pulls off his black T-shirt. Across his chest is a faint pink mark made by the edge of the wash-tub, a curved line, like a smiling mouth.

‘Bloody hell,’ Petter says.

The Needle goes over and inspects the roots of the dead woman’s hair. He takes out a small torch and points it at the pale skin under her hair.

‘I don’t need a microscope for this. Someone’s held her very tightly by her hair.’

He turns the torch off and puts it back in the pocket of his white coat.

‘In other words …’ Joona says.

‘In other words, you’re right, of course,’ The Needle says, and claps his hands.

‘Murder,’ Svanehjälm sighs.

‘Impressive,’ Frippe says, wiping some eye-liner that has smeared across one cheek.

‘Thanks,’ Joona says distantly.

Nils looks at him quizzically:

‘What is it, Joona? What have you seen?’

‘It’s not her,’ he says.

‘What?’

Joona meets Nils’s gaze, then points at the body in front of them.

‘This isn’t Penelope Fernandez. It’s someone else,’ he says, and looks at the prosecutor. ‘The dead woman isn’t Penelope. I’ve seen her driver’s licence, and I’m certain this isn’t her.’

‘But what …’

‘Maybe Penelope Fernandez is dead too,’ he says. ‘But if she is, we haven’t found her yet.’

14 (#ulink_afe81c42-8234-5ce4-996c-8ea2187f6c50)

A late-night party (#ulink_afe81c42-8234-5ce4-996c-8ea2187f6c50)

Penelope’s heart is still beating horribly fast – she’s trying to breathe quietly, but the air shudders in her throat. She slides down the rough rocks, pulling the damp moss down with her, and ends up under cover of the branches of the fir tree. She’s so terrified that she’s shaking. She creeps closer to the trunk where the night’s darkness is at its most dense. She hears herself start to whimper when she thinks of Viola. Björn is sitting motionless in the darkness under the branches with his arms wrapped tightly around him, muttering to himself over and over again.

They’ve been running in panic, not looking back, have stumbled and fallen and got back up, they’ve clambered over fallen trees, scraping their legs, knees and hands, but they’ve kept rushing on.

Penelope no longer has any sense of how close their pursuer is, if he’s already caught sight of them again or if he’s given up and decided to wait.

They’ve been running, but Penelope has no idea why. She can’t understand why they’re being hunted.

Maybe it’s all a mistake, she thinks. A terrible mistake.

Her racing pulse starts to slow down.

She feels sick, and almost throws up, but swallows hard instead.

‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ she keeps whispering to herself. ‘This is impossible, we have to get help, someone ought to find the boat soon and start looking for us …’

‘Shhh,’ Björn hisses with fear in his eyes.

Her hands are shaking. A series of rapid-fire images plays in her mind. She tries to blink them away, tries to look at her white trainers, at the brown fir needles on the ground, at Björn’s dirty, bloody knees, but the images keep forcing their way through: Viola is dead, sitting on the bed with her eyes wide open, the look in them unreadable, her face blotchy and white and wet, her hair lank and dripping.

Somehow Penelope had understood that the man standing on the shore beckoning Björn to swim back to land was the person who had killed her sister. She could feel it. She put the few pieces she had together and interpreted the image in an instant. If she hadn’t they would all be dead.

Penelope had screamed at Björn. They were losing time, it was going too slowly, and she hurt him with the end of the boathook before she managed to get him on board.

The black inflatable boat had appeared round the end of Kastskär and picked up speed on the flat, open water.

She had steered straight for an old wooden jetty, then hit reverse and switched the engine off as the hull hit a post. They’d slid sideways with a great creaking sound, then just fled from the boat in panic. They didn’t take anything, not even a phone. Penelope slipped on the rocks and had to cling on with her hands, then turned and saw the man in black quickly tying the inflatable to the jetty.

Penelope and Björn ran into the forest, rushing along side by side, swerving round trees and dark rocks. Björn groaned when his bare feet trod on sharp twigs.

Penelope pulled him along after her, their pursuer wasn’t far behind.

They had no thoughts, no plan, they were just rushing in panic, deep into dense ferns and blueberry bushes.

Penelope heard herself sob as she ran, sobbing in a voice she had never heard herself use before.

A thick branch caught her sharply in the thigh and she had to stop. Her breathing was ragged as she pushed the branch away with trembling hands. Björn was running towards her. Her thigh muscle was throbbing painfully. She started running again, then speeded up. She could hear Björn behind her as she ran deeper and deeper into the dense forest without looking back.

Something happens to your mind when you’re seized by panic. Because the panic isn’t constant – every so often it shatters and is replaced by purely rational reasoning. It’s like switching a horrible noise off and finding yourself surrounded by silence and a sudden overview of the situation. Then the fear comes back again, your thoughts go back to being one-track, chasing round in circles, and all you want to do is run, get away from whoever is chasing you.

Penelope thought plenty of times that they needed to find other people, there must be hundreds of them on Ornö that evening. They needed to find the inhabited parts of the island, further south, they had to get help, get hold of a phone and call the police.

They hid under cover of some fir trees, but after a while the fear became unbearable and they raced on.