The Nightmare

‘Not in the usual sense – but you were still right. It could have exploded at any moment.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The insulation on the cables is seriously damaged in one place, looks like they’ve been pinched … the metal’s not touching, because that would trip the circuit, but it’s uncovered … and when you start it up you can easily get an electrical surge … and arcing.’

‘What happens then?’

‘This arcing has a temperature of over three thousand degrees, and they could easily set light to an old cushion someone has squeezed in there,’ Erixon goes on. ‘And then the fire would find its way along the tube from the fuel tank and …’

‘Fast, then?’

‘Well … the arcing might take ten minutes or so, maybe more … but after that it’s fairly quick – fire, more fire, explosion – the boat would fill with water almost instantly and sink.’

‘So there would have been a fire and an explosion if the engine had been left running?’

‘Yes, but it hasn’t necessarily been done on purpose,’ Erixon says.

‘So the cables could have been damaged by accident? And the cushion just ended up there?’

‘Absolutely,’ he replies.

‘But you don’t believe that?’ Joona asks.

‘No.’

Joona thinks about the fact that the boat was found drifting in Jungfrufjärden, then clears his throat and says thoughtfully:

‘If the murderer did this …’

‘Then he’s no ordinary killer,’ Erixon concludes.

Joona repeats the thought to himself, telling himself that they’re not dealing with an ordinary murderer. Run-of-the-mill killers tend to react emotionally, even if they’ve planned the murder. There are always a lot of heightened emotions at play, and murders often have an element of hysteria about them. The plan usually emerges afterwards, in an effort to conceal the act and construct an alibi. But on this occasion the perpetrator appears to have followed a very specific strategy from the outset.

Even so, something still went wrong.

Joona stares into space for a while, then writes Viola Fernandez’s name on the top page of The Needle’s notepad. He circles it, then adds Penelope Fernandez and Björn Almskog’s names underneath. The two women are sisters. Penelope and Björn are in a settled relationship. Björn owns the boat. Viola asked if she could go with them at the last minute.

Identifying the motive behind a murder is a long and winding road. Joona is aware that he only recently thought that Penelope Fernandez was alive. It hadn’t just been a hope or an attempt to give comfort. It had been an intuition, but no more than that. He had caught the thought mid-flight, but lost his grip on it almost immediately.

If he were to follow the National Homicide Commission’s template, his suspicions ought to be directed at Viola’s boyfriend, and possibly Penelope and Björn seeing as they were on the boat. Alcohol and other drugs may have been involved. Perhaps there was a disagreement, a serious jealousy drama. Leif G. W. Persson would soon be giving his opinion on television, saying that the perpetrator was someone close to Viola, probably a boyfriend or former boyfriend.

Joona considers the intention behind making the fuel tank explode and tries to understand the logic behind the plan. Viola was drowned in the zinc wash-tub on the aft-deck and the perpetrator carried her down to the cabin and left her on the bunk.

Joona knows he’s trying to think too many thoughts at the same time. He needs to stop himself and start to structure what he actually knows, and the questions that still need to be answered.

He draws another circle round Viola’s name and starts again.

What he knows is that Viola Fernandez was drowned in a wash-tub and then placed on the bed in the front cabin, and that Penelope Fernandez and Björn Almskog haven’t yet been found.

But that’s not all, he tells himself, and turns to a new page.

Details.

He writes the word ‘calm’ on the pad.

There was no wind, and the boat was found drifting near Storskär.

The front of the boat is damaged, from a fairly forceful collision. Forensics have presumably managed to secure evidence and taken imprints by now.

Joona throws Nils’s notepad hard at the wall and closes his eyes.

‘Perkele,’ he whispers.

Something has slipped out of his grasp again, he had it, he knows he almost made a crucial observation. He was on the brink of making a breakthrough, but then he just lost it again.

Viola, Joona thinks. You died on the aft-deck of the boat. So why were you moved after you died? Who moved you? The murderer, or someone else?

If you find her apparently lifeless on deck, you probably try to resuscitate her, you call SOS Alarm, that’s what you do. And if you realise that she’s dead, that it’s already too late, that you can’t bring her back, maybe you don’t just want to leave her lying there, you want to take her inside, cover her with a sheet. But a dead body is heavy and awkward to move, even if there are two of you. But it wouldn’t have been too difficult to move her into the saloon. It’s only five metres, through a pair of wide glass doors and down just one step.

That’s perfectly possible, even without any specific intention.

But you don’t drag her down a steep set of steps, through a narrow passageway, to put her on the bed in the cabin.

You only do that if you intend her to be found drowned in her room on the submerged boat.

‘Exactly,’ he mutters, and stands up.

He looks out of the window, spots an almost blue beetle crawling along the white sill, then looks up and sees a woman riding a bicycle disappear between the trees, and suddenly he realises what the missing component is.

Joona sits down again and drums his fingers on the desk.

It wasn’t Penelope who was found dead on the boat, it was her sister Viola. But Viola wasn’t found on her own bed, in her own cabin on the boat, but in the front cabin, on Penelope’s bed.

The murderer could have made the same mistake as me, Joona thinks, and a shiver runs down his spine.

He thought he had killed Penelope Fernandez.

That’s why he put her on the bed in the front cabin.

That’s the only explanation.

And that explanation means that Penelope Fernandez and Björn Almskog aren’t responsible for Viola’s death, because they wouldn’t have placed her on the wrong bed.

Joona starts when the door flies open. The Needle shoves it open with his back, then comes in backwards carrying a large, oblong box covered with red flames and the words ‘Guitar Hero’ on the front.

‘Frippe and I are going to start …’

‘Quiet,’ Joona snaps.