Stalker

There’s a lamp with a clouded white shade and alabaster base in the window, and her shadow moves across the chest of drawers and the flowery wallpaper. She slips her hand between her thighs and tries to pull the thin nylon material up towards her crotch, and he can see her breathing through her mouth as the film ends.

‘Did you see what you were looking for?’ Adam asks, leaning over Joona’s shoulder.

Joona remains seated in front of the screen, then plays the film again, watches her struggle with her tights, then freezes the picture after thirty-five seconds and clicks to advance it frame by frame.

‘We’ve done that too,’ Adam says, stifling a belch.

Joona moves closer to the screen and watches Maria Carlsson as she moves very slowly, breathing with her mouth open. Her eyes blink and her long lashes cast shadows across her cheeks. Her right hand sinks weightlessly between her thighs to her crotch.

‘This won’t do,’ Adam says to Margot. ‘We need to get on.’

‘Give him a chance,’ she replies.

Maria Carlsson turns jerkily towards the camera, the grey shadow crosses her face, as if she were being lifted up from a bath full of lead. Her lips part, the light from the lamp in the window shines on her face, making her eyes glow, and there’s a shimmer in her mouth, then the film ends.

Behind Joona, Adam and Margot have started to talk about investigating the people in the drawing class that Maria was about to set out for; they’ve already tried to find out if any of their names begin with ‘H’, but without success so far.

Joona moves the cursor and plays the last five seconds again. The light plays across her hair, her ear and cheeks, making her eyes shine, and then her mouth flashes.

He enlarges the image as far as he can without losing too much focus, then shifts the enlarged area so that it covers her mouth, and looks at the last few frames again. Her parted lips fill the screen, light shines in and the pink tip of her tongue becomes visible. He clicks to advance the image, frame by frame. The curve of her tongue comes into view, becomes lighter, and in the next shot it looks like a white sun fills the whole of her mouth. The sun contracts. And in the penultimate frame the glow has shrunk to a white dot on a grey pea.

‘He took the jewellery,’ Joona says quietly.

The two detectives fall silent and turn to look at him and the computer screen. It takes a few moments for them to interpret the enlarged image, the pink tongue and hazy stud.

‘OK, we missed the fact that her tongue was pierced,’ Adam says in a rasping voice.

Margot is standing with her legs apart and her hands round her stomach, and looks at Joona as he leans against the desk and gets up from the chair.

‘You saw that she had a hole in her tongue and wanted to watch the film to see if the stud was there,’ she says, picking up her phone.

‘I just thought her mouth was important,’ Joona says. ‘Her jaw was broken, and she had her own saliva on her hand.’

‘Impressive,’ Margot says. ‘I’ll request an enlargement from Forensics at once.’

Joona stands still, staring at the pictures and maps on the wall as Margot speaks into the phone.

‘We’re collaborating with the BKA,’ Margot explains once she’s hung up. ‘The Germans are way out in front when it comes to this sort of thing, in all forms of image enhancement … Have you met Stefan Ott? Handsome guy, curly hair. He’s developed his own programs, which J-lab …’

‘OK, so we’ve got an item of jewellery on the film,’ Adam says, thinking out loud. ‘The degree of violence is aggressive, fuelled by hatred … probably jealousy, and …’

Margot’s inbox bleeps and she opens the email and clicks on the image so that it fills the whole screen.

In order to improve the contrast of the stud itself, the image enhancement software has changed all the colours. Maria Carlsson’s tongue and cheeks are blue, almost like glass, but at the same time the stud is clearly visible.

‘Saturn,’ Margot whispers.

At the end of the stud piercing Maria’s tongue is a silver sphere with a ring around its equator, just like the planet Saturn.

‘That’s not an “h”,’ Joona says.

They turn and see that he’s looking at the photograph of Maria’s Filofax where it says ‘class 19.00 – squared paper, pencils, ink’, then on the line below the letter ‘h’.

‘That’s the symbol for Saturn,’ he says. ‘It actually represents a scythe or sickle. That’s why it’s slightly crooked, and sometimes it’s crossed up at the top.’

‘Saturn … the planet. The Roman god,’ Margot says.

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Joona and Margot have taken their shoes off and are standing looking through a pane of glass. The room inside is warm and damp.

‘I’ve tested for allergens, and it turns out that I’m allergic to mindfulness,’ she says.

To the strains of Indian music, about thirty perspiring women are moving with mechanical symmetry on their yoga mats.

Margot got five officers to check through Maria Carlsson’s Internet traffic once more: her email, Facebook and Instagram accounts. The stud in her tongue is only visible in a few pictures, and is only mentioned by one of her friends on Facebook before all communication between them ceased.

‘You got lick it, before we kick it. Me too wanna pierce my tongue.’

The woman who had posted that was called Linda Bergman, and she was an instructor in Bikram yoga in the centre of Stockholm. They were in very regular contact for six months before she suddenly unfriended Maria.

Linda Bergman emerges from the staffroom dressed in jeans and a grey sweater. She’s suntanned, and has quickly showered and put on some make-up.

‘Linda? I’m Margot Silverman,’ Margot says, shaking the woman’s hand.

‘You didn’t say what this was about, and I can honestly say that I have absolutely no idea,’ she says.