Joona Linna Crime Series Books 1-3: The Hypnotist, The Nightmare, The Fire Witness

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tuesday, december 15: morning

Joona turns off the audio book; Per Myrberg is reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment with his own peculiar mixture of calm and intensity. He parks the car outside Lao Wai, an Asian vegetarian restaurant that Disa keeps nagging him to try. He glances in through the window and is struck by the ascetic, simple beauty of the wooden furniture, the absence of anything unnecessary, the lack of decorative bits and pieces within the restaurant.

Erik and Simone are waiting for him in their apartment. Joona runs through what he intends to do.

“We’re going to reconstruct the kidnapping as far as possible. The only one of us who was really there when it happened is you, Simone.”

She nods resolutely.

“So you will play yourself. I’ll be the kidnapper and you, Erik, can be Benjamin.”

“All right.”

Joona points to the clock. “Simone, what time do you think the break-in took place?”

She clears her throat. “I’m not sure … but the paper hadn’t come, so it was before five. I’d got up for a drink of water at about two … then I lay awake for a while … so sometime between half past two and five o’clock.”

“Good. I’ll set the clock at half past three, somewhere in the middle,” says Joona. “Now, I’m going to unlock the door, creep into Simone’s bedroom, and pretend to give her an injection. Then I’ll go into Benjamin’s room and inject you, Erik, and drag you out of the room. Is Benjamin a big boy?”

“Not particularly,” says Simone. “Why?”

“Erik’s heavier, then. When I drag him along the hall and through the front door, I’ll need to compensate by adding a minute or so to the time. Simone, try to move exactly the way you did that night. Lie down in the same position at the same time. I want to know what you could see and what you could only sense.”

Simone nods, her face pale. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for doing this.”

Joona looks at her with ice-grey eyes. “Believe me. We are going to find Benjamin.”

Simone rubs her hand rapidly over her forehead. “I’m going into the bedroom,” she says hoarsely, as Joona leaves the apartment with the keys in his hand.

She is lying under the duvet when Joona comes in. He moves quickly towards her, not in haste but with purpose. She feels a tickling sensation as he lifts her arm and pretends to inject her. Just as she meets Joona’s gaze as he bends over her, she remembers being woken by a distinct jab in her arm and seeing someone slip out through the doorway and into the hall. The memory alone makes her arm tingle unpleasantly where the needle went in. Joona disappears, and she sits, rubs her arm, and slowly gets up. She goes into the hallway, peers into Benjamin’s room, sees Joona bending over the bed—and suddenly she simply comes out with the words, as if they have been echoing in her memory.

“Benjamin? What’s going on?”

She moves hesitantly down the hallway. Her body seems to recall the sensations it felt that night; how quickly its strength faded. Her legs give way and she falls, banging her head. She remembers the feeling of sinking deeper and deeper into a black numbness, penetrated by ever briefer flashes of light. As she sits half propped up against the wall, she sees Joona dragging Erik along by his feet. Her memory replays the incomprehensible: Benjamin trying to cling to the doorframe, his head banging on the threshold, the slow windmilling of his hands growing weaker and weaker as he reaches out to her.

As Erik is dragged past Simone, it’s as if a figure made of mist or steam appears there in the hallway for a fraction of a second: she is looking at Joona’s face from below, and the image shifts: a glimmer of the kidnapper’s face flashes through her mind: a shadowed face, a yellow hand around Benjamin’s ankle. Simone’s heart is pounding as she hears Joona drag Erik out onto the landing and close the door behind him.

An air of unpleasantness pervades the entire apartment. Simone cannot shake off the feeling that she has been drugged again; her limbs feel numb and slow as she gets to her feet and waits for them to come back.

As Joona drags Erik across the scratched marble floor of the landing, he looks around him the entire time, checking angles and vantage points, searching for unexpected places where an eyewitness might have had a good view of the incident. He moves toward the lift, whose doors he’s propped open in advance, and drags Erik inside. From there he can see the apartment door to his right, the letter box and nameplate made of brass, but to the left there is only a wall. From deeper inside, Joona looks over at the large mirror on the landing, but even by craning his neck he can see nothing new. The window on the stairwell is hidden the whole time. Nothing seems to reveal itself when he looks back over his shoulder. Then suddenly he discovers something unexpected. From a certain vantage point, from a smaller security mirror mounted at an angle, he can see reflected in the landing’s mirror the shining peephole in the door of an apartment that had seemed to be out of sight. Joona lets the lift doors shut and notes as they close that the mirror still allows him to stare straight at the door. If someone were standing inside that apartment looking out—roused, perhaps, by the commotion next door—that person would be able to see his face with absolute clarity right now. But if he moves his head just two inches in any direction, the view immediately disappears.

When they reach the ground floor, Joona helps Erik up and checks his watch. “Eight minutes.”

They return to the apartment. Simone is standing in the hallway; it’s obvious that she has been crying.

“He was wearing rubber gloves,” she says. “Yellow rubber gloves.”

“Are you sure?” asks Erik.

“Yes.”

“In that case, there’s no point in looking for fingerprints,” says Joona.

“What now?” she asks.

“The police have already carried out door-to-door inquiries,” Erik says gloomily, as Simone brushes dirt and dust off his back.

Joona takes out a sheet of paper. “Yes, I’ve got a list of the people they’ve spoken to. Needless to say, they concentrated on this floor and the apartments directly below. There are five people they haven’t spoken to yet.”

He checks the list and sees that the apartment diagonally behind the lift has been crossed out. That was the door he could see via the two mirrors.

“One apartment has been crossed out,” he says. “The one on the far side of the lift.”

“They were away,” says Simone. “They still are. They’ve gone to Thailand for six weeks.”

Joona looks at them, his expression serious. “Time for me to knock on some doors,” he says.

The nameplate on the door says ROSENLUND. This was the apartment ignored by the officers carrying out door-to-door inquiries, since it was hidden from view and was empty.

Joona bends down and peers in through the letter box. He can’t see any mail or advertising leaflets on the doormat. Suddenly he hears a faint noise from further inside. A cat comes padding out of one of the rooms and into the hallway. It stops dead and stares at Joona, peering through the slot.

“Nobody leaves a cat for six weeks,” Joona says slowly to himself.

The cat is listening, its whole body alert.

“You don’t look as if you’re starving,” Joona says to the animal.

The cat gives an enormous yawn, jumps up onto a chair in the hallway, and curls itself into a ball.

Joona straightens up and glances at the paper in his hand. The apartment directly opposite the lift is occupied by a couple, but when the police called, only Alice Franzén was at home. The first person Joona wants to speak to is her husband.

Joona rings the doorbell and waits. He remembers being young, going around ringing doorbells with May Day flowers or an occasional charity collection box. The feeling of strangeness at looking into someone else’s home, the expression of distaste in the eyes of those who open the door.

He rings again. A woman in her thirties answers. She looks at him with a watchful, reserved expression that makes him think of the cat in the empty apartment.

“Yes?”

“My name is Joona Linna,” he says, showing her his ID. “I’d like to speak to your husband.”

She glances over her shoulder. “I’d like to know what it’s about first. He’s actually very busy at the moment.”

“It’s about the early morning of Saturday, 12

December.”

“We’ve already answered all your questions,” the woman says irritably.