Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (83 page)

Penelope zips up her hoodie and sucks in air through her nose to steady her breath.

“Hi,” she says.

They’re staring at her. It’s easy to see why: she and Björn are bloody and dirty.

“We’ve had an accident,” she says. “We need to borrow a phone.”

Tortoiseshell butterflies flutter over the goosefoot and horsetail growing in the ditch.

The man nods and hands his phone to Penelope.

“Thanks,” Björn says, although he keeps his eyes glued on the road and into the forest.

“What happened?” the man asks.

Penelope doesn’t know what to say. Tears begin to stream down her cheeks.

“An accident,” Björn says.

“Oh my God,” the woman in the tennis dress hisses to her boyfriend. “She’s that bitch.”

“Who?”

“The bitch on TV the other day who was criticising our Swedish exports.”

Penelope doesn’t hear. She tries to smile engagingly at the young woman as she taps out Claudia’s number. But her hands are shaking too hard and she hits the wrong number. She has to stop and try again. Her hands shake so fiercely she’s afraid she’ll drop the phone. The young woman is whispering into her boyfriend’s ear.

She plants herself in front of Penelope. “Tell me something. Do you think that hardworking people, people working sixty hours a week, are supposed to pay for people like you to just say whatever the hell you want on some television programme?”

Penelope can’t comprehend why the young woman is so angry. She’s unable to concentrate on her question. Her thoughts whirl as she anxiously scans the area between the trees while she hears the signal go through. The ringing crackles. It sounds far away.

“So real work’s not good enough for you?” The woman is really working herself up.

Penelope pleads with Björn with her eyes to help her out here and calm the woman down. She sighs as she hears her mother’s voice on the answering machine.

“This is Claudia Fernandez. I can’t answer the phone right now, but please leave a message and I’ll call back as soon as I can.”

Tears run down her cheeks and her knees are about to buckle. She’s so tired. She holds up her hand towards the woman in a plea.

“We paid for our phones with our own money we earned ourselves,” the young woman says. “You do the same. Pay for your own damn phone …”

The line is breaking up. Penelope moves away in search of a better signal but it only gets worse. It cuts out and she’s not sure she’s even got through as she starts to speak.

“Mamma, I need help. People are after us—”

The woman yanks the phone from Penelope’s hand and tosses it back to the young man.

“Get a job!” he yells.

Penelope sways in shock. She watches the woman climb onto the motorcycle behind the man and wrap her arms around his waist.

“Please!” Penelope calls after them. “
Please
—”

Her voice is lost in the roar of the motorcycle as it speeds away, spitting gravel. Björn and Penelope start to run after them, but the motorcycle disappears down the track to Skinnardal.

“Björn,” Penelope says as she stops running.

“Keep running,” he yells.

She’s out of breath. This is a mistake, she thinks. He stops and looks at her. Then he starts walking away.

“Wait! He understands how we think!” she yells after him. “We have to outwit him!”

Björn walks more slowly and then turns to look at her. He keeps on walking backwards.

“We’ve got to get help,” he pleads.

“Not yet.”

Björn slowly comes to a stop and then returns. He takes her by the shoulders.

“Penny, I’m sure that it’s only ten minutes or so to the first house. You can do it. I’ll help—”

“We have to get back in the woods,” Penelope says. “I know that I’m right.”

She pulls off her hair band and throws it on the road in front of them and heads back into the woods, away from habitation.

Björn looks behind him down the road, then reluctantly follows Penelope. Penelope hears him behind her. He catches up and takes her hand. They’re now running side by side but not all that fast. A small inlet of water bars their way. They wade across for approximately forty metres, the water coming up to their thighs. Out of the water, they start to jog again in shoes that are completely soaked.

Ten minutes later, Penelope slows down. She stops, takes a deep breath, lifts her gaze, and looks around. Somehow she no longer senses the cold presence of their pursuer. Björn asks, “When we were in the house, why’d you yell for him to come in?”

“He’d have just come inside anyway—but he didn’t expect a voice.”

“Still—”

“Up to now, he’s been one step ahead of us,” she continues. “We’ve been scared and he knows how fear makes people stupid.”

“Still, even stupid people don’t say, ‘Come on in,’?” Björn says, and a tired smile crosses his face.

“That’s why we can’t head towards Skinnardal. We have to zigzag, change our direction all the time, keep deep in the forest, and head towards nothing at all.”

“Right.”

She observes his exhausted face and his white, dry lips.

“I think we have to think it out now. Try new ideas. I believe that we have to … instead of heading for the mainland … we have to keep going further out into the archipelago and away from the mainland.”

“No one in their right mind would do that.”

“Can you keep going?” she asks softly.

He nods and they begin to move again, further into the forest, further away from roads, from houses and people.

Axel Riessen unbuttons the cuff links from his stiff shirtsleeves and puts them in the bronze bowl on his dresser. The cuff links were an inheritance from his grandfather, Admiral Riessen. This design is civilian, however, a heraldry design consisting of two crossed palm leaves.

Axel studies himself in the mirror next to the wardrobe door. He loosens his tie and then walks to the bed and sits down on the edge. The radiator hisses and he thinks he can make out snatches of music coming through the wall.

The music is coming from his younger brother’s apartment in their shared family mansion. One lone violin, Axel thinks as his mind gathers the fragments he’s heard into a whole. It’s the Bach Violin Sonata in G Minor, the first movement, an adagio, but played much more slowly than conventional interpretations. Axel hears not only the musical notes but also every single overtone as well as an accidental bump against the body of the violin.

His hands long to take up a violin. His fingers tremble when the music changes tempo. It’s been a long time since he’s let his fingers play with the music, running over the strings and up and down the fingerboard.

When the telephone rings, the music in his head falls silent. He gets up from the bed and rubs his eyes. He’s very tired and hasn’t slept much for the past week.

Caller ID reveals that the call is coming from Parliament. Axel clears his throat before he answers in a calm voice.

“Axel Riessen.”

“I’m Jörgen Grünlicht. As you may know, I’m the president of the Government Panel for Foreign Affairs.

“Good evening.”

“Please excuse me for calling so late.”

“I was still awake.”

“They told me you might be,” Jörgen Grünlicht says. He hesitates before continuing. “We’ve had an extra board meeting just now where we decided to try to recruit you for the post of general director for the ISP.”

“I understand.”

There’s silence on the other end. Grünlicht adds hastily, “I assume you know what happened to Carl Palmcrona.”

“I read about it in the newspaper.”

Grünlicht clears his throat and says something that Axel can’t understand before Grünlicht raises his voice again. “You are already aware of our work and—if you accept our nomination—could get up to speed fairly quickly.”

“I’d have to resign my UN post,” Axel replies.

“Is that a problem?” Grünlicht’s voice seems worried.

“No, not really—I’ve been taking some time off anyway.”

“We’ll be able to discuss the terms, of course … but there’s nothing that’s off the table,” Grünlicht says. “You must already know we would like you on board. There’s no point in keeping that a secret.”

“I need to think about it.”

“Can you meet us tomorrow morning?”

“You’re in a hurry.”

“We’ll take, of course, the time needed,” Grünlicht replies. “But it must be said that after what happened … there have been hints from the economics minister about a matter already delayed—”

“And that would be?”

“Nothing unusual, just an export permit. The preliminary report was positive and the Export Control Committee has completed its work, the contracts have been signed. Unfortunately, Palmcrona wasn’t able to sign it.”

“His signature was required?”

“Only the general director can approve exports of defence matériel or products of dual usage,” Jörgen Grünlicht explains.

“But can’t the government approve certain business transactions at times?”

“Only once the general director of the ISP has decided to turn the matter over to the government.”

“I understand,” says Axel.

For eleven years, Axel Riessen served as a war matériel inspector in the old system for the Foreign Office before being assigned to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. At fifty-one, he still looks youthful. His hair, flecked with grey, is still thick. His features are regular and friendly, and the tan he picked up recently on holiday in Cape Town gives him a healthy glow. It had been an exceptional break: he’d sailed solo along the breathtaking, rugged coast.

Axel walks to his library and settles into his reading chair. He closes his eyes and starts to reflect on the fact that Carl Palmcrona is dead. He’d read the obituary in the morning edition of
Dagens Nyheter
. It was not clear what had happened, but he’d got the impression the death was unexpected. Palmcrona had not been ill, that much was clear. He thinks back to some of the times they’d met through the years and recalls when they’d worked together on how to combine the Military Equipment Inspection Committee with the Governmental Strategic Export Control Committee. In the end, a new agency would emerge: the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products.

And now Palmcrona is dead. Axel remembers the tall, pale man with his military air and a sense of loneliness about him.

Axel starts to worry. The rooms are too quiet. He stands up and looks around the apartment, listening for sounds.

“Beverly?” he calls in a low voice. “Beverly?”

She doesn’t answer and fear rises in his mind. He walks quickly through the rooms and heads for the hallway to put on his coat when he hears her humming to herself. She is walking barefoot over the rugs in the kitchen. When she sees his worried face, her eyes widen.

“Axel,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

“I was just worried that you’d left,” he mutters.

“Out into the dangerous world.” She smiles.

“I’m just saying there are people you can’t trust out there.”

“I don’t trust them,” she says. “I just look at them. I look at their light. If it shines around them, I know that they’re nice.”

Axel never knows what to say when she says things like that, so he just tells her he’s bought some crisps and a big bottle of Fanta.

It seems as if she’s stopped listening. He tries to read her face, to see if she is restless or depressed or closed off.

“So are we still going to get married?” she asks.

“Yes,” he lies.

“It’s just that flowers make me think of Mamma’s funeral and Pappa’s face when—”

“We don’t need to have flowers,” he says.

“Though I like lilies of the valley.”

“Me, too,” he says weakly.

She reddens contentedly and he hears her pretend to yawn for his sake.

“I’m so sleepy,” she says as she leaves the room. “Do you want to go to sleep?”

“No,” Axel says, but only to himself.

Parts of his body want to stop dead, but he gets up and follows her, clumsily and strangely slow, over the marble floor that leads along the hallway, up the stairs, through two large rooms, and finally into the suite where he retires in the evening. The girl is skinny and short and doesn’t even come up to his chest. Her hair is frizzy. She shaved it last week, but it’s begun to grow out again. She gives him a quick hug and he can smell the odour of caramel from her mouth.

It’s been ten months since Axel Riessen met Beverly Andersson, and that only came about because of his acute insomnia. Ever since he experienced a traumatic event thirty years ago, he’s had difficulty sleeping. As long as he took sleeping pills, he was able to manage, but he slept a chemical sleep without dreams and without real rest. At least he slept.

Eventually he had to keep increasing the dosage. The pills caused a hypnotic noise that drowned out his thoughts, but he loved his medication and he usually mixed it with expensive, well-aged whisky. One day, after twenty years of high consumption, Axel’s brother found him unconscious in the hallway, blood flowing from both nostrils.

At Karolinska Hospital, he was diagnosed with severe cirrhosis of the liver. The chronic cell damage was so serious that, after the usual medical tests, he was placed on the waiting list for a liver transplant. He was in blood group O and his tissue type was unusual, so the number of possible donors was fairly slim.

His younger brother could have donated a partial liver if he hadn’t suffered from such severe arrhythmia that his heart could not have endured an operation.

The hope of finding a liver donor was nearly nonexistent, but if Axel refrained from drinking and using sleeping pills, he would not die. As long as he took regular doses of Konakion, Inderal, and Spironolakton, his liver functioned and he lived a normal life.

Except that he never slept more than an hour or two at night. He was admitted to a sleep clinic in Gothenburg and underwent a polysomnography and had his insomnia officially diagnosed. Since medication was out of the question, he was given advice about meditation, hypnosis, self-suggestion, and sleep techniques. None of this helped.