The Nightmare (14 page)

Joona flips through each one. When he reaches
The Roots of Swedish Racial Ideas in the History of Ideas
, a photograph falls out. It’s a black-and-white picture of a serious young woman with braided hair. He recognizes Claudia Fernandez. She can’t be more than fifteen years old, and the resemblance to her daughter is remarkable.

Who would keep a photograph of one’s mother in a book on racial biology?
Joona wonders to himself as he turns the photograph over.

On the backside of the photo, someone has written a line:
Don’t go far off, not even for a day.
It’s in pencil.

Joona takes out Neruda’s poetry collection again. He flips through it until he finds the entire verse:

No estés lejos de mí un solo día, porque cómo,

porque, no sé decirlo, es largo el día,

y te estaré esperando como en las estaciones

cuando en alguna parte se durmieron los trenes.

The photograph should have been in the Neruda collection.

If the killer had been looking through the books, this photo could have fallen out.

He was standing right here
, Joona thought.
He was looking at the dust in front of the books just as I am doing now and he was quickly flipping through the ones pulled out the past few weeks. He notices a photograph has fallen out of one of the books and is on the floor. He automatically picks it up and sticks it back, but into the wrong book.

Joona closes his eyes.

That’s what happened
, he thinks.
The hit man was looking through the books.

If he knows what he’s looking for, then the object must be small enough to be hidden between the pages of a book.

What could it be?

A letter? A will? A photograph? A confession? Maybe it was a CD or a memory stick or a SIM card?

25

the child on the staircase

Joona leaves the living room and peeks into the bathroom, now in the process of being photographed in minute detail. He continues along the hallway and out the door of the apartment. He stops in front of the tight grillwork that covers the elevator shaft.

There’s a nameplate on the apartment door next to the elevator. Nilsson. Joona knocks and waits. Finally, he hears footsteps from inside. A plump woman of around sixty opens the door a crack and looks out.

“Well?”

“Hello, I’m Joona Linna, a detective inspector, and I—”

“But I told you before, I didn’t see his face.”

“Have the police already visited you? I didn’t know that.”

She opens the door wider and two cats hop down from the telephone table to disappear deeper in the apartment.

“He was wearing a Dracula mask,” the woman says impatiently, as if she’s said this a number of times before.

“Who?”

“Who?” the woman repeats, muttering, and goes inside her apartment.

After some time she returns with a yellowed newspaper clipping.

Joona takes a look at the twenty-year-old article describing a flasher who wore a Dracula mask and who groped women living in the Södermalm district.

“He wasn’t wearing a stitch down there—”

“But this is not—”

“Not that I was looking, of course,” she continued. “But I’ve already talked to you about this over and over again.”

Joona looks at her and smiles. “I actually intended to ask you about something completely different.”

The woman’s eyes widen. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

“I was wondering if you know your neighbor, Penelope Fernandez, who—”

“She’s like a grandchild to me,” the woman says. “So sweet, so kind, so pleasant—”

She stops herself short. “Is she dead?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because the police only come over to ask unpleasant questions,” she replies.

“Did you notice any unusual visitors during the past couple of days?”

“Just because I’m old, doesn’t mean I pry into other people’s business.”

“No, I mean, perhaps you might have noticed something.”

“I have not.”

“Has anything else unusual happened lately?”

“Absolutely not. That girl is hardworking and dutiful.”

Joona thanks her for her time saying he might come back with a question some other time. Then he moves aside so the woman can shut the door.

There are not many more apartments on the fourth floor. He begins to climb the stairs. Halfway up, he finds a child sitting on the steps. It looks like a boy approximately eight years old. His hair is short and he’s wearing jeans and a worn Helly Hansen sweater. He has a bag with a bottle of Ramlösa mineral water. Its label is almost worn completely away. He also has half of a French roll.

Joona pauses in front of the child, who is looking at him in a shy way.

“Hello there,” Joona says. “What’s your name?”

“Mia.”

“My name’s Joona.”

Mia is a girl. Joona notices she has dirt on her chin and around her tiny neck.

“Do you carry a gun?” she asks.

“Why do you ask?”

“You told Ella that you were from the police.”

“That’s right. I’m a detective inspector.”

“So you have a gun?”

“Yes, I do,” Joona says. “Would you like to shoot it off?”

The girl looks at him astonished.

“You’re joking.”

“Yes, I’m joking,” Joona says with a smile.

The child laughs.

“Why are you sitting on the staircase?” he asks.

“I like it. You can hear stuff.”

Joona sits down next to the child.

“What kind of stuff have you heard?” he asks calmly.

“Right now I just heard you were from the police and I heard Ella lying to you.”

“What was she lying about?”

“That she likes Penelope,” Mia says.

“She doesn’t like Penelope?”

“She sticks cat poop through Penelope’s mail slot.”

“Why would she do something like that?”

“I dunno.” The girl shrugs her shoulders and fiddles with the bag on her lap.

“Do you like Penelope?”

“She says hi to me.”

“But you don’t know her?”

“Not really.”

Joona looks around. “Do you live in the stairwell?”

The girl gives a slight smile back. “No, I live on the second floor with my mom.”

“But you like to hang out on the stairs.”

Mia shrugs. “Most of the time.”

“Do you sleep here sometimes?”

The girl picks at the label on the bottle. “Sometimes.”

“Last Friday,” Joona says slowly. “Early in the morning, Penelope left home. She took a taxi.”

“No luck,” the girl says quickly. “She missed Björn by, like, a second. He got here right after she left. I told him that she just left.”

“What did he say?”

“No big deal, he said. He was just going to pick something up.”

“Pick something up?”

Mia nods.

“Sometimes he lets me borrow his phone so I can play games on it. But he was in a hurry. He just went inside and came right back out. Then he locked the door and ran down the stairs.”

“Did you see what he picked up?”

“No.”

“What happened after that?”

“Nothing. I went to school. Quarter to nine.”

“And after school, in the evening. Did anything happen then?”

Mia shrugged. “Mom was gone so I was inside and I ate some macaroni and cheese and watched TV.”

“What about yesterday?”

“Mom was gone again so I was home.”

“So you didn’t see anyone coming or going?”

“No.”

Joona takes out one of his business cards and writes a telephone number.

“Look at this,” he tells Mia. “Here are two good telephone numbers. One is my own number.”

He points at the number on the card, which is also imprinted with the police insignia.

“Call me if you need help or if someone is doing something mean to you. And the other number is the Child Hotline. See, I’ve written it down: 0200-230-230. You can call them whenever you want and talk about anything you want.”

“Okay,” Mia whispers as she takes the card.

“Don’t throw that card away, now, the minute I turn my back,” Joona says. “Keep it, because even if you don’t want to call someone now, you might want to later on.”

“When he came out, Björn had his hand on his stomach,” Mia said. She demonstrated.

“Like he had a tummy ache?”

“Yeah. Just like he had a tummy ache.”

26

a palm

Joona knocks on the other doors, but all he finds out is that Penelope was a quiet and somewhat shy neighbor who took part in the annual cleaning days as well as the yearly meetings, but not much else. Once he’s done, he slowly climbs the stairs back to the fourth floor.

The door to Penelope’s apartment is open. A Säpo technician has just dismantled the lock from the outer door and bagged the bolt in plastic.

Joona goes in but stays in the background to watch the forensic investigators work. He’s always enjoyed hanging around to see how systematically they photograph everything, collect evidence, rigorously note every aspect of what they find. It’s ironic how the investigation itself will destroy the crime scene, contaminating layer by layer, even as it progresses. No piece of evidence or a key to reconstructing what has happened must be lost.

Joona lets his gaze wander over Penelope Fernandez’s tidy apartment. Why had Björn Almskog come here? He had arrived the minute Penelope left. Joona could almost picture him hiding outside the entrance to the building waiting for her to leave.

Perhaps it was a coincidence, but maybe he did not
want
to run into her.

Björn had hurried in, met the child sitting on the stairs with no time to speak to her, explaining he just had to pick something up, and had only stayed a few minutes.

Perhaps Björn
did
pick up something, just as he told the little girl. Perhaps he’d forgotten the key to the boat or something else that fit in a pocket.

Perhaps he
left
something behind instead. Perhaps he only had to take a look at something or make sure of a piece of information or write down a telephone number.

Joona walks into the kitchen and looks around.

“Have you checked the fridge?” he asks.

A young man with a goatee looks up, surprised, at Joona.

“Are you hungry?” he asks in a strong Dalarna accent.

“It’s a good place to hide something,” Joona replies drily.

“We haven’t gotten to it yet,” the investigator says.

Joona returns to the living room. He notes that Saga is still off in a corner of the room talking on her cell. Tommy Kofoed is placing a strip of tape with picked-up fibers onto OH film. He looks up.

“Finding anything unexpected?” Joona asks.

“Besides a shoe print on the wall?”

“Nothing else?”

“The important stuff is at the lab in Linköping.”

“Can we get their results in a week?”

“If we give them enough hell, sure,” Tommy says, shrugging. “Right now I’m going to look at the cut from the knife blade and make a mold of the edge.”

“Don’t bother,” Joona says.

“So you were able to see the blade? Was it carbon steel?”

“No, the blade was a lighter color. Perhaps sintered tungsten carbide. Some people prefer it. But, actually, nothing’s going to really help.”

“What won’t help?”

“This entire crime scene investigation,” Joona says. “We won’t find DNA or fingerprints. Nothing will lead to the suspect.”

“So what should we do?”

“I believe the killer came for something here. And I believe he was interrupted before he could find it.”

“So maybe it’s still here?”

“Entirely possible,” Joona replies.

“But you have no idea what it could be.”

“It fits inside a book.”

Joona’s granite eyes meet Kofoed’s brown ones. Göran Stone from Säpo is photographing the bathroom door, the edges of the door, the frame, and the hinges. Then he sits down on the floor to photograph the bathroom’s white ceiling. Joona reaches to open the living-room door, about to ask Göran to take a photo of the magazines in the living room, when the flash goes off. The brightness startles him. Things go black for a second. Four white points prick the darkness and then a light blue iridescent palm print emerges. Then they’re gone. Joona looks around, unable to determine where they’d been.

“Göran!” Joona calls loudly, his voice penetrating through the thick glass door. “Take another picture right there!”

Everyone freezes in the apartment. The man by the outer door shoots Joona a curious look. The tech guy with a Dalarna accent sticks his head into the hallway from the kitchen. Tommy Kofoed takes off his face mask and scratches his neck. Göran Stone is still sitting on the floor, now looking very interested.

“Like you did just now,” Joona says. “Take a photo of the ceiling.”

Göran shrugs and lifts his camera to take another photo of the bathroom ceiling. There’s a flash, and Joona’s pupils shrink in protest. Tears come to his eyes. He closes them and still sees a black triangle. He realizes that it is a glass pane in the door transformed into a negative image.

The middle of the square shows four white spots and next to them floats a light blue palm print.

He knew that’s what he’d seen.

Joona blinks and walks close to the door. The remains of four pieces of tape form a square, and right next to it is the palm print.

Tommy Kofoed steps up next to him.

“A handprint,” he says.

“Can you lift it?” Joona asks.

“Göran,” Kofoed says. “We need a picture of this.”

Göran gets up and is humming as he stands by the door, camera ready. He peers at the handprint.

“Yes, somebody was here and wasn’t too clean either,” he says contentedly as he takes four pictures.

Then Göran moves aside and waits as Tommy Kofoed treats the palm print with cyanoacrylate to bind the salt and moisture. Then he uses Basic Yellow 40.

Göran waits a moment and then takes two more pictures.

“Now we got you!” Kofoed whispers to the print as he carefully lifts it with a stiff sheet of plastic.