The Nightmare (58 page)
The photo of a worn cairn of stones in the middle of a green meadow is on her screen. The stones mark a mass grave of cholera victims near Skanstull in Stockholm.
She’s tapping notes into a document on her computer. She stretches her back and lifts her coffee mug halfway to her lips and then thinks better of it. She gets up to brew a new pot of coffee when the telephone on the desk buzzes.
Without reading the name of the caller, she shuts it off. She stands by the window, looking out. She sees dust dancing in the sunlight. Disa feels a tightness in her throat. She sits back down at her computer. She intends never to speak to Joona Linna again.
joona linna
There’s a festive feeling in the air as Midsummer draws near. The traffic is light on Tegnérgatan as Joona slowly walks along. He’s stopped trying to reach Disa. She’s turned off her phone and it’s obvious she wants to be left alone. Joona passes the Blue Tower and then turns down Drottninggatan, which is lined with antique stores and small shops. At the new occult bookstore Aquarius, an old woman pretends to admire the display. As Joona passes by, she gestures toward the glass and then begins to follow him.
It takes a few moments for him to realize that he’s being followed.
He stops at the black fence by Adolf Fredrik Church and turns around. The woman is ten meters behind him. She’s about eighty years old. She peers at him and holds out a card.
“This is you, isn’t it?” she says as she shows it. “And here is the crown, the bridal crown.” She holds out another.
Joona walks over to her and takes the cards from her hand. They’re playing cards from one of the oldest card games in all of Europe, tarot.
“What do you want from me?” Joona asks calmly.
“Nothing at all,” says the old woman. “But I have a message for you from Rosa Bergman.”
“You must be mistaken. I don’t know anyone by—”
“She’s wondering why you pretend that your daughter is dead.”
epilogue
It’s early autumn in Copenhagen. The air is clear and cool when a group of men, discreetly transported in four separate limousines, arrives at the Glyptotek Museum. The men walk up the stairs and enter. They walk past the fruitful winter garden beneath its high glass ceiling. Their footsteps echo on the stone hallway floor as they pass antique sculptures and enter the magnificent concert hall.
The audience is already seated. The Tokyo String Quartet is in its place on the low stage. The musicians hold their legendary Stradivarius instruments, the ones once played by Niccolò Paganini himself.
The four late-arriving guests find their seats around a table in the colonnades to one side of the hall. The youngest is still almost a boy, a fine-limbed blond man whose name is Peter Guidi. The other men wear expressions that are determined but also one step from fear; they are prepared to enslave themselves. They are all soon going to kiss his hand.
The musicians nod to one another and start to perform the Schubert String Quartet no. 14. It begins with great pathos, a deep emotion held in check, a power restrained. A violin calls, painfully and beautifully. The music takes a breath one last time and then it all pours out. The melody seems happy, but the instruments have, at the same time, an underlying tone of sorrow as if it were breath left behind from many lost souls.
* * *
Every single day, thirty-nine million bullets are made. Worldwide military spending, at the lowest estimate, is $1,226 trillion a year. In spite of the fact that enormous amounts of armaments are manufactured, the demand never lessens and it is impossible to estimate the volume. The nine largest exporters of weapons in the world are the United States, Russia, Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and China.
also by lars kepler
The Hypnotist
a note about the author
Lars Kepler is the pseudonym for a literary couple who live and write in Sweden. Their novels, including
The Nightmare
and
The Hypnotist
, have been number-one bestsellers in more than a dozen countries, including France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Holland, and Denmark. The forthcoming film version of
The Hypnotist
was directed by Lasse Hallström (
Chocolat, The Cider House Rules
).
SARAH CRICHTON BOOKS
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2010 by Lars Kepler
Translation copyright © 2012 by Laura A. Wideburg
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2010 by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Sweden, as
Paganinikontraktet
Published in the United States by Sarah Crichton Books / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2012
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following previously published material: “Starman,” “Life on Mars,” and “Ziggy Stardust,” written by David Bowie, reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation and Tintoretto Music, administered by RZO Music, Inc.; Pablo Neruda, “Soneto XLV,”
Cien sonetos de amor
, © Fundación Pablo Neruda, 2012.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kepler, Lars.
[Paganinikontraktet. English]
The nightmare / Lars Kepler ; translated from the Swedish by Laura A. Wideburg
p. cm.
Sequel to: The hypnotist
ISBN 978-0-374-11533-3 (hardback)
I. Wideburg, Laura A. II. Title.
PT9877.21.E65 A2 2012
833'.92—dc23
2012000806
eISBN 978-1-4668-2016-6