The Viper (32 page)

“Hi,” said the nurse once the glasses were in place. “Yes, I’ve seen you. You’re the one who usually comes in here.”

Sara smiled at the nurse.

“Yes, but this will be the last time. I’m going back to Visby tomorrow.”

“I see,” said the nurse and touched the medicine cabinet.

“I was wondering about something.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it seems like his memory is slowly coming back, that he’s remembering more and more, or is it just that his speech is returning and that his memory has been there the whole time, but…”

Sara stopped short, realized that she was just making it more confusing. The nurse adjusted her glasses, waited.

“What I’m really asking,” said Sara, “is whether you think that he’ll remember anything from his time here at the hospital? I mean, has he even heard what I’ve been talking to him about, and can he remember it in that case?”

The nurse got a little wrinkle between her eyebrows.

“It’s impossible to say,” she said, “but it’s possible. You’ll have to ask him once he’s gotten a little better.”

48.

He was alone in the dark. He felt the cold and damp against his face and the hard stone against his back where he was sitting curled up against the wall. No light, nothing, just the wind and the rain that buffeted the roof, whipped hard against the brickwork.

If the sleeping bag he’d crawled into couldn’t keep out the damp and cold, he wouldn’t last very long out here. He leaned his head back against the rough stone and shut his eyes. Might as well shut his eyes. There was nothing to see. He was blind when he opened his eyes. He closed them and tried to turn inward, feel his lungs rise and fall, to block out everything and focus solely on his own breathing.

Just when he thought that it was working, that he felt a relief of sorts, he suddenly got the distinct impression that someone was standing there leaning over him. He quickly opened his eyes and saw even less. The darkness just became blacker and thicker, but the figure in his head became ever more present. He saw something black within the blackness. A figure without a face, and yet he felt a pair of eyes staring at him, eyes filled with tears; no, eyes that were bleeding, a thick, red liquid that oozed from even redder eyeballs.

Madness, nonsense, a figment of his imagination, he told himself and quickly swiped his hand out in the empty void in front of him to prove his assertion. Nothing there, of course. And yet the figure remained, like an image etched into his mind following a blinding flash of light. A vague, rustling sound along the floor and suddenly the dark figure was gone, but had made way for something else. Another rustling. This was no figment of his imagination, no haunting apparition, there really was something out there in the darkness, that slithered across the gritty stone floor, rasping softly against it. A snake. He could hear it distinctly. He was alone in the darkness with a viper, a scaly, zigzag-pattered reptile, its flickering tongue sniffing him out just as clearly as he could see in broad daylight. Deadly and real.

He stamped down hard with both feet, but the effect was dampened by the cushioning effect of the sleeping bag. He threw out his left hand, groping along the wall, he tipped something over that rattled when it hit the floor, found his lighter and managed to get a flame. He got to his feet and held the lighter out at arms length. The flame flickered in the wind that was gusting through the building, but still did a decent job of lighting up the room. He moved it slowly from left to right, saw no snake. He moved slowly around the room with the lighter stretched out in front of him. No snake. No, of course there was no snake. It was just his mind playing tricks on him. When the frightening figure that had loomed over him proved so easy to drive away, his mind immediately came up with something else that was harder to fend off.

Why was he tormenting himself? Because it all came from inside, the snakes and the strange, bleeding figures. He detected a strong smell, turned around and saw that the camping stove that he had knocked over onto the floor was leaking alcohol onto the ground. A big, black pool was spreading across the floor. He swore under his breath, wriggled out of his sleeping bag, felt at once how the cold bit into him, hurried over and put it back upright, careful to keep his lighter well away. The stove was almost empty.

He moved his backpack with all his food and clothes, out of the way, the bag of bread rusks and the bottle of vodka that he’d unpacked. There was alcohol on the bag of rusks. He ripped it open and dumped the rusks straight into his backpack and tossed away the empty bag. He swore again. Luckily the backpack had been spared and he moved it even further away from the camping stove. His right hand was cold and dry from the alcohol.

The lighter was burning the thumb of his left hand. He crawled into his sleeping bag and let the flame on the lighter go out. He didn’t know what to do with it, finally sticking it between his teeth as he drew up the zipper of his sleeping bag. He shuffled over to the wall, sat down, and set aside the lighter.

As soon as the stillness settled in, the visions returned. The darkness loomed over him, tightened around him, stared at him, grabbed at him. He stared back, steeled himself against the nonsense that was whirling around inside him, but no matter how hard he fought against it, he noticed how his heart pounded faster and harder in his chest, how his blood surged through his swollen, hardened arteries, and how his pulse finally seemed to flutter ceaselessly.

He grabbed the lighter again, had to flick the flint three times before the gas flame once again cast its dim light across the room. The round floor’s dirty paving stones stared back at him vacantly. He reached for the vodka bottle and wished he’d had something more, something stronger, when he put it to his lips and took two deep gulps in quick succession. He wanted something that would knock him out completely until morning. He wasn’t sure that the alcohol would help, but he drank it anyway.

He had felt that he was right. When he’d done it, he had felt that he’d been right to do it.

49.

Detective Christer Eriksson pulled his thin, wrinkled raincoat more tightly around his grayish-green, one-size-too-big suit. It may have stopped raining, but there was still a cold wind blowing.

He had driven to Huddinge, south of Stockholm, in order to examine the scene of a shooting that had taken place over a week ago. When Christer Eriksson had started to sift through all the material that had been dumped onto him by a superior who was going on vacation, he hadn’t quite been able to get the witness accounts to tally with the forensic evidence. So he had decided to head down there to see for himself. His personal theory was that someone had screwed up somewhere. Nobody had gotten hurt in the shooting and the intended victim had been an unemployed Chilean, no record, but had been under suspicion of making criminal threats. Low priority, in other words.

The shooting had taken place in a high-rise area up on a plateau not far from the Vårby Gård subway station. Instead of snaking his way up there by car along the endless winding loop roads, he had parked the car at the bottom of a long stairway that pretty much led straight to the crime scene.

The stairway was divided into three separate flights that cut up through a park. Christer Eriksson was trudging up the first one when he caught sight of a man walking along the asphalted path that intersected with the bottom and middle flights. Even though Christer saw him from the side, and his face was partially hidden beneath a gray hood, he was immediately sure of what he saw. Four years previously he had spent a few long, cold nights staking out Leo Ringvall. It hadn’t paid off, but he wouldn’t forget that face anytime soon. And he had been reminded of Ringvall this morning by the APB that district CID had issued.

The wind tossed Christer Eriksson’s short but unruly bangs. He brushed them aside with his right hand and took an extra look while the motion concealed his probing gaze. He was absolutely certain. It was Leo Ringvall, the triple murderer from Gotland.

Ringvall veered off the park path onto the stairs ahead of Christer and continued up the green slope. Christer Eriksson, known to his colleagues as “Che” because of his station signature, had decided to arrest the man. The alternative would be to follow after him and call for backup, but he considered this to be a safe arrest both for himself and the public. If he could arrest Ringvall before he reached the plateau and he still had his hands where he could see them, then he’d do it.

He quickened his pace, let go of his raincoat and fixed his gaze on Ringvall’s waist. He didn’t like the whole “Che” thing, especially considering he had never voted for anyone left of the Center Party, but he had chosen to ignore it. Reacting against nicknames was a surefire way of getting it to catch on for good. A few of them had even taken to calling him “The Communist,” but he didn’t really care so much about them. They were the bad apples who thought you were an idiot for spending a calm Saturday morning at the station following up on an accidental shooting in the suburbs instead of sitting around scratching your ass in the coffee room. “Regards to the Cubans,” they had hollered after him. It would feel pretty damn good to come back into town with a triple murderer in handcuffs.

When Leo Ringvall reached the top of the second flight of stairs, Christer Eriksson checked to make sure there was no one behind him, then he pulled out his service weapon, prepared it for firing, and aimed it at Ringvall’s back in a quick, but controlled movement.

“Stop, police,” he barked. “Put your hands on your head!”

Ringvall stopped short after the first shout, but remained standing where he was with his hands at his side.

“Hands on your head,” Christer Eriksson repeated.

Ringvall glanced behind him, caught sight of the gun that Christer Eriksson had trained on him and slowly started to raise his hands.

“Don’t move, eyes straight ahead. Hands on your head,” Christer Eriksson ordered as he slowly moved up the stairs.

“Take it easy,” Ringvall mumbled.

Christer Eriksson kept his gun aimed squarely at Ringvall’s back the whole time. The suspected multiple killer took his time putting his hands on his head. Christer Eriksson wasn’t about to make any mistakes. If Ringvall tried anything, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.

“Clasp your hands on top of your head,” he commanded once Ringvall had finally gotten his hands up.

He drew closer, and had nearly reached the landing between the flights of stairs. Just then, he caught sight of two teenage boys peering down from the crest of the hill.

“Police, get out of here!” he shouted without looking at them. “Not you,” he said to Ringvall who glanced back over his shoulder questioningly.

He then told him to step to the side out onto the slope and get down to his knees. Ringvall did as he was told. As he was sinking to his knees, he instinctively lowered one hand to keep his balance, but Christer Eriksson immediately shouted at him to keep both his hands behind his head.

It was easy to shove Ringvall over onto the grass. Christer Eriksson approached him with the handcuffs and dropped down with his knee against Ringvall’s back. Leo Ringvall was considered dangerous according to the APB, and this was a critical moment. His hand wasn’t completely steady as he reached out toward Ringvall’s arm with the cuffs. He fastened one cuff around Ringvall’s left wrist, and brought that arm down behind his back, then he brought the right one down, too. At this point he should have holstered his weapon, but he could feel his hands shaking and how the adrenaline was causing his pulse to race. He didn’t want to take any chances, risk being overpowered, or cut with a carpet knife or a razor blade that Ringvall might be hiding in his hand. The man beneath him had three lives on his conscience, and hadn’t thought twice about dismembering his victims.

The pain that suddenly shot up the pinky of his left hand almost made him drop his gun, but that was nothing compared to what followed after a few seconds of stunned calm. It was as if someone had driven a spear right through his hand and on up into his forearm. Christer Eriksson screamed out.

It felt like he’d been out for a few seconds. He looked down at his left hand. Bright red blood was pumping out of his severed pinky. The burning, wrenching, pulsating pain was excruciating, but no longer completely overpowering. He steered the handcuffs around Ringvall’s wrists. They were securely in place, but about an inch above his cuffed hands there was a hole in the fabric of his gray hoodie. Pressing his throbbing left hand against his body, he carefully turned Ringvall over. Off to the right, on the lower part of his chest, was an irregular and steadily growing bloodstain.

*   *   *

OVE GAVE A
loose knock on Göran’s open door.

“They got him in Stockholm.”

Göran looked up from the desk, pulled off his glasses.

“Great. Where?”

“Somewhere in Huddinge. Some officer recognized him from the description. Apparently Ringvall was on his way home from a friend’s house,” said Ove and took a few steps into the room.

“Have they had a chance to question him yet?” asked Göran.

“Well, that just it,” said Ove and crossed his arms. “Shots were fired during the arrest, both the officer and Ringvall were injured.”

“Seriously?” asked Göran and tried to read the message in Ove’s expression.

“The officer was hit in the hand, that probably wasn’t serious. Ringvall was hit in the lungs.”

Göran grimaced in dismay.

“What happened? Sounds like some kind of a shootout.”

“The explanation I got was a little unclear, but apparently it was accidental. It seems the arresting officer didn’t take proper care when he was going to cuff him and his gun went off. In any case, that means that we can’t question him for at least forty-eight hours.”

“Damn it.”

Göran got up, pulled his pants up a few inches, and turned his back to Ove.

“Shit,” he said and looked out the window.

“Yeah, and he won’t be able to handle any lengthy interviews for another week or so,” said Ove.