Ларс Кеплер – The Nightmare (страница 19)
‘I know it’s the weekend and everyone would rather be at home,’ he says. ‘But I think I’ve noticed something important.’
‘Of course we’re going to come if you tell us it’s important,’ Svanehjälm says amiably, and finally puts his briefcase down between his feet.
‘The perpetrator made his way onto the leisure cruiser,’ Joona says seriously. ‘He went down the steps to the front cabin and saw Penelope Fernandez asleep, then went back up to the aft-deck, dropped the bucket on the rope into the water and started to fill the wash-tub that was standing on deck.’
‘Five, six buckets,’ Petter says.
‘Then, when the tub was full, he went down to the cabin and woke Penelope. He took her up the steps and out onto the deck, where he drowned her in the tub.’
‘Who would do something like that?’ Svanehjälm asks.
‘I don’t know yet, maybe it was some sort of torture, like waterboarding …’
‘Revenge? Jealousy?’
Joona tilts his head and says thoughtfully:
‘This isn’t any ordinary murderer. Maybe the perpetrator wanted information from her, to get her to say or admit to something, before finally holding her underwater until she could no longer resist the urge to breathe in.’
‘What does our pathologist say?’ Svanehjälm asks.
The Needle shakes his head.
‘If she was drowned,’ he says, ‘then I’d have found signs of violence on her body, bruises and …’
‘Can we wait with the objections?’ Joona interrupts. ‘Because I’d like to start by showing what I think happened, the way it looks in my head. And then, once I’m done, I’d like us all to go and look at the body, and see if there’s any basis for my theory.’
‘Why can’t you ever do anything the way it’s supposed to be done?’ Petter asks.
‘I do need to go home soon,’ the prosecutor warns.
Joona looks at him with an ice-grey glint in his pale eyes. There’s a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his eyes, a smile that does nothing to detract from the seriousness of his look.
‘Penelope Fernandez,’ he begins. ‘She had been sitting on deck just before, smoking a joint. It was a warm day and she felt tired, so went down to rest on her bed for a while, and fell asleep wearing her denim jacket.’
He gestures towards The Needle’s young assistant, who is waiting in the doorway.
‘Frippe has agreed to help with the reconstruction.’
Frippe smiles and takes a step forward. His dyed black hair is hanging in clumps down his back, and his worn leather trousers are studded with rivets. He carefully fastens his leather jacket over his black T-shirt with a picture of the pop-group Europe on it.
‘Look,’ Joona says quietly, and demonstrates how with one hand he can take a firm grip of both sleeves of the jacket to lock Frippe’s arms behind his back, allowing him to grab hold of his long hair with the other hand.
‘I’ve got complete control of Frippe now, and there won’t be a single bruise on him.’
Joona raises the young man’s arms behind his back. Frippe whimpers and leans forward.
‘Take it easy,’ he laughs.
‘Obviously, you’re much bigger than the victim, but I still think I could push your head down in the wash-tub.’
‘Be careful with him,’ The Needle says.
‘I’m only going to spoil his hair.’
‘Forget it,’ Frippe says with a smile.
It’s a silent tussle. The Needle looks worried, Svanehjälm uncomfortable. Petter swears. Without any great difficulty Joona manages to push Frippe’s head down into the water and hold him there for a few moments before letting go and backing away. Frippe wobbles as he straightens up and Nils hurries forward with a towel.
‘You could have just described it, surely?’ he says irritably.
Once Frippe has finished drying himself they go silently into the next room, where the cool air is heavy with the stench of decay. One wall is covered with three layers of stainless steel fridge doors. Nils opens compartment 16 and pulls out the tray. The young woman is lying on the narrow bunk, naked and drained of colour, with brown, spidery veins around her neck. Joona points at the thin, curved line over her chest.
‘Take your clothes off,’ he says to Frippe.
Frippe unbuttons his jacket and pulls off his black T-shirt. Across his chest is a faint pink mark made by the edge of the wash-tub, a curved line, like a smiling mouth.
‘Bloody hell,’ Petter says.
The Needle goes over and inspects the roots of the dead woman’s hair. He takes out a small torch and points it at the pale skin under her hair.
‘I don’t need a microscope for this. Someone’s held her very tightly by her hair.’
He turns the torch off and puts it back in the pocket of his white coat.
‘In other words …’ Joona says.
‘In other words, you’re right, of course,’ The Needle says, and claps his hands.
‘Murder,’ Svanehjälm sighs.
‘Impressive,’ Frippe says, wiping some eye-liner that has smeared across one cheek.
‘Thanks,’ Joona says distantly.
Nils looks at him quizzically:
‘What is it, Joona? What have you seen?’
‘It’s not her,’ he says.
‘What?’
Joona meets Nils’s gaze, then points at the body in front of them.
‘This isn’t Penelope Fernandez. It’s someone else,’ he says, and looks at the prosecutor. ‘The dead woman isn’t Penelope. I’ve seen her driver’s licence, and I’m certain this isn’t her.’
‘But what …’
‘Maybe Penelope Fernandez is dead too,’ he says. ‘But if she is, we haven’t found her yet.’
Penelope’s heart is still beating horribly fast – she’s trying to breathe quietly, but the air shudders in her throat. She slides down the rough rocks, pulling the damp moss down with her, and ends up under cover of the branches of the fir tree. She’s so terrified that she’s shaking. She creeps closer to the trunk where the night’s darkness is at its most dense. She hears herself start to whimper when she thinks of Viola. Björn is sitting motionless in the darkness under the branches with his arms wrapped tightly around him, muttering to himself over and over again.
They’ve been running in panic, not looking back, have stumbled and fallen and got back up, they’ve clambered over fallen trees, scraping their legs, knees and hands, but they’ve kept rushing on.
Penelope no longer has any sense of how close their pursuer is, if he’s already caught sight of them again or if he’s given up and decided to wait.
They’ve been running, but Penelope has no idea why. She can’t understand why they’re being hunted.
Maybe it’s all a mistake, she thinks. A terrible mistake.
Her racing pulse starts to slow down.
She feels sick, and almost throws up, but swallows hard instead.
‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ she keeps whispering to herself. ‘This is impossible, we have to get help, someone ought to find the boat soon and start looking for us …’
‘Shhh,’ Björn hisses with fear in his eyes.
Her hands are shaking. A series of rapid-fire images plays in her mind. She tries to blink them away, tries to look at her white trainers, at the brown fir needles on the ground, at Björn’s dirty, bloody knees, but the images keep forcing their way through: Viola is dead, sitting on the bed with her eyes wide open, the look in them unreadable, her face blotchy and white and wet, her hair lank and dripping.
Somehow Penelope had understood that the man standing on the shore beckoning Björn to swim back to land was the person who had killed her sister. She could feel it. She put the few pieces she had together and interpreted the image in an instant. If she hadn’t they would all be dead.
Penelope had screamed at Björn. They were losing time, it was going too slowly, and she hurt him with the end of the boathook before she managed to get him on board.
The black inflatable boat had appeared round the end of Kastskär and picked up speed on the flat, open water.