Joona Linna: Stalker Part 75

'I know.'

'Where do I look now?'

'Poke about at the back,' Joona replies. 'Look behind shelves, under boxes, you need to find something.'

They end the call and Margot looks everywhere, leaning against the wall and crawling right to the back, but she finds absolutely nothing. Just as she walks back into the bedroom she sees Roger Storm reach the top of the stairs. His face is sweaty and he looks at her with his eyes wide open as he comes towards her. Margot sighs and presses her clenched hand against the small of her back to suppress the next contraction.

'What is it?' she asks in a subdued voice.

'We've received another film,' he says.

129.

The sun has gone down and Rocky has just woken up beside Joona, the streetlamps are coming on and they are approaching Sdertlje when Margot calls back.

'We've received a new video,' she says in an anguished voice. 'Presumably it's someone Erik knows, or has at least-'

'Describe the film.'

'Nelly is already inside the victim's home when she begins filming ... The woman seems injured, she's sitting curled up in a corner ... and at the end, at the end of the film there's a small foot ... It's dark, but it looks like there's a child lying on the floor.'

'Go on.'

'It's a perfectly ordinary b.l.o.o.d.y room, old walls and uneven wallpaper ... there might be a big chimney outside the window, but Forensics aren't done yet.'

'Go on.'

'I'm watching the video on an iPad right now ... the woman has short black hair, she's thin, and I don't know ... she's bleeding, she's almost unconscious and she's moving her hands as if she can't see anything, or-'

'Listen,' Joona interrupts. 'Her name is Jackie Federer and she lives at Lill-Jans plan.'

'I'll send the rapid response unit,' she says, and ends the call.

Joona doesn't have time to explain that she may well no longer be in her flat, because Nelly will want to kill Jackie in front of Erik's eyes, just as she killed her mother in front of her father, and Natalia in front of Rocky.

They drive past a minibus parked at the side of the road with a puncture. A bearded man in shorts and with sunburned legs is putting out a warning triangle.

'You talked about a cage, about being locked in a cage,' Joona says to Rocky.

'When was that?'

'Nelly had you locked up somewhere.'

'I don't think so,' he replies, staring out at the road.

'Do you know where that might have been?'

'No.'

'You escaped and stole a car near Norrtlje.'

'I thought you were the one who goes around stealing cars,' he mutters.

'Think ... It was a farm, there may have been a chimney ...'

Rocky sits there watching the landscape flash by, and as they pa.s.s the junction for Salem he lets out a deep sigh. He rubs his face and beard with his big hands, then looks back at the road again.

'Nelly Brandt murdered Rebecka Hansson,' he says slowly.

'Yes.'

'G.o.d came back to look for me after all,' he says, crumpling an empty cigarette packet.

'It looks like it,' Joona replies gently.

'Maybe I'll be punished for escaping and for having heroin in my pockets ... but after that I can go back to being a priest.'

'You've already been wrongly convicted, you won't be sentenced again,' Joona says.

'Can you stop here?' Rocky says calmly. 'I need to take a look at my church.'

Joona pulls over to the verge and lets him out. The big priest closes the car door, knocks on the roof, and then sets off in the direction of the turning for Salem.

130.

When he was allocating work earlier that day, Ramon Sjlin, commanding officer of the Norrtlje Police, decided that Olle and George Broman could take one of the patrol cars.

They're father and son, and don't often partner each other. Their colleagues joked that at last Olle, the father, would get a lesson in proper police work.

Olle loves his colleagues' banter, and is immensely proud of his son, who is a head taller than him.

As usual the day pa.s.sed peacefully, and towards evening they drove out to Vallby industrial estate, seeing as there had been several reports of break-ins there in the past six months. But everything was calm and they didn't call in, and carried on towards Rimbo after a wee-break.

Olle's back is hurting, and he tilts the seat back a bit further, looks at the time, and is about to say they'll give it half hour then head back to the station when a call from the regional communications centre comes in.

SOS 112 received a phone call thirty minutes ago.

A man called from a phone with very bad reception.

The operator could barely hear anything, but a.n.a.lysis of the recording of the short conversation suggested that the man needed help, and described a location involving a ruined factory somewhere in the vicinity of Rimbo.

They had been able to identify the place as the house that had been built after the big fire at Solbacken Gla.s.sworks.

'We're on our way back to the station,' Olle mutters.

'You haven't got time to take this first?' the operator asks.

'OK, we'll take it,' he replies.

Large drops of rain are falling on the roof of the car. Olle s.h.i.+vers and closes his window, managing to squash a brimstone b.u.t.terfly.

'Suspected domestic down in Gemlinge,' he tells his son.

George turns the car round and heads south, past large farms that open up the landscape in the middle of the black forests.

'Mum reckons you don't eat enough vegetables, she was going to make carrot lasagne,' Olle says. 'But I forgot to buy the carrots, so we're having beef patties instead.'

'Sounds good,' George grins.

The fields are completely dark now. One wing of the b.u.t.terfly falls down the inside of the window and drifts on the warm air from the vent.

They stop talking when they turn off and start heading along the narrow track. The deep potholes make the suspension creak, and branches sc.r.a.pe the roof and sides of the car.

'For G.o.d's sake, this place is derelict,' George says.

The car's headlights open up a tunnel through the darkness and make the swirling moths and the tall gra.s.s at the side of the track s.h.i.+ne like bra.s.s.

'What's the difference between a cheese?' Olle asks, absurdly.

'I don't know, Dad,' George says, without taking his eyes off the track.

'There are holes in the cheese, but no cheese in the holes.'

'Brilliant,' his son sighs, and drums his hands on the wheel.

They turn into a large yard and see a huge chimney etched against the night sky. The tyres roll slowly over crunching gravel. Olle leans closer to the windscreen, breathing through his nose.

'Dark,' George mutters, turning the wheel.

The headlights sweep across bushes and rusting machine parts when they are suddenly reflected back at them.

'A number plate,' Olle says.

They drive closer and see a car with its boot open parked in the yard among the ruins of the gla.s.sworks.

The two men look towards the yellow house. It's surrounded by tall stinging nettles, and the windows are black.

'Do you want to wait and see if they carry out a television?' Olle asks quietly.

George turns the wheel to the left and lines the car up so that the headlights are pointing straight at the veranda before putting the handbrake on.

'But the call was about a suspected domestic,' he says, and opens his door. 'I'll go and take a look.'

'Not on your own,' his dad says.

The two police officers are wearing light protective vests under the jackets of their uniforms, and on their belts they're carrying their service pistols, extra magazines, batons, handcuffs, torches and radios.

Their thin shadows stretch out over the ground, reaching all the way to the house across the nettles.

George has pulled out his torch, and suddenly imagines he's seen something move behind the broken gla.s.s of the ruins.

'What is it?' Olle asks.

'Nothing,' George replies with a dry mouth.

The leaves rustle in the darkness, and then they hear a strange noise, like someone crying out in anguish from within the forest.

'b.l.o.o.d.y deer, scaring people like that!' Olle says.

George s.h.i.+nes his torch at a deep shaft between some collapsed brick walls. There are fragments of gla.s.s scattered among the weeds.

'What is this place?' George whispers.

'Just stick to the path.'

The flat disc of the torch moves over the dirty windows of the house. The gla.s.s is so filthy that it reflects no more than a grey s.h.i.+mmer.

They wade through the tall nettles and George makes a joke about the garden being greener than his dad's.

One pane in the veranda has been nailed over with plywood, and there's a rusty scythe leaning against the wall.

'The row was probably about whose turn it was to do the cleaning,' Olle says quietly.

131.