Joona Linna: Stalker Part 8

'There's something strange ... off to the side ... I ...'

'What did you say?' Erik asks.

'It's moving, off to the side ...'

'OK, just let it go,' Erik replies. 'Look straight ahead and keep going.'

Bjrn walks through the hall, but his eyes keep getting drawn to the side, towards the clothes hanging in the porch. They're moving slowly in the gloom, as if a wind were blowing through the house. The sleeves of Susanna's trenchcoat lift in a gust, then fall back.

'Look ahead of you,' Erik says.

Someone suffering mental trauma experiences a chaotic jumble of memories that press in on them from all sides: they lose all coherence, fade away and lurch into view, all mixed up.

All Erik can do is try to lead Bjrn through the rooms, towards the fundamental insight that he couldn't have prevented his wife's death.

'I'm in the kitchen now,' he whispers.

'Keep going,' Erik says.

There's a bag of newspapers for recycling in the pa.s.sageway leading to the door of the cellar. Bjrn takes a cautious step forward, looking straight ahead, but he still sees a kitchen drawer slide open, and it rattles when it comes to a halt.

'One drawer is open,' he mutters.

'Which one?'

Bjrn knows it's the drawer containing the knives, and he knows that he's the one opening it, seeing as he washed a large knife several hours earlier.

'Oh, G.o.d ... I can't ... I ...'

'There's nothing to be afraid of, you're safe, and I'll be with you as you go further in.'

'I'm walking past the door to the cellar, towards the living room ... Susanna must have gone to bed already ...'

It's quiet, the television is switched off, but something's different, the furniture seems to be in the wrong places, as if a giant had picked the house up and given it a gentle shake.

'Sanna?' Bjrn whispers.

He reaches out his hand towards the light switch. The room doesn't light up, but the glow fills the windows that look out onto the garden. He can't help thinking he's being watched, and feels an urge to close the curtains.

'G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d,' he suddenly whimpers, his face trembling.

Erik realises that Bjrn is there now, in the midst of his memory of the traumatic event, but he's barely describing anything, he's keeping it to himself.

Bjrn is getting closer, sees himself in the black window, sees the bushes outside move in the wind, far beyond the reflections.

He's gasping even though he's under deep hypnosis, his body tenses and his back arches.

'What's happening?' Erik asks.

Bjrn stops when he sees someone with a dark grey face looking back at him in the window. Right next to the gla.s.s. He takes a step back and feels his heart pounding hard in his chest. A branch of the rosebush sways and sc.r.a.pes the window ledge. He realises that the grey face isn't outside. There's someone sitting on the floor in front of the window. He can see their reflection.

A calm voice repeats that there's nothing to be scared of.

He moves to the side and realises that it's Susanna. She's sitting on the floor in front of the window.

'Sanna?' he says quietly, so as not to startle her.

He can see her shoulder, some of her hair. She's leaning back against an armchair, looking out. He approaches cautiously and feels that the floor is wet beneath his feet.

'She's sitting down,' he mutters.

'She's sitting?'

Bjrn goes closer to the armchair by the window, and then the light in the ceiling comes on and the room is bathed in light. He knows he switched it on, but is still frightened when the bright light fills the room.

There's blood everywhere.

He's trodden in blood, it's splashed across the television and sofa, and up the walls, there are smears of blood on the floor, trickling into the gaps between the wood.

She's sitting on the floor in a dark-red pool. A dead woman wearing Sanna's kimono. Dust has settled on the pool of blood around her.

Erik sees Bjrn's face tense, and his lips and the tip of his nose turn white. As soon as Bjrn has realised that the dead woman is his wife, Erik is planning to bring him out of the hypnosis.

'Who can you see?' he asks.

'No ... no,' he whispers.

'You know who it is,' Erik says.

'Susanna,' he says slowly, and opens his eyes.

'You can move back now,' Erik says. 'I'm going to wake you up in a moment, and-'

'There's so much blood, G.o.d, I don't want to ... Her face, it's been destroyed, and she's sitting perfectly still, with-'

'Bjrn, listen to my voice, I'm going to count from-'

'She's sitting with her hand over her ear, and there's blood dripping from her elbow,' he says, panting for breath.

Erik feels an icy chill as adrenalin fills his veins for a few seconds, the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up. With his heart pounding he glances towards the closed door of the treatment room and hears a trolley rattle as it moves away.

'Look at your own hands,' he says, trying to keep his voice steady. 'You're looking at your own hands and you're breathing slowly. With each breath you're feeling calmer-'

'I don't want to,' Bjrn whispers.

Erik can feel that he's forcing him, but he has to know the position Bjrn's wife was sitting in when he found her.

'Before I wake you up, we need to go deeper,' he says, swallowing hard. 'Beneath the house that you're in is another house, identical to the other one ... but down there is the only place you can see Susanna clearly. Three, two, one, and now you're there ... She's sitting on the floor in the pool of blood, and you can look at her without feeling frightened.'

'Her face is almost gone, it's just blood,' Bjrn says sluggishly. 'And her hand is stuck to her ear ...'

'Keep going,' Erik says, glancing at the door again.

'Her hand is tangled up in ... in the cord of her kimono.'

'Bjrn, I'm going to bring you up now ... to the house above, and the only thing you know there is that Susanna is dead and that there was nothing you could have done to save her ... That's the only thing you're going to take with you when I wake you up, you're going to leave everything else behind.'

16.

Erik closes his office door and goes over to his desk. He feels that his back is wet with sweat when he sits down.

'It's nothing,' he whispers anxiously to himself.

He moves the mouse to wake his computer up, then logs in. With his hand trembling he pulls open the top drawer, presses a Mogadon out of a blister-pack and swallows it without water.

He quickly signs into the database of patients, and notices how cold his fingers are as he waits to be able to perform a search.

He jumps when Superintendent Margot Silverman opens the door without knocking. She walks in and stops in front of him with her hands clasped round her stomach.

'Bjrn Kern says he can't remember what you talked about.'

'That's natural,' Erik replies, minimising the doc.u.ment.

'How did you get on with the hypnosis, then?' she asks, running her hand over the wooden elephant from Malaysia.

'He was definitely receptive ...'

'So you were able to hypnotise him?' she smiles.

'I'm afraid I forgot to start the camera,' Erik lies. 'Otherwise I could have shown you, he went into a trance almost instantly.'

'You forgot to start the camera?'

'You know that this wasn't an official interview,' he says, a touch impatiently. 'This was a first step towards what we call affective stabilisation, so that-'

'I don't give a d.a.m.n about that,' she cuts him off.

'So that you can have a functional witness later on,' he concludes.

'How much later? Will he be able to say anything later today?'

'I think he's going to realise what happened fairly quickly, but talking about it is another matter.'

'So what happened? What did he say? He must have said something, surely?'

'Yes, but-'

'No f.u.c.king oath of confidentiality b.o.l.l.o.c.ks now,' she interrupts. 'I have to know, otherwise people will die.'

Erik goes over to the window and leans on the sill. Far below a patient is standing smoking, thin and bent-backed in his hospital gown.

'I took him back,' Erik says slowly. 'Into the house ... it was rather complicated, because it was very recent, and full of fragments of terrible memories.'

'But he saw everything ... could he see everything?'

'It was only to make him understand that he couldn't have saved her.'

'But he saw the murder scene, and his wife? Did he?'

'Yes, he did,' Erik replies.

'So what did he say?'

'Not much ... he talked about blood ... and the wounds to her face.'

'Was she in a particular position? A posture with s.e.xual implications?'

'He didn't say.'

'Was she sitting up or lying down? How did her mouth look, where were her hands? Was she naked? Violated?'

'He said very little,' Erik replies. 'It can take a long time to reach details of that sort ...'

'I swear, if he doesn't start talking I'll take him into custody,' she says in a loud voice. 'I'll drag him off to headquarters and watch him like a hawk until-'

'Margot,' Erik interrupts in a friendly voice.

She looks at him with a subdued expression, nods and breathes through her mouth, then pulls out a business card and puts it down on his desk.

'We don't know who his next victim's going to be. It could be your wife. Think about that,' she says, and leaves the room.

Erik feels his face relax. He walks slowly back to his desk. The floor is starting to feel soft beneath his feet. As he sits down in front of his computer there's a knock on the door.

'Yes?'

'That charming superintendent has left the building,' Nelly says, peering round the door.

'She's only trying to do her job.'

'I know, she doesn't really seem too bad ...'