The Disciple (10 page)

‘It’s not a desire, it’s an interest. I’m a lepidopterist.’

‘I presume that means you’re a butterfly collector.’

‘Expert. A butterfly expert.’

‘How does it work? Are they still alive when you stick a pin in them?’

‘No, I kill them first with ethyl acetate.’

‘So you’re interested in killing things?’

Carl tilted his head to one side as if Vanja had just said something enchanting and sweet.

‘Aren’t you going to ask if I used to wet the bed and enjoyed setting fire to things as well?’

Vanja didn’t reply. She bent down next to Billy to put on her shoes, avoiding that supercilious look.

Carl went on: ‘You do know it’s a gross simplification to believe that when serial killers are young, they wet the bed, start fires and kill animals?’

Billy straightened up. ‘You seem to know a great deal about serial killers.’

‘I’m writing a dissertation about them. Among other things.’

‘And what’s it about? This dissertation?’

‘When the desires of the individual collide with the rules of a civilised society.’

Billy met Carl’s gaze and suddenly had the feeling that the topic was very definitely based on personal experience. In spite of the warmth in the apartment, he shivered.

‘He was creepy.’

Vanja and Billy had stepped out onto Forskarbacken and were walking along the pavement to the car when Billy put into words what they were both thinking. Vanja nodded, put on her sunglasses and unbuttoned her thin jacket.

‘Creepy, and taller than you.’

‘Yes, I noticed that too,’ said Billy, unlocking the car even though they were still twenty metres away. ‘Shall we put him under surveillance?’

‘He seemed a bit too relaxed. If it is him, he knows we’ve got forensic evidence.’

‘Perhaps he wants to be caught?’

‘Why would he want that?’

‘The media haven’t linked the murders yet. He’s getting no publicity, no attention. If the kick he gets from killing is becoming weaker and weaker, he might need something else. An arrest and trial would not only show what he’s done, but would provide him with acknowledgement. Make him someone.’

Vanja stopped dead and stared at Billy in surprise. Not only because that was probably the most she had ever heard him say without interruption, but mainly because she couldn’t remember him speaking with such authority and insight. He was an expert when it came to technology and new gadgets, of course . . . but serial killers? When Billy noticed that Vanja had stopped, he turned back; even though he couldn’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses, he could tell that she was surprised.

‘What?’ he said.

‘You’ve been reading up on this.’

‘Yes, and?’

‘Nothing.’ There was something in Billy’s voice that told Vanja she shouldn’t go any further, and that she definitely shouldn’t joke about this. Not right now, anyway.

‘We’ll keep an eye on him until we get the results of his DNA sample,’ she went on. They got in the car and closed the doors. Vanja fastened her seatbelt as Billy started the engine.

‘So who’s the girl, by the way?’

‘What girl?’

‘The girl you went to the theatre with.’

‘Nobody.’

Which meant it was definitely somebody. Vanja smiled to herself. She would get the details out of him during the short trip home.

Polhemsgatan. Again. Sebastian was sitting in the café where he could call himself a regular customer by now. At his favourite table, the one with the best view of his former workplace. Riksmord. Which was now her workplace. He was on his third cup of coffee, and he looked once more at the white plastic clock on the wall. He cursed himself. He cursed Stefan, who had got him to go all the way to Frescati to see a woman who hated him, as it turned out. He should have stayed in the café instead. Waited for her. It would have cost less.

He needed to see her.

Here in the café on Polhemsgatan he felt almost comfortable. The closer he was to his former workplace, the safer he felt. Here he didn’t need to hide himself quite so carefully. There were several reasons why he should be here. If Vanja or anyone else saw him, he could always say that he was visiting. That he was waiting for a former colleague. That he had a meeting which had been cancelled. If they didn’t buy that, he could always change tactics and claim that he was there because he wanted them to take him back. They would believe that.

Not that Torkel would ever do it. Not after Västerås. But it would be logical. They would understand why he was sitting here with his cup of coffee, staring over at the concrete-grey building. It would be considerably more difficult to explain his presence if Vanja spotted him on the hill outside her apartment.

The big hand on the plastic clock had moved half a circuit, and was now showing five twenty-five. There were no other customers left in the café; the young couple who seemed to have relationship problems had disappeared without Sebastian noticing, and the older lady who he suspected was probably the owner had removed the ready-made sandwiches from the chilled counter. Sebastian looked out of the window again. At the concrete-grey facade. Failed to find what he was looking for. Suspected it might be time to make a move. The question was what to do now? He didn’t want to go back to his apartment and the debris of his other life, and he didn’t know if he had the nerve to go back to the familiar spot outside her building. It was too dangerous. From a statistical point of view, the danger of discovery increased each time he went there. But he had to do something. Something to ease the impatience and the irritation. He had no intention of seeing the woman from yesterday again, otherwise she would have been the simplest alternative. Ellinor Bergkvist. There was something about the way she had tried to keep him there in the morning, constantly wanting to know more and more, that had annoyed him. That and the fact that she had held his hand. There were limits when it came to intimacy.

Sebastian took out his frustration on the woman on the till.

‘The coffee’s crap,’ he said, staring at her.

‘I can make a fresh pot,’ she suggested.

‘Go to hell,’ he said, and stormed out.

That was probably the end of his stint as a regular customer, he thought as he walked out into the warm summer’s evening. But he could always find somewhere else.

If there was one thing there was no shortage of in Stockholm, it was cafés.

And women.

After a few brief but failed attempts in hotel bars, trying to find someone with whom to finish off a bad day, Sebastian was on the verge of giving up. By this time even the Royal Library was closed. The ostentatious building in Humlegården was one of his favourite places when it came to fishing for female company. His technique was simple. Find a central seat in the big reading room. Borrow some books; it was important to take along a few copies of his own work and to make sure they were clearly visible. Then he would sit down and begin to struggle with a new text, battling to find the right words, and at the appropriate moment he would turn to a woman who happened to be passing: ‘Excuse me, but I’m working on a new book, and I wondered if you might just have a look at this sentence.’ If he played his cards right, they were soon partaking of a glass of wine in the Hotel Anglais next door.

Sebastian was beginning to get annoyed with himself as he ambled aimlessly through the heat of the city; nothing he did seemed to work these days. He was getting crosser with every step. Positively furious.

Why the fuck did everything have to be this way?

Why the fuck did nothing ever turn out the way he wanted?

He ought to hit back at everything and everyone. Ring Trolle and ask him to dig as deep as he could. Drill right down into the lives of those perfect people until he finally reached the shit. Anna Eriksson and Valdemar Lithner were to blame for all of it. He ought to check out Anna too. Perhaps she was the weak link, the fissure that could make their perfect middle-class facade crack open. Surely he would be able to find some dirt on her. She wasn’t exactly a stranger to secrets and lies. Vanja didn’t even know the truth about her own father. No doubt Anna justified this to herself by claiming it was in Vanja’s best interests. But who had given her the right to decide? Who said she could play God? He wanted to be close to his daughter, but right now that seemed to mean at least a couple of hundred metres away. As if he’d been issued with some kind of restraining order. He stopped. He would ask Trolle to widen the search. Take a look at Anna Eriksson. Sebastian took out his mobile, then put it away again. Why call? He turned around and headed for the nearest taxi rank. After all, he had nothing better to do. Trolle lived in Skärholmen.

Trolle was a person you could trust.

He would understand.

He had lost his own family.

Billy was sitting on the sofa with his iPad, surfing the net. Maya was in the shower. Billy was hoping they could go out and eat when she’d finished.

They had been together since midsummer. An old school friend of Billy’s had a place on Djurö out in the archipelago, and it was the third year Billy had been invited to celebrate with them. This year another friend was there, along with his sister. Maya Reding-Hedberg. They ended up sitting next to one another at the traditional pickled herring lunch, and they stayed there all evening and most of the night. They had been together ever since, and saw each other nearly every day.

In spite of this he hadn’t said anything about Maya on the way home from Forskarbacken when Vanja tried to pump him for details. He usually told Vanja everything. Or most things. Sometimes he felt as if they were more like brother and sister than colleagues, but this time he held back, for the simple reason that he was fairly sure Vanja wouldn’t like Maya.

She was a life coach.

Vanja had many good points, but she was such a high achiever that she found it difficult to cope with people who didn’t make the most of their lives. On their own. It was one thing to improve your education, to go on courses, attend lectures, set goals, but she regarded it as a sign of inherent weakness and spinelessness if someone needed help to find their motivation and achieve results. If you didn’t know what you wanted, then you didn’t want it enough – that was her mantra. If you had real problems you went to a qualified psychologist, not some half-baked New Age character with a diploma who provided encouragement at a thousand kronor an hour.

No, Vanja wouldn’t like Maya.

Not that he needed Vanja’s approval, but it was simpler if she didn’t know anything. That meant he could avoid the gibes, the ironic little comments. This was particularly important now, when he had actually started making a serious attempt to change his situation within the team.

It had begun with Maya asking him if he was happy in his work. A simple question, a simple answer. Yes, he was. He couldn’t imagine a better place to work or better colleagues. As time went by, they had talked more. She was interested in what he did, what his role was. A lot of people just wanted to hear the gory details of an exciting murder enquiry, but Maya wasn’t like that. No, she was interested in the job itself. In him. That was something he liked about her, the fact that she could make him talk. So he started to tell her about his work. About what he did each day. He kept it practical and concrete. Afterwards she had looked at him with a slight furrow in her brow.

‘It sounds to me as if you’re more of an IT technician than a detective.’

That had hit home. He became more conscious of the tasks he was given. Checking police records. Downloads. Searches.

The more he became aware of it, the more he realised that his role within the investigations was increasingly that of a kind of advanced secretary rather than an investigative police officer. He talked to Maya about it, and she suggested that he should take some time to think about where he was going. And have the courage to listen to the answer. The answer was that he didn’t know. He’d never even thought about it.

He went to work.

He enjoyed it.

He went home.

He was able to make use of his ability to create structure by building timelines, and by gathering and collating information from every imaginable source, but was he using his full potential? No, he couldn’t say that he was. It was difficult to assert himself within the team. Torkel Höglund was one of the most highly qualified police officers in Sweden, and both Vanja and Ursula were in the top three – if not number one – in their respective fields. But he didn’t need to reach that level. He hadn’t said so to Maya, but if he were to be perfectly honest he didn’t really think he had what it took; however, he could certainly become a more equal member of the team. He had already started working on it.