The Hypnotist (25 page)

Erik gets into the car, his hands shaking so fiercely he can’t slide the key into the ignition. He knows he’s left his hat and gloves next to his burger in the diner, but he can’t be bothered to go back inside. The surface of the road shimmers in shades of grey from the wet snow as he reverses into the darkness and drives home. He parks on Döbelnsgatan and strides down to Luntmakargatan, feeling a strange sense of alienation as he walks in the door and hurries up the stairs. He rings the doorbell, waits, hears footsteps, the small click as the metal cover of the peephole is pushed to one side. He hears the door being unlocked from the inside, but it doesn’t open to admit him, so he opens it himself. Simone has moved back down the dark hallway. In her jeans and blue knitted sweater, arms folded over her chest, she looks resolute.

“You’re not answering your phone,” says Erik.

“I saw you’d called,” she says in a subdued voice. “Was it something important?”

“Yes.”

Her face cracks, revealing all the anxiety she’s been struggling to hide. She puts her hand over her mouth and stares at him.

“Benjamin called me half an hour ago.”

“Oh my God!” She moves closer. “Where is he?” she asks, raising her voice.

“I don’t know. He didn’t know himself, he didn’t know anything.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me he was in the boot of a car.”

“Was he hurt?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But what— ”

“Hang on,” Erik interrupts. “I need to borrow a phone. It might be possible to trace the call.”

“Who are you going to call?”

“The police. I’ve got a contact who— ”

“I’ll talk to Dad— it’ll be quicker.”

Erik briefly considers protesting but thinks better of it. She takes the phone and he sits on the low hall seat in the darkness, feeling his face growing hot in the warmth.

“Were you asleep?” Simone asks. “Dad, I have to . . . Erik’s here; he’s spoken to Benjamin; you have to trace the call . . . I don’t know . . . No, I haven’t . . . You’d better speak to him.”

Erik takes the phone and holds it to his ear. “Hi.”

“Tell me what happened, Erik,” says Kennet.

“I wanted to call the police, but Simone said you could trace the call more quickly.”

“She could well be right.”

“Benjamin called me half an hour ago. He had no idea where he was or who had taken him; all he really knew was that he was lying in the boot of a car. While we were talking the car stopped, Benjamin said he could hear someone coming, he started shouting, and then everything went quiet.”

Erik can hear the sound of suppressed sobs from Simone.

“Did he call from his own phone?” asks Kennet.

“Yes.”

“Because it’s been switched off. I tried to trace it the day before yesterday; mobile phones send signals to the nearest base station even when they’re not being used.”

Erik listens in silence as Kennet quickly explains that mobile phone operators are obliged to assist the police in accordance with paragraphs 25 to 27 of the law governing telecommunications, if the minimum punishment for the crime under investigation is at least two years’ imprisonment.

“What can they find out?” asks Erik.

“The precision varies— it depends on the station and the exchanges— but with a bit of luck we’ll soon have a location within a radius of a hundred yards.”

“Hurry up, please hurry.”

Erik ends the call, stands with the phone in his hand, and then passes it to Simone. “What happened to your cheek?” he asks.

“What? Oh, it’s nothing.” They look at each other, tired and fragile. “Do you want to come in, Erik?”

He nods, remains where he is for a moment, then kicks off his shoes and moves along the passageway; he sees that the computer is on in Benjamin’s room and goes in. “Found anything?”

Simone stops in the doorway. “Some messages between Benjamin and Aida,” she says. “It seems as if they felt threatened.”

“By whom?”

“We don’t know. Dad’s working on it.”

Erik sits down at the computer. “Benjamin’s alive,” he says quietly, giving her a long look.

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t look as if Josef Ek was involved.”

“You said that in your message; you said he doesn’t know where we live. But he did call here, didn’t he, so he could have— ”

“That’s a different matter.”

“Is it?”

“The switchboard put the call through,” he explains. “I’ve asked them to do that if something sounds important. He hasn’t got our telephone number or our address.”

“But someone’s taken Benjamin and put him in a car.” She falls silent.

Erik reads the message from Aida in which she says she feels sorry for him, living in a house of lies. Then he opens the picture she attached: a colour photo taken with a flash at night, showing an overgrown patch of grass, bleached yellow in the harsh xenon light of the flash, curving outward toward a low hedge. Behind the dry hedge it is just possible to make out a brown wooden fence. At the edge of the grass, there is a green plastic leaf basket and something that might be a potato patch.

Erik looks closely at the picture, trying to understand what the subject is, whether there might be a hedgehog or a shrew somewhere that he hasn’t spotted yet. He tries to peer into the darkness beyond the camera flash to see if there is a person there, a face, but he finds nothing.

“What a strange photo,” whispers Simone.

“Maybe Aida attached the wrong picture,” says Erik.

“That would explain why Benjamin deleted the message.”

“We need to talk to Aida about this as well.”

Simone suddenly whimpers. “Benjamin’s medication.”

“I know.”

“Did you give him the factor concentrate last Tuesday?”

Before he has time to reply, she leaves the room and heads for the kitchen. He follows her. By the time he gets there she is standing by the window, blowing her nose on a piece of paper towel. Erik reaches out to her, but she pulls away. Without the injection, the drug that helps Benjamin’s blood to coagulate and protects him from spontaneous bleeds, he can haemorrhage to death from something as simple as a rapid movement.

“I gave the injection to him last Tuesday morning, at twenty past eight. He was going to go skating, but he went to Tensta with Aida instead.”

She nods and calculates. “It’s Sunday today. He ought to have another injection soon,” she whispers.

“There’s no real danger for a few more days,” Erik says reassuringly.

He looks at her: tired face, lovely features, freckles. The low-cut jeans, her yellow briefs just visible at the waistband. He’d like to stay here; he would like them to sleep together; actually, he would like to make love to her, but he knows it’s too soon for all that, too soon even to start wanting her.

“I’d better go,” he mumbles. She nods. They look at each other. “Call me when Kennet’s traced the call.”

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“I have to work.”

“Are you sleeping in your office?”

“It’s a practical solution.”

“You can sleep here,” she says.

He’s surprised; suddenly he doesn’t know what to say. But the brief moment of silence is enough for her to misinterpret his reaction as hesitation.

“That wasn’t meant as an invitation,” she says quickly. “Don’t go getting any ideas.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Have you moved in with Daniella?”

“No.”

“We’ve already separated,” she says, raising her voice, “so you don’t need to lie to me.”

“OK.”

“What? OK what?”

“I’ve moved in with Daniella,” he lies.

“Good,” she whispers.

“Yes.”

“I’m not going to ask if she’s young and pretty and— ”

“She is.”

Erik puts on his shoes in the hallway, leaves the apartment, and closes the door. He waits until he hears her lock up and slide the security chain in place before he sets off down the stairs.

Simone is awakened by the ringing of the telephone. The curtains are open and the bedroom is filled with wintry sunlight. Could it be Erik? She wants to cry when she realizes he isn’t going to call. He’ll be waking up next to Daniella this morning. She is completely alone now.

She picks up the phone from the bedside table. “Simone? It’s Yiva. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days.”

Yiva sounds stressed out. Simone glances at the clock. It’s already ten. “I’ve had other things on my mind,” she says tersely.

“They haven’t found him?”

“No.”

Silence. A few shadows drift past outside the window. Simone can see flakes of paint falling from the metal roof opposite; men in bright yellow overalls are scraping it.

“Sorry,” Yiva says. “I won’t disturb you.”

“What’s happened?”

“The auditor is coming tomorrow.”

Simone stands up and glances at the tinted mirror on the wardrobe. She looks thin and tired. It feels as if her face has been smashed into tiny pieces and then put back together again.

“What about Sim Shulman?” she asks. “How’s his exhibition coming along?”

Yiva sounds excited. “He says he needs to speak to you.”

“I’ll give him a call.”

“He wants to show you something to do with the light.” She lowers her voice. “I have no idea how things are between you and Erik, but— ”

“We’ve separated,” Simone replies tersely.

“Well, I really think— ”

“What do you think?” Simone asks patiently.

“I think Shulman has a serious thing for you.”

Simone meets her own eyes in the mirror and feels a sudden tingle in her stomach. “I’d better come in,” she says.

“Could you?”

“I just need to make a call first.”

Simone hangs up but remains sitting on the edge of the bed for a little while. Benjamin is alive, that’s the most important thing. The person who took him doesn’t seem interested in killing him; he has something else in mind. Ransom? She runs quickly through her assets. What does she actually own? The apartment, the car, a few works of art. The gallery, of course. She could borrow money. Everything will work out. She isn’t rich, but her father could sell the summer cottage and his apartment. They could move in, everyone in a rented apartment, anywhere. Just so long as she gets back Benjamin; as long as she can have her boy again.

Simone calls her father, but he doesn’t answer. She leaves a short message telling him she’s going to the gallery, then takes a quick shower, brushes her teeth, puts on clean clothes, and leaves the apartment without bothering to switch off the lights.

It’s cold and windy outside, a few degrees below freezing. The gloom of the mid-December morning is filled with oppressive quietness, somnolence, a graveyard atmosphere. A dog runs past with its leash trailing in the puddles. No sign of the owner.

As soon as she arrives at the gallery, she meets Yiva’s gaze through the glass door. She walks in and Yiva rushes over and gives her a hug. Simone notices that Yiva has forgotten to touch up her roots; the grey forms a straight line down the centre of her black hair. But her face is smooth and perfectly made-up, her mouth dark red as always. She is wearing grey culottes over black-and-white striped tights and clumpy brown shoes.

Simone looks around. A greenish light shimmers from a series of paintings by Sim Shulman, glowing, aquarium-green oils.

“Fantastic,” says Simone. “You’ve done a brilliant job.”

“Thank you,” says Yiva.

Simone goes over to the paintings. “I hadn’t seen them like this, grouped together, the way they were intended. I’d only seen them individually.” She takes a step closer. “It’s as if they’re flowing sideways.”

She moves into the second room. The block of stone with Shulman’s cave paintings is on a wooden stand.

“Sim Shulman wants oil lamps in here,” says Yiva. “I’ve told him it’s impossible; people want to see what they’re buying.”

“No, they don’t.”

Yiva laughs. “So Shulman gets what he wants?”

“Yes,” Simone replies. “He gets what he wants.”

“Well, you can tell him yourself.”

“What?”

“He’s in the office.”

“Shulman?”

“He said he needed to make a few calls.”

Simone looks over toward the office, and Yiva clears her throat. “I’m going out to get a sandwich for lunch.”

“What, at this hour?”

“I just thought,” says Yiva, her eyes downcast. “Go on then.”

Simone knocks on the office door and goes in. Shulman is sitting behind the desk sucking a pencil.

“How are you?” he asks, beginning to rise.

“Not so good.”

“That’s what I thought.”

There is silence between them, and he moves closer. She lowers her head. A feeling of exposure, of having been worn down to the most fragile part of herself fills her. Her voice trembles as she blurts out:

“Benjamin is alive. We don’t know where he is or who’s taken him, but he’s alive.”

“That’s good news,” Shulman says quietly.

“Fuck,” she whispers, turning away and wiping the tears from her face with a trembling hand.

Shulman gently touches her hair. She moves away without knowing why. She really doesn’t want him to stop. His hand drops. They look at each other. He’s wearing his soft black suit, with a hood sticking up above the collar of his jacket.

“You’re wearing the ninja suit,” she says, smiling in spite of herself. “Shinobi, the correct word for ninja, has two meanings,” he says. “It means ‘a hidden person,’ but it also means ‘one who endures.’ ”

“Endures?”

“Perhaps the most difficult art of all.”

“It’s impossible alone, at least it is for me.”

“No one is alone.”

“I can’t cope with this,” Simone whispers. “I’m falling apart. I have to stop thinking about it all the time. I have nowhere to go. I walk around thinking I just want something to happen. I could hit myself over the head or jump into bed with you just to stop this panic inside of me— ” She stops abruptly. “What I just said. It sounded completely . . . I’m really sorry, Sim.”

“So which would you choose, in that case?” he asks with a smile. “Would you jump into bed with me or hit yourself over the head?”

“Neither,” she answers quickly. Then she realizes that doesn’t sound right and tries to smooth things over again. “I don’t mean . . . I’d really like— ” She stops again, feeling her heart pounding in her chest.

“What would you like to do?” he asks.

She meets his gaze. “I’m not myself. That’s why I’m behaving like this,” she says simply. “I feel incredibly stupid.” She lowers her eyes; her cheeks are burning, and she clears her throat.

They gaze at each other, no longer focusing on the conversation.

“Simone,” he says; he leans forward and kisses her on the mouth, just briefly.

Her legs feel weak, her knees are trembling. His silky voice, the warmth of his body. The smell from his soft jacket, a mixture of sleep and fine herbs. As his hand moves gently over her cheek and around to the back of her neck, it feels as if she has forgotten the wonderful silkiness of a caress; as his grip tightens slightly to draw her face nearer to his, she realizes how long it has been since she has felt truly desired. Shulman gazes at her intently. She is no longer thinking about running away from the gallery. Maybe this is just a way of escaping for a little while from the terror thudding in her chest, but that’s all right. Let me escape, she thinks. Let me forget all the terrible things.

This time she responds to his kiss. She is breathing rapidly, feeling his hands on her back, at the base of her spine, on her hips. Her emotions overwhelm her; she feels a burning sensation, a sudden blind urge to have him inside her. The force of her desire startles her; she pulls away, hoping he can’t see how excited she is. She wipes her mouth and clears her throat again as she turns away, hastily trying to adjust her clothing.

“Somebody . . . someone . . . might . . .”

“What should we do?” Shulman asks, and she can hear the tremor in his voice.