Stalker. Ларс Кеплер
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himself as Constantine the First. He usually borrowed one of the fishing boats and slept outside a heating vent.
He sat in the interview room with his big beard and dirty fingers, cracked lips and a wary look in his eyes. In a rattling voice he told them about the big Finn who told him to keep his distance, before taking his jacket off and swimming out into the water. He watched him swim out towards Strömbron until he reached the fast-flowing current and disappeared.
‘You don’t believe he’s dead?’ Åhlén asks calmly.
‘Several years ago he phoned me … he wanted me to find out some information about a woman in Helsinki, in secret,’ Saga says. ‘At the time I thought the woman had something to do with the case at Birgittagården.’
‘What about her, then?’
‘She was seriously ill, she was in hospital for an operation … Her name was Laura Sandin,’ Saga says, holding Åhlén’s gaze. ‘But she was really … really Summa Linna, his wife, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ he nods.
‘I tried to get hold of Laura to tell her that Joona was dead,’ Saga explains. ‘Laura had been in a cancer hospice for palliative care, but two days after Joona’s suicide she was discharged to spend her last days at home … but neither Laura nor her daughter are still at their address on Elisabetsgatan.’
‘Really?’ Åhlén says, his thin nostrils turning pale.
‘They aren’t anywhere,’ Saga says, taking a step towards him.
‘That’s good to hear.’
‘I think Joona arranged his suicide so he could go and pick up his wife and daughter and go into hiding with them.’
Nils Åhlén’s eyes are red, and his mouth is twitching slightly with emotion when he speaks:
‘Joona was the only person who believed that Jurek’s reach extended beyond the isolation unit, and as usual, he was right … If we hadn’t done this, Jurek would have killed Summa and Lumi, just as he killed Disa.’
‘Nils, I need to find Joona and tell him that Jurek Walter is dead,’ Saga says. ‘He needs to know that the body’s been found.’
She puts her hand on his arm and sees his shoulders slump when he makes his mind up.
‘I don’t know where they are,’ he eventually says. ‘But if Summa is dying, like you say … I know where you could try looking …’
‘Where?’
‘Go to the Nordic Museum,’ he says in a thick voice, as if he were worried about changing his mind. ‘There’s a small bridal crown, a Sámi bridal crown made of woven roots. Look at it carefully.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Good luck,’ Åhlén says seriously, then hesitates. ‘No one wants to hug a pathologist, but …’
Saga hugs him hard, then leaves the room and hurries along the corridor.
Saga parks in front of the large flight of steps leading up to the Nordic Museum, drinks a sip of cold coffee from a 7-Eleven mug, and looks at the people around her, all dressed for summer. It’s as if she hasn’t really paid attention to her surroundings before now. Adults and children, tired from the sun or long picnics, or excited and expectant on their way to the amusement park or some restaurant.
She’s barely noticed the summer passing her by again. Since Joona disappeared she has withdrawn from the world, searching for Jurek’s body.
Now it’s time to bring this to an end.
Saga gets out of the car and goes up the steps. There’s a broken syringe on one of the top steps.
She walks in through the imposing entrance, buys a ticket, picks up a plan of the museum and carries on into the entrance hall. A colourful statue of Gustav Vasa sits on a huge wooden throne gazing off towards the replica of a post-war home that’s been installed in the museum.
As she walks towards the staircase she catches a glimpse of a text about the people’s home and the Social Democratic vision of a modern, supportive and equal Sweden in which all families had the right to a home with hot water, a kitchen and bathroom.
She jogs up the stone steps and carries on to the section for Sámi handicrafts. A few visitors are walking along the glass cabinets containing jewellery, knives with reindeer-horn handles, cultural artefacts and clothes.
She stops in front of a display featuring a bridal crown. This must be the one Åhlén meant. It’s a beautiful piece of work, made of woven birch-root, with points that look like the fingers of two interlaced hands.
Saga looks at the small lock on the case, sees that it would be easy to pick, but the cabinet is alarmed and there’s a risk that a guard would arrive before she had time to look at the crown.
An elderly woman stops next to her and says something in Italian to a man pushing a stroller a short distance away.
The man speaks to the guard and is helped towards the lifts. A girl with straight fair hair is looking at the ceremonial Sámi costumes.
There’s a crackle of velcro as Saga pulls out her tiny dagger for hand-to-hand fighting from its sheath below her left armpit. She carefully slides the tip in next to the lock on the glass door, and jerks it. The door shatters and the splinters fall to the floor as an alarm goes off.
The girl looks at Saga in astonishment as she calmly puts the knife away, opens the door and removes the bridal crown.
It looks smaller outside the case, and weighs practically nothing. Saga stares at it as the alarm blares.
Åhlén told her that Summa’s mother had woven the crown for her own wedding, and that Summa had worn it for hers, and then donated it to the museum of handicrafts in Luleå.
Saga sees the guard hurrying back, and carefully turns the crown over in her hands, looks inside it and sees that someone has burned the name ‘Nattavaara 1968’ into it with a brand. She puts the crown back in the case and closes the shattered door.
She knew there was some sort of family connection to Nattavaara, and assumes that that’s where Joona is at the moment.
Saga feels her heart swell at the thought of being able to tell Joona Linna that it’s all over.
The guard’s cheeks are flushed as he stops five metres away and points at her with his radio without managing to get a word out.
The train pulls out of Stockholm Central Station, rocking noisily across the points as it rolls away from the dirty sidings. To the left, big white boats are gliding along on Karlbergssjön, while to the right is a concrete wall covered in badly painted-over graffiti.
Seeing as the bunks were all booked, Saga has had to take an ordinary seat. She shows her ticket to the conductor, then eats a sandwich with her eyes fixed outside the window. As the train passes Uppsala she takes off her military boots, folds her jacket around her pistol and uses that as a pillow.
The train journey to Nattavaara, over a thousand kilometres away, will take almost twelve hours.
The train rumbles on through the night. Lights pass by outside like tiny stars, fewer and fewer the further north they get. Warm air streams from the scorching-hot radiator by the panel beside her seat.
In the end the night outside the window is nothing but solid darkness.
She closes her eyes and thinks about what Nils Åhlén told her. When Joona and his partner