Stalker by Lars Kepler Page A

thighs.
    Erixon takes several hundred pictures of the body, from the head resting on the pillow all the way down to the tips of her toes.
    ‘I’m going to have to touch you now, Susanna,’ he whispers, and lifts her left arm.
    He turns it over and looks at the defensive wounds, cuts which indicate that she tried to fend off the attack.
    With practised gestures he scrapes under her fingernails, the most common place to find a perpetrator’s DNA. He uses a new tube for each nail, attaches a label and makes a note on the computer on the bedside table.
    Her fingers are limp, because rigor mortis has loosened its grip now.
    When he’s done with her nails he carefully pulls a plastic bag over her hand and fastens it with tape, ahead of the post-mortem.
    ‘I pay house visits to ordinary people every week,’ Erixon says quietly. ‘They’ve all got broken glass, overturned furniture and blood on the floor.’
    He walks round the bed and carries on with the nails of the other hand. Just as he’s about to pick it up he stops.
    ‘There’s something in her hand,’ he says, and reaches for his camera. ‘Do you see?’
    Margot leans forward and looks. She can make out a dark object between the dead woman’s fingers. She must have been clutching it tightly because of rigor mortis, but now it’s visible as her hand relaxes.
    Erixon picks up the woman’s hand and carefully lifts the object. It’s as if she still wants to hold on to it, but is too tired to struggle.
    His bulky frame blocks Margot’s view, but then she sees what the victim was clutching in her hand.
    A tiny, broken-off porcelain deer’s head.
    The head is shiny, chestnut-brown, the broken surface at the bottom white as sugar.
    Did the perpetrator or her husband put it in her hand?
    Margot thinks of the glass-fronted cabinet, she’s almost certain that all the porcelain figures were intact, even if they had fallen over.
    She steps back to get an overview of the bedroom. Beside the dead woman Erixon stands, hunch-backed, photographing the little brown head. Adam is sitting slumped on a pouffe in front of the wardrobe. It looks like he’s still trying not to throw up.
    Margot walks back out to the glass-fronted cabinet again, and stands for a while in front of the toppled figurines. They’re all lying as if they were dead, but none of them is broken, none is missing its head.
    Why is the victim holding a small deer’s head in her hand?
    She looks over towards the bright light of the bedroom and thinks that she ought to go and take one last look at the body before it’s moved to the pathology department in Solna.

13
    It’s morning, and Erik Maria Bark is standing at the till in the cafeteria of the Psychology Clinic, buying a cup of coffee. As he takes his wallet out to pay, he feels the ache in his shoulders from his piano lesson.
    ‘It’s already been paid for,’ the cashier says.
    ‘Already paid for?’
    ‘Your friend has paid for your coffee all the way up to Christmas.’
    ‘Did he say what his name was?’
    ‘Nestor,’ she replies.
    Erik smiles and nods, thinking that he really must talk to Nestor about his over-effusive gratitude. It’s Erik’s job to help people, Nestor doesn’t owe him anything.
    He’s still thinking of his former patient’s friendly, cautious manner when he hears muted footsteps behind him and turns round. The pregnant superintendent is rolling towards him, waving a shrink-wrapped sandwich in his direction.
    ‘Björn’s fallen asleep, and seems to be feeling a bit better,’ she says breathlessly. ‘He wants to help us, and is willing to try hypnosis.’
    ‘I’ve got an hour, if we can start now,’ Erik says, quickly drinking his coffee.
    ‘Do you think it’s going to work on him?’ she asks as they head in the direction of the treatment room.
    ‘Hypnosis is just a way of getting his brain to relax, so that he can begin to sort his memories in a less chaotic way.’
    ‘But the prosecutor’s unlikely to be