Joona Linna: Stalker Part 22

The woman's breath smells of alcohol, and the d.i.l.d.o slips between his thighs. Her legs begin to give way and he holds her up, feeling her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his body.

'Can you stand?'

'I don't know if this thing is on right,' she mutters against his neck. 'Can you check the strap at the back?'

She turns round, leans one hand against the wall, knocking a brown wall-clock and making its plastic cover rattle.

'Have you seen Eugene?' Adam asks.

The black leather strap between her b.u.t.tocks has become twisted, and she feels along it with tired fingers.

'It's twisted,' Adam says.

He doesn't know what to do, hesitates, then tries to help her. He twists the strap twice, but notices that it's tangled further down as well.

Her skin is hot and sweaty, he's trembling and can feel how cold his fingers are as he follows the strap down between her b.u.t.tocks.

A naked man pushes past and weaves into the bathroom. He urinates without closing the door, or so much as glancing at them.

Adam can't help noticing that the leather strap between her legs is wet and slippery as he tries to adjust it. She stumbles again and leans her cheek against the wall, as the plastic clock sways on its hook.

A woman in the next room is whimpering, two men move through the pa.s.sageway, and then he sees the beautiful woman with the boyish haircut in the doorway. She's no longer wearing her pants. She's walking slowly towards the next room when she catches sight of him. She raises her champagne gla.s.s towards him in a toast, and he sees pale lip-prints on the rim.

The woman in front of him leans her shoulder against the wall, then slides down on to the floor and rests her cheek on the carpet.

The woman with the boyish haircut comes over to Adam, her neck looks flushed, and she leans into him, pressing her forehead to his chest, then looks up at him with a smile.

Adam can't help himself. He kisses her, and she responds, and he can feel her tongue-stud against his tongue.

He tells himself that he couldn't help it. It's wrong and he already knows that he's going to regret it and will feel terrible afterwards, but all he wants right now is to have s.e.x with her.

The woman on the floor mutters something about falling over, and pulls at his leg, making him sway.

When the woman with the boyish haircut opens his trousers, a wave of icy fear runs through him.

This is too easy, too tempting, he thinks.

But his hands are touching her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, they're warm and tense and powdered with something rough and glittery.

He's never seen such a beautiful woman.

He picks her up, pushes her back against the wall, and slides inside. Angst and l.u.s.t spin through him. He groans, and sees her mouth open and Saturn sparkles on her tongue. Her body billows and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s quiver with his thrusts. She's smiling, eyes closed, but she makes no noise, no groaning, and she doesn't really seem interested in what's happening, maybe she's too drugged.

Two women come into the pa.s.sageway and watch them for a while before they carry on.

The woman with the d.i.l.d.o has got to her feet, she's standing behind him and her hands are suddenly under his T-shirt, caressing his waist and back. He tries to pull away and doesn't know if she's felt his gun, but she suddenly stops, moves away from him, mutters something and lurches into the bedroom.

Adam knows his cover may have been blown, but he can't stop now. The woman says something to his neck, and he can smell a raspberry aroma from her mouth, she's trying to get him to slow down, puts her hand on his chest, but he moves her hand away and pushes her hard against the wall.

40.

When Adam enters the third room he immediately catches sight of Eugene Ca.s.sel. He's wearing a black top hat, but nothing else. Five people are having s.e.x with each other on the large bed. The shade of a table lamp is hanging askew and shaking in time with the movement of the bed. Eugene is on his knees behind a woman on all fours.

Her pearl necklace is swinging between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The woman with the strap-on d.i.l.d.o comes staggering into the room after Adam. He watches her sit down on the edge of the bed, almost fall, then sit up again. Another woman takes hold of the d.i.l.d.o, says something and laughs. She replies, then coughs into her elbow.

'What did you say?'

'Tra-la-la-laa,' she smiles.

'OK.'

'The cops are here, tra-la-laa,' she repeats, and coughs again.

Eugene hears her words and stops, sits down on the bed and puts an arm on the woman's backside, and then turns to look at Adam.

'This is a private party,' he says with a look of disappointment.

'Is there somewhere we can talk in private?' Adam says, showing his police ID.

'Leave your card and I'll get my lawyers to call you on Monday,' Eugene says, and gets up from the bed.

Eugene is about forty years old, probably the oldest person in the suite of rooms. His naked, hairless body is in good shape, despite his protruding stomach. His erection has subsided. Beneath the rim of his hat a gold ring sparkles in his eyebrow, and his pupils are dilated.

'I need to find Filip Cronstedt,' Adam says.

'Good luck,' Eugene says, and raises his hat slightly. 'He isn't here, but I can give you a clue: follow the white rabbit.'

'Listen,' Adam says. 'We can leave the hotel nice and quietly, but if I have to, I'll put handcuffs on you in here and drag you all the way to the car.'

A woman with shimmering white skin and reddish-brown hair in two plaits over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s enters the room and comes over to Eugene.

'Shall I order some food?' she says, putting a joint to her lips.

'Still hungry?' he asks flirtatiously.

She nods and smiles, then exhales a narrow plume of smoke, and walks off towards the phone beside the bed.

'OK, I'm going to have to arrest you according to chapter twenty-four, paragraph seven of the penal code,' Adam says.

'It's not my fault you went to a bad school and ended up having to join the police,' Eugene says sternly. 'The world's unfair, and-'

'You know Maria Carlsson, don't you?' Adam b.u.t.ts in.

'I love her,' he replies slowly.

'Give her a kiss,' Adam says, pulling out a picture from the crime scene.

In the sharp light of the flash, the dead woman's ravaged face, gaping mouth and broken jaw are brutally visible. Eugene whimpers, staggers backwards and knocks over a table lamp, and its brown ceramic base shatters.

41.

Eugene Ca.s.sel has put his clothes back on, and Adam has called for a patrol car. They're walking down the hotel corridor together.

'I'm really sorry ... I'm shocked, just tell me what I can do, I want to help, as a point of honour ... but I have to speak to my lawyer first.'

Eugene has washed his face, but his cheeks are white and shiny with sweat.

'I need to find Filip,' Adam says.

'He didn't do this,' Eugene says instantly.

'Filip isn't at any of the usual addresses, where is he?'

'I know, he's not doing too well,' Eugene says, scratching his forehead with his hat. 'Look, I'm not going to spread s.h.i.t about Filip, but the way things are right now, I really don't want anything to do with him. I've tried to get him to seek help, but ...'

'Help with what?' Adam says.

The lift door opens and they step aside to let a woman in an orange trenchcoat get out before going in.

'He's been taking a bit too much,' Eugene smiles, waving his hand towards his temple.

'Is he an addict?'

'Yes, but the problem with taking too much MDPV, MDPPP, MDPBP, MDAI ... It doesn't work, you just get f.u.c.king paranoid, and then you get the wrong sort of high and end up feeling so bad you want to die.'

'Does it make you aggressive?' Adam asks as they step out of the lift on the ground floor.

'I mean, you're terrified the whole time, but sort of ultra-focused at the same time. You think too quickly, don't sleep at all ... The last time I met Filip he was completely f.u.c.king manic, said he was on thousands of satellite pictures on Google, kept going on about Saturn being forced to eat his own children ... He couldn't stand still for a second, he kept ranting, waving this little knife around, he cut my hand and yelled that I should be grateful ... and then he cut himself, right across the arm. He was dripping with blood as he ran off into the underground.'

They pa.s.s the lobby and walk out of the doors on to Tulegatan at the very moment a patrol car pulls up.

'Right now I just need to know where I can find him,' Adam repeats, stopping Eugene.

'OK, I feel like a traitor, but he said they couldn't see him in the storerooms.'

'Storerooms?'

'He rents a load of storage over on Vanadisvgen you know, that self-storage place. I think he's got more than half of the storerooms there.'

Two uniformed officers come over and say h.e.l.lo to Adam. One of them leads Eugene to the back seat of the car while the other one listens to Adam.

'Take him to the custody negotiation room,' Adam. 'Make sure he doesn't call anyone, buy us some time. Once his lawyer shows up we won't be able to hold him.'

42.

Joona is driving fast as he ignores the red light and turns left into Odengatan.

A homeless woman with two overloaded shopping trolleys is sitting asleep outside the 7-Eleven.

Adam tells him how Filip has been overdosing on several different varieties of MDPV for a while now, and that Eugene thinks he's entered a paranoid psychosis.

The drug has caused a number of deaths in Sweden, and was referred to in the evening tabloids as 'the cannibal drug' after a man who'd taken it tried to eat the face of a homeless man.

'We haven't got much time, they won't be able to hold Eugene for long, he'll be out soon and I reckon he's likely to warn Filip,' Adam says in a tense voice.

Joona overtakes a taxi on the inside, pulls in front of it, then swerves into the oncoming lanes and turns into Vanadisvgen.

The b.u.mper thuds as he drives up on to the pavement and stops in front of the pale mocha-coloured building with red garage doors.

Within central Stockholm the self-storage companies have had to make do with using existing bas.e.m.e.nts so as not to change the visible appearance of the city. Huge areas of small, locked rooms spread out just below the ground, like old catacombs beneath cathedrals.

Joona and Adam get out of the car and head over to the closed office looking out onto the little car park. In the gloom through the window they can make out flat stacks of removal boxes, a reception desk, and a large monitor for security cameras on the wall.

'I want to look at a map of the storerooms, and I want to look at those cameras,' Joona says.

'It's closed, we're going to have to go through a prosecutor,' Adam replies.

Joona nods, taps his stick against the edge of the pavement and thinks how it feels to sink through broken ice. It's when you warm up that you start to freeze, he thinks as he picks up a heavy kerb-stone and throws it through the window. There's a loud crash as the gla.s.s shatters and a red light begins to flash over on the reception desk.

'The alarm will have gone off at their security company,' Adam says feebly.

Joona pushes some loose splinters from the window frame with his stick, then goes in. Adam looks round, then follows him.