Joona Linna: Stalker Part 51

The fat man is lying on his back, untangling the wires from his neck, coughing and trying to get up.

The man in the shiny jacket stops in front of Joona, with the flowery sofa between them, and screws a silencer on to his Sig Pro.

'I'll shoot you in both knees unless you come with me,' he says.

Joona holds up one hand in a calming gesture and tries to back away, but the fat man on the floor grabs hold of his legs.

'I didn't know this was a private club,' Joona says, trying to pull his legs free.

The armed man has finished fitting the silencer, raises the gun and squeezes the trigger. Joona throws himself aside, lands on his shoulder and hits his temple on the floor.

There's no sound as the gun goes off, but the powder is hanging in the air, and a naked man behind Joona stands up with blood streaming from a bullet hole in his stomach. A woman screams and hurries to move away from him, and falls on all fours.

'Time to die,' the man with the gun pants, climbing up on to the sofa to see over the back of it.

Joona grabs hold of the toppled lamp and swings the heavy base in a semi-circle. It hits the man in the shoulder and he staggers to one side. The cable clatters on the floor as it snakes along behind. The man leans against the back of the sofa and Joona reaches him before he has time to fire, knocking the pistol aside and punching him squarely in the throat.

He grabs the warm barrel of the gun and feels a heavy blow to his cheek as he bends the weapon upwards.

The man recoils, clutching his throat. He can't breathe and saliva is dribbling from his gaping mouth.

Joona takes a step back as he twists the gun round and shoots the man through his right lung.

The only sound is a sharp click, instead of a loud bang.

The empty sh.e.l.l bounces off the cement floor.

The man staggers, trying to cover the entry hole with his hand, coughs, then slumps back onto the sofa.

The fat man gets unsteadily to his feet with a knife in his hand. One of his shoulders is drooping and the taser is still dangling from the wires around his neck.

Joona moves away and glances quickly towards the bead curtain.

The man takes a couple of steps and jabs with the knife. Joona backs into a table as he feels the tip of the blade touch his jacket. He follows the knife as it moves, holds it aside with the pistol, twists his body and rams his right elbow into the man's cheek with immense force. His head snaps sideways, spraying droplets of sweat in the direction of the blow. Joona moves with him, takes a long stride to keep his balance and feels a stab of pain from his hip.

As the man slumps unconscious to the floor, Joona moves out of the way and scans the room.

Very soon it will be impossible to get out. Crouching down, Joona moves towards the curtain with the pistol pointing at the floor.

The new customer who bought heroin from Anatoly is lying lifeless beside his sofa. His lips are grey and his eyes open.

Joona steps round a low gla.s.s table and sees the woman in the studded collar heading towards him between the sofas.

'Take me away from here with you,' she whispers, with a desperate look in her eyes. 'Please, I'm begging you, I have to get away from here ...'

'Can you run?'

She smiles at him and then her head suddenly jerks. A cascade of blood squirts from her temple.

Joona spins round as a bullet slams into the back of the chair next to him and stuffing sprays out across the floor. The man with the grey moustache is approaching between two women with a raised pistol.

Smoke rising from the barrel.

Joona takes aim, lowers the barrel a couple of millimetres, then fires three times. It sounds like the gun isn't loaded, but a cloud of blood explodes behind the man.

The man takes another two steps before collapsing on top of the two women, dropping his pistol and putting his hand out towards a footstool.

The woman in the studded collar is still standing. Blood is pumping from her temple and running down her body. She looks at Joona and her mouth opens as if she's trying to speak.

'I'll get help,' he says.

Bewildered, she touches her b.l.o.o.d.y hair, then falls sideways on to an armchair and curls up as if she wants to sleep.

In the distance a round-shouldered man is approaching at a crouch, using the sofas as cover. Joona runs the last part of the way. A bullet hits the wall beside him, throwing out a shower of plaster. He ducks through the curtain, tucks his gun close to his body and walks as fast as he can towards the pa.s.sageway.

A fat man is dancing on the stage with his shirt outside his trousers.

There's no sign of Erik, and Joona starts running as soon as he reaches the narrow corridor.

He can hear his pursuers behind him as he enters the changing room and quickly locks the door. Someone is in the shower, and the plastic tray creaks with their weight. Joona runs past two women standing in front of the make-up table.

In the kitchen a short man is frying frozen meatb.a.l.l.s on the stove. He barely has time to s.n.a.t.c.h up a knife before Joona shoots him in the thigh.

The man falls to the floor and Joona hears him scream as he runs across the old cardboard boxes in the waste-storage room and emerges out of the back of the building. He runs round the warehouse as fast as he can, through tall weeds, then out through the gates, along a barbed-wire fence and round a van before he sees that Erik's car has gone. He sets off at a limp towards Hgdalsplan to alert the police and emergency services.

87.

There's barely any traffic, and Erik is taking care to keep a safe distance between him and the car in front all the way through the industrial estate and up on to lvsjvgen. The preacher is driving a blue Peugeot which is so dirty it's impossible to see what the registration number is. Erik has no other plan beyond following it as long as he can without being seen.

The amber glow of the streetlights fills the car, then vanishes between the lampposts, like slow breathing.

Erik wonders if the preacher was at the Zone to buy drugs or to meet Rocky.

Concern about what has happened to Joona flutters in his chest. Erik didn't look back, just did what he had to do: he left the room full of addicts, pa.s.sed through the bead curtain and carried on through the crowd.

The heavy ba.s.s of the music grew louder as the beat was turned up and the throb of the music reached deep inside his body.

In the flickering light from the stage he suddenly caught sight of the yellow raincoat. The preacher was heading for the exit and Erik followed him. A woman tried to stop him, but he just shook his head and forced his way past.

No one gave him a second glance as he pa.s.sed the search area and hurried on through the metal door and out onto the loading bay.

Joona seemed so sure of what he had said that the only thing on Erik's mind was that he mustn't lose the preacher now that they were so close.

The yellow oilskin glinted in the darkness over by the cars, and Erik followed as quickly as he could without being heard. The preacher walked out through the gates and stopped in front of the blue car.

He has now been following the red tail-lights for quarter of an hour, and keeps telling himself that he mustn't let too much of a gap form. He speeds up a little on a long straight past a bare-grit football pitch and a school. The spa.r.s.e lights of a large housing estate flicker through the greenery.

A night bus pulls out from a stop and Erik has to slow down. He loses sight of the preacher, puts his foot down and overtakes the bus on the wrong side of a central reservation.

A set of traffic lights ahead turns red. Erik speeds up, swerves and just makes it past the back of a car crossing his path.

It's already too late, though, as he realises that the blue Peugeot has turned off to the right. He sees its lights flickering between the houses.

There's no time to think if he isn't to lose the preacher altogether.

Erik turns into the next road, and in the boot a bag of empty bottles for recycling falls over. He's trying to double-guess the other car's likely direction as he drives past lush gardens and dark houses.

He brakes and turns left, glancing the side of a letterbox and accelerating hard past a number of villas, then realises that there's a dead end up ahead, beyond the next junction, and brakes hard, sending the tyres skidding across the tarmac, jerks the wheel and swerves sharply to the right.

The back wheels lose their grip and there's a crash as the rear wing hits an electricity pole. The bottles in the boot shatter as Erik lurches out on to the main road again.

He accelerates hard up a hill, reaches the top and just manages to spot the preacher driving into the tunnel under the motorway bridge.

He slows down and feels his hands shaking on the steering wheel. The wing mirror has come loose again and is dangling from its wires.

Someone has sprayed the words 'Another world is possible' on the concrete walls of the tunnel.

Everything goes dark, then a moment later he emerges into an area of attractive four-storey buildings.

The blue Peugeot pa.s.ses a bin lorry emptying dustbins with measured mechanical movements, and Erik wonders if the preacher lives here in Hkmossen.

Even though he has a reasonable grasp on reality, the idea of the preacher having an ordinary life seems incredible: a man who stabs knives into the faces of his victims long after they're dead, then goes home to his lovely villa with apple trees and lawn-sprinklers and sits down to watch television with his family.

Erik follows the blue car as it turns right off Korpmossevgen and into Klensmedsvgen.

The preacher slows down and stops just after the third side-street.

Without changing his speed, Erik drives past the blue car and looks in the rear-view mirror as the light inside the car goes out. He pa.s.ses a small patch of woodland, turns into the next road, stops and hurries back. The yellow raincoat is disappearing into the forest to the left of the road, and Erik stops on the pavement and realises how badly his legs are shaking.

88.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is located on Jrfallavgen, next to a large, tarmacked car park. It's a low building with a terracotta-coloured facade, panelled roof and a red tower rising from the centre of a circular stone foundation.

Stake president Thomas Apel lives with his wife and two children in a cement-grey villa very close to the temple. From the garden's wooden decking with its covered barbeque, the red tower is visible above the trees and tiled roofs.

Adam and Margot are sitting in the living room with gla.s.ses of lemonade. Thomas Apel and his wife Ingrid are sitting opposite them. Thomas is a skinny man, dressed in grey trousers, a white shirt, and a pale grey tie. His face is clean-shaven and thin, with fair eyebrows and a narrow, crooked mouth.

Margot has just asked Thomas where he was at the times of the murders, and he's replied that he was at home with his family.

'Is there anyone else who could vouch for that?' Margot asks, looking at Ingrid.

'Well, of course the children were at home,' Thomas's wife says in an amiable voice.

'No one else?' Adam asks.

'We lead a quiet life,' Thomas replies, as if that explained everything.

'You have a lovely home,' Margot says, glancing round the smart room.

An African mask is hanging on the wall next to a painting of a woman in a black dress with a red book in her lap.

'Thank you,' Ingrid says.

'Each family is a kingdom,' Thomas says. 'Ingrid is my queen, the girls princesses.'

'Naturally.' Margot smiles.

She looks at Ingrid's face, free of make-up, at the small pearls in her earlobes, and the long dress that reaches up to her neck and halfway over her hands.

'You probably think we dress in a very old-fashioned, boring way,' Ingrid says when she sees Margot looking.

'It looks nice,' Margot lies, and tries to find a comfortable position on the deep sofa with crocheted antimaca.s.sars on the back.

Thomas leans forward, pours more lemonade in her gla.s.s, and she thanks him soundlessly.

'Our lives aren't boring,' Thomas says calmly. 'There's nothing boring about not using drugs, or alcohol or tobacco ... or coffee or tea.'

'Why not coffee?' Adam asks.

'Because the body is a gift from G.o.d,' he replies simply.

'If it's a gift, then surely you can drink coffee if you want to?' Adam retorts.

'Of course, it isn't set in stone,' Thomas says lightly. 'It's just guidance ...'

'OK,' Adam nods.

'But if we listen to this guidance, the Lord promises that the angel of death will pa.s.s our home and not kill us.' Thomas smiles.

'How quickly does the angel come if you mess up badly?' Margot asks.

'You said you wanted to look at my diary?' Thomas says, the veins in his temples darkening slightly.