Joona Linna: Stalker Part 63

Rocky extends the baton again and walks backwards behind Joona towards the airlock.

The officer who was sitting in the security command centre hurries over. His task now is to slow things down and delay the escape for as long as possible.

'I can't let you out,' he says. 'But if you give yourselves up, then-'

'Look at your colleague,' Joona interrupts.

Arne whimpers as Joona pulls the ends of the metal outwards. The noose tightens around his neck and blood starts to trickle down his dark sweater. He tries to hold the metal back with his hands, but stands no chance.

'Stop!' the security officer yells. 'For G.o.d's sake, stop!'

Arne stumbles sideways, into a display of information for visitors, sending brochures falling to the ground around him.

'I'll let him go when we get outside,' Joona says.

'OK, everyone move back,' the security officer says. 'Let them through, let them go.'

They pa.s.s through the bleeping metal detector. Prison officers and other staff get out of the way. One officer is recording everything on his mobile phone.

'Forward,' Joona says.

Arne whimpers quietly as they approach the exit.

'Oh, G.o.d,' he whispers, holding his left arm.

A dog is barking frantically on the other side of the security airlock, as guards rush outside the gla.s.s doors to get into formation.

'Let them through!' the security officer calls, following them out through the airlock. 'I'll come with you, make sure you get out.'

He pulls out his card, taps in the code and opens the door.

'Who the h.e.l.l are you, really?' he gasps, looking at Joona Linna.

Outside the prison the sun is shining, the sky is a radiant blue above them as they walk across the paved entrance area towards Joona's grey Porsche.

Joona walks round the vehicle and pushes Arne to the ground, and apologises as he fastens the other handcuff to the metal fence behind the car. The security officer stands and watches them as the prison guards mill about inside the gla.s.s doors only a dozen metres away from them.

Joona gets in quickly and starts the car.

Before Rocky has time to close the door he drives over the kerb, down the gra.s.s slope, past the cement blocks and out on to the road, where he accelerates hard towards the forest where the old Volvo is waiting.

109.

Nestor was taken to the Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, where a team operated on him and managed to stop the bleeding. Nestor was lucky, his condition is already stable, and he's been moved from the Intensive Care Unit.

Margot has put two uniformed officers outside the post-operative care unit.

Nestor is conscious again, but in a state of severe shock. He's being given extra oxygen through a tube in his nose, and the saturation of his blood is under constant monitoring. A pleural drain has been inserted above his diaphragm, and bubbly blood is running out through the tube.

Nelly has spoken to Nestor's consultant and has suggested a low-level sedative out of consideration for his medical history.

Nestor cries the whole time Margot tries to explain the chain of events from the police's point of view, up to the storming of his flat.

'But Erik wasn't there so where was he?' she asks.

'I d-don't know,' Nestor sobs.

'Why did you call and say that ...'

'Nestor, you have to understand that none of what happened is your fault, it was just an accident,' Nelly says, holding his hand.

'Has Erik been in touch with you at all?' Margot asks.

'I d-don't know,' he repeats, staring past her.

'Of course you know.'

'I d-don't want to talk to you,' he says quietly, and turns his face away.

'What line of work are you in?' Margot asks, taking a ham sandwich out of her large bag.

'I'm retired ... but I d-do a bit of gardening work ...'

'Where?'

'For the council ... d-different places,' he says.

'Do you have a lot of trouble with weeds?' Margot asks.

'Not really,' he says, looking curious.

'Stinging nettles?'

'No,' he says, picking at a tube.

'Nestor,' Nelly says gently. 'You've probably worked out that Erik and I are good friends ... and like you I think it would be best for him to hand himself in to the police.'

Tears well up in Nestor's eyes again, and Margot goes over to the window so she doesn't have to watch him cry.

'I'm riddled with b-bullets,' he says in a loud voice, and puts his hand on top of the bandage covering the wound in his chest.

'It was a terrible accident,' Nelly says.

'G.o.d wants to k-kill me,' he says, pulling the oxygen tube from his nose.

'Why do you think that?'

'I can't bear it,' he whimpers.

'You know ... the Jews say that a righteous man can fall seven times and get up again, but the unG.o.dly stumble when calamity strikes ... and you're going to get up.'

'Am I r-righteous?'

'How should I know?' she smiles.

'That's what you m-meant, isn't it?'

Nelly can see that the oxygenation of his blood is falling, and reattaches the tube to his nose.

'Erik saved me and I just wanted to save him,' he whispers.

'Yesterday, you mean?' she asks tentatively.

'He c-came to me and I gave him food and l-lodging,' he says, and coughs lightly. 'They p-promised not to hurt him.'

'How did he look when he came to you?'

'He had an ugly c-cap on, and his hand was bleeding. He was d-dirty and unshaven, and had scratches on his face.'

'And you just wanted to help him,' Nelly says.

'Yes,' he nods.

Margot is standing by the window eating her sandwich, but can still hear Nestor's careful answers. His description of Erik fits someone who ran off through a forest and has been sleeping rough.

'Do you know where Erik is now?' she asks slowly, turning round.

'No.'

Margot meets Nelly's gaze, then leaves the room to set a large-scale police operation in motion.

'I'm starting to get t-tired,' he says.

'It's a bit early for the medicine to take effect.'

'Are you Erik's g-girlfriend?' Nestor asks, looking at her.

'What did Erik say before he left?' Nelly asks, but can't help smiling. 'Do you think he's planning to give himself up?'

'You m-mustn't be angry with Erik.'

'I'm not.'

'My mother says he's b-bad, but ... she c-can just shut up, I think ...'

'Get some rest, now.'

'He's the nicest m-man you could get,' Nestor goes on.

'I think so too,' she smiles, and pats his hand.

'We meet sometimes ... but you c-can't see me,' Nestor says. 'You can't hear me, and you c-can't smell me. I was b-born before you and I'll be waiting for you when you die. I can embrace you, b-but you can't hold on to me ...'

'Darkness,' she replies.

'Good,' Nestor nods. 'If a man carried my b-burden, he ... he would ...'

Nestor closes his eyes and gasps for breath.

'I'm going to go home now,' Nelly says quietly, and carefully gets up from the edge of the bed.

When she leaves the post-operative care unit she notices that the police officers are no longer guarding the door.

110.

The bell in St Mark's Church is ringing under an open sky. The wheel turns, pulling the great bell with it. The heavy clapper hits the metal and the peal reaches across the wall of the churchyard, in amongst the trees, all the way to the buried animals.

The dirty single pane of gla.s.s in the window of the shed where Erik is hiding rattles. The red shack in the pet cemetery consists of thin timber walls and a stained chipboard floor. Presumably there would once have been a plastic mat on the floor. The shed may have been used by local cemetery workers before everything was streamlined. In recent years only Nestor has been here, as the solitary but conscientious guardian of the animals' last resting place.

On one wall there is a cold-water tap above a large zinc trough.

Erik has moved five sacks of compost and lined them up on the floor to form a bed.

He's lying on his side listening to the church bell. The smell of earth around him is pervasive, as if he was already lying in his grave.

Who can understand their own fate? he thinks, watching the morning light shine in through the grey curtain and wander slowly across the sacks of gra.s.s seed and grit, spades and shovels, then down across the floor to an axe with a rusty blade.

His gaze lingers on the axe, staring at the blunt edge with its deep indentations, and thinks that Nestor must use it to chop off roots when he's digging graves.

He turns on his bed, trying to get more comfortable. He spent the first few hours curled up in the corner behind the sacks, he'd cut his thigh on a sharp branch, had a ringing sound in his ears, felt nauseous and was shaking all over.

The ambulance siren died away, the helicopter disappeared, and silence enveloped the little shed.