Читать книгу Joona Linna Crime Series Books 1-3: The Hypnotist, The Nightmare, The Fire Witness - Ларс Кеплер, Lars Kepler - Страница 86

It was half past eight in the morning. The sun was pouring in through the dusty windows. I’d slept in my office after night duty, I felt tired, but I was packing my gym bag anyway. Lars Ohlson had been postponing our badminton matches for several weeks. He’d been too busy travelling between the hospital in Oslo and Karolinska and lecturing in London; he was due to take a seat on the board. But he’d called unexpectedly yesterday.

“Erik, are you ready?”

“Damn right I’m ready,” I’d said.

“Ready to get beaten,” he’d said, but without the usual vigour in his voice.

I poured the last of the coffee down the sink, left the cup in the pantry, ran downstairs, and biked over to the gym. Lars Ohlson was already in the chilly locker room when I got there. He looked up at me, then turned away and pulled on his shorts. Something in his expression was strange, almost afraid.

“You won’t be able to hold your head up for a week when I’m done with you today,” he said, looking at me. But his hand was shaking as he turned the key in his locker.

“You’ve been working too hard,” I said.

“What? Well, yes, it’s been—” He stopped and slumped down on the bench.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“Absolutely. What about you?”

I shrugged. “I’m seeing the board on Friday.”

“Of course. It’s the end of your funding. Same song and dance every time, isn’t it?”

“I’m not particularly worried,” I said. “I think it’ll be fine. My research is making good progress, after all. I’ve had some excellent results.”

“I know Frank Paulsson,” he said, getting to his feet. Paulsson was a member of the board.

“Oh? How do you know him?”

“We did our military service together; he’s very much on the ball and quite open.”

“Good,” I said quietly.

We left the locker room and Lars took my arm. “Should I give him a call and tell him they just have to invest in you?”

“Can you do that sort of thing?”

“Well, it’s not exactly accepted practice. But what the hell.”

“In that case, it’s probably best if you don’t.” I smiled.

“But you have to carry on with your research.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Nobody would know.”

I looked at him and said hesitantly, “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

“I’ll give Paulsson a call tonight.”

I nodded, and he smiled and gave me a slap on the back.

When we got into the big hall, with its echoes and squeaking shoes, Lars suddenly asked, “Would you take over a patient of mine?”

“Why?”

“I haven’t really got time for her,” he replied.

“I don’t know that I could do much better by her. My list is pretty full at the moment.”

I started stretching as we waited for a court to become free. Lars jogged on the spot but seemed distracted. He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. “Actually, I think you could.”

“Could what?”

“Could do better by her. I think Eva Blau would benefit from being in your group,” he said. “She’s completely locked around some trauma. At least, that’s what I think, because I just can’t penetrate her shell. I haven’t got through to her once.”

“I’d be happy to offer my advice, if you—”

“Advice?” He lowered his voice. “To be honest, I’m through with her.” Even speaking quietly, he said this with some vehemence.

“Has something happened?”

“No, no, it’s just … I thought she was really ill. Physically, I mean.”

“But she wasn’t?”

He smiled, which seemed only to etch the stress on his face more deeply, and looked at me. “Can you just do me this favour?” he asked.

“I’ll think about it.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said quickly.

He fell silent and looked over at the court, where two young women who looked like medical students had a couple of minutes left of their session. When one of them stumbled and missed a simple drop shot, he snorted. “What a klutz.”

I rolled my shoulders and pretended to be looking at the clock, but I was actually studying Lars. He stood there biting his nails. Although it was chilly and he hadn’t begun to exert himself, he was sweating. And his face had definitely aged, grown thinner. Somebody yelled outside the hall, and he jumped and wheeled towards the door.

The women gathered up their things and left the court, chatting away.

“Let’s play,” I said, starting to move.

“Erik, wait a second.” He put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. “I’ve never asked you to take on a patient before.”

“I know. It’s just that I’m pretty full right now, Lars.”

“What if I cover your on-call hours?” he said, searching my face for a reaction.

“That’s quite a commitment,” I said, surprised.

“I know, but you’ve got a family and you ought to be at home.”

“Is she dangerous?”

“What do you mean?” he asked with an uncertain smile, fiddling with his racket.

“Eva Blau. Is that your assessment?”

He glanced over at the door again. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said quietly.

“Has she threatened you?”

He considered his response for a moment. “Every patient of this kind can be dangerous. It’s difficult to judge … But I’m sure you’ll be able to cope with her.”

“I expect I will.”

“You’ll take her? You will take her, won’t you, Erik? Please?”

“Yes,” I said.

His cheeks flushed, he turned away and moved toward the baseline. Suddenly a trickle of blood ran down the inside of his thigh; he wiped it away with his hand and looked at me. When he realised I had seen the blood, he mumbled that he was having a problem with his groin; he apologised and limped off the court.

I had just got back to my consulting room two days later when there was a knock at the door. Lars was standing in the corridor. Several feet away, a woman in a white raincoat waited. She had a sharp and narrow face and a troubled expression in her eyes, which were heavily made up with blue and pink eyeshadow.

“This is Erik Maria Bark,” said Lars. “He’s a very good doctor, better than I’ll ever be.”

“You’re early,” I said.

“Is that all right?” he asked anxiously.

I nodded and invited them in.

“Erik, I can’t,” he said quietly.

“I think it would be helpful if you were here.”

“I know, but I have to run,” he said, raising his voice again and clapping me on the shoulder. “Call me any time. I’ll pick up, in the middle of the night, any time at all.”

He hurried off and Eva Blau came into my room, closing the door behind her. “Is this yours?” she asked suddenly, holding out a porcelain elephant on the palm of her hand, which was shaking.

“No, that’s not mine.”

“But I saw the way you were looking at it,” she said, in a sneering tone of voice. “You want it, don’t you?”

I took a deep breath. “Why do you think I want it?”

“Don’t you want it?”

“No.”

“Do you want this, then?” she asked.

She yanked open the raincoat. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and her pubic hair had been shaved off.

“Eva, don’t do that,” I said.

“All right,” she said, her lips trembling with nerves.

She was standing far too close to me. She smelled strongly of vanilla.

“Shall we sit down?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

“On top of each other?”

“Why don’t you sit on the couch?”

“The couch,” she said.

“Yes.”

“That would be a real treat, wouldn’t it?” she said. She went over to the desk and sat down in my chair.

“Would you like to tell me something about yourself?” I asked.

“What are you interested in?”

I wondered whether she was a person who would be easy to hypnotise, despite the intense effort she was making to appear hard, or whether she would resist, trying to remain reserved and observant.

“I’m not your enemy,” I explained calmly.

“No?” She pulled open one of the desk drawers.

“Please don’t do that.”

She ignored me and scrabbled carelessly among the papers. I went over, removed her hand, closed the drawer, and said firmly, “You are not to do that. I asked you not to.”

She looked at me defiantly and opened the drawer again. Without taking her eyes off me, she took out a bundle of papers and hurled them on the floor.

“Stop that,” I said harshly.

Her lips began to quiver. Her eyes filled with tears. “You hate me,” she whispered. “I knew it. I knew you’d hate me. Everybody hates me.” She suddenly sounded afraid.

“Eva,” I said carefully, “I just want to talk to you for a bit. You can use my chair if you want or you can sit on the couch.”

She nodded and got up to move. Then she suddenly turned and asked quietly, “Can I touch your tongue?”

“No. Sit down, please.”

She eventually sat down but immediately started fidgeting restlessly. She seemed to be holding something in her hand.

“What have you got there?” I asked.

She quickly hid her hand behind her back. “Come and look if you dare,” she challenged, her tone one of frightened hostility.

I felt a wave of impatience rush through me but forced myself to sound calm as I asked her, “Would you like to tell me why you’re here?”

She shook her head.

“Why do you think you’re here?”

Her face twitched. “Because I said I had cancer,” she whispered.

“Were you afraid you had cancer?”

“I thought he wanted me to have it.”

“Lars Ohlson?”

“They operated on my brain. They operated a couple of times. They knocked me out. They raped me while I was unconscious.” Her eyes met mine, and a fleeting smile crossed her lips. “So now I’m both pregnant and lobotomised.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s good, because I long to have a child, a son, a boy to suck at my breast.”

“Eva,” I said, “why do you think you’re here?”

She brought her hand from behind her back and slowly opened her clenched fist. Despite myself, I was leaning forward with curiosity.

The hand was empty; she turned it over several times. “Do you want to examine my cunt?” she whispered. She grasped the lapels of her raincoat with both hands, as if to part them again.

I felt I had to leave the room or call someone in. But Eva Blau stood up quickly.

“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I’m just scared you’re going to hate me. Please don’t hate me. I want to stay. I need help.”

“Eva, I’m just trying to have a conversation with you. As you know, the plan is for you to join my hypnosis group. Dr Ohlson said you were positive about the idea, that you wanted to give it a try.”

She nodded soberly, then reached out and knocked my coffee cup to the floor. “Sorry,” she said again.

When Eva Blau had gone, I gathered up my papers from the floor and sat down at the desk. A light rain was falling outside the window, and it occurred to me that Benjamin was on an outing with his nursery school today, and both Simone and I had forgotten to send his rain gear with him.

I wondered if I ought to call the school and ask them to let Benjamin stay indoors. Every outing terrified me. I didn’t even like the fact that he had to go down two flights of stairs to get to the dining room. In my mind’s eye, I saw other children bumping into him, someone letting a heavy door swing back in his face. I saw him tripping over the shoes stacked in grubby heaps. I give him his injections, I thought. The medication means he won’t bleed to death from a little cut. But he’s still far more vulnerable than the other children.

I remember the sunlight the following morning, penetrating the dark grey curtains. Simone was sleeping naked next to me. Her mouth was half open, her hair a jumbled mess. I admired her shoulders and breasts, covered with small pale freckles. Goose pimples suddenly appeared on her arm, and I pulled the duvet over her.

Benjamin coughed faintly. He sometimes crept in at night and lay down on the mattress on the floor if he was having nightmares, and I would lie uncomfortably beside him, holding his hand until he went back to sleep. I hadn’t noticed him come in last night, though. I saw that it was six o’clock, rolled over, closed my eyes, and thought how nice it would be to have just a few more hours of sleep.

“Daddy?” Benjamin whispered all of a sudden.

“Go back to sleep for a little while,” I said quietly.

He sat up, looked at me, and said in his high, clear voice, “Daddy, you were lying on top of Mummy last night.”

“Was I?” I said, and felt Simone wake up beside me.

“Yes, you were lying under the duvet rocking on top of her.”

“That sounds a bit silly,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“Mm.”

Simone giggled and hid her head under the pillow.

“Maybe I was having a dream,” I said evasively.

Simone was now shaking with laughter underneath the pillow.

“Did you dream you were rocking?”

“Well—”

Simone looked up with a big grin. “Go on, answer the question,” she said, her voice perfectly controlled. “Did you dream you were rocking?”

“Daddy?”

“I must have.”

“But,” Simone went on with a laugh, “why were you lying on top of me when you—”

“Time for breakfast,” I said.

I saw Benjamin grimace as he got up. The mornings were always the worst. His joints had been immobile for several hours, which often led to spontaneous bleeds.

“How are you feeling?”

He held on to the wall for support as he stood.

“Just a minute, little man, I’ll give you a massage.”

Benjamin sighed as he lay down and let me gently bend and stretch his joints. “I don’t want a shot,” he said dejectedly.

“Not today, Benjamin, the day after tomorrow.”

“Don’t want it, Daddy.”

“Just think about Kalle,” I said. “He’s diabetic. He has to have injections every day.”

“David doesn’t have to,” he complained.

“But maybe there’s something else he finds difficult,” I said.

There was a silence. “His daddy’s dead,” Benjamin whispered.

“See?” I finished massaging his arms and hands.

“Thanks, Daddy,” Benjamin said, getting up slowly.

“Good boy.”

I hugged his slender little body, but as usual I suppressed the urge to hold on until he squirmed to get free.

“Can I watch Pokémon?” he asked.

“Ask your mother,” I replied, and heard Simone shout “Coward!” from the kitchen.

After breakfast I sat down in the study and called Lars Ohlson. His secretary answered, and I chatted with her for a few moments before asking if I could have a word with Lars.

“Just a moment,” she said.

I was intending to ask him not to mention me to Frank Paulsson, if it wasn’t already too late.

After waiting a minute or so, she came back on the line. “Lars isn’t available at the moment.”

“Tell him it’s me.”

“I already did,” she said stiffly.

I hung up without a word, closed my eyes, and realised that something wasn’t right. Perhaps I had been conned; presumably Eva Blau was far more troublesome than Lars Ohlson had told me.

“I can cope,” I told myself.

I wasn’t thinking of Eva Blau as a potentially dangerous person then, at least not primarily. My foremost concern was that she would throw my hypnosis group out of balance. I had assembled a small number of men and women whose problems and backgrounds were completely dissimilar. Some were easily hypnotised, others not. I’d wanted to achieve communication within the group, to help each of them move out of their shells and begin to develop new relationships, both with others and with themselves. The one thing most of them had in common was a feeling of guilt, a burden that had caused them to withdraw. Yet, while they blamed themselves for having been raped or tortured or otherwise abused, their burden was compounded by their having lost all trust in the world. I’d worked hard with them to forge the fragile bond that now existed among them, and I was worried that the addition of Eva Blau might separate them.

During our last session, the group had gone to a deeper level than we’d ever managed before. After our usual opening discussion, I’d made an attempt to put Marek Semiovic under deep hypnosis. All my past efforts had failed; he’d been unfocused and defensive.

In hypnosis, the practitioner may try to find a starting point, often a familiar or idealised place that the subject can imagine and from which he can proceed without fear or anxiety. I hadn’t yet found that starting point with Marek.

“A house? A football pitch? A forest?” I suggested.

“I don’t know,” Marek replied, as usual.

“Well, we have to start somewhere.”

“But where?”

“Try to imagine the place you’d have to return to in order to understand the person you are now,” I suggested.

“Zenica, out in the country,” said Marek, his tone neutral. “Zenica-Doboj.”

“Good,” I said, making a note. “Do you know what happened there?”

“Everything happened there, in a big building made of dark wood, like a castle, a landowner’s house, with a steep roof and turrets and verandas.”

The group was focused now; everyone was listening; they all realised that Marek had suddenly opened a number of inner doors.

“I was sitting in an armchair, I think,” Marek said hesitantly. “Or on some cushions. Anyway, I was smoking a Marlboro while … there must have been hundreds of girls and women from my home town passing by me.”

“Passing by?”

“Over the course of a few weeks … They would come in through the front door, and then, they were taken up the main staircase to the bedrooms.”

“Was it a brothel?” asked Jussi, in his strong Norrland accent.

“I don’t know what went on there. I don’t know anything, really,” Marek replied quietly.

“Did you ever see the upstairs?” I asked.

He rubbed his face with his hands and took a deep breath. “I have this memory,” he began. “I walk into a little room and I see one of my teachers from high school, and she’s tied to a bed, naked, with bruises on her hips and thighs.”

“What happens?”

“I’m standing just inside the door with a kind of wooden stick in my hand—and I can’t remember anything else.”

“Try,” I said calmly.

“It’s gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can’t … I can’t do any more.”

“All right, fine, that’s enough,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” he said, and sat without speaking for a long time. Then he sighed, rubbed his face, and stood up.

“Marek?”

“I don’t remember anything!” he said, his voice shrill.

I made a few notes; I could feel Marek watching me all the time.

“I don’t remember, but everything happened in that freaking house,” he said, looking at me intently. I nodded.

“Everything that’s me—it’s in that wooden house!”

“The haunted house,” said Lydia, from her seat beside him.

“Exactly,” he said, “it was a haunted house,” and when he laughed, his face was etched with anguish.

I checked my watch again. In an hour I was to meet with the hospital board to present my research. If they didn’t agree to continue my funding, I would have to start winding down both the research and the therapy. So far, I hadn’t had time to start feeling nervous. I went over to the sink and rinsed my face, then stood for a while looking at myself in the mirror and trying to summon up a smile before I left the bathroom. As I was locking the door of my office, a young woman stopped in the corridor just a few steps away.

“Erik Maria Bark?”

Her dark, thick hair was caught up in a knot at the back of her neck, and when she smiled at me, deep dimples appeared in her cheeks. She looked happy and smelled of hyacinth, of tiny flowers. She was wearing a doctor’s coat, and her badge indicated that she was an intern.

“Maja Swartling,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m one of your greatest admirers.”

“I’m honoured,” I said.

“I’d love to have the opportunity to work with you while I’m here,” she said, with an uncommon directness I found appealing.

“Work with me?”

She nodded and blushed. “I find your research to be incredibly exciting.”

“Frankly, I don’t even know if there’s going to be any more research,” I explained. “I hope the board of directors is as enthusiastic as you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“My funding only lasts until the end of the year.” My imminent appearance before the board suddenly loomed up. “Right now I have an important meeting.”

Maja jumped to one side. “I’m sorry,” she said. “God, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, smiling at her. “Walk me to the lift.”

She blushed again and we set off together. “Do you think there’ll be a problem renewing your funding?” she asked anxiously.

The usual procedure was for the applicant to talk about his or her research—results, targets, and time frame—but I always found it difficult, because no matter how meticulously I presented my case, I knew I’d inevitably run into difficulties because of the pervasive prejudice against hypnosis.

“If psychotherapy is a soft science, Maja, hypnosis is even softer. By its very nature, even the most exhaustive research in the field leads to relatively inconclusive results,” I said.

“But if they read all your reports, the most amazing patterns are emerging. Even if it is too early to publish anything.”

“You’ve read all my reports?” I asked sceptically.

“There are certainly plenty of them,” she replied dryly.

We stopped at the lift.

“What do you think about my ideas relating to engrams?” I said, to test her.

“You’re thinking about the patient with the injured skull?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to hide my surprise.

“Interesting,” she said. “The fact that you’re going against conventional wisdom on the way memory is dispersed throughout the brain.”

“Any thoughts of your own on the subject?”

“I think you should intensify your research into the synapses and concentrate on the amygdala.”

“I’m impressed,” I said, pressing the button for the lift.

“You have to get the funding.”

“I know.”

“What happens if they say no?”

“If I’m lucky, I’ll be given enough time to wind down the therapy and help my patients into other forms of treatment.”

“And your research?”

I shrugged. “I could apply to other universities, see if anyone would take me.”

“Do you have enemies on the board?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

She placed her hand gently on my arm and smiled apologetically. Her cheeks flushed even more. “I know I’m speaking out of turn. But you will get the money, because your work is ground-breaking.” She looked hard at me. “And if they can’t see that, I’ll talk to them. All of them.”

Suddenly I wondered if she was flirting with me. There was something about her obsequiousness, that soft, husky voice. I glanced quickly at her badge to be sure of her name: maja swartling, intern.

“Maja—”

“I’m not easily put off, you know,” she said playfully. “Erik Maria Bark.”

“We’ll discuss this another time,” I said, as the lift doors slid open.

Maja Swartling smiled, revealing dimples; she brought her hands together beneath her chin, bowed deeply and mischievously, and said softly, “Sawadee.”

I realised I was smiling at the Thai greeting as I took the lift up to the director’s office.

Despite the fact that the door was open, I knocked before entering the conference room. Annika Lorentzon was there already, gazing out the picture window at the fantastic view, far out across Northern Cemetery and Haga Park.

“Just gorgeous,” I said.

Annika Lorentzo smiled calmly at me. She was tanned and slim. Once, her beauty had made her runner-up in the Miss Sweden contest, but now a fine network of lines had formed beneath her eyes and on her forehead. She didn’t smell of perfume but rather of cleanliness; a faint hint of exclusive soap surrounded her.

“Mineral water?” she asked, waving in the direction of several bottles.

I shook my head and noticed for the first time that we were alone in the conference room. The others ought to have gathered by now, I thought; my watch showed that the meeting should have begun five minutes earlier.

Annika stood up and explained, as if she’d read my mind, “They’ll be here, Erik. They’ve all gone for a sauna.” She gave a wry smile. “It’s one way of having a meeting without me. Clever, eh?”

At that moment the door opened and five men with bright red faces came in. The collars of their suits were damp from wet hair and wet necks, and they were exuding steamy heat and aftershave.

“Although of course my research is going to be expensive,” I heard Ronny Johansson say.

“Obviously,” Svein Holstein replied, sounding worried.

“It’s just that Bjarne was rambling on about how they were going to start cutting. The finance boys want to slash the research budget right across the board.”

The conversation died away as they came into the room.

Svein Holstein gave me a firm handshake.

Ronny Johansson, the pharmaceutical representative on the board, just waved half-heartedly at me as he took his seat, while at the same time the local government politician, Peter Mälarstedt, took my hand. He smiled at me, puffing and panting, and I noticed he was still perspiring.

Frank Paulsson barely met my eye; he simply gave me the briefest of nods and then stayed on the far side of the room. Everyone chatted for a while, pouring out glasses of mineral water and admiring the view. For one crystal moment I observed them: these people who held the fate of my research in their hands. They were as sleek, well-groomed, and savvy as my patients were awkward, shabby, and inarticulate. Yet my patients were contained in this moment. Their memories, experiences, and all they had suppressed lay like curls of smoke trapped motionless inside this glass bubble.

Annika softly clapped her hands and invited everyone to take their seats around the conference table. The members of the board settled down, whispered, and fidgeted. Someone jingled coins in his pocket. Another flipped through his calendar. Annika smiled gently and said, “Over to you, Erik.”

“My method,” I began, “involves treating psychological trauma through group hypnosis therapy.”

“So we’ve gathered,” said Ronny Johansson.

I tried to provide an overview of what I’d done thus far. I could hear feet shuffling, chair legs scraping against the floor.

“Unfortunately, I have another commitment,” Rainer Milch said after a while. He got to his feet, shook hands with the men next to him, and left the room. My audience listened without really paying attention.

“I know this material can seem dense, but I did provide a summary in advance. It’s fairly comprehensive, I know, but it’s necessary; I couldn’t make it any shorter.”

“Why not?” asked Peter Mälarstedt.

“Because it’s a little too early to draw any conclusions,” I said.

“But if we move forward two years?” he asked.

“Hard to say, but I am seeing patterns emerge,” I said, despite the fact that I knew I shouldn’t go down that path.

“Patterns? What kind of patterns?”

“Can you tell us what you’re hoping to find?” asked Annika Lorentzon, with an encouraging smile.

I took a deep breath. “I’m hoping to map the mental barriers that remain during hypnosis—how the brain, in a state of deep relaxation, comes up with new ways of protecting the individual from the memory of trauma or fear. What I mean—and this is really exciting—is that when a patient is getting closer to a trauma, the core, the thing that’s really dangerous, when the suppressed memory finally begins to float towards the surface during hypnosis, the mind begins to rummage around in a final attempt to protect the secret. What I have begun to realise and document is that the subject incorporates dream material into his or her memories, simply in order to avoid seeing.”

“To avoid seeing the situation itself?” asked Ronny Johansson, with a sudden burst of curiosity.

“In a way. It’s the perpetrator they don’t want to see,” I replied. “They replace the perpetrator with something else, often an animal.”

There was silence around the table. I could see Annika, who had so far looked mainly embarrassed on my behalf, smiling to herself.

“Can this be true?” said Ronny Johansson, almost in a whisper.

“How clear is this pattern?” asked Mälarstedt.

“Clear, but not fully established,” I replied.

“Is there any similar research going on elsewhere in the world?” Mälarstedt wondered.

“No,” Ronny Johansson replied abruptly.

“But does it stop there?” said Holstein. “Or will the patient always find some new way of protecting himself under hypnosis, in your opinion?”

“Yes, is it possible to move beyond this protective mechanism?” asked Mälarstedt.

I could feel my cheeks beginning to burn; I cleared my throat. “I think it’s possible to move beyond the mechanism, to find what lies beneath these images through deeper hypnosis.”

“And what about the patients?”

“I was thinking about them, too,” Mälarstedt said to Annika Lorentzon.

“This is all very tempting, of course,” said Holstein. “But I want guarantees. No psychoses, no suicides.”

“Yes, but—”

“Can you promise me that?”

Frank Paulsson was just sitting there, scraping at the label on his bottle of mineral water. Holstein looked tired and glanced openly at his watch.

“My priority is to help my patients,” I said.

“And your research?”

“It’s—” I cleared my throat again—“it’s a by-product, when it comes down to it,” I said quietly. “That’s how I have to regard it. I would never develop an experimental technique if there was any indication that it was detrimental to a patient’s condition.”

Some of the men around the table exchanged glances.

“Good answer,” said Frank Paulsson, all of a sudden. “I am giving Erik Maria Bark my full support.”

“I still have some concerns about the patients,” said Holstein.

“Everything is in here,” Paulsson said, pointing to the folder of notes I had provided in advance. “He’s written about the development of the patients; it looks more than promising, I’d say.”

“It’s just that it’s very unusual therapy. It’s so bold we have to be certain we can defend it if something goes wrong.”

“Nothing can really go wrong,” I said, feeling shivers down my spine.

“Erik, it’s Friday and everybody wants to go home,” said Annika Lorentzon. “I think you can assume that your funding will be renewed.”

The others nodded in agreement, and Ronny Johansson leaned back and began to applaud.

Simone was standing in our spacious kitchen when I got home. She’d covered the table with groceries: bundles of asparagus, fresh marjoram, a chicken, a lemon, jasmine rice. When she caught sight of me she laughed.

“What?” I asked.

She shook her head and said with a broad grin, “You should see your face.”

“What do you mean?”

“You look like a little kid on Christmas Eve.”

“Is it so obvious?”

“Benjamin!” she shouted.

Benjamin came into the kitchen with Pokémon cards in his hand. Simone hid her merriment and pointed at me. “How does Daddy look, Benjamin?”

He studied me for a moment and began to smile. “You look happy, Daddy.”

“I am happy, little man. I am happy.”

“Have they found the medicine?” he asked.

“What medicine?”

“To make me better, so I won’t need injections,” he said.

I picked him up, hugged him, and explained that they hadn’t found the medicine yet but I hoped they soon would, more than anything.

“All right,” he said.

I put him down and saw Simone’s pensive expression.

Benjamin tugged at my trouser leg. “So what was it, Daddy?”

I didn’t understand.

“Why were you so happy, Daddy?”

“It was just money,” I replied, subdued. “I’ve got some money for my research.”

“David says you do magic.”

“I don’t do magic. I try to help people who are frightened and unhappy.”

Simone let Benjamin run his fingers through the marjoram leaves and inhale their scent. “Tomorrow I sign the lease for the space on Arsenalsgatan.”

“But why didn’t you say anything? Congratulations, Sixan!”

She laughed. “I know exactly what my opening exhibition is going to be,” she said. “There’s a girl who’s just finished at the art college in Bergen. She’s absolutely fantastic; she does these huge—”

Simone broke off as the doorbell rang. She tried to see who it was through the kitchen window, before she went and opened the front door. I followed her and saw her walk through the dark hall and towards the doorway, which was filled with light. When I got there, she was standing looking out.

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Nobody. There was nobody here.”

I looked out over the shrubbery towards the street.

“What’s that?” she asked suddenly.

On the step in front of the door lay a rod with a handle at one end and a small round plate of wood at the other.

“Strange,” I said, picking up the old tool and turning it over in my hands.

“What is it?”

“A ferrule, I think. It was used to punish children in the old days.”

It was time for a session with the hypnosis group. They would be here in ten minutes. The usual six plus the new woman, Eva Blau.

I picked up my pad and read through my notes from the session a week earlier, when Marek Semiovic had talked about the big wooden house in the country in the region of Zenica-Doboj.

It was Charlotte’s turn to begin this time, and I thought I might then make a first attempt with Eva Blau.

I arranged the chairs in a semicircle and set up the video camera tripod as far away as possible.

I was eager that day. The stress of worrying about funding had been relieved, and I was curious as to what would emerge during the session. I was becoming increasingly convinced that this new form of therapy was better than anything I had practised in the past—that the importance of the collective was immense in the treatment of trauma. I was excited by the way the lonely isolation of individual pain could be transformed into a shared and empathetic healing process.

I inserted a new tape in the video camera, zoomed in on the back of a chair, adjusted the focus, and zoomed out again.

Charlotte Ceder entered. She was wearing a dark blue trench coat with a wide belt tightly cinched around her slender waist. As she pulled off her hat, her thick, chestnut-brown hair tumbled around her face. As always, she was beautifully, and terribly, sad.

I went over to the window, opened it, and felt the soft spring breeze blowing over my face. When I turned around, Jussi Persson had arrived.

“Doctor,” he said in his calm Norrland accent.

We shook hands and he went over to say hello to Sibel, who had just come in. He patted his beer belly and said something that made her giggle and blush. They chatted quietly as the rest of the group arrived: Lydia, Pierre, and finally Marek, slightly late as usual.

I stood motionless, waiting until they felt ready. As individuals, they had one thing in common: they had each suffered traumatising abuse of one kind or another, abuse that had created such devastation within their psyches that they had concealed what had happened from themselves in order to survive. In some cases, I had a greater command of the facts of their lives than they did. They were each, however, acutely aware that their lives had been decimated by terrible events in the past.

“The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.” I would often quote William Faulkner. I meant that every little thing that happens to people remains with them throughout their lives. Every experience influences every choice. In the case of traumatic experiences, the past occupies almost all the space available in the present.

Everyone was waiting for me to start, but Eva Blau had not yet arrived. I glanced at the clock and decided to begin without her.

Charlotte always sat furthest away. She had taken off her coat and was as usual dressed elegantly. When our eyes met, she smiled tentatively at me. Charlotte had tried to take her own life fifteen times before I accepted her into the group. The last time she had shot herself in the head with her husband’s elk rifle, right in the drawing room of their villa. The gun had slipped, and she had lost one ear and a small part of her cheek. There was no trace of it now; she had undergone expensive plastic surgery and changed her hairstyle into a smooth, thick bob that concealed her prosthetic ear and hearing aid. Yet despite the fact that she was beautiful and impeccably groomed, I sensed an abyss within her, on the edge of which she was constantly teetering. Whenever I saw her tilt her head to one side, favouring her good ear as she politely and respectfully listened to the others, I always went cold with anxiety.

“Are you comfortable, Charlotte?” I asked.

She nodded and replied, in her gentle, beautifully articulated voice, “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Today we’re going to investigate Charlotte’s inner rooms,” I explained.

“My own haunted house.” She smiled.

“Exactly.” I was always pleased and a little amazed at the way that certain meaningful phrases and expressions were commonly adopted as part of the private idiom in use within the group.

Marek grinned joylessly and impatiently at me as our eyes met. He had been training at the gym all morning, and his muscles were suffused with blood.

“Are we all ready to begin?” I asked.

Sibel spat her chewing gum into a tissue and got up quickly to throw it away. She glanced at me shyly and said, “I’m ready, doctor.”

Slowly I led them into a trance, evoking the image of a wet wooden staircase down which I was leading them. A familiar special energy began to flow among us, a unique warmth we all shared. My own voice, clear and articulated at first, began to register as a series of mesmerising, calming sounds that guided the patients. I seemed to be watching through someone else’s eyes as their bodies settled more heavily into their chairs and their features flattened and relaxed, assuming the coarse, open expression shared by those under hypnosis.

I moved behind them, gently touching their shoulders, guiding them individually all the time, counting backwards, step by step.

“Continue down the staircase,” I said quietly.

I hadn’t told the board that the hypnotist also becomes immersed in a kind of parallel trance as he puts his patients under. In my opinion this was both unavoidable and a good thing. My own trance always took place underwater. I didn’t understand why, but I liked the image of water; it was clear and pleasant, and I had developed a way of using it as a visual and tactile metaphor to help me understand and interpret the course of events during sessions.

My patients were each seeing something completely different, of course; all drifting down into memories, into the past, ending up in the rooms of their childhood, the places where they had spent their youth; returning to their parents’ summer cottages, or the garage of the little girl who lived next door. They didn’t know that for me they were deep underwater at the same time, slowly floating down past an enormous coral formation, a deep-sea plinth, the rough wall of a continental rift, all of us sinking together through gently bubbling water.

This time I wanted to try to take them all with me into a deeper hypnosis. My voice kept on counting, speaking of pleasant relaxation as the water roared in my ears. I watched them.

Jussi hissed something to himself.

Marek’s mouth was open, and a trickle of saliva ran out.

Pierre looked thinner and weaker than ever.

Lydia’s hands hung loosely over the arms of her chair.

“I want you to go even deeper, even further,” I said. “Continue moving downwards, but more slowly now, more slowly. Soon you will stop, very gently coming to rest … a little deeper, just a little more, and now we are stopping.”

The whole group stood facing me in a semicircle on a sandy seabed, level and wide like a gigantic floor. The water was pale and slightly green. The sand beneath our feet moved in small, regular waves. Shimmering pink jellyfish floated above us. From time to time, a flatfish whirled up a little cloud of sand, then darted away.

“We are all deep down now,” I said.

They opened their eyes and looked straight at me.

“Charlotte, it’s your turn to begin,” I went on. “What can you see? Where are you?”

Her mouth moved silently.

“There’s nothing here that is dangerous,” I reminded her. “We’re right behind you all the time.”

“I know,” she said in a monotone.

Her eyes peered at me like those of a sleepwalker, empty and distant.

“You’re standing outside the door,” I said. “Would you like to go in?”

She nodded, and her hair moved with the currents of water.

“Let’s go through the door now,” I said.

“Yes.”

“What do you see?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you gone inside?” I asked, feeling distantly that I was rushing things.

“Yes.”

“Can you see anything?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Is it something strange?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Tell me what you see,” I said quickly.

She shook her head. Small air bubbles were released from her hair and rose towards the surface, glittering. The nagging sense that I was doing the wrong thing seemed closer now, more insistent, warning me that I wasn’t listening, that I wasn’t helping lead her forward but, instead, was pushing her. Still, I couldn’t help saying, “You’re in your grandfather’s house.”

“Yes,” she replied, her voice subdued.

“You’re inside the door, and you’re moving forward.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Just take one step.”

“Maybe not right now,” she whispered.

“Raise your head and look.”

“I don’t want to.” Her lower lip was trembling.

“Can you see anything strange?” I persisted. “Anything that shouldn’t be there?”

A deep furrow appeared in her forehead, and I suddenly realised that she would very soon let go and simply be ripped out of her hypnotic state. This could be dangerous; she could end up in a deep depression if it happened too quickly. Large bubbles were floating out of her mouth like a shining chain. Her face shimmered, and blue-green lines played across her brow.

“You don’t have to look, Charlotte,” I said reassuringly. “You can open the French doors and go out to the garden if you like.”

But her body was shaking, and I realised it was too late.

“We are completely calm now,” I whispered, reaching out to pat her gently.

Her lips were white, her eyes wide open.

“Charlotte, we are going to return to the surface together, very slowly,” I said.

Her feet kicked up a dense cloud of sand as she floated upwards.

“Wait,” I said faintly.

Marek was looking at me, trying to shout something.

“We are already on our way up, and I am going to count to ten,” I continued, as we moved quickly towards the surface. “And when I have counted to ten you will open your eyes and you will feel fine.”

Charlotte was gasping for breath as she got unsteadily to her feet. She adjusted her clothing and looked at me entreatingly.

“Let’s take a short break,” I said.

Sibel got up slowly and went out for a smoke. Pierre followed her. Jussi remained where he was, heavy and inert. None of them was completely awake. The ascent had been too steep, too quick. I remained seated; I rubbed my face and was taking some notes when Marek sauntered over.

“Well done,” he said, with a wry grimace.

“It didn’t quite go as planned,” I replied, without looking up.

“I thought it was funny,” he said.

“What?” I asked. “What was funny?” I met his eyes, which burned with an obscure hostility.

Lydia was on her way over, jewellery rattling. Her henna-dyed hair glowed like threads of copper as she walked through a sunbeam.

“The way you put that upper-class whore in her place,” Marek said.

“What did you say?” asked Lydia.

“I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about—”

“You’re not to call Charlotte a whore, because it isn’t true,” Lydia said softly. “Right, Marek?”

“Fine, whatever.”

I moved away, looking at my notes, but kept on listening to their conversation.

“Do you have issues with women?” she continued.

“Things happened in the haunted house,” he said quietly. “If you weren’t there, you wouldn’t understand.”

He fell silent, clamping his teeth so tightly together I could see his jaw muscles working.

“There is actually nothing that is wrong,” she said, and took his hand in both of hers.

Sibel and Pierre came back. Everyone was quiet and subdued. Charlotte looked very fragile. Her slender arms were crossed over her chest; her hands were on her shoulders.

I changed the tape in the video camera, gave the date and time, and explained that everyone was still in a post-hypnotic state. I looked through the lens, raised the tripod a fraction, and refocused the camera. Then I straightened the chairs and asked the group to sit down again.

“Let’s continue,” I said.

There was a sudden knock at the door and Eva Blau walked in. I could see instantly that she was under stress and went over to greet her.

“Welcome,” I said.

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

Eva Blau sat down on the empty chair and clamped her hands firmly between her thighs. I went back to my place and carefully introduced the second session.

“Please get comfortable. Let’s keep our feet on the floor, hands on our knees. The first part didn’t quite turn out as I expected.”

“I’m sorry,” said Charlotte.

“Nobody need apologise, least of all you; I hope you understand.”

Eva Blau was staring at me the whole time.

“We’re going to begin with thoughts and associations from the first session,” I said. “Would anyone like to comment?”

“Confusing,” said Sibel.

“Frus … tra … ting,” said Jussi. “I mean, I only just had time to open my eyes and scratch my head, and it was all over.”

“What did you feel?” I asked him.

“Hair,” he answered, with a smile.

“Hair?” asked Sibel, giggling.

“When I scratched my noggin,” Jussi explained.

Some of them laughed.

“Let’s have some associations with hair,” I said, with a smile. “Charlotte?”

“I don’t know. Hair? Beard, maybe … no.”

Pierre interrupted her in his high voice. “A hippie, a hippie on a chopper,” he said with a smile. “He’s sitting like this, chewing a piece of Juicyfruit, and—”

Suddenly Eva got up with such a violent movement that the chair banged behind her. “This is just childish nonsense,” she said angrily, pointing at Pierre.

“Why do you feel that way?” I asked.

Eva didn’t reply, she merely met my gaze before sulkily flopping back down on her chair.

“Pierre, would you continue, please,” I said calmly.

He shook his head, forming a cross with his index fingers and pointing them at Eva, pretending to protect himself against her.

“They shot Dennis Hopper because he was a hippie,” he whispered conspiratorially.

Sibel giggled even more loudly and glanced expectantly at me. Jussi raised his hand and turned to Eva.

“In the haunted house you won’t have to listen to our childish nonsense,” he said, in his strong accent.

The room fell completely silent. It occurred to me that Eva had no way of knowing what the haunted house meant to our group, but I left it.

Eva Blau turned to Jussi. It looked as if she were going to yell something at him, but he simply gazed back at her with such a calm, serious expression that she appeared to change her mind and settled back down.

“Eva, we begin with relaxation exercises and breathing and then I hypnotise you, one by one or in pairs,” I explained. “Of course, everyone participates all the time, regardless of the level of consciousness on which you find yourself.”

An ironic smile passed over Eva’s face.

“And sometimes,” I went on, “if I feel it will work, I try to put the whole group into a deep hypnosis.”

I pulled up my chair and asked them to close their eyes and lean back. “Your feet should be on the floor, your hands should be resting on your lap,” I repeated.

As I gently led them deeper into a state of relaxation, I decided to begin by investigating Eva Blau’s secret rooms. It was important for her to make some contribution soon, in order to be accepted by the group. I counted backwards and listened to their breathing, immersing them in a light hypnotic state and leaving them just beneath the silvery surface of the water.

“Eva, I am speaking only to you,” I said. “You should feel safe and relaxed. Just listen to my voice and follow my words. Follow my words spontaneously all the time. Do not question them. You are amid their flow, not anticipating, not analysing, but right here in the moment the whole time.”

We were sinking through grey water, falling down into the dark depths past a thick rope, a hawser festooned with swaying ribbons of seaweed. I looked up and glimpsed the rest of the group dangling there with the tops of their heads brushing the rippling mirror.

At the same time, I was actually standing behind Eva Blau’s chair with one hand on her shoulder, speaking calmly, my voice growing softer. She was leaning back, her face relaxed.

In my own trance, the water around her was sometimes brown, sometimes grey. Her face lay in shadow, her mouth tightly closed. Her brow was furrowed, but her gaze was completely blank. Lars Ohlson’s notes contained almost nothing about her background, so I decided to try a cautious entry strategy. Evoking a calm and happy time ironically often proves to be the quickest way into the most difficult areas.

“You are ten years old, Eva,” I said, coming around so that I could observe her from the front.

Her chest was barely moving; she was breathing calmly, gently, from down in her diaphragm.

“You are ten years old, Eva. This is a good day. You are happy. Why are you happy?”

Eva pouted sweetly, smiled to herself, and said, “Because the man is dancing and splashing in the puddles.”

“Who’s dancing?” I asked.

“Who?” She didn’t speak for a moment. “Gene Kelly, Mummy says.”

“Oh, so you’re watching Singin’ in the Rain?”

A slow nod.

“What happens?”

I saw her face slowly sink towards her chest. Suddenly a strange expression flitted across her lips.

“My tummy is big,” she said, almost inaudibly.

“Your tummy?”

“It’s huge,” she said, with tears in her voice.

Jussi was breathing heavily beside her. From the corner of my eye I could see that he was moving his lips.

“The haunted house,” he whispered, in his state of light hypnosis. “The haunted house.”

“Eva, listen to me,” I said. “You can hear everyone else in this room, but you must listen only to my voice. Pay no attention to what the others say, pay attention only to my voice.”

“OK,” she said, her expression contented.

“Do you know why your tummy is big?” I asked.

“I want to go into the haunted house,” she whispered.

I counted backwards, suggesting the staircase that led ever downwards. As I counted, I was thinking that something wasn’t right. I myself was immersed in pleasantly warm water, as I slowly drifted down past the rock face, deeper and deeper.

Eva Blau lifted her chin, moistened her lips, sucked in her cheeks, and whispered, “I can see them taking someone. They just come up and take someone.”

“Who’s taking someone?” I asked.

Her breathing became irregular. Her face grew darker. Brown, cloudy water drifted in front of her.

“A man with a ponytail. He’s hanging the little person up on the ceiling,” she whimpered.

She was clutching the hawser with the billowing seaweed tightly with one hand; her legs were paddling slowly.

Something wasn’t right. With an effortful thrust I pushed myself outside the hypnosis. Eva Blau was faking. I was absolutely certain that she wasn’t under hypnosis. She had resisted, blocked my suggestion. She’s lying, she isn’t under hypnosis at all, my brain whispered coldly.

She was throwing herself back and forth on her chair. “The man is pulling and pulling at the little person, he’s pulling too hard.” Suddenly she met my gaze and stopped moving. Her lips distended in a wide, ugly grin. “Was I good?” she asked me.

I didn’t reply. I just watched as she stood up, took her coat from the hook, and calmly walked out of the room.

I wrote the haunted house on a piece of paper, wrapped it around tape number 14, and secured it with a rubber band. But instead of archiving the tape as usual, I took it to my office. I wanted to analyse Eva Blau’s lie and my own reaction, but I was still in the hall when I realised what had been wrong all along: Eva had been aware of her face and had tried to look sweet; she had not had the listless, open face that those under hypnosis always have. A person under hypnosis can smile, but it isn’t their usual smile, it’s a somnolent, slack smile.

As I turned the corner leading to my office, I saw Maja Swartling waiting outside my door. I surprised myself by remembering her name. When she caught sight of me, her face lit up and she waved.

“Sorry to keep bothering you like this,” she said quickly, “but since I’m basing part of my dissertation on your research, my advisor suggested that I interview you.” She looked at me intently.

“I understand,” I said.

“Is it all right if I ask you a few questions?” she asked.

Suddenly she looked like a little girl: wide awake but unsure of herself. Her eyes were very dark, set off against the milky glow of her fair skin. She wore her shiny hair in looped braids: an old-fashioned hairstyle, but it suited her.

“Is it all right?” she repeated softly. “You have no idea how persistent I can be.”

I realised I was standing there smiling. There was something so bright and healthy about her. She laughed and gave me a lingering, satisfied look. I unlocked the door and she followed me into the office, settled down in the visitor’s chair, and took out a notepad and pen.

“What would you like to ask me?”

Maja blushed deeply and sat, then began to talk.

“I’ve read your reports,” she said, “and your hypnosis group is made up not only of victims, people who have been subjected to some kind of abuse, but also perpetrators, those who have done terrible things to others.”

“You have to understand that sometimes the level of coercion is so great that a person is forced to commit terrible acts. The victim becomes the perpetrator through the very process of victimisation. In any event, for patients like this, it works the same way in the subconscious, and in the context of group therapy this is in fact a resource.”

“Interesting,” she said, taking more notes. “I want to come back to that, but what I’d like to know now is how the perpetrator sees himself or herself during hypnosis—after all, you do put forward the idea that the victim often replaces the perpetrator with something else, like an animal.”

“I haven’t had time to investigate how perpetrators see themselves, and I don’t want to speculate.”

Maja leaned forward, lips pursed. “But you’ve got an idea?”

“I have a patient, for example, who—” I fell silent, thinking of Jussi Persson, the man from Norrland who carried his loneliness like a dreadful self-imposed weight.

“What were you going to say?”

“Under hypnosis this patient returns to a hunting tower. It’s as if the gun is in control of him; he shoots deer and simply leaves them lying there.”

We sat in silence, looking at each other.

“It’s getting late,” I said.

“I still have a lot of questions.”

I waved my hand. “We’ll have to meet again.”

She looked at me. My body suddenly felt strangely hot as I noticed a faint flush rising on her pale skin. There was something mischievous between us, a mixture of seriousness and the desire to laugh.

“Can I buy you a drink to say thank you? There’s a really nice Lebanese—”

She stopped abruptly as the telephone rang. I apologised and picked it up.

“Erik?” It was Simone, sounding stressed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I … I’m out in back, on the bike path. It looks like someone’s broken into our home.”

An ice-cold shudder ran through me. I thought about the ferrule that had been left outside our door, the old instrument of punishment.

“What happened?”

I heard Simone swallow hard. Some children were playing in the background; they might have been up on the football pitch. I heard the sound of a whistle and screams.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Nothing, a class of schoolchildren,” she said firmly. “Erik, Benjamin’s veranda door is open and the window has been smashed.”

Maja Swartling stood and pointed at the door, asking if she should go. I nodded briefly, with an apologetic shrug. She bumped into the chair, which scraped along the floor.

“Are you alone?” asked Simone.

“Yes,” I said, without knowing why I was lying.

Maja waved and closed the door soundlessly behind her. I could still smell her perfume.

“It’s just as well you didn’t go inside,” I went on. “Have you called the police?”

“Erik, you sound funny. Has something happened?”

“You mean apart from the fact that there might be a burglar inside our house right now? Have you called the police?”

“Yes, I called Dad.”

“Good.”

“He said he was on his way.”

“Move further away from the house, Simone.”

“I’m standing on the bike path.”

“Can you still see the house?”

“Yes.”

“If you can see the house, anyone inside the house can see you.”

“Stop it!” she said.

“Please, Simone, go up to the football pitch. I’m on my way home.”

I stopped behind Kennet’s dirty Opel and got out of the car. Kennet came running toward me, his expression tense.

“Where the hell is Sixan?” he shouted.

“I told her to wait on the football pitch.”

“Good, I was afraid she’d—”

“She would have gone inside otherwise, I know her; she takes after you.”

He laughed and hugged me tightly. “Good to see you, kid.”

We set off around the block, to get to the back. Simone was standing not far from our garden. Presumably she had been keeping an eye on the broken veranda door the whole time; it led straight to our shady patio. She looked up, left her bike, came straight over and gave me a hug, and looked over my shoulder. “Hi, Dad.”

“I’m going in,” he said, his tone serious.

“I’m coming with you,” I said.

Simone sighed. “Women and children wait outside.”

All three of us stepped over the low potentilla hedge and walked across the grass to the patio, with its white plastic table and four plastic chairs.

Shards of glass covered the step and the doorsill. On the wall-to-wall carpet in Benjamin’s room, a large stone lay among fragments and shards. As we went in, I reminded myself to tell Kennet about the ferrule that we’d found outside our door.

Simone followed us and switched on the ceiling light. Her face was glowing, and her strawberry-blonde hair hung down in curls over her shoulders.

Kennet went into the hall, looked into the bedroom on the right, and into the bathroom. The reading lamp in the TV room was on. In the kitchen, a chair lay on its side on the floor. We went from room to room, but nothing seemed to be missing. In the downstairs bathroom, the toilet paper had been yanked violently off the roll and lay strewn across the floor.

Kennet looked at me with an odd expression. “Do you have any unfinished business with anyone?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not as far as I know,” I said. “Obviously, I meet a lot of damaged people in my work. Just like you.”

He nodded.

“They haven’t taken anything,” I said.

“Is that normal, Dad?” asked Simone.

Kennet shook his head. “It isn’t normal, not if they break a window. Somebody wanted you to know they’d been here.”

Simone was standing in the doorway of Benjamin’s room. “It looks as if someone has been lying in his bed,” she said quietly. “What’s the name of that fable? Goldilocks, isn’t it?”

We hurried into our bedroom and saw that somebody had been lying in our bed too. The bedspread had been pulled down and the sheets were crumpled.

“This is pretty weird,” said Kennet.

There was silence for a little while.

“The ferrule!” Simone exclaimed.

“Exactly. I thought about it and then I forgot,” I said. I went into the hall and got it from the stand.

“My God,” said Kennet. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was a boy.”

“It was outside our door yesterday,” said Simone.

“Let me have a look,” said Kennet.

“They used to use it for corporal punishment,” I said.

“I know what it is,” said Kennet, running his hand over it.

“I don’t like this at all. The whole thing feels creepy,” said Simone.

“Has anyone threatened you, or have you experienced anything that could be construed as a threat?”

“No,” she replied.

“But perhaps that’s how we should regard it,” I said. “Perhaps someone thinks we should be punished. I thought maybe it was just a bad joke, because we coddle Benjamin so much. I mean, if you didn’t know about Benjamin’s illness, we’d seem pretty neurotic.”

Simone went straight to the telephone and called Benjamin’s nursery school to check that he was all right.

That evening we put Benjamin to bed early; as usual, I lay down beside him and told him the entire plot of a children’s film about an African boy. Benjamin had watched it many times and almost always wanted me to tell him the story when he settled down to go to sleep. If I forgot the smallest detail he would remind me, and if he was still awake when I got to the end, Simone got to sing lullabies.

That night, he fell asleep easily. I made a pot of tea, and Simone and I settled down to watch a video. But neither of us could focus on the movie, so I paused the machine and we talked about the break-in, reassuring ourselves with the fact that nothing was stolen; someone had just unrolled the toilet paper and messed up our beds.

“Maybe it was some teenagers who wanted a place to screw around,” said Simone.

“No, I don’t think so. They would have left more of a mess if that were the case.”

“But don’t you think it’s a bit strange that the neighbours didn’t notice anything?” asked Simone. “I mean, Adolfsson doesn’t usually miss much.”

“Maybe he was the one who did it,” I suggested.

“Screwed around in our bed?”

I laughed and pulled her close. How good she smelled! She was wearing my favourite scent, Aromatics Elixir, heavy, but not cloying or sweet. She pressed herself to me, and I felt her slim, boyish body against mine. I slipped my hands inside her loose shirt, running them over her silky skin. Her breasts were warm, her nipples hard. She groaned when I kissed her throat; a blast of hot breath shot into my ear.

We undressed by the glow of the television, helping each other with rapid, seeking hands, fumbling, laughing, and kissing again. She drew me to the bedroom and pushed me down onto the bed with playful severity.

“Time for the ferrule,” she said.

I nodded, transfixed, and watched as she moved closer to me, bowing her head to allow her hair to trail over my legs; she smiled as she moved steadily upward. Her curls cascaded over her slender, freckled shoulders. Her arm muscles tensed as she straddled my hips. Her cheeks flushed deep red as I pushed inside her.

For a few seconds the memory of some photographs flickered through my mind. I had taken the pictures on an isolated beach in the Greek archipelago, two years before Benjamin was born. We’d taken a bus along the coast and got off at what we thought was the prettiest spot. When we realised the beach was completely deserted, we decided not to bother with swimsuits. We ate warm watermelon in the sunshine and then lay naked in clear, shallow water, kissing and caressing each other. We made love perhaps four times that day on the beach, growing ever warmer and more indolent. I recalled Simone’s skin, sticky with salt water, her heavy, sun-drenched gaze, her introverted smile. Her small, taut breasts, her freckles, her pale pink nipples. Her flat stomach, her navel, her reddish-brown pubic hair.

Now Simone leaned forward, chasing her orgasm. She thrust backwards, kissed my chest, my throat. She was breathing faster, her eyes closed; she gripped my shoulders and whispered. “Don’t stop, Erik, please don’t stop.”

She was moving faster, heavier, her back slippery with sweat. She groaned loudly, still thrusting backwards, over and over again, stopping with quivering thighs before starting again; she stopped, whimpering, gasped for air, moistened her lips, and supported herself on my chest with her hands.

I parked my bike outside the neurological unit and stood for a little while, listening to the birds rustling in the trees; I could see their bright spring colours among the dense leaves. I thought about waking up next to Simone this morning and looking into her green eyes.

My office looked just as I had left it; the chair on which Maja Swartling had sat while she interviewed me was still pulled out, and my desk lamp was on. I switched it off. It was only half past eight, and I had plenty of time to go through my notes from yesterday’s abortive hypnosis session with Charlotte. It was easy to understand why it had turned out as it had: I had forced the pace of events, striving only to reach the goal. I should have known better. I was far too experienced to make that kind of mistake. It’s impossible to force a patient to see something she absolutely does not want to see. Charlotte had gone into her room but had not wanted to look up. That should have been enough for one session, it was courageous enough.

I changed into my white coat, disinfected my hands, and thought about the group. I wasn’t completely happy with the role Pierre had assumed; it was a little unclear. He often hung around Sibel or Lydia and was talkative and mischievous, but he remained extremely passive during hypnosis. He was a hairdresser, openly homosexual, who wanted to be an actor. On the surface he lived a perfectly functioning life—except for one recurring detail. Every Easter he went on a charter holiday with his mother. They locked themselves in their hotel room, got drunk, and had sex. What his mother did not know was that Pierre sank into a deep depression after every trip and frequently tried to commit suicide.

I didn’t want to force my patients. I wanted it to be their own choice to talk about issues.

There was a knock at the door. Before I had time to answer, it opened and Eva Blau walked in. She had shaved off all her hair and made up only her eyes. She made a strange face, as if she were trying to smile without using her facial muscles.

“No, thank you,” she said suddenly. “There’s no need to invite me to supper, I’ve already eaten. Charlotte is a wonderful person. She cooks for me, meals for the whole week; I put them in the freezer.”

“That’s kind of her,” I said.

“She’s buying my silence,” Eva explained cryptically, moving to stand behind the chair where Maja had sat the previous day.

“Eva, would you like to tell me why you’ve come here?”

“Not to suck your cock—just so you know.”

“You don’t have to continue with the hypnosis group,” I said calmly.

She looked down. “I knew you hated me,” she mumbled.

“No, Eva, I’m just saying you don’t have to be part of the group. Some people don’t want to be hypnotised, some aren’t receptive even though they really do want to try, and some—”

“You hate me.”

I took a moment. “Eva, I don’t hate you. I’m just saying that your participation in the group isn’t meaningful or helpful to you, if you’re unwilling to be hypnotised.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “But you’re not to stick your cock in my mouth.”

“Stop it,” I said.

“Sorry,” she whispered, and took something out of her bag. “Look, this is for you.”

I took the object from her. It was a photograph. The picture showed Benjamin’s christening. I recognised it immediately.

“Sweet, isn’t he?” she said proudly.

I could feel my heart beginning to pound. “Where did you get this?” I asked her.

“That’s my little secret. I look out for myself, you know. It’s the only way to be in this life.”

She sat down on the sofa, calmly unbuttoned her blouse, and exposed her breasts to me. “Stick your cock in then, if it makes you happy.”

“You’ve been to my house,” I said.

“You’ve been to my house,” she answered defiantly.

“Eva, you told me about your home. Breaking in is another matter altogether.

“I didn’t break in,” she retorted quickly.

“You broke a window.”

“The stone broke the window.”

I felt suddenly exhausted; I was losing control and was about to turn my fury on a sick, confused woman.

“Why did you take this picture from me?”

“You’re the one who takes! You take and take! What the fuck would you say if I took things from you? How do you think that would feel?”

She hid her face in her hands and said she hated me; she repeated it over and over again, perhaps a hundred times, before she calmed down.

Then she said steadily, “You have to understand that you make me angry when you claim that I take things. I gave you something, a lovely picture.”

“Yes.”

She smiled broadly and licked her lips. “Now I want you to give me something.”

“What do you want?” I asked calmly.

“I want you to hypnotise me,” she replied.

“Why did you leave a ferrule outside my door?” I asked.

She stared blankly at me. “What’s a ferrule?”

“It’s a flat stick that was once used to punish children,” I said.

“I didn’t leave anything outside your door.”

“That isn’t true. You left an old—”

“Don’t lie!” she screamed.

“Eva, I will call the police if you don’t know where the boundaries are, if you can’t understand that you have to leave me and my family alone.”

“What about my family?” she said.

“Just listen to me.”

“Fascist pig!” she yelled. She leaped to her feet and left the room.

My patients sat before me in the semicircle. It had been easy to hypnotise them this time, and we had drifted softly down together through lapping water. I was working with Charlotte again. Her face was relaxed yet sorrowful, with deep, dark circles under her eyes; the point of her chin was slightly crumpled.

I waited. It was clear that Charlotte was under deep hypnosis. She was breathing heavily but silently.

“You know you’re safe with us, Charlotte,” I said. “Nothing can harm you. You feel good. You are pleasantly relaxed.”

She nodded sadly and I knew she could hear me; she was following my words and was no longer able to distinguish between actual reality and the reality of hypnosis. It was as if she were watching a film in which she herself took part. She was both audience and actor, united as one.

“Don’t be cross,” she whispered. “Sorry, I’m so sorry. I will console you, I promise, I will console you.”

We were in the haunted house. I knew we had reached Charlotte’s dangerous rooms and I wanted her to stop; I wanted her to have the strength to look up from the floor and see something, to catch a glimpse of the thing she was so afraid of. I could hear the group breathing around me. I wanted to help her, but I had no intention of forcing the pace this time; I was not about to repeat last week’s mistake.

“It’s cold in Grandfather’s gym,” Charlotte said suddenly.

“Can you see anything?”

“Long floorboards, a bucket, a cable,” she said, almost inaudibly.

I could see her eyelids quivering. Fresh tears seeped through her eyelashes. Her open hands were nested in her lap, palms up, like an old woman.

“You know you can leave the room whenever you want to.”

“Can I?”

“Whenever you want.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

She fell silent, lifted her chin, then slowly turned her head, her mouth half open like a child’s.

“I’ll stay a little while longer,” she said.

“Are you alone in there?”

She shook her head. “I can hear him,” she murmured, “but I can’t see him.” She frowned, as if she were trying to see something that was out of focus. “There’s an animal here,” she said suddenly.

“What kind of animal?” I asked. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

“Daddy has a big dog …”

“Is your daddy there?”

“Yes, he’s here, he’s standing in the corner; he’s upset, I can see his eyes. I’ve hurt Daddy, he says. Daddy is upset.”

“And the dog?”

“The dog is moving about in front of his legs, sniffing. It comes closer, moves back. Now it is standing quietly beside him, panting. Daddy says the dog is to guard me. I don’t want that, it shouldn’t be allowed to do that; it isn’t—”

Charlotte gasped for breath. A dreadful shadow passed over her face. I thought it was best to come up out of the trance, up out of the black sea. She ran the risk of wrenching herself out of the hypnosis if she moved forward too quickly. We had found the dog; she had stayed and looked at it. This was an enormous step forward. In time we would solve the riddle of who the dog actually was.

As we floated up through the water, I saw Marek part his lips and bare his teeth at Charlotte. Lydia reached out through a dark green cloud of seaweed, trying to stroke Pierre’s cheek; Sibel and Jussi closed their eyes and drifted upwards. We met Eva Blau hovering just beneath the surface.

We were almost awake. The dividing line where reality dissolves into the influence of hypnosis is always unclear, and the same is true during the reverse journey, back to the territory of consciousness.

“We’ll take a break now,” I said, and turned to Charlotte. “Good idea?”

“Thank you,” she said, lowering her eyes.

Marek got up, asked Sibel for a cigarette, and went outside with her. Pierre remained in his seat next to Jussi. Lydia stood up slowly, stretched her arms languidly above her head, and yawned. I thought I would tell Charlotte I was pleased she had chosen to stay a little while longer in her haunted house, but she had left the room.

I had picked up my pad to make a few quick notes when Lydia came over to me. Her heavy jewellery clinked softly, and I could smell her perfume as she stood next to me. “Isn’t it my turn soon?”

“Next time,” I replied, without looking up from my notepad.

“Why not today?”

I put my pen down and met her gaze. “Because I was intending to continue with Charlotte.”

“But if she doesn’t come back,” Lydia persisted.

“Lydia, I try to help all my patients.”

She tilted her head to one side. “But you’re not going to succeed, are you?”

“What makes you think that?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Statistically, one of us will commit suicide, a couple will end up in an institution, and—”

“You can’t reason like that.”

“Yes, I can,” she said, “because I want to be one of those who makes it.” She took a step closer to me and her eyes gleamed with unexpected cruelty as she lowered her voice. “I think Charlotte will be the one who takes her own life.”

Before I had time to respond, she simply sighed and said, “At least she hasn’t got any children.”

I watched Lydia go and sit down. When I glanced at the time, I realised more than fifteen minutes had passed. Pierre, Lydia, and Jussi had returned to their seats. I called Marek in; he was wandering around in the hall, talking to himself. Sibel was standing in the doorway, smoking, and giggled wearily when I asked her to come in.

Lydia’s expression was smug when I finally had to admit that Charlotte hadn’t returned.

“Right,” I said, bringing my hands together. “Let’s continue.”

I saw their faces before me. They were ready. In fact, the sessions were always better after the break; it was as if they were all longing to return to the depths, as if the lights and the currents down there were whispering to us, inviting us to join them once again.

The effect of the induction was immediate. Lydia sank into a deep hypnosis in just ten minutes.

We were falling. I could feel lukewarm water washing over my skin. The big grey rock was covered with corals. The tentacles of their polyps were waving in the water. I could see every detail, every glowing, vibrant colour.

“Lydia,” I said, “where are you?”

She licked her dry lips and tipped her head back; her eyes were just closed, but she had an irritated expression around her mouth, and her brow was furrowed. “I’m taking the knife.” Her voice was dry and rasping.

“What kind of knife is it?” I asked.

“The knife with the serrated edge, the one on the draining-board,” she said in a surprised tone, then sat in silence for a while, her mouth half open.

“A bread knife?”

“Yes.” She smiled.

“Go on.”

“I cut the pack of ice cream in half. I take one half and a spoon to the sofa in front of the TV. Oprah Winfrey. Dr Phil is sitting in the audience. She asks him a question and he holds up his index finger. There’s a piece of red thread tied around it, and he’s just about to tell us why when Kasper starts yelling. I know he doesn’t want anything, he’s just trying to spite me. He yells because he knows it will upset me. I won’t tolerate bad behaviour in my house.”

“What is he yelling?”

“He knows I want to hear what Dr Phil says. He knows I enjoy Oprah; that’s why he’s yelling.”

“And what is he yelling right now?”

“There are two closed doors between us,” she goes on. “But I can hear him yelling.”

“What is he saying?”

“Horrible words. He’s yelling cunt, cunt, cunt