Lazarus

There’s no one there.

She’s almost certain she saw a man standing motionless at the edge of the forest.

He was as thin as a skeleton, and was looking up at her.

The glass in the greenhouses is glinting with condensation. There’s no one there. She can’t let herself be afraid of the dark, that would make things impossible.

Valeria tells herself that it must have been a customer or supplier who disappeared when he saw her naked in the window.

She often gets visitors after the nursery has closed for the day.

She reaches for her mobile, but the battery has run out.

She quickly pulls on her long, red dressing-gown and starts to go downstairs. After a few steps she feels a cold breeze around her ankles. She carries on, and sees the front door standing wide open.

‘Hello?’ she calls quietly.

There are fallen leaves on the doormat, they’ve blown in across the wooden floor. Valeria slips her wet feet into her wellington boots, grabs the large torch from the coat rack and goes outside.

She follows the path down the greenhouses, checks the doors and shines the torch between the rows of plants.

The dark leaves light up in its beam as shadows and reflections play across the glass walls.

Valeria walks round the furthest greenhouse. The edge of the forest is black. The cold grass crunches beneath her feet as she walks.

‘Can I help you with something?’ she says loudly, shining the torch towards the trees.

The tree trunks look pale and grey in the light, but further in there’s nothing but darkness. Valeria walks past her old wheelbarrow, and can smell the rust on it. Slowly she moves the beam of the torch from tree to tree.

The long grass looks untouched. She goes on aiming the torch at the trees. In amongst the trunks she catches sight of something on the ground. It looks like a grey blanket covering a log.

The light from the torch is getting weaker, and she shakes it. It grows stronger again, and she moves closer.

As she holds a branch out of the way she feels her heart start to beat faster, and the torch trembles in her hand.

It looks almost as if there could be a body under the blanket, someone hunched up, maybe missing one or both arms.

She has to pull the blanket off and look.

The forest is completely silent.

A dry branch snaps beneath her boot and suddenly the whole edge of the forest is bathed in white light. It’s coming from behind her, and as it moves long, thin shadows merge with hers as they slip across the ground.

3

Joona Linna lets his car roll slowly towards the furthest greenhouse. The narrow, cracked tarmac track is edged with tall grass and tangled forest.

He has one hand resting on the steering wheel.

There’s a thoughtful look on his face, a lonely look in his eyes, grey as sea-ice.

Joona keeps his hair cut short, because it starts sticking out in all directions if he lets it grow too long.

He’s tall and muscular, the way you can only be from decades of hard exercise, when all your muscles, sinews and ligaments work together.

He’s wearing a dark grey jacket, with an open-necked white shirt.

A wrapped bouquet of red roses is lying on the passenger seat beside him.

Before Joona Linna joined Police Academy he was in the military, part of the Special Operations Unit, where he qualified for a cutting-edge course in the Netherlands in unconventional close combat and urban guerrilla warfare.

Since Joona became a superintendent with the National Crime Division, he has solved more complex murder cases than anyone else in Scandinavia.

When he was sentenced to four years in prison, there were plenty of people who thought the entire trial in Stockholm Courthouse was unfair.

Joona didn’t appeal against the judgement. He had known the risk he was taking when he tried to save a friend.

Last autumn Joona’s sentence was reduced to community service as a neighbourhood officer in Norrmalm in Stockholm. He’s been staying in a police service apartment on Rörstrandsgatan, opposite the Philadelphia Church. In a few weeks’ time he’s due to return to duty as a superintendent, and get back his office in Police Headquarters.

Joona turns the car round and stops, gets out and stands there in the cool air.

The lights are on in Valeria’s little house, and the front door is wide open.

The light from the kitchen window is spreading out through the bare branches of the weeping birch and across the frost-covered grass.

He hears a snapping sound from the forest and turns. A weak light is moving amongst the trees, and leaves rustle as footsteps approach him.

Joona quickly unfastens his holster with one hand.

He steps aside when he sees Valeria emerge from the forest with a torch in her hand. She’s wearing a red dressing-gown and wellington boots. Her cheeks are pale and her hair wet.

‘What are you doing in the forest?’ he asks.

She’s looking at him oddly, as if her thoughts were a long way away.

‘I was just checking the greenhouses,’ she says.

‘In your dressing-gown?’

‘You’re early,’ she points out.

‘I know, it’s very impolite, I tried to drive slower,’ he says, fetching the bunch of roses.

She thanks him, looks at him with her big brown eyes, and invites him up to the house.

The kitchen smells of cumin and bay, and Joona starts to say something about how hungry he is, then changes his mind and tries to explain that he knows he’s early and that he’s not in any rush to eat.

‘It’ll be ready in half an hour,’ she smiles.

‘Perfect.’

Valeria puts the flowers down on the table and goes over to the stove. She lifts the lid of the pan and stirs it, then puts her reading glasses on and checks the cookbook before adding the chopped parsley and coriander from the chopping board.

‘You’re staying the night, aren’t you?’ she asks.

‘If that’s OK.’

‘I mean, so you can have some wine,’ she explains with a blush.

‘I guessed as much.’

‘You guessed as much,’ she says, imitating his Finnish accent with a wry smile.

‘Yes.’

She takes two glasses from one of the top cupboards, opens a bottle of wine and pours it.

‘I’ve made the bed in the spare room and left a towel and toothbrush.’

‘Thanks,’ Joona says, taking the glass.

They drink a silent toast, tasting the wine and looking at each other.

‘I didn’t get to do this in Kumla,’ he says.

Valeria looks at the cut ends of the roses, puts them in a vase on the table, then turns serious.

‘I’m going to say it straight out,’ she begins, pulling at the belt of her old dressing-gown. ‘I’m sorry I reacted the way I did.’

‘You’ve already apologised,’ Joona replies.

‘I wanted to say it face to face … I behaved stupidly and immaturely when I found out you were still a police officer.’

‘I know you thought I lied, but I—’

‘It wasn’t just that,’ she interrupts, and blushes again.

‘Everyone likes a police officer, don’t they?’

‘Yes,’ she replies, trying so hard not to smile that the tip of her chin wrinkles.

She stirs the pot again, puts the lid back on and lowers the heat slightly.

‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

‘No, it’s only … I was planning to sort out my hair and make-up before you came, so I’ll nip off and do that now,’ she says.

‘OK.’

‘Do you want to wait here or keep me company?’

‘I’ll keep you company,’ Joona smiles.

They take their wine-glasses upstairs with them and go into the bedroom. The yellow dress is still lying on the neatly made bed.

‘You can sit in the armchair,’ Valeria mumbles.

‘Thanks,’ he says and sits down.

‘You don’t have to watch.’

He looks away as she takes the dressing-gown off, pulls on the yellow dress and starts to fasten the small buttons that run up from the waist.

‘I don’t often wear a dress, just the occasional day in the summer when I go into the city,’ she says, looking at her reflection in the mirror.

‘Really beautiful.’

‘Stop looking,’ she smiles as she fastens the last of the buttons over her breasts.

‘I can’t,’ he replies.

She moves closer to the mirror and starts to put up her damp hair with hairclips.

Joona looks at her slender neck as she leans forwards to put lipstick on.

She sits down on the bed and picks up one of her earrings from the bedside table when she stops and meets his gaze.

‘I think my reaction was because of that time in Mörby Centrum … I’m still ashamed of that,’ she says quietly. ‘I don’t even want to think about what you must have thought of me.’

‘That was one of my first operations with the Stockholm Rapid Response Unit,’ he replies, looking down at the floor.

‘I was an addict, a junkie.’

‘People take different paths, that’s just how it is,’ he replies, looking her in the eye.

‘But it upset you,’ she says. ‘I could tell … and I remember trying to counter that with a kind of hatred.’

‘Do you know, I could only ever picture the way you were in high school … you never answered any of my letters, then I did my military service and ended up abroad.’

‘And I ended up in Hinseberg Prison.’

‘Valeria—’

‘No, it was all so pointless, so fucking immature – I took every bad decision I possibly could … And then I came close to ruining things for us again.’

‘You weren’t expecting me to carry on in the police,’ he says softly.

‘Do you even know why I was in prison?’

‘I’ve read the file, and it’s no worse than what I’ve done.’

‘OK, as long as you’re aware that I’m no angel.’

‘Of course you are,’ he retorts.

Valeria goes on looking at him, as if there’s more to see, as if there’s something hidden that might soon become apparent.

‘Joona,’ she says seriously. ‘I know you’re convinced that it’s dangerous to be together with you, that you expose the people you care about to danger.’

‘No,’ he whispers.

‘You’ve been through some terrible things, for a very long time, but it isn’t written in the stars that it always has to be like that.’

4

Joona is eating one last helping even though he’s already full, as Valeria wipes the bottom of her plate with a piece of bread. They’re sitting at the kitchen table, with the vase of roses moved to the worktop so they can see each other.

‘Do you remember when we went on that canoeing course together?’ Valeria asks, emptying the last of the bottle of wine in Joona’s glass.

‘I think about that summer a lot.’

It was high summer, and the two of them decided to spend the night on a small island they had spotted. It lay in an inlet, and was barely bigger than a double bed, with soft grass, a few bare rock outcrops, and five trees.

Valeria wipes the lipstick from the rim of her glass.

‘Who knows how differently our lives might have turned out is that storm hadn’t blown in,’ she says without looking at him.

‘I was so in love with you in high school,’ he says, thinking that the same feelings are washing over him again.

‘I don’t think that ever really passed for me,’ she says.

He puts his hand on hers and she looks at him with shimmering eyes before picking up another piece of bread.

Joona wipes his mouth on his napkin and leans back, making his chair creak.

‘How’s Lumi?’ Valeria asks. ‘Is she getting on OK in Paris?’

‘I spoke to her on Saturday, she sounded happy, she was going to a party at Perottin, which apparently is a gallery I ought to know about … and I started asking if she was going to be out late and how she was going to get home.’

‘The worried dad,’ Valeria says with amusement.

‘She said she’d probably get a taxi, and then I might have got a bit annoying, telling her to make sure she sits behind the driver and puts the seatbelt on.’

‘OK,’ Valeria smiles.

‘I realised she wanted to end the call but I couldn’t help telling her to take a photograph of the taxi-driver’s licence and send it to me, and so on.’

‘She didn’t send the picture, did she?’

‘No,’ he laughs.

‘Young people want us to care, but not too much … they want us to have faith in them.’

‘I know, but it just comes out, I have trouble not thinking like a police officer.’

They remain seated at the table, drink the last of the wine, talk about the nursery and Valeria’s two sons.

The darkness outside is thick now, as Joona thanks her for the meal and starts to clear the table.

‘Would you like me to show you the guest bedroom?’ she says shyly.

They stand up and Joona hits his head on the light, and it makes a metal clanging sound. They go up the creaking staircase together to a narrow room with a deep window alcove.

‘Nice,’ he says, stopping right behind her.

She turns and finds herself unexpectedly close to him, moves backwards and gestures slightly oddly towards the wardrobe.

‘There are extra pillows in there … and blankets, if you’re cold.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Or you could sleep in my bed, of course, if you like,’ she whispers, taking his hand and leading him with her.

She stops in the doorway to her bedroom, stands on tiptoe and kisses him. He responds, puts his arms round her and almost picks her up.

‘Shall we make the sheets into a tent?’ he whispers.

‘That’s what we always used to do,’ she smiles, and feels her heart beat faster.

She unbuttons his shirt and pushes it down over his shoulders, places her hands on his biceps and looks at him.

‘It’s funny … I remember your body, but you were only a tall boy back then, you didn’t have all these muscles and scars.’

He unbuttons her dress, kisses her on the lips and the side of her neck, then looks at her again.

She’s slim, with small breasts.

He remembers her dark nipples.

Now she has tattoos on her shoulders, and her arms are muscular and covered with scratches from thorny shrubs.

‘Valeria … how can you be so beautiful?’ he says.

She pulls down her pants and lets them fall to the floor, then steps out of them. Her pubic hair is black and tightly curled.

With trembling hands she starts to unbutton his trousers, but can’t quite figure out how the catch on his belt works and only succeeds in pulling it tighter instead.

‘Sorry,’ Valeria giggles.

She blushes and forces herself not to stare too hard as he takes his trousers off.

They pull the large duvet over themselves, then sit beneath it on the bed, laughing and looking at each other in the soft light before starting to kiss again.

They roll to one side, push the duvet off, feeling like teenagers, but simultaneously not. They’re strangers, yet oddly familiar.

She sighs as he kisses her neck and lips, sinking back onto the bed and looking into his intense grey eyes, and feels a burst of giddy joy in her heart.

He kisses her breasts and sucks one of her nipples. She pulls his head towards her and he feels her heart racing.

‘Come here,’ she whispers, pulling him upwards and parting her legs as he lies on top of her.

Joona can’t stop looking at her, those serious eyes, her half-open lips, her neck, the shadow of her collarbone.

Valeria pulls him closer and feels how hard he is as he slips inside her.

His weight presses her into the mattress, and the muscles in her thighs strain as her legs are pushed apart.

He feels her squeezing, moist warmth, then lets out a gasp as he changes rhythm.

She opens her eyes and sees the tenderness in his, the lust.

She responds to his movements and the soft light runs across her breasts, stomach, hips.

Her breathing speeds up and she raises her hips, leans her head back and closes her eyes.

The duvet slides to the floor.

The water in the glass on the bedside table is swaying, casting reflections that move in an elliptical pattern across the ceiling, over and over again.

5

It’s Sunday, and the early winter’s day is so dark that it feels as though the sun has already gone down. Joona has spent the past two nights at Valeria’s, but is going back to work on Monday.

Valeria is sitting at the desk up in her bedroom, going through some quotes on her laptop when she hears a car.

She looks out of the window and sees Joona put his spade in the wheelbarrow and wave towards a white Jaguar that’s approaching along the gravel track.

Joona tries to get Nils Åhlén to stop, but he drives straight over the row of potted hyacinths. There’s a cracking sound as the pots break and damp compost sprays up around the tyres. The car comes to a stop with one wheel perched on the tall edging stone.

Valeria stands in the window and watches as a tall man in pilot’s glasses gets out of the precariously balanced car. He’s wearing a white lab coat under his unbuttoned duffel coat. His thin nose is crooked and his cropped hair grey.

Nils Åhlén is Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Karolinska Institute, and one of the leading forensic medical officers in Europe.

Joona shakes hands with his old friend and says he looks paler than usual.

‘You should be wearing a scarf,’ Joona says, and tries to fasten Åhlén’s collar.

‘Anja gave me the address here,’ Nils says, without returning Joona’s smile. ‘I need to—’

He breaks off abruptly when he sees Valeria coming down the steps.

‘What’s happened?’ Joona asks.

Nils Åhlén’s thin lips are colourless, and he has a hunted look in his eyes.

‘I need to talk to you in private.’

Valeria walks over to them and holds out her hand to the tall man.

‘This is Valeria,’ Joona says.

‘Professor Nils Åhlén,’ Åhlén replies formally.

‘Nice to meet you,’ Valeria smiles.

‘I need to have a word with Nils,’ Joona says. ‘Is it OK if we go into the kitchen?’

‘Of course,’ she says, and leads them up to the house.

‘I’m sorry to have to disturb you on a Sunday,’ Nils Åhlén says.

‘Don’t worry, I was doing some work upstairs anyway,’ Valeria says, and heads towards the stairs.

‘Don’t come down, I’ll let you know when we’re done,’ Joona calls after her.

‘OK.’

Joona shows Åhlén into the kitchen and invites him to sit down. The fire in the stove crackles.

‘Would you like coffee?’

‘No, thanks … I won’t …’

He tails off and sinks onto a chair.

‘So how are you doing really?’

‘This isn’t about me,’ Nils replies, sounding troubled.

‘So what’s happened, then?’

Nils doesn’t meet his gaze, just brushes the tabletop with one hand.

‘I have a lot of dealings with my colleagues in Norway,’ he begins tentatively. ‘And I’ve had a call from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health … that’s where their forensic medicine and pathology departments are based these days.’

‘I know.’

Nils swallows hard, takes his glasses off, makes a half-hearted attempt to polish them and then puts them back on again.

‘Joona, I’m sitting here, but I still don’t know how on earth to tell … I mean, not without you …’

‘Just tell me what’s happened.’

Joona pours a glass of water and puts it down in front of Åhlén.

‘As I understand it, the Norwegian Criminal Police have taken over from the Oslo police in the preliminary investigation of a suspected murder … They found a dead man in a flat. All the evidence suggested a run-of-the-mill drunken fight at first, but when they looked in the victim’s freezer they found body parts belonging to a large number of different people, frozen at various stages of decomposition … They’re working on the theory that the dead man was a previously unknown grave-robber … he may also have been involved in necrophilia and cannibalism … It seems he used to travel to antiques fairs and auctions as a dealer, taking the opportunity to raid local graves and help himself to souvenirs.’

Nils Åhlén takes a sip of water, then wipes his top lip with a trembling finger.

‘What does this have to do with us?’

‘I don’t want you to get upset now,’ Nils says, meeting Joona’s gaze for the first time. ‘He had Summa’s skull in his freezer.’

‘My Summa?’

Joona reaches out for the worktop and manages to knock over the empty wine bottle, but doesn’t appear to notice as it clatters into the sink with the glasses and plates. His ears are roaring as memories of his wife flood his mind.

‘Are you sure?’ he whispers, looking out of the window at the greenhouses.

Nils Åhlén pushes his glasses further up his nose and explains that the Norwegian police have tried to find matches for DNA from the body parts found in the freezer in police databases held by Europol, Finland, and the Scandinavian countries.

‘They found Summa’s dental records … and seeing as I signed her death certificate, they called me.’

‘I see,’ Joona says, and sits down opposite his friend.

‘They found all his travel documents in his flat … in the middle of November he was at a house clearance in Gällivare … that’s not far from where Summa is buried.’

‘Are you sure about this?’ Joona repeats.

‘Yes.’

‘Can I see the pictures?’

‘No,’ Nils whispers.

‘You don’t have to worry,’ Joona says, looking Nils in the eye.

‘Don’t do it.’

But Joona has already opened his case and taken out the file from the Norwegian Criminal Police. He lays one photograph after the other down on the kitchen table.

The first one shows the open chest freezer from above. A child’s grey foot is sticking out of a frosted lump of white ice. A skeletal spine is nestled next to a bearded face and bloody tongue.

Joona leafs through photographs of the thawing body-parts on a stainless steel worktop. A human heart in an advanced state of decay, a leg cut off at the knee, an entire baby’s body, three fleshless craniums, some teeth, and a torso complete with breasts and arms.

Suddenly Valeria walks into the kitchen and puts two used coffee-cups on the draining board.

‘For God’s sake!’ Joona snaps, trying to cover the pictures even though he knows she’s already seen them.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbles and hurries out.

He gets to his feet, leans one hand against the wall, stares out at the greenhouses, then back at the pictures again.

Summa’s skull.

It’s just a coincidence, he tells himself. The grave-robber didn’t know who she was. There’s no indication on the gravestone, and nothing in any public registers.

‘What do we know about the perpetrator?’ he asks, and hears Valeria go back upstairs.

‘Nothing, they’ve got no leads at all.’

‘And the victim?’

‘All the evidence suggests a fight in the flat, he had a lot of alcohol in his blood when he died.’

‘Isn’t it a bit odd that the police don’t have any leads on the other person?’

‘What are you thinking? Joona, what exactly are you thinking now?’ Nils Åhlén asks with apprehension in his voice.

6

Valeria is sitting at her computer upstairs when Joona comes up and knocks on the door.

She turns towards him and the pale light through the leaded window gives her hair a chestnut-red shimmer.

‘Nils has gone,’ Joona says in a subdued voice. ‘Sorry I was angry, I just didn’t want you to have to see that.’

‘I’m not that fragile,’ she replies. ‘You know, I’ve seen dead bodies plenty of times.’

‘But that was more than body-parts … this is personal,’ Joona says, then falls silent.