LITMIR.BIZ

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then the kitchen door. He is breathing quietly, trying to see through the textured pane of glass and the glass door to the living room.

      Joona takes a step forward, but really he just wants to get out of the flat: a strong instinct is telling him to call for backup. Something goes dark behind the textured glass. A wind-chime with dangling brass weights is swaying, but without making any noise. Joona sees the motes of dust in the air change direction, following a new air-current.

      He’s not alone in Penelope’s flat.

      Joona’s heart starts to beat faster. Someone is moving through the rooms. He can sense it, and turns to look at the kitchen door, and then everything happens very fast. The wooden floor creaks. He hears a rhythmic sound, like little clicks. The door to the kitchen is half open. Joona catches sight of movement in the crack between the hinges. He presses himself against the wall, as if in a railway tunnel. Someone moves quickly through the darkness of the long hallway. Just their back, a shoulder, an arm.

      The figure approaches rapidly, then spins round. Joona catches just a glimpse of the knife, like a white tongue. It shoots up like a projectile, from below. The angle is so unexpected that he doesn’t have time to parry the blow. The sharp blade cuts through his clothes and its tip hits his pistol. Joona strikes out at the figure, but misses. He hears the knife slash the air a second time and throws himself back. This time the blade comes from above. Joona hits his head on the bathroom door. He sees a long splinter of wood peel off as the knife cuts into the doorframe. Joona falls to the floor, rolls over, kicks out low, in an arc, and hits something, possibly one of his attacker’s ankles. He rolls away, draws his pistol and removes the safety catch in the same fluid movement. The front door is open and he hears rapid footsteps going down the stairs. Joona gets to his feet, is about to set off after the man when he hears a rumbling sound behind him. He understands instantly what the noise is and rushes into the kitchen. The microwave oven has been switched on. It’s crackling, and black sparks are visible through the glass door. The valves of the four burners on top of the old gas stove have been left open, and gas is streaming into the room.

      With a feeling that time has become incredibly sluggish, Joona throws himself at the microwave. The timer is clicking anxiously. The crackling noise is getting louder. A can of insect spray is revolving on the glass plate inside. Joona pulls the plug from the wall and the noise stops. The only sound is the monotonous hiss of the open gas burners on the stove. Joona shuts the valves off. The chemical smell makes his stomach heave. He opens the kitchen window and then looks at the aerosol in the microwave. It’s badly swollen, and could still explode at the slightest touch.

      Joona leaves the kitchen and quickly searches the rest of the flat. The rooms are empty, untouched. The air is still thick with gas. On the landing outside the door Erixon is lying on the floor with a cigarette in his mouth.

      ‘Don’t light it,’ Joona shouts.

      Erixon smiles and waves his hand wearily.

      ‘Chocolate cigarettes,’ he whispers.

      Erixon coughs weakly and Joona suddenly sees the pool of blood beneath him.

      ‘You’re bleeding.’

      ‘Nothing too serious,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how he did it, but he cut my Achilles’ tendon.’

      Joona calls for an ambulance, then sits down beside him. Erixon is pale and his cheeks are wet with sweat. He looks distinctly unwell.

      ‘He cut me without even stopping, it was … it was like being attacked by a bloody spider.’

      They fall silent and Joona thinks about the lightning-fast movements behind the door, and the way the knife moved with a speed and a purposefulness that was unlike anything he’s ever experienced before.

      ‘Is she in there?’ Erixon pants.

      ‘No.’

      Erixon smiles with relief, then turns serious.

      ‘But he was still planning to blow the place up?’ he asks.

      ‘Presumably to get rid of evidence, or some sort of connection,’ Joona says.

      Erixon tries to peel the paper from the chocolate cigarette but drops it and closes his eyes. His cheeks are greyish white now.

      ‘I guess you didn’t see his face either,’ Joona says.

      ‘No,’ Erixon says weakly.

      ‘But we saw something, people always see something …’

       18

       The fire

      The paramedics reassure Erixon repeatedly that they’re not going to drop him.

      ‘I can walk,’ Erixon says, as he shuts his eyes.

      His chin trembles with every step they take.

      Joona returns to Penelope Fernandez’s flat. He opens all the windows, airing out the gas, and sits down on the comfortable, apricot-coloured sofa.

      If the apartment had exploded, it would probably have been written off as an accident caused by a gas leak.

      Joona reminds himself that no fragments of memory ever disappear, nothing you ever see is lost, it’s all a matter of letting the memory drift up from the depths like flotsam.

       So what did I see, then?

      He didn’t see anything, just rapid movements and a white knife-blade.

      That was what I saw, Joona suddenly thinks. Nothing.

      He tells himself that the very absence of observations supports the idea that they’re not dealing with any ordinary murderer.

      They could be dealing with a professional killer, a problem solver, a fixer.

      He had already had his suspicions, but after his encounter he is convinced.

      He’s sure that the person he met in the hallway is the same person who murdered Viola. His intention had been to kill Penelope, sink the motor cruiser and make the whole thing look like an accident. It was the same pattern here, before he was disturbed. He wants to remain invisible, he wants to get on with his business but hide it from the police.

      Joona looks around slowly, trying to gather his observations into a coherent whole.

      It sounds like some children are rolling balls across the floor in the flat upstairs. They would be trapped in an inferno of fire if Joona hadn’t pulled the plug from the microwave in time.

      He’s never been subjected to such a deliberate and dangerous attack before. He’s convinced that the person who was inside the home of peace campaigner Penelope Fernandez isn’t some hate-filled enemy from the extreme right. Those groups may be guilty of carefully planned acts of violence, but this individual is a trained professional in a league far above the extreme right-wing groups in Sweden.

      So what were you doing here? Joona asks himself. What is a fixer doing with Penelope Fernandez, what has she got caught up in? What’s going on under the surface?

      He thinks about the man’s unpredictable movements, the knife-technique that was designed to get past any standard defensive manoeuvres, including those taught by the police and military.

      He feels a shiver run through him when he realises that the first blow would have hit his liver if his pistol hadn’t been hanging below his right arm, and the second would have hit his head if he hadn’t thrown himself backward.

      Joona gets up from the sofa and goes into the bedroom. He looks at the neatly made bed and the crucifix hanging above it.

      A fixer thought he had murdered Penelope, and his intention

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