Part 69 (2/2)

'Look at this picture,' he says.

Rocky takes the phone, holds the screen away from the daylight and then gasps for breath.

'Stop!' he roars. 'Stop the car!'

He opens the door as they're speeding along, but it hits a railing and bounces back, and gla.s.s from the broken window flies into the car. The door is hanging loose, sc.r.a.ping along the tarmac. Joona pulls over to the verge and comes to a halt with two wheels up on the gra.s.s.

A lorry blows its horn angrily behind them and pa.s.ses so close that the ground shakes.

Rocky walks out into the field beside the road, striding past the plastic-wrapped bales of hay lying scattered across the ground, stops, and holds his face in his hands.

120.

Joona sits there with the engine running, picks his phone off the floor and tries to call Erik again. Rocky stands in the field with his face turned up towards the sky for a long while before returning to the car. He yanks the broken door off, tosses it in the ditch and gets back in his seat.

'I remember her,' he says without looking at Joona. 'She had her head shaved, pale as candle-wax, she went to Klockhammar School ... After the funeral I had s.e.x with her on the floor of the hall in the rectory ... it didn't mean anything, we'd been talking and drinking coffee, and I was in no hurry to get home.'

Joona says nothing, aware that even though the photograph triggered Rocky's memory, the flood of information is finite. He could lose touch with his past again at any moment.

'I remember it all,' Rocky says dreamily. 'She came looking for me in Salem, came to the services ... She was just there, as part of my life, without me really realising how it had happened ...'

He drifts off in thought and pokes a cigarette out of the packet with trembling hands. His rough grey hair is frizzy and his thick eyebrows have tightened across the top of his nose.

'I'm a priest,' he says eventually. 'But I'm also a man ... I do things I might not always be proud of. I'm not boyfriend material, I'm clear about that, I've never been faithful or ...'

He falls silent again as if the strength of his memories has taken his breath away.

'Sometimes I slept with her, sometimes she had to wait, I never promised her anything, I didn't want her f.u.c.king sermons ... I remember, it was always about me watching out for promiscuous women ... ”Her house is the way to h.e.l.l” ...'

The car shakes as a bus drives past, and Joona sees Rocky gaze out across the field and lake at the little cl.u.s.ter of trees in the distance.

'When I told her I was fed up with her, she disappeared,' he goes on. 'But I understood that she was still creeping around outside the rectory ... I opened the door and shouted into the darkness, telling her to leave me the f.u.c.k alone.'

He stops talking again and Joona waits in silence so as not to pull Rocky out of his fragile reminiscences.

'The following evening she came to the church with twenty capsules of white heroin and it all started again ... it went f.u.c.king fast,' he says, looking gloomily at Joona. 'I was hooked as good as instantly. We shared needles, she followed me everywhere, talking about G.o.d, preaching, sank into squalor with me, wanted to be with me, wanted to be part of me.' He shakes his head and rubs his face.

'We hung out at the Zone, I didn't care about all her preaching ... it was mostly extreme interpretations of the Bible, proof that we should get married ... a whole worldview in which a jealous G.o.d proved her right.'

A trace of pain flashes in his eyes as he looks darkly at Joona.

'I was drugged and stupid,' he says. 'I told her I loved Natalia. It wasn't true, but I still said it.'

All the energy goes out of him and his chin sinks to his chest.

'Natalia had such beautiful hands,' he says, then falls silent.

His face is suddenly very pale and he looks out at the fields. His forehead is s.h.i.+ny with sweat, and a drop falls from his nose on to his chest.

'You were talking about Natalia,' Joona says after a while.

'What?'

Rocky looks at him uncomprehendingly, leans out of the car and spits on the gra.s.s. A car pulling a trailer full of chopped wood drives past.

'Nelly showed pictures of the people she was planning to kill,' Joona goes on. 'But Natalia had to die in front of you ...'

Rocky shakes his head.

'All I know is that G.o.d lost me somewhere along the way, and didn't bother to go back and look,' he mutters hoa.r.s.ely.

Joona doesn't say anything more. He takes his phone out and calls Erik's number again, but still can't get through.

He calls Margot but gives up after ten rings.

Now he knows who the preacher is, but he can't prove anything, and he's got nothing to give the police. There's a chance that Margot might listen to him, but he may well have gone too far when he broke Rocky out of jail.

Joona tries to understand why Nelly has been stalking Erik. They're only colleagues, and Nelly is married to Martin Brandt. It must have been going on for years, and it isn't going to end well.

121.

Grit flies up behind them as they set off again. The car fills with a thunderous, jolting wind.

As Joona pushes the car as hard as it will go, he tries to get a picture of the serial killer clear in his mind. After they had s.e.x following her father's funeral, Nelly transferred her affections to Rocky. She stalked him, followed him, made herself part of his life, tried to control him with drugs, and killed the women who threatened their union. She created an impossible life for Rocky by making sure he was the main suspect for the murder of Rebecka Hansson. In the end she kept him in a cage, was supplying him with heroin and thought she owned him completely, when he managed to escape. He stole a car in Finsta and crashed on his way to Arlanda. The accident left him with serious brain damage, he lost all appeal to her and ended up being sentenced to secure psychiatric care.

Maybe Nelly caught sight of Erik when he was called in as an expert witness during Rocky Kyrklund's trial.

Joona shudders at the thought that Nelly probably started stalking Erik as long ago as that, slowly and systematically getting closer to him.

She studied and got her qualifications, got a job at the same place as him, married Martin and supported Erik during his separation from Simone.

After the divorce her a.s.sumption of owners.h.i.+p grew stronger, and she started to keep watch on him, couldn't bear any sign of compet.i.tion, and became pathologically jealous. She probably wanted him to choose her of his own accord, that he would have eyes for no one but her, but when that didn't happen something snapped inside her and she had to act in order to stop herself falling apart.

When Erik embarked on an affair with Maria Carlsson, she probably thought everything would be fine if she could just get rid of her rival.

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