The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler

Author:Lars Kepler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Blue Door
Published: 2011-04-07T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 66

monday, december 14 : night

It is cold and dark in his office at the hospital. Erik kicks off his shoes, catching the smell of damp greenery on his coat as he hangs it up. He is shivering as he boils some water on the hot plate, makes a cup of tea, takes two strong tranquillizers, and sits down at his desk. There are no lights on except the desk lamp. He stares into the deep black darkness of the windowpane, where he can glimpse an outline of himself, framed by the light. Who hates me? he wonders. Who envies me? Who wants to punish me, take everything I have away from me, take my life, take what lives within me? Who wants to crush me?

Erik switches on the main light and begins to pace back and forth. Incapable of gathering his thoughts, he reaches for the phone on his desk and knocks over a plastic cup of water. He watches without interest for a moment as a thin stream slowly heads toward one of his medical journals. Without another thought, he dials Simone’s cell number, leaves a short message about wanting to look at Benjamin’s computer again, and then falls silent, unable to say anything else.

“Sorry,” he says quietly, and tosses the phone back on the desk.

The lift rumbles in the corridor. He hears the doors ping and glide open, then the sound of someone pushing a squeaking hospital trolley to his door.

The pills are beginning to work; he feels the calm rise through his body like warm milk, a memory, a movement inside him, a dip in the pit of his stomach. Like falling from a great height, first through clear cold air, then down into warm oxygen-rich water.

“Come on,” he says to himself. Someone has taken Benjamin; someone has done this to me; there has to be a key to this somewhere in my memory.

“I will find you,” he whispers.

Erik contemplates the sodden pages of his medical journal. In one photograph, the new director of the Karolinska Institute is leaning over a desk. The ink has run, blurring and darkening her face. When Erik peels the magazine from his desktop, the back pages stick to its surface, leaving behind random letters, so he begins to scratch off the bits of paper with his thumbnail. Suddenly he stops and stares at a combination of letters: e v A.

Up from the depths of his memory rolls a slow wave, full of reflections and facets; then comes the clear image of a woman who refuses to give back what she has stolen. Her name is Eva. Her mouth is tense, with flecks of froth on the narrow lips. She is screaming at him in outraged fury. 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 hides her face in her hands and says she hates him; she repeats it over and over again, perhaps a hundred times, before she calms down.

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