'What are you doing?'

'Sorry, I'm just a bit stressed,' she says, rubbing her forehead.

He nods and walks over to the door to the hall and pulls the handle, but the powerful spring-loaded mechanism has locked the door. There's no key in the hole. Adrenalin floods his body as he hears her approach from behind. He yanks at the door but it doesn't move a millimetre.

'I just want you to do as I say,' Nelly explains.

'Well, I'm not thinking of going down into some f.u.c.king-'

Erik can't understand what's happening, but something hits him hard across the back and all the air goes out of him as his forehead hits the door. He stumbles sideways. It feels like he's got cramp in his left shoulder, then realises that warm liquid is running down his back.

He looks down and sees splashes of blood in the filth on the linoleum floor, turns to face Nelly and realises that she has. .h.i.t him with a lump of wood, which is now lying on the floor by her feet.

'Sorry, Erik,' she all but laughs. 'I didn't mean ...'

'Nelly?' he gasps. 'You hurt me.'

'Yes, I know, it's not easy, but I'm helping you. Nothing to worry about,' she says.

'I didn't do what they're saying about me,' he tries to explain.

'Didn't you?'

He moves sideways then turns back towards Nelly again, and sees that she's picked up a heavy crowbar from the worktop.

'Don't you understand ...? I'm innocent!'

Erik backs away and b.u.mps into the table, on top of which is a full washing-up bowl. The dirty water slops over the side and splashes on to the floor.

Nelly moves quickly towards him and strikes. He blocks the blow with his lower arm, it hurts so much he almost pa.s.ses out, and he stumbles backwards into the pale blue door of the pantry.

She swings again but misses his head. Splinters fly from the edge of the door. He lurches to the side and manages to knock over a tray of empty jam-jars. They roll across the worktop and fall to the floor, scattering shards of broken gla.s.s.

'Nelly, stop it!' he gasps.

His arm is probably broken, he's having to support it with his other hand.

Nelly has a look of intense concentration on her face as she pursues him. He throws his head back and she turns her body and strikes again. The crowbar misses his face and brushes past the tip of his nose. The back of his head hits an open cupboard door. He tries to get away but puts his foot down on a piece of broken gla.s.s just as she lashes out again.

He blocks the powerful blow with his broken arm and shrieks with pain. His vision goes black for a moment and his legs give way. Erik falls to his knees. He stares at the filthy floor and the blood running down his injured arm.

'Stop, just stop,' he pleads, and tries to get up, but the next blow hits him on the temple.

His head is knocked sideways. Everything goes quiet inside him, as though he had simply come to a stop.

He fumbles for support with his hand.

His field of vision contracts to a narrow tunnel, he sees the kitchen shrink as Nelly leans forward and smiles at him.

Erik tries to stand up. He realises he must have trodden on more gla.s.s, because he feels the pain like a distant itch, far away, under his foot, down in the ground somewhere.

He falls backwards, rolls on to his side, and lies there panting with his cheek against the floor.

'Oh, G.o.d ...'

'And the just, upright man is laughed to scorn,' she mutters. 'But ask now the beasts ...'

Through his limited field of vision he sees Nelly open the door to the cellar and stick a wedge under it with her foot.

He smells her perfume as she bends over, takes hold of him under his arms and drags him across the floor. He's completely powerless, his feet just hang limp, leaving a trail of blood across the floor.

'Don't do it,' Erik pants.

She pulls him towards the staircase, he tries to cling on to a cupboard but can't hold on. Blood is trickling over his cheek and down his throat and neck. He tries to grab hold of the door frame but is too weak to resist.

Nelly walks backwards down the stairs, dragging him into the darkness. His feet fall heavily with each step.

He can barely see anything, just feels the pain shooting from his arm with each step down. Far above he can make out the glow of the torch. Then he loses consciousness.

125.

When Erik opens his eyes in the darkness he notices the stench of old excrement and far gone decay. His right arm is excruciatingly painful and his head is throbbing with pain.

He can't see anything, and a scorching wave of panic crumbles his thoughts, scattering them across the flaring darkness. He can't understand what's happened, and his entire body feels tense, wary, ready for flight.

All he really feels like doing is calling for help, but he forces himself to lie still and listen. The room is completely silent.

Occasionally he hears a vague rumbling sound, like wind in a chimney.

He carefully touches his wounded arm and discovers that it's been wrapped in paper.

Erik's heart begins to beat faster.

This is madness, he thinks.

Nelly hit me, seriously hurt me, my arm is probably broken.

When he tries to roll over, he can feel dried blood sticking his hair and cheek to the mattress.

He raises his head and gasps with dizziness. His temple pounds as he forces himself up onto his knees.

The effort makes Erik breathe hard through his nose, and he tries to listen again but can't hear any movement, no sound of breathing apart from his own.

He stares out into the darkness, blinks, but his eyes don't get used to it.

Unless I've gone blind, this room is entirely devoid of light, he thinks.

Now he remembers being dragged down a steep flight of steps into a cellar before he pa.s.sed out.

He holds his injured arm tightly to his body as he stands up, but before he manages to straighten up he hits his head on something.

There's a faint rattle of metal.

Crouching, he creeps forward with his hand outstretched, but only walks two steps before he reaches some bars.

Something wet pops beneath one of his feet.

Erik tries to feel his way forward, following the mesh, and reaches a corner.

It's a cage.

His heart thuds in his chest and he feels panic rising once more, his pulse thunders in his ears and it feels like he can't breathe.

He begins to understand. Everything that has happened to him slides apart, piece by piece, forming clear, isolated events as if illuminated by ice-cold light.

Erik keeps moving round, trampling on something that feels like a blanket. He feels along the mesh with his good hand, running his fingers along the thick bars, investigating the corners. They've been welded together. With his fingers he can feel the lumpy joints where the bars have been welded to the mesh on the floor and roof of the cage.

Nelly, he thinks.

Nelly has done all of it.

Somehow she's the person known as the unclean preacher. A serial killer, a stalker.

Erik stands on the mattress and finds the hatch with his fingers. There's a dull rattle as he pushes it, and the cage sways around him.

He sticks his fingers out and feels the large padlock, twists and tries to pull it, but it soon becomes obvious that the lock can't be forced, not even if he had a st.u.r.dy crowbar.

Erik kneels down again and tries to breathe calmly. He leans on his left hand and closes his eyes in the darkness, when a sound makes him start. The door up in the kitchen is opening.

Steps creak on the staircase and a patch of light grows steadily larger.

Someone is coming down, holding a torch.

He leans forward and sees the green dress around Nelly's legs.

The beam from the torch veers across the steps and wall, where a large patch of plaster has fallen off. The handrail is loose and pulls some more mortar off when she leans on it.

Erik feels like he's going to be sick.

She killed Maria Carlsson, Sandra Lundgren, Susanna Kern and Katryna Youssef completely innocent women that he happened to come into contact with.

How can he possibly understand that Nelly did that? That she sat astride them and hacked at their faces and throats with a knife, long after they were dead?

She's reached the bottom now. The light sweeps past him and he sees that the cage is made of welded reinforcing mesh. He's surrounded by rust-brown iron rods in a close grid-pattern. The heavy lock is made of brushed steel, sealing a hatch made of a double layer of mesh with welded hooks.

Shadows slide across the walls of the cellar as she stops and looks at him.

Her face is flushed with excitement and she's panting for breath. Erik sees that his left hand is brown with rust from the mesh. His vest is torn, hanging in shreds around his waist.

'Don't be frightened,' Nelly says, pulling an office chair towards the cage. 'I know, right now you're trying to work out how it all fits together, but there's no rush.'

Without taking her eyes off him, she puts the torch down on an old kitchen table. Erik sees it light up the wall by the stairs, and is able to make out the rest of the room in its indirect light.

Beside him is an old mattress. The striped fabric is stained with dark patches in the middle, as if someone had lain there for a long time.

In the other corner is a faded plastic bucket full of murky water, next to a china plate with a washed-out floral pattern and a network of fine cracks.

This must have been the cage Rocky spoke about.

He was here for seven months before he managed to escape.

He got out of the cage and stole a car in Finsta, only to crash and end up getting sentenced for Rebecka's murder.

In the shadows outside the cage Erik can see dead rats and a bundle of wooden sticks with sooty ends.

Nelly's black bag is under the table.

Erik brushes his hair from his eyes, thinking that he has to talk to her, to make himself something more than just a victim for her.

'Nelly,' he says weakly. 'What am I doing here?'

'I'm protecting you,' she says.

He coughs and thinks that he needs to speak in his usual voice, has to sound like her colleague at the Karolinska, not sound afraid, dehumanised.

'Why do you think I need protecting?'

'Loads of reasons,' she whispers with a smile.

Some of her blonde hair has slipped out from her headscarf, and her thin dress has dark sweat stains under the arms and across her chest.

She says she's protecting me, he thinks. Nelly believes that she's protecting me for loads of reasons.

She hasn't brought me here to kill me.

Rocky sat in this cage, and wasn't tortured or mutilated, but possibly chastised and beaten.

Spiders' webs full of flies and woodlice sway from the mesh down by the floor. He looks at the dark opening at the other end of the cage. The faint breeze across the floor is coming from the pa.s.sageway.

He needs to think.