Madeleine is standing perfectly still, with her hand on the wound to her neck. Blood is running between her fingers, but she's alive.

Nelly's high-pitched voice has been a foreboding of death every time.

Joona rushes over to the girl, kicks the knife from Nelly's hand even though he knows she's dead, picks Madeleine up and backs away through the smoke.

Nelly is lying on her back among the fragments of broken mirror, her mouth open. She's lost one of her boots and her foot is twitching in her filthy nylon stocking.

A plastic bottle topples over and paraffin splashes out across the floorboards, there's a hiss and then the fire leaps up through the floor.

They're hit by a wave of heat. Joona stumbles backwards with the girl, just making it through the doorway as the floor of the bedroom gives way under Nelly's weight.

She's sucked down and vanishes into a shaft of raging flame.

Joona's trouser leg catches fire as he shuffles backwards with the girl in his arms.

The flames are reaching up with a howl all the way from the cellar, striking the bedroom ceiling. Burning pieces of the lamp fall in a cloud of swirling sparks. The windowsill is ablaze and the gla.s.s shatters with a bang.

Joona pulls Madeleine with him further into the girl's bedroom. The walls covered with pictures of Erik are on fire.

'I'm going to take this off,' Joona says, and pulls the tape from her mouth. 'Did that hurt?'

'No,' she whispers.

A tall cupboard collapses through the floor of the bedroom and disappears into the shrieking inferno.

'Let's try to get out,' he says, wrapping his leather jacket around her. 'The smoke's dangerous, so I want you to breathe through the lining. Can you do that?'

She nods, and he picks her up and starts to carry her down the stairs. The glow from the fire is flickering across the walls. Sparks are drifting up between the steps. From somewhere deep in the bas.e.m.e.nt there's a screech of twisting metal.

The fire is climbing the wall then pulling back, leaving sooty traces across the wallpaper.

Joona breathes hot air into his lungs and begins to cough.

There's a crash in the room beneath them as the heat blows out all the windows at the same time. Gla.s.s rains down onto the floor and air streams in, making the flames leap up towards the ceiling with a roar.

The burning lampshade spins on its cable.

The girl coughs and Joona shouts to her to keep breathing through the lining of his jacket.

In the living room below the bedroom the walls are burning from floor to ceiling. The heat forces him towards the television room. Parts of the ceiling are collapsing and the girl screams as burning dust rains down on them.

Joona coughs again and puts his hand down on the hot floor to steady himself. His lungs are burning, and smoke-poisoning is making him dizzy and tired. He knows he doesn't have many seconds left, so holds his breath and gets to his feet again. With the girl in his arms he takes a few faltering steps forward, then carries on through the thick smoke in the next room.

His eyes are streaming and he's having trouble seeing. The sofa catches alight and sparks swirl up into his face on the hot wind.

There's a thunderous roar behind their backs, like a lashing sail, and the fire throws itself at them.

He steps over a smoking bundle of carpets and shoves the door open.

The kitchen is ablaze, and burning sections of the ceiling are crashing down. An explosion sends splinters of gla.s.s and fire across the room.

Joona's lungs are straining and burning, he'll have to breathe soon, his heart is pounding desperately.

The end of one of the roof beams comes loose and falls like a heavy pendulum, crushing the kitchen table and embedding itself deep in the floor.

The linoleum floor is bubbling and the walls are rippling with fire.

A bucket of water is boiling.

The powerful spring mechanism has contorted out of shape, bending the door back on one hinge.

Joona steps over the dead police officer's body. The hall is full of flames. The heat and howling roar wrap themselves around him and the child. He knows he needs oxygen desperately, but forces himself to fight the urge to take a breath.

Surrounded by fire, he fights his way forward and kicks the burning front door open. It comes loose from its hinges and crashes down the front steps.

Joona emerges on to the veranda with the girl in his arms. His face is black with soot and his clothes are burning. Police and paramedics rush towards them with fire-extinguishers and blankets.

Margot Silverman is forced to take a step back from the heat and lets out a gasp as a powerful contraction hits her, then feels her waters break and run down between her thighs.

The clattering downdraught from the helicopter's rotor-blades sends rubbish and dust flying in a wide circle.

Erik is holding Maddy's hand as the helicopter takes off. She's lying strapped to a stretcher next to Jackie, and smiles up at him before closing her eyes.

They rise unsteadily into the air, and Erik sees Joona lying on all fours on the ground, coughing. He's surrounded by police officers and paramedics. Margot is trying to resist as she is led away to a waiting ambulance.

The yellow glow of the burning house and the pulsating blue lights of the emergency vehicles fill the yard.

Joona slowly gets up, takes his pistol from its holster and throws it on the ground, then holds out both hands so he can be cuffed.

The helicopter turns, tilts forward and picks up speed.

Erik watches as the whole house collapses into the flames, and the smoke curls up into the sky like a black umbilical cord. The shadow of the tall chimney stretches jerkily across the ruins and neglected fields.

epilogue.

Erik Maria Bark is sitting in his sheepskin armchair, looking out at the white October sky through the tall windows. Detective Superintendent Margot Silverman is walking up and down across the polished oak floor, holding her baby daughter at her breast.

Erik and Rocky Kyrklund have both been cleared of suspicion of any involvement in the murders. Without apologising for anything, Margot is outlining the key points of the long reconstruction of events she has been working on since September.

Nelly probably began stalking Erik at the time of Rocky Kyrklund's trial. She transferred her fixation to him, just as she had transferred her fixation to Rocky at her father's funeral.

It turned out that Nelly once registered for a medical degree in the USA, but there's no sign of any qualifications, employment history or specialist training. She probably taught herself everything on her own. Her house in Bromma contained hundreds of books about neurology, psychological trauma and disaster psychiatry.

There was nothing to suggest that her husband had any idea about her double life. She spied on Erik in secret, slowly getting closer to him and building up a collection of pictures of him in the house at the burned-out gla.s.sworks. After Erik's divorce, she began to imagine that she and Erik were actually married.

Erik closes his eyes and hears gentle piano music through the walls as he listens to Margot's voice.

In Nelly's case, obsessive fixation syndrome was linked to a narcissistic personality disorder that led to her trying to resemble Erik, to become everything for him. And the more she felt she owned him, the more she needed to watch and control him.

She wanted him to see her, to love and desire her. Her need was insatiable, until in the end she was like a fire, growing and growing until everything was consumed.

Nelly was deeply marked by her religious upbringing, by the constant presence of the church and her father's sermons. She had studied the Old Testament closely, and its jealous G.o.d convinced her that everything she felt was right.

She spied on the women she thought Erik was attracted to, and became fixated on their individual attributes. Driven by pathological jealousy, she filmed them to unmask their supposedly coquettish behaviour before stripping them of their beauty and attractiveness.

It isn't easy to see how her jealousy was aroused, or how she selected her victims. The evidence suggests that each murder only served to accelerate the process. When there was no way back, she turned her hostility against Erik; she was like a rabid animal, prepared to attack anything and everything.

The build-up of stress led her to think that the police investigation was going too slowly, so she started to leave more clues. Tormented by jealousy, she murdered her rivals and at the same time set a trap for Erik, one that would end up leading him to her.

Nelly had killed her mother in front of her father, she had killed the woman Rocky claimed he loved in front of him, and she had been planning to kill Jackie in front of Erik.

She would have taken Madeleine as a trophy, leaving Jackie without a face, with her hand over her womb to ill.u.s.trate her particular crime.

Margot falls silent, carefully moves her baby up towards her shoulder and strokes her back until she burps.

When Margot has left the house, Erik walks towards the gently rippling piano music and opens the double doors to the living room. The grand piano is standing in the middle of the floor, and appears to be playing itself. Only when he walks round the oversized instrument can he see the look of concentration on Madeleine's face as her fingers dart across the keys.

Erik sits down quietly next to Jackie on the sofa and after a while she leans her head on his shoulder.

The paramedics managed to stabilise Jackie's heart with a defibrillator before she was put in the helicopter. She was given emergency sedation, and underwent a seven-hour operation in the University Hospital in Uppsala.

For Erik everything feels like he's woken up from a long nightmare, and, as Jackie laces her fingers between his, all he feels is a deep grat.i.tude that they're alive and that Cupid had another arrow in his quiver for him.

Madeleine lets the final notes fade before stopping the strings, then waits for silence to spread through the room before looking up and smiling at them.

Erik stands up and applauds, and doesn't stop until Madeleine starts to adjust the stool. He walks over and sits down, changes the sheet-music, closes his eyes for a few seconds, then begins to play his etude.

On Friday, 24 October the protracted main hearing in Stockholm District Court comes to an end. The presiding judge and the three lay judges regard it as proven beyond reasonable doubt that Joona Linna is guilty of a number of serious crimes in connection to the jailbreak at Huddinge Prison.

The verdict should have been expected in spite of the extenuating circ.u.mstances, but when the sentence is p.r.o.nounced Erik gets to his feet. Jackie and Madeleine stand up beside him, followed by Nils hlen, Margot Silverman and Saga Bauer.

Joona remains seated next to his defence lawyer, his head lowered, as the judge reads out the unanimous verdict.

'The court finds Joona Linna guilty of violence against a public official, aggravated criminal damage, a.s.sisting a felon to escape from custody, alleging a public office, and aggravated theft ... The defendant is sentenced to four years in prison.'

Keep Reading.

If you're a Joona Linna fan, try the first in the series:.

COME FACE TO FACE WITH FEAR ITSELF.

Click here to buy The Hypnotist.

If you're a Joona Linna fan, try the second in the series:.

HE SEES YOUR DARKEST DREAMS THEN HE MAKES THEM COME TRUE..

Click here to buy The Nightmare.

If you're a Joona Linna fan, try the third in the series:.

WAKE UP TO TRUE EVIL..

Click here to buy The Fire Witness.

If you're a Joona Linna fan, try the fourth in the series:.

HE'LL STEAL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP.

Click here to buy The Sandman.

About the Author.

Lars Kepler is a No.1 bestselling international sensation, whose Joona Linna thrillers have sold over 6 million copies in 20 countries. The first book in the series, The Hypnotist, was selected for the 2012 Richard and Judy Book Club and the most recent, The Sandman, was the Evening Standard's book of the year. Stalker is the fifth novel in the series and went straight to No.1 in Sweden, Norway, Holland and Slovakia.

Lars Kepler is the pseudonym for writing duo, Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril. They live with their family in Sweden.

www.larskepler.com.

Also by Lars Kepler.

The Hypnotist.

The Nightmare.

The Fire Witness.

The Sandman.

end.