'Stop it,' he says, but can't help smiling.

'No, but she was pretty funny,' Nelly says and laughs.

Erik rests his head on his hand and she turns serious and walks in, closes the door behind her and looks at him.

'What is it?' she asks. 'What's happened?'

'Nothing,' he replies.

'Tell me,' she insists, sitting down on the corner of his desk.

Her red woollen dress crackles with static electricity against her nylon tights as she crosses her legs.

'I don't know,' Erik sighs.

'What's up with you?' she laughs.

Erik stands up, takes a deep breath and looks at her.

'Nelly,' he says, and she can hear how empty his voice sounds. 'I need to ask you about a patient ... Before you started working here, Nina Blom put together a team for a complicated research project.'

'Go on,' she says, looking at him with obvious curiosity.

'I know I outlined my cases to you, but this may not have been included, I mean ...'

'What's the patient's name?' she asks calmly.

'Rocky Kyrklund do you remember him?'

'Yes, hang on,' she says tentatively.

'He was a priest.'

'Exactly, I remember, you talked about him quite a lot,' she says as she thinks. 'You had a file of pictures from the crime scene, and-'

'You don't remember where he ended up?' he interrupts.

'That was years ago,' she replies.

'He's still inside, though, isn't he?'

'We'd better hope so,' she replied. 'He'd killed people, after all, hadn't he?'

'A woman.' Erik nods.

'That's right, now I remember. Her whole face was destroyed.'

17.

Nelly stands behind Erik as he makes his way through the patient database on his computer. He types Rocky Kyrklund's name, searches, and discovers that he was sent to Karsudden District Hospital.

'Karsudden,' he says quietly.

She brushes a strand of blonde hair from her cheek and looks at him, her eyes narrowing.

'Do you want to tell me why we're talking about this patient?'

'Rocky Kyrklund's victim had been posed. You won't remember, but she was lying on the floor with her face horribly disfigured, and her hand round her neck ... I've just hypnotised Bjrn Kern, and ... and he described details that were very reminiscent of the old murder.'

'The one committed by the priest?'

'I don't know, but Bjrn Kern said his wife's face had been completely destroyed ... and that she was sitting with her hand over her ear.'

'What do the police say?'

'I don't know,' Erik mutters.

'I mean, you did tell that ... lovely pregnant lady?'

'I didn't tell her anything.' Erik says.

'You didn't?' she asks, a sceptical smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

'Because it emerged while he was under hypnosis, and-'

'But he wanted to talk, didn't he?'

'I might have misheard,' Erik says.

'Misheard?' she laughs.

'It's just so sick I can't think clearly any more.'

'Erik, it probably isn't important, but you have to tell the police, that's why they're here,' Nelly says gently.

He walks over to the window. The area where the patients stand and smoke is empty now. But he can still see the cigarette b.u.t.ts and sweet wrappers that have been tossed on the ground, and a blue shoe-cover that's been pushed into the ashtray.

'It's a long time ago, but to me ... Do you know what those weeks were like? I didn't want Rocky to be released,' Erik says slowly. 'It was everything ... the brutality, the eyes, the hands ...'

'I know I read all about it,' Nelly says. 'I don't remember the details of your recommendation, but I know you said he was seriously b.l.o.o.d.y dangerous and that there was a severe risk of a relapse.'

'What if he's out? I've got to call Karsudden,' Erik says, then picks up his phone, checks his computer, and dials the number for Simon Casillas, the senior consultant in charge.

Nelly sits down on Erik's sofa while he talks to the doctor, and smiles at him when he looks at her as he exchanges the usual pleasantries and when he ends the conversation by repeating that the consultant's article in Swedish Psychiatry really was excellent.

The sun pa.s.ses behind a cloud and darkness falls across the room, as if a huge figure were standing in front of the building.

'Rocky is still in Ward D:4,' Erik says. 'And he's never been let out on parole.'

'Does that feel better?'

'No,' he whispers.

'Are you losing your grip?' she asks, so seriously that he can't help smiling.

He sighs and puts his hands to his face, then slowly lowers them, feeling his fingertips press gently against his eyelids and down his cheeks before he looks at Nelly again.

Her back is straight as she looks at him carefully. A tiny, sharp little wrinkle has appeared between her thin eyebrows.

'OK, listen,' Erik says. 'I know this is completely wrong, but in one of the last conversations I had with Rocky, he claimed he had an alibi for the night of the murder, but I didn't want him to be released simply because he'd bought himself a witness.'

'What are you trying to say?' she asks quietly.

'I never pa.s.sed that information on.'

'No way,' she says.

'He could have been released-'

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, you can't do that!' she interrupts.

'I know, but he was guilty and he would have killed again.'

'That's not our business, we're psychologists, we're not detectives, and we aren't judges ...'

She takes a few agitated steps, then stops and shakes her head.

'f.u.c.king h.e.l.l,' she gasps. 'You're mad, you're completely-'

'I can understand you being angry.'

'Yes, I am angry. I mean, you know, if this gets out you'd lose your job.'

'I know what I did was wrong, it's tormented me ever since, but I've always been utterly convinced that I stopped a murderer.'

's.h.i.t,' she mutters.

He picks up the business card from his desk and begins to dial the superintendent's number.

'What are you doing?' she asks.

'I need to tell her about Rocky's alibi, and the whole business about the hand and the ear, and-'

'Go ahead,' she interrupts. 'But what if you were right, what if his alibi wasn't real? Then any similarities are just coincidence.'

'I don't care.'

'Then ask yourself what you're going to do with the rest of your life,' she says. 'You'll have to give up being a doctor, you'll lose your income, you might even face charges, all the scandal and gossip in the papers-'

'It's my own fault.'

'Find out if the alibi checks out first if it does, then I'll report you myself.'

'Thanks,' he laughs.

'I'm being serious,' she says.

18.

Erik leaves the car in front of the garage, hurries up the path to his dark house, unlocks the door and goes inside. He turns the light on in the hall but doesn't take his outdoor clothes off, just carries on down the steep staircase to the cellar that contains his extensive archive.

In the locked steel cabinets he keeps all the doc.u.ments from his years in Uganda, from the major research project at the Karolinska Inst.i.tute, and about his patients at the Psychology Clinic. All the written material is collected in the form of logbooks, personal journals and extensive notes. The recordings of his sessions have been saved on eight external hard-drives.

Erik's heart is thumping as he unlocks one of the cabinets and searches back in time to the year when his life crossed paths with that of Rocky Kyrklund.

He pulls the file out of a black box and hurries upstairs to his study. He switches the lamp on, glances at the black window, removes the elastic band round the file, and opens it on the desk in front of him.

It was nine years ago, and life was very different. Benjamin was still in primary school, Simone was writing her dissertation in art history, and he himself had just started working at the Crisis and Trauma Centre with Professor Sten W Jakobsson.

He no longer remembers the exact details of how he was contacted and invited to join a team for a forensic psychology project. He had actually decided not to take part in anything like that again but, given the particular circ.u.mstances, changed his mind when his colleague Nina Blom asked for his help.

Erik remembers spending the evening in his new office, reading the material the prosecutor had sent over. The man who was going to be evaluated was a Rocky Kyrklund, and he was vicar of the parish of Salem. He was being held in custody on suspicion of having murdered Rebecka Hansson, a forty-three-year-old woman who had attended Ma.s.s and then stayed behind to speak to him in private on the Sunday before she was murdered.

The murder had been extremely aggressive, fuelled by hatred. The victim's face and arms had been destroyed. She was found lying on the linoleum floor of her bathroom, with her right hand around her neck.

There was fairly persuasive forensic evidence. Rocky had sent her a number of threatening text messages, and his fingerprints and strands of his hair were found in her home, and traces of Rebecka's blood were found on his shoes.

An arrest warrant was issued and he was eventually picked up seven months later in conjunction with a serious traffic accident on the motorway at Brunnby. He had stolen a car at Finsta and was heading for the airport at Arlanda.

In the accident Rocky Kyrklund suffered serious brain damage which led to epileptic seizures in the frontal and temporal lobes of his brain.

He would suffer recurrent bouts of automatism and memory loss for the rest of his life.