Lazarus Read online

  LAZARUS

  Lars Kepler

  Translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

  Copyright © Lars Kepler 2018

  Translation copyright © Neil Smith 2020

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in 2018 by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Sweden, as Lazarus

  Lars Kepler assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

  Cover layout design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

  Cover photography © Dirk Wustenhagen / Trevillion Images (wintery road);

  Tim Robinson / Trevillion Images (man crossing road)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

  Source ISBN: 9780008205959

  Ebook Edition © MARCH 2020 ISBN: 9780008205973

  Version: 2020-01-15

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Epilogue

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  Also by Lars Kepler

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The light of the white sky reveals the world in all its naked cruelty, the way it must have appeared to Lazarus outside the tomb.

  The ribbed metal floor is vibrating beneath the priest’s feet. He clings to the railing with one hand as he tries simultaneously to parry the rocking with his stick.

  The grey sea is moving drowsily, like a billowing tent-canvas.

  The ferry is being winched forward along the two steel cables stretched between the two islands. They rise dripping out of the water in front of the boat and sink back down behind it.

  The ferryman brakes, foaming waves swell up and the gangplank is extended to the concrete jetty with a clatter.

  The priest stumbles slightly as the prow hits the fenders and the jolt echoes through the hull.

  He’s here to visit retired churchwarden Erland Lind, seeing as he isn’t answering his phone and didn’t show up for the Advent Service in Länna Church like he usually does.

  Erland lives in the warden’s cottage behind Högmarsö Chapel, it belongs to the parish. He suffers from dementia, but still gets paid to cut the grass and grit the paths when the weather turns icy.

  The priest walks along the winding gravel track, his face turning numb in the cold air. There’s no one in sight, but just before he reaches the chapel he hears the shriek of a lathe from the dry dock down in the boatyard.

  He can no longer remember the Bible quote he tweeted that morning, he had been thinking of repeating it to Erland.

  Against the backdrop of flat farmland and the strip of forest, the white chapel looks almost as if it’s made of snow.

  Because the place of worship is shut up in winter, the priest walks directly to the warden’s cottage and knocks on the door with the crook of his stick, waits, then goes inside.

  ‘Erland?’

  There’s no one home. He stamps his shoes and looks around. The kitchen is a mess. The priest gets out the bag of cinnamon buns and puts it down on the table next to a foil tray containing the cracked remains of some mashed potato, dried-up sauce, and two grey meatballs.

  The lathe down by the shore falls silent.

  The priest goes outside, tries the door to the chapel, then looks in the unlocked garage.

  There’s a muddy shovel on the floor, and a black plastic bucket full of rusting rat-traps.

  He uses his stick to lift the plastic covering the snow-blower, but stops when he hears a distant moaning sound.

  He goes back outside and walks over to the ruins of the old crematorium on the edge of the forest. The oven and the sooty stump of its chimney are sticking up from the tall weeds.

  The priest walks round a stack of wooden pallets and can’t help looking over his shoulder.

  He’s had an ominous feeling ever since he stepped on board the ferry.

  There’s nothing reassuring about the light today.

  The odd sound rings out again, closer, like a calf trapped in a metal
box.

  He stops and stands still, not making a sound.

  Everything is quiet as his breath steams from his mouth.

  The ground is muddy and trampled down behind the compost heap. There’s a bag of potting compost leaning against one tree.

  The priest starts to walk towards the compost but stops when he reaches a metal pipe sticking out of the ground, some half a metre long. Perhaps it marks the boundary.

  Leaning on his stick, he looks up at the forest and sees a path covered with pine-needles and cones.

  The wind is whistling through the treetops, and a solitary crow cries in the distance.

  The priest turns back, hears the strange moaning sound behind him and starts to walk faster. He passes the crematorium and cottage, glances over his shoulder and thinks that all he wants right now is to get back to his vicarage and sit down in front of the fire with a thriller and a glass of whisky.

  1

  A dirty police car is driving away from the centre of Oslo on the outer ring road. The weeds growing beneath the barriers shiver in the wind, and a plastic bag is blowing along the ditch.

  Karen Stange and Mats Lystad have responded to the call even though it’s late.

  It’s really time for them to knock off for the day, but instead they’re on their way to Tveita.

  A number of residents in an apartment block have been complaining about a terrible smell. The maintenance company sent someone to check the bins, but they were all clean. The smell turned out to be coming from a flat on the eleventh floor. The sound of quiet singing could be heard inside, but the occupant, a Vidar Hovland, was refusing to answer the door.

  The police car drives past an industrial estate.

  Behind the barbed wire fence sit skips, trucks, and depots full of salt, ready for winter.

  The blocks of flats on Nåkkves vei look like a huge concrete staircase has fallen over and split into three parts.

  A man in grey overalls is waving to them in front of a van with Morten’s Lock Service Ltd emblazoned on the side. Their headlights sweep over him, and the shadow of his raised hand reaches several storeys up the building behind him.

  Karen pulls over to the kerb and stops gently, pulls the handbrake on, switches the engine off and gets out of the car with Mats.

  The sky is already closing up for the night. The air is cold, it feels like it might snow. The two police officers shake hands with the locksmith. He’s clean-shaven, but his cheeks are grey, his chest seems shrunken and he moves in a twitchy, nervous way.

  ‘Have you heard the one about the Swedish Police being called to a cemetery? They’ve already found almost three hundred buried bodies,’ he jokes almost breathlessly, and looks down at the ground as he laughs.

  The thickset man from the building maintenance company is sitting in his pickup smoking.

  ‘The old guy’s probably forgotten he’s left a bag of rubbish containing fish in the hall,’ he mutters, then shoves the car door open.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Karen replies.

  ‘I banged on the door and shouted through the letterbox that I was going to call the police,’ he says, and flicks the cigarette butt away.

  ‘You did the right thing calling us,’ Mats replies.

  Dead bodies have been found here twice in the past forty years, one in the car park and the other inside one of the flats.

  The two officers and the locksmith follow the maintenance man in through the door and are hit at once by the nauseating smell.

  They all try to avoid breathing through their noses as they get into the lift.

  The doors close and they feel the pressure under their feet as they are carried upward.

  ‘Floor eleven’s a favourite,’ the maintenance man says. ‘We had a difficult eviction there last year, and in 2013 one of the flats was completely gutted by a fire.’

  ‘On Swedish fire extinguishers it says they have to be tested three days before any fire,’ the locksmith says quietly.

  The smell when the lift door opens is so awful that they all get a slightly desperate look in their eyes.

  The locksmith covers his nose and mouth with his hand.

  Karen struggles to stop herself retching. It’s as if her diaphragm is panicking and trying to push the contents of her stomach up through her throat.

  The man from the maintenance company pulls his jumper over his nose and mouth and points out the flat with his other hand.

  Karen walks over, puts her ear to the door and listens. There’s no sound from within. She rings the doorbell.

  A subdued melody rings out.

  Suddenly she hears a weak voice from inside the flat. A man’s voice, singing or reciting something.

  Karen bangs on the door and the man falls silent, then starts again, very quietly.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ Mats says.

  The locksmith walks over to the door, puts his heavy bag down on the floor and unzips it.

  ‘Can you hear that?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Karen replies.

  The door to one of the other flats opens and a small girl with tousled fair hair and dark rings under her eyes looks out.

  ‘Go back inside,’ Karen says.

  ‘I want to watch,’ the girl smiles.

  ‘Aren’t your mum and dad home?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, and quickly shuts the door.

  Rather than use a lockpick, the locksmith drills the entire lock out. Shiny spirals of metal fly out and fall to the floor. He picks up the hot sections of the cylinder and puts them in his bag, pulls the bolt out and then backs away.

  ‘Wait here,’ Mats tells the maintenance man and locksmith.

  Karen draws her pistol as Mats pulls the door open and calls into the flat.

  ‘This is the police! We’re coming in!’

  Karen looks at the pistol in her pale hand. For a few moments the black metal object looks completely alien, its component parts, the barrel, bolt, and butt.

  ‘Karen?’

  She looks up and meets Mats’s eye, then turns towards the flat, raises the pistol and goes inside with her other hand over her mouth.

  She can’t see any bags of rubbish in the hall.

  The stench must be coming from the bathroom or kitchen.

  The only sound is her boots on the plastic floor, and her own breathing.

  She walks past a narrow hall mirror and into the living room, quickly securing the corners and glancing around at the chaos. The television has been tipped onto the floor, potted ferns are lying smashed on the floor, the sofa bed is standing askew and one of the cushions has been torn open, and the standard lamp is lying on the floor.

  She turns her pistol towards the passageway leading to the bathroom and kitchen, lets Mats move past her and then follows him.

  Their boots crunch on broken glass.

  One wall lamp is lit, small dust-particles hovering in its light.

  She stops and listens.

  Mats opens the bathroom door, then lowers his weapon. Karen tries to look in, but the door is blocking the light. All she can make out is a dirty shower curtain. She takes a step closer, leans forwards and nudges the door, and the light reaches across the tiles.

  The handbasin is smeared with blood.

  Karen shudders, then she suddenly hears a voice behind them. An old man, talking quietly. She’s so startled that she lets out a whimper as she swings round and aims her pistol along the corridor.

  There’s no one there.

  Full of adrenalin, she returns to the living room, hears a laugh and points her gun at the sofa.

  There could easily be someone hiding behind it.

  Karen hears Mats trying to say something to her, but doesn’t catch what.

  Her pulse is throbbing in her head.

  She moves forward slowly, her finger resting on the trigger, then notices that she’s shaking and supports it with her other hand.

  The next moment she realises that the voice is coming from the stereo, as the old man starts to
sing again.

  Karen carries on round the sofa, then lowers her weapon and stares at the dusty cables and empty crisp packet.

  ‘OK,’ she whispers to herself.

  On top of the stereo is a CD case from the Institute for Language and Folklore. The same track is playing on a loop, over and over again. An old man is saying something in heavy dialect, laughs, then starts to sing – There’s a wedding here at our farm, with empty plates and cracked dishes – before falling silent.

  Mats is standing in the doorway, gesturing to her to move on, keen to get to the kitchen.

  It’s almost dark outside now, the curtains are quivering gently in the heat from the radiators.

  Karen follows her partner into the passageway, sways slightly and reaches out to the wall for support with the hand holding the pistol.

  The air is thick with the smell of excrement and cadaver, strong enough to make their eyes water.

  She can hear Mats taking short, shallow breaths, and focuses on not letting her nausea overwhelm her.

  She follows him into the kitchen and stops.

  On the linoleum floor lies a naked person with a bulging stomach and a head that’s too big.

  A pregnant woman with a swollen, grey-blue penis.

  The floor lurches beneath her and her field of vision contracts.

  Mats is leaning against the chest freezer, moaning gently to himself.

  Karen tries to tell herself that it’s just shock. She can see that the dead body is a man’s, but the swollen stomach and spread thighs make her think of a woman giving birth.

  She can feel her hands trembling as she puts her pistol back in its holster.

  The body is in an advanced stage of decomposition, large parts of it look slack and wet.

  Mats crosses the floor and throws up in the sink, so hard that it splashes the coffee machine.

  The dead man’s head looks like a blackened pumpkin that’s been attached to his shoulders. His jaw has been broken off, and the gullet and Adam’s apple have been pushed out through the deformed mouth by the gases that have built up inside.

  There was a fight, Karen thinks. He got injured, broke his jaw, hit his head on the floor and died.

  Mats vomits again, then spits out the slime.

  Karen looks back to the stomach, parted legs, and the man’s genitals.

  Mats is sweating profusely and his face is white. She’s about to go over and help him when someone grabs hold of her leg. Karen lets out a shriek and starts to fumble for her pistol, then realises that it’s the girl from the neighbouring flat.