KULT: A dark and gripping crime thriller full of twists and suspense Read online

  Contents

  About the author

  Title Page

  Night on our earth now has fallen...

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47

  48

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  Author's Note

  Copyright

  Stefan Malmström is a former news journalist who has worked for Sveriges Radio and Swedish TV4. Today he works as a consultant, lecturer and author. At a young age, Stefan was manipulated into the Church of Scientology in Hässleholm, a small town in southern Sweden. KULT, his first book, is based on his experiences in the cult. Stefan lives in Karlskrona in Sweden with his family.

  KULT

  Stefan Malmström

  Translated by

  Suzanne Martin Cheadle

  SILVERTAIL BOOKS • London

  Night on our earth now has fallen.

  Shimmering starlit, sheen!

  Our small worlds wander so distant.

  Darkness so endless seems.

  Darkness and depth and the dusk hour,

  Why, why do I love them?

  Though the stars wander so distant.

  Earth is still our human home.

  Erik Blomberg

  Translated by Linda Schenck

  1.

  Luke’s hand shook as he tried to put the key in the lock. Something was wrong. So wrong.

  “Just open the door!” screamed Therese, Viktor’s ex-wife, standing behind Luke and on the verge of hysteria. It was eight-thirty on Monday evening and they were outside the door of Viktor’s apartment on the third floor of Alamedan 30 in downtown Karlskrona.

  Luke swore to himself. The key wouldn’t go in.

  “You must have given me the wrong key,” Luke said. “It doesn’t fit.”

  Therese grabbed his arm and tried to take it from him.

  “Give it to me. I’ll take care of it.”

  Luke jerked his arm away.

  “No, I’ll do it,” he snapped, feeling instantly guilty for the sharpness of his tone. It wasn’t fair to speak to Therese like that. She had every right to be beside herself with worry. Viktor should have arrived with his and Therese’s four-year-old daughter Agnes at Luke’s for dinner two-and-a-half hours ago, at six o’clock. Luke started trying to call Viktor on his cell phone when he was an hour late, but he didn’t answer. An hour later, Luke was worried and he decided to leave his cabin on Björkholmen and head to Viktor’s apartment, a five-bedroom, 3,000-square foot place in a spectacular brick-and-granite building. Viktor, Luke’s best friend, had lived there since he divorced Therese three years earlier.

  When Luke came up to the third floor, he heard music playing in Viktor’s apartment and assumed he was in there with Agnes. But the door was locked and when Luke rang the bell no one opened it. After ten minutes of ringing and pounding, Luke realized he was going to have to call Therese as she had a spare key.

  Therese answered after four rings, and there was a lot of noise and talking in the background. She was at a work party and grew both irritated and nervous when Luke asked if she could come with her spare key. She had left Agnes with Viktor around five o’clock, at which point everything seemed normal. She promised Luke she would come with the key as soon as she could.

  As soon as the call ended, Luke pushed the elevator button to send it down so Therese wouldn’t have to take the stairs. Ten minutes passed before he heard the elevator running. It stopped at the right floor and Therese stepped out—wearing full make-up and party clothes.

  “I should never have agreed to shared custody,” were the first words out of her mouth. “He can hardly take care of himself. How in the hell could he take care of a child, too?”

  “Now he’s ruined the entire evening for me,” she continued while giving Luke the key. “We’re celebrating the biggest order in the history of the company and were just about to sit down to eat. A three-course meal. He’s definitely going to have to pay me back for this.”

  Now it was a few minutes later, and that calm anger happened had been replaced by pure, primal panic. Luke had never seen a mother terrified for the safety of her child before, and it was as powerful as any emotion he had ever witnessed. It made him even more desperate to get into the flat quickly.

  Luke examined the key. At first he thought it was one of those keys which worked whichever way you held it, but now he realized he might be holding it upside down. He turned it quickly and it slid in all the way. He twisted it and heard the latch click open. Luke shoved open the heavy door and the sound of the music hammered against his eardrums. It was jazz.

  Strange, he thought. Viktor doesn’t like jazz.

  He turned on the light in the hallway and entered the stylishly minimalist apartment. Viktor hadn’t spared a dime when he divorced Therese and bought the place. He tore out nearly everything. New kitchen, new bathrooms, refinished floors, fresh paint everywhere, a complete renovation. He hired a local interior decorating company and gave them free license. It cost a fortune, but if anyone could afford it, Viktor could. The floor in the foyer was composed of black and white marble squares in a checkerboard pattern. White walls, a narrow black bureau under a painting by Blekinge artist Kjell Hobjer of a large red fish, covering almost the entire picture, set against a bright blue background.

  Luke’s thoughts were racing with questions but no answers. Was the gas stove leaking? In his mind, he saw Viktor and Agnes lying passed out in their beds. But he didn’t smell gas. It smelled clean. Viktor hired a cleaning lady who usually came on Sundays.

  Damn strange, Luke thought. Completely dark in the apartment and jazz playing loudly. So unlike Viktor.

  “Viktor!” Luke called into the apartment as Therese pushed passed him, threw open the door to Agnes’ room, turned on the light, looked in and then continued into the apartment. Luke also looked into the room. The bed was empty, and the comforter lay on the floor. The pink pillows and stuffed animals rested in a neat row on the petite red armchair. The book of princess fairy tales, which Luke read for her last Saturday night, lay on the nightstand.

  Luke hurried towards the gigantic living room. The computer, the source of the music, was on. He saw Therese stop in the entrance to the living room. She screamed and disappeared into the room. A second later, Luke halted at the same spot and saw Therese leaning over Agnes, who lay in her nightgown on the pale grey sofa. She had thrown up and looked like she was sleeping deeply.

  Luke turned his head and went completely cold when he saw Viktor—hanging lifeless from a noose on the bathroom door.

  2.
/>
  Luke ran to Viktor and lifted him as he pulled him sideways so the rope would slide off of the top of the door. The rope had been tied around the door handle on the other side. Viktor’s cheek pressed against Luke’s when he lifted him down, and the thought occurred to him that this was the first time he had felt Viktor’s cheek against his. They usually hugged when they hadn’t seen each other in a few days, but never cheek-to-cheek. This was the first time. And Viktor’s cheek was cold.

  “What the hell have you done, Viktor? What have you done?” Luke’s voice trembled as he quickly laid him down on the parquet floor. Luke caught the scent of urine as he clumsily tried to release the noose around Viktor’s neck and looked into Viktor’s eyes. He saw no sign of life in them. He tried to feel for breath and find a pulse in his neck but found none. He made a few awkward attempts to blow air into Viktor’s lungs, but he soon gave up. There was no response. The realization that Viktor was dead instantly brought back memories from Luke’s time in the Devil’s Rebels and with Johnny Attia’s gang in New York. It was fifteen years since he last saw death.

  “Luke, she’s dead!” Therese’s crying turned to screams and Luke rushed to the sofa. He pushed Therese, who was performing CPR on Agnes, out of the way. He leaned over the girl, placed his mouth close to Agnes’ nose and felt the faintest movement of air.

  “She’s breathing,” he said.

  Luke pushed the coffee table away with his foot, lifted her down onto the pale turquoise Ikea rug and began to blow with all the strength in his lungs. After a moment, he began pushing with both hands on her chest. He passed his mobile phone to Therese after the first thirty compressions.

  “Call an ambulance! Now!”

  He leaned down and continued blowing and pushing in turns. He realized that he might crush her tiny ribs if he wasn’t careful, and he eased up the pressure of his compressions. He looked into her face while he pushed, hoping to see some sign of life.

  “Come on, Agnes,” Luke begged. “You’re going to make it. Please.”

  Luke looked quickly up to Therese. She sat paralyzed, his phone in her hand. Luke realized that she wouldn’t be able to say anything comprehensible and took his phone back.

  “Keep pushing. Thirty times. Then mouth-to-mouth,” he said to Therese, standing up and dialing the number. A woman answered immediately.

  “I need an ambulance. As quickly as possible. Alamedan 30. There are two people here, one’s dead and one is a little girl who’s still breathing.”

  “Could you please repeat that? Not as quickly, and try to speak more clearly. I need to know your name, too,” the dispatcher said.

  When Luke was stressed, his American accent tended to grow stronger, making it hard for Swedes to understand him.

  “Luke Bergmann. We need an ambulance. Hurry, for god’s sake! There’s a four-year-old girl who’s going to die!”

  “Okay now, you’ve got to try to calm down so I get the right information. Take a deep breath and then tell me your location, both street address and city.”

  Luke clenched his teeth. He took a deep breath and tried to speak slowly.

  “The address is Alamedan 30 in Karlskrona. Two people. One is dead. The other, a little girl, is dying and she’s definitely going to if you don’t send a goddamn ambulance. Now!”

  “Can you tell me what happened?” the woman asked.

  “Does it matter?” Luke asked stubbornly. “I don’t know what happened. We came into the apartment and this is what we found.”

  “I can’t just send an ambulance without first getting an idea of the situation. I have to be sure this is real and that it’s truly an emergency.”

  Luke lowered his voice, trying to project fear rather than anger.

  “I promise you this is real. Please.”

  The woman fell silent for a couple seconds.

  “I’m sending two ambulances.”

  Therese was crying and blowing as instructed. Agnes lay as lifeless with her long, blonde hair spread out around her head and her white nightgown against the aqua-colored rug. Therese’s tears had dampened Agnes’ beautiful face. Luke thought how pretty Agnes was, how stunning she would be when she became a teenager. He and Viktor talked about it as recently as Saturday evening. Agnes was watching her favorite show on TV, Anki and Pytte, and was laughing so unabashedly at the clever little duck that Viktor and Luke interrupted their dinner preparations to stand and watch her.

  “That girl is going to have trouble with boys when she gets to be a teenager,” Luke said to Viktor.

  “It’s more like they’re going to have problems with me,” Viktor answered.

  Luke’s smile abruptly disappeared. He folded his arms. “And me,” he said.

  A little later, the phone rang. Viktor went into his home office and asked Luke to put Agnes to bed, which he gladly did. She ran her little finger along his muscular, tattooed arm and asked why he didn’t wash better. Luke’s heart melted even more when Agnes then took off his black knit cap and started to curl her fingers into his thick, black hair as she trustingly fell asleep in his arms.

  “Agnes! Please, Agnes! Breathe! Please!” Therese gasped after having attempted to blow life into the little girl’s body for the fourth time. Agnes lay with her mouth half-open and her eyes closed, her long, fine eyelashes pasted to her skin. She looked like she was sleeping peacefully. But this time she might not wake up again.

  Luke’s anger towards the ambulance dispatcher dissipated and was replaced with a chill that took a tight hold on his insides. Luke whispered a prayer to himself, to a god he didn’t believe in.

  Let Agnes live. I’ll do anything. Just let her live.

  Where in the hell were those ambulances? He looked towards the bathroom where Agnes’ father, his best friend, lay dead. The jazz music increased in intensity and drowned out the sounds of Therese’s struggle to bring Agnes back to life. An electric piano and a guitar were vying for who could play the most notes per second.

  What boring music, Luke thought, beginning to feel sick at the same time as his legs started to shake. He had to silence the noise. He walked on quivering legs to the computer, and pressed mute. On the table stood a small, flame-colored jar with the cap off and a white powder in it. A glass with a grainy fluid in the bottom stood next to it. A half-eaten Marabou milk chocolate bar lay on the floor next to the table. He noticed a faint whiff of chocolate when he performed CPR on Agnes. Luke heard sirens in the distance.

  “Luke! She’s not breathing any more! Agnes, no!”

  Therese screamed in confusion and took Agnes into her arms where she sat on the floor and rocked frantically back and forth. Luke knelt down and held her and Agnes tightly.

  3.

  Ronneby, October 5, 1991

  “If I say it’s 1787, what sort of mental image do you get?”

  The guy asking Jenny this question was named Peter. He was 25 years old, six years older than Jenny and, as of six months ago, a graduate of the MBA program at Lund University. He wore a brown corduroy jacket, a red scarf around his neck, glasses, and a moustache. Aristocratic, like an English dandy. A completely different style to the other guys Jenny knew.

  Jenny graduated from high school in Karlskrona with top grades a half-year earlier. Now she was working at a café, taking a sabbatical year from her studies and intending to begin her university studies the next fall.

  She sat wedged into a newly-purchased, bright red IKEA couch in her boyfriend Stefan’s sister’s modern apartment on Kungsgatan in central Ronneby. Victoria was turning 23 and had invited a few friends over for cake. She was going to have a larger party later in the month.

  Peter sat sunken into an armchair across from the couch, holding a cigarette elegantly between his index and middle fingers. Empty dessert plates and coffee mugs sat on the coffee table. They talked a lot about politics, which was totally uninteresting to Jenny. The bourgeois coalition had won the election and broken the string of three Social Democratic governments. Just that day, conservati
ve politician Carl Bildt assumed the role of prime minister. Now, Peter thought, Sweden was on the right track again.

  Through the impressive Pioneer sound system, Whitney Houston’s velvety voice enveloped them: I’m your baby tonight.

  Stefan, Jenny’s boyfriend, sat to her left, and on her right was Stefan’s older sister Viktoria. Of the eight people in the room, these were the only two Jenny knew. The last time she sat on a couch with Viktoria was a month earlier, at the siblings’ parents’ house for coffee on a Sunday. It was the first time Jenny met Stefan’s mother and father, and the atmosphere was tense. Viktoria decided to try to lighten the mood. Suddenly she gave a start, leaned away from Jenny, pinched her nose, laughed, and said, “Ew, Jenny! Did you fart?!”

  It was so incredibly mean of her! Jenny felt like sinking through the floor. Her lame protests were pointless. She blushed all the way down her neck and knew that everyone thought she had passed gas.

  So this was the second time within only a few weeks that she was sitting on a couch, blushing. The question Peter asked her made everyone fall silent and turn their attention to her. Damn that I always blush! she thought. As long as she could remember, she thought it was awkward to be the center of attention. Standing in front of the class and giving a presentation was torture, despite the fact she knew she was pretty and one of the best students in the class. When the teachers returned exams and announced the results aloud, a custom in Swedish classrooms, she was almost always the one who earned the most points, and it was just as awkward every time when she heard her name and everyone looked at her. The flush came like clockwork. It got so bad that sometimes she blushed even before the exams had been returned, blushing purely at the thought that she might soon blush.

  All the friends looked at Jenny. Her thoughts whirled around in her head. She felt pressured and nervous. So, naturally, she blushed.