The Disciple Read Online Free PDF

right-hand side he picked up a neatly folded nightdress and put it in the bag. From the left-hand side he picked up a pack of Philippe Matignon Noblesse 50 Cammello Light Brown nylon stockings, and put it in the black sports bag. He zipped the bag shut and put it in the drawer between the remaining clothes. It fitted perfectly.
    Of course.
    He closed the drawer.
    Back to the kitchen.
    He took a carefully folded paper bag from the cleaning cupboard and opened it as he walked over to the fridge. On the shelf inside the door of the fridge was a soft drink in a glass bottle and a packet of Marie biscuits. The drawer at the bottom of the fridge contained bananas. He took out two and placed them in the paper bag along with the fizzy drink, the biscuits and a bar of chocolate from the top shelf. For the third time he opened the door of the cupboard under the sink and took out a plastic bottle which had once contained chlorine. He was aware of the faint smell of disinfectant as he slipped the bottle into the paper bag, then took it into the hallway and put it down on the floor to the right of the front door.
    He turned around and looked back at the apartment. All quiet. For the first time in several hours. The ritual had been carried out. He had finished. But he was also ready.
    For the next one.
    For number four.
    All he had to do now was to wait.

It was a few minutes past midnight when Vanja walked into the room that was never referred to as anything other than ‘the Room’. Six chairs arranged around an oval conference table on a pale green carpet. A control panel for group discussions, video conferencing and the projector on the ceiling above the table, which was bare apart from four glasses and several bottles of mineral water. No glass walls facing the rest of the department, which meant that nobody could see into the Room. On one long wall hung the whiteboard, where Billy made sure that all the information relating to the case they were currently working on was displayed. He was just putting up a picture of Katharina Granlund when Vanja came in, sat down and placed three folders in front of her on the table.
    ‘What would you have been doing tonight?’
    Billy was a little surprised by the question; he had expected her to ask about the case. Whether he had found a connection between the three dead women. Whether any progress had been made. It wasn’t that Vanja had no interest in her colleagues, but she was the most focused police officer Billy knew, and rarely bothered with small talk or brought up personal matters when she was working.
    ‘I was at the open-air theatre,’ Billy replied, sitting down. ‘I had to leave straight after the interval.’
    Vanja looked at him with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. ‘But you don’t go to the theatre!’
    It was true. On a number of occasions when they weren’t talking about work, Billy had referred to the theatre as a ‘dead art form’, expressing the view that just as we had abandoned the horse and cart when the motor car came along, the theatre should have been allowed to die a quiet and dignified death when film was born.
    ‘I’ve met a girl – she wanted to go.’
    Vanja smiled; of course it was a girl.
    ‘So what did she say when you had to sneak off ?’
    ‘I’m not sure if she believed me. She’d already had to wake me up once during the first act . . . So what were you doing?’
    ‘Nothing really; I was at home reading about Hinde.’
    Which led them to the reason why they were sitting in the virtually empty building at Kungsholmen when the new day was no more than a few minutes old.

    Three-quarters of an hour later they were forced to acknowledge that they had made no progress whatsoever. There was no common denominator between the three victims. Different ages, two married, one divorced, one had children; they hadn’t grown up in the same place, hadn’t attended the same schools, hadn’t worked in the same field; they weren’t members of the same