Motive X - blog tour

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Motive X – Stefan Ahnhem

About The Book

He strikes at random. His motive unknown. No one is safe...

Helsingborg police must solve the unsolveable. A wave of apparently random homicides is sweeping through their idyllic seaside town. The murders have no pattern, no order, no reason. The perpetrator is immune to psychological profiling; forensically untraceable; utterly invulnerable to modern police techniques.

The body count is growing.But lead investigator Fabian Risk is distracted by his mission to expose a corrupt colleague, and his boss Astrid is spiralling back into addiction. As the hunt for the solution becoming ever more desperate, their tight-knit team begins to unravel...

Motive Xis both an explosive, multi-layered thriller and a fearless exploration of the darkest side of human nature. To enter Stefan Ahnhem’s world, with its interwoven plotlines and sprawling cast of characters, is to put yourself in the hands of a master storyteller.

EXTRACT

MOTIVE X-STEFAN AHNHEM

1

At first, Molly Wessman could only just make out the faint melody. But as the volume increased, she became ever more aware of the dulcet harp tones that meant she had five minutes to wake up and switch her brain on before it was time to get out of bed. Five minutes during which she could still keep her eyes closed and stretch.

She felt rested and hadn’t woken up once during the night, which was incredible, considering the presentation she was giving to the board this afternoon. Normally, she would have tossed and turned all night and come to work a wreck. Now, by contrast, she was convinced the board was going to approve her proposal and give her permission to implement the last round of 

absolutely crucial cost-cutting measures needed to turn things around.

And she had her new sleep app to thank for it. Before, she had never slept more than four hours a night. She had been constantly exhausted and taken sick leave so often even those of her colleagues who had young children had started to wonder what she was up to.

In the end, her then manager had called her into his office and told her what she herself had been unable to see. That she was heading straight for burnout. Then he’d given her the number of a therapist and told her about an app that used sounds and different kinds of white noise to help the human brain to relax, thus improving sleep.

It had made all the difference and, what’s more, only cost a fraction of what the therapist charged for a handful of pointless conversations. It had even given her enough energy to go back to the gym.

She took a deep breath, filling her lungs like she’d learned in yoga class, and reached out for the phone on her bedside table. But when she turned the alarm off, she noticed something strange the second before the screen went black.

She didn’t actually allow herself to check her phone in bed. Turning her alarm on and off was the only exception to the rule. In her new life, her bed was a screen-free zone, along with the bathroom and the dinner table. And yet she couldn’t stop herself from tapping in her PIN and unlocking it.

She looked at the screen again, uncomprehending.

To someone who didn’t know what it normally looked like, it would probably have seemed neither odd nor unsettling. But she did know, and as she looked at it, she felt panic starting to build. Before long, the pressure around her chest was so tight she couldn’t breathe.

Her first thought was that it wasn’t her phone. But the chip in the top left corner from when she dropped it was there, and the home button glitched just like it had been doing over the past few weeks.

Everything was right.

Everything except the background picture.

It should have been a picture of Smilla, her brown and white Boston terrier who had died three years ago from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. But it wasn’t a picture
of Smilla.

Instead, it was a picture of her.

A picture of her, sleeping in her own bed, wearing the exact same T-shirt she was wearing right now. Even the toothpaste stain from last night was there, which meant
the picture had been taken in the past eight hours. So someone had broken into her flat.

Maybe it was just a technical malfunction. Or some new camera function she had accidentally activated when she went to bed. But no, the picture was taken from above. Someone must have been in her bedroom.

Was someone having her on? One of the many nocturnal guests she’d brought home over the past few years, who had made a copy of her keys? Though she had no idea how that could have happened without her noticing. Or was it a warning from someone at work that she’d been too ruthless there?

The questions bounced around like ping-pong balls. Granted, there were likely disgruntled people among the staff, but hard as she tried, she couldn’t think of anyone who’d be twisted enough to do something like this.

Then it struck her.

What if he was still in the flat. What if he was standing right outside her bedroom door, waiting for her. Or what if he was inside the…

She tried to regain her composure and convince herself she was just overreacting. But she couldn’t. Before she could dare to leave the bed, she would need something to defend herself with. Something other than her pillows and duvet. Maybe her bedside lamp. Though it was far from ideal, it was the only thing she could think of that was within reach.

As though she stood a chance of fending off some strange man. Who was she trying to fool? She, who froze when she saw a spider. Running over people in a meeting using factual arguments was one thing. Physical violence was something else entirely.

But what choice did she have? Did she have a choice
at all?

She turned over as carefully and quietly as she could, grabbed the lamp with both hands and tugged. The two screws were ripped from their holes, pulling out white plaster dust that fell on to her black pillowcase. Then she unplugged it from the outlet, wrapped the cord around her left hand and grabbed the wall mount with her right before putting her feet down on the floor.

To the beat of her own pulse, she squatted down and peered under the bed. Apart from her scales and the box of sex toys on castors, there was nothing there, nor had she expected there to be. On the other hand, she still found it hard to believe someone had really taken a picture of her with her own phone.

About The Author

STEFAN AHNHEM is the internationally bestselling author of the Fabian Risk thrillers. He has worked as a screenwriter on Mankell’s Kurt Wallender series and serves on the board of the Swedish Writers Guild. He lives in Copenhagen.

Follow Stefan:  

Facebook: @ahnhem.stefan

Twitter: @StefanAhnhem

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