Lars Kepler - The Sandman

She leans against his chest and hears the muffled double beat of his heart.

‘There’s never been anyone but you,’ she says simply. ‘When you stayed with me after your family’s accident, well, that was... you know, that was when I... lost my heart, as they say... but it’s true.’

‘I’m just worried about you.’

She strokes his arm and whispers that she doesn’t want to go. When her voice breaks, he pulls her to him and kisses her.

‘But we’ve seen each other all the way through,’ Disa says, looking up into his face. ‘I mean, if there is an accomplice who’s a threat to us, why hasn’t anything happened? It doesn’t make sense...’

‘I know, I agree, but... I have to do this. I’m going after him, and now is when it’s all happening.’

Disa can feel a sob rising in her throat. She fights it back down and turns her face away. Once she had been Summa’s friend. That was how they met. And when his life fell apart, she was there.

He moved in and stayed with her for a while when things were at their very worst for him.

At night he would sleep on her sofa, and she would hear him moving about, and knew that he knew she was lying awake in the next room. That he was looking at the door to her bedroom and thinking about her lying in there, more and more confused and hurt by how distant he was being, how cold. Until one night he got up, got dressed and left her flat.

‘I’m staying,’ Disa whispers, wiping the tears from her face.

‘You have to go.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I love you,’ he says. ‘You must know that...’

‘Do you really think I’d go now?’ she asks with a broad smile.

Jurek Walter is visible on one of the nine squares of the huge monitor. Like a caged beast he is pacing the dayroom, walking round the sofa, then turning left and going past the television. He goes round the running machine, turns left again and goes back into his room.

Anders Rönn watches him from above on another of the screens, as well as on the other monitor.

Jurek washes his face, then sits down on the plastic chair without drying himself. He stares at the door to the corridor as the water drips onto his shirt and dries.

My is sitting in the operator’s chair. She checks the time, waits another thirty seconds, looks at Jurek, makes a note of the zone on the computer, and locks the door to the dayroom.

‘He’s getting faggots this evening... he likes that,’ she says.

‘He does?’

Anders Rönn already thinks that the routines surrounding this one patient are so repetitive and static that it would be hard to tell the days apart if it weren’t for the daily meeting up on Ward 30. The other doctors talk about their patients and care plans. No one even expects him to repeat that the situation in the secure unit is unchanged.

‘Have you ever tried talking to the patient?’ Anders asks.

‘With Jurek? We’re not allowed to,’ she replies, and scratches her tattooed arm. ‘It’s because... well, he says things you can’t forget.’

Anders hasn’t spoken to Jurek Walter since that first day. He just makes sure that the patient gets his regular injection of neuroleptic drugs.

‘Do you know how the computer system works?’ Anders asks. ‘I couldn’t work out how to sign out of the medical records.’

‘In that case you’re not allowed to go home,’ she says.

‘But I...’

‘I’m joking,’ she laughs. ‘The computers down here are always getting snarled up.’

She gets up, grabs her bottle of Fanta from the desk and goes out into the corridor. Anders sees that Jurek is still sitting completely motionless with his eyes open.

It might not be that much fun doing his specialist service deep underground, behind security doors and airlocks, but for him it’s fantastic to work so close to home, and to be able to spend time with Agnes each evening, he tells himself as he goes after My. She is walking along the dimly lit corridor at a relaxed stroll. When she reaches the brightly lit office he notices that her red underwear is visible through the white fabric of her nurse’s trousers.

‘Now let’s see,’ she mutters, sitting in his chair and rousing the computer from standby mode. With a contented grin she forces the program to close and logs in again.

Anders thanks her, asks who’s working that night, and asks her to restock the medication trolley if she has time.

‘Don’t forget to sign the requisition orders afterwards,’ he says, then leaves.

He walks round the corner into the other corridor and into the changing room. The ward is completely silent. He doesn’t know what drives him to do it, but he opens My’s locker and starts to search through her gym bag with trembling hands. Carefully he unfolds a damp T-shirt and a pair of pale grey jogging pants, and finds a pair of sweaty knickers. He takes them out, lifts them to his face and breathes in her scent. Suddenly he realises that My might see him on the monitor the moment she returns to the control room.

When Anders gets home the house is quiet and the light is off in Agnes’s room. He locks the door behind him and goes into the kitchen. Petra is standing at the sink rinsing the glass cylinder from the blender.

She’s wearing baggy stay-at-home clothes: a Chicago White Sox T-shirt that’s too big for her, and yellow leggings that she’s pulled up to her knees. Anders goes up behind her and puts his arms round her, smelling her hair and fresh deodorant. She’s about to pull away when he moves his hands up to cup her heavy breasts.

‘How’s Agnes?’ he asks, letting go of her.

‘She’s got a new best friend at preschool,’ Petra says with a big smile. ‘A little boy who started last week, apparently he’s in love with her... I don’t know how reciprocated his feelings are, but she let him give her some bits of Lego.’

‘Sounds like love,’ he says, sitting down.

‘Tired?’

‘I fancy a glass of wine – do you want one?’ he asks.

‘Want one?’

She looks him in the eye, smiling more broadly than she’s done for a very long time.

‘What do you mean by that?’ he asks.

‘Does what I want matter?’ she whispers.

He shakes his head and she looks at him with twinkling eyes. They leave the kitchen and go silently into the bedroom. Anders locks the door to the corridor and watches as Petra opens the mirrored wardrobe door and pulls out a drawer. She removes a bundle of underwear and gets out a carrier bag.

‘So that’s where you hid everything?’

‘You’re not to make me feel embarrassed now,’ she says.

He pulls the duvet aside and Petra empties the contents of the bag, all the things they bought after she’d read Fifty Shades of Grey . He picks up the soft rope and ties her hands, loops it through the slatted headboard, then tightens it, making her fall onto her back with her hands above her head. He ties the rope to the bottom of the bed with two half-hitch knots. She parts her legs and squirms as he pulls off her leggings and underwear.

He loosens the rope again, loops it round her left ankle and ties it to the bedpost, then pulls it round the other post and ties her right ankle.

He pulls the rope gently, making her legs slowly spread open.

She’s looking at him, her cheeks flushed.

He suddenly pulls harder and forces her thighs apart as far as they’ll go.

‘Careful,’ she says quickly.

‘Keep quiet,’ he tells her sternly, and sees her smile happily to herself.

He fastens the rope, then moves up the bed and pulls her T-shirt over her face so she can no longer see him. Her breasts sway as she tries to get the fabric off her face.