Lars Kepler - The Sandman

No one looks at her, but she can’t help noticing the way the atmosphere gets more tense when the guards realise that she’s got the highest security classification.

She is to be kept in strict isolation until her transfer.

Saga stands still, eyes fixed on the yellow vinyl floor, not answering any questions.

She is patted down before being led along a corridor for the full-body search.

Two thickset women are discussing a new television series as they lead her through a door with no window in it. The room looks like a small medical examination room, with a narrow bunk covered with rustling paper and locked cabinets along one wall.

‘Remove all your clothes,’ one of the women says in a blank voice as she pulls on a pair of latex gloves.

Saga does as she is told and drops her clothes in a heap on the floor. When she is naked she just stands there under the bare fluorescent light with her arms hanging by her sides.

Her pale body is girlishly slender, toned and athletic.

The warder with the gloves breaks off mid-sentence and just stares at Saga.

‘OK,’ one of them sighs after a few seconds.

‘What?’

‘Let’s try to do what we’ve got to do.’

Carefully they set about examining Saga, shining a light in her mouth, nose and ears. They tick each thing off from a list, then ask her to lie on the bunk.

‘Lie on your side and pull one knee up as far as you can,’ the woman with the gloves says.

Saga obeys, unhurriedly, and the woman moves between the bunk and the wall behind her back. She shivers, and feels her skin break out in goosebumps.

The dry paper rustles against her cheek as she turns her head. She shuts her eyes tight as lubricant is squeezed from a bottle.

‘This is going to feel a bit cold now,’ the woman says, sticking two fingers as far up Saga’s vagina as she can.

It doesn’t hurt, but it’s extremely unpleasant. Saga tries to breathe evenly, but can’t help gasping as the woman sticks a finger in her anus.

The examination is over in a matter of seconds, and the woman quickly pulls the gloves off and throws them away.

She hands Saga a piece of paper to wipe herself with, and explains that she’ll be given new clothes while she’s there.

Dressed in a baggy green outfit and a pair of white gym shoes, she is taken to her cell in Ward 8:4.

Before they close and lock the door behind her they ask amiably if she’d like a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee.

Saga just shakes her head.

Once the women have gone, Saga stands completely still in her cell for a moment.

It’s hard to know what the time is, but before it’s too late she goes over to the sink and fills her hands with water, drinks some, then sticks her fingers down her throat. She coughs and her stomach clenches. After a couple of hard, painful cramps, the microphone comes back up.

She can’t help her eyes watering as she washes the capsule and then rinses her face.

She lies on the bunk and waits, holding the microphone hidden in her hand.

The corridor outside is silent.

Saga can smell the toilet and drain in the floor as she lies staring at the ceiling and reads the messages and names that have been carved into the walls over the years.

Rectangles of sunlight have moved left towards the floor by the time Saga hears footsteps outside. She quickly pops the capsule in her mouth, stands up and swallows as the lock clicks and the door is opened.

It’s time for her to be taken to Karsudden Hospital.

The uniformed guard signs her out, along with her possessions and transfer documents. Saga stands still as they cuff her hands and ankles, then sign the forms.

The police team consists of thirty-two people in total, civilian staff and officers from the surveillance and detection units of the National Criminal Investigation Department and the National Murder Squad.

In one of the big workrooms on the fifth floor the walls are covered with maps marking the locations of the disappearances and finds in the Jurek Walter case. Colour copies of photographs of the missing people are surrounded by constellations of their families, colleagues and friends.

Old interviews with the relatives of victims are examined again, and new interviews conducted. Medical and forensic reports are checked, and anyone who knew any of the victims is spoken to, no matter how peripheral the relationship.

Joona Linna and his team are standing in the winter light by the window reading the printout of the latest interview with Mikael Kohler-Frost. As they read, a sombre mood settles over the group. There’s nothing in Mikael’s account that can take the investigation forward.

Once the analysts have discounted the expressions of regret and despair from his statements, there’s very little left.

‘Nothing,’ Petter Näslund mutters, rolling the printout up.

‘He says he can feel his sister’s movements, that she tries to find him every time she wakes up in the darkness,’ Benny says with a sorrowful expression on his face. ‘He can feel how much she hopes he might have returned—’

‘I don’t believe any of that,’ Petter interrupts.

‘We have to assume that Mikael is telling the truth, at least in some form or other,’ Joona says.

‘But this business with the Sandman,’ Petter says with a grin. ‘I mean...’

‘The same thing with the Sandman,’ Joona replies.

‘He’s talking about a character in a fairytale,’ Petter says. ‘Are we going to question everyone who sells barometers, or—’

‘As a matter of fact I’ve already compiled lists of manufacturers and dealers,’ Joona replies with a smile.

‘What the hell?’

‘I’m aware that there’s a barometer salesman in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story about the Sandman,’ Joona goes on. ‘And I know Mikael’s mother used to tell them a bedtime story about the Sandman. But none of that precludes the possibility that he might actually exist in real life.’

‘We haven’t got a fucking thing, we might as well admit it,’ Petter says, tossing his rolled-up printout on the desk.

‘Almost nothing,’ Joona gently corrects him.

‘Mikael was sedated when he was moved to the capsule, and sedated when he was removed from it,’ Benny sighs, rubbing a hand over his bald head. ‘It’s impossible even to start identifying a location. In all likelihood, Felicia is in Sweden – but even that isn’t certain.’

Magdalena goes over to the whiteboard and lists what little information they have about the capsule: concrete, electricity, water, Legionella bacteria.

Because Mikael has never seen the accomplice, or heard him speak, they know nothing beyond the fact that it is a man. That’s all. Mikael was sure that the coughs he heard came from a man.

Everything else in the description can be traced back to childhood fantasies about the Sandman.

Joona leaves the room, takes the lift down, walks out of police headquarters and carries on up Fleminggatan, across the Sankt Erik bridge and into Birkastan.

The attic flat of Rörstrandsgatan 19 is where Athena Promacho is based.

When the goddess Pallas Athena is depicted as a beautiful girl with a lance and a shield, she is known as Athena Promacho, the goddess of war.

Athena Promacho is also the name of a secret investigative group that has been put together to analyse the material that Saga Bauer is expected to provide while she is undercover. The group doesn’t exist in any official records, and has no budget from either the National Criminal Investigation Department or the Swedish Security Police.

Athena Promacho consists of Joona Linna from National Crime, Nathan Pollock from the National Murder Squad, Corinne Meilleroux from the Security Police, and forensic officer Johan Jönson.