Lars Kepler - The Sandman

Bernie is staring up at the ceiling, licking his lips, then he shuts his eyes again. Saga watches him as she slides a finger into the lining of her trousers, gets the microphone out and hides it in her hand. She pulls off one of her shoes and leans forward to adjust its tongue, thereby shielding the palm from the camera. She shifts position slightly, and is just reaching out to the leaf to attach the microphone as the sofa creaks.

‘I’ve got my eye you, Snow White,’ Bernie says in a weary voice.

She calmly withdraws her hand, puts her foot back in her shoe, and sees Bernie sitting there watching her as she sticks the velcro down.

Saga starts to walk on the running machine, thinking that she’ll have to wait for him to go into his room before she positions the microphone. Bernie gets up from the sofa, takes a couple of steps towards her, and reaches out to steady himself against the wall.

‘I come from Säter,’ he whispers with a smile.

She doesn’t look at him, but is aware of him coming closer. Sweat is dripping from his face onto the floor.

‘Where were you before you got moved here?’ he asks.

He waits a moment, then punches the wall hard before looking at her again.

‘Karsudden,’ he replies in a squeaky voice. ‘I was at Karsudden, but I moved here because I wanted to be with Bernie...’

Saga turns away and just catches a shadow cross the third doorway as someone pulls back from it. She realises that Jurek Walter is standing there listening to them.

‘You must have met Yekaterina Ståhl at Karsudden,’ Bernie says in his normal voice.

She shakes her head, she can’t remember anyone with that name, she doesn’t even know if he’s talking about a patient or a guard.

‘No,’ she replies honestly.

‘Because she was at St Sigfrid,’ he grins, and spits on the floor. ‘So who did you meet?’

‘No one.’

He mutters something about skeleton slaves, then stands in front of the running machine and watches her.

‘I can feel from your cunt if you’re lying,’ he says, scratching his moustache. ‘Is that what you want?’

She stops the machine, stands there for a moment, and thinks about the fact that she has to stick to the truth. She was actually at Karsudden.

‘What about Micke Lund, then? You must have seen Micke Lund if you were there,’ he says with a flash of a smile. ‘Tall bloke, one metre ninety... scar across his forehead.’

She nods, unsure what to say, considers leaving it at that, but still replies:

‘No.’

‘Fucking weird.’

‘I sat in my room watching television.’

‘There aren’t any televisions in the rooms there, you’re fucking lying, you’re a—’

‘There are in isolation,’ she interrupts.

She can’t tell whether he knew that. He’s breathing hard and staring at her, grinning all the while. Then he licks his lips and comes closer.

‘You’re my slave,’ he says slowly. ‘Fucking hell, that’s brilliant... you lie there, sucking my toes...’

Saga gets off the running machine and returns to her cell. She lies on her bunk and hears Bernie standing by her door for a while, calling for her, before he settles back down on the sofa.

‘Shit,’ she whispers.

She’ll have to be quick out tomorrow, sit down on the edge of the running machine, adjust her shoes and attach the microphone. She’ll walk on the machine with long strides, she won’t look at anyone, and when Jurek comes out she’ll simply get off the machine and leave the dayroom.

Saga thinks about the sofa and the angle of the wall adjacent to the reinforced glass covering the television. The camera’s view must be partially obscured by the protruding section. She’ll have to watch out for that blind spot. That’s where she was standing when Bernie pinched her nipple. That was why the staff didn’t react.

She has been in the Löwenströmska unit for just over five hours, and already she’s exhausted.

The metal-walled room feels more enclosed now. She shuts her eyes and thinks about why she’s here. In her mind’s eye she can see the girl in the photograph. All of this is for her sake, for Felicia.

The Athena group sit completely still and listen to the broadcast from the dayroom in real time. The sound quality is bad, muffled and distorted by loud scraping noises.

‘Is it going to sound like this the whole time?’ Pollock asks.

‘She hasn’t positioned the microphone yet. Maybe it’s in her pocket,’ Johan Jönson replies.

‘As long as she doesn’t get searched...’

They listen to the recording again. They can hear the rasping of Saga’s trousers, her shallow breathing, the sound of steps on the running machine and the drone of the television. Like a group of blind people, the members of Athena Promacho are being guided through the closed world of the secure unit with the help of hearing alone.

‘Obrahiim,’ a slurred voice says.

The entire group are suddenly very focused. Johan Jönson raises the volume slightly and adds a filter to reduce the hissing.

‘There he is,’ the man continues. ‘I’d turn him into my slave, my skeleton slave.’

‘I thought that was Jurek to start with,’ says Corinne.

‘Fucking hell,’ the voice goes on. ‘Look at those lips... I’d...’

They listen in silence to the other patient’s aggressive torrent of words, and hear a guard come in and break up the confrontation. After the intervention there’s a short period of silence. Then the patient starts to interrogate Saga about Karsudden in a very thorough, suspicious way.

‘She’s handling it well,’ Pollock says through clenched teeth.

Eventually they hear Saga leave the dayroom without having managed to position the microphone.

She swears quietly to herself.

She’s surrounded by silence until the electronic lock on the door clicks shut.

‘Well, at least we know that the technology seems to work,’ Pollock says.

‘Poor Saga,’ Corinne whispers.

‘She should have positioned the microphone,’ Johan Jönson mutters.

‘It must have been impossible.’

‘But if she gets found out, then...’

‘She won’t be,’ Corinne says.

She smiles, then throws out her arms, spreading the pleasant scent of her perfume through the room.

‘No Jurek so far,’ Pollock says, glancing over at Joona.

‘What if he’s being held in total isolation? All this will have been in vain,’ Jönson sighs.

Joona says nothing, but he’s thinking that something was being conveyed by the recording. For several minutes it was as if he could feel the almost physical presence of Jurek. As if Jurek were in the dayroom even though he hadn’t said anything.

‘Let’s listen to it one more time,’ he says, looking at the clock.

‘Are you going somewhere?’ Corinne asks, raising her neat black eyebrows.

‘I’m meeting someone,’ Joona says, returning her smile.

‘Finally, a bit of romance...’

Joona walks into a white-tiled room with a long wash basin along one wall. Water is running from an orange hose into a drain on the floor. The body from the hunting cabin in Dalarna is lying on a plastic-covered autopsy table. Its sunken brown chest has been sawn open and yellow liquid is trickling slowly down into the stainless-steel trough.

‘Tra la la la laa – we’d catch the rainbow,’ Nils Åhlén sings to himself. ‘Tra la la la laa – to the sun...’

He pulls out a pair of latex gloves and is just blowing into them when he sees Joona standing in the doorway.

‘You ought to record a forensic album,’ Joona smiles.

‘Frippe’s a very good bassist,’ Åhlén replies.