Lars Kepler - The Sandman

‘Joona Linna, National Crime,’ he says, holding out his hand.

‘Eliot Sörenstam.’

Eliot has a shaved head, a little vertical strip of beard on his chin, and melancholic brown eyes.

The other officer shakes his hand firmly and introduces herself as Marie Franzén. She has a cheerful, freckled face, blonde eyebrows and a ponytail high up at the back of her head.

‘Nice to see you in real life,’ she smiles.

‘It’s good that you could come so quickly,’ Joona says.

‘Only because I have to get home and plait Elsa’s hair,’ she says chattily. ‘She’s desperate to have curly hair for preschool tomorrow.’

‘We’d better hurry up, then,’ Joona says, and sets off towards the house.

‘Only kidding, there’s no rush... I’ve got some curling tongs as backup.’

‘Marie’s been on her own with her daughter for five years,’ Eliot explains. ‘But she’s never had a day off sick, or left early.’

‘That’s a lovely thing to say – considering you’re a Capricorn,’ she adds with real warmth in her voice.

The forest behind the house shelters it from the wind blowing off the lake, and the snow seems to roll up above the trees and fall on the little residential area. There are lights in the windows of most houses on the road, but number 23 is ominously dark.

‘There’s probably a good explanation,’ Joona tells the two officers. ‘But neither of the parents has been at work for the past few months, and the children are off school sick.’

The low hedge facing the road is covered with snow, and the green plastic mailbox next to the electricity meter is bursting with post and adverts.

‘Are Social Services involved?’ Marie asks seriously.

‘They’ve been out here already, but say the family is away,’ Joona replies. ‘Let’s try knocking, then we’re probably going to have to ask the neighbours.’

‘Do we suspect a crime?’ Eliot asks, looking at the virgin snow on the drive.

Joona can’t help thinking about Samuel Mendel. His whole family vanished. The Sandman took them, just as Jurek had predicted. But at the same time, it doesn’t fit. Susanne Hjälm reported the children sick, and herself signed the doctor’s note that was sent to the school.

The two police officers calmly follow Joona up to the house. The snow crunches under their boots.

No one’s been here for weeks.

A loop of garden hose is sticking out of the snow next to the sandpit.

They go up the steps to the porch and ring the bell, wait for a while, then ring again.

They listen for any noises from the house. Clouds of breath rise from their mouths. The porch creaks beneath them.

Joona rings again.

He can’t shake his bad feeling, but says nothing. There’s no reason to worry his colleagues.

‘What do we do now?’ Eliot asks quietly.

Leaning on the little bench, Joona bends over and peers through the narrow hall window. He can see a brown stone floor and striped wallpaper. The glass prisms hanging from the wall lamps are motionless. He looks back at the floor. The dustballs by the wall are still. He’s just thinking that the air inside the house doesn’t seem to be moving when one of the dustballs rolls under the dresser. Joona leans closer to the glass, cupping his hands to the pane, and sees a shadowy figure in the hall.

Someone standing with their hands raised.

It takes Joona a moment to realise that he’s seeing his own reflection in the hall mirror, but adrenalin is already coursing through his body.

He sees himself as a silhouette in the narrow hall window, he sees umbrellas in a stand, the inside of the door, the security chain and the red hall rug.

There’s no sign of any shoes or outdoor clothing.

Joona knocks on the window, but nothing happens.

The prisms of the lamps are hanging motionless, everything is still inside the house.

‘OK, let’s go and have a word with the nearest neighbours,’ he says.

But instead of going back to the road he starts to walk round the house. His colleagues stand on the drive, looking at him curiously.

Joona goes past a snow-covered trampoline, then stops. There are tracks from some animal leading through several of the gardens. Light from a window in the neighbouring house stretches out like a golden sheet across the snow.

Everything is completely silent.

Where the garden ends, the forest begins. Pine cones and needles have fallen on the thinner snow beneath the trees.

‘Aren’t we going to talk to the neighbours?’ Eliot asks, bemused.

‘I’m coming,’ Joona replies quietly.

‘What?’

‘What did he say?’

‘Wait a moment...’

Joona pads a bit further through the snow, his feet and ankles getting cold. A garden bird-feeder is swinging outside the dark kitchen window.

He carries on round the corner of the house, thinking that something isn’t right.

Snow has drifted against the wall of the house.

Shimmering icicles are hanging off the sill below the window closest to the forest.

But why only that one? he asks himself.

As he gets closer he sees the neighbours’ outside light reflected in the window.

There are four long icicles, and a series of smaller ones.

He’s almost reached the window when he notices a dip in the snow, next to an air vent close to the ground. Which means that every now and then warm air comes out of the vent.

That’s why there are icicles in that spot.

Joona leans forward and listens. All he can hear is the sound of wind moving slowly through the treetops.

The silence is broken by voices from the neighbouring house. Two children are shouting angrily at each other. A door slams, and the voices get quieter.

A faint scraping sound makes Joona bend down towards the vent again. He’s holding his breath, and thinks he can hear a quick whisper from the vent, like a command.

Instinctively he draws back, uncertain whether he imagined the whisper, then turns round and sees the other officers standing in the driveway, the dark trees, the snow-crystals sparkling in the air, and suddenly he realises what he saw a little while ago.

When he looked through the narrow hall window and saw himself in the mirror, he was so surprised that he missed the most important detail.

The door’s security chain was on, and to do that you had to be inside the house.

Joona runs through the deep snow, back round to the front. Loose snow flies up round his legs. He digs out his skeleton key from his inside pocket and goes up the steps to the porch.

‘There’s someone in there,’ he says quietly.

His colleagues just look at him in astonishment as he picks the lock, opens the door carefully, closes it again and then pushes hard to break the security chain.

Joona gestures to them to keep behind him.

‘Police!’ he calls into the house. ‘We’re coming in!’

The three police officers go into the hall, and are struck at once by the acrid stench of old rubbish. The house is silent, and as cold as outside.

‘Is anyone home?’ Joona calls.

All they can hear are their own footsteps and movements. The sounds from the next house don’t carry inside. Joona reaches out to switch on the light, but it doesn’t work.

Marie turns on her torch behind him. Its light flits nervously in different directions. They move further into the house, and Joona sees his own shadow grow and slide across the closed blinds.

‘Police,’ he calls again. ‘We only want to talk.’

They enter the kitchen, and see a mound of empty packets under the table – cornflakes, pasta, flour and sugar.

‘What the hell is this?’ Eliot whispers.