Lars Kepler - The Sandman

In the weak light he can make out the children’s tracks among the trees, at different angles, then the straight line of Eliot’s steps following them.

‘They’re just children!’ Joona cries again, trying to gain on him by sliding down a steep slope.

He slips onto one hip, bringing down loose stones and pine cones, and scrapes his back on something, but gets to his feet again as he reaches the bottom.

Through the dense foliage he can make out the searching beam of the torch, and close by a skinny girl is standing next to a tree, holding the shotgun in both hands.

Joona runs straight through the thicket of dry twigs. He tries to shield his face, but his cheeks still get scratched. He sees Eliot’s frame moving between the tree trunks, then the little girl behind the tree steps out and fires the gun at the policeman.

The cloud of shot hits the snow just a metre or so in front of the end of the barrel. The butt jerks back and the girl’s thin frame is shaken by the recoil. She falls and Eliot spins round and aims his pistol at her.

‘Wait!’ Joona shouts, trying to force his way through the branches.

He ends up with snow all over him and inside his coat, but the branches give way and he emerges on the other side, and stops abruptly.

Eliot Sörenstam is sitting on the ground, with his arms round the sobbing girl. A few steps away her little sister is standing and staring at them.

Susanne Hjälm’s arms are cuffed behind her back. Her broken elbow juts out at an odd angle. She’s screaming hysterically and putting up fierce resistance as two uniformed police officers drag her up the cellar steps. The blue lights from the various emergency vehicles make the snowy landscape ripple like water. Neighbours are watching events from a distance, like silent ghosts.

Susanne stops screaming when she sees Joona and Eliot emerge from the forest. Joona is carrying the younger girl, and Eliot is holding the other one by the hand.

Susanne’s eyes open wide and she breathes hard in the ice-cold winter night. Joona puts the girl on the ground so she can go over to her mother with her sister. They hug for a long time, and she tries to calm them.

‘It’s going to be all right now,’ she says in a broken voice. ‘Everything’s going to be all right...’

An older female officer starts talking to the girls, trying to explain that their mother needs to go with the police.

The father is led out of the cellar by the paramedics, but he’s so weak that he has to be put on a stretcher.

Joona follows as the officers lead Susanne through the deep snow towards one of the police cars in the drive. They put her in the back seat while a senior officer talks to a prosecutor over the phone.

‘She needs to go to hospital,’ Joona says, stamping the snow from his shoes and trousers.

He walks over to Susanne Hjälm. She’s sitting quietly in the car, her face turned towards the house as she tries to catch a glimpse of her daughters.

‘Why did you do this?’ Joona asks.

‘You’d never understand,’ she mumbles. ‘No one could understand.’

‘Maybe I could,’ he says. ‘I was the person who arrested Jurek Walter thirteen—’

‘You should have killed him,’ she interrupts, looking him in the eye for the first time.

‘What happened? After so many years working as a psychiatrist in the secure unit...’

‘I should never have spoken to him,’ she says through gritted teeth. ‘We’re not supposed to, but I never imagined...’

She falls silent and looks up at the house again.

‘What did he say?’

‘He... demanded that I post a letter,’ she whispers.

‘A letter?’

‘There are loads of restrictions limiting what he’s allowed to do, so I couldn’t... but I, I...’

‘You couldn’t send it? So where’s the letter now?’

‘Maybe I should talk to a lawyer,’ she says.

‘Have you still got the letter?’

‘I burned it,’ she says, then turns away again.

Tears start to trickle down her exhausted, filthy face.

‘What did it say in the letter?’

‘I want to see a lawyer before I answer any more questions,’ she says resolutely.

‘This is important, Susanne,’ Joona persists. ‘You’re going to get medical treatment now, and you can see a lawyer, but first I need to know where the letter was to be sent... Give me a name, an address.’

‘I don’t remember... it was a PO box.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t remember... there was a name,’ she says, shaking her head.

Joona watches the eldest daughter being carried towards an ambulance on a stretcher. She looks scared, and is trying to undo the straps holding her on.

‘Do you remember the name?’

‘It wasn’t Russian,’ Susanne whispers. ‘It was—’

The daughter suddenly panics in the ambulance and starts screaming.

‘Ellen!’ Susanne cries. ‘I’m here, I’m here!’

Susanne tries to get out of the car, but Joona forces her to stay where she is.

‘Leave me alone!’

She struggles to pull free and get out. The doors of the ambulance close and everything is quiet again.

‘Ellen!’ she calls.

The ambulance drives off and Susanne turns her head away with her eyes closed.

When Anders Rönn gets home from the parents’ meeting organised by the Autism and Asperger Association, Petra is sitting at the computer paying bills. He goes over and kisses her on the back of the neck, but she shrugs him off. He tries to smile, and pats her cheek.

‘Stop it,’ she says.

‘Can we try to be friends?’

‘You went far too far,’ she tells him wearily.

‘I know, sorry, I thought you wanted—’

‘Well, stop thinking it,’ she interrupts.

Anders looks her in the eye, nods and then goes off to Agnes’s room. She’s sitting by her dolls’ house with her back to him. He can see that she’s got the hairbrush in her hand, she’s brushed all the dolls and has piled then on top of each other in one of the beds in the dolls’ house.

‘You’ve made it very nice,’ Anders says.

Agnes turns, shows him the brush and meets his gaze for a few seconds.

He sits down next to her and puts his arm around her thin shoulders. She pulls slowly away.

‘Now they’re all lying asleep together,’ Anders says cheerily.

‘No,’ she says in her monotonous voice.

‘What are they doing, then?’

‘They’re looking.’

She points at the dolls’ painted eyes, wide open.

‘You mean they can’t sleep if they’re looking? But you can pretend—’

‘They’re looking,’ she interrupts, her head starting to move anxiously.

‘I can see that,’ he says in a soothing voice. ‘But they’re lying in bed, just like they should be, and that’s really good—’

‘Ow, ow, ow...’

Agnes is moving her head jerkily, then she quickly claps her hands three times. Anders holds her in his arms and kisses her head, and whispers that she’s done really well with the dolls. In the end her body relaxes again and she starts lining up pieces of Lego along the floor.

The doorbell rings and Anders leaves the room, glancing at Agnes one last time before going to answer it.

The outside light shows a tall man in a suit, with wet trousers and a torn pocket. The man’s hair is curly and messed up. His cheeks are dimpled, and his eyes look serious.

‘Anders Rönn?’ he says with a Finnish accent.

‘Can I help you?’ Anders says in a neutral tone of voice.

‘I’m from the National Criminal Investigation Department,’ he says, showing his police ID. ‘Can I come in?’

Anders stares at the tall man outside the door. For a fleeting moment he feels chill with fear. He opens the door to let the man in, and as he asks whether his guest would like coffee, a thousand thoughts are going through his fevered mind.