Lars Kepler - The Sandman

The light from the bedside lamp is shining behind her, between her legs.

‘I can’t sleep,’ she says with big, dark eyes.

‘Are you scared of the dark?’ he smiles.

‘I need ten milligrams of Stesolid, that’s what I always used to get at Karsudden.’

He’s thinking that she’s even more beautiful and slender in reality. She moves with a strange awareness, confident in her body, as if she were an elite gymnast or a ballerina. He can see that her tight, thin vest is damp with sweat. The perfect curve of her shoulders, her nipples beneath the fabric.

He tries to recall if he’s read anything about sleeping problems in her notes from Karsudden. Then he remembers that it really doesn’t matter. He’s in charge of decisions about medication.

‘Wait there,’ he says, then goes and gets a tablet.

When he comes back he can feel sweat between his shoulder blades. He shows her the plastic cup, she reaches her hand through the hatch to take it, but he can’t resist teasing her:

‘Can I have a smile?’

‘Give me the tablet,’ she says simply, still holding out her hand.

He holds the plastic cup in the air, out of reach of her outstretched hand.

‘One little smile,’ he says, tickling the palm of her hand.

Saga smiles at the doctor and maintains eye-contact with him until she has the plastic cup. He closes and locks the hatch, but remains outside the door. She retreats into the room, pretends to put the pill in her mouth, gets some water and swallows, tipping her heard back. She’s not looking at him, isn’t sure if he’s still there, but she sits down on the bed for a while and then turns out the light. Under cover of darkness she quickly slips the pill under the inner sole of one of her shoes, then lies back on the bed.

Before she falls asleep she sees Bernie’s face again, the tears filling his eyes as he put the noose round his neck.

His silent cramps, the little thuds as his heels hit the door, follow her into sleep.

Saga sinks steeply into deep sleep, into healing, falling sleep.

At some point the hourglass gets turned over.

Then, like warm air, she drifts up towards wakefulness and suddenly opens her eyes in the dark. She doesn’t know what’s woken her up. In her dream it was Bernie’s helplessly kicking feet.

A distant rattling sound, perhaps, she thinks.

But all she can hear is her own pulse, deep inside her ears.

She blinks and listens.

The reinforced glass in the door gradually appears as a rectangle of frozen seawater.

She closes her eyes and tries to go back to sleep. Her eyes are stinging with tiredness, but she can’t relax. Something is heightening her senses.

The metal walls are clicking, and she opens her eyes again and stares over at the grey window.

Suddenly a black shadow appears against the glass.

She’s instantly wide awake, ice-cold.

A man is looking at her through the reinforced glass. It’s the young doctor. Has he been standing there the whole time?

He can’t see anything in the darkness.

But he’s still standing there, in the middle of the night.

There’s a faint hissing sound.

His head is nodding slightly.

Now she realises that the rattling sound that woke her was the key slipping into the lock.

Air rushes in, the sounds expands, grows lower and fades away.

The heavy door opens and she knows she must lie absolutely still. She ought to be sleeping soundly because of the pill. The nocturnal lighting from the corridor falls like shimmering powder on the young doctor’s head and shoulders.

She’s wondering if he saw that she only pretended to take the pill, that he’s coming to get it from her shoe. But staff aren’t allowed in patients’ rooms alone, she thinks.

Then it dawns on her: the doctor has come in because he thinks she’s taken the pill and is fast asleep.

This is madness, Anders is thinking as he shuts the door behind him. It’s the middle of the night, and he’s gone in to see a patient and is now standing in her darkened room. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that it actually hurts.

He can just make out her figure in bed.

She’ll be sound asleep for hours yet, practically unconscious.

The door to the rest-room where My is sleeping is closed. There are two guards by the most distant security door. Everyone else is asleep.

He doesn’t actually know what he’s doing in Saga’s room, he can’t think ahead, all he knows is that he has to come in and look at her again, has to come up with an excuse that will let him feel her warm skin beneath his fingers.

It’s impossible to stop thinking of her perspiring breasts and the look of resignation she gave him when she tried to get away and her clothes pulled up.

He repeats to himself that he’s only making sure everything’s OK with a patient who’s just taken a sedative.

If anyone spots him, he can say he detected signs of sleep apnoea, and decided to go in and check, seeing as she’s so heavily medicated.

They’ll say it was an error of judgment not to wake My, but the intrusion itself will be regarded as justified.

He just wants to make sure everything’s OK.

Anders takes a couple of steps into the room, and suddenly finds himself thinking of fishing nets, lobster pots and fyke traps, large openings leading you on towards smaller ones, until eventually there’s no way back.

He swallows hard and tells himself he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s exceptionally conscientious about his patients’ welfare, that’s all.

He can’t stop thinking about the time he gave her the injection. The memory of her back and buttocks are like a great weight inside him.

He walks slowly over and looks at her in the darkness. He can see she’s lying on her side.

Carefully he sits down on the edge of the bed and folds the covers back from her legs and backside. He tries to listen to her breathing, but his own heartbeat is pounding too hard in his ears.

Her body is radiating warmth.

He strokes her thigh softly, a gesture that any doctor might make. His fingers reach her cotton underpants.

His hands are cold, they’re shaking and he’s far too nervous to be sexually excited.

It’s too dark for the camera in the ceiling to be able to register what he’s doing.

He lets his fingers slip cautiously over the underpants and in between her thighs, and feels the heat of her genitals.

Gently he presses a finger into the fabric, running it along the lips of her vagina.

He’d like to stroke her to orgasm, until her whole body is crying out for penetration, even though she’s asleep.

His eyes have got used to the darkness and now he can make out Saga’s smooth thighs and the perfect line of her hips.

He reminds himself that she is fast asleep, he knows that, and he pulls her underpants down without ceremony. She groans in her sleep, but is otherwise completely still.

Her body is shimmering in the darkness.

The blonde pubic hair, sensitive inner thighs, her flat stomach.

She’ll carry on sleeping, no matter what he does.

It makes no difference to her.

She won’t say no, she won’t shoot him a look that’s pleading with him to stop.

A wave of sexual excitement crashes over him, filling him, making him pant for breath. He can feel his penis swelling, straining against his clothes. He adjusts it with one hand.

He can hear his breathing – and the thud and roar of his heartbeat. He has to get inside her. His hands fumble with her knees, trying to part her thighs.

She rolls over, kicking gently in her sleep.

He slows down, leans over her, pushing his hands between her thighs and trying to spread them.