Lars Kepler - The Sandman

Blinking hard against the bright light, Saga looks round. Jurek isn’t there. He must have returned to his room. The clock behind the reinforced glass tells her the doors to the dayroom will be locked in a few seconds.

Anders Rönn taps lightly at the door of the surveillance control room. My is sitting there reading a copy of Expo in front of the large monitor.

‘Have you come to say goodnight?’ she asks.

Anders smiles back at her, sits down beside her and watches Saga leave the dayroom and go into her room. Jurek is already lying on his bed, and of course Bernie’s room is dark. My yawns widely, then leans back in the revolving chair.

Leif is standing in the doorway, draining the last drops from a can of Coca-Cola.

‘What does male foreplay look like?’ he asks.

‘Is there such a thing?’ My asks.

‘An hour of begging, pleading and persuasion.’

Anders smiles and My laughs so hard the piercing in her tongue glints.

‘They’re a bit short of staff up on Ward 30 tonight,’ Anders says.

‘Funny how we’re so short of staff when there’s such high unemployment,’ Leif sighs.

‘I said they could borrow you,’ Anders says.

‘There always have to be two of us here,’ Leif says.

‘Yes, but I’m going to have to stay and work until at least one o’clock anyway.’

‘OK, I’ll come back down at one o’clock.’

‘Good,’ Anders says.

Leif tosses the can in the bin and leaves the room.

Anders sits silently beside My for a while. He can’t take his eyes off Saga. She’s pacing anxiously in her cell, with her thin arms wrapped round her body.

The image is so sharp that he can see the sweat on her back.

He can feel himself aching with desire. All he can think about is how to get into her room again. He’s going to give her twenty milligrams of Stesolid this time.

He makes the decisions, he’s the responsible clinician, he can have her put in a straitjacket, tied to her bed, he can do whatever he wants. She’s psychotic, paranoid, there’s no one she can talk to.

My yawns again, stretches and says something Anders doesn’t hear.

He looks at the time. Only two hours until the lights go out and he can let My go and get some sleep.

Saga is pacing around the floor of her cell, feeling the little package from Bernie’s room moving in her pocket. Behind her back she hears the electronic lock whirr and click. She ought to wash her face, but can’t be bothered. She goes over to the door to the corridor and looks through the toughened glass to see if she can see anything, then leans her forehead against the cool surface and closes her eyes.

If Felicia is in the house behind the brickworks, I’ll be free tomorrow. Otherwise I’ve got a couple more days in me before this gets unbearable, before I have to put a stop to the escape attempt, she thinks.

Her facial muscles ache – she’s been willing herself not to break down.

She hasn’t let the pain in, all she can think about is completing her mission.

She’s breathing faster again, and knocks her head gently against the cold glass.

I’m in charge of this situation, she tells herself. Jurek thinks he’s controlling me, but I’ve got him to talk. He needs sleeping pills in order to escape, but I went into Bernie’s room, found the package and I’m going to hide it, say it wasn’t there.

She smiles anxiously to herself. The palms of her hands are wet with sweat.

As long as Jurek believes he’s manipulating me, he’ll carry on giving himself away, piece by piece.

She’s sure he’s going to tell about his escape plan tomorrow.

I just have to stay a few more days, and I need to stay calm, not let him inside my head again.

She can’t understand how it could have happened.

It was incredibly cruel of him to say she had killed her mother on purpose, that she would have wanted to kill her.

Now she feels the tears welling up. Her throat aches and she swallows and feels sweat running down her back.

Saga bangs her hands against the door.

Could her mum have thought...?

She turns, grabs the back of the plastic chair and hits the basin with it. She loses her grip and it spins round, but she grabs it again and bashes it against the wall, then the basin.

She sits down on the bed, panting.

‘I’m going to be OK,’ she whispers to herself.

She can feel she’s on the brink of losing control of the situation, she can’t stop thinking. Her memory is only showing her the long strands of the rug, the pills, her mum’s wet eyes, the tears running down her cheeks, her teeth hitting the edge of the glass as she swallows the pills.

Saga remembers her mum shouting at her when she said Dad couldn’t come, she remembers her mum forcing her to call him, even though she didn’t want to.

Maybe I was angry with Mum, she thinks. Tired of her.

She gets up, trying to calm down, and repeats to herself that she’s being deceived.

Slowly she walks over to the basin and washes her face, then carefully bathes her aching eyes.

She has to find a way back to herself, she has to become herself again. It’s as if she’s scrambling about outside her body, as if she can’t be inside her body any more.

Maybe the neuroleptica injection is what’s stopping her from just crying and crying.

Saga lies down on the bed and makes up her mind to hide Bernie’s package, tell Jurek she didn’t find anything. Then she won’t have to ask the doctor for sleeping pills. She can just give Jurek the ones she got from Bernie’s room.

One at a time, one per night.

Saga rolls over onto her side and turns her back on the CCTV camera in the ceiling. Covered by her own body, she takes out the package. She carefully unrolls the toilet paper, little by little, until she sees that it contains just three pieces of chewing gum.

Chewing gum.

She forces herself to breathe calmly, lets her eyes trace the streaks of dirt on the walls, and thinks with strange, vacant clarity that she’s done exactly what Joona warned her against.

I’ve let Jurek inside my head, and everything has changed.

How can I possibly stand myself?

It’s wrong to think like this, I know I’m being deceived, but that’s how it feels.

Her stomach is aching with anguish as she thinks about her mum’s cold body that morning. A sad, immoveable face with an odd froth at the corner of her mouth.

It feels as if she’s about to fall.

I mustn’t lose it, she thinks, and struggles to regain control of her breathing, and come up with a strategy that works.

I’m not sick, she reminds herself. I’m here for one reason alone, that’s all I have to think about. My task is to find Felicia. This isn’t about me, I don’t care about myself. I am undercover, I’m following the plan, I’m accumulating sleeping pills, pretending to go along with the plan and talking about escape routes and hiding places for as long as I can. I’m doing my duty, for as long as it’s possible. It doesn’t matter if I die, she thinks with sudden relief.

It’s been almost twenty-four hours since Joona Linna was picked up from Nikita Karpin’s house by the men from the FSB, the new Russian security service. They haven’t answered any questions at all, and he hasn’t been given any explanation as to why his passport, wallet, watch and mobile have been confiscated.

After sitting in a café for hours, they took him to a bleak concrete block of flats, led him along one of the walkways and into a two-room apartment.

Joona was taken to the furthest room, which contained a dirty sofa, a table with two chairs, and a small closet concealing a toilet. The steel door was locked behind him and then nothing happened until a couple of hours later, when they gave him a warm paper bag containing soggy food from McDonald’s.