Lars Kepler - The Sandman

He’s now at the original level of the ridge, more than forty metres above the current ground level, and has a good view of the pitted landscape. Cold air tears at his lungs as he gazes out across the illuminated pit with its machines, makeshift roads and piles of sand.

He starts to run along the narrow strip of snow-covered meadow grass between the steep drop and the Älvsunda road.

There’s a crumpled car-wreck by the side of the road in front of the wire-mesh fence with its warning signs and notices from the security company. Joona stops and peers into the falling snow. At the far corner of the very oldest section of the gravel pit is an area of tarmac, on top of which is a row of single-storey buildings, as long and narrow as military barracks.

Joona steps over some rusty barbed wire and heads towards the old buildings with their broken windows and graffiti tags sprayed on the brick walls.

It’s dark up here and Joona gets his torch out. He aims the beam at the ground, carries on, then shines the light between the low buildings.

There’s no door on the first building. Snow has blown in over the first few metres of blackened wooden floor. The beam of the torch sweeps quickly across old beer cans, dirty sheets, condoms and latex gloves.

He carries on through the deep snow, going from door to door and peering through broken or missing windows. The guest workers’ old housing has been abandoned for many years. Nothing but dirt and dereliction. In some places the roofs have caved in, and whole sections of wall are missing.

He slows down when he sees that the windows in the last but one building are intact. An old supermarket trolley is lying on its side by the wall.

On one side of the building the ground drops away steeply towards the bottom of the quarry.

Joona switches the torch off as he makes his way to the wall, where he stops and listens before turning the torch on again.

All he can hear is the wind sweeping across the rooftops.

In the darkness a short distance away he can make out the last building in the row. It seems to be little more than a snow-covered ruin.

He goes over to the window and shines the torch through the dirty glass. The beam moves slowly across a filthy hotplate connected to a car battery, a narrow bed with some rough blankets, a radio with a shiny aerial, some tanks of water and a dozen tins of food.

When he reaches the door he can make out an almost vanished number 4 at the top left corner.

This could be the number four of the visiting workers’ accommodation that Nikita Karpin mentioned.

Joona carefully pushes the handle down and the door slides open. He slips inside, shutting the door behind him. It smells of damp old fabric. There’s a bible on a rickety shelf. There’s only one room, with one window and door.

Joona realises that he is now quite visible from the outside.

The wooden floor creaks under his weight.

He shines the torch along the walls, and sees piles of water-damaged books. In one corner the light flashes back at him.

He moves closer and sees that there are hundreds of tiny glass bottles lined up on the floor.

Dark glass bottles, with rubber membranes.

Sevoflurane, a highly effective sedative.

Joona pulls out his phone and calls the emergency control room, and asks for police backup and an ambulance to be sent to his location.

Then everything is silent again, and all he can hear is his own breathing and the floor creaking.

Suddenly from the corner of his eye he sees movement outside the window, draws his Colt Combat and releases the safety catch in an instant.

There’s nothing there, just some loose snow blowing off the roof.

He lowers the pistol again.

On the wall by the bed is a yellowed newspaper cutting about the first man in space, the ‘Space Russian’ as Expressen’s headline-writer describes him.

This must be where the father killed himself.

Joona is just thinking that he ought to search the other buildings when he catches sight of an outline on the filthy rag-rug where something underneath is protruding. He pulls the rug aside and exposes a large hatch in the wooden floor.

Carefully he lies down and puts his ear to the hatch, but he can’t hear anything.

He looks towards the window, then shoves the rug aside and opens the heavy wooden hatch.

A dusty smell of sand rises from the darkness.

He leans forward and shines the torch into the opening, and sees a steep flight of concrete steps.

The sand on the steps crunches under Joona’s shoes as he heads down into the darkness. After nineteen stairs he finds himself in a large concrete room. The torch beam flickers across the walls and ceiling. There’s a stool almost in the middle of the floor, and on one wall is a sheet of polystyrene with a few drawing pins and an empty plastic sleeve.

Joona realises that he must be in one of the many shelters built in Sweden during the Cold War.

There’s an eerie silence down here.

The room tapers slightly, and tucked beneath the staircase is a heavy door.

This has to be the place.

Joona puts the safety catch back on his pistol and slips it into the holster again to leave his hands free. The steel door has large bolts that slide into place when a wheel at the centre of the door is turned.

He turns the wheel anticlockwise and there’s a metallic rumble as the heavy bolts slide from their housings.

The door is hard to open, the metal fifteen centimetres thick.

He shines the torch into the shelter, and sees a dirty mattress on the floor, a sofa and a tap sticking out of the wall.

There’s no one here.

The room stinks of old urine.

He points the torch at the sofa again and approaches cautiously. He stops and listens, then moves closer.

She might be hiding.

Suddenly he has the feeling that he’s being followed. He could end up trapped in the same room as her. He turns and at that instant sees that the heavy door is closing. The immense hinges are creaking. He reacts instantly, throwing himself backwards and jamming the torch in the gap. There’s a crunch as it gets squeezed and the glass shatters.

Joona shoves the door open with his shoulder, draws his pistol again and emerges into the dark room.

There’s no one there.

The Sandman has moved remarkably quietly.

Strange light formations are flickering in front of his eyes as they try to make out shapes in the murky gloom.

The torch is only giving off a faint glow now, barely enough to illuminate anything.

All he can hear are his own footsteps and his own breathing.

He looks over towards the concrete steps leading up to the building above. The hatch is still open.

He shakes the torch, but it carries on getting dimmer.

Suddenly Joona hears a tinkling sound and holds his breath as he finds himself thinking about porcelain fingertips. At the same moment he feels a cold cloth pressed to his mouth and nose.

Joona spins round and lashes out hard, but hits nothing and loses his balance.

He turns, holding his pistol out, the barrel scrapes the concrete wall, but there’s no one there.

Panting, he stands with his back to the wall, extending the torch towards the darkness.

The tinkling sound must have come from the little sedative bottles when the Sandman was pouring the volatile liquid onto the cloth.

Joona is feeling giddy, and swallows hard, forcing himself not to empty the magazine of the pistol into the darkness.

He desperately wants to get out into the fresh air, but forces himself to stay where he is.

It’s completely silent, there’s no one here.

Joona waits a few seconds, then returns to the capsule. His movements feel strangely delayed, and his gaze keeps slipping to the side. Before he goes inside, he turns the wheel of the lock so that the bolts slide out, preventing the door from closing.