Lars Kepler - The Sandman

In the weak glow of the torch he makes his way forward once more. The light bounces round the grey walls. He reaches the sofa and nudges it carefully away from the wall, and sees a skinny woman lying on the floor.

‘Felicia? I’m a police officer,’ he whispers. ‘I’m going to get you out of here.’

When he touches her he can feel that she’s boiling hot. She has an extremely high fever, and is no longer conscious. As he picks her up from the floor she starts to shake in fevered cramps.

Joona charges up the stairs with her in his arms. He drops the torch and hears it clatter down the steps. He realises that she’s going to die soon unless he manages to get her fever down. Her body has gone completely limp again. He doesn’t know if she’s still breathing as he climbs up through the hatch.

Joona runs through the small building, kicks open the door, lays her down on the snow and sees that she’s still breathing.

‘Felicia, you’ve got a really bad fever... you poor thing...’

He covers her with snow, speaking to her in a soothing, reassuring voice, all the while keeping his pistol trained on the door of the building.

‘The ambulance is on its way,’ he says. ‘Everything’s going to be fine, I promise, Felicia. Your brother and your dad are going to be so happy, they’ve missed you so much, do you hear?’

The ambulance arrives, its blue lights flashing across the snow. Joona stands up as the trolley is wheeled past the old buildings. He explains the situation to the paramedics, the whole time keeping his pistol aimed at the entrance to barrack number four.

‘Hurry up,’ he cries. ‘She’s running a really high fever, you’ve got to get her temperature down... I think she’s lost consciousness.’

The two paramedics lift Felicia out of the snow. Her hair is hanging in black, sweaty locks over her impossibly pale forehead.

‘She’s got Legionnaires’ disease,’ he says, then starts walking towards the open doorway with his weapon raised.

He’s about to go back inside when he sees the flickering blue light of the ambulance playing over the remains of the last building. There are fresh footprints in the snow, leading away from the building and into the darkness.

Joona runs towards them, thinking that there must be another exit, that the two buildings share an underground shelter.

He follows the footsteps at a run, through clumps of grass and scrub.

As he rounds an old diesel tank he sees a thin figure walking quickly along the edge of the pit.

Joona is running as quietly as he can.

The figure is leaning on a crutch, limping, then realises he’s being pursued and tries to move faster along the steep cliff.

There are sirens in the distance.

Joona races through the deep snow, his pistol in his hand.

I’m going to get him, he thinks. I’m going to arrest him and drag him back to the waiting cars.

They’re approaching an illuminated section of the gravel pit containing a large concrete factory. A single floodlight is lighting up the bottom of the steep crater.

The figure stops, turns, and looks at Joona. He’s standing right on the edge, supported by a crutch, breathing with his mouth open.

Joona slowly approaches, his pistol pointed at the ground.

The Sandman’s face is almost identical to Jurek’s, just much thinner.

Far in the distance Joona can hear the police cars arrive at the old barracks, but only thin arrows of blue light reach that far.

‘It all went wrong with you, Joona,’ the Sandman says. ‘My brother managed to tell me to take Summa and Lumi, but they died before I got the chance... fate sometimes chooses its own path...’

The strong beams of the police officers’ torches are circling round the old barracks.

‘I wrote to my brother and told him about you, but I never found out if he wanted me to take anything else away from you,’ he says quietly.

Joona stops, feeling the weight of the weapon in his tired arm, and looks into the Sandman’s pale eyes.

‘I was sure you’d hang yourself after the car accident, but you’re still alive,’ the skinny man says, shaking his head slowly. ‘I waited, but you just went on living...’

He falls silent, then smiles suddenly, looks up and says:

‘You’re still alive because your family isn’t really dead.’

Joona simply raises his pistol, aims the barrel at the Sandman’s heart and fires three shots. The bullets go straight through his skinny frame, and black blood sprays out from the exit wounds between his shoulder blades.

Three gunshots echo round the gravel pit.

Jurek’s twin brother falls backwards.

His crutch remains where it is, stuck in the snow.

The Sandman is dead before he even hits the ground. His emaciated body rolls down the slope until it hits an old cooker. Light snowflakes drift down from the black sky.

Joona is sitting in the rear seat of his own car with his eyes closed, while his boss Carlos Eliasson drives him back to Stockholm, talking to him as if he was his dad.

‘She’s going to be OK... I spoke to a doctor at the Karolinska... Felicia’s condition is serious, but not critical... They’re not making any promises, but even so, it’s great news... I think she’s going to make it, I...’

‘Have you told Reidar?’ Joona asks, without opening his eyes.

‘The hospital are dealing with that, you just need to go home and get some rest, and—’

‘I tried to reach you.’

‘Yes, I know, I saw I had a load of missed calls... You might have heard that Jurek mentioned an old brickworks to Saga. There were never that many, but there used to be one in Albano. When we went into the forest the dogs identified graves all over the place. We’re busy searching the whole damn area.’

‘But you haven’t found anyone alive?’

‘Not yet, but we’ll carry on searching.’

‘I think you’re just going to find graves...’

Carlos is driving with exemplary caution, and it’s now so warm inside the car that Joona has to unbutton his coat.

‘The nightmare’s over, Joona... First thing tomorrow the Prison Service Committee will pass the decision to transfer Saga again, and we can go and pick her up and clear all her details from the databases.’

They reach Stockholm, and the light around the streetlamps looks like fog because of the snow. A bus pulls up beside them, waiting for the lights to change. Weary faces look out through the steamed-up windows.

‘I talked to Anja,’ Carlos says. ‘She couldn’t wait till tomorrow... she’s found the records for Jurek and his brother in the Child Welfare Commission’s files in the council archive, and she’s tracked down the decision of the Aliens Department in the National Archive in Marieberg.’

‘Anja’s smart,’ Joona says to himself.

‘Jurek’s father was allowed to stay in the country on a temporary work permit,’ Carlos says. ‘But he didn’t have permission to have the boys with him, and after they were found the Child Welfare Commission was brought in and the boys were taken into care. Presumably the authorities thought they were doing the right thing. The decision was hurried through, but because one of the boys was ill the cases were dealt with separately...’

‘They were sent to different places.’

‘The Aliens Department sent the healthy boy back to Kazakhstan, and then a different caseworker took the decision to send the other boy to Russia, to Children’s Home Number 67, to be precise.’

‘I see,’ Joona whispers.

‘Jurek Walter crossed the border into Sweden in January 1994. Maybe his brother was already at the quarry by that time, maybe not... but by then their father was dead.’