Lars Kepler - The Sandman

Gasping, she struggles to grab hold of him again, fumbling with her hand behind her. Using all her strength she tries to twist her body, but she’s completely stuck.

The doctor takes hold of her head and bends it hard to one side, almost dislocating her shoulder. The cartilage in the joint makes a creaking sound and she howls with pain. She’s struggling to pull one foot free, but the strap is cutting into her skin and her ankle is clicking. She hits him on the cheek with her free hand, but without any real force. He pushes her hand down to the top of the bed, fixes the strap round her wrist and tightens it.

The young doctor wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, panting, then takes a couple of steps away and just looks at her.

The doctor walks slowly up to her, places the last strap across her chest and fixes it in place. Her left hand is stinging after her desperate blows. He stands there for a while, just staring at her again, then goes to the foot of the bed. Blood is trickling from his nose, over his lips. She can hear him taking shallow, excited breaths. Without any hurry, he tightens the straps round her ankles, pulling her thighs further apart. She looks him in the eyes and thinks that she can’t let this happen.

He strokes her calves with shaking hands, and stares up between her thighs.

‘Don’t do this,’ she tries to say in a composed voice.

‘Just keep quiet,’ he says, removing his doctor’s coat without taking his eyes off her.

Saga turns her face aside, doesn’t want to look at him, can’t believe that this is happening.

She closes her eyes, desperately trying to think of a way out.

Suddenly she hears a strange rattling sound beneath the bed. She opens her eyes and sees a figure mirrored in the stainless-steel basin.

‘You should get out of here,’ she gasps.

The doctor picks her pants up from the bed and stuffs them roughly in her mouth. She tries to scream as she realises what the reflection in the shiny metal of the basin is.

It’s Jurek Walter.

He must have hidden himself away in her room while she was looking for Bernie’s sleeping pills.

With growing panic she struggles to free herself.

She can hear the buttons of Jurek’s shirt clicking against the struts under the mattress as he moves.

One button comes loose and flies out across the floor. The doctor looks at it in surprise as it rolls round in a large circle and spins to a stop.

‘Jurek,’ the doctor mutters at the moment a hand grabs his legs and pulls him to the ground.

Anders Rönn falls flat on the floor, hitting the back of his head and gasping, but he rolls over onto his front, kicks out and crawls away.

Run, Saga thinks. Lock the door, call the police.

Jurek rolls out onto the floor and gets to his feet at the same time as the doctor. Anders Rönn makes for the door, but Jurek gets there first.

Saga is struggling to get the underpants out of her mouth, coughs, takes a deep breath and starts to feel sick.

Anders Rönn moves sideways, walks straight into the plastic chair and backs away, staring at the elderly patient.

‘Don’t hurt me,’ he pleads.

‘No?’

‘Please, I’ll do anything.’

Jurek comes closer, and his wrinkled face is completely expressionless.

‘I’m going to kill you, my boy,’ he says. ‘But first you’re going to experience a great deal of pain.’

Saga screams through the fabric gag, and tugs at the straps.

She can’t understand what’s happened, why Jurek hid in her room, why he changed their plan.

The plastic chair tumbles to the floor.

The doctor is shaking his head, retreating and trying to fend Jurek off with one hand.

His eyes are open wide.

Sweat is running down his cheeks.

Jurek is following him slowly, then suddenly he grabs his hand and forces the doctor down on the floor. With terrible force he stamps on the arm, close to the shoulder. There’s a crunch and the young doctor screams out loud. With military precision, Jurek pulls in the opposite direction and twists the arm round. It’s completely detached from its socket now, just hanging from muscle and skin.

Jurek yanks the doctor to his feet, holds him up against the wall, and slaps him several times to stop him losing consciousness.

His loose arm is slowly turning darker from internal bleeding.

Saga coughs, she’s having trouble breathing.

The doctor is weeping like an overtired child.

Saga manages to shift position slightly and pulls her left arm so hard that her vision starts to go black before her arm suddenly comes loose.

She tugs the underpants from her mouth, gasps for breath and coughs again.

‘We can’t escape now – there weren’t any sleeping pills in Bernie’s room,’ Saga says quickly to Jurek.

The hand she’s just pulled free hurts like hell. She can’t tell how badly wounded it is. Her fingers are burning like fire.

Jurek starts to go through the doctor’s clothes, finds the keys to the cell door and slips them in his pocket.

‘Do you want to watch while I cut his head off?’ he asks, glancing quickly at Saga.

‘Don’t do it, please... there’s no need, is there?’

‘There’s never any need to do anything,’ Jurek says, grabbing the doctor by the neck.

‘Wait.’

‘OK, I’ll wait... for two minutes, for your sake, little police officer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The one mistake you made was when you only broke one of Bernie’s fingers,’ Jurek says, taking the doctor’s pass card.

‘I was thinking of killing him slowly,’ she tries, even though she knows there’s no point.

Jurek slaps the doctor again.

‘All I need is the two codes,’ he says.

‘Codes,’ the doctor mumbles. ‘I can’t remember, I...’

Saga tries to loosen the other straps, but the fingers of her left hand are so badly injured that it’s impossible.

‘How could you tell?’ Saga asks.

‘I got a letter.’

‘No,’ the doctor whimpers.

‘Saying that Mikael Kohler-Frost had escaped and been found alive... so I assumed the police were going to send someone.’

Jurek finds the doctor’s phone, drops it on the floor and crushes it beneath his foot.

‘But why—’

‘I haven’t got time,’ he interrupts. ‘I need to go and destroy Joona Linna.’

Saga watches as Jurek Walter leads the doctor out of the cell. She hears their footsteps in the corridor, then the sound of the pass card being pulled through the reader, the code being tapped in, followed by the whirr of the lock.

Joona rings his own doorbell and smiles to himself as he hears footsteps on the floor. The lock rattles and the door swings open. He walks into the dimly lit hall and takes his shoes off.

‘You look completely wiped out,’ Disa says.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Do you want something to eat? There’s some left... I can warm it up...’

Joona shakes his head and gives her a hug. He’s thinking that he’s too tired to talk now, but later he’ll ask her to cancel her trip to Brazil. There’s no need for her to go now.

She helps him get his clothes off and a load of sand falls on the floor.

‘Have you been playing in a sandpit?’ she laughs.

‘Only for a little while,’ he replies.

He goes into the bathroom and gets in the shower. His body feels sore as the hot water courses over him. He leans against the tiles as his muscles slowly start to relax.

The hand that was holding the gun as he pulled the trigger and shot an unarmed man is burning.

If I can get used to the thought of what I’m guilty of having done, I can be happy again, he thinks.