Lars Kepler - The Sandman

Even though Joona knows the Sandman is dead, even though he saw the bullets go straight through his body, even though he saw him tumble into the quarry like a corpse into a mass grave, he still went down after it. He slid down the steep slope, trying to stop himself going too fast, and made his way to the body. Keeping his pistol aimed at the back of the man’s head, he felt his neck with the other hand. The Sandman was dead. His eyes hadn’t deceived him. The three bullets had all passed straight through his heart.

The thought that he no longer has to fear Jurek’s accomplice is so warm and comforting that he can’t help letting out a groan.

Joona dries himself and brushes his teeth, then suddenly stops and listens. It sounds like Disa’s talking on the phone.

When he walks into the bedroom he sees that Disa’s getting dressed.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks, lying down on the fresh sheets.

‘My boss called,’ she says with a weary smile. ‘Apparently they’re filling in a pit out at Loudden. The ground is being cleared, but it sounds as if they’ve found a backgammon set. I’ve got to get out there and stop them at once, because if it really is—’

‘Don’t go,’ Joona begs, feeling his eyes prick with tiredness.

Disa hums to herself as she takes a folded sweater from the top drawer of the chest.

‘Have you started using my drawers?’ he mutters, closing his eyes.

Disa walks back and forth in the room. He hears her brushing her hair, then lifting her coat off the hanger.

He rolls onto his side and feels memory and dreams start to join up, like snowflakes.

The Sandman’s body tumbles down the steep slope and stops when it hits an old cooker.

Samuel Mendel scratches his head and says: ‘There’s nothing at all to suggest that Jurek Walter has an accomplice. But you have to stick a finger in the air and say .’

Saga makes a fresh attempt to loosen the strap round her right wrist, but fails and slumps back again, out of breath.

Jurek Walter is escaping, she thinks.

Panic is bubbling in her chest.

She has to warn Joona.

Saga twists her body to the right, but has to give up.

In the distance she can hear a noise.

She holds her breath and listens.

There’s a squeaking sound, then several heavy thuds, before everything is silent once more.

It dawns on Saga that Jurek never needed the pills, all he wanted was for her to entice the doctor into her room. Jurek had seen through Anders Rönn’s intentions, and realised he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to go into her room if she asked for sleeping pills.

That had been the plan all along.

That was why he had taken her punishment, because the fact that she was dangerous had to be concealed.

She was a siren, just as he had said on the first day.

Jurek needed to lure the doctor into her room without a guard or a carer keeping an eye on proceedings.

Her fingers are so badly damaged that she whimpers with pain as she stretches to the side and picks at the catch of the strap across her shoulders.

Now she can move her shoulder and raise her head.

We all walked into his trap, she thinks. We thought we were deceiving him, but he had as good as put in an order for me. He knew someone would be sent, and today he found out for certain that I was his Trojan horse.

She lies still for a few seconds, catching her breath and feeling the endorphins in her body. She gathers her strength, then cranes her head to the side, trying to grab the strap round her right wrist with her mouth.

She slumps back, panting, thinking that she has to alert the staff and get them to call the police.

Saga takes a deep breath and tries again. Straining hard to hold her position, she manages to sink her teeth into the thick strap, loosen the catch and release another centimetre or so of the strap. She falls back, feeling nauseous, then twists and pulls her hand and succeeds in freeing it.

It doesn’t take long for her to remove the remaining straps. She puts her legs together and slips onto the floor. Her inner thighs are aching and her muscles shake as she pulls on her trousers.

She runs out into the corridor barefoot. One of the doctor’s shoes is wedged in the doorway, preventing the security door from closing.

Cautiously she opens the door, listens, then hurries on. The secure unit is ghostly quiet and abandoned. She can hear the sound of her feet sticking to the vinyl flooring as she creeps into the room to her right and over to the operator’s desk. The screens are dark, and the lights on the alarm unit are all switched off. The electricity supply to the whole secure unit has been cut.

But somewhere there has to be a phone or a functioning alarm. Saga carries on, past a number of closed doors, until she reaches the staff kitchen. The cutlery drawers are open, and there’s a toppled chair on the floor.

In the sink there’s a vegetable knife and some browning apple peel. Saga quickly snatches up the little knife, checks that the blade is sharp, and moves on.

She can hear a strange buzzing sound.

She stops and listens, then continues forward.

Her right hand is squeezing the knife too hard.

There ought to be security staff and carers here, but she daren’t call out. She’s scared of Jurek hearing her.

The buzzing is coming from the corridor. It sounds like a fly caught on a piece of fly-paper. She creeps past the inspection room, feeling more and more apprehensive.

She blinks at the darkness and stops again.

The buzzing is closer now.

She takes a few cautious steps forward. The door to the staffroom is open. There’s a light on. She reaches out her hand and opens the door wider.

For a moment there’s total silence, then she hears the hissing, buzzing sound again.

She moves closer and sees the end of the bed. Someone’s lying on it, their toes twitching. Two feet in white socks.

‘Hello?’ she says tentatively.

Saga convinces herself that the carer is lying there listening to music and has missed everything that’s been going on before she steps further into the room.

The bed is completely drenched in blood.

The girl with pierced cheeks is lying on her back, her body is quivering, her eyes are staring up at the ceiling but she may well have lost consciousness.

Her face is twitching, and from her pursed lips a mixture of blood and air is bubbling out with a hissing sound.

‘God...’

The girl has a dozen knife-wounds to her chest, deep cuts into her lungs and heart. There’s nothing Saga can do, she needs to get help as soon as she possibly can.

Blood is dripping onto the floor, beside the remnants of the girl’s crushed phone.

‘I’ll get help,’ Saga says.

The girl’s lips hiss as a bubble of blood inflates.

Saga leaves the room with a horribly empty feeling inside.

‘Dear God in heaven, dear God in heaven...’

She runs along the corridor, oddly numb with shock as she approaches the security airlock. The guard is sitting on the other side of the far door. The toughened glass makes him look indistinct and grey.

Hiding the little vegetable knife in her hand so as not to frighten him, Saga slows down and tries to control her breathing as she walks up to the glass and knocks on it.

‘We need help in here!’

She knocks louder, but he doesn’t react, so she moves to the side, towards the door, and sees that it’s open.

All the doors are open, she thinks as she walks through.

Saga is about to say something when she sees that the guard is dead. His throat has been cut so brutally that it’s sliced right through to the vertebrae. His head looks almost as if it’s hanging limply from a broom-handle. The blood has run down his body and gathered in a pool around his chair.