Lars Kepler - The Sandman

Disa turns right, away from the illuminated premises of one of the big banana import companies, and drives past a succession of low industrial units as she peers into the gloom.

Articulated lorries start to drive on board the ferry to St Petersburg.

A group of dock workers are standing smoking in an empty car park. Darkness and snow make the world around the little gathering seem muffled and isolated.

Disa drives past warehouse number five, and in through the gates of the container terminal. Each container is the size of a small cottage, and can weigh more than thirty tons. They stand there stacked on top of each other, maybe fifteen metres high.

A plastic bag is being blown about by the wind. The ice on the puddles crunches beneath the car’s tyres.

The stacks of containers form a network of passageways for the huge lorries and terminal tractors. Disa heads down one of the gangways that feels oddly narrow because its sides are so high. She can see from the tracks in the snow that another car has driven this way very recently. Some fifty metres ahead the passageway opens up onto the quayside. The vast bulk of Loudden’s oil tank is just visible through the snow beyond the cranes that are loading containers onto a ship.

The men with the backgammon set are probably waiting for her up ahead.

Snow is blowing across the windscreen and she slows down, switches the wipers on and brushes the light snow away.

In the distance a large piece of machinery resembling a scorpion stops in the middle of a sideways movement: it’s holding a red container quite still, just above the ground.

There’s no one in the driver’s cab, and the wheels are quickly being covered by snow.

She’s starts when her mobile suddenly rings, and smiles to herself as she answers:

‘You’re supposed to be asleep,’ she says brightly.

‘Tell me where you are right now,’ Joona says, his voice intense.

‘I’m in the car, on my way to—’

‘I want you to skip the meeting and go straight home.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Jurek Walter has escaped from the secure unit.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I want you to go home right away.’

The headlights are forming an aquarium full of glowing, swirling snow in front of the car. She slows down even more, looks at the red container held in the claw of the machine, and reads:

‘Hamburg Süd...’

‘You have to listen to me,’ Joona says. ‘Turn the car round and drive home.’

‘OK then.’

He waits and listens to her over the phone.

‘Have you turned round?’

‘I can’t right now... I need to find a suitable place,’ she says quietly as she suddenly catches sight of something odd.

‘Disa, I can see that I might be sounding a bit—’

‘Hang on,’ she interrupts.

‘What are you doing?’

She slows down still further and drives cautiously towards a large bundle that’s lying on the ground in the middle of the passageway. It looks like a grey blanket tied with duct tape, and it’s slowly being covered with snow.

‘What’s happening, Disa?’ Joona asks, sounding agitated. ‘Have you turned round yet?’

‘There’s something in the way,’ she says as she stops. ‘I can’t get past.’

‘You can reverse!’

‘Just give me a moment,’ she says, and puts the phone down on the seat.

‘Disa!’ he shouts. ‘You mustn’t get out of the car! Reverse away from there! Disa!’

She can’t hear him, she’s already out of the car and walking away. Snow is swirling gently through the air. It’s almost totally quiet, and the light from the tall cranes doesn’t reach into the deep gulley between the stacks of containers.

The wind forcing its way between the containers high above her is making strange noises.

In the distance she can see the warning lights of a huge forklift truck. The flashes of yellow are caught by the falling snow.

Disa is filled with a sense of sombre ceremony as she walks on in silence. She’s thinking that she’ll drag the bundle to the side so she can drive past, but stops and tries to focus her gaze.

The forklift disappears round a corner a long way ahead, leaving just the ice-cold light of the car’s headlights and the endlessly falling snow.

It looks as if there’s something moving under the grey blanket.

Disa blinks and hesitates.

Everything in this moment is astonishingly silent and peaceful. Snowflakes are sailing slowly down from the dense sky.

Disa stands still, feeling her heart beating hard in her chest, then she walks the rest of the way.

Joona is driving too fast when he turns left at the roundabout, the front bumper thuds into the banked-up snow, the tyres rumble over the packed ice. He wrestles with the steering wheel as the car slides sideways, then puts his foot down and the car leaves the pavement and carries on along Lindarängsvägen without losing much speed.

The vast grassy expanse of Gärdet is covered with snow, stretching like a white sea up towards Norra Djurgården.

He overtakes a bus on the straight, hits one hundred and sixty kilometres an hour, and flies past yellow-brick blocks of flats. The car slides between the edges of the deep tracks through the snow as he brakes to turn left towards the harbour. Snow and ice are thrown up across the windscreen. Through the tall wire fence surrounding the harbour he can see a long, narrow ferry being loaded with containers in the blurred light from a crane.

A rust-brown goods train is on its way into Frihamnen.

Joona peers through the swirling snow, the murky shadows surrounding the deserted warehouses. He turns sharply into the harbour, bouncing across a traffic-island as slush flies around the car and the tyres spin.

The railway barriers are already starting to close but Joona accelerates across the tracks and the barriers scrape the roof of the car.

He drives on at speed through Frihamnen. There are people leaving the Tallinn ferry terminal, a scant line of black figures vanishing into the night.

She can’t be far away. She stopped the car and got out. Someone rebooked her meeting. Forced her to come out here. Got her to leave the car.

He sounds his horn and people leap out of his way. One woman drops her luggage trolley and Joona drives straight over it.

An articulated lorry is moving slowly down the roll-on, roll-off ramp and onto the ferry to St Petersburg. It leaves great clods of compacted brown snow on the ground behind it.

Joona drives past an empty car park between warehouses five and six and in through the gates of the container terminal.

The area is like a city, with narrow alleys and tall, windowless buildings. He sees something from the corner of his eye and brakes sharply, then reverses with a shriek of tyres.

Disa’s car is standing in the passageway ahead of him. A thin layer of snow has settled on top of it. The driver’s door is open. Joona stops and runs over to it. The engine is still warm. He looks inside, there’s no sign of violence or a struggle.

He breathes ice-cold air into his lungs.

Disa got out of the car and walked in front of it. Snow is filling her tracks, making them soft.

‘No,’ he whispers.

There’s a patch of downtrodden snow ten metres ahead of her car, and a track has been left by something being dragged off to the side a metre or so between the tall containers before it stops.

A necklace of drops of blood is just visible under the powdery, freshly fallen snow.

Beyond that the snow is smooth and untouched.

Joona stops himself calling Disa’s name.

Ice-crystals are falling on the containers, making a tinkling sound. He takes a few steps back and sees five ISO containers hanging in the air twenty metres up. The one at the bottom has white writing on a red background: Hamburg Süd.