Lars Kepler - The Sandman

Joona almost falls as he steps off the track. He picks up the bolt-cutters and turns to the train driver.

‘Open the red containers,’ he says.

‘I don’t have the authority to—’

‘Just do it,’ Joona shouts, throwing the bolt-cutters on the ground.

The driver climbs down and picks up the bolt-cutters. Joona goes with him along the train, and points at the first red container. Without a word the driver clambers up onto the rust-brown coupling and sheers the lock. There’s a rumble as the door opens and large boxes containing television sets tumble out.

‘Next one,’ he whispers.

Joona starts walking, drops his pistol, picks it up out of the snow, and carries on towards the rear of the train. They pass eight containers before they reach the next red one bearing the words Hamburg Süd.

The train driver breaks the lock, but can’t open the heavy catch. He hits it with the bolt-cutters, and the sound of metal against metal echoes desolately around the harbour.

Joona staggers forward, shoves the catch up with a scraping sound and the big metal door swings open.

Disa is lying on the rusty floor of the container. Her face is pale and there’s a look of bewilderment in her wide-open eyes. She’s lost one of her boots, and her hair is stiff and frozen round her head.

Disa’s mouth is frozen in a grimace of fear and sobbing.

There’s a deep cut on the right side of her long, slender neck. The pool of blood beneath her throat and neck is already covered by a film of ice.

Gently Joona lifts her down from the container and takes a few steps away from the train.

‘I know you’re alive,’ he says, falling to his knees with her in his arms.

Some blood is trickling over his hand, but her heart has stopped. It’s over, there’s no way back.

‘Not this,’ Joona whispers against her cheek. ‘Not you...’

He rocks her slowly as the snow falls. He doesn’t notice the car stopping, and is unaware of Saga Bauer running towards him. She’s barefoot, wearing just trousers and a T-shirt.

‘We’ve got people on their way,’ she cries as she gets closer. ‘God, what have you done? You need to get some help...’

Saga shouts into her radio, swears, and, as if in a dream, Joona hears her force the train driver to take his jacket off, then she wraps it round his shoulders. She sinks down behind him and holds him while the sirens of police cars and ambulances fill the harbour.

The snow is blown from a large circle of ground as the yellow air-ambulance helicopter lands, settling onto its runners. The sound is deafening and the train driver backs away from the man sitting there with the dead woman in his arms.

The rotors are still turning as the paramedics leap out and run over, their clothes flapping round their bodies.

The draught from the helicopter is blowing rubbish up against the high fence. It feels as if all the oxygen is being blown away from them.

Joona is on the point of losing consciousness when the paramedics force him to let go of Disa’s dead body. His eyes are unfocused, and his hands white with cold. He’s muttering incoherently and resists when they try to get him to lie down.

Saga is crying as she watches him being carried away on the stretcher and into the helicopter. She realises that it’s urgent now.

The noise of the rotors changes as the helicopter rises off the ground, swaying in a side wind that’s picked up.

The angle of the rotors shifts, the helicopter leans forward and disappears across the city.

As they cut his clothes off, Joona starts to sink into a death-like torpor. His eyes are still open, but his pupils have expanded and are so fixed that they no longer react to light. It’s impossible to detect any pulse or sign of breathing.

Joona Linna’s body temperature has sunk below 32 degrees as they descend to land on the helicopter pad on building P8 at the Karolinska Hospital.

The police are quickly on the scene at Frihamnen, and after just a few minutes they are able to put out an alert for a silver-grey Citroën Evasion. Jurek Walter’s car was registered by several different surveillance cameras as it drove into the harbour fifteen minutes before Disa Helenius’s car arrived. The same cameras recorded the car leaving the area seven minutes after Joona Linna got there.

Every police car in Stockholm is involved in the search, as well as two Eurocopter 135s. It’s a massive deployment, and just fifteen minutes after the alarm is sounded, the vehicle is observed on the Central Bridge before it disappears into the Söderleden Tunnel.

Police cars are on their way, with sirens and flashing lights, and roadblocks are being set up at the exits when the shock wave from a huge explosion blasts out of the entrance to the tunnel.

The helicopter hovering above lurches and the pilot only just manages to parry the force of the wave. Dust and debris is scattered across the carriageways and railway tracks, all the way down to the snow-covered ice of Riddarfjärden.

It’s half past four in the morning and Saga Bauer is sitting on a rustling sheet of protective paper on top of a couch as a doctor sews up the wounds on her body.

‘I have to go,’ she says, staring at the dusty flat-screen television on the wall.

The doctor has just started bandaging her left wrist when the item about the big traffic accident comes on.

A sombre-voiced reporter explains that a police chase in the centre of Stockholm has ended with a single car crashing with fatal consequences inside the Söderleden Tunnel.

‘The accident happened at half past two this morning,’ the reporter says, ‘which probably explains why no other vehicles were involved. The police have given assurances that the road will be reopened in time for the morning rush-hour, but have otherwise declined to make any comment about the incident.’

The screen shows a cloud of black smoke billowing out of the entrance to the tunnel at a peculiarly high speed. The cloud covers the whole of the Hilton Hotel with rolling veils, then slowly disperses over Södermalm.

Saga refused to go to hospital until she received confirmation that Jurek Walter was dead. Two of Joona’s colleagues from National Crime told her. To save time, their forensics experts had accompanied the fire crews into the tunnel. The violent explosion had torn Jurek Walter’s arms and head from his body.

On the screen, a politician is sitting in the studio with a female presenter. Their faces heavy with sleep, they discuss the problem of dangerous police pursuits.

‘I have to go,’ Saga says, slipping down onto the floor.

‘The wounds on your legs need...’

‘Don’t bother,’ she says, and leaves the room.

Joona wakes up in hospital, feeling frozen. His arms are itching where infusions of warm liquid are slowly being fed into him. A male nurse is standing by his bed, and smiles at him when he opens his eyelids.

‘How are you feeling?’ the nurse asks, leaning forward. Joona tries to read the name-badge, but can’t get the letters to stay still long enough.

‘I’m freezing,’ he says.

‘In two hours your body temperature should be back to normal. I’ll give you some warm juice...’

Joona tries to sit up to drink, but suddenly feels a pain in his bladder. He lifts the insulating blanket off and sees that two thick needles are sticking into his abdomen.

‘What’s this?’ he asks weakly.

‘A peritoneal lavage,’ the nurse says. ‘We’re warming your body up from inside... You’ve got two litres of warm liquid in your abdomen right now.’

Joona shuts his eyes and tries to remember. Red containers, icy slush, and the shock as he jumped from the ship straight into the incredibly cold water.