Lars Kepler - The Sandman

She carries on through the deep snow and tries to make out anything through the darkness, off towards the forest.

The light of the flare is weaker now, it will soon go out. Mikael is lying on his side in the snow, gasping for breath. There’s blood spattered at the very edge of the trembling circle of light, but the body isn’t there.

‘Jurek,’ she whispers, pushing into the light and spotting his tracks through the snow.

Saga’s head is aching badly as she picks up the flare and holds it aloft, then carries on moving forward. The glow flickers ahead of her. Shadows and light play across the snow, and suddenly she sees movement from the corner of her eye.

Jurek stands up and moves away through the snow.

Saga fires before she has time to aim properly. The bullet goes through the top of his arm and he lurches to one side, almost falling, then takes a few steps down the steep slope leading to the rapids.

Saga follows, with the flare held high. She catches sight of him again, takes aim and hits him in the chest with three shots.

Jurek falls backwards, over the icy fringe and straight into the black water of the rapids. Saga fires as he’s falling, and hits him in the cheek and ear.

He gets sucked down into the water and she runs over and manages to shoot him in the foot before he disappears. Saga replaces the cartridge, slides down the steep slope, falls and hits her back on the ground, sliding under the snow, but gets unsteadily to her feet and fires into the black water. She holds the flare up above the swirling rapids. The light penetrates the surface, past the spinning bubbles and all the way to the dark-brown bottom. Something large is tumbling round down there, and suddenly she catches a glimpse of a wrinkled face among the stones and swirling weeds.

Saga fires again and a cloud of blood billows out in the dark water. She takes aim and goes on firing, releases the cartridge and slides in a fresh one, then shoots again. The flashes from the barrel flicker on the racing water. She walks along the shore, following the current, and goes on shooting until she has no more ammunition and Jurek Walter’s body vanishes beneath the ice where the rapids spread out.

Panting, Saga stands at the edge of the water as the flare dies away to a shimmering red glow.

She just stares down at the water as tears run down her face, like a tired child.

The first rays of sunlight are starting to reach over the treetops, and the warm light of dawn spreads out across the sparkling snowy landscape. There’s a sound of helicopters approaching in the air, and Saga realises that it’s over at last.

Saga was taken by ambulance to Danderyd Hospital, where she was examined and given a bed. She lay for a while in her room, but left the hospital by taxi before she received any treatment.

Now she’s limping along a corridor in the Karolinska Hospital, where Reidar and Mikael were taken by air ambulance. Her clothes are dirty and wet, her face is streaked with blood, and all she can hear in her right ear is a loud buzzing sound.

Reidar and his son are still in emergency room 12. She opens the door and sees the author lying on an operating table.

Mikael is standing beside him, holding his hand.

Reidar is telling the male nurse over and over again that he has to see his daughter.

The moment he sees Saga he falls silent.

Mikael takes some clean compresses from the trolley and gives them to Saga. He points at her forehead, where blood has once again started to trickle from the blackened wound on her eyebrow.

The nurse comes over, looks at Saga, then asks her to accompany him to an examination room.

‘I’m a police officer,’ Saga says, looking for her ID.

‘You need help,’ the nurse tries to say, but Saga interrupts him and asks for them to be taken to Felicia Kohler-Frost’s room in the infectious diseases clinic.

‘I have to see her,’ she says gravely.

The nurse makes a call, gets the go-ahead and wheels Reidar’s bed towards the lift.

The bed’s wheels squeak faintly on the pale vinyl floor.

Saga follows, suddenly feeling the urge to cry.

Reidar is lying with his eyes closed, and Mikael is walking alongside, holding his father by the hand.

A young nurse meets them and shows them into an intensive care room with subdued lighting.

The only sound is the slow wheezing and ticking of the machines monitoring heart rate, breathing, blood oxygenation and ECG.

In the bed lies an extremely slight woman. Her long black hair is spread out over her shoulders and pillow. Her eyes are closed and her small hands are lying by her sides.

She’s breathing rapidly, and her face is covered with beads of sweat.

‘Felicia,’ Reidar whispers, trying to reach her with his hand.

Mikael leans his cheek towards his sister and whispers something to her with a smile.

Saga stands behind them, staring at Felicia, the captive girl who has now been rescued from the darkness.

Two days later Saga is walking through the park towards the headquarters of the Security Police. There are birds singing in the bushes and snow-covered trees.

Her hair has started to grow out again. She has twelve neat stitches on her temple, and five across her left eyebrow.

Yesterday her boss, Verner Zandén, called and told her to report to his office at eight o’clock this morning to receive the Security Police Medal of Honour.

The ceremony strikes her as being rather odd. Three men died out at Råcksta Manor, and Jurek Walter’s body was washed away, deep under the ice covering the lake.

Before she was discharged she managed to visit Joona in hospital. He had a distant look in his eyes as he patiently answered her questions about why Jurek and his brother had done what they did.

Joona’s body was shaking as if he were still frozen as he slowly told her what was behind it all.

Vadim Levanov fled from Leninsk with his two sons Igor and Roman after the disastrous accident in 1960, when an intercontinental missile exploded on the launch pad. He eventually reached Sweden, was granted a work permit and given a job at the big quarry in Rotebro, with accommodation in the guest labourers’ barracks. His children lived with him in secret; he would school them during the evenings and keep them hidden during the day, all the while hoping that he would be granted Swedish citizenship and the chance of a new life for him and his sons.

Joona had asked for a glass of water and when Saga leaned forward to help him drink she could feel him shaking as if he were freezing, even though his body was radiating heat.

Saga recalls Reidar’s account of how he met the twins by Edssjön, and started playing with them. The twins took Reidar back to the quarry where they played in the great mounds of sifted sand. One evening Reidar got caught by one of the foremen. He was so scared of reprisals that he blamed everything on the older boys, and pointed out where they lived.

The twins were taken into the custody of the Child Welfare Commission, and because they weren’t listed on any Swedish registers the case was passed to the Aliens Department.

Joona asked a nurse for a warm blanket and explained to Saga that Jurek’s brother had pneumonia and was being treated in hospital when Jurek was extradited to Kazakhstan. But because Jurek didn’t have any family there he ended up in a children’s home in Pavlodar.

From the age of thirteen he worked on the barges trafficking the Irtysh River, and during the troubles that followed Stalin’s death he was forcibly recruited by a Chechen militia group. They took the fifteen-year-old Jurek to a suburb of Grozny and turned him into a soldier.

‘The brothers were sent to different countries,’ Joona said in a low voice.