Lars Kepler: The Sandman

It’s the middle of the night, and snow is blowing in from the sea. A young man is walking across a high railway bridge, towards Stockholm. His face is as pale as misted glass. His jeans are stiff with frozen blood. He is walking between the rails, stepping over the sleepers. Fifty metres below him the ice on the water is just visible, like a strip of cloth. A blanket of snow covers the trees and oil tanks in the harbour are barely visible; the snow is swirling in the glow from the container crane far below .

Warm blood is trickling down the man’s lower left arm, into his hand and dripping from his fingertips .

The rails start to sing and whistle as a night-train approaches the two-kilometre-long bridge .

The young man sways and sits down on the rail, then gets to his feet again and carries on walking .

The air is buffeted in front of the train, and the view is obscured by the billowing snow. The Traxx train has already reached the middle of the bridge when the driver catches sight of the man on the track. He blows his horn, and sees the figure almost fall, then it takes a long step to the left, onto the oncoming track, and grabs hold of the flimsy railing .

The man’s clothes are flapping around his body. The bridge is shaking heavily under his feet. He is standing still with his eyes wide open, his hands on the railing .

Everything is swirling snow and tumbling darkness .

His bloody hand has started to freeze as he carries on walking .

His name is Mikael Kohler-Frost. He has been missing for thirteen years, and was declared dead seven years ago.

Secure Criminal Psychology Unit

Löwenströmska Hospital

The steel gate closes behind the new doctor with a heavy clang. The metallic echo pushes past him and continues down the spiral staircase.

Anders Rönn feels a shiver run down his spine when everything suddenly goes quiet.

As of today, he is going to be working in the secure criminal psychology unit.

For the past thirteen years, the strictly isolated bunker has been home to the ageing Jurek Walter. He was sentenced to psychiatric care with specific probation requirements.

The young doctor doesn’t know much about his patient, except that he has been diagnosed with: ‘Schizophrenia, non-specific. Chaotic thinking. Recurrent acute psychosis, with erratic and extremely violent episodes’.

Anders Rönn shows his ID at level zero, removes his mobile and hangs the key to the gate in his locker before the guard opens the first door of the airlock. He goes in and waits for the door to close before walking over to the next door. When a signal sounds, the guard opens that one too. Anders turns round and waves before carrying on along the corridor towards the isolation ward’s staffroom.

Senior Consultant Roland Brolin is a thickset man in his fifties, with sloping shoulders and cropped hair. He is standing smoking under the extractor fan in the kitchen, leafing through an article on the pay gap between men and women in the health-workers’ magazine.

‘Jurek Walter must never be alone with any member of staff,’ the consultant says. ‘He must never meet other patients, he never has any visitors, and he’s never allowed out into the exercise yard. Nor is he...’

‘Never?’ Anders asks. ‘Surely it isn’t permitted to keep someone...’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Roland Brolin says sharply.

‘So what’s he actually done?’

‘Nothing but nice things,’ Roland says, heading towards the corridor.

Even though Jurek Walter is Sweden’s worst-ever serial killer, he is completely unknown to the public. The proceedings against him in the Central Courthouse and at the Court of Appeal in the Wrangelska Palace were held behind closed doors, and all the files are still strictly confidential.

Anders Rönn and Senior Consultant Roland Brolin pass through another security door and a young woman with tattooed arms and pierced cheeks winks at them.

‘Come back in one piece,’ she says breezily.

‘There’s no need to worry,’ Roland says to Anders in a low voice. ‘Jurek Walter is a quiet, elderly man. He doesn’t fight and he doesn’t raise his voice. Our cardinal rule is that we never go into his cell. But Leffe, who was on the night-shift last night, noticed that he had made some sort of knife that he’s got hidden under his mattress, so obviously we have to confiscate it.’

‘How do we do that?’ Anders asks.

‘We break the rules.’

‘We’re going into Jurek’s cell?’

‘You’re going in... to ask nicely for the knife.’

‘I’m going in...?’

Roland Brolin laughs loudly and explains that they’re going to pretend to give the patient his normal injection of Risperidone, but will actually be giving him an overdose of Zypadhera.

The Senior Consultant runs his card through yet another reader and taps in a code. There’s a bleep, and the lock of the security door whirrs.

‘Hang on,’ Roland says, holding out a little box of yellow earplugs.

‘You said he doesn’t shout.’

Roland smiles weakly, looks at his new colleague with weary eyes, and sighs heavily before he starts to explain.

‘Jurek Walter will talk to you, quite calmly, probably perfectly reasonably,’ he says in a grave voice. ‘But later this evening, when you’re driving home, you’ll swerve into oncoming traffic and smash into an articulated lorry... or you’ll stop off at the DIY store to buy an axe before you pick the kids up from preschool.’

‘Should I be scared now?’ Anders smiles.

‘No, but hopefully careful,’ Roland says.

Anders doesn’t usually have much luck, but when he read the advert in the Doctors’ Journal for a full-time, temporary but long-term position in the secure unit of the Löwenströmska Hospital, his heart had started to beat faster.

It’s only a twenty-minute drive from home, and it could well lead to a permanent appointment.

Since working as an intern at Skaraborg Hospital and in a health centre in Huddinge, he has had to get by on temporary contracts at the regional clinic of Sankt Sigfrid’s Hospital.

The long drives to Växjö and the irregular hours proved impossible to combine with Petra’s job in the council’s recreational administration and Agnes’s autism.

Only two weeks ago Anders and Petra had been sitting at the kitchen table trying to work out what on earth they were going to do.

‘We can’t go on like this,’ he had said, perfectly calmly.

‘But what alternative do we have?’ she had whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ Anders had replied, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

Agnes’s teaching assistant at her preschool had told them that Agnes had had a difficult day. She had refused to let go of her milk-glass, and the other children had laughed. She hadn’t been able to accept that break-time was over, because Anders hadn’t come to pick her up like he usually did. He had driven straight back from Växjö, but hadn’t reached the preschool until six o’clock. Agnes was still sitting in the dining room with her hands round the glass.

When they got home, Agnes had stood in her room, staring at the wall beside the doll’s house, clapping her hands in that introverted way she had. They don’t know what she can see there, but she says that grey sticks keep appearing, and she has to count them, and stop them. She does that when she’s feeling particularly anxious. Sometimes ten minutes is enough, but that evening she had to stand there for more than four hours before they could get her into bed.