The Sandman

by Lars Kepler

  Jurek Walter was to be held in strict isolation in Sweden’s most secure facility for an indeterminate amount of time. Samuel Mendel had regarded Jurek’s threat as empty words from a defeated man, but Joona had been unable to escape a sense that the threat had been presented as a truth, a fact.

  The investigation was downgraded when no other bodies were found. Although it wasn’t dropped altogether, it went cold.

  Joona refused to give up, but there were too few pieces of the puzzle, and the scant lines of inquiry they had turned out to be dead ends. Even though Jurek Walter had been stopped and convicted, they didn’t really know any more about him than before.

  He was still a mystery.

  * * *

  —

  One friday afternoon, two months after the appeal, Joona was sitting with Samuel at Il Caffè, close to police headquarters, drinking a double espresso. They were busy with other cases now but still met up regularly to discuss Jurek Walter. Though they had been through all the material about him many times, they had found nothing to suggest that he had an accomplice. The whole thing was on the verge of becoming an in-joke, with the two of them weighing up innocent passersby as possible suspects. And then something terrible happened.

  28

  Samuel’s phone buzzed on the café table, next to his espresso cup. The screen showed a picture of his wife, Rebecka. Joona listened idly to the conversation as he picked the crystallized sugar from his cinnamon bun. Evidently, Rebecka and the boys were heading out to Dalarö earlier than planned, and Samuel agreed to pick up some food on the way. He told her to drive carefully, and ended the call with lots of kisses.

  “The carpenter who’s been repairing our veranda wants us to take a look at his work as soon as possible,” Samuel explained. “The painter can start this weekend if it’s ready.”

  Joona and Samuel returned to their offices in the National Criminal Investigation Department and didn’t see each other again for the rest of the day.

  Five hours later, Joona was eating dinner with his family when Samuel called. He was panting and talking so fast that it was difficult to make out what he was saying, but apparently Rebecka and the boys weren’t at the house in Dalarö. They hadn’t been there and weren’t answering the phone.

  “There’s bound to be an explanation,” Joona said.

  “I’ve called the police, and all the hospitals, and—”

  “Where are you now?” Joona asked.

  “I’m out on the Dalarö road. I’m heading back to the house.”

  “What can I do?” Joona asked.

  He had already thought the thought, but the hairs on the back of his neck still stood up when Samuel said: “Make sure Jurek Walter hasn’t escaped.”

  Joona checked with the Secure Criminal Psychology Unit of the Löwenströmska Hospital at once, and spoke to Chief Roland Brolin. He was told that nothing unusual had occurred in the secure unit. Jurek Walter was in his cell and had been in total isolation all day.

  When Joona called Samuel back, his friend’s voice sounded different, shrill and hunted.

  “I’m out in the forest.” Samuel was nearly shouting. “I’ve found Rebecka’s car. It’s in the middle of the little road leading to the headland, but there’s no one here. There’s no one here!”

  “I’m on my way,” Joona said at once.

  The police searched intensively for Samuel’s family. All traces of Rebecka and the boys had vanished on the gravel road five meters from the abandoned car. The dogs didn’t pick up any scent, just walked up and down, sniffing and circling without finding anything. The forests, roads, houses, and waterways were searched for two months. After the police had withdrawn, Samuel and Joona kept looking on their own. They searched with determination and with a fear that grew until it was on the brink of being unbearable. Not once did they discuss what this was all about. Both refused to voice their fears about what had happened to Joshua, Reuben, and Rebecka. They had witnessed Jurek Walter’s cruelty.

  29

  Throughout this period, Joona suffered such terrible anxiety that he couldn’t sleep. He watched over his family, following them everywhere, picking them up and dropping them off, and making special arrangements with Lumi’s preschool, but he was forced to accept that this wouldn’t be enough in the long term.

  Joona had to confront his worst horror.

  He couldn’t talk to Samuel, but he could no longer deny the truth to himself.

  Jurek Walter hadn’t committed his crimes alone. Everything about Jurek Walter’s understated grandiosity suggested that he was the leader. But after Samuel’s family was abducted, there could be no doubt that Jurek Walter had an accomplice.

  This accomplice had been ordered to take Samuel’s family, and he had done so without leaving a single piece of evidence.

  Joona realized that his family was next. It was only good fortune that had spared him so far.

  Jurek Walter showed no mercy to anyone.

  Joona brought this up with Summa on numerous occasions, but she refused to take the threat as seriously as he did. Though she humored him, accepting his concern and precautionary measures, she assumed that his fears would subside over time.

  He had hoped that the police investigation that followed the disappearance of Samuel’s family would lead to the capture of the accomplice. When the search first began, Joona saw himself as the hunter, but as the weeks went by the dynamic changed. He knew that he and his family were the prey, and the calm he tried to demonstrate to Summa and Lumi was just a façade.

  * * *

  —

  It was half past ten in the evening, and he and Summa were lying in bed reading when a noise from the ground floor made Joona’s heart skip. The washing machine hadn’t finished its cycle yet, and he could hear a zipper rattling against the drum. He couldn’t help getting up and checking that all the windows downstairs were in one piece, the outside doors locked.

  When he returned, Summa had switched off her lamp and was lying there watching him.

  “What did you do?” she asked gently.

  He forced himself to smile, and was about to say something when they heard little footsteps. Joona turned and saw his daughter come into the bedroom. Her hair was sticking up, and her pajama pants had twisted around her waist.

  “Lumi, you’re supposed to be asleep,” he sighed.

  “We forgot to say good night to the cat,” she said.

  Every evening, Joona would read Lumi a story, and before he tucked her in for the night they always had to look out the window and wave to the gray cat that slept in their neighbors’ kitchen window.

  “Go back to bed now,” Summa said.

  “I’ll come and see you,” Joona promised.

  Lumi mumbled something and shook her head.

  “Do you want me to carry you?” he asked, and picked her up.

  She clung to him, and he suddenly noticed her heart pounding.

  “What is it? Did you have a dream?”

  “I only wanted to wave to the cat,” she whispered. “But there was a skeleton out there.”

  “In the window?”

  “No, he was standing on the ground,” she replied. “Right where we found the dead hedgehog. He was looking at me.”

  Joona put her in bed with Summa.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  He ran downstairs, not bothering to get his pistol from the gun cabinet, not bothering to put shoes on, just opened the kitchen door and rushed outside into the cold night air.

  No one was there.

  He ran behind the house, climbed over the neighbors’ fence, and moved into the next garden. The whole area was quiet and still. He returned to the tree in the garden where he and Lumi had found a dead hedgehog the previous summer.

  The tall grass just inside their fence had been disturbed. Somebody had definitely been standing there. From that spot you could see very clearly through Lumi’s window.

  Joona went inside, locked the door behind him, picked up his pistol,
and searched the whole house before going back to bed. Lumi fell asleep almost instantly between him and Summa, and a little while later, his wife was asleep as well.

  30

  Joona had already tried to talk to Summa about going into hiding and starting a new life, but she had never encountered Jurek Walter. She didn’t know the extent of what he had done, and she had doubts that he was behind Rebecka’s, Joshua’s, and Reuben’s disappearance.

  With fevered concentration, Joona began to confront the inevitable. A chill focus consumed him as he examined every detail, every aspect, and drew up a plan. A plan that would save all three of them.

  The National Criminal Investigation Department knew almost nothing about Jurek Walter. The disappearance of Samuel Mendel’s family after his arrest provided strong support for the theory that he had an accomplice. But this accomplice hadn’t left a single shred of evidence. He was a shadow of a shadow.

  Joona’s colleagues said it was hopeless, but he wouldn’t give up. Naturally, he understood it wouldn’t be easy to find this invisible accomplice. It might take several years, and Joona was only one person. He couldn’t search and protect Summa and Lumi at the same time, not every second. If he hired two bodyguards to accompany them everywhere, the family’s savings would be exhausted in six months.

  Jurek’s accomplice had waited months before seizing Samuel’s family. This man was in no hurry, patiently biding his time until he was ready to strike.

  Joona tried to find a way for them to stay together. They could move, get new jobs and change identities, and live quietly somewhere. Nothing mattered more than being with Summa and Lumi.

  But, as a police officer, he knew that protected identities aren’t safe; they just give you breathing space. The farther away you got, the more breaths you managed to take, but in the file of Jurek Walter’s suspected victims was a man who went missing in Bangkok, disappearing without a trace from the elevator in the Sukhothai Hotel.

  There was no escape.

  Eventually, Joona was forced to accept that there was something more important to him than being with Summa and Lumi. Their lives mattered more.

  If he ran away or disappeared with them, it would be a direct challenge to Jurek to track them down. And Joona knew that, once you start looking, sooner or later you are going to find your quarry, no matter how hard they might try to hide.

  Jurek Walter mustn’t look, he thought. That’s the only way not to be found.

  There was only one solution. Jurek and his shadow had to believe that Summa and Lumi were dead.

  31

  By the time Joona reaches the outskirts of Stockholm, the traffic has built up. Snowflakes are swirling around before vanishing on the damp asphalt of the highway.

  He can’t stand to remember how he arranged Summa and Lumi’s deaths in order to give them a different life. Nils Åhlén helped him but didn’t like it. He understood that they were doing the right thing, assuming the accomplice really did exist. But if Joona was wrong, this would be a mistake of incomprehensible proportions.

  Over the years, this doubt has settled over the pathologist’s slender figure as a great sorrow.

  The railings of the Northern Cemetery flicker past the car, and Joona remembers the day Summa’s and Lumi’s urns were lowered into the ground. The rain fell on the silk ribbons of their wreaths and pattered on the black umbrellas.

  Both Joona and Samuel continued looking, but not together. They were no longer in touch with each other. Their different fates had made them strangers. Eleven months after his family disappeared, Samuel gave up searching and returned to duty. He lasted three weeks after abandoning hope. Early in the morning of a glorious March day, Samuel went to his summer house. He walked down to the beautiful beach where his boys used to swim, took out his service pistol, fed a bullet into the chamber, and shot himself in the head.

  When Joona got the call from his boss telling him that Samuel was dead, he felt a deep, unsettling numbness.

  * * *

  —

  Joona had never thought that he would be losing his family forever. He knew he had to refrain from meeting them, seeing them, touching them for a while. He realized that it might take years. Still, he had always been convinced that he would find Jurek Walter’s accomplice and arrest him. But after ten years he had progressed no further than he had in the first ten days. The only evidence that the accomplice existed was that Jurek’s prophecy for Samuel had come true.

  Officially, there was no connection between the disappearance of Samuel’s family and Jurek Walter; it was regarded as an accident. Joona was the only person who believed that Jurek’s partner had taken them. He was convinced that he was right, even though he had started to accept that he wasn’t going to find the accomplice.

  But the important thing was that his family was still alive.

  He stopped talking about the case, because it was impossible to ignore the likelihood that he was being watched. He felt condemned to a solitary life.

  The years passed, and the fabricated deaths came to seem more and more real.

  He had truly lost his wife and daughter.

  * * *

  —

  Joona pulls up behind a taxi outside the main entrance of Södermalm Hospital, gets out, and walks through the falling snow toward the revolving glass door.

  32

  Mikael Kohler-Frost has been moved from the emergency room of Södermalm Hospital to Ward 66, which specializes in acute and chronic cases of infection.

  Dr. Irma Goodwin is now walking across the shiny vinyl floor with Joona. A light flickers above a framed print.

  “His general condition is very poor,” she explains as they walk. “He’s malnourished, and he has pneumonia. The lab found the antigens for Legionnaires’ in his urine.”

  “Legionnaires’ disease?”

  Joona stops in the corridor and runs his hand through his tousled hair. The doctor notices that his eyes have turned an intense gray, almost like burnished silver, and she hurriedly assures him that the disease isn’t contagious.

  “It’s linked to specific locations with—”

  “I know,” Joona replies, and continues walking.

  He remembers that the man who was found dead in the plastic barrel had been suffering from Legionnaires’ disease. To contract the disease, you have to be somewhere with infected water. Cases of infection in Sweden are extremely rare. The Legionella bacteria grow in warm pools, water tanks, and pipes, but cannot survive if the temperature is too low.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Joona asks.

  “I think so. I gave him a macrolide immediately,” she replies, trying to keep up with the tall detective.

  “And that’s helping?”

  “It’ll take a few days—he still has a high fever, and there’s a risk of septic embolisms,” she says, opening a door and ushering him through before following him into the patient’s room.

  Daylight is passing through the bag on the drip stand, making it glow. A thin, very pale man is lying on the bed with his eyes closed, muttering: “No, no, no. No, no, no, no.”

  His chin is trembling, and the beads of sweat on his brow merge and trickle down his face. A nurse is sitting beside him, holding his left hand and carefully cleaning the lacerations on it.

  “Has he said anything?” Joona asks.

  “He’s been delirious, and it’s hard to understand what he’s saying,” the nurse replies, taping a compress over the wound on his hand.

  She leaves the room, and Joona carefully approaches the patient. When he looks at his emaciated features, he has no difficulty discerning the child’s face he has studied in photographs: the neat mouth, the long, dark eyelashes. Joona thinks back to the most recent picture of Mikael. He was ten years old, sitting in front of a computer with a fringe of hair over his eyes, an amused smile on his lips.

  The young man in the hospital bed coughs tiredly, takes a few irregular breaths with his eyes closed, then whispers to himself, “No, no, no�
��”

  There’s no doubt that the man lying in bed in front of him is Mikael Kohler-Frost.

  “You’re safe now, Mikael,” Joona says.

  Dr. Goodwin is standing behind him silently, looking at the emaciated patient.

  He shakes his head and jerks, tensing every muscle in his body. The liquid in the drip bag turns the color of blood. He’s trembling, and starts to whimper quietly to himself.

  “My name is Joona Linna. I’m a detective inspector, and I was one of the people who looked for you when you didn’t come home.”

  Mikael opens his eyes a little but doesn’t seem to see anything at first. Then he blinks a few times and squints at Joona.

  “You think I’m alive….”

  He coughs, then lies back, panting, and looks at Joona.

  “Where have you been, Mikael?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know where I am.”

  “You’re in Södermalm Hospital in Stockholm,” Joona says.

  “Is the door locked? Is it?”

  “Mikael, I need to find out where you’ve been.”

  “I don’t understand,” he whispers.

  “I need to find out—”

  “What the hell are you doing with me?” he asks in a despairing voice, and starts to cry.

  “I’m going to give him a sedative,” the doctor says, and leaves the room.

  “You’re safe now,” Joona explains. “Everyone here is trying to help you, and—”

  “I don’t want to. I don’t want to.”

  He shakes his head and tries to pull the drip from his arm with tired fingers.

  “Where have you been all this time, Mikael? Where have you been living? Were you hiding? Were you locked up, or—”