The Sandman

by Lars Kepler

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand.”

  “You’re tired, and you have a fever,” Joona says gently. “But you have to try to think.”

  33

  Mikael Kohler-Frost talks to himself in a low voice, moistening his mouth and looking up at Joona with big, questioning eyes. “I don’t know. It’s so hard to think,” the young man whispers. “There’s nothing to remember. It’s just dark, I get mixed up. I mix up what was before and how it was in the beginning. I can’t think, there’s too much sand, I can’t wake up.”

  He leans his head back and closes his eyes.

  “You said something about how it was in the beginning,” Joona says. “Can you try—”

  “Don’t touch me. I don’t want you to touch me,” he interrupts.

  “I’m not going to.”

  “I don’t want to—I don’t want to—”

  His eyes roll back, and he tilts his head in an odd, crooked way; then he shuts his eyes and his body trembles.

  “There’s no danger,” Joona repeats. “There’s no danger.”

  After a while, Mikael’s body relaxes again, and he coughs and looks up.

  “Can you tell me anything about how it was in the beginning?” Joona repeats gently.

  “When I was little, we were huddled together on the floor,” he says, almost soundlessly.

  “So there were several of you at the start?” Joona asks, a shiver running up his spine.

  “Everyone was frightened. I was calling for Mom and Dad, and there was a grown-up woman and an old man on the floor. They were sitting on the floor behind the sofa. She tried to calm me down, but…but I could hear her crying the whole time.”

  “What did she say?” Joona asks.

  “I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. Maybe I dreamed the whole thing….”

  “Do you remember any names?”

  He coughs and shakes his head.

  “Everyone was just crying and screaming, and the woman with the eye kept asking about two boys,” he says, his eyes focused inwardly.

  “Do you remember any names?”

  “What?”

  “Do you remember the names of—”

  “I don’t want to. I don’t…”

  “I’m not trying to upset you, but—”

  “They all disappeared. They just disappeared,” Mikael says, his voice getting louder. “They all disappeared….” Mikael’s voice cracks, and it’s no longer possible to make out what he’s saying.

  Joona repeats that everything is going to be all right. Mikael looks him in the eye, but he’s shaking so much he can’t speak.

  “You’re safe here,” Joona says. “I’m a police officer, and I’ll make sure that nothing happens to you.”

  Dr. Goodwin comes into the room with a nurse. They walk over to the patient and gently put his oxygen tube back in his nose. The nurse injects the sedative solution into the drip while calmly explaining what she’s doing.

  “He needs to rest now,” the doctor says to Joona.

  “I have to know what he saw.”

  She tilts her head. “Is it very urgent?”

  “No,” Joona concedes. “Not really.”

  “Come back tomorrow, then,” Dr. Goodwin says. “Because I think—”

  Her cell phone rings, and she has a short conversation, then hurries out of the room. Joona is left standing by the bed as he hears her walk down the corridor.

  “Mikael, what did you mean about the eye? You mentioned the woman with the eye—what did you mean?” he asks slowly.

  “It was like…like a black teardrop.”

  “Her pupil?”

  “Yes,” Mikael whispers.

  Joona looks at the young man in the bed, feeling his pulse roar in his temples, and his voice is brittle and metallic as he asks:

  “Was her name Rebecka?”

  34

  Mikael is crying as the sedative enters his bloodstream. His body relaxes, and his sobbing grows more weary, then subsides completely, seconds before he drifts off to sleep.

  Joona feels oddly empty inside as he leaves the patient’s room and pulls out his phone. He stops, pauses for breath, then calls his friend, Professor Nils “the Needle” Åhlén, who performed the autopsies on the bodies found in Lill-Jan’s Forest.

  “Nils Åhlén,” he says as he takes the call.

  “Are you sitting at your computer?”

  “Joona Linna, how nice to hear from you,” the Needle says in his nasal voice. “I was just sitting here in front of the screen with my eyes closed, enjoying its warmth. I was fantasizing that I’d bought a facial solarium.”

  “Elaborate daydream.”

  “Well, if you look after the pennies…”

  “Would you like to look up some old files?”

  “Talk to Frippe; he’ll help you.”

  “No can do.”

  “He knows as much as—”

  “It’s about Jurek Walter,” Joona interrupts.

  A long silence follows.

  “I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about that again,” the Needle says.

  “One of his victims has turned up alive.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Mikael Kohler-Frost. He’s got Legionnaires’ disease, but it looks as though he’s going to pull through.”

  “What files are you interested in?” the Needle asks with nervous intensity in his voice.

  “The man in the barrel had Legionnaires’ disease,” Joona goes on. “But did the boy who was found with him show any signs of the disease?”

  “Why are you wondering that?”

  “If there’s a connection, it ought to be possible to put together a list of places where the bacteria might be present. And then—”

  “We’re talking about millions of places,” the Needle says.

  “Okay.”

  “Joona. You have to realize, even if Legionella was mentioned in the other reports, that doesn’t mean that Mikael was one of Jurek Walter’s victims.”

  “So there were Legionella bacteria?”

  “Yes, I found antibodies against the bacteria in the boy’s blood, so he probably had Pontiac fever, a mild form of Legionnaires’,” the Needle says with a sigh. “I know you want to be right, Joona, but nothing you’ve said is enough to—”

  “Mikael Kohler-Frost says he met Rebecka,” Joona interrupts.

  “Rebecka Mendel?” the Needle asks.

  “They were held captive together,” Joona confirms.

  There is a long silence. Then: “So…so you were right about everything, Joona,” the Needle says. “You have no idea how relieved I am to hear that.” He gulps hard down the line, and whispers that they did the right thing after all.

  “Yes,” Joona says.

  He and the Needle had arranged a fake car crash for Joona’s wife and daughter.

  Two dead bodies were cremated and buried in place of Lumi and Summa. Using fake dental records, the Needle had identified the bodies. He believed Joona, and trusted him, but it had been such a big decision, so momentous, that he has never stopped worrying about it.

  * * *

  —

  Joona doesn’t dare leave the hospital until two uniformed officers arrive to guard Mikael’s room. On his way out, along the corridor, he calls Nathan Pollock and says they need to send someone to pick up the man’s father.

  “I’m sure it’s Mikael,” he says. “And I’m sure he’s been held captive by Jurek Walter all these years.”

  Joona gets in the car and slowly drives away from the hospital as the windshield wipers clear the snow from his view.

  Mikael Kohler-Frost was ten years old when he disappeared, and has become a free man again at twenty-three.

  Sometimes prisoners manage to escape, like Elisabeth Fritzl in Austria, who got away after twenty-four years as a sex-slave in her father’s cellar. Or Natascha Kampusch, who fled from her kidnapper after eight years.

  Joona hopes that, like Elisabeth Fritzl and Nata
scha Kampusch, Mikael saw the man holding him captive. Suddenly a conclusion to all this seems possible. In just a few days, as soon as he is well enough, Mikael should be able to show the way to the place where he was held captive.

  The car’s tires rumble as Joona crosses the ridge of snow in the middle of the road to overtake a bus. As he drives past the Palace of Nobility, the city opens up in front of him once more, with heavy snow falling between the dark sky and the swirling black water below the bridge.

  The accomplice must know that Mikael has escaped and can identify him, Joona thinks. Presumably, he has already tried to cover his tracks and switch to a new hiding place, but if Mikael can lead them to where he was held captive, Forensics would be able to find some sort of evidence, and the hunt would be on again.

  There’s a long way to go, but Joona’s heart is already beating faster in anticipation.

  The thought is so overwhelming that he has to pull over to the side of the Vasa Bridge and stop the car. Another driver blows his horn irritably. Joona gets out and steps up onto the pavement, breathing the cold air deep into his lungs.

  A sudden migraine makes him stumble, and he grabs the railing for support. He closes his eyes for a moment, waits, and feels the pain ebb away before he opens his eyes again.

  It’s too early to think the thought, but he is well aware of what this means. His body feels weighted down by the realization. If he manages to catch the accomplice, there will no longer be any threat to Summa and Lumi.

  35

  It’s too hot to talk in the Sauna. Gold light is shining on their naked bodies and the pale sandalwood. It’s scorching now, and the air burns Reidar Frost’s lungs when he breathes in. Drops of sweat are falling from his nose onto the white hair on his chest.

  The Japanese journalist Mizuho is sitting on the bench next to Veronica. Their bodies are both flushed and shiny. Sweat is running between their breasts, over their stomachs, and down into their pubic hair.

  Mizuho is looking seriously at Reidar. She has come all the way from Tokyo to interview him. He told her good-naturedly that he never gives interviews, but that she was very welcome to attend the party. She was probably hoping he would say something about the Sanctum series being turned into a manga film. She has been here for four days now.

  Veronica sighs and closes her eyes.

  Mizuho hadn’t taken off her gold necklace before entering the sauna, and Reidar can see that it’s starting to burn. Marie lasted only five minutes before she went off to the shower, and now the Japanese journalist leaves the sauna as well.

  Veronica leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees, breathing through her half-open mouth as sweat drips from her nipples.

  Reidar feels a sort of brittle tenderness toward her. But he doesn’t know how to explain how desolate he feels. He doesn’t know how to explain that everything he does now, everything he throws himself into, is just random fumbling for something to help him survive the next minute.

  “Marie’s very beautiful,” Veronica says.

  “Yes.”

  “Big breasts.”

  “Stop it,” Reidar mutters.

  She looks at him with a serious expression as she goes on: “Why can’t I just get a divorce?”

  “Because that would be the end for us,” Reidar says.

  Veronica’s eyes fill with tears, and she is about to say something else when Marie comes back in and sits down next to Reidar with a little giggle.

  “God, it’s hot,” she gasps. “How can you sit here?”

  Veronica throws a scoop of water onto the stones. There’s a loud hiss, and hot clouds of steam rise up and surround them for a few seconds. Then the heat becomes dry and static again.

  Reidar is hanging forward over his knees. The hair on his head is so hot he almost scalds himself when he runs his hand through it.

  “That’s enough,” he exhales, and climbs down.

  The two women follow him outside into the soft snow. Dusk is spreading its darkness across the snow, which glows pale blue.

  Heavy snowflakes drift as the three of them, naked, sink down to their calves in the deep snow.

  David, Wille, and Berzelius are eating dinner with the other members of the Sanctum scholarship committee, and the drinking songs can be heard all the way out in the back of the garden.

  Reidar turns and looks at Veronica and Marie. Steam rises from their flushed bodies. They’re enveloped in veils of mist as the snow falls around them. He is about to say something when Veronica bends over and throws an armful of snow up at him. He backs away, laughing, and falls, vanishing into the loose snow.

  He lies there on his back, listening to their laughter.

  The snow feels liberating. His body is still burning hot. Reidar looks straight up at the sky, at the hypnotic snow falling from the center of creation, an eternity of drifting white.

  A memory takes him by surprise. He is peeling off the children’s snowsuits. Taking off hats with snow caught in the wool. He can remember their cold cheeks, their sweaty hair, and the smell of their wet boots.

  He misses the children so intensely that his longing feels purely physical.

  He wishes he were alone so he could lie in the snow until he loses consciousness, surrounded by his memories of Felicia and Mikael.

  He gets to his feet with effort and gazes out across the white fields. Marie and Veronica are laughing, making angels in the snow and rolling around a short distance away.

  “How long have these parties been going on?” Marie calls to him.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Reidar mumbles.

  He is about to walk off and get drunk, but Marie is standing in front of him, legs apart. “You never want to talk. I don’t know anything,” she says with a laugh.

  “Just leave me the fuck alone!” Reidar shouts, and pushes past. “What is it you want?”

  “Sorry, I…”

  “Leave me the fuck alone,” he snaps, and disappears into the house.

  The two women walk, shivering, back into the sauna. The steam on their bodies runs off as the heat closes around them again, as if it had never left.

  “What’s his problem?” Marie asks.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know,” Veronica replies simply.

  36

  Reidar Frost is wearing a new pair of striped pants and an open shirt. The back of his hair is damp. He clutches a bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild in each hand.

  That morning, he awoke with an ache of longing. He forced himself to go downstairs and wake his friends. They poured spiced schnapps into crystal glasses and rustled up some boiled eggs with Russian caviar.

  Reidar is walking barefoot along a corridor lined with dark portraits. The snow outside casts an indirect light. In the reading room, with its shiny leather furniture, he stops and looks out the huge window. The view is like a fairy tale, as if the king of winter himself had blown snow across the fields.

  Suddenly he sees flickering lights on the long avenue leading from the gates to the front of the house. The branches of the trees look like embroidered lace in the glow. A car approaching. The snow swirling into the air behind it is colored red by its taillights.

  Reidar can’t recall inviting anyone else to join them.

  He is thinking that Veronica will have to take care of the new arrivals when he sees that it’s a police car. Reidar stops and puts the bottles down on a chest, then goes back downstairs and pulls on the felt-lined winter boots beside the door. He heads out into the cold air to meet the car as it arrives in the broad turning circle.

  “Reidar Frost?” a woman in plainclothes says as she gets out of the car.

  “Yes,” he replies.

  “May we go inside?”

  “Here will do,” he says.

  “Would you like to sit in the car?”

  “Does it look like it?”

  The woman pauses. “We’ve found your son,” she says, taking a couple of steps toward him.

  “I see.” He holds
up a hand to silence the police officer.

  He breathes and composes himself, then slowly lowers his hand.

  “So where did you find Mikael?” he says in a voice that has become strangely calm.

  “He was walking over a bridge—”

  “What?! What the hell are you saying?” Reidar roars.

  The woman flinches. She’s tall, and has a long ponytail down her back. “I’m trying to tell you that he’s alive,” she says.

  “What is this?” Reidar asks, uncomprehendingly.

  “He’s been taken to Södermalm Hospital for observation.”

  “Not my son. He died many years—”

  “There’s no doubt that it’s him.”

  Reidar is staring at her.

  “Mikael’s alive?”

  “He came back.”

  “My son?”

  “I know it’s a shock, but—”

  “I thought…”

  Reidar’s chin trembles as the policewoman explains that Mikael’s DNA is a 100 percent match. The ground beneath him rolls like a wave, and he fumbles in the air for support.

  “God,” he whispers. “Dear God, thank you.”

  He seems completely broken. He looks up as his legs give way beneath him. The policewoman tries to catch him, but one of his knees hits the ground and he falls sideways.

  The police officer helps him to his feet, and he is holding her arm when he sees Veronica run down the steps barefoot, wrapped in his thick winter coat.

  “You’re sure it’s him?” he says, staring into the policewoman’s eyes.

  She nods.

  “It’s a one hundred percent match,” she repeats. “It’s Mikael Kohler-Frost, and he’s alive.”

  He takes Veronica’s arm as he follows the policewoman back to her car.

  “What’s going on, Reidar?” Veronica asks, sounding worried.

  He looks at her. His face is confused and he instantly appears much older.

  “My little boy,” he says.

  37

  From a distance, the white blocks of Södermalm Hospital look like tombstones looming out of the thick snow.