The Sandman

by Lars Kepler

  Joona’s suspicion that Mikael and Felicia Kohler-Frost had been among Jurek Walter’s victims had been strengthened by the fact that it was due to the children’s disappearance that he had been tracked down and arrested: he had first been spotted below their mother’s window.

  Joona looks at the young man’s thin face, his straggly beard, his sunken cheeks, and the beads of sweat on his forehead.

  When Mikael spoke about the way things were at the start, when Rebecka Mendel was there, he had been talking about the period shortly after his disappearance. This would have coincided with the first few weeks of Jurek Walter’s incarceration, Joona thinks.

  Since then, more than a decade of imprisonment has gone by. But Mikael managed to escape—it must be possible to find out where he was held.

  “I never stopped looking,” Joona says quietly to Reidar.

  Reidar looks at his son, and his face cracks into an uncontrollable smile. He has been sitting like that for hours, and still can’t get enough of just gazing at his child.

  “They’re saying he’s going to be fine. They’ve promised—they’ve promised there’s nothing wrong with him,” he says in a rough voice.

  “Have you talked to him?” Joona asks.

  “He’s on a lot of painkillers, so he’s mostly been asleep, but they say that’s good, it’s what he needs.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Joona agrees.

  “He’s going to be fine. Mentally, I mean. It will just take a bit of time.”

  “Has he said anything at all?”

  “Nothing I can understand,” Reidar says. “He just sounds confused. But he recognized me.”

  Joona knows it’s important to get him talking right from the outset. Remembering is a crucial part of the healing process. Mikael needs time, but he can’t be left to himself. As time goes by, the questions can gradually probe deeper, but there’s always the risk that a traumatized person will shut off entirely.

  It could take months to map out everything that’s happened, but he does need to ask the most important question today. If he can just get a name or a decent description of the accomplice, this nightmare could be over.

  “I have to talk to him as soon as he wakes up,” Joona says. “I need to ask him a few very specific questions, but he might find it a little difficult.”

  “As long as it doesn’t frighten him,” Reidar says. “I can’t let that happen.”

  A nurse comes in and says hello, then checks Mikael’s pulse and oxygen levels.

  “His hands have gone cold,” Reidar tells her.

  “I’m going to give him something for the fever soon,” the nurse assures him.

  “He is getting antibiotics, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, but it can be a couple of days before those start to work,” the nurse says as she hangs a new bag on the drip stand.

  Reidar helps her, standing up and holding the tube out of the way to make it easier for her, then walks to the door with her.

  “I want to talk to the doctor,” he says.

  Mikael sighs and whispers something to himself. Reidar stops and turns around. Joona leans forward and tries to hear what he’s saying.

  43

  Mikael’s breathing has sped up, and he’s tossing his head, his mouth moving. He opens his eyes and stares at Joona with a haunted expression.

  “You have to help me. I can’t lie here,” he says. “I can’t take it, I can’t take it, my sister’s waiting for me, I can feel her, I can feel…”

  Reidar hurries over and takes his hand, holds it to his own cheek.

  “Mikael, I know,” he whispers, then gulps hard.

  “Dad—”

  “I know, Mikael. I think about her all the time.”

  “Dad,” Mikael cries with anguish. “I can’t, I can’t, I…”

  “Calm down,” Reidar murmurs.

  “She’s alive, Felicia’s alive,” he cries. “I can’t lie here, I’ve got to…”

  He lets out a long, rattling cough. Reidar holds his head up and tries to help him. He keeps saying soothing things to his son, but Mikael’s eyes are burning with boundless panic.

  He sinks back into the pillow as tears run down his cheeks.

  “What were you saying about Felicia?” Reidar asks quietly.

  “I don’t want to,” Mikael gasps. “I can’t just lie here—”

  “Mikael,” Reidar interrupts. “You need to be clearer.”

  “I can’t take it—”

  “You said that Felicia is alive,” Reidar says carefully. “Why did you say that?”

  “I left her. I left her behind,” Mikael sobs. “I ran, and I left her behind.”

  “Are you saying that Felicia is still alive?” Reidar asks, for the third time.

  “Yes, Dad,” Mikael mumbles.

  “Dear God,” his father whispers, stroking his son’s head. “Dear God.”

  Mikael coughs violently. A cloud of blood billows into the tube, and he gasps for air, then coughs again, and lies there panting.

  “We were together the whole time, Dad. In the darkness, on the floor. But I left her.”

  Mikael falls silent, as though every last drop of strength has been exhausted. His eyes are unreadable.

  “You have to tell us….”

  His voice cracks. He takes a deep breath and then goes on: “Mikael, you know you have to tell us where she is, so I can go and get her.”

  “She’s still there. Felicia’s still there,” Mikael says weakly. “She’s still there. I can feel her. She’s scared.”

  “Mikael,” Reidar pleads.

  “She’s scared, because she’s on her own. She always wakes up at night crying until she realizes that I’m there.”

  Reidar feels his chest tighten. Big patches of sweat have formed under the arms of his shirt.

  44

  As Reidar listens to Mikael, one thought consumes his mind: He has to find Felicia. She must not be left on her own.

  He walks over to the window and stares into the middle distance. Far below, some sparrows are sitting in the bare rosebushes. Dogs have pissed in the snow under a lamppost. Over at the bus stop, a glove is lying beneath the bench.

  Somewhere behind him, he hears Joona Linna posing questions to Mikael. Joona’s deep voice merges with the heavy thud of Reidar’s heartbeat.

  You only see your mistakes in hindsight, and some of them are so painful that you can hardly live with yourself. Reidar knows that he was an unfair father. That was never his intention; it just turned out that way. People always say that they love their children equally, he thinks. Yet we still treat them differently.

  Mikael was his favorite.

  Felicia always irritated him, and sometimes she made him so angry that he frightened her. Now it seems incomprehensible. After all, he was an adult and she was just a child.

  I shouldn’t have shouted at her, he thinks, staring out at the overcast sky. His left armpit is really starting to hurt now.

  “I can feel her,” Mikael is telling Joona. “She’s just lying there on the floor. She’s so terrified.”

  Reidar lets out a groan as he feels a burst of pain in his chest. Sweat is running down his neck. Joona rushes over to him, grabs the top of his arm, and says something.

  “It’s nothing,” Reidar says.

  “Does your chest hurt?” Joona asks.

  “I’m just tired,” he replies quickly.

  “You seem—”

  “I have to find Felicia,” he says.

  A burning pain shoots through his jaw, and he feels another stab in his chest. He falls, hitting his cheek against the radiator, but all he can think about is how, the day she disappeared, he shouted at Felicia and told her she didn’t deserve to be in a nice home.

  He gets to his knees and is trying to crawl when he hears Joona rush back into the room with a doctor.

  45

  Joona talks to Reidar’s doctor, then returns to Mikael’s room, hangs his jacket on the hook behind the door, pulls up the only ch
air, and sits down.

  He has to get Mikael to talk about his memories.

  An hour later, Mikael wakes up. He opens his eyes slowly, squinting against the light. As Joona repeats that his father’s not in any danger, he shuts his eyes again.

  “I need to ask you a question,” Joona says seriously.

  “My sister,” he says.

  Joona puts his cell phone on the bedside table and starts to record.

  “Mikael, I have to ask you: do you know who was holding you captive?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “He just wanted us to sleep, that was all. We had to sleep.”

  “Who?”

  “The Sandman,” Mikael whispers.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing…I can’t go on….”

  Joona looks down at his phone and checks that it’s recording the conversation.

  “I thought you mentioned the Sandman?” he presses. “You mean like Wee Willie Winkie, putting the children to sleep?”

  Mikael looks him in the eye.

  “He’s real,” he says. “He smells like sand….He sells barometers during the day.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “It’s always dark when he comes.”

  “You must have seen something, surely?”

  Mikael shakes his head, sobbing silently, as tears run onto the pillow.

  “Does the Sandman have another name?” Joona asks.

  “I don’t know. He never says a word. He never spoke to us.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “I’ve only heard him in the darkness. His fingertips are made of porcelain, and when he takes the sand out of the bag they tinkle against each other, and…”

  Mikael’s mouth is moving, but no sound comes out.

  “I can’t hear what you’re saying,” Joona says.

  “He throws sand in children’s faces, and a moment later you’re asleep.”

  “How do you know it’s a man?” Joona asks.

  “I’ve heard him cough,” Mikael replies.

  “But you never saw him?”

  “No.”

  46

  A very beautiful woman with Indian features is standing looking down at Reidar when he comes around. She explains that he’s had a coronary spasm.

  “I thought I was having a heart attack,” he mutters.

  “Naturally, we’re considering X-raying the coronary arteries, and—”

  “Yes,” he sighs, sitting up.

  “You need to rest.”

  “I found out…that my…” he says, but his mouth starts to tremble so much that he can’t finish the sentence.

  She touches his cheek and smiles as if he were an unhappy child.

  “I have to see my son,” he explains in a slightly steadier voice.

  “You understand that you can’t leave the hospital before we’ve investigated your symptoms,” she says.

  She gives him a small pink bottle of nitroglycerin for him to spray under his tongue at the first sign of pain in his chest.

  Reidar walks to Ward 66, but before he reaches Mikael’s room, he stops in the corridor and leans against the wall.

  When he enters the room, Joona stands up and offers him the chair. His phone is still next to the bed.

  “Mikael, you have to help me find her,” he says as he sits down.

  “Dad, what happened?” his son asks.

  “It’s nothing,” Reidar replies, trying to smile. “The doctor says there’s a bit of an issue with my arteries, but I don’t believe that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We have to find Felicia.”

  “She was convinced you wouldn’t care. I said that that wasn’t true, but she was sure you’d only be looking for me.”

  Reidar sits motionless. He knows what Mikael means, because he’s never forgotten what happened on that last day. His son puts his bony hand on Reidar’s, and their eyes meet once more.

  “You were walking from Södertälje—is that where I should start looking?” Reidar asks. “Is that where she might be?”

  “I don’t know,” Mikael says.

  “But you must remember something,” Reidar goes on.

  “I don’t. I’m sorry,” his son says. “There’s nothing to remember.”

  Joona is leaning on the end of the bed. Mikael’s eyes are half open, and he’s clutching his father’s hand tightly.

  “You said before that you and Felicia were together, on the floor, in the darkness,” Joona begins.

  “Yes,” Mikael whispers.

  “How long was it just the two of you? When did the others disappear?”

  “I don’t know,” he replies. “I can’t say. Time doesn’t work the way you think.”

  “Describe the room.”

  Mikael looks into Joona’s gray eyes with a tortured expression.

  “I never saw the room,” he says. “Apart from, at the start, when I was little…there was a bright light that was sometimes switched on, when we could look at each other. But I don’t remember what the room looked like. I was just scared.”

  “But you do remember something?”

  “The darkness. There was almost nothing but darkness.”

  “There must have been a floor,” Joona says.

  “Yes,” Mikael whispers.

  “Go on,” Reidar says softly.

  Mikael looks away from the two men. He stares into space as he starts to talk about the room he was trapped in for so long.

  “The floor…It was hard, and cold. Maybe five meters one way, three meters the other. And the walls were made of solid concrete. There was no echo when you hit them.”

  47

  Reidar squeezes his hand. Mikael closes his eyes and lets the images and memories guide his words.

  “There’s a sofa, and a mattress that we pull away from the drain when we need to use the tap,” he says, gulping hard.

  “The tap,” Joona repeats.

  “And the door…It’s made of iron, or steel. It’s never open. I’ve never seen it open. There’s no lock on the inside, no handle…and next to the door there’s a hole in the wall. That’s where the bucket of food appears. It’s only a little hole, but if you stick your arm in and reach up, you can feel a metal hatch with your fingertips.”

  Reidar sobs as he listens to Mikael.

  “We try to save the food,” he says, “but sometimes it runs out. Sometimes it would take so long that we’d just lie there listening for the hatch, and when we did get something we’d end up being sick…and sometimes there was no water in the tap….We got thirsty, and the drain started to smell.”

  “What sort of food was it?” Joona asks.

  “Just scraps, mainly. Bits of sausage, potato, carrot, onions. Macaroni.”

  “The person who gave you the food—he never said anything?”

  “In the beginning, we would scream for help whenever the hatch opened, but then it would slam shut and we would go without food. After that, we tried talking to whoever opened it, but we never got an answer. We always listened….We could hear breathing, shoes on a concrete floor—the same shoes every time.”

  Joona checks that the recording is still working. He can hardly fathom the extreme isolation that the siblings have endured.

  “You heard him moving around,” Joona says. “Did you ever hear anything else from outside?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Birds, dogs barking, cars, trains, voices, airplanes, TV, laughter, shouting, sirens? Anything at all?”

  “Just the smell of sand.”

  The sky outside the hospital window is dark now, and hailstones are falling against the glass.

  “What did you do when you were awake?”

  “Nothing. Well, when we were still little, I managed to pull a loose screw out of the bottom of the sofa. We used it to scratch a hole in the wall. The screw got so hot it almost burned our fingers. We kept going for ages. There was nothing but cement at first, but then, after
five centimeters or so, we hit some metal mesh. We kept going through one of the gaps, and a short distance further on we hit more mesh. It was impossible….It’s impossible to escape from the capsule.”

  “Why do you call the room ‘the capsule’?”

  Mikael smiles in a way that makes him look incredibly lonely.

  “It was Felicia who started that. She imagined we were out in space, that we were on a mission….That was back in the beginning, but I went on thinking of the room as the capsule.”

  Reidar raises a trembling hand to his mouth. His face struggles with emotion.

  “You say it’s impossible to escape, yet that’s precisely what you did,” Joona says.

  48

  Carlos Eliasson, chief of the National Criminal Investigation Department, is walking through a light snow shower from a meeting in Rådhuset and talking to his wife on the phone. Right now, police headquarters looks like a summer palace in a wintry park. The hand holding the phone is so cold that his fingers ache.

  “I’m going to be deploying a lot of resources.”

  “Are you sure Mikael’s going to get better?”

  “Physically, absolutely.”

  Carlos stamps the snow from his shoes when he reaches the pavement.

  “That’s fantastic,” she murmurs.

  He hears her sigh as she sits down on a chair.

  “I can’t tell them about my last conversation with Mikael’s mother,” he says after a brief pause. “I just can’t, can I?”

  “No,” she replies.

  “What if it turns out to be crucial to the investigation?” he asks.

  “You can’t,” she says gravely.

  Carlos continues up Kungsholms Street and glances at his watch; he hears his wife tell him that she’s got to go. “See you tonight,” she says quietly.

  Over the years, police headquarters has been extended, one piece at a time. The various sections reflect changes in fashion. The most recent part is up by Kronoberg Park. That’s where the National Criminal Investigation Department is based.

  Carlos goes through two different security doors, walks past the covered inner courtyard, and takes the elevator up to the eighth floor. There’s a worried expression on his face as he removes his coat and walks past the row of closed doors. A newspaper clipping on a noticeboard flutters in his wake. It’s been there since the evening the police choir was voted off Sweden’s Got Talent.