The Sandman

by Lars Kepler

  “You should have told me about her phone call,” Joona says.

  “I didn’t believe her.”

  “It led to a lot of suffering—you know that?”

  Carlos nods and hands Joona the car keys.

  “Get some sleep,” Carlos says.

  153

  My looked slightly bemused when Anders told her she could take a nap in the staff room again.

  “I just don’t see any reason for us both to be awake,” he’d said. “I don’t have a choice—I have a couple hours of work left to do. After that, you and Leif can divide things up however you like.”

  Now he’s alone. He walks down the corridor, stops outside the staff room, and listens.

  Silence.

  He continues to the surveillance room and sits down in the operator’s seat. At last, it’s time to turn the lights out. The large monitor depicts nine different scenes. Jurek seems to have gone to bed early. Anders can see his thin frame outlined beneath the covers. He’s lying unnervingly still, almost as if he isn’t breathing. Saga is sitting on her bed with her feet on the ground. Her chair is on its side on the floor.

  He leans closer to the screen and looks at her. His eyes follow the outline of her shaved head, her slender neck and shoulders, and the muscles in her thin arms.

  There’s nothing to stop him.

  He doesn’t know why he got so scared last night when he was in her room. There was no one watching the monitors, and even if there had been, the room was so dark that they wouldn’t have been able to see anything.

  He could have had sex with her ten times. He could have done whatever he wanted.

  Anders takes a deep breath, inserts his ID card into the computer, types the code, and logs in. He opens the unit’s administrative program, highlights the patients’ zone, and clicks on nocturnal lighting.

  Now all of the patients’ rooms are black.

  Seconds later, Saga turns on her bedside lamp and lifts her face up toward the camera.

  It’s as if she’s looking at him because she knows he’s looking at her.

  Anders checks on the two guards. They’re talking to each other by the entrance. The male guard is saying something that makes the tall female guard laugh. He’s smiling as he mimes playing a violin.

  Anders stands and looks at Saga again on the screen.

  He takes a pill from the stockroom and puts it in a plastic cup, then goes over to the security door and runs his card through the reader. As he approaches her door, his heart starts thumping. He opens the hatch and sees her turn her head in his direction. She gets to her feet and walks toward him.

  “Did you sleep well last night?” he asks in a friendly voice, but she doesn’t respond.

  When she reaches her hand through the hatch, he holds her fingers for a few moments before giving her the plastic cup.

  He closes the hatch and watches her walk toward the sink. She fills the cup with water, puts the pill in her mouth, and swallows it. She turns off the lamp by the bed and lies down.

  Anders retrieves the straps for the bed, removes the plastic covering, and stands outside the steel door, watching her through the reinforced glass.

  154

  Under cover of darkness, Saga hides the pill in her shoe and lies down on the bed. She doesn’t know if the young doctor is still standing outside the door, but she’s sure he’s planning to come into her room as soon as he thinks she’s asleep. She could see quite clearly in his eyes that he wasn’t finished with her.

  Yesterday she was so taken aback by his abuse of power that she let it go way too far. Today she doesn’t even know if she cares what happens.

  She’s here to save Felicia, and she may have to put up with this place for a couple more days.

  Tomorrow or the day after, Jurek will reveal everything to her. Then this will be over, and she can go home and forget what she’s been through.

  Saga rolls onto her other side, glances at the door, and immediately sees the silhouette behind the glass. Her heartbeat begins to speed up in her chest. The young doctor is waiting outside the door until she’s knocked out by the medication.

  Is she prepared to let herself be raped in order to conceal her mission? Her thoughts are too chaotic for her to be able to prepare herself for what seems to be happening.

  She hears the scrape as the key opens the lock.

  Cooler air sweeps in through the door.

  She watches the doctor walk over to the bed.

  She shuts her eyes and listens.

  Nothing happens.

  Maybe he just wants to look at her.

  She tries to breathe out soundlessly, then waits for ten seconds before breathing in again. In her mind, she envisions a square for which each side is a moment.

  The doctor puts his hand on her stomach, following the movement of her breathing. She feels it slide to her hip and take hold of her underwear. She lets him pull her pants off, easing them over her feet.

  She can feel the warmth of his body.

  He strokes her right hand and raises it gently above her head. At first she thinks he’s going to measure her pulse, but then she realizes that she can’t move. When she tries to pull her hand away, he puts a broad strap over her thighs and tightens it before she has a chance to wriggle off the bed.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  She can’t kick. He must have tied her ankles while she was trying to free her right hand with her left. He switches on the bedside lamp and looks at her, wide-eyed. The fingers of her free hand are frantically grasping at the thick strap around her right wrist.

  He stops her, quickly pulling her free hand away.

  She jerks to get loose and tries to twist around, but it’s impossible.

  She slumps back, and he starts to attach another strap across her shoulders, but when he leans over she punches him in the mouth with her clenched fist. As the blow connects, he stumbles back and sinks down onto one knee. Shaking, she starts to untie her right hand.

  He’s back at the bed now, shoving her hand away.

  There’s blood running down his chin as he roars at her to lie still. He tightens the strap around her right wrist again, then moves behind her.

  “I’ll kill you,” she shouts, trying to follow him with her eyes.

  He’s quick and seizes her left arm with both hands, but she pulls free, gets hold of his hair, and yanks him toward her. She rams his forehead against the bed frame as hard as she can. She pulls him forward again and tries to bite his face, but he slaps her with such force across the neck that she lets go.

  Using all her strength, she claws her free hand toward him and tries to turn her body, but she’s completely stuck.

  The doctor takes hold of her head and bends it hard to one side, almost dislocating her shoulder. The cartilage in the joint makes a creaking sound, and she howls with pain. She struggles to pull one foot free, but the strap cuts into her skin. She hits him on the cheek with her free hand, but without any real force. He pushes her hand down to the top of the bed, fixes the strap around her wrist, and tightens it.

  He wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, panting, then takes a couple of steps back and just looks at her.

  155

  The doctor slowly walks up to her and fastens the last strap across her chest. Her left hand is stinging after her desperate blows. He stands there for a while, then goes to the foot of the bed. Blood is trickling from his nose, over his lips. She can hear him taking shallow, excited breaths. Without hurry, he slowly pulls her thighs farther apart with the straps. She looks him in the eye. She can’t let this happen.

  He strokes her calves with trembling hands and stares up between her thighs.

  “Don’t do this,” she tries to say in a composed voice.

  “Just keep quiet,” he says, removing his doctor’s coat without taking his eyes off her.

  Saga turns her face aside. She doesn’t want to look at him. She can’t believe that this is happening.

  She c
loses her eyes, desperately trying to think of a way out.

  Then she hears a strange rattling sound beneath the bed. She opens her eyes and sees a figure mirrored in the stainless-steel sink.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” she gasps.

  The doctor picks her underwear up off the bed and stuffs it roughly in her mouth. She tries to scream as she realizes what the reflection in the shiny metal of the sink is.

  It’s Jurek.

  He must have hidden himself in her room while she was looking for Bernie’s sleeping pills.

  With growing panic, she struggles to free herself.

  She can hear the buttons of Jurek’s shirt clicking against the struts under the mattress as he moves.

  One button comes loose and slides out across the floor. The doctor looks at it in surprise as it rolls in an arc and spins to a stop.

  “Jurek,” the doctor mutters at the moment when a hand grabs his leg and pulls him to the ground. Anders hits the back of his head and gasps, but manages to roll over onto his front and crawl away.

  Run, Saga thinks. Lock the door and call the police.

  Jurek rolls out onto the floor and gets to his feet at the same time as the doctor. Anders makes for the door, but Jurek gets there first.

  Saga is struggling to get the underpants out of her mouth. She coughs, takes a deep breath, and starts to feel sick.

  Anders trips over the plastic chair and backs away, staring at the elderly patient.

  “Don’t hurt me,” he pleads.

  “No?”

  “Please. I’ll do anything.”

  Jurek comes closer, and his wrinkled face is completely expressionless.

  “I’m going to kill you, my boy,” he says. “But first you’re going to experience a great deal of pain.”

  Saga screams through the gag and strains against the straps.

  She can’t understand what’s happening, why Jurek hid in her room, why he changed their plan.

  The doctor is shaking his head, retreating and trying to fend Jurek off with his hands.

  Sweat is running down his face.

  Jurek follows him slowly, then suddenly grabs his hand and forces the doctor down on the floor. With terrible force, he stomps on the arm, close to the shoulder. There’s a crunch, and the young doctor screams. With military precision, Jurek pulls in the opposite direction and twists the arm around. It’s completely detached from its socket now, just hanging from muscle and skin.

  Jurek yanks the doctor to his feet, holds him up against the wall, and slaps him several times to prevent him from losing consciousness. His loose arm is darkening from internal bleeding. The doctor is weeping like a child.

  Saga’s having trouble breathing. She manages to shift her position slightly, and pulls her left arm so hard that her vision starts to go black before the strap comes loose. She tugs the fabric from her mouth and gasps for breath.

  “We can’t escape now—there weren’t any sleeping pills in Bernie’s room,” Saga says to Jurek.

  The hand she’s just pulled free hurts like hell. She can’t tell how badly wounded it is. Her fingers are burning like fire.

  Jurek starts to go through the doctor’s clothes, finds the keys to the cell door, and slips them into his pocket.

  “Do you want to watch while I cut his head off?” he asks, glancing at Saga.

  “Don’t do it, please. There’s no need, is there?”

  “There’s never any need to do anything,” Jurek says, grabbing the doctor by the neck.

  “Wait.”

  “Okay. I’ll wait. For two minutes, for your sake, little police officer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The one mistake you made was when you only broke one of Bernie’s fingers,” Jurek says, taking the doctor’s pass card.

  “I was going to kill him slowly,” she tries, even though she knows there’s no point.

  Jurek slaps the doctor again.

  “All I need is the two codes,” he says.

  “Codes,” the doctor mumbles. “I can’t remember, I—”

  Saga tries to loosen the other straps, but the fingers of her left hand are so severely injured that it’s impossible.

  “How could you tell that I’m a cop?” Saga asks.

  “Thanks to him, I got to send a letter.”

  “No,” the doctor whimpers.

  “I assumed the police were going to bring someone in here when Mikael Kohler-Frost escaped and was found alive.”

  Jurek finds the doctor’s phone, drops it on the floor, and crushes it beneath his foot.

  “But why—”

  “I don’t have time,” he interrupts. “I’m going to destroy Joona Linna.”

  Saga watches as Jurek Walter leads the doctor out of the cell. She hears their footsteps in the corridor, then the sound of the pass card being pulled through the reader and the tones of the keypad as the code is tapped in, followed by the whirr of the lock.

  156

  Joona rings his own doorbell and smiles to himself as he hears footsteps approaching. The lock rattles, and the door swings open. He walks into the dimly lit hall and takes his shoes off.

  “You look completely wiped out,” Disa says.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Do you want something to eat? There are some leftovers I can warm up.”

  Joona shakes his head and hugs her close. He’s too tired to talk now, but later he’ll ask her to cancel her trip to Brazil. There’s no need for her to go now.

  A small flurry of sand is released as she helps him get his clothes off.

  “Have you been playing in a sandbox?” she says, laughing.

  “Just a little,” he replies.

  He goes into the bathroom and gets into the shower. His body aches. With the hot water coursing over him, he leans against the tiles and feels his muscles slowly start to relax.

  The hand that pulled the trigger and shot an unarmed man is tingling.

  As long as I can live with what I did, I can be happy again, he thinks.

  Even though Joona knew the Sandman was dead, even though he saw the bullets go straight through his body, even though he saw him tumble into the quarry like a corpse into a mass grave, he still went down after it. He slid down the slope, digging in his heels to stop himself from going too fast, and made his way to the body. Keeping his pistol aimed at the back of the man’s head, he felt his neck with the other hand. The Sandman was dead. His eyes hadn’t deceived him. The three bullets had all passed straight through his heart.

  The thought that he no longer has to fear Jurek’s accomplice is so warm and comforting that he can’t help letting out a groan.

  Joona dries himself and brushes his teeth, then suddenly stops and listens. It sounds as if Disa’s talking on the phone.

  When he walks into the bedroom, he sees Disa getting dressed.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, lying down on the fresh sheets.

  “My boss called,” she says with a weary smile. “Some company is excavating at the old oil harbor at Loudden. They’re working day and night to decontaminate the ground. And it sounds like they’ve found an artifact, some kind of ancient board-game set. I have to get out there and stop the digging, because if it really is—”

  “Don’t go,” Joona begs, feeling his eyes prick with exhaustion.

  Disa hums to herself as she takes a folded sweater from the top dresser drawer.

  “You’ve taken over my dresser now?” he jokes, closing his eyes.

  Disa walks back and forth in the room. He hears her brushing her hair and lifting her coat off the hanger.

  He rolls onto his side and feels memories and dreams begin to join up like snowflakes.

  The Sandman’s body tumbles down the steep slope and stops when it hits an old stove.

  Samuel Mendel scratches his head and says: “There’s nothing at all to suggest that Jurek Walter has an accomplice. But you have to stick a finger in the air and say: Perhaps the opposite is the case.”

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nbsp; 157

  Saga makes another attempt to loosen the strap around her right wrist, but fails and slumps back again.

  Jurek Walter is escaping, she thinks.

  Panic is rising in her chest.

  She has to warn Joona.

  Even if she screams, the door to the dayroom is too thick for the microphone to register the sound.

  Saga twists her body to the right but has to give up.

  In the distance, she can hear a noise.

  She holds her breath and listens.

  There’s a squeaking sound, then several heavy thuds, before everything is silent once more.

  It dawns on Saga that Jurek never needed the pills. All he wanted was for her to lure the doctor into her room. Jurek had seen through the doctor’s intentions and had realized that he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to sneak into her room if she asked for sleeping pills.

  That had been the plan all along.

  That was why he had allowed himself to be punished for her actions, because the fact that she was dangerous had to be concealed.

  She was a siren, just as he had said on the first day.

  She whimpers with pain as she stretches to the side and picks at the catch of the strap across her shoulders. Now she can move her shoulder and raise her head.

  We all walked into his trap, she thinks. We thought we were deceiving him, but he effectively put in an order for me. He knew someone would be sent, and today he found out for certain that I was his Trojan horse.

  She gathers her strength and cranes her head to the side, trying to grab the strap around her right wrist with her mouth.

  She slumps back, panting. She has to alert the staff and call the police.

  Saga takes a deep breath and tries again. Straining hard to hold her position, she manages to sink her teeth into the thick strap, loosen the catch, and release another half-inch or so of the strap. She falls back, feeling nauseated, then twists and pulls her hand until she frees it.

  It doesn’t take long for her to remove the remaining straps. Her inner thighs are aching, and her muscles shiver as she pulls on her pants.