The Sandman

by Kepler, Lars

  Saga feels the muscles in her face tighten. She’s scared she’s going to start crying if she stays, so she gets up quickly to go to her room.

  ‘Your mum didn’t die of cancer,’ Jurek says.

  She stops and turns towards him.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she says sternly.

  ‘She didn’t have a brain tumour,’ he says quietly.

  ‘OK … I was with my mum when she died, you know nothing about her, you can’t—’

  ‘The headaches,’ Jurek interrupts. ‘The headaches don’t subside the following morning if you have a tumour.’

  ‘That’s how it was for her,’ she says firmly.

  ‘The pain is caused by the pressure on brain tissue and blood vessels as the tumour grows. That doesn’t pass, it just gets worse.’

  She looks into Jurek’s eyes and feels a shiver run down her back.

  ‘I …’

  Her voice is no more than a whisper. She feels like shouting and screaming, but she’s suddenly powerless.

  If she’s honest, she’s always known that there was something odd about her memories. She remembers yelling at her father when she was a teenager, saying he lied about everything, that he was the biggest liar she’d ever met.

  He had told her that her mother hadn’t had cancer.

  She’s always thought he was lying to her in an effort to excuse his betrayal of her mum.

  Now she’s standing here, no longer sure where the idea of her mother’s brain tumour came from. She can’t remember her mum ever saying she had cancer, and they never went to any hospital.

  But why did Mum cry every evening if she wasn’t sick? It doesn’t make sense. Why did she make me call Dad all the time and tell him he had to come home? Why did Mum take codeine if she wasn’t in pain? Why did she let her own daughter give her all those pills?

  Jurek’s face is a sombre, rigid mask. Saga turns away and starts walking towards the door. She wants to run away, she doesn’t want to hear what he’s about to say.

  ‘You killed your own mother,’ he says calmly.

  144

  Saga stops abruptly. Her breathing has become shallow but she forces herself not to show her feelings. She has to remind herself who’s in charge of this situation. He may believe that he’s deceiving her, but in actual fact she’s the one deceiving him.

  Saga adopts a neutral expression, then turns slowly to face him.

  ‘Codeine,’ Jurek says, smiling joylessly. ‘Codeine phosphate only comes in the form of twenty-five-milligram tablets … I know precisely how many it takes to kill a human being.’

  ‘Mum told me to give her the pills,’ she explains hollowly.

  ‘But I think you knew she’d die,’ he says. ‘I’m sure your mum thought you knew … She thought you wanted her to die.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ she whispers.

  ‘Maybe you deserve to be locked up here for ever.’

  ‘No.’

  He looks at her with terrifying gravity in his eyes, with metallic precision.

  ‘Maybe it will be enough if you get one more sleeping pill,’ he says. ‘Because yesterday Bernie said he had some Stesolid wrapped in a piece of paper, in a crack under his sink … Unless he only said it to buy time.’

  Her heart speeds up. Bernie hid sleeping pills in his room? What’s she going to do now? She has to stop this. She can’t let Jurek get hold of the sleeping pills. What if there are enough for him to carry out his escape plan?

  ‘Are you going into his room?’ she asks.

  ‘The door’s open.’

  ‘It would be better if I did it,’ she says quickly.

  ‘Why?’

  Jurek is giving her a look that seems almost amused, while she tries desperately to come up with a reasonable answer.

  ‘If they catch me,’ she says, ‘they’ll just think I’m addicted and—’

  ‘Then we won’t get any more pills,’ he retorts.

  ‘I think I can get more from the doctor anyway,’ she says.

  Jurek considers this, then nods.

  ‘He looks at you as if he were the one who was captive.’

  She opens the door to Bernie’s room and goes inside.

  In the light from the dayroom she can see that his room is an exact copy of hers. When the door closes behind her, everything goes dark. She walks over to the wall, feeling her way round, picking up the smell of stale urine from the toilet, then she reaches the sink, the edges of which are wet, as if it’s recently been cleaned.

  The doors to the dayroom will be closing in a few minutes.

  She tells herself not to think about her mother, just concentrate on the job at hand. Her chin starts to tremble, but she manages to pull herself together, stifling the tears even though her throat feels as if it’s going to burst. She kneels down and runs her fingers across the cool underside of the sink. She reaches the wall and feels along the silicone seal, but can’t find anything. A drop of water falls on her neck. She blinks in the darkness, reaches further down, touches the floor. Another drip falls between her shoulder blades. She suddenly notices that the basin is sloping slightly. That’s why the water on top is dripping onto her instead of draining back into the bowl.

  She pushes the basin up with her shoulder and feels along the underside where it joins the wall. Her fingers find a crack. There it is. A tiny package, tucked inside. Sweat is running from her armpits. She pushes the basin up further. It creaks as she tries to grab hold of the package. Carefully she manages to pull it out. Jurek was right. Pills. Tightly wrapped in toilet paper. She’s breathing hard as she crawls out, tucks the package in her trousers and stands up.

  As she feels her way to the door to the dayroom she thinks about having to tell Jurek she didn’t find anything, that Bernie must have been lying about the pills. She reaches the wall, quickly moves along it until she finds the door and emerges into the dayroom.

  Blinking hard against the bright light, Saga looks round. Jurek isn’t there. He must have returned to his room. The clock behind the reinforced glass tells her the doors to the dayroom will be locked in a few seconds.

  145

  Anders Rönn taps lightly at the door of the surveillance control room. My is sitting there reading a copy of Expo in front of the large monitor.

  ‘Have you come to say goodnight?’ she asks.

  Anders smiles back at her, sits down beside her and watches Saga leave the dayroom and go into her room. Jurek is already lying on his bed, and of course Bernie’s room is dark. My yawns widely, then leans back in the revolving chair.

  Leif is standing in the doorway, draining the last drops from a can of Coca-Cola.

  ‘What does male foreplay look like?’ he asks.

  ‘Is there such a thing?’ My asks.

  ‘An hour of begging, pleading and persuasion.’

  Anders smiles and My laughs so hard the piercing in her tongue glints.

  ‘They’re a bit short of staff up on Ward 30 tonight,’ Anders says.

  ‘Funny how we’re so short of staff when there’s such high unemployment,’ Leif sighs.

  ‘I said they could borrow you,’ Anders says.

  ‘There always have to be two of us here,’ Leif says.

  ‘Yes, but I’m going to have to stay and work until at least one o’clock anyway.’

  ‘OK, I’ll come back down at one o’clock.’

  ‘Good,’ Anders says.

  Leif tosses the can in the bin and leaves the room.

  Anders sits silently beside My for a while. He can’t take his eyes off Saga. She’s pacing anxiously in her cell, with her thin arms wrapped round her body.

  The image is so sharp that he can see the sweat on her back.

  He can feel himself aching with desire. All he can think about is how to get into her room again. He’s going to give her twenty milligrams of Stesolid this time.

  He makes the decisions, he’s the responsible clinician, he can have her put in a straitjacket, tied to her bed, he can do whatever he wants.
She’s psychotic, paranoid, there’s no one she can talk to.

  My yawns again, stretches and says something Anders doesn’t hear.

  He looks at the time. Only two hours until the lights go out and he can let My go and get some sleep.

  146

  Saga is pacing around the floor of her cell, feeling the little package from Bernie’s room moving in her pocket. Behind her back she hears the electronic lock whirr and click. She ought to wash her face, but can’t be bothered. She goes over to the door to the corridor and looks through the toughened glass to see if she can see anything, then leans her forehead against the cool surface and closes her eyes.

  If Felicia is in the house behind the brickworks, I’ll be free tomorrow. Otherwise I’ve got a couple more days in me before this gets unbearable, before I have to put a stop to the escape attempt, she thinks.

  Her facial muscles ache – she’s been willing herself not to break down.

  She hasn’t let the pain in, all she can think about is completing her mission.

  She’s breathing faster again, and knocks her head gently against the cold glass.

  I’m in charge of this situation, she tells herself. Jurek thinks he’s controlling me, but I’ve got him to talk. He needs sleeping pills in order to escape, but I went into Bernie’s room, found the package and I’m going to hide it, say it wasn’t there.

  She smiles anxiously to herself. The palms of her hands are wet with sweat.

  As long as Jurek believes he’s manipulating me, he’ll carry on giving himself away, piece by piece.

  She’s sure he’s going to tell about his escape plan tomorrow.

  I just have to stay a few more days, and I need to stay calm, not let him inside my head again.

  She can’t understand how it could have happened.

  It was incredibly cruel of him to say she had killed her mother on purpose, that she would have wanted to kill her.

  Now she feels the tears welling up. Her throat aches and she swallows and feels sweat running down her back.

  Saga bangs her hands against the door.

  Could her mum have thought …?

  She turns, grabs the back of the plastic chair and hits the basin with it. She loses her grip and it spins round, but she grabs it again and bashes it against the wall, then the basin.

  She sits down on the bed, panting.

  ‘I’m going to be OK,’ she whispers to herself.

  She can feel she’s on the brink of losing control of the situation, she can’t stop thinking. Her memory is only showing her the long strands of the rug, the pills, her mum’s wet eyes, the tears running down her cheeks, her teeth hitting the edge of the glass as she swallows the pills.

  Saga remembers her mum shouting at her when she said Dad couldn’t come, she remembers her mum forcing her to call him, even though she didn’t want to.

  Maybe I was angry with Mum, she thinks. Tired of her.

  She gets up, trying to calm down, and repeats to herself that she’s being deceived.

  Slowly she walks over to the basin and washes her face, then carefully bathes her aching eyes.

  She has to find a way back to herself, she has to become herself again. It’s as if she’s scrambling about outside her body, as if she can’t be inside her body any more.

  Maybe the neuroleptica injection is what’s stopping her from just crying and crying.

  Saga lies down on the bed and makes up her mind to hide Bernie’s package, tell Jurek she didn’t find anything. Then she won’t have to ask the doctor for sleeping pills. She can just give Jurek the ones she got from Bernie’s room.

  One at a time, one per night.

  Saga rolls over onto her side and turns her back on the CCTV camera in the ceiling. Covered by her own body, she takes out the package. She carefully unrolls the toilet paper, little by little, until she sees that it contains just three pieces of chewing gum.

  Chewing gum.

  She forces herself to breathe calmly, lets her eyes trace the streaks of dirt on the walls, and thinks with strange, vacant clarity that she’s done exactly what Joona warned her against.

  I’ve let Jurek inside my head, and everything has changed.

  How can I possibly stand myself?

  It’s wrong to think like this, I know I’m being deceived, but that’s how it feels.

  Her stomach is aching with anguish as she thinks about her mum’s cold body that morning. A sad, immoveable face with an odd froth at the corner of her mouth.

  It feels as if she’s about to fall.

  I mustn’t lose it, she thinks, and struggles to regain control of her breathing, and come up with a strategy that works.

  I’m not sick, she reminds herself. I’m here for one reason alone, that’s all I have to think about. My task is to find Felicia. This isn’t about me, I don’t care about myself. I am undercover, I’m following the plan, I’m accumulating sleeping pills, pretending to go along with the plan and talking about escape routes and hiding places for as long as I can. I’m doing my duty, for as long as it’s possible. It doesn’t matter if I die, she thinks with sudden relief.

  147

  It’s been almost twenty-four hours since Joona Linna was picked up from Nikita Karpin’s house by the men from the FSB, the new Russian security service. They haven’t answered any questions at all, and he hasn’t been given any explanation as to why his passport, wallet, watch and mobile have been confiscated.

  After sitting in a café for hours, they took him to a bleak concrete block of flats, led him along one of the walkways and into a two-room apartment.

  Joona was taken to the furthest room, which contained a dirty sofa, a table with two chairs, and a small closet concealing a toilet. The steel door was locked behind him and then nothing happened until a couple of hours later, when they gave him a warm paper bag containing soggy food from McDonald’s.

  Joona has to get in touch with his colleagues and ask Anja to look for Vadim Levanov and his twin sons, Igor and Roman. Maybe the names would lead to new addresses, maybe they’d be able to identify the gravel pit where the father worked.

  But the metal door has remained locked, and the hours are passing. He’s heard the men talk on the phone a couple of times, but apart from that it’s been silent.

  Joona has been dozing off and on, curled up on the sofa, but snaps awake towards morning at the sound of footsteps and voices in the next room.

  He turns the light on and waits for them to come in.

  Someone coughs, and he hears voices talking irritably in Russian. Suddenly the door opens and the two men from the previous day come in. They’ve both got pistols in their shoulder-holsters and are carrying on a rapid-fire conversation in Russian.

  The man with silver-grey hair pulls out one of the chairs and puts it in the middle of the floor.

  ‘Sit down here,’ he says in good English.

  Joona gets up from the sofa and notices the man step back as he walks slowly over to the chair and sits down.

  ‘You’re not here on official business,’ the thick-necked man with black eyes says. ‘Tell us why you went to see Nikita Karpin.’

  ‘We were talking about the serial killer, Alexander Pichushkin,’ Joona replied in a toneless voice.

  ‘And what conclusions did you reach?’ the man with the silvery hair asks.

  ‘The first victim was his presumed accomplice,’ Joona says. ‘We were talking about him … Mikhail Odichuk.’

  The man tilts his head, nods a couple of times, then says amiably:

  ‘Naturally, you’re lying.’

  The man with the thick neck has turned away and drawn his pistol. It isn’t easy to see, but it might be a high-calibre Glock. He’s hiding the gun with his body as he feeds a bullet into the chamber.

  ‘What did Nikita Karpin tell you?’ the man with grey hair goes on.

  ‘Nikita believes that the accomplice’s role was—’

  ‘Don’t lie!’ the other man roars, and turns round, holding the pistol b
ehind his back. ‘Nikita Karpin no longer has any authority, he isn’t in the security service.’

  ‘You knew that – didn’t you?’ the man with black eyes asks.

  Joona is thinking that he might be able to overpower the two men, but without his passport and money it would be impossible to get out of the country.

  The agents exchange a few words in Russian.

  The man with cropped white hair takes a deep breath and then says sharply:

  ‘You discussed material that has been declared confidential, and we need to know exactly what you were told before we can take you to the airport.’

  For a long time none of them moves. The white-haired man looks at his phone, says something to the other one in Russian, and gets a shake of the head in response.

  ‘You have to tell us,’ he says, putting his phone in his pocket.

  ‘I’ll shoot you in your kneecaps,’ the other man says.

  ‘So, you drive out to Ljubimovka, meet Nikita Karpin and—’

  The white-haired man breaks off as his phone rings. He answers, looking stressed, exchanges a few short words, then says something to his colleague. They have a short conversation that gets more and more heated.

  148

  The man with black eyes is stressed, and moves aside and takes aim at Joona with the pistol. The lino floor creaks under his feet. A shadow slips away and the light from the standard lamp reaches his hand. Joona can now see that the black pistol is a Strizh.

  The white-haired man rubs one hand over his head, barks an order, looks at Joona for a few seconds, then leaves the room and locks the door behind him.

  The other man walks round and stops somewhere behind Joona. He’s breathing hard, and having trouble standing still.

  ‘The boss is on his way,’ he says in a low voice.

  There’s the sound of angry shouting behind the steel door. The smell of gun-grease and sweat is suddenly very noticeable in the small room.

  ‘I have to know – do you understand?’ the man says.