The Sandman

by Kepler, Lars

  165

  Joona runs through the snow along the edge of the quay, with the sledgehammer hanging by his side. He can hear shouting behind him. Large blocks of ice are rolling in the sludgy water. The water rises, hits the quayside and sprays up.

  Joona tears up the ramp of the roll-on, roll-off ferry to St Petersburg. He carries on past the rows of warm, steaming private cars, trailers and lorries. Light is coming from lamps along the bulkheads. Behind a grey container towards the stern he can just make out a red one.

  A man tries to get out of his car, but Joona shuts the door on him so he can get past. The sledgehammer hits a bolt in one of the ship’s bulkheads. He can feel the vibration moving through his arm and shoulder.

  The steel deck under the cars is wet with melted snow. Joona kicks some cones blocking his path out of the way and keeps moving.

  He reaches the red container, bangs on the doors and shouts out. The lock is high up. He has to climb up onto the car behind – a black Mercedes – and stand on the bonnet to reach it. The bonnet buckles beneath his feet and the paint cracks. He swings the sledgehammer and smashes the lock with his first blow. The noise echoes off the bulkheads and roof. Joona leaves the sledgehammer on the car bonnet. He opens the container. One of the doors swings open and scrapes the car’s bumper.

  ‘Disa!’ he calls into the container.

  It’s full of white boxes with the name Evonik on their sides. They’re tightly packed, and strapped down on pallets. Joona picks up the sledgehammer again and carries on towards the stern, past the cars and lorries. He can feel that he’s starting to get tired. His arms are trembling from the exertion. Loading of the ferry has finished now and the bow is being lowered into place. There’s a rumble of machinery and the deck shakes as the ferry pulls away. Ice knocks against its hull. He’s almost at the stern when he sees another red container with the words Hamburg Süd on the side.

  ‘Disa,’ he calls.

  He runs round the cab, stops and looks at the blue lock on the container. He wipes water from his face, grabs hold of the sledgehammer, and fails to notice the person approaching from behind.

  Joona raises the sledgehammer and is about to strike when he receives a hard blow in the back. It hurts, his lungs roar and he almost blacks out. He drops the sledgehammer and falls forward, hitting his forehead against the container and collapsing on the deck. He rolls to the side and gets to his feet. Blood is running into one eye, and he stumbles and reaches out to a nearby car for support.

  In front of him is a fairly tall woman with a baseball bat over her shoulder. She’s breathing quickly and her padded jacket is pulled tight across her chest. She takes a step to the side, blows a lock of blonde hair from her face and takes aim again.

  ‘Leave my cargo the fuck alone!’ she yells.

  She strikes again, but Joona moves quickly, heading straight at her, grabbing her throat with one hand, stamping his foot down at the back of her knee so that her leg buckles, then throws her to the deck and points his pistol at her.

  ‘National Criminal Police,’ he says.

  She lies on deck, whimpering and looking at him as he picks up the sledgehammer, grasps it with both hands, swings it and shatters the lock. A piece of metal casing lands with a clatter right in front of her face.

  Joona opens the doors, but the container is full of large boxes of televisions. He pulls a few out to see further in; Disa isn’t there. He wipes the blood from his face and runs off between the cars, past a black container, and hurries up some steps to the open deck.

  He rushes over to the railing, gasping for breath in the cold air. In front of the ship he can see the channel that an icebreaker has cleared through the archipelago to the open sea.

  A mosaic of crushed ice is bobbing around a buoy.

  The ferry is now twenty metres from the quay, and Joona suddenly has a view of the whole harbour. The sky is black, but the harbour is lit up by floodlights.

  Through the heavy snow he sees the large crane loading a waiting goods train. Joona feels a spasm of anguish as he realises that three of the wagons have similar red containers on them.

  He carries on towards the stern, takes his phone out and calls the emergency control room. He asks for all traffic from Frihamnen in Stockholm to be stopped. The duty officer knows who Joona is, and puts his call through to the regional police commissioner.

  ‘All rail traffic from Frihamnen has to be stopped,’ he repeats breathlessly.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ she replies calmly.

  Heavy snow is falling over the vast container terminal.

  He clambers up the mooring winch and out onto the railing. He can see a reach-stacker carrying a red container to a waiting lorry.

  ‘We have to stop all traffic,’ Joona says again.

  ‘That can’t be done,’ the commissioner says. ‘The best we can do is—’

  ‘I’ll do it myself,’ Joona says abruptly, and jumps.

  Hitting the practically freezing water feels like being struck by icy lightning, like getting an adrenalin injection straight to the heart. His ears are roaring. His body can’t handle the abrupt chill. Joona sinks through the black water, loses consciousness for a few seconds and dreams of a bridal crown of woven birch-root. He can’t feel his hands and feet, but thinks that he has to get up to the surface, kicks out with his legs and finally manages to stop himself sinking any deeper.

  166

  Joona breaks the surface of the water, emerging through the icy slush and trying to stay calm and get some air into his lungs.

  It’s incredibly cold.

  The sub-zero temperature is making his head pound, but he’s conscious.

  His time as a paratrooper saved him – he managed to ignore the impulse to gasp and breathe in.

  With numb arms and heavy clothes, he swims through the black water. It’s not far to the quayside, but his body temperature is dropping alarmingly quickly. Lumps of ice are tumbling over all round him. He’s already lost all feeling in his feet, but he carries on kicking with his legs.

  The waves roll and lap over his head.

  He coughs, feeling his strength draining away. His vision is starting to fade, but he forces himself on, takes more strokes, and finally reaches the edge of the quay. With trembling hands he tries to grab onto the blocks, onto the narrow gaps between them. Panting, he moves sideways until he reaches a metal ladder.

  The water splashes beneath him as he starts to climb. His hands freeze to the metal. He’s on the point of fainting, but wills himself to keep going, step after heavy step.

  He rolls onto the quay with a groan, gets to his feet and starts walking towards the lorry.

  His hand is shaking as he checks that he hasn’t lost his pistol.

  His wet face stings as snow blows into it. His lips are numb and his legs are trembling badly.

  He runs into the narrow passageway between the stacks of dark containers to reach the lorry before it leaves the harbour. His feet are so numb he can’t help stumbling and he hits his shoulder but carries on regardless, leaning against one of the containers as he clambers over a bank of snow.

  He emerges into the glare of the headlights of the lorry carrying the red Hamburg Süd container.

  The driver is behind the vehicle, checking that the brake lights are working, when he sees Joona approaching.

  ‘Have you been in the water?’ he asks, taking a step back. ‘Bloody hell, you’ll freeze to death if you don’t get indoors.’

  ‘Open the red container,’ Joona slurs. ‘I’m a police officer, I need to—’

  ‘That’s down to Customs, I can’t just open it—’

  ‘National Criminal Investigation Department,’ Joona interrupts in a weak voice.

  He’s having trouble keeping his eyes focused, and is aware how incoherent he sounds when he tries to explain what powers the National Crime unit has.

  ‘I don’t even have the keys,’ the driver says, looking at him kindly. ‘Just a pair of bolt-cutters, and—’


  ‘Hurry up,’ Joona says, then coughs tiredly.

  The driver runs round the lorry, climbs up and leans into the cab, peering behind the passenger seat. An umbrella tumbles out onto the ground as he pulls out a set of long-handled bolt-cutters.

  Joona bangs on the container, shouting Disa’s name.

  The driver runs back, and his cheeks turn red as he presses the handles together.

  The lock breaks with a crunch.

  The door of the container swings open on creaking hinges. It’s packed full of boxes on wooden pallets, strapped into place, right up to the roof.

  Without saying a word to the lorry driver, Joona takes the bolt-cutters and walks on. He’s so frozen he’s shaking, and his hands hurt terribly.

  ‘You need to get to hospital,’ the man calls after him.

  167

  Joona walks as quickly as he can towards the railway line. The heavy bolt-cutters keep hitting compacted banks of snow, jarring his shoulder. The goods train by the warehouse has just started to move, its wheels squealing as it rolls forward. Joona tries to run, but his heart is beating so slowly that his chest feels like it’s burning. He scrambles up the snow-covered railway embankment, slips and hits his knee on the gravel, drops the bolt-cutters but gets to his feet and stumbles onto the railway track. He can no longer feel his hands or feet. The shaking is now uncontrollable and he is experiencing a frightening sense of confusion because he’s so severely frozen.

  His thoughts are strange, slow and disintegrating. All he knows is that he has to stop the train.

  The heavy train has started to build up speed and is approaching with its wheels screeching. Joona stands in the middle of the track, raises his eyes towards the light and holds up his hand to stop it. The train blows its whistle, and he can just make out the driver’s silhouette inside. The track is shaking with vibrations under his feet. Joona draws his pistol, raises it and shoots out the windscreen of the train.

  Fragments of glass fly up over the roof and swirl away. The echo of the shot resounds quickly and harshly between the stacked containers.

  Paper is flying round the cab of the train, and the driver’s face is completely expressionless. Joona raises the pistol again and takes aim straight at him. There’s a thunderous sound as the train brakes. The rails scrape and the ground shakes. The train slides forward with its brakes squealing, and stops with a hiss just three metres away from him.

  Joona almost falls as he steps off the track. He picks up the bolt-cutters and turns to the train driver.

  ‘Open the red containers,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t have the authority to—’

  ‘Just do it,’ Joona shouts, throwing the bolt-cutters on the ground.

  The driver climbs down and picks up the bolt-cutters. Joona goes with him along the train, and points at the first red container. Without a word the driver clambers up onto the rust-brown coupling and sheers the lock. There’s a rumble as the door opens and large boxes containing television sets tumble out.

  ‘Next one,’ he whispers.

  Joona starts walking, drops his pistol, picks it up out of the snow, and carries on towards the rear of the train. They pass eight containers before they reach the next red one bearing the words Hamburg Süd.

  The train driver breaks the lock, but can’t open the heavy catch. He hits it with the bolt-cutters, and the sound of metal against metal echoes desolately around the harbour.

  Joona staggers forward, shoves the catch up with a scraping sound and the big metal door swings open.

  Disa is lying on the rusty floor of the container. Her face is pale and there’s a look of bewilderment in her wide-open eyes. She’s lost one of her boots, and her hair is stiff and frozen round her head.

  Disa’s mouth is frozen in a grimace of fear and sobbing.

  There’s a deep cut on the right side of her long, slender neck. The pool of blood beneath her throat and neck is already covered by a film of ice.

  Gently Joona lifts her down from the container and takes a few steps away from the train.

  ‘I know you’re alive,’ he says, falling to his knees with her in his arms.

  Some blood is trickling over his hand, but her heart has stopped. It’s over, there’s no way back.

  ‘Not this,’ Joona whispers against her cheek. ‘Not you …’

  He rocks her slowly as the snow falls. He doesn’t notice the car stopping, and is unaware of Saga Bauer running towards him. She’s barefoot, wearing just trousers and a T-shirt.

  ‘We’ve got people on their way,’ she cries as she gets closer. ‘God, what have you done? You need to get some help …’

  Saga shouts into her radio, swears, and, as if in a dream, Joona hears her force the train driver to take his jacket off, then she wraps it round his shoulders. She sinks down behind him and holds him while the sirens of police cars and ambulances fill the harbour.

  The snow is blown from a large circle of ground as the yellow air-ambulance helicopter lands, settling onto its runners. The sound is deafening and the train driver backs away from the man sitting there with the dead woman in his arms.

  The rotors are still turning as the paramedics leap out and run over, their clothes flapping round their bodies.

  The draught from the helicopter is blowing rubbish up against the high fence. It feels as if all the oxygen is being blown away from them.

  Joona is on the point of losing consciousness when the paramedics force him to let go of Disa’s dead body. His eyes are unfocused, and his hands white with cold. He’s muttering incoherently and resists when they try to get him to lie down.

  Saga is crying as she watches him being carried away on the stretcher and into the helicopter. She realises that it’s urgent now.

  The noise of the rotors changes as the helicopter rises off the ground, swaying in a side wind that’s picked up.

  The angle of the rotors shifts, the helicopter leans forward and disappears across the city.

  As they cut his clothes off, Joona starts to sink into a death-like torpor. His eyes are still open, but his pupils have expanded and are so fixed that they no longer react to light. It’s impossible to detect any pulse or sign of breathing.

  Joona Linna’s body temperature has sunk below 32 degrees as they descend to land on the helicopter pad on building P8 at the Karolinska Hospital.

  168

  The police are quickly on the scene at Frihamnen, and after just a few minutes they are able to put out an alert for a silver-grey Citroën Evasion. Jurek Walter’s car was registered by several different surveillance cameras as it drove into the harbour fifteen minutes before Disa Helenius’s car arrived. The same cameras recorded the car leaving the area seven minutes after Joona Linna got there.

  Every police car in Stockholm is involved in the search, as well as two Eurocopter 135s. It’s a massive deployment, and just fifteen minutes after the alarm is sounded, the vehicle is observed on the Central Bridge before it disappears into the Söderleden Tunnel.

  Police cars are on their way, with sirens and flashing lights, and roadblocks are being set up at the exits when the shock wave from a huge explosion blasts out of the entrance to the tunnel.

  The helicopter hovering above lurches and the pilot only just manages to parry the force of the wave. Dust and debris is scattered across the carriageways and railway tracks, all the way down to the snow-covered ice of Riddarfjärden.

  It’s half past four in the morning and Saga Bauer is sitting on a rustling sheet of protective paper on top of a couch as a doctor sews up the wounds on her body.

  ‘I have to go,’ she says, staring at the dusty flat-screen television on the wall.

  The doctor has just started bandaging her left wrist when the item about the big traffic accident comes on.

  A sombre-voiced reporter explains that a police chase in the centre of Stockholm has ended with a single car crashing with fatal consequences inside the Söderleden Tunnel.

  ‘The accident happened at h
alf past two this morning,’ the reporter says, ‘which probably explains why no other vehicles were involved. The police have given assurances that the road will be reopened in time for the morning rush-hour, but have otherwise declined to make any comment about the incident.’

  The screen shows a cloud of black smoke billowing out of the entrance to the tunnel at a peculiarly high speed. The cloud covers the whole of the Hilton Hotel with rolling veils, then slowly disperses over Södermalm.

  Saga refused to go to hospital until she received confirmation that Jurek Walter was dead. Two of Joona’s colleagues from National Crime told her. To save time, their forensics experts had accompanied the fire crews into the tunnel. The violent explosion had torn Jurek Walter’s arms and head from his body.

  On the screen, a politician is sitting in the studio with a female presenter. Their faces heavy with sleep, they discuss the problem of dangerous police pursuits.

  ‘I have to go,’ Saga says, slipping down onto the floor.

  ‘The wounds on your legs need …’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ she says, and leaves the room.

  169

  Joona wakes up in hospital, feeling frozen. His arms are itching where infusions of warm liquid are slowly being fed into him. A male nurse is standing by his bed, and smiles at him when he opens his eyelids.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ the nurse asks, leaning forward. Joona tries to read the name-badge, but can’t get the letters to stay still long enough.

  ‘I’m freezing,’ he says.

  ‘In two hours your body temperature should be back to normal. I’ll give you some warm juice …’

  Joona tries to sit up to drink, but suddenly feels a pain in his bladder. He lifts the insulating blanket off and sees that two thick needles are sticking into his abdomen.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asks weakly.

  ‘A peritoneal lavage,’ the nurse says. ‘We’re warming your body up from inside … You’ve got two litres of warm liquid in your abdomen right now.’