The Sandman (16 page)

Now Forensics can get to work.

Then the forest needs to be searched with dog patrols.

Joona is standing with his helmet in his hand, looking at the snow as it sparkles on the ground.

If I’m honest, I knew we weren’t going to find Felicia here, he thinks. The room that Mikael called the capsule had thick, reinforced walls, a water tap and a hatch for food. It was constructed to hold people captive.

Joona has read Mikael’s medical records, and knows that the doctors found traces of the anaesthetic drug Sevoflurane in his soft tissues. Now he’s thinking that Mikael must have been drugged and moved here while he was unconscious. That matches his description of just waking up to find himself in a different room. He fell asleep in the capsule and woke up here.

For some reason, Mikael was moved here after all those years.

Was it finally time for him to end up in a coffin when he managed to escape?

The temperature is falling even lower as Joona watches the police officers return to their vehicles. Marita Jakobsson’s careworn face is tense, and she looks sad.

If Mikael was drugged, then there is no way he can lead them to the capsule.

He never saw anything.

Nathan Pollock waves to Joona, to let him know it’s time to leave. Joona starts to raise his hand, but gives up.

It mustn’t end like this. It can’t be over, he thinks, running his hand through his hair.

What is left to be done?

As Joona walks back towards the cars, he already knows the terrifying answer to his own question.

Joona turns gently into the Q-Park garage, takes a ticket, then drives down the ramp and parks. He remains seated in the car as a man from the carpet warehouse above gathers up shopping trolleys.

When he can’t see anyone else in the car park, Joona gets out of the car and goes over to a shiny black van with tinted windows, opens the side door and climbs in.

The door closes silently behind him and Joona says a muted hello to Carlos Eliasson, chief of the National Police, and the head of the Security Police, Verner Zandén.

‘Felicia Kohler-Frost is being held in a dark room,’ Carlos begins. ‘She’s been there more than ten years, together with her older brother. Now she’s entirely alone. Are we going to abandon her? Say she’s dead and leave her there? If she’s not ill, she could live another twenty years or so.’

‘Carlos,’ Verner says in a soothing voice.

‘I know, I’ve lost all detachment.’ He smiles, raising his hands apologetically. ‘But I really do want us to do absolutely everything we can this time.’

‘I need a large team,’ Joona says. ‘If I can have fifty people we can try to pick up all the old threads, every missing-person case. It might not lead to anything, but it’s our only chance. Mikael never saw the accomplice, and he was drugged before he was moved. He can’t tell
us where the capsule is. Obviously we’re going to carry on talking to him, but I simply don’t believe he knows where he’s been kept for the past thirteen years.’

‘But if Felicia is alive, then she’s probably still in the capsule,’ Verner says in his deep voice.

‘Yes,’ Joona agrees.

‘How the hell are we going to find her? It’s impossible,’ Carlos says. ‘No one knows where the capsule is.’

‘No one apart from Jurek Walter,’ Joona says.

‘Who can’t be questioned,’ Verner says.

‘No,’ Joona replies.

‘He’s utterly psychotic, and—’

‘No, he was never that,’ Joona interrupts.

‘All I know is what it says in the forensic medical report,’ Verner says. ‘They wrote that he was schizophrenic, psychotic, prone to chaotic thinking and extremely violent.’

‘Only because that’s what Jurek wanted it to say,’ Joona replies calmly.

‘So you think he’s healthy? Is that what you mean, that there’s nothing wrong with him?’ Verner asks. ‘What the hell is this? Why wasn’t he interrogated, then?’

‘He was sentenced to solitary confinement,’ Carlos says. ‘In the verdict of the Supreme Court—’

‘It must be possible to get round the terms of the sentence,’ Verner sighs, stretching out his long legs.

‘Maybe,’ Carlos says.

‘And I’ve got some very skilled people who’ve interrogated people suspected of terrorist—’

‘Joona’s the best,’ Carlos interrupts.

‘No, I’m not,’ Joona responds.

‘It was you who tracked down and apprehended Jurek, and you’re actually the only person he spoke to before his trial.’

Joona shakes his head and looks out at the deserted garage through the tinted window.

‘I’ve tried,’ he says slowly. ‘But it’s impossible to fool Jurek. He isn’t like other people, he isn’t unhappy, he doesn’t need sympathy, he won’t say anything.’

‘Do you want to try?’ Verner asks.

‘No, I can’t,’ says Joona.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m frightened,’ he replies simply.

Carlos looks at him uncertainly.

‘I know you’re only joking,’ he says nervously.

Joona turns to face him. His eyes are hard, and as grey as wet slate.

‘Surely we’ve no reason to be scared of an old man who’s already locked up,’ Verner says, scratching his head slightly nervously. ‘He ought to be scared of us. For God’s sake, we could rush in, pin him down on the floor and scare the shit out of him. I mean, seriously fucking tough.’

‘It won’t work,’ Joona says.

‘There are methods that always work,’ Verner goes on. ‘I’ve got a secret group who were involved in Guantanamo.’

‘Obviously, this meeting has never taken place,’ Carlos says hurriedly.

‘I very rarely have meetings that have,’ Verner says in his deep voice, then leans forward. ‘My group knows all about waterboarding and electric shocks.’

Joona shakes his head. ‘Jurek isn’t scared of pain.’

‘So we just give up?’

‘No,’ Joona says, leaning back and making his seat creak.

‘So what do you think we should do?’ Verner asks.

‘If we go in and talk to Jurek, the only thing we can be sure of is that he’ll be lying. He’ll steer the conversation and once he’s found out what we want with him, he’ll get us to start bargaining, and we’ll end up giving him something we’ll only regret.’

Carlos looks down and scratches his knee irritably.

‘So what does that leave us with?’ Verner asks quietly.

‘I don’t know if it’s even possible,’ Joona says. ‘But if you could place an agent as a patient in the same secure psychiatric unit as—’

‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ Carlos interrupts.

‘It would have to be someone so convincing that Jurek would want to talk to them,’ Joona goes on.

‘Bloody hell,’ Verner mutters.

‘A patient,’ Carlos whispers.

‘Because it would be enough to have someone who might be useful to him, someone he could exploit,’ Joona says.

‘What are you saying?’

‘We need to find an agent who’s so exceptional that they can make Jurek Walter curious.’

The punchbag lets out a sigh and the chain rattles. Saga Bauer moves nimbly to one side, follows the movement of the bag with her body and strikes again. Two blows, then an echo that rumbles off the walls of the empty boxing gym.

She’s practising a combination of two quick left hooks, one high, one low, followed by a hard right hook.

The black punchbag sways, and the hook creaks. Its shadow crosses Saga’s face and she punches again. Three rapid blows. She rolls her shoulders, moves backwards, glides round the punchbag and strikes once more.

Her long blonde hair flies out with the rapid movement of her hips, flicking across her face.

Saga loses track of time when she’s training, and all thoughts vanish from her head. She’s been on her own in the gym for the past two hours. The last of the others left while she was doing her skipping. The lamps above the boxing ring are switched off, but the bright glow from the drinks machine is shining through the doorway. There’s snow swirling outside the windows, around the dry cleaners’ sign and along the pavement.

From the corner of her eye Saga sees a car stop in the street outside the boxing club, but she carries on with the same combination of blows, trying to increase their power the whole time. Drops of sweat hit the floor next to a smaller punchbag that has come off its support.

Stefan walks in. He stamps the snow from his feet, then stands quietly for a moment. His coat is undone, showing the pale suit and white shirt beneath.

She goes on punching as she sees him take off his shoes and come closer.

The only sounds are the thump of the bag and the rattle of the chain.

Saga wants to go on training, she’s not ready to break her concentration yet. She lowers her brow and attacks the bag with a rapid series of punches even though Stefan is standing right behind it.

‘Harder,’ he says, holding the bag in place.

She throws a straight right, so hard that he has to take a step back. She can’t help laughing, and before he’s managed to regain his balance she punches again.

‘Give me some resistance,’ she says, with a hint of impatience in her voice.

‘We need to leave.’

Her face is closed and hot as she fires off another salvo of punches. She finds it so easy to succumb to desperate rage. Rage makes her feel weak, but it’s also what makes her keep fighting, long after others have given up.

The heavy blows make the punchbag tremble and the chain rattle. She slows herself down, even though she could carry on for ages yet.

Panting, she takes a couple of easy steps backwards. The bag continues to swing. A light shower of concrete dust falls from the catch in the ceiling.

‘OK, I’m happy now.’ She smiles at him, pulling off her boxing gloves with her teeth.

He follows her into the women’s changing room and helps her remove the strapping from her hands.

‘You’ve hurt yourself,’ he whispers.

‘No problem,’ she says, looking at her hand.

Her washed-out gym clothes are wet with sweat. Her nipples are showing through her damp bra, and her muscles are swollen and pumped with blood.

Saga Bauer is an inspector with the Security Police, and she’s worked with Joona Linna of the National Criminal Investigation Department on two big cases. She’s not just an elite-level boxer, but a very good
sniper, and has been specially trained in advanced interrogation techniques.

She’s twenty-seven years old, her eyes are blue as a summer sky, she has colourful ribbons plaited into her long, blonde hair, and is almost improbably beautiful. Most people who see her are filled with a strange, helpless sense of longing. Just seeing her is enough to make people fall helplessly in love.

The hot shower creates steam that mists up the mirrors. Saga stands solidly with her legs apart and her arms hanging by her sides as the water washes over her. A large bruise is forming on one thigh, and the knuckles of her right hand are bleeding.

She looks up, wipes the water from her face and sees Stefan standing there watching her with a perfectly neutral expression.

‘What are you thinking?’ Saga asks.

‘That it was raining the first time we had sex,’ he says quietly.

She remembers that afternoon very well. They had been to a matinee at the cinema, and when they emerged onto Medborgarplatsen it was pouring with rain. They ran down Sankt Paulsgatan to his studio, but still got drenched. Stefan has often talked about the unembarrassed way she got undressed and hung her clothes over the radiator, then stood there picking out notes on his piano. He said he knew he shouldn’t stare, but that she lit up the room like a ball of molten glass in a dark hut.

‘Get in the shower,’ Saga says.

‘There isn’t time.’

She looks at him with a little frown between her eyebrows.

‘Am I alone?’ she suddenly asks.

He smiles uncertainly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Am I alone?’

Stefan holds out a towel and says calmly:

‘Come on, now.’

It’s snowing as they get out of the taxi at the Glenn Miller Café. Saga turns her face towards the sky, shuts her eyes and feels the snow fall on her warm skin.

The cramped premises are already full, but they’re in luck and find a free table. Candles flicker in frosted lanterns and the snow slides wetly down the windows facing Brunnsgatan.

Stefan hangs his coat on the back of a chair and goes over to the bar to order.

Saga’s hair is still wet and she shivers as she takes off her green parka, its back dark with damp. The people nearby keep looking round and she’s worried they’ve taken someone’s seats.

Stefan puts two vodka martinis and a bowl of pistachio nuts on the table. They sit opposite each other and drink a silent toast. Saga is about to say how hungry she is when a thin man in glasses comes over.

‘Jacky,’ Stefan says, surprised.

‘I thought I could smell cat-piss.’ Jacky grins.

‘This is my girl,’ Stefan says.

Jacky glances at Saga but doesn’t bother to say hello, just whispers something to Stefan instead and laughs.

‘No, seriously, you’ve got to play with us,’ he says. ‘Mini’s here as well.’

He points to a thickset man who’s making his way towards the corner
where an almost black contrabass and a half-acoustic Gibson guitar stand ready.

Saga can’t hear what they’re saying; they’re talking about some legendary gig, a contract that’s the best so far, and a cleverly put-together quartet. She lets her eyes roam round the bar as she waits. Stefan says something to her as Jacky starts pulling him to his feet.

‘Are you going to play?’ Saga asks.

‘Just one song,’ Stefan calls with a smile.

She waves him off. The noise in the bar subsides as Jacky takes the microphone and introduces his guest. Stefan sits down at the piano.

‘ “April in Paris”,’ he says simply, and starts to play.

Saga watches Stefan half-close his eyes and her skin breaks out in goosebumps as the music takes over and shrinks the room, making the subdued lighting soft and shimmering.