The Sandman (44 page)

‘Lie down on the floor,’ the younger one says, walking closer.

‘It’s only a little girl,’ the other one says.

‘I’m a police officer,’ she says, throwing the knife away.

It bounces across the vinyl floor and stops in front of them. They look at it, open their holsters and draw their service pistols.

‘Down on the floor!’

‘I’m lying down,’ she says quickly. ‘But you’ve got to warn—’

‘Fuck,’ the younger one exclaims when he sees the head. ‘Fuck, fuck …’

‘I’ll shoot,’ the other one says in a shaky voice.

Saga slowly gets down on her knees and the guard hurries over, pulling the handcuffs from his belt. The other guard moves aside. Saga holds out her hands and stands up.

‘Nice and fucking slow now,’ the guard says in a jagged voice.

She shuts her eyes, hears boots on the floor, feels his movements and takes a little step backwards. The guard leans forward to cuff her hands, and Saga opens her eyes at the same moment as she throws a right hook. There’s a crunch as she hits him hard above his ear. She swings round and meets the jolt of his head with her left elbow.

The only sound is a brief thump.

Saliva sprays from his open mouth.

The two blows were so hard that the guard’s field of vision shrinks to a pinpoint of light in a tenth of a second.

His legs give way and he doesn’t notice Saga snatching his pistol from him. She releases the safety catch and fires before he hits the floor.

Saga shoots the other guard twice, right in his bulletproof vest.

The shots echo in the narrow passageway and the guard staggers back. Saga rushes over and knocks the pistol out of his hand with the butt of hers.

The gun clatters across the floor towards the bloody footprints.

Saga kicks both his legs out from under him, and he falls flat on his back with a groan. The other guard rolls over onto his side, clutching his face with one hand. Saga grabs one of their radios and takes a few steps away.

Joona is wrenched from his dreams by the sound of the phone ringing. He hadn’t even realised he was dozing off, just plunged straight into deep sleep while Disa was changing into her work clothes. The bedroom is dark, but the glow from his phone is casting a pale elliptical shape on the wall.

‘Joona Linna,’ he answers with a sigh.

‘Jurek’s escaped, he’s managed to get out of—’

‘Saga?’ Joona asks, leaping out of bed.

‘He’s killed loads of people,’ she says, a note of hysteria in her voice.

‘Are you hurt?’

Joona walks through the flat, adrenalin coursing through him as the realisation of what Saga’s saying sinks in.

‘I don’t know where he is, he just said he was going to hurt you, he said—’

‘Disa!’ Joona cries.

He sees that her boots are gone, opens the front door and calls her name down the stairwell, his voice echoing in the darkness. He tries to remember what she said just before he fell asleep.

‘Disa’s gone to Loudden,’ he says.

‘Sorry to—’

Joona cuts the call off, pulls his clothes on, grabs his pistol and holster and leaves the flat, not bothering to lock it behind him.

He runs down the stairs and out onto the pavement, then off towards Dalagatan where Carlos parked his car. As he runs he calls Disa. No answer. It’s snowing heavily, and when he sees the snow piled up along the edge of the pavement, he wonders if he’s going to have to dig the car out.

His path is blocked by a bus passing so close that the ground shakes. The wind is blowing fresh snow from a low, wide wall.

Joona rushes over to the car, gets in and drives straight through the bank of snow, scraping the side against a parked car and putting his foot down.

As he accelerates past Tegnérlunden and down towards Sveavägen, the loose snow flies off the car in soft clouds.

Joona is suddenly aware that everything he’s afraid of is going to flare up like a firestorm tonight.

The transition is instant, from one moment to the next.

Disa is alone in her car, on her way out to Frihamnen.

Joona can feel his heart pounding against his holster. Snow is falling heavily on the windscreen.

He’s driving very fast now, thinking of how Disa’s boss called and asked her to look at something that had been found. Samuel’s wife Rebecka got a call from a carpenter, asking her to go out to their summer house earlier than arranged.

The Sandman must have mentioned Disa in the letter that Susanne Hjälm gave Jurek. His hands are shaking as he brings up Disa’s name in his contacts and calls again. As the phone rings, he feels sweat trickling down his back.

She doesn’t answer. Joona turns sharply into Karlavägen and drives as fast as he possibly can.

It’s probably nothing, he tries to convince himself. He just has to get hold of Disa and tell her to turn round and drive home. He’ll hide her away somewhere until Jurek has been recaptured.

The car slides on the brown slush on the tarmac and a lorry swerves violently out of his way. He calls again. Still no answer.

He heads past Humlegården as fast as he can. The road is lined with grubby banks of snow, and the streetlamps reflect off the wet tarmac.

He calls Disa again.

The traffic lights have turned red, but Joona turns right into Valhallavägen. A cement-mixer swerves out of his way, and a red car pulls up sharply with a shriek of brakes. The driver blows his horn as Disa suddenly answers.

Disa drives carefully over the rusty railway tracks and carries on into the huge harbour of Frihamnen with its ferry and container traffic. The night sky is low and full of swirling, falling snow.

The yellow glow of a hanging streetlight sways across a hangar-like building.

People are walking with their heads bowed to stop the snow getting in their eyes, to protect themselves from the cold. Far off through the snow she can just make out the large Tallinn ferry, lit up but as indistinct as a dream.

Disa turns right, away from the illuminated premises of one of the big banana import companies, and drives past a succession of low industrial units as she peers into the gloom.

Articulated lorries start to drive on board the ferry to St Petersburg.

A group of dock workers are standing smoking in an empty car park. Darkness and snow make the world around the little gathering seem muffled and isolated.

Disa drives past warehouse number five, and in through the gates of the container terminal. Each container is the size of a small cottage, and can weigh more than thirty tons. They stand there stacked on top of each other, maybe fifteen metres high.

A plastic bag is being blown about by the wind. The ice on the puddles crunches beneath the car’s tyres.

The stacks of containers form a network of passageways for the huge lorries and terminal tractors. Disa heads down one of the gangways that feels oddly narrow because its sides are so high. She can see from the tracks in the snow that another car has driven this way very recently. Some fifty metres ahead the passageway opens up onto the quayside. The vast bulk of Loudden’s oil tank is just visible through the snow beyond the cranes that are loading containers onto a ship.

The men with the backgammon set are probably waiting for her up ahead.

Snow is blowing across the windscreen and she slows down, switches the wipers on and brushes the light snow away.

In the distance a large piece of machinery resembling a scorpion stops in the middle of a sideways movement: it’s holding a red container quite still, just above the ground.

There’s no one in the driver’s cab, and the wheels are quickly being covered by snow.

She’s starts when her mobile suddenly rings, and smiles to herself as she answers:

‘You’re supposed to be asleep,’ she says brightly.

‘Tell me where you are right now,’ Joona says, his voice intense.

‘I’m in the car, on my way to—’

‘I want you to skip the meeting and go straight home.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Jurek Walter has escaped from the secure unit.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I want you to go home right away.’

The headlights are forming an aquarium full of glowing, swirling snow in front of the car. She slows down even more, looks at the red container held in the claw of the machine, and reads:

‘Hamburg Süd …’

‘You have to listen to me,’ Joona says. ‘Turn the car round and drive home.’

‘OK then.’

He waits and listens to her over the phone.

‘Have you turned round?’

‘I can’t right now … I need to find a suitable place,’ she says quietly as she suddenly catches sight of something odd.

‘Disa, I can see that I might be sounding a bit—’

‘Hang on,’ she interrupts.

‘What are you doing?’

She slows down still further and drives cautiously towards a large bundle that’s lying on the ground in the middle of the passageway. It looks like a grey blanket tied with duct tape, and it’s slowly being covered with snow.

‘What’s happening, Disa?’ Joona asks, sounding agitated. ‘Have you turned round yet?’

‘There’s something in the way,’ she says as she stops. ‘I can’t get past.’

‘You can reverse!’

‘Just give me a moment,’ she says, and puts the phone down on the seat.

‘Disa!’ he shouts. ‘You mustn’t get out of the car! Reverse away from there! Disa!’

She can’t hear him, she’s already out of the car and walking away. Snow is swirling gently through the air. It’s almost totally quiet, and the light from the tall cranes doesn’t reach into the deep gulley between the stacks of containers.

The wind forcing its way between the containers high above her is making strange noises.

In the distance she can see the warning lights of a huge forklift truck. The flashes of yellow are caught by the falling snow.

Disa is filled with a sense of sombre ceremony as she walks on in silence. She’s thinking that she’ll drag the bundle to the side so she can drive past, but stops and tries to focus her gaze.

The forklift disappears round a corner a long way ahead, leaving just the ice-cold light of the car’s headlights and the endlessly falling snow.

It looks as if there’s something moving under the grey blanket.

Disa blinks and hesitates.

Everything in this moment is astonishingly silent and peaceful. Snowflakes are sailing slowly down from the dense sky.

Disa stands still, feeling her heart beating hard in her chest, then she walks the rest of the way.

Joona is driving too fast when he turns left at the roundabout, the front bumper thuds into the banked-up snow, the tyres rumble over the packed ice. He wrestles with the steering wheel as the car slides sideways, then puts his foot down and the car leaves the pavement and carries on along Lindarängsvägen without losing much speed.

The vast grassy expanse of Gärdet is covered with snow, stretching like a white sea up towards Norra Djurgården.

He overtakes a bus on the straight, hits one hundred and sixty kilometres an hour, and flies past yellow-brick blocks of flats. The car slides between the edges of the deep tracks through the snow as he brakes to turn left towards the harbour. Snow and ice are thrown up across the windscreen. Through the tall wire fence surrounding the harbour he can see a long, narrow ferry being loaded with containers in the blurred light from a crane.

A rust-brown goods train is on its way into Frihamnen.

Joona peers through the swirling snow, the murky shadows surrounding the deserted warehouses. He turns sharply into the harbour, bouncing across a traffic-island as slush flies around the car and the tyres spin.

The railway barriers are already starting to close but Joona accelerates across the tracks and the barriers scrape the roof of the car.

He drives on at speed through Frihamnen. There are people leaving
the Tallinn ferry terminal, a scant line of black figures vanishing into the night.

She can’t be far away. She stopped the car and got out. Someone rebooked her meeting. Forced her to come out here. Got her to leave the car.

He sounds his horn and people leap out of his way. One woman drops her luggage trolley and Joona drives straight over it.

An articulated lorry is moving slowly down the roll-on, roll-off ramp and onto the ferry to St Petersburg. It leaves great clods of compacted brown snow on the ground behind it.

Joona drives past an empty car park between warehouses five and six and in through the gates of the container terminal.

The area is like a city, with narrow alleys and tall, windowless buildings. He sees something from the corner of his eye and brakes sharply, then reverses with a shriek of tyres.

Disa’s car is standing in the passageway ahead of him. A thin layer of snow has settled on top of it. The driver’s door is open. Joona stops and runs over to it. The engine is still warm. He looks inside, there’s no sign of violence or a struggle.

He breathes ice-cold air into his lungs.

Disa got out of the car and walked in front of it. Snow is filling her tracks, making them soft.

‘No,’ he whispers.

There’s a patch of downtrodden snow ten metres ahead of her car, and a track has been left by something being dragged off to the side a metre or so between the tall containers before it stops.

A necklace of drops of blood is just visible under the powdery, freshly fallen snow.

Beyond that the snow is smooth and untouched.

Joona stops himself calling Disa’s name.

Ice-crystals are falling on the containers, making a tinkling sound. He takes a few steps back and sees five ISO containers hanging in the air twenty metres up. The one at the bottom has white writing on a red background: Hamburg Süd.

He heard Disa say those words just before their conversation was cut off.

Joona starts to run through the passageway towards the crane holding the container. The snow is deep, he slips on a piece of
metal, hits his shoulder against a yellow container, but keeps on going.