Authors: Johan Theorin
38
JAN DOESN’T RECALL
ever having spoken to a neighbour, not in all the years he has lived in apartment blocks. He might have said hello if he met someone on the stairs, but he has never stopped to chat. To him a stairwell is not a meeting place, it is just a no-man’s-land where the only sound is the reverberating echo of doors closing.
But here in Valla there is one neighbour he has spoken to, and now he wants to see him again.
When he gets home after the evening with Hanna, he places Rami’s picture books on the kitchen table. He sleeps well that night.
He is still tired when he wakes up, but there are things he must do, and after breakfast he picks up an empty coffee cup and goes down two flights of stairs to the door that says V. LEGÉN on it, and rings the bell.
It takes almost a minute before the door opens. An aroma of pipe tobacco and alcohol reaches Jan’s nostrils as his grey-haired neighbour stares blankly at him, but he gives Legén a big smile.
‘Hello there,’ Jan says. ‘Me again, from upstairs … I’m baking another cake, and I wondered if you could possibly spare a bit more sugar?’
The neighbour seems to recognize him, but doesn’t bother to say hello. ‘Ordinary sugar?’
‘Any kind.’
Legén simply takes the cup and turns away; he doesn’t invite Jan into the dark hallway, but Jan steps inside anyway.
There is no sign of the bag from St Patricia’s that was lying on the floor last time; Jan follows Legén into the kitchen. There are plates piled high all over the place, little islands of bottles and cans on the floor, and the windows are covered in a grey film of dust and grease.
‘I work at St Patricia’s, by the way,’ he says to Legén’s back.
His neighbour doesn’t react at all; he simply carries on tipping sugar into the cup.
‘You used to work there too, didn’t you?’ Jan goes on.
There is no reply this time either, but he thinks he picks up a brief nod over by the worktop. So he tries again: ‘Did you work in the laundry?’
This time Legén definitely nods.
‘How long were you there?’
‘Twenty-eight years. And seven months.’
‘Wow. But you’ve retired now?’
‘Yes,’ Legén says. ‘Now I just make wine.’
Jan looks around. It’s true; that’s what the bottles and cans are for. The fruity, alcoholic aroma is coming from the containers, not from Legén.
‘But maybe you still remember how things looked up there … in the hospital?’ Jan says slowly.
‘Maybe.’
‘Any secret passageways?’ Jan says, smiling to show that this is a joke. Which it isn’t.
Legén stops pouring sugar and looks at Jan, who adds, ‘I’d really like to hear some of your stories, if you feel like talking.’
‘Why?’ asks Legén, picking up the cup of sugar.
‘Well, I work there … I’m just curious about the place. I’ve never been up to any of the wards.’
‘Oh?’ says Legén. ‘So where do you work, then?’
Unable to come up with a convincing lie, Jan replies, ‘At the pre-school.’
‘Pre-school? There is no pre-school.’
‘There is now. It’s for children whose parents are in St Patricia’s.’
Legén simply shakes his head in amazement; he considers Jan’s
request
for a moment, then hands over the cup of sugar. ‘OK … A hundred, in that case.’
‘A hundred what?’
‘A hundred kronor and I’ll tell you. You can try my wine as well.’
Jan thinks about it, then nods. ‘If you talk to me I’ll fetch the money afterwards.’
Legén sits down at the kitchen table; he doesn’t speak for a little while, but eventually he says, ‘There are no secret passageways. Or at least I’ve never seen one. But there is something else.’
He rummages among the newspapers and receipts covering the surface of the table, and finds a pencil and a torn piece of paper. He begins to draw squares and narrow rectangles.
‘What’s that?’ Jan asks.
‘The laundry.’ Legén draws an arrow. ‘You go to the drying room. There’s a big, wide door. But you don’t go through it, you use the door on the right, just here. That takes you into a storeroom’ – he draws a thick circle around one of the squares – ‘and in there, behind all the stuff, is the way up.’
‘A staircase?’
‘No. An old lift. It goes straight up to the wards … The whole place. But not many people know about it.’
Jan looks at the messy sketch. ‘But there are usually people in the laundry. And plenty of security guards.’
‘Not on Sundays,’ says Legén. ‘The laundry is empty on Sundays; you can operate the lift from inside, and go up and down as you wish.’
For the first time he meets Jan’s eye, and Jan gets the feeling that Legén is talking about himself. All of a sudden there is some kind of understanding between them.
Twenty-eight years at St Psycho’s
, Jan thinks. Plenty of time to learn about every square metre of the place, every door and every corridor.
And he must have met many of the patients. Seen them and thought about them.
‘Did
you
use the lift?’ Jan asks.
‘Now and again,’ Legén replies.
‘On Sundays?’
‘Now and again.’
‘You used to meet someone up there?’
Legén nods. He seems to be remembering those encounters. ‘A woman?’
Legén’s expression is mournful. ‘She was beautiful, really lovely … but she carried hell inside her.’
Jan doesn’t ask any more questions.
Lynx
The detective inspector had bright-green eyes that stared and stared and never looked away. She was sitting at Nina’s desk in the office and seemed completely at home, as if she were now in charge of Lynx. Jan was trying to appear equally relaxed – he was just one of the members of staff being interviewed by the police.
‘Did you see anyone else out in the forest?’
‘You mean … any other adults?’
‘Children or adults,’ said the officer. ‘Anyone who wasn’t part of your group.’
Jan pretended to think back. He could have come up with a shadow among the trees, a crouching male figure spying on the boys with greedy eyes, but he knew that the police were hunting for a kidnapper now, and he didn’t want to link himself to such a figure in any way. He shook his head. ‘I didn’t see anyone … but I did hear some noises.’
‘Noises?’
Jan hadn’t heard any noises, of course, but he had to carry on now he’d started: ‘Yes … creaking branches, as if something was moving about among the fir trees. But I thought it was an animal.’
‘What kind of animal?’
‘I don’t know … A deer, maybe. Or an elk.’
‘Something large, in other words?’
‘Exactly, a large animal … But not a predator.’
The inspector narrowed her eyes. ‘What do you mean by predator?’
‘Well … there
are
predators in the forest. You don’t see them very often, because they’re so timid, but there are bears and lynxes and wolves … or maybe not wolves, not this far south.’ Jan knew he had started to babble; he closed his mouth and gave a slightly strained smile.
The inspector didn’t ask any more questions. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said, writing something down in her notebook.
Jan stood up. ‘Will you be organizing another search party?’
‘Not just at the moment. The helicopter is going out, and there will be a number of specific targeted initiatives.’
‘I’d be happy to help,’ Jan said. ‘With … anything at all.’
‘Thank you.’
When Jan left the room he looked at the clock. It was twenty past two. Soon it would be twenty-four hours since William had entered the bunker and Jan had crept up and locked him in.
It felt like a year.
Nina and the rest of his colleagues from Lynx and Brown Bear were sitting in the staffroom. They barely spoke to one another; they were just waiting. It felt like a funeral tea. Sigrid Jansson wasn’t there – she had signed herself off sick after her interrogation by the police and gone home.
Because that was what they were doing, wasn’t it? Interrogating people? That’s what it had felt like, and Jan was exhausted after all the questions. He knew that the police had read the letter he had sent to William’s parents, and that they were searching for the boy’s kidnapper, but surely he wasn’t a suspect?
He poured himself a cup of coffee, sat down with the others and tried to relax. There was no longer any sign of the sun outside the window. It was still too early for twilight, but it was on the way.
William’s second twilight in the forest, followed by evening, followed by night.
‘How are you feeling, Jan?’ one of his colleagues asked quietly.
He looked up. ‘Not too bad.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Thanks.’
Not his fault
. Sometimes Jan actually thought this was true, and that William had just somehow disappeared. But then he remembered what had really happened, and he felt sick. He was tired, beaten. He wasn’t strong enough.
The nursery was unbearably quiet without the children. Silent and still. Not much happened; uniformed officers came and went in the corridor, their expressions still grim, and Jan realized that William had not been found.
He finished his coffee and looked out of the window again. The forest up above the nursery loomed like a dark shadow.
Stop this
, a voice said inside his head.
Do the right thing and stop this ritual now. Let him go
.
Jan got to his feet. ‘I have to go.’
‘Do you want to go home?’ asked Nina.
‘I don’t know … I might take a walk up to the forest.’
He looked helplessly at Nina, but she turned and gazed sadly out of the window. She said quietly, ‘They don’t think he’s there any more.’
‘OK … But I might just wander up there anyway before I go home. I have to do something.’
Some of his colleagues gave him sympathetic smiles, but Jan didn’t smile back.
39
THE DELL LOOKS
so fragile from a distance, Jan thinks. It’s only a wooden hut after all, built to function on a trial basis for a few years before it disappears without a trace. Winter is on its way, and one severe storm sweeping in from the sea could rip off the roof, smash the walls and race through the rooms.
St Psycho’s is a different matter altogether. The grey-stone building has stood for more than a hundred years, and will doubtless stand for a hundred more.
It is Saturday, and Jan has a night shift at the pre-school. He expects to hear the happy voices of the children when he opens the door, but all is quiet. The only sound is a faint clinking from the kitchen, and as Jan is taking off his jacket Hanna appears. She is holding a knife in her hand, but it’s only an ordinary table knife; she’s in the middle of emptying the dishwasher. ‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Hi. I thought Lilian was working today?’
‘She’s ill.’
Jan looks around. ‘Where are the children?’
‘They’ve gone to visit Mira’s new foster family.’
‘Oh, right … When will they be back?’
‘Any minute now.’
Jan takes a step closer to Hanna, in spite of the fact that there is no one else in the building, and says quietly, ‘Listen, all the stuff we’ve talked about … all those secrets. You won’t mention anything to anybody else, will you?’
He feels really stupid, but Hanna merely shakes her head, her expression blank. ‘Secrets bind us together.’
‘You’re right,’ Jan nods. ‘We have a pact.’
He has no time to say any more; the door bursts open and two small bodies dressed in waterproofs come hurtling in: Mira and Leo.
Mira shouts with joy when she spots Jan, and both he and Hanna automatically move apart.
Maintain the façade in front of the children
.
Mira and Leo are accompanied by a man in a blue cap, a light-brown jacket and sturdy boots. He looks calm and reassuring; he smiles and shakes hands, first with Jan and then with Hanna, introducing himself as ‘Mira’s second daddy’. They both smile back at her new foster father.
‘It all went very well today,’ he says. ‘They’re great kids … This is going to be fantastic.’
‘Absolutely,’ Jan says.
Now the children are back he can’t talk to Hanna any more. She finishes at half past six, and goes home dead on time, with big hugs for Mira and Leo and a brief nod to Jan.
When he is alone with the children he makes supper and sits down at the table with them. ‘Did you have a good time today?’
Mira nods. ‘I’m going to live on a farm. They’ve got horses!’
‘Wow,’ says Jan. ‘Did you get to stroke them?’
Mira chatters on, brimming over with excitement. Jan sees the look on her face, and it makes him feel happy too.
Then he glances over at Leo. He knows that Leo is also going to live on a farm outside the town, but he can see no trace of excitement in Leo’s eyes. ‘Have you had enough to eat?’ he asks.
‘Maybe … Can we have some sweets?’ asks Mira. She knows it’s Saturday.
The children have some chocolate, read two picture books, then go to bed at quarter past eight, after the usual protests.
Jan sits down in the kitchen to wait. The underground passageway leading to St Psycho’s is calling to him, but he has no intention of going down there tonight. That can wait until tomorrow, when the
laundry
will be empty and security will be slightly more relaxed. Tonight he will just slip up to the visitors’ room. He has to take that risk.
At half past ten he goes up in the lift. He opens the door a fraction at first, but the room is empty and in darkness.
Nothing has changed, but when he quickly goes over to the sofa and lifts up the cushion, he finds a new envelope. It is pale blue this time, and not as fat.
When Jan is safely back in the kitchen, he opens the envelope and discovers that it contains eighteen letters, but he is really interested in only one of them. It is addressed to him, to
Jan
, and he rips it open immediately, like a Christmas present.
Inside there is a small piece of paper, with a short message in spidery handwriting. But Jan reads it over and over again:
Jan, the squirrel remembers you like a dream
,
a poem or a burning cloud in the sky
.