The Sandman (38 page)

Reidar sits down and glances quickly through the pile of post. His Japanese translator needs to know the exact titles and ages of various characters for the manga film adaptations of the books, and a producer from an American television company wants to discuss a new idea. At the bottom of the pile is a plain envelope with no sender’s address. Reidar’s address looks as if it had been written by a child.

He doesn’t know why his heart starts beating faster before he’s even opened the envelope and read the note:

Reidar’s hands are shaking as he gets to his feet and calls Joona. His phone is switched off. Reidar walks towards the hall. Obviously
he’s aware it could be another hoax, but he has to go, he has to go at once. He takes the car keys from the bowl in the hall table, checks that his nitroglycerine spray is in his coat pocket, then rushes out.

While he’s driving to Stockholm he tries calling Joona again, then manages to get through to Joona’s colleague, Magdalena Ronander.

‘I know where Felicia is!’ he yells. ‘She’s on Södermalm, in a flat on Kvastmakarbacken.’

‘Is that Reidar?’ she asks.

‘Why’s it so damn difficult to get hold of anyone?’ Reidar roars.

‘You’re saying you know where Felicia is?’ Magdalena asks.

‘Kvastmakarbacken 1B,’ Reidar says, trying to sound calm and collected. ‘I received a letter this morning.’

‘We’d like to see the letter—’

‘I need to talk to Joona,’ Reidar interrupts, dropping the phone.

It slips down beside his seat and he swears to himself and hits the wheel angrily as he overtakes a grey articulated lorry. The windscreen gets soaked in dirty snow, and the car shudders in the wind.

Reidar pulls up onto the pavement and leaves the car with its door open by the red railings leading to Kvastmakarbacken. His phone is ringing under his seat, but he doesn’t bother trying to retrieve it. His legs are shaking as he climbs over the fence and runs through the deep snow towards the entrance that’s been cleared of snow.

Number 1B is an old stone building that stands alone on a hill. Beyond it there’s nothing but main roads and industrial estates. Reidar slips on the steep stone steps, hitting his knee hard enough to make him cry out.

He’s trying to breathe calmly, and limps on up the steps, even though the pain is making him groan.

Leaning on the wrought-iron railing, he tugs at the locked door as he feels blood trickling from his knee inside his trousers.

An illuminated sign bearing the number 1B is glowing dull yellow from the entrance.

Reidar bangs on the door as hard as he can, and eventually the window alongside creaks as someone pushes it open.

‘What are you up to?’ a bald old man asks through the gap.

‘Open the door,’ Reidar gasps. ‘My daughter’s in here …’

‘Oh,’ the old man says, then closes the window.

Reidar starts banging on the door again and after a while the lock begins to turn. Reidar yanks the door open, marches in and shouts into the stairwell:

‘Felicia! Felicia!’

The old man looks scared and backs away towards his door, and Reidar follows him.

‘Who are you?’ he asks. ‘Was it you who wrote the letter?’

‘I’m just—’

Reidar forces his way past the man and marches straight into his flat. On the left is a cramped kitchen with a table and one chair. The man remains standing in the doorway as Reidar walks into the next room. In front of a red sofa covered in blankets is a television on legs. Reidar’s feet leave wet marks on the linoleum floor. He pulls the wardrobe open and hunts through the clothes hanging inside it.

‘Felicia!’ Reidar yells, looking in the bathroom.

The old man steps out into the stairwell when he sees Reidar coming.

‘Unlock the basement!’

‘No, I—’

Reidar follows him. His eyes are darting about the walls, doors, and the worn stone steps leading down.

‘Open it!’ Reidar shouts, grabbing the man’s tanktop.

‘Please,’ the man begs, pulling the keys from his trouser pocket.

Reidar snatches the keys and runs down the steps, weeping as he opens the steel door and rushes in amongst the storage compartments.

‘Felicia!’ he cries.

He’s coughing as he walks round the chicken-wire walls, calling for his daughter, but there’s no one there and he runs back upstairs again. His chest is starting to hurt, but he carries on to the next floor and kicks on the door. He opens the letterbox and calls for Felicia, then goes up to the next floor and rings on the door. The building smells of damp and rotten wood.

Sweat is pouring down his back and he’s starting to have trouble breathing.

A young woman with her hair dyed red opens the door and Reidar forces his way past her without saying anything.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ she yells.

‘Felicia!’

A man in a leather waistcoat and long black hair stops Reidar and shoves him backwards. Reidar sticks out an arm and manages to pull
a calendar onto the floor. He tries to get past the man again, but is struck so hard he stumbles back, tripping over shoes and junk mail and falls to the floor. He hits the back of his head on the doorstep, loses consciousness for a few moments, then rolls onto his side as he hears the woman shouting that they need to call the police.

Reidar stands up and comes close to falling again, pulling a coat down off its hanger and muttering an apology as he turns back towards the flat.

‘I have to get in,’ he says, wiping blood from his mouth.

The man with long black hair is holding a hockey stick in both hands and is glaring at him intently.

‘Felicia,’ Reidar whispers, feeling tears pricking his eyes.

‘I’ve got her, but I don’t think she’s very well,’ a woman says behind his back.

Reidar turns to see an old woman in a blonde wig with bright red lips. She’s standing on the dimly lit staircase, a couple of steps down, cradling a striped cat in her arms.

‘What did you say?’ he gasps.

‘You were calling for Felicia,’ she smiles.

‘My daughter …’

‘She was stealing food from me.’

He walks towards the woman on the stairs. She’s frowning and holding the cat out in front of her. Now he can see that the cat’s neck is broken.

‘Felicia,’ the woman said. ‘She was in the flat when I moved in, and I’ve been looking after her and—’

‘The cat?’

‘It says Felicia on the collar …’

Her unease after the doctor’s nocturnal visit is like rain on a window – it’s not too close, but is keeping her shut inside.

Her medication is making Saga feel oddly cut off from reality, but she still has a very strong sense that her cover is about to be blown.

That doctor would have raped me if I’d really been asleep, she thinks. I can’t let him touch me again.

She just needs a bit more time to complete her mission. She’s so close now. Jurek is talking about escape with her. And if her cover isn’t blown he’ll soon give her a location, a clue, something that could lead to Felicia.

He was on the point of confiding in her yesterday. Maybe today.

As long as the microphone is working.

Time and time again, thinking about Felicia helps Saga.

She needs to concentrate on what she came here to do. Not feel sorry for herself.

She’s going to save the captive girl.

The rules are simple. Under no circumstances must she let Jurek escape. But she can plan the escape with him, she can show interest and ask questions.

The most common problem with escapes is that people have nowhere to go once they’re out. Jurek won’t make that mistake. He knows where he’s going.

The lock on the door to the dayroom whirrs. Saga gets up from her bed, rolls her shoulders as if preparing for a bout, then goes out.

Jurek Walter is standing by the wall opposite, waiting for her. She can’t understand how he could have got out into the dayroom so quickly.

There’s no reason to stay close to the running machine now that the lead is gone. She just hopes the range of the microphone is wide enough.

The television isn’t turned on, but she goes and sits on the sofa.

Jurek is standing in front of her.

It feels as if she hasn’t got any skin, as if he has a strange ability to see straight into her bare flesh.

He sits down beside her and she discreetly passes him the tablet.

‘We only need four more,’ he says, looking at her with his pale eyes.

‘Yes, but I …’

‘And then we can leave this terrible place.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to.’

When Jurek Walter reaches out his hand and touches her arm she almost jumps. He notices her fear and looks at her blankly.

‘I’ve got a place I think you’d love,’ he says. ‘It’s not that far away from here. It’s only an old house behind an old brick factory, but at night you could go outside and swing.’

‘A real swing?’ she asks, trying to smile.

Jurek needs to keep talking to her, she thinks. His words are little pieces that will form a pattern in the puzzle Joona is putting together.

‘It’s just an ordinary swing,’ he replies. ‘But you can swing out over the water.’

‘What, a lake, or—’

‘You’ll see, it’s lovely.’

‘I like apple trees as well,’ she says quietly.

Saga’s heart is beating so hard it seems to her that Jurek must be aware of it. If the microphone is working, then her colleagues will be identifying every derelict brickworks, they might even be on their way already.

‘It’s a good place to hide until the police give up the hunt,’ he goes on, looking at her. ‘And you can stay in the house if you like it there—’

‘But you’ll be moving on?’ she says.

‘I have to.’

‘And I can’t come with you?’

‘Do you want to?’

‘Depends where you’re going.’

Saga’s aware that she might be pushing him too far, but right now he seems keen to involve her in his escape attempt.

‘You have to trust me,’ he says curtly.

‘It sounds like you’re planning on dumping me in the first house we come to.’

‘No.’

‘Sounds like it,’ she persists, sounding hurt. ‘I think I’ll stay here until I get discharged.’

‘And when will that be?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you sure they’re going to let you out?’

‘Yes,’ she replies honestly.

‘Because you’re a good little girl who helped your sick mum when she—’

‘I wasn’t good,’ Saga interrupts, pulling her arm away. ‘Do you think I wanted to be there? I was only a child, I was just doing what I had to.’

He leans back on the sofa and nods.

‘Compulsion is interesting.’

‘I wasn’t forced into it,’ she protests.

He smiles at her. ‘You just said you were.’

‘Not like that … I mean, I managed to do it,’ she explains. ‘She was only in pain in the evenings, and at night.’

Saga falls silent, thinking about one morning after a particularly difficult night, when her mother was making breakfast for her. She was frying eggs, making sandwiches, pouring milk. Then they went outside in their nightdresses. The grass in the garden was damp with dew, and they took the cushions with them down to the hammock.

‘You gave her codeine,’ Jurek says, in a strange tone of voice.

‘It helped.’

‘But they’re not very strong – how many did she have to take that last evening?’

‘A lot … she was in such terrible pain …’

Saga rubs her hand across her forehead and realises to her surprise that she’s perspiring heavily. She doesn’t want to talk about this, she hasn’t thought about it for years.

‘More than ten, I suppose?’ Jurek asks lightly.

‘She used to take two, but that evening she needed far more … I spilled them on the rug, but … I don’t know, I must have given her twelve, maybe thirteen pills.’

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.