The Devil's Sanctuary (11 page)

AT QUARTER TO FIVE
on Sunday afternoon there was a knock at the door. Daniel pulled aside the curtain of the alcove and sat up in bed, but before he had time to stand up the little dark-haired hostess was standing in the doorway with one of the male hosts.

“Are you here already?” Daniel said.

He’d dozed off for a while and didn’t quite know if this was the morning or evening patrol. Neither felt right.

“Time for the test,” the girl said.

“What test?”

“Just the usual blood test,” the host said calmly, leaning against the door frame. “Just a little prick in the arm. And some new pictures of your brain. Completely painless.”

What was this? Max hadn’t mentioned anything about this.

Through the open door he could see some heavily built men in guards’ uniforms waiting outside.

“Can’t it wait a bit?” he asked. “I’d rather do it another day.”

“Apparently you turned down Doctor Doberman as well,” the host said.

He leaned back against the door frame and folded his arms, with his pale-blue cap pushed back on his head.

“Not at all. I’d just rather see her some other time,” Daniel said. “I’m going to see Doctor Obermann later.”

“No, you said you didn’t feel motivated,” the host pointed out.

“Did I?”

“Maybe we’ll have to try to motivate you.”

He grinned again. Daniel felt like asking why he called her Doctor Doberman.

“We’re actually a bit short on time,” the hostess said. “Let’s just get on with it nice and quickly, shall we? You’ll be back in your cabin tomorrow. It’ll be you and Marko.”

She gestured toward the next cabin. Daniel went out onto the step. His neighbor was standing outside his cabin, staring sullenly at his feet.

There were four guards. They stood there looking vacant, inactive, bored, but with a sense of innate power, like harnessed horses waiting for their driver’s command.

“You’ve done this before, Max. There’s nothing to it,” the hostess went on. “But you’ll have to move onto one of the wards. We need to keep an eye on you. The MRI scan this evening, and the blood test first thing tomorrow morning. You need to have fasted for twelve hours beforehand. So, no breakfast.”

“But afterward you get a top-notch lunch in the restaurant,” the host added with a wink. His wavy blond hair shone like burnished brass in the sun. “Scrambled eggs and bacon. Blueberry pancakes. Exotic fruit drinks.”

“Is smoking allowed?” Daniel’s neighbor asked.

“Yes. But not on the ward, of course. The staff will go out into the park with you. You just have to ask.”

“I’m not going,” Daniel said firmly.

The host sighed.

“You want to do this the hard way? You’ll have to take that up with these guys.” The host gestured languidly toward the guards, who instantly straightened their backs and looked more alert. “Well, Lydia and I have to get going. Take over, lads.”

The host and hostess jumped into their little electric cart and rolled away.

“
I’m
not making a fuss,” the neighbor said to the guards, holding his hands up in the air. “I’m happy to go. Just let me get my cigarettes.”

“Bring your toothbrush as well,” one of the guards said.

The neighbor lumbered into his cabin while a guard watched him from the doorway. The other three gathered around Daniel.

“So, what’s it to be? Voluntary or involuntary?”

“I want to talk to a doctor.”

“Sure. But first you need to go to the care center. Now, get your things.”

Daniel went to get a little bag of toiletries that he had bought from reception. A thought had occurred to him. If they take a blood test from me, will they see that I’m not Max? Or are we the same there as well? He had a vague memory that identical twins shared the same blood group. Or even the same DNA. But perhaps there was some other difference between them?

The fact was that it would actually be quite a relief if their deception was revealed. He didn’t want to let Max down, but he’d been gone far too long now. This way maybe their switch would be uncovered without him actually having to spill the beans.

The MRI scan was sort of like an X-ray. It could hardly do him any harm.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get this over and done with.”

Escorted by the guards, Daniel and his neighbor were led toward one of the tall glass-fronted buildings. They took the elevator up and headed down one of the corridors. A door opened and a nurse appeared with a stainless-steel cart full of gauze and instruments. Before the door closed behind her Daniel had time to notice a blinding light from a very strong lamp. There was a smell of disinfectant and some sort of sweet-scented soap. Up to now the clinic had seemed more like a luxury hotel, but now there was no doubt that he was in a hospital.

They went into a ward and Daniel and Marko were each shown into a private room with separate toilet and shower.

“Fill this out, please,” a nurse said, handing Daniel a four-page questionnaire and a pen.

The questions related to his attitude toward other people and how he usually behaved in certain situations. A lot of the possible responses were silly, some of them downright absurd.

While he pondered which of the options he should go for, he looked round the room and caught sight of the surveillance camera on the wall opposite the bed.

He filled in the questionnaire as best he could, then handed it in to the nurse, who was sitting in a little office along the corridor. The guards were still there, leaning against the wall with their arms crossed.

“Okay, let’s take some nice pictures of your brain. Who wants to go first, you or Marko?” the nurse asked.

Marko wasn’t there. Presumably he was still filling out the form.

“It had better be you,” the nurse said to Daniel.

The woman in charge of the magnetic scanner introduced herself as Sister Louise.

“Take off your jacket, shoes, and belt,” she said. “And anything metal.”

She was wearing a lilac-colored lab coat, her face was sallow, and she spoke in a nasal, lazy voice as if she had said these words many times before. But her hands seemed to have a life of their own and worked at an entirely different speed. Their rapid, efficient movements reminded Daniel of the school nurse who had given him his vaccinations and cut off his wart—it had all been over before he had time to feel scared.

“Lie down on the couch and relax.”

Daniel lay down on the couch that jutted out in front of the scanner’s circular opening, like a tongue sticking out of a mouth.

“I hope you’re not claustrophobic,” Sister Louise said as she strapped his head down and put a pair of headphones over his ears with the same matter-of-fact gestures as if she were strapping a baby into a stroller.

“Now, lie absolutely still.”

Slowly the bunk slid into the narrow tunnel as classical music streamed out of the headphones. Then the machine started to make a terrible noise. The music went quiet and Sister Louise’s voice came over the headphones, whispering, almost sensual: “Don’t worry. It’s just the magnet working. Just relax and listen to the music. And don’t move. This examination costs more than a thousand dollars. Doctor Fischer wouldn’t be happy if we had to redo it.”

The music gradually got louder. It was a famous piece of classical music. Tchaikovsky’s
Swan Lake
? Daniel tried to think back to his music lessons at school. To concerts he had attended. An opera he and Emma had been to. Where was that? Brussels? Which opera was it? He couldn’t remember.

“Happy thoughts?” Sister Louise said over the headphones. “You’re about to get something else to occupy you. Just relax and take it all in.”

On a small screen in the ceiling of the tunnel an image of a landscape suddenly appeared. Daniel thought it looked like the south of England. The landscape faded away and was replaced by a picture of a single crying child in a street. The pictures went on changing. People, animals, landscapes. They were followed by some words in English. Single words, abstract or concrete, one after the other, without any context.

The banging continued, as if a whole gang of poltergeists were messing about, and the music went on playing.

When the scanner finally fell silent and he slid out again, Sister Louise was standing there with his shoes and belt on a plastic tray.

“See? You survived this time as well,” she said.

Daniel spent the evening watching television with Marko in a small lounge on the ward. Daniel tried to make conversation. He talked about the examination they had both been through, and about the questionnaire. But Marko wasn’t interested in social niceties.

“Shut up. I’m trying to watch the film,” he said.

The nurse came over to them.

“Your sleeping pills, Marko,” she said, handing him a little pink tub of tablets. He didn’t seem to notice her, so she put it down on the coffee table.

“There’s a thermos of tea for you over there. You’ll have to manage without milk and sugar. Good night.”

They were watching an American action film starring Sylvester Stallone, who was speaking German with a voice that seemed to say far more words than his lips did. Marko was leaning forward with his stomach hanging like a heavy sack between his legs, staring hypnotized at the television screen. He was breathing heavily through his nose, and he smelled of stale sweat. Daniel hoped one of the patients in the other rooms would come out. Someone who felt more like chatting. He went and got the thermos and two mugs.

“Do you want some?”

Marko didn’t answer. Without looking away from the screen, he fished a packet of cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his shirt. He tapped out a cigarette, put it between his lips, and lit it.

“You can’t smoke in here,” Daniel reminded him. “You have to ask one of the staff to go out with you.”

“They’ve left,” Marko muttered, the cigarette clamped between his lips.

“So go out alone, then.”

“It’s locked.”

Daniel got up and went over to the glass doors at the end of the ward. Sure enough, they were locked. He knocked on the door of the nurses’ room, waited, then tried the handle. That was locked as well.

“You’ll have to wait until the night staff get here,” he said.

Marko blew out a cloud of smoke and tapped the ash into Daniel’s mug of tea. Sylvester Stallone was throwing a man through a window, the glass shattering in slow motion.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” Daniel said, getting up.

Marko didn’t react.

Once Daniel had gotten into the hospital bed he lay awake for a long time, enveloped by the detergent smell of the crisp sheets and the sound of the television. He found himself longing for the cozy sleeping alcove in Max’s cabin. He tried to remember his own bed at home in Uppsala but kept getting it mixed up with other beds he had slept in over the course of his life, and he couldn’t remember what it looked like or how it felt.

When he woke up a couple of hours later he didn’t know where he was. He sat up and had to fumble for the bedside lamp before finding it. His heart was racing and he could feel a strong, almost bestial anxiety. Had he been dreaming? Yes, he had been dreaming about skyscrapers at night, fast cars, women with eighties hairstyles. Hangovers from the film on television. A pleasant, inoffensive dream. So that couldn’t be the source of his anxiety.

He took a couple of quick, shallow breaths. Smoke. Not cigarette smoke. A fire!

He flew out of bed and opened the door to the corridor. The smell of smoke was stronger here, but he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Little green nightlights glowed along the edges of the corridor floor. The small lounge was dark and deserted, and the nurses’ room was locked. There was no sign of any night staff.

Marko must have lit a cigarette in his room and forgotten to put it out. Maybe he’d fallen asleep while he was smoking.

Daniel couldn’t remember which door belonged to Marko’s room. It didn’t matter; all the patients on the ward had to be woken up. Why hadn’t the fire alarm gone off? He opened the doors, one after the other. Some were locked, but the ones leading to the patients’ rooms were unlocked. He found eight single rooms the same as his own. They were all empty, with neatly made beds. When he switched on the light in the ninth room he found Marko fast asleep, snoring on his back with his clothes on. The mattress was billowing with dark smoke like the crater of a volcano.

Daniel hurried over to the bed. A glowing hole, as big as a hand, had opened up around the pillar of ash that had once been the cigarette. Daniel grabbed a folded blanket and beat the glowing mattress to put it out.

Marko’s heavy body rocked and his snoring got louder, but astonishingly he didn’t wake up. His sleeping pills must have been very strong.

“Wake up, you idiot!” Daniel yelled as he beat the smoking mattress with the blanket.

Marko muttered an oath. At the same moment a flame emerged from a different part of the mattress. Instead of putting the fire out, it looked like Daniel had managed to encourage it with his beating.

“Get up!” Daniel shouted. “The bed’s on fire!”

Marko groaned and rolled over to heave his big frame out of bed, but he was so drowsy and clumsy that both he and the mattress slid onto the floor.

The fire flared up explosively, and Daniel lurched backward. The amount of smoke coming from the mattress was incredible, a whole factory’s worth.

The surveillance camera on the wall glared at them with its hemispherical eye. Daniel stood in front of it waving his arms. Evidently no one was watching.

He rushed out into the corridor, shouting for help. He yelled several times, but the corridor remained completely deserted. The glass doors were still locked, and beyond them the elevator button shone like a red eye in the darkness.

Was it really possible that he and Marko had been left alone in a locked ward?

He rushed down the corridor looking for a fire extinguisher or a fire-alarm button. At the very least, there had to be a fire escape.

In the corner of the television lounge he found a green sign with the crouched running figure on it. When he managed to get the heavy metal door open he could see a narrow staircase with fluorescent lighting and cool, clean, smokeless air. He took several deep breaths, fighting against the urge to flee alone. Then he let the door swing shut and returned to Marko’s room.