The Sandman (17 page)

Jacky starts to play gently ornate harmonies, and then the bass joins in.

Saga knows that Stefan loves this, but at the same time she can’t forget the fact that they’d arranged to sit and talk, just for once.

She’s been looking forward to this all week.

Slowly she eats the pistachio nuts, gathering a heap of empty shells and waiting.

A peculiar angst at his walking away from her like that makes her feel suddenly chill; she has no idea where the feeling has come from. She knows that she’s being irrational, and keeps telling herself not to be childish.

When her drink is finished she moves on to Stefan’s. It’s no longer cold, but she drinks it anyway.

She looks over at the door just as a red-cheeked man takes a picture of her with his phone. She’s tired, and is considering going home to sleep, but she’d really like to talk to Stefan first.

Saga has lost track of how many numbers they’ve played. John Scofield, Mike Stern, Charles Mingus, Dave Holland, Lars Gullin, and a long version of a song she doesn’t know the name of, from that record with Bill Evans and Monica Zetterlund.

Saga looks at the heap of pale nutshells, the toothpicks in the martini glasses and the empty chair opposite her. She goes over to the bar and gets a bottle of Grolsch, and when she’s finished it she heads to the bathroom.

Some women are adjusting their make-up in front of the mirror, the toilets are all occupied and she has to queue for a while. When one of the cubicles is finally free she goes in, locks the door, sits down and just stares at the white door.

An old memory makes her feel suddenly impotent. She remembers her mother lying in bed, her face marked by sickness, staring at the white door. Saga was only seven years old and was trying to comfort her, trying to say everything would soon be all right, but her mum didn’t want to hold her hand.

‘Stop it,’ Saga whispers to herself as she sits on the toilet, but the memory won’t let go.

Her mum got worse and Saga had to find her medication, help her take her tablets and hold the glass of water.

Saga sat on the floor beside her mother’s bed looking up at her, fetching a blanket when she was cold, trying to call her dad each time her mum asked her to.

When her mum finally fell asleep Saga can remember switching off the little lamp, curling up on top of the bed and wrapping her mother’s arms round her.

She doesn’t usually think of it. She usually manages to keep her distance from the memory, but this time it was just there, and her heart is beating hard in her chest as she leaves the toilet.

Their table is still empty, the empty glasses are still there, and Stefan is still playing. He’s maintaining eye contact with Jacky, and they’re responding playfully to each other’s improvisations.

Maybe it’s the drink or her memories affecting her judgment. She forces her way through to the musicians. Stefan is in the middle of a long, meandering improvisation when she puts a hand on his shoulder.

He starts, looks at her, then shakes his head irritably. She grabs his arm and tries to get him to stop playing.

‘Come, now,’ she says.

‘Get your girl under control,’ Jacky hisses.

‘I’m playing,’ Stefan says through gritted teeth.

‘But the two of us … We’d agreed …’ she tries, feeling to her own surprise that tears are rising to her eyes.

‘Get lost,’ she hears Jacky snarl at her.

‘Can’t we go home soon?’ she asks, patting the back of Stefan’s neck.

‘For God’s sake,’ he whispers sharply.

Saga backs away and manages to knock over a glass of beer on top of one of the amplifiers, and it falls to the floor and shatters.

Beers splashes up onto Stefan’s clothes.

She stands still, but his eyes are focused solely on the keys of the piano, and the hands racing across them as sweat runs down his cheeks.

She waits a moment, then returns to their table. Some men have sat down in their chairs. Her green parka is lying on the floor. She picks it up with trembling hands, and hurries out into the heavy snow.

Saga Bauer spends the whole of the following morning in one of the Security Police’s generously proportioned meeting rooms with four other agents, three analysts and two people from admin. Most of them have laptops or tablets in front of them, and a grey screen is currently showing a diagram illustrating the extent of non-wireless communication traffic across the country’s borders during the past week.

Under discussion are the analytical database of the Signals Intelligence Unit, new search methods and the apparently rapid radicalisation of thirty or so Islamists who are in favour of violence.

‘Mind you, even if al-Shabaab have made extensive use of the al-Qimmah network,’ Saga is saying, brushing her long hair back over her shoulders, ‘I don’t think it will give us much. Obviously we need to carry on, but I still say we should be trying to infiltrate the group of women on their periphery … as I mentioned before, and—’

The door opens and the head of the Security Police, Verner Zandén, comes in, raising his hand apologetically.

‘I really don’t want to interrupt,’ he says in his rumbling voice as he catches Saga’s eye. ‘But I was just thinking of going for a little stroll, and would very much appreciate your company.’

She nods and logs out, but leaves her laptop on the table as she exits the meeting room with Verner.

Shimmering snow is falling from the sky as they emerge onto Polhemsgatan. It’s extremely cold and the tiny crystals in the air are lit up by the hazy sunlight. Verner walks with long strides and Saga hurries along beside him like a child.

They pass Fleminggatan in silence, walk through the gate to the health centre, across the circular park surrounding the chapel and down the steps towards the ice of Barnhusviken.

The situation is feeling more and more peculiar, but Saga refrains from asking any questions.

Verner makes a little gesture with his hands and turns left onto a cycle path.

Some small rabbits scamper for cover under the bushes as they approach. The snow-covered park benches are soft shapes in the white landscape.

After walking a bit further they turn in between two of the tall buildings lining Kungsholms Strand and go up to a door. Verner taps in a code, opens the door and leads her into the lift.

In the scratched mirror Saga can see snowflakes covering her hair. They’re melting, forming glistening drops of water.

When the creaking lift stops, Verner takes out a key with a plastic card attached, unlocks a door that bears the telltale signs of attempted burglaries, then nods to her to follow him inside.

They walk into an entirely empty flat. Someone has recently moved out. The walls are full of holes where pictures and shelves have been removed. There are large dustballs on the floor and a forgotten Ikea Allen key.

The toilet flushes and Carlos Eliasson, chief of the National Criminal Investigation Department, comes out. He wipes his hands on his trousers and then shakes hands with Saga and Verner.

‘Let’s go into the kitchen,’ Carlos says. ‘Can I offer you something to drink?’

He gets out a pack of plastic cups and fills them with tap-water, then offers them to Saga and Verner.

‘Perhaps you were expecting lunch?’ Carlos says as he sees the mystified look on her face.

‘No, but …’

‘I’ve got some throat sweets,’ he says quickly, pulling out a little box of Läkerol.

Saga shakes her head, but Verner takes the box from Carlos, taps out a couple of pastilles and pops them in his mouth.

‘Quite a party.’

‘Saga, as you’ve no doubt realised, this is an extremely unofficial meeting,’ Carlos says, then clears his throat.

‘What’s happened?’ Saga asks.

‘Have you heard of Jurek Walter?’

‘No.’

‘Not many people have … and that’s just as well,’ Verner says.

A ray of sunlight is twinkling on the dirty kitchen window as Carlos Eliasson hands Saga Bauer a dossier. She opens the folder and finds herself staring directly into Jurek Walter’s pale eyes. She moves the photograph and starts to read the thirteen-year-old report. Her face turns white and she sits down on the floor with her back against the radiator, still reading, looking at the pictures, glancing through post-mortem reports and reading about his sentence and where it was being served.

When she closes the file Carlos tells her how Mikael Kohler-Frost was found wandering across the Igelsta Bridge after being missing for thirteen years.

Verner gets out his mobile and plays the recording of the young man describing his captivity and escape. Saga listens to his anguished voice, and when she hears him talk about his sister her face goes red and her heart starts beating hard. She looks at the photograph in the folder. The little girl is standing with her loose plait and riding hat, smiling as if she were planning something naughty.

When Mikael’s voice falls silent she stands up and paces the empty kitchen before stopping in front of the window.

‘National Crime have got nothing more to go on than they had thirteen years ago,’ Verner says.

‘We don’t know anything … but Jurek Walter knows, he knows where Felicia is, and he knows who his accomplice is …’

Verner explains that it’s impossible to get the truth out of Jurek Walter in a conventional interrogation, or by using psychologists or priests.

‘Not even torture would work,’ Carlos says, trying to sit down on the windowsill.

‘What the hell, why don’t we do what we usually do, then?’ Saga asks. ‘Surely all we have to do is recruit just one damn informant, that’s pretty much the only thing our organisation does these days apart from—’

‘Joona says … sorry to interrupt,’ Verner cuts in. ‘But Joona says that Jurek would break down any informer who tried—’

‘So what the hell do we do, then?’

‘Our only option is to install a trained agent as a patient in the same institution,’ he replies.

‘Why would he talk to a patient?’ Saga asks sceptically.

‘Joona reckons we need to find an agent who’s so exceptional that Jurek Walter ends up curious enough to want to know more.’

‘Curious how?’

‘Curious about them as a person … not just in the possibility of getting out,’ Carlos replies.

‘Did Joona mention me?’ she asks in a serious voice.

‘No, but you’re our first choice,’ Verner says firmly.

‘Who’s your second choice?’

‘There isn’t one,’ Carlos replies.

‘So how would this be arranged, in purely practical terms?’ she asks in a neutral tone of voice.

‘The bureaucratic machinery is already hard at work,’ Verner says. ‘One decision leads to another, and if you accept the mission you just have to climb on board …’

‘Tempting,’ she mutters.

‘We’ll arrange for you to be sentenced to secure psychiatric care in the Court of Appeal, and transferred at once to Karsudden Hospital.’

Verner goes over to the tap and refills his plastic cup.

‘We spotted something that might work to our advantage, a formulation in the original county council permit … the one that was granted when the psychiatric unit at Löwenströmska Hospital was first set up.’

‘It states very clearly that the ward is designed to offer treatment to three patients,’ Carlos adds. ‘But for the past thirteen years they’ve had just one patient, Jurek Walter.’

Verner drinks noisily, then crumples up his cup and tosses it in the sink.

‘The hospital managers have always tried to fend off other patients,’ Carlos goes on. ‘But they’re perfectly aware that they have to accept more if they receive a direct request.’

‘Which is precisely what’s happening now … The Prison Service Committee has called an extraordinary meeting, where the decision will be taken to transfer one patient from the secure psychiatric unit at Säter to Löwenströmska, and another from Karsudden Hospital.’

‘In other words, you would be the patient from Karsudden,’ Carlos says.

‘So if I agree to this, I’d be admitted as a dangerous patient?’ she asks.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you going to give me a criminal record?’

‘A decision from the National Judiciary Administration will probably be sufficient,’ Verner replies. ‘But we need to create an entire identity, with guilty court verdicts and psychiatric evaluations.’

Saga is standing in the empty flat together with the two police chiefs. Her heart is beating hard and every fibre of her being is screaming at her to say no.

‘Is this illegal?’ she asks, and feels that her mouth has gone dry.

‘Yes, of course … and it’s extremely confidential,’ Carlos replies seriously.

‘Extremely?’ she replies, the corner of her mouth curling into a smile.

‘At National Crime we’ll be declaring it confidential, so that the Security Police can’t see the file.’

‘And I’ll make sure that it’s declared confidential by the Security Police so National Crime can’t see it,’ Verner goes on.

‘No one will know about this unless there’s a direct request from the government,’ Carlos says.

The sun is shining through the dirty window, and Saga looks out at the panelled façade of the neighbouring building. A chimney vent is glinting at her and she turns back towards the two men.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she asks.

‘To save the girl,’ Carlos says with a smile, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

‘And I’m supposed to believe that the heads of National Crime and the Security Police are working together to—’

‘I knew Roseanna Kohler,’ Carlos interrupts.

‘The mother?’

‘We were in the same class at Adolf Fredrik School, we were very close … we … it’s been very tough, very …’

‘So this is personal?’ Saga asks, taking a step back.

‘No, it’s … it’s the only right thing to do, you can see that for yourself,’ he replies, gesturing towards the folder.

When Saga’s expression doesn’t change, he goes on:

‘But if you want me to be honest … Obviously it’s hypothetical, but I’m not sure we would have had a meeting quite like this if it wasn’t personal.’