The Sandman (22 page)

Once the analysts have discounted the expressions of regret and despair from his statements, there’s very little left.

‘Nothing,’ Petter Näslund mutters, rolling the printout up.

‘He says he can feel his sister’s movements, that she tries to find him every time she wakes up in the darkness,’ Benny says with a
sorrowful expression on his face. ‘He can feel how much she hopes he might have returned—’

‘I don’t believe any of that,’ Petter interrupts.

‘We have to assume that Mikael is telling the truth, at least in some form or other,’ Joona says.

‘But this business with the Sandman,’ Petter says with a grin. ‘I mean …’

‘The same thing with the Sandman,’ Joona replies.

‘He’s talking about a character in a fairytale,’ Petter says. ‘Are we going to question everyone who sells barometers, or—’

‘As a matter of fact I’ve already compiled lists of manufacturers and dealers,’ Joona replies with a smile.

‘What the hell?’

‘I’m aware that there’s a barometer salesman in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story about the Sandman,’ Joona goes on. ‘And I know Mikael’s mother used to tell them a bedtime story about the Sandman. But none of that precludes the possibility that he might actually exist in real life.’

‘We haven’t got a fucking thing, we might as well admit it,’ Petter says, tossing his rolled-up printout on the desk.

‘Almost nothing,’ Joona gently corrects him.

‘Mikael was sedated when he was moved to the capsule, and sedated when he was removed from it,’ Benny sighs, rubbing a hand over his bald head. ‘It’s impossible even to start identifying a location. In all likelihood, Felicia is in Sweden – but even that isn’t certain.’

Magdalena goes over to the whiteboard and lists what little information they have about the capsule: concrete, electricity, water, Legionella bacteria.

Because Mikael has never seen the accomplice, or heard him speak, they know nothing beyond the fact that it is a man. That’s all. Mikael was sure that the coughs he heard came from a man.

Everything else in the description can be traced back to childhood fantasies about the Sandman.

Joona leaves the room, takes the lift down, walks out of police headquarters and carries on up Fleminggatan, across the Sankt Erik bridge and into Birkastan.

The attic flat of Rörstrandsgatan 19 is where Athena Promacho is based.

When the goddess Pallas Athena is depicted as a beautiful girl with
a lance and a shield, she is known as Athena Promacho, the goddess of war.

Athena Promacho is also the name of a secret investigative group that has been put together to analyse the material that Saga Bauer is expected to provide while she is undercover. The group doesn’t exist in any official records, and has no budget from either the National Criminal Investigation Department or the Swedish Security Police.

Athena Promacho consists of Joona Linna from National Crime, Nathan Pollock from the National Murder Squad, Corinne Meilleroux from the Security Police, and forensic officer Johan Jönson.

As soon as Saga is transferred to the secure unit at Löwenströmska Hospital they’ll be there twenty-four hours a day to receive, collate and analyse the surveillance recordings.

Athena Promacho has another three officers attached to it. They’ll be responsible for recording the transmissions from the fibre-optic microphone in a minibus belonging to the local council’s parks department that’s been left in the hospital grounds. All the material will be saved on hard disks, encrypted and sent to Athena Promacho’s computers with a delay of no more than a tenth of a second.

Anders Rönn looks at the time again. The new patient from the secure unit at Säter Prison is on his way to the isolation unit at Löwenströmska. Prison Service transport have called to warn him that the man is anxious and aggressive. They’ve given him ten milligrams of Stesolid en route, and Anders Rönn has prepared a syringe with another ten milligrams. An older warder named Leif Rajama throws the packaging of the syringe in the bin, then stands and waits, legs spread.

‘I don’t think he’ll need more than that,’ Anders says, not quite managing to summon up his carefree smile.

‘It normally depends on how much the search upsets them,’ Leif says. ‘I try to tell myself that my job is to help people who are having a hard time … even if they may not actually want help.’

The guard on the other side of the reinforced glass gets a message that the transport is on its way down. There’s a metallic clang from the walls, then a muffled cry.

‘This is only the second patient,’ Anders says. ‘We won’t know how things are going to be until all three are in place.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ Leif smiles.

Anders looks at a monitor showing a view of the staircase from the side. Two security guards are supporting a patient who’s unable to walk unaided, a thickset man with a fair moustache and glasses that have slid down his narrow nose. His eyes are closed and sweat is
running down his cheeks. His legs are bowed, but the guards are holding him up.

Anders glances quickly at Leif. They can hear the blond patient babbling nonsensically. Something about dead slaves and the fact that he’s wet himself.

‘I’m standing in piss, right up to my knees, and …’

‘Hold still,’ the guards order, and lay him down on the floor.

‘Ow, it hurts,’ he whimpers.

The guard behind the glass is standing up now, and takes the transfer documents from the senior transport officer.

The patient is lying on the floor with his eyes shut, gasping. Anders tells Leif calmly that they aren’t going to need any more Stesolid, then pulls his pass card through the reader.

Jurek Walter is walking monotonously on the running machine. His face is turned away, but his back is moving with focused determination.

Anders Rönn and head of security Sven Hoffman are standing in the hospital’s security control room looking at a monitor showing the dayroom.

‘You know how to sound the alarm, and how to switch it off,’ Hoffman says. ‘You know someone with a pass card must accompany the guards when they come into contact with the patients.’

‘Yes,’ Anders says, with a hint of impatience in his voice. ‘And the security door behind you has to be locked before you open the next one.’

Sven Hoffman nods.

‘Guards will show up within five minutes of the alarm being sounded.’

‘We won’t be sounding any alarms,’ Anders says, watching the monitor as the new patient comes into the dayroom.

They watch the patient as he sits down on the brown sofa, holding one hand over his mouth as though trying not to be sick. Anders thinks about the handwritten notes from Säter, detailing aggression, recurrent psychosis, narcissism and an antisocial personality disorder.

‘We’ll have to conduct our own evaluation,’ Anders says. ‘And I’ll increase his medication if there’s the slightest reason to …’

The large computer screen in front of him is divided into nine squares, for the nine cameras in the unit. Airlocks, security doors, corridors, dayroom and patients’ rooms are all filmed. There aren’t enough staff to monitor the cameras round the clock, but there always has to be someone with operational responsibility for the system on duty in the unit.

‘You’ll be spending a lot of time in the office, but it’s good if everyone knows how these things work,’ Sven Hoffman says, gesturing towards the monitors.

‘We’ll have to muck in together when we’ve got more patients.’

‘The basic principal is that the staff should always know where all the patients are.’

Sven clicks one of the squares, and the image immediately fills the monitor alongside, and suddenly Anders can see psychiatric nurse My taking off her wet coat.

The changing room is reflected on the screen with unexpected clarity, five yellow metal lockers, a shower, and doors to the toilet and corridor.

The outline of My’s breasts can clearly be seen beneath her black T-shirt bearing an image of an angel of death. She must have been in a rush to get there, because her cheeks are flushed. She has melted snow in her hair. She gets out her uniform, lays it on the bench, then puts a pair of Birkenstock sandals on the floor.

Sven clicks away from the changing room and enlarges the image from the dayroom instead. Anders forces himself not to look at the smaller square as My starts to unbutton her black jeans.

He sits down and tries to sound unconcerned as he asks if recordings are stored.

‘We haven’t got permission to do that … not even in exceptional circumstances.’ Hoffman winks at him.

‘Shame,’ Anders says, running a hand over his short brown hair.

Sven Hoffman starts to go through the cameras covering the rooms. Then Anders tries clicking his way through the monitor, checking the corridors and airlocks.

‘We cover everything where—’

A door opens in the distance, they hear the hum of the coffee machine, then My walks into the security control room.

‘What are you doing huddled up in here?’ she asks with a grin.

‘Sven’s going through the security system with me,’ Anders replies.

‘And there was me thinking you were watching while I took my clothes off,’ she jokes with a sigh.

They fall silent and watch the screen covering the dayroom. Jurek Walter is walking on the running machine with even strides, and Bernie Larsson gradually slips down until he is lying with his neck against the low back of the sofa. His shirt slides up and his fat stomach moves as he breathes. His face is sweaty, one of his legs is bouncing nervously and he seems to be talking to the ceiling.

‘What’s he doing?’ My asks, looking at the others. ‘What’s he saying?’

Anders shrugs. ‘No idea.’

The only sound audible in the security control room is the ticking of a golden, solar-powered Chinese cat waving its paw.

Anders thinks back to Bernie Larsson’s medical notes from Säter. Twenty-one years ago he was sentenced to secure psychiatric care for what was described as a bestial series of rapes.

Now he’s slumped on the sofa, yelling up at the ceiling. Saliva is spraying from his mouth. He’s making aggressive slicing gestures with his hands, and throws the cushion beside him onto the floor.

Jurek Walter does what he has always done. With long strides he walks his nine kilometres on the running machine, then stops it, gets off and heads in the direction of his room.

Bernie shouts something at him as he leaves. Jurek stops in the doorway and turns back towards the dayroom again.

‘What’s happening now?’ Anders asks anxiously.

Sven quickly picks up his radio and calls two colleagues, then hurries out. Anders leans forward and watches Sven as he appears on one of the monitors. He’s walking along the corridor, talking to the other guards, then he stops outside the airlock, evaluating the situation.

Nothing happens.

Jurek is standing in the doorway, between the rooms, precisely where his face is in shadow. He’s not moving, but both Anders and My can see that he’s talking. Bernie is slumped in the sofa, eyes closed as he listens. After a while his bottom lip starts to quiver. The whole scenario plays out in little more than a minute, then Jurek turns and disappears into his room.

‘Back to your lair,’ My mutters.

One of the other monitors shows Jurek from above. Slowly he walks into his room, sits down on the plastic chair directly beneath the CCTV camera, and stares at the wall.

After a while Bernie Larsson gets up from the sofa in the dayroom. He wipes his mouth a few times before shuffling off to his room.

Another monitor shows Bernie Larsson going over to the sink, leaning forward and rinsing his face. He stands there as water runs over his face, then he walks to the door to the dayroom, presses his thumb against the inside of the frame and slams the door shut as hard as he can. The door bounces back and Bernie sinks to his knees, shrieking out loud.

It’s ten o’clock in the morning and sharp winter light is shining on Magdalena Ronander as she returns to police headquarters from her yoga session. Petter Näslund is standing in front of a large-scale map of the residential area where the two Kohler-Frost children disappeared. He frowns as he pins up photographs from the old investigation. Magdalena says a quick hello, throws her bag onto her chair, and goes over to the whiteboard. She quickly strikes through the lines of inquiry they managed to follow up yesterday. Benny Rubin, Johnny Isaksson and Fredrik Weyler are sitting round the conference table making notes.

‘We need to take another look at everyone who was employed at Menge’s Engineering Workshop at the same time as Jurek Walter,’ she says.

‘I’ve compiled the interviews with Richard van Horn from yesterday,’ Johnny says. He’s blond and thin, and sports the same haircut that Rod Stewart had in the 1980s.

‘Who’s calling Reidar Frost today?’ Petter asks, twirling a pen between his fingers.

‘I can take care of that,’ Magdalena replies calmly.

‘Wonder if they want us to carry on looking for Wee Willie Winkie,’ Benny says.

‘Joona wants us all to take the whole Sandman thing seriously,’ Petter reminds him.

‘I found a great clip on YouTube,’ Benny says, searching his mobile.

‘Do we have to?’ Magdalena sighs, picking up a heavy file from the table.

‘But have you seen that clown who hides from stupid cops?’ Benny asks, putting his phone down.

‘No,’ Petter replies.

‘No, because I’m probably the only person in the room who’s actually managed to catch sight of him,’ Benny laughs.

Magdalena is smiling as she opens the file.

‘Who’s going to help me find the last people connected to Agneta Magnusson?’ she asks.

She’s the woman who was found alive in the grave in Lill-Jan’s Forest when Jurek Walter was caught. The two bodies in the plastic barrel that was buried nearby belonged to her brother and nephew.