The Sandman Read online

  “What does male foreplay look like?” he asks.

  “Is there such a thing?” My asks.

  “An hour of begging, pleading, and persuasion.”

  Anders chuckles, and My laughs so hard the piercing in her tongue glints.

  “They’re a bit short on staff up in Ward Thirty tonight,” Anders says.

  “Funny how we’re so short on staff when there’s such high unemployment,” Leif sighs.

  “I said they could borrow you,” Anders says.

  “There always have to be two of us here,” Leif says.

  “Yes, but I’m going to have to stay and work until at least one o’clock anyway.”

  “Okay. I’ll come back down at one o’clock.”

  “Good,” Anders says.

  Leif tosses the soda can into the trash and leaves the room.

  Anders sits beside My for a while. He can’t take his eyes off Saga. She’s pacing anxiously in her cell, with her thin arms wrapped around her body.

  He can feel himself aching with desire. All he can think about is how to get into her room again. He’s going to give her twenty milligrams of Stesolid this time.

  He makes the decisions. He’s the doctor in charge. He can have her put in a straitjacket and tied to her bed. He can do whatever he wants. She’s psychotic and paranoid, and there’s no one she can talk to.

  My stretches and says something Anders doesn’t hear.

  He looks at the time. Only two hours until the lights go out and he can let My go get some sleep.

  144

  Saga is pacing around the floor of her cell, feeling the little package from Bernie’s room moving in her pocket. Behind her back, she hears the electronic lock whirr and click. She should wash her face, but she can’t be bothered. She goes over to the door to the corridor and looks through the glass, then leans her forehead against the cool surface and closes her eyes.

  If Felicia is in the house behind the brick factory, I’ll be free tomorrow. Otherwise, I have a couple more days in me before I have to put a stop to the escape attempt, she thinks.

  She’s been willing herself not to break down.

  She hasn’t let the pain in. All she can think about is completing her mission.

  She’s breathing fast and knocking her head gently against the cold glass.

  I’m in charge of this situation, she tells herself. Jurek thinks he’s controlling me, but I’ve gotten him to talk. He needs sleeping pills in order to escape, but I went into Bernie’s room and found the package, and I’m going to hide it, say it wasn’t there.

  The palms of her hands are sweaty.

  As long as Jurek believes he’s manipulating me, he’ll give himself away, piece by piece.

  She’s sure he’s going to tell her his escape plan tomorrow.

  I just have to be here a few more days. I need to stay calm and not let him inside my head again.

  He said that she had killed her mother on purpose. That she wanted to kill her.

  Saga bangs her hands against the door.

  Could her mom have thought…?

  She turns, grabs the back of the plastic chair, and hits the sink with it. She loses her grip and it clatters to the floor, but she grabs it again and bashes it against the wall, then the sink.

  She sits down on the bed, panting.

  “I’m going to be okay,” she whispers to herself.

  She’s on the brink of losing control of the situation. She can’t still her thoughts. Her memory is only showing her the long strands of the rug, the pills, her mom’s wet eyes, the tears running down her cheeks, her teeth hitting the edge of the glass as she swallows the pills.

  Saga remembers her mom shouting at her when she said that Dad couldn’t come. She remembers her mom forcing her to call him, even though she didn’t want to.

  Maybe I was angry with her, she thinks. Tired of her.

  She tries to calm herself down.

  She walks over to the sink and splashes water on her face, rubbing her eyes.

  She has to regain control.

  Maybe the neuroleptic injection is what’s stopping her from just breaking down and crying.

  Saga lies down on the bed and makes up her mind to hide Bernie’s package, tell Jurek she didn’t find anything. Then she won’t have to ask the doctor for sleeping pills. She can just give Jurek the ones she got from Bernie’s room.

  One at a time, one per night.

  Saga rolls over onto her side and turns her back on the CCTV camera in the ceiling. Covered by her own body, she takes out the package. She carefully unrolls the toilet paper, little by little, until she sees that it contains just three pieces of chewing gum.

  Chewing gum.

  She takes a deep breath, traces the streaks of dirt on the walls with her eyes, and thinks with vacant clarity that she’s done exactly what Joona warned her against.

  I’ve let Jurek inside my head, and everything has changed.

  I can’t stand myself.

  Her stomach is churning with anguish as she thinks about her mom’s cold body that morning. A sad, immovable face with an odd froth at the corner of her mouth.

  It feels as if she’s falling.

  I can’t lose it now, she thinks. She struggles to regain control of her breathing.

  I’m not sick, she reminds herself. I’m here for one reason alone. That’s all I have to think about. My task is to find Felicia. This isn’t about me. I don’t care about myself. I’m undercover, pretending to go along with the plan, and I’ll keep Jurek talking about escape routes and hiding places for as long as I can.

  145

  It’s been almost twenty-four hours since Joona was picked up from Nikita Karpin’s house by the men from the Russian Security Service. They haven’t answered any of his questions, and they haven’t explained why he’s been detained.

  After sitting in a café for hours, they took him to a bleak concrete apartment building and led him along one of the exterior walkways into a two-room apartment.

  Joona was taken to the farther room, which contained a dirty sofa, a table with two chairs, and a small bathroom. The steel door was locked behind him, and then nothing happened until a couple of hours later, when they gave him a warm paper bag containing soggy food from McDonald’s.

  Joona has to get in touch with his colleagues and ask them to look up Vadim Levanov and his twin sons, Igor and Roman. Maybe the names would lead to new addresses. Maybe they’d be able to identify the gravel pit where the father worked.

  But the metal door remains locked, and the hours are passing. He’s heard the men talk on the phone a couple of times, but apart from that it’s been silent.

  * * *

  —

  Joona has been dozing off and on, curled up on the sofa, but snaps awake toward morning at the sound of footsteps and voices in the next room.

  He turns the light on and waits for them to come in.

  Someone coughs, and he hears voices talking irritably. Suddenly the door opens and the two men from the previous day come in. They both have pistols in their shoulder holsters and are absorbed in a rapid-fire conversation in Russian.

  The man with gray hair pulls out one of the chairs and puts it in the middle of the room.

  “Sit down here,” he says.

  Joona gets up from the sofa and notices that the man backs away as he walks slowly over to the chair and sits down.

  “You’re not here on official business,” the thick-necked man with black eyes says. “Tell us why you went to see Nikita Karpin.”

  “We were talking about the serial killer Alexander Pichushkin,” Joona replies.

  “And what conclusions did you reach?” the man with gray hair asks.

  “The first victim was his presumed accomplice,” Joona says. “We were talking about him—Mikhail Odichuk.”

  The man tilts his head, nods, then says amiably: “Naturally, you’re lying.”

  The man with the thick neck and black eyes has turned away and drawn his pistol. It�
��s hard to see, but it might be a high-caliber Glock. He’s hiding the gun with his body as he feeds a bullet into the chamber.

  “What did Nikita Karpin tell you?” the man with gray hair presses.

  “Nikita believes that the accomplice’s role was—”

  “Don’t lie!” the man with black eyes roars, and turns around, holding the pistol behind his back. “Nikita Karpin no longer has any authority. He isn’t in the Security Service.”

  “You knew that, didn’t you?” the man with gray hair asks.

  Joona might be able to overpower the two men, but without his passport and money it would be impossible to get out of the country.

  The agents exchange a few words in Russian. The man with gray hair says sharply, “You discussed material that has been declared confidential, and we need to know exactly what you were told before we can take you to the airport.”

  For a long time, no one moves. The gray-haired man looks at his phone, says something to the other one in Russian, and gets a shake of the head in response.

  “You have to tell us,” he says, putting his phone in his pocket.

  “I’ll shoot your kneecaps,” the other man says.

  “So—you drove out to Lyubimova, met Nikita Karpin, and—”

  The gray-haired man breaks off as his phone rings. He looks stressed. He answers, exchanges a few short words, then says something to his colleague. They have a short, heated conversation.

  146

  The man with the thick neck and black eyes moves aside and takes aim at Joona with the pistol. The floor creaks under his feet. A shadow slips away, and the light from the lamp reaches his hand. Joona can now see that the black pistol is a Strizh.

  The gray-haired man rubs one hand over his head and barks an order. He looks at Joona for a few seconds, then leaves the room and locks the door behind him.

  The other man walks around Joona and stops somewhere behind him.

  “The boss is on his way,” he says in a low voice.

  There’s the sound of angry shouting behind the steel door. The smell of gun grease and sweat is suddenly very noticeable in the small room.

  “I need to know. Do you understand?” the man says.

  “We were talking about serial ki—”

  “Don’t lie!” he yells. “Tell me what Karpin said.”

  Joona can hear the man’s impatient movements behind his back. He sees the man’s shadow move on the floor and can feel him coming closer.

  “I have to go home now,” Joona says.

  The man with black eyes moves quickly, pressing the barrel of the pistol hard against the back of Joona’s neck from a position just to the right of him.

  His rapid breathing is loud.

  In a single movement, Joona pulls his head out of the way, twists his body, and knocks the gun aside with his right hand. He stands up and throws the man off-balance. He grabs the barrel of the pistol and twists it down before jerking it upward to break the man’s fingers.

  The man howls, and Joona concludes by ramming a knee into his kidneys and ribs. One of the man’s legs is lifted from the floor by the force of the blow, and he tumbles backward, crashing into the chair behind him.

  Joona has already moved out of the way and turned the pistol on him when he rolls onto his side, coughing, and opens his eyes. He tries to get up but coughs again, then lies there with his cheek to the ground, inspecting his wounded fingers.

  Joona removes the magazine and puts it on the table. He takes the bullet out of the chamber and dismantles the entire pistol.

  “Sit down,” Joona says.

  The man with black eyes groans with pain as he gets up. His brow is beaded with sweat, and he sits down.

  Joona puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out a piece of candy.

  “This might help a bit,” he says as he unwraps the cellophane and pops the candy into the guy’s mouth.

  The man looks at Joona in astonishment.

  The door opens, and two men come in. One is the man with gray hair, and the other an older man with a full beard, wearing a gray suit.

  “Sorry for the misunderstanding,” the older man says.

  “I urgently need to get home,” Joona says.

  “Of course.”

  The older man accompanies Joona out of the apartment. They take the elevator down to a waiting car and are driven to the airport together.

  The driver carries Joona’s bag, and the older man goes with him through check-in and security. He escorts Joona all the way to the gate and onto the plane. Only when boarding is complete does Joona get his phone, passport, and wallet back.

  Before the bearded man leaves the plane, he hands Joona a paper bag containing seven small bars of soap and a fridge magnet of Vladimir Putin.

  Joona barely has time to send a text to Anja before he is told to switch his phone off. He closes his eyes and considers the bars of soap. There’s no doubt that this is a gift from Nikita Karpin. Joona got the same kind of soap the last time he visited him. Nikita is a hard and cautious man. The entire interrogation must have been arranged by him as a test to see if Joona had the sense to protect his source.

  147

  It’s evening by the time Joona’s plane lands in Stockholm. He switches his phone on and reads a message from Carlos, informing him that a big police operation is under way.

  Maybe Felicia’s already been found?

  Joona tries to get ahold of Carlos as he hurries past the duty-free shops, down to the exit by the baggage claim area, and then over the bridge to the garage. Tucked inside the compartment for the spare wheel is the shoulder holster containing his black Colt Combat Target .45 ACP.

  He drives south as he waits for Carlos to answer his phone.

  Nikita had said that Vadim Levanov expected the boys to make their way to the place where they were last together if they ever tried to find him.

  “And where was that?” Joona had asked.

  “Migrant workers’ accommodations, Barrack Number Four. That was also where he took his own life, much later.”

  Joona is heading down the highway toward Stockholm at 140 kilometers an hour. The pieces of the puzzle have been coming together thick and fast, and he’s confident that he’ll soon be able to see the overall picture.

  Twin brothers forced to leave the country. The father commits suicide.

  Their father was a highly educated engineer but was doing manual labor in one of Sweden’s many gravel pits.

  Joona puts his foot down as he tries to reach Carlos again. Before he has time to pull up the number, his phone rings.

  “You should be grateful I’m here,” Anja says. “Every police officer in Stockholm is out at Norra Djurgården.”

  “Have they found Felicia?”

  “They’re busy searching the forest beyond the industrial complex in Albano. They have dogs and—”

  “Did you get my text?” Joona interrupts, his jaw clenched with stress.

  “Yes, and I’ve been trying to work out what happened,” Anja says. “It hasn’t been easy, but I think I’ve managed to track down Vadim Levanov, though the spelling of his name was Westernized. It looks like he arrived in Sweden in 1960, with no passport, from Finland.”

  “And the children?”

  “I’m afraid there’s no mention of any children in the records.”

  “Could he have smuggled them in?”

  “During the fifties and sixties, Sweden absorbed a huge number of migrant workers and the welfare state was expanded, but the regulations were still very old-fashioned. Migrant workers were thought incapable of looking after their children, and Social Services often placed them with foster families or in group homes for children.”

  “But these boys were extradited,” Joona says.

  “That wasn’t unusual, especially if there was suspicion that they were Roma. I’m talking to the National Archives tomorrow. There was no immigration bureau in those days, so the police, the Child Welfare Committee, and the Aliens Department used to mak
e the decisions fairly arbitrarily.”

  He turns off at Häggvik to fill up on gas.

  This can’t slip away, he thinks. There has to be something here that will crack the investigation.

  “Do you know where the father worked?” he asks.

  “I’ve started investigating all the gravel pits in Sweden, but it may take a while, because we’re dealing with such old records,” she says and sighs.

  Joona thanks Anja several times and ends the call.

  Joona suddenly remembers Mikael’s confused words about the Sandman. He talked about the porcelain fingers and said three times that the Sandman smells like sand. It may just have been something from the old fairy tales. But what if there was some connection to a gravel quarry or a sand pit?

  A car horn sounds behind Joona, and he starts to drive again but pulls over to the side of the road shortly afterward and calls Reidar Frost.

  “What’s going on?” Reidar asks.

  “I’d like to talk to Mikael. How is he?”

  “He feels bad about not being able to remember more. We’ve had the police here several hours a day.”

  “Every little detail could be important.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Reidar says hurriedly. “We’ll do anything, you know that. That’s what I keep saying—we’re here, twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Is he awake?”

  “I can wake him. What did you want to ask?”

  “He’s said a few times that the Sandman smells like sand. Is it possible that the capsule is near a gravel pit? At some gravel pits they crush stone, and at others—”

  “I grew up near a gravel pit, on the Stockholm Ridge, and—”

  “You grew up near a gravel pit?”

  “In Antuna,” Reidar replies, slightly bewildered.

  “Which pit?”

  “Rotebro. There’s a large gravel factory north of the Antuna Road, past Smedby.”

  Joona pulls onto the opposite on-ramp and heads north again on the highway. He’s already fairly close to Rotebro, so the gravel pit can’t be far.

  Joona listens to Reidar’s weary, rasping voice while Mikael’s voice plays in his head: “He smells like sand….His fingertips are made of porcelain, and when he takes the sand out of the bag they tinkle against each other…and a moment later you’re asleep….”