by Kepler, Lars
She has blue eyes and dark brown hair, worn in a plait down her back. Her knees hurt, though she runs every morning, goes to the gym and attends tactical shooting training.
She’s 1.8 metres tall, has sturdy hips and large breasts. She’s always struggled with her weight, and has lost four kilos since she stopped eating sweets last summer. She tries to keep an eye on the calories, but she can’t stand being hungry all the time, it makes her weak and messes with her concentration.
For the past six years Sabrina has worked in the Personal Protection Unit in Stockholm, and has had more than twenty previous assignments like this, but this is the first time she’s been in this particular flat.
Being a bodyguard for anyone who has been put on the witness protection programme is extremely demanding. The social aspects are as important as the purely technical side of things. You have an ultimate responsibility to maintain your charge’s mental health.
Sabrina calls to Pellerina that tea is ready.
She’s piled their plates with rice and fish-fingers, peas and crème fraiche flavoured with saffron and tomato.
Pellerina comes running in wearing her fluffy slippers, and treads intentionally on the sill of the kitchen door to make it squeak. It could be the tiny brass nails, or perhaps the wood is splitting, but for some reason it makes a high-pitched squeak whenever you step on it.
Sabrina has never spent any time with someone with Down Syndrome before, she’s actually always been a bit scared of them, unsure of what to say.
But Pellerina is wonderful.
It’s very obvious that the girl is trying to hide how worried she is about her dad and older sister, Saga, but every so often she declares that her dad’s a cardiologist, and sometimes has to work nights.
She used to go to a nursery that was open at night, but now Saga stays with her instead.
Pellerina spends a lot of time thinking about her missing dad, she worries that he’s fallen off his bicycle and broken his leg, and wonders if that’s why he hasn’t come to fetch her.
Pellerina eats four fish-fingers, but doesn’t touch the peas, just arranges them in a circle round the edge of her plate.
‘My dad’s a hen, I used to have to feed him peas and sweet corn,’ she says.
Once Sabrina’s finished clearing up in the kitchen it’s time for Swedish Idol in the living room. Pellerina takes her glasses off and pulls the footstool over to Sabrina. She’s the judge, and has to sit on the stool while Pellerina mimes and dances to Ariana Grande songs.
An hour later it’s time for Pellerina to go to bed, after brushing her teeth and going to the toilet.
Sabrina pulls the curtains in the bedroom. They sway gently, and the rings tinkle on the pole.
‘You can still be scared of the dark even though you’re twelve,’ Pellerina says quietly.
‘Of course,’ Sabrina replies, and sits down on Pellerina’s bed. ‘I’m thirty-two, and sometimes I get scared of the dark.’
‘Me too,’ Pellerina whispers, fiddling with Sabrina’s silver cross.
Pellerina tells her about the chain email that frightened her. That if you don’t send it to more people, the clown girls will come and hurt you at night. Sabrina reassures her, and eventually manages to make her laugh. They say goodnight and agree to keep the door open slightly and leave the bathroom light on.
Sabrina walks across the soft carpet in the living room, goes out into the hall and checks that the front door is locked, even though she knows it is.
She doesn’t know why she feels so uneasy, but she’s got an anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She goes and gets a glass and the large bottle of sugar-free Coca-Cola from the kitchen, returns to the living room, settles down on the sofa and starts to watch a dating show on television.
It’s so ridiculous that her face feels hot and she has to take her jacket off.
She fans herself with her hand, then leans back again.
The pale light of the television plays across her slightly sullen-looking features. The shadows of her head and shoulders rise and fall in strength on the wall behind her.
She goes through to the kitchen again, makes herself a sandwich at the pine table, does what she needs to on Facebook and Instagram, then goes and brushes her teeth.
Maybe it’s because of the nagging feeling in her stomach, but she’s always struck by her own loneliness when she’s on an assignment like this.
She’s a fairly shy person really.
Her sister’s been trying to get her to try internet dating.
No one wants to be alone, but at the same time Sabrina feels she has some sort of need for that.
She can’t explain it.
She often finds socialising exhausting.
Like the time her neighbour invited her out to dinner.
She managed to get out of the situation without coming across as too weird, saying she had to help her mum with her Christmas decorations.
That conversation with her neighbour has been bothering her for weeks, to the point where she hardly dares go out into the stairwell now.
Perhaps her shyness is something to do with her job, perhaps she just needs to be alone when she’s not working, sleep in her own bed without having to worry about anyone else.
Her mum also takes a lot of time, even though she’s moved into an assisted flat. She has her own apartment with access to centrally prepared meals, and a shared space for activities.
Her mum has always been a bit New Age. It makes her happy, breathes fresh life into her. But since she moved into the new flat she’s hooked up with a group of spiritualists.
Sabrina isn’t sure what she thinks about that. Her mum has told her she’s been in contact with her dead father, and that he’s very angry.
He keeps shouting at everyone, and calling her a trollop and a whore.
Sabrina inherited the large silver cross from her grandfather. She isn’t really even a Christian but she always wears it, possibly as some sort of protective talisman.
Sabrina has tried to ask her mum who the spiritualists’ medium is, but all she’s been told is that it’s one of the residents.
Mediums usually offer support and comfort.
This sounds more like manipulation, some sort of personal attack.
Sabrina feels sorry for her mum, for being tricked into believing that her father’s angry with her.
It’s very sad.
Apparently, three weeks ago her grandfather told her mother to hang herself.
It was then that Sabrina decided she’d had enough. She threatened to report the medium and the managers of the home, and told her mother that she wouldn’t visit her again unless she stopped seeing the spiritualists.
She went back last Sunday anyway.
Her mum had got a new wig, with tight, light brown curls down to her shoulders. It didn’t look anything like the hair she used to have.
Her mum offered her ‘afternoon tea’ and got out a three-tiered cake stand.
They looked in the old photograph album from when Sabrina was little, then worked their way back in time, to her parents’ wedding, then her mum’s school graduation.
When they came to a black-and-white photograph of her grandfather, her mum didn’t want to look any further.
She clung to the album without saying anything.
Sabrina had never seen that photograph before.
Her grandfather was standing under a ladder that was leaning against a building, with an angry frown on his face. He was wearing a strange, tight-shouldered jacket with the silver cross outside it, and was holding his hat in one hand.
Sabrina tried to get her mum to turn the page, but she didn’t want to, just sat there in her ugly wig, staring at the picture.
Before Sabrina goes to bed she does another circuit of the flat, checks on Pellerina and makes sure all the windows are shut and locked, then goes into the hall and switches the monitor on so she can see the door to the street and the landing outside the reinforced d
oor.
There’s a pushchair parked on the other side of the lift.
Last night the doorbell rang, someone down in the street, but there was no one there. Probably someone pressing the wrong button.
Sabrina turns the monitor off, goes into her bedroom, puts her phone on to charge, lies down on the bed fully clothed, with her pistol still in its holster, and switches the light out.
The screen on her phone glows for a while before going dark. Sabrina stares up at the ceiling, closes her eyes, and thinks about that fact that someone’s coming to relieve her tomorrow.
68
Sabrina Sjöwall starts and opens her eyes in the darkness. Adrenalin courses through her body.
Someone’s banging hard on the door of the flat.
She gets up from the bed, wobbles and reaches out to the wall with one hand.
‘What the hell is the time, anyway?’
She adjusts the cross round her neck as she walks past Pellerina’s room. She crosses the darkened living room, bumping into the footstool with a dull thud.
Her jacket is still lying on the sofa.
There’s another knock on the door.
Sabrina scratches her stomach and puts her hand on her holstered pistol as she walks out into the hall.
She turns the light on so she can see the buttons, then switches on the monitor on the wall beside the entry-phone.
The black-and-white image flickers, then becomes sharper.
It’s her mum.
Her mum is standing in the stairwell banging on the door.
She’s wearing that curly wig and staring into the camera.
Her face is visible in the light of the entry-phone’s buttons, but the stairwell behind her is completely dark.
How on earth has her mum found her way here?
Somehow she’s managed to get through the door down in the street, got the lift up, and is now standing outside the door of the flat.
Sabrina swallows hard and presses the button for the microphone.
‘Mum, what are you doing here?’
Her mum looks round, she doesn’t understand where her daughter’s voice is coming from, then bangs on the door again.
‘How did you find your way here?’
Her mum holds up a scrap of paper on which she’d written the address, then puts it back in her handbag.
Sabrina tries to understand how this has happened. She was visiting her mum when she got this assignment. She must have repeated the address out loud while she was on the phone, and her mum must have thought she was saying it to her.
When her mum takes a step back she’s almost swallowed up by the darkness in the stairwell. Her face becomes a grey shadow.
‘Mum, you need to go home,’ Sabrina says.
‘I hurt myself, I …’
She leans into the light again, feels beneath the wig and shows her bloody fingers.
‘Oh God, what’s happened?’ Sabrina says, unlocking the door.
She presses the handle down, looks at her mum on the monitor, and sees a thin man stepping quickly out from the darkness.
She only opened the door a crack, and starts to pull it shut again when she feels someone grab hold of the handle on the other side.
‘No one dies,’ her mum cries. ‘He promised me that—’
Sabrina braces one hand against the doorframe and pulls with all her strength. She can’t understand what’s happening. The other person is too strong, the gap is slowly getting wider.
She isn’t going to be able to hold them back, she lets out a whimper, the handle is already starting to slip out of her sweaty hand.
Sabrina tries to pull the door shut one last time.
Impossible.
She lets go and rushes back into the flat, stumbling over Pellerina’s fluffy slippers and hitting her shoulder against the wall, knocking a framed poster to the floor.
Sabrina runs straight through the dark living room and into Pellerina’s bedroom, lifts the warm body out of bed, hushes her, then hurries along the passageway, past her own room and into the bathroom.
She closes the door silently, locks it and turns the light out.
‘Pellerina, you need to be completely silent, can you do that?’
She can feel the girl shaking.
‘Yes,’ she whispers.
‘You need to lie in the bath the whole time and not look up – we can pretend it’s a special bed for you to sleep in,’ Sabrina says.
She places some large towels in the bathtub, then lifts the girl over the edge so she can lie down.
‘Is it the girls?’ Pellerina asks in the darkness.
‘Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of it, just try to stay really quiet.’
Pellerina had told her before that a friend’s cousin had ended up blind, the nails were still in her eyes, it had been in the newspaper, but the police hadn’t found the clown girls because they were hiding in the forest.
Sabrina had calmed her down and explained that that was only a made-up story – people tell you it’s real, but it isn’t. The same thing used to happen when she was little.
She picked a funny example and managed to make Pellerina laugh before she said goodnight to her.
Sabrina moves away from the door, unfastens her holster and draws her pistol, feeds a bullet into the chamber and releases the safety catch.
‘Are you OK, Pellerina? Are you lying down?’
‘Yes,’ the girl whispers.
Sabrina is aware that her portable radio is in the jacket she left lying on the sofa last night. She’s supposed to keep it with her at all times, so she can always contact the command centre at once.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
She’s been careless.
Her phone is lying on the bedside table, in full view. If the man has been in there, he’s probably taken it.
She can’t believe that she let herself be tricked into opening the door.
She thought her mum had had a fall and needed help.
But someone must have given away the location of the safe house, seen her go in, then traced her mother and fetched her from her assisted housing.
There’s a dull clang from the bath when Pellerina moves.
‘You have to lie still,’ Sabrina whispers.
Sabrina thinks about the thin man who appeared out of the darkness, and the door handle slipping from her grasp.
Slowly her eyes are getting used to the darkness. Very faint light from the lamp in the hall is actually reaching the bathroom.
The faint glow is like a watery strip under the bathroom door. Just enough to reveal that there’s someone standing right outside.
69
Sabrina stands absolutely still in the dark bathroom, staring at the light under the door.
She’s breathing as quietly as she can, and can feel sweat running down her back.
She hears a metallic sound somewhere in the flat.
The man must be in Pellerina’s room. She can hear the rings moving along the rail as he opens the curtains.
Sabrina puts her ear to the bathroom door.
He’s searching Pellerina’s room. The magnetic lock on the wardrobe clicks as he opens the door, and the empty plastic hangers clatter against each other.
Then footsteps again, it’s impossible to tell in which direction.
Sabrina aims the pistol at the door and moves back. She stares at the unbroken strip of light beneath the door.
Her heart is beating fast.
The man is systematically searching through the flat, it’s only a matter of minutes before he finds them. She needs to fetch the radio from her jacket on the sofa, get back to the bathroom and sound the alarm.
If he’s not armed with a gun she can probably hold him off long enough until backup arrives.
She can tell he’s walking through the living room again. His footsteps vanish as he crosses the rug, then reappear.
He’s heading towards the hall, the other bedrooms and possibly the kitchen.
>
‘Wait here,’ she whispers to Pellerina.
Sabrina hesitates for a moment, turns the lock silently, pushes the handle down and gently inches the door open.
She keeps the barrel of the pistol aimed at the crack in the door, her finger resting on the trigger as her other hand nudges the door open.
Sabrina steps out, sweeps the passageway with the pistol, making sure it’s secure.
The heavy silver cross sways between her breasts.
She closes the bathroom door and looks along the dimly lit passageway towards the two bedroom doors and the opening to the living room.
Everything is quiet.
Sabrina passes the first door and sees that her mobile has gone. She keeps going, constantly looking between the living room and the other bedroom door.
She stares at the doorway to Pellerina’s room and shivers as she passes it.
Slowly she approaches the living room.
The wooden floor creaks behind her.
Every door represents a point of danger.
She sticks close to one wall of the passageway and keeps the pistol aimed in front of her, and now she can see the soft living room rug and the end of the sofa where her jacket should be.
Sabrina looks back and gets the impression that the handle of the bathroom door has moved slightly.
She keeps going. There’s no other option. She needs to get into the living room even though the man might be waiting for her just inside.
Everything is silent.
Sabrina bends her arms, holds the pistol in front of her face and tries to control her breathing.
The sill of the kitchen door creaks. The man must have stood on it.
She reacts instantly, quickly takes the last few steps along the corridor and hurries into the dark living room.
She checks around the walls, then sinks to one knee and sweeps the pistol from right to left around the room.
The glow from the light in the hall reaches across the floor, all the way to the half-closed kitchen door.
Bloody footprints lead in both directions across the parquet floor.
Sabrina stands up, walks round the large sofa and sees that the radio is still hanging over the left shoulder of her jacket.
Just as she’s about to reach out for it she hears a kitchen chair slam into the table.
