Don't Wake Me

by Martin Krüger

  ‘Why would I do that to Larsen?’

  ‘You wanted to incinerate the truth. Or should I say, Hanna Jansen wanted to? Larsen confronted you with the logo of Nordic Health Invest – the upside-down triangle. He confronted you with a reality you’d been repressing. During your time under our care, you kept making paper sculptures of that logo, among other things, and you projected your obsession with origami onto your son.’

  ‘But why would I—?’

  ‘Johann Larsen checked himself into the same Nordic Health Invest clinic and was there with you for a long time,’ Henriksen went on. ‘That was when you became acquainted with his particular inclinations. His political views. We hoped that if you came face to face with him here, part of your memory would come back to the surface. He volunteered to help us with our unusual experiment.’

  ‘Is he . . . ?’

  ‘Dead?’ said Henriksen. ‘No, of course not. Only his house burned down. All the same, I had to use all my influence and powers of persuasion that night to prevent the experiment from being called off immediately and to stop you from being taken straight back to the clinic.’

  ‘What about the drifter?’ Jasmin asked weakly. ‘Was he—?’

  ‘His name is Christian Sunderberg. He’s a nurse at the hospital. The man who’s been looking after you all these years. Your closest confidant. All he wanted was to protect you, to watch over you the whole time. The scar on his face is because of you. You gave it to him.’

  ‘He – he was really looking after me?’

  ‘Some of my colleagues thought this experiment was futile. Some of them think you should be permanently sedated and locked away. You’re on the verge of insanity, Jasmin, and frequently violent. You encountered one of those dissenting voices on the beach recently. Mattila tried to stage an intervention.’

  ‘He wanted to hurt me!’

  ‘He knows what you are, Jasmin. You’ve created a third personality. Alongside the Jasmin Hansen who believes Paul is still alive and the Jasmin Hansen who occasionally acknowledges the truth during rare moments of clarity, you also developed a personality you call Hanna Jansen – a woman whom you claim Jørgen had an affair with. But Hanna Jansen is you. She’s a violent part of your subconscious that’s starting to emerge more and more often. I couldn’t accept it, though. Not me, and not your parents or your husband either. We’ve always believed there’s something of you left, a part of you that’s capable of recognising the truth and accepting it.’

  Footsteps approached down the hall. Jasmin looked up.

  ‘Jasmin, your husband is here. Do you want to see him?’

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘You have to promise us that you’re willing to acknowledge reality. Otherwise I see little hope of convincing the others that you’re on the road to recovery.’

  Jasmin took a deep breath. There seemed to be an immense burden resting on top of her, pushing her down like a coiled spring. The footsteps fell silent, and when she looked up, Jørgen was standing in the doorway.

  Jørgen, tall and blond, just like she remembered him. The smile on his lips was sad and affectionate at the same time.

  Fresh tears welled up in her eyes at the sight of him. ‘You’re – you’re really here.’

  He walked over to her, holding out his arms, but then paused as if afraid of her reaction. ‘Everything Dr Henriksen said is true. Nobody wants to hurt you. It was an experiment, but maybe it was too extreme. It was the last chance to make you realise what happened, and I’m sorry. I never should have allowed it. Your parents and I have discussed your situation with Dr Henriksen and the whole team so many times, and although I was hoping it would work, I realise now that I should never have given my permission.’ He shook his head and looked at Henriksen. ‘And nor should you, doctor. Everything we tried to do here is illegal.’ Then he turned back to Jasmin. ‘Your father funded the whole thing secretly. Henriksen, Mattila and Moen were the only doctors willing to get involved with the experiment, together with Nordic Health Invest, and so we planned it all on this remote island. It was hard to keep it secret, almost impossible, but—’

  ‘It might still work,’ Henriksen objected placidly. ‘This might be the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for all this time.’

  Jasmin stared at him. ‘So this was a shot in the dark? Just a good opportunity for you? You want professional recognition for this bullshit experiment? Is that all I am to you? A guinea pig? What about Karl Sandvik and his wife? Or Jan Berger at the lighthouse? Were they in on it too?’

  Henriksen looked sheepish and said nothing, but Jørgen nodded. ‘Of course they were. We wanted you to find your way back to the real world, and some part of your subconscious must have realised it too. You avoided visiting Sandvik about his back pain because if you’d gone, you might have realised that you haven’t practised medicine in years. And as for getting Berger to teach you how to shoot – Hanna Jansen would never have let you learn how to use a gun. That’s her part of your personality. But you can manage it, I know you can! Don’t let her—’

  ‘When did you get here?’ Jasmin cut him off abruptly. ‘Where’s Bonnie?’ And then, with horror, Jasmin wondered, If this is all true, does that mean you were the one who hit Bonnie and staged the break-in? The blond hairs they found in the room – did they belong to you?

  ‘She’s outside. She’s absolutely fine.’

  ‘Was that me? Did I hurt Bonnie and break the window? Because I needed to make the kidnapping a reality for myself?’

  Henriksen nodded.

  ‘And the threatening letter? “I know what you are.” Who could have . . . ?’ She fell silent when she saw the expression in Henriksen’s eyes.

  ‘It was Hanna Jansen who sent the letter. It was you, Jasmin.’ He nodded at Jørgen, who passed him a laptop with an NHI logo on the back. Henriksen put it on the coffee table between them and opened a CCTV software package. ‘Do you remember? You showed me a video of the drifter putting the letter through the door while I was lying injured on your sofa.’

  Injured. A thought occurred to Jasmin – one last way out, a lifeline in the storm. ‘That cut on your head,’ she cried. ‘It can’t have been me!’

  ‘Can’t it?’ Henriksen pointed at the camera footage. ‘Look. The threatening letter.’

  Jasmin leaned forwards as Henriksen pressed play on a video taken from a camera mounted in the entrance hall. She saw herself hurrying over to the front door, peering out, and then taking the letter from a drawer in the sideboard and dropping it on the floor, as if she’d already prepared it and hidden it away beforehand.

  ‘This was taken several hours earlier.’ Henriksen opened another video, this one taken in her bedroom. Jasmin watched herself grab the drawer of the bedside table and tip it out onto the floor. A small mirror shattered, sending shards of glass everywhere. ‘You see? You cut yourself while scrambling to gather up the pieces,’ Henriksen explained. They watched as Jasmin tucked the bloody shard into her coat pocket before removing the false bottom of the drawer and taking out the silver revolver.

  ‘Of course we knew it was in there. We replaced it with a fake, but you took it with you all the same, Jasmin. And you fired it at me twice. The first time was when you found me injured out there on the road. You were carrying the gun in your coat pocket and you cut yourself again on the piece of glass when you pulled it out. That’s how you got the wound on your hand that Dr Gundersen noticed. And the second time was just now, of course, down in the cellar. I know it isn’t you who wants to hurt me. It’s that other woman. Hanna Jansen takes control of you during these moments, but Hanna Jansen only exists because you let her. Because you’re suppressing the truth. But the night of your accident – that night is the truth, Jasmin. You mustn’t let Hanna win!’

  Henriksen played another video. This time, Jasmin was sitting alone at the kitchen table and talking to a person on the other side of the room – someone just outside the camera’s field of view. She talked, and Jasmin heard a voice replying to
her words that seemed to come from nowhere. Then she saw herself arriving in her rental car, recorded by one of the countless surveillance cameras they’d installed throughout the house, and watched herself get out and open the door for Bonnie. But there was no Paul following her into the house.

  Jasmin drained her cup. The last of the tea tasted bitter, mingling with salty tears on her tongue. The truth felt like a drill boring into her temples with no anaesthetic.

  ‘And what about us?’ she asked Jørgen. She felt sick, as if every fibre of her body was rebelling against this truth, this agony.

  ‘Us?’ A cloud passed over Jørgen’s face. ‘After all that’s happened – the accident, that business with Sven Birkeland – do you know how much I despised you? How badly you hurt me? And do you have any idea how hard it was for me to stay by your side, in spite of everything? You’re ill, but . . .’ He sighed. ‘I want to help you, Jasmin. That’s all. To see you like this – dear God, it breaks my heart.’

  She looked up at him, her eyes blurred with tears. Jørgen, just as she remembered him. Or was it? If what both of them were saying was true . . .

  ‘Has it really been years since it happened?’ she asked incredulously. ‘And I refused to believe it? Paul is dead? He didn’t come here with me? We’ve lost two children?’

  ‘The shock was too much for you, Jasmin,’ Henriksen explained.

  Behind Jørgen, the woman whom she’d known as Gabriela Yrsen appeared, along with Arne Boeckermann. The two of them fixed her with a penetrating look. They were on the alert, ready to act at a moment’s notice.

  And what if they’re all lying? Jasmin thought. What if none of this is true? What if Paul is sitting terrified out there somewhere, waiting for you to come back? What if Jørgen staged this whole thing to get hold of your money, like you suspected?

  You heard Yrsen talking about him. Yrsen is Hanna Jansen. Jansen and Jørgen. They both . . .

  It was a possibility.

  ‘Ms Hansen,’ said Yrsen – or Solveig Moen, as Henriksen had called her – in a loud voice. ‘You have to tell us now why you’re here. I need to hear you say it.’

  Jasmin wiped her cheeks and rubbed her eyes. She glanced at Boeckermann, who regarded her coldly and dismissively, and then back at Moen with her cool, analytical expression. Jørgen smiled encouragingly and Henriksen nodded curtly beside her.

  ‘What do you think, Jasmin?’ he asked her. ‘What happened to Paul? Can you tell us?’

  Paul. The name sounded foreign now. It was like a bitter taste on her lips. The taste of pain. Jasmin saw Sven Birkeland standing in front of her – saw him leaning in to kiss her. Not like a colleague, but like a lover. She coughed. ‘I drank too much that night. I had an accident and I lost my son. Paul – Paul is dead. I spent my whole time here looking for a way out, a way to avoid admitting the truth. I was looking for a false reality. But I understand now. I know who I am and what happened. I’m sorry for all the people I hurt. When I set fire to the clinic, when I tried to shoot you. My name is Jasmin Hansen and my son died five years ago.’

  Epilogue

  The storm had passed; the night was over and the breeze whipped through Jasmin’s hair as she got into the car beside Jørgen and they drove to the ferry that would take them across to the mainland. She looked back over her shoulder; Minsøy lay behind them.

  She was overcome with a sense of relief. It felt so good to be leaving this lump of rock behind.

  You made it.

  ‘I’m glad you came.’ Once they were on board, Jasmin and Jørgen got out of their car and walked over to the railing together. ‘What a day.’

  Jørgen threw his arm over her shoulder and looked happier than she’d seen him in a long time.

  ‘And now?’ she asked him cautiously. ‘What comes next?’

  ‘You need to get to grips with everything again, honey. With your everyday life, with 2018, with everything you forgot. But we’re all going to help you. I’m so glad you’re finally here again. Really here, I mean.’

  Jasmin nodded, leaned against him and looked out to sea as the ferry left the harbour. The waves churned; the spray was clear and glittered brightly in the sun.

  She wasn’t quite sure what he meant by here. Hadn’t she always been here?

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘for a moment I had the feeling we were being watched. But that’s obviously absurd.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course! Who would be watching us?’ She closed her eyes. The murmur of the waves was soothing, and Jasmin felt the strain of the last few days melt away. When she opened her eyes again, she looked over Jørgen’s shoulder. ‘When we get back,’ she said quietly, ‘we need to buy Paul a birthday present. He’ll be turning six soon. I think I already know what he wants.’

  Jørgen looked down at her. There was something in his eyes that she didn’t quite understand. It looked like resignation and deep regret.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked him and smiled. Paul was leaning against the railing beside Jørgen and he returned her smile, beaming the way only he could. The wind tousled his corn-blond hair as he lifted his hand and waved at her. ‘Everything is going to be OK, isn’t it?’

  Jørgen nodded. The wind buffeted against them: a cold north wind heralding the autumn. ‘Yes,’ he answered slowly, gazing out to sea. ‘Everything is going to be OK.’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Martin Krüger studied the dark arts of the law in Frankfurt before becoming an author and musician. He now divides his time between southern Germany and Switzerland. Find out more at www.kruegerthriller.de or www.facebook.com/kruegerthriller.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Photo © 2014 Jozef van der Voort

  Jozef van der Voort is a literary translator working from Dutch and German into English. He studied literature and languages in Durham and Sheffield and is an alumnus of the New Books in German Emerging Translators Programme. In 2014 he was named runner-up in the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize and in 2020 he won second prize in the Geisteswissenschaften International Non-Fiction Translation competition.