The Sandman

by Lars Kepler

  Verner moves on to the National Board of Forensic Medicine’s database, and uploads a copy of the forensic psychiatric report.

  “How are we doing in terms of time?” Saga asks.

  “Fairly well, I think,” Verner says, glancing at his watch. “In precisely two minutes, the Prison Service Committee will be gathering for a special meeting. They’ll check the National Judiciary Administration database and make the decision to transfer two patients to the secure psychiatric unit at Löwenströmska.”

  “You never explained why there have to be two new patients,” Saga says.

  “So that you’ll be less exposed,” Pollock replies.

  “We imagine Jurek would become suspicious if a new patient suddenly appeared after so many years,” Carlos explains. “But if a patient from the secure unit at Säter shows up first, followed a day or so later by one from Karsudden, with a bit of luck you won’t attract quite as much scrutiny.”

  “You’re being moved because you’re dangerous and an escape risk, and the other patient has requested a transfer himself,” Pollock says.

  “Time to let Saga go now,” Verner says.

  “Tomorrow night you’ll be sleeping in Karsudden Hospital,” Pollock says.

  “You’ll have to tell your family you’re on a secret mission abroad,” Verner begins. “You’ll need someone to look after bills, pets, houseplants—”

  “I’ll figure it out,” she interrupts.

  Joona picks up her parka from where she dropped it on the floor and holds it up for her to put on.

  “Do you remember the rules?” he asks quietly.

  “Say little, talk in short sentences, mean what you say, and stick to the truth.”

  “I have one more rule,” Joona says. “It probably varies from person to person, but Samuel said you should avoid talking about your parents.”

  She shrugs.

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know why he thought that was so important.”

  “I think it would be wise to listen to Samuel’s advice,” Verner agrees.

  “Yes, I’d say so.”

  Carlos puts two sandwiches in a bag and gives them to Saga.

  “I should remind you that, in there, you’ll be a patient, nothing more. You won’t have access to police information or rights,” he says gravely.

  Saga looks him in the eye. “I know.”

  “It’s important that you understand this,” Verner says.

  “I’m going to go home and get some rest,” Saga says, and walks toward the hall.

  As she’s sitting on a stool, tying her boots, Joona comes out to her. He squats down beside her.

  “It’ll soon be too late to change your mind,” he whispers.

  “I want to do this, Joona.” She smiles, meeting his gaze.

  “I know,” Joona says. “It’ll be fine, as long as you don’t forget how dangerous Jurek is. He affects people, changes them, rips their souls out like—”

  “I’m not going to let Jurek get to me,” she says. She stands up and begins to fasten her coat.

  “He’s like—”

  “I’m a big girl,” she interrupts.

  “I know.”

  Joona holds the door open for her and accompanies her out onto the landing. He hesitates, and she leans against the wall.

  “What is it you want to say?” she asks gently.

  A few seconds of silence follow. The elevator is waiting motionless on their floor. A police car races past outside, sirens blaring.

  “Jurek will do anything he can to escape,” Joona says in a somber voice. “You cannot let that happen. You’re like a sister to me, Saga, but it would be better if you died than if he got out.”

  68

  Anders Rönn is sitting at the big conference table, waiting. It’s already half past five. The pale, impersonal room is full of the usual members of the hospital committee, two representatives from General Psychiatry, Chief Roland Brolin, and the head of security, Sven Hoffman.

  The hospital manager, Rikard Nagler, is still talking on the phone as his secretary hands him a glass of iced tea.

  Snow is falling slowly outside the window.

  All conversation in the room ceases when the hospital manager puts his empty glass down on the table, wipes his mouth, and begins the meeting.

  “It’s good that you all could make it,” he says. “I received a call from the Prison Service Committee an hour ago.”

  He pauses. People shift in their seats and look up at him.

  “They’ve decided that the secure unit is going to admit two new patients at short notice,” he continues. “We’ve been very spoiled with just one patient, and an old, quiet one at that.”

  “Because he’s biding his time,” Roland says gravely.

  “I called this meeting to hear your thoughts about what this means in terms of security and our current procedures,” the manager says, ignoring Roland’s comment.

  “What sort of patients are they sending?” Anders asks.

  “Naturally, they’re both high-risk,” the manager replies. “One is in the secure unit at Säter, and the other is in the psychiatric unit at Karsudden after—”

  “It’s not going to work,” Roland says.

  “Our secure unit was built to house three patients,” the hospital manager responds. “Times have changed. We all have to do what we can to cut costs, and we can’t—”

  “Yes, but Jurek is…”

  Roland falls silent.

  “What were you going to say?”

  “It’s impossible for us to handle any more patients,” Roland says.

  “Even though we have a direct obligation to accept them.”

  “Find some excuse.”

  The manager laughs wearily and shakes his head.

  “You’ve always seen him as a monster, but he—”

  “I’m not scared of monsters,” Roland interrupts. “But I’m smart enough to be scared of Jurek Walter.”

  The manager smiles at Roland and then whispers something to his secretary.

  “I’m still fairly new,” Anders says. “Has Jurek Walter ever caused any problems here?”

  “He made Susanne Hjälm disappear,” Roland replies.

  Silence descends on the room. One of the doctors from General Psychiatry takes his glasses off, then puts them back on.

  “I was told that she was on a leave of absence—for a research project, I think it was?” Anders says.

  “We’re calling it a leave of absence,” Roland says.

  “I’d very much like to hear what happened,” Anders says, a vague anxiety growing inside him.

  “Susanne smuggled out a letter from Jurek Walter, but regretted it,” Roland explains. “She called me and told me everything. She was completely…I don’t know…she was crying and promising that she’d burned the letter. She was frightened, and kept saying she wasn’t going to go in to see Jurek again.”

  “She’s taken a leave of absence,” the hospital manager says forcefully.

  A few people laugh, while others look troubled. Sven Hoffman projects an image of the secure unit onto the white screen.

  “In terms of security, we have no problem managing more patients,” he says. “But we’ll need to maintain a higher level of alert to start with.”

  “Jurek Walter cannot be allowed to interact with other people,” Roland persists.

  “Well, he’s going to have to now. You’ll just need to ensure that security isn’t compromised,” the manager says, looking at the others.

  “It won’t work. And I want it in the minutes that I’m abdicating responsibility for the secure unit. It will have to come under the umbrella of General Psychiatry, or become a separate—”

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

  “This is exactly what Jurek Walter has been waiting for all these years,” Roland says, his voice breathless with agitation.

  He gets up and leaves the room without another word.

  “I’m sure
I can take care of three patients, regardless of their diagnoses,” Anders offers, leaning back in his chair.

  The others look at him in surprise. The hospital manager puts his pen down.

  “I don’t actually understand the problem,” Anders continues, glancing at the door through which Roland disappeared.

  “Go on,” the manager says, nodding.

  “It’s merely a matter of medication,” Anders says.

  “We can’t just keep them sedated.” Hoffman laughs.

  “Of course we can, if it’s absolutely necessary,” Anders says with a boyish smile. “Take Sankt Sigfrids, for instance. We were stretched so thin that we didn’t have the capacity to deal with a lot of incidents.”

  The hospital manager regards him intently. Anders raises his eyebrows and shrugs. “We know that heavy medication is perhaps…uncomfortable for the patient,” he says. “But if I were responsible for the secure unit, I wouldn’t want to take any risks.”

  69

  Agnes is sitting on the floor in a pair of pajamas, blue with bees on them. She’s clutching her little white hairbrush and feeling the bristles with her fingertip, one by one, as if she were counting them. Anders sits in front of her, holding her Barbie doll and waiting.

  “Brush the doll’s hair,” he says.

  Agnes doesn’t look up at him. She goes on picking at each individual bristle, one row after another, slowly and with the utmost concentration.

  He knows she doesn’t play spontaneously like other children, but she does play in her own way. She has trouble understanding what other people see and think. And she’s never given her Barbie dolls names. She just tests their mechanics, bending their arms and legs and twisting their heads around.

  But he has learned from courses organized by the Autism and Asperger Association that she can be trained to play if the various parts of the game are divided up sequentially.

  “Agnes? Brush the doll’s hair,” he repeats.

  She stops fiddling with the brush, holds it out, and pulls it through the doll’s blond hair, then repeats the movement twice more.

  “She looks lovely now,” Anders says.

  Agnes starts picking at the brush again.

  “Have you seen how lovely she looks?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she says, without looking.

  Anders gets out a Sindy doll, and before he even has time to say anything, Agnes reaches forward and brushes its hair, smiling.

  Three hours later, when Agnes is asleep, Anders settles down on the couch in front of the television and watches Sex and the City. In front of the house, heavy snowflakes are falling through the yellow glow of the streetlights. Petra’s at a staff party. Her coworker Victoria picked her up at five o’clock. She said she wasn’t going to be late, but it’s almost eleven now.

  Anders drinks a sip of cold tea and sends Petra a text to tell her that Agnes brushed her dolls’ hair.

  He’s tired, but he’d like to tell her about the meeting at the hospital, and how he’s assumed responsibility for the secure unit and has a guarantee of permanent employment.

  During the commercial break, Anders goes to turn out the light in Agnes’s room. The nightlight is shaped like a life-size rabbit. It gives off a lovely pink light, casting a soft glow on the sheets and on Agnes’s relaxed face.

  The floor is littered with Lego pieces, dolls, doll furniture, plastic food, pens, princess tiaras, and a whole porcelain tea set.

  Anders can’t understand how the room became such a mess.

  He has to shuffle forward to keep from stepping on anything. The toys rattle slightly as they slide around the wooden floor. As he’s reaching for the light switch, he imagines he can see a knife on the floor beside the bed.

  The big Barbie house is in the way, but he can make out a glint of steel through the little doorway.

  Anders tiptoes closer and leans over. His heart starts to pound when he sees that the knife looks like the one he found in the secure cell.

  He doesn’t understand. He gave the knife to Roland Brolin.

  Agnes begins to whimper anxiously in her sleep.

  Anders crawls over the floor and sticks his hand through the ground floor of the dollhouse, opens the little door wide, and reaches for the knife.

  The floor creaks, and Agnes coughs slightly as she exhales.

  Something is glinting in the darkness under the bed. It could be the shiny eyes of a teddy bear. It’s difficult to tell through the tiny colored windows of the dollhouse.

  “Ow,” Agnes whispers in her sleep. “Ow, ow.”

  Anders has just managed to touch the knife with his fingertips when he sees the twinkling eyes of a wrinkled face under the bed.

  It’s Jurek Walter—and he moves fast as lightning, grabbing Anders’s hand and pulling.

  Anders wakes up when he snatches his hand back. He’s gasping as he realizes that he fell asleep on the couch in front of the television. He switches it off and sits there, his heart racing.

  Car headlights shine in through the window. A taxi turns around and disappears. Then the front door opens softly.

  It’s Petra.

  He hears her go to the bathroom and pee. He walks slowly closer, toward the light of the bathroom spilling into the corridor.

  70

  Anders stands in the dark, watching Petra in the mirror above the sink. She brushes her teeth, spits, cups her hand to lift some water to her mouth, then spits again.

  When she sees him, she startles.

  “You’re awake.”

  “I was waiting for you,” Anders says.

  “That’s sweet of you.”

  She turns out the light, and he follows her into the bedroom. She sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs cream into her hands and elbows.

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “It was okay. It was a goodbye party for Lena.”

  Anders grabs her left hand and holds her tightly by the wrist. She looks into his eyes.

  “You know we have to be up early tomorrow.”

  “Shut up,” he says.

  She tries to pull free, but he grabs her other hand and pushes her down onto the bed.

  “Ow—”

  “Just shut up!”

  He forces one knee between her thighs and she tries to twist aside, then lies still.

  “I mean it—red light. I have to get some sleep,” she says gently.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  She regards him for a moment, then nods.

  “Lock the door.”

  He gets off the bed and listens for sounds from the corridor, but the house is quiet, so he locks the door. Petra has taken off her nightgown and is opening the box. With a smile, she gets out the soft rope and the bag with the whip, the vibrator, and the big dildo, but he pushes her onto the bed.

  She tells him to stop. He roughly pulls off her underwear, leaving red marks on her hips.

  “Anders, I—”

  “Don’t look at me,” he interrupts.

  “Sorry.”

  She doesn’t resist as he ties her more tightly than usual. It’s possible that drinking has made her less sensitive. He ties the rope around one of the bedposts and forces her thighs apart.

  “Ow,” she whimpers.

  He grabs the blindfold, and she shakes her head as he yanks it down over her face. She tries to pull loose, tugging at the ropes so hard that her heavy breasts swing.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispers.

  It’s four o’clock by the time they finish and he unknots the ropes. Petra takes out the ripped underwear he stuffed in her mouth when she asked him to stop. She is silent, her body trembling as she massages her sore wrists. Her hair is sweaty, her cheeks are streaked with tears, and the blindfold has slipped down around her neck.

  71

  Saga abandons any attempt to sleep at five o’clock. Ninety minutes left. Then they’re coming to get her. Her body feels heavy as she pulls on her running pants and leaves the apartment.


  She jogs a couple of blocks, then speeds up toward Söder Mälarstrand. There’s no traffic this early. She runs along the silent streets. The fresh snow is so airy, she can barely feel it under her feet.

  She knows she can still change her mind, but today’s the day she’s going to give up her freedom.

  Södermalm is asleep. The sky is black above the glow of the streetlights.

  Saga considers the fact that she hasn’t been given an alias, that she’s being admitted under her name and doesn’t have to remember anything but her medication, past and present. Intramuscular injections of Risperdal, she repeats silently. Oxascand for the side effects. Stesolid and Heminevrin.

  Pollock had explained that it didn’t matter what her diagnosis was. “You still have to know exactly what medication you’re on,” he said. “It’s a matter of life or death. The medication is what helps you survive.”

  An empty bus swings into the deserted but well-lit terminal for the Finland ferries.

  “Trilafon, eight milligrams, three times a day,” she whispers as she runs. “Cipramil, thirty milligrams. Seroxat, twenty milligrams.”

  Just before she reaches the Photography Museum, Saga turns onto the steep steps leading away from Stadsgårdsleden. She reaches the top step and looks out across Stockholm as she goes over Joona’s rules once more.

  I have to keep to myself, say little, and speak only in short sentences. I have to mean what I say and tell only the truth.

  That’s all, she thinks.

  She tries to sprint the final stretch along Tavast Street to her building.

  Saga runs up the stairs, kicks her shoes off onto the hall mat, and goes straight into the bathroom for a shower.

  It feels strange to be able to dry herself so quickly afterward, without all that long hair. All she has to do is rub a towel over her head.

  She pulls on the most basic underwear she owns: a white sports bra and a pair of panties she wears only when she has her period. A pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and a faded sweatshirt.