by Lars Kepler
148
The traffic thins out as he speeds north.
After all these years, three major pieces of the puzzle are finally fitting together.
Jurek’s father worked in a gravel pit and killed himself in his home there.
Mikael says the Sandman smells like sand.
And Reidar grew up near a gravel pit in Rotebro.
What if it’s the same gravel pit? This can’t be a coincidence. The pieces have to fit together somehow. In which case, this is where Felicia is, not where all his colleagues are searching, he thinks.
The ridges of slush between the lanes make the car swerve. Dirty water sprays up onto the windshield.
He speeds up again, past the Rotebro shopping center and up the narrow Norrviken Road, which runs parallel to the high ridge.
He reaches the top and sees the entrance to the gravel works a moment too late. He turns sharply and brakes in front of two heavy metal barriers. The wheels slide on the snow, Joona wrenches the steering wheel, the car spins, and the rear bumper slams into one of the barriers.
The red glass from the brake light shatters across the snow.
Joona throws the door open, gets out of the car, and runs past the blue shed that houses the office.
He runs down the steep slope toward the vast crater that has been excavated over the years. Floodlights on tall towers illuminate this strange lunar landscape, with its static excavators and vast heaps of sifted sand.
No one could be buried here. It would be impossible to hide any bodies, because everything is constantly being dug up. A gravel quarry is a hole that gets wider and deeper every day.
Heavy snow is falling through the artificial light. He runs past stone crushers with massive caterpillar tracks. He’s in the most recent section of the pit. The sand is bare, and it’s obvious that work is still being done here every day. Beyond the machinery are several blue shipping containers and three RVs. A floodlight hits him from behind a pile of sand. Half a kilometer away, he can see a snow-laden area in front of a steep drop. That must be the older part of the pit.
He makes his way up a slope where people have dumped old fridges, broken furniture, and trash. His feet slip on the snow, but he keeps going, sending cascades of stones down behind him.
He makes it to the original level of the ridge, more than forty meters above the current ground level, and has a good view of the pitted landscape. Cold air tears at his lungs as he surveys the illuminated landscape of sand with its machines and makeshift roads.
He starts to run along the narrow strip of meadow grass between the slope and Älvsunda Road.
There’s a crumpled car wreck by the side of the road in front of the chain-link fence plastered with “No Trespassing” signs. Joona stops and peers into the falling snow. At the far corner of the very oldest section of the gravel pit is an area of tarmac, on top of which is a row of single-story buildings, as long and narrow as military barracks.
149
Joona steps over rusty barbed wire and heads toward the old buildings; the windows are broken, and there are graffiti tags sprayed on the brick walls.
It’s dark up here. Joona gets his flashlight out and shines the light at the first building.
There’s no door. Snow has blown in over the first few meters of the blackened wooden floor. The beam sweeps quickly across old beer cans, dirty sheets, condoms, and latex gloves.
He goes from door to door, peering through the broken or missing windows. The guest workers’ old housing has been abandoned for many years. Nothing but dirt and dereliction. In some places, the roofs have caved in, and whole sections of walls are missing.
He slows down when he sees that the windows in the second-to-last building are intact. An old shopping cart is lying on its side by the wall.
On one side of the building, the ground drops away toward the bottom of the quarry.
Joona switches the flashlight off as he makes his way to the building, where he stops and listens before turning it on again.
All he can hear is the wind sweeping across the rooftops.
In the darkness a short distance away, he can make out the last building in the row. It seems to be little more than a snow-covered ruin.
He goes over to the window of the second-to-last building and shines the flashlight through the dirty glass. The beam pans across a filthy hot plate connected to a car battery, a narrow bed with rough blankets, a radio with a shiny antenna, several tanks of water, and a dozen cans of food.
When he reaches the door, he can make out an almost eroded number “4” at the top left corner.
This could be the building that Nikita Karpin had mentioned.
Joona carefully pushes the handle down, and the door opens. He slips inside, shutting the door behind him. The space smells like damp old fabric. A Bible lies on a rickety shelf. There’s only one room, with one window and one door.
Joona realizes that he is clearly visible from the outside.
The wooden floor creaks under his weight.
He shines the flashlight along the walls and sees piles of water-damaged books. In one corner, the light flashes back at him.
He sees that there are hundreds of tiny glass bottles lined up on the floor.
Dark glass bottles, with rubber membranes.
Sevoflurane, a highly effective sedative.
Joona pulls out his phone and calls the Emergency Control Room. He asks for police backup and an ambulance to be sent to his location.
Then everything is silent again. All he can hear is his own breathing and the floor creaking beneath him.
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he sees movement outside the window. He draws his Colt Combat and releases the safety catch in an instant.
There’s nothing there, just some loose snow blowing off the roof.
He lowers the pistol again.
On the wall by the bed is a yellowed newspaper clipping about the first man in space—the “Space Russian,” as Expressen’s headline describes him.
This must be where the father killed himself.
Joona is thinking that he ought to search the other buildings when he catches sight of the outline of something protruding from under the filthy rag-rug. He pulls the rug aside and exposes a large hatch in the wooden floor.
He lies down and puts his ear to the hatch, but he can’t hear anything.
He glances at the window, then shoves the rug aside and opens the hatch.
The dusty smell of sand rises from the darkness.
He leans forward and shines the flashlight into the opening, where he sees a steep flight of concrete steps.
150
The sand on the stairs crunches under Joona’s shoes as he heads down into the darkness. After nineteen steps, he finds himself in a large concrete room. The flashlight beam flickers across the walls and ceiling. There’s a stool in the middle of the room, and on one wall is a foam board with a few pushpins and an empty plastic sleeve.
Joona realizes that he must be in one of the many bomb shelters built in Sweden during the Cold War.
There’s an eerie silence down here.
The room tapers slightly, and tucked beneath the staircase is a heavy steel door.
This has to be the place.
Joona puts the safety catch back on his pistol and slips it into the holster to free up his hands. The steel door has large bolts that slide into place when a wheel at the center of the door is turned.
He pulls the wheel counterclockwise. There’s a metallic rumble as the heavy bolts slide from their housings.
The door is hard to open, the metal fifteen centimeters thick.
He shines the flashlight into the shelter and sees a dirty mattress on the floor, a sofa, and a tap sticking out of the wall.
There’s no one here.
The room stinks of old urine.
He points the light at the sofa again and approaches cautiously. He stops and listens, then moves closer.
She might be hiding.
&nbs
p; Suddenly he has a feeling that he’s being followed. He could end up trapped in the room. He turns and at that instant sees the heavy door closing. The immense hinges are creaking. He reacts immediately, throwing himself backward and jamming the flashlight into the gap. There’s a crunch as it gets squeezed and the glass shatters.
Joona shoves the door open with his shoulder, draws his pistol again, and emerges into the dark room.
There’s no one there.
The Sandman has moved remarkably quietly.
Strange light formations are flickering in front of Joona’s eyes as he tries to make out shapes in the murky gloom. The flashlight is only giving off a faint glow now, barely enough to illuminate anything.
All he can hear are his own footsteps and his own breathing.
He looks over toward the concrete steps leading up to the main room. The hatch is still open. He shakes the flashlight, but it keeps dimming.
Suddenly Joona hears a tinkling sound and holds his breath as he finds himself thinking about porcelain fingertips. At the same moment, he feels a cold cloth pressed to his mouth and nose.
Joona spins around and lashes out hard but hits nothing and loses his balance.
He turns, holding his pistol out. The barrel scrapes the concrete wall. There’s no one there.
Panting, he stands with his back to the wall, extending the flashlight toward the darkness.
The tinkling sound must have come from the little sedative bottles when the Sandman took them out to pour the liquid onto the cloth.
Joona is feeling dizzy. He desperately wants to get out into the fresh air, but he forces himself to stay where he is.
It’s completely silent. There’s no one here.
Joona waits a few seconds, then returns to the capsule. His movements feel strangely delayed, and his gaze keeps slipping sideways. Before he goes inside, he turns the wheel of the lock so that the bolts slide out, preventing the door from closing.
In the weak glow of the flashlight, he makes his way forward once more. He reaches the sofa and nudges it carefully away from the wall. A skinny woman is lying on the floor.
“Felicia? I’m a police officer,” he whispers. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
When he touches her he can feel that she’s boiling hot. She has an extremely high fever and is no longer conscious. As he picks her up from the floor she starts to shake with fevered chills.
Joona charges up the stairs with her in his arms. He drops the flashlight and hears it clatter down the steps. She’s going to die soon unless he manages to get her fever down. Her body is completely limp. He doesn’t know if she’s breathing as he climbs through the hatch.
Joona runs across the main room, kicks open the door, lays her down on the snow, and detects that she’s still breathing.
“Felicia, you have a really high fever.”
He covers her with snow, speaking to her in a soothing voice, all the while keeping his pistol trained on the door of the building.
“The ambulance is on its way,” he says. “Everything’s going to be fine, Felicia, I promise. Your brother and your dad are going to be so happy. They’ve missed you so much, you know that?”
151
The ambulance arrives, its blue lights flashing across the snow. Joona stands as the stretcher is wheeled past the old buildings. He explains the situation to the paramedics and keeps his pistol aimed at the entrance to Barrack 4.
“Hurry up,” he cries. “She’s running a dangerously high fever, and she’s unconscious.”
Two paramedics lift Felicia out of the snow. Her hair is hanging in black, sweaty locks over her impossibly pale forehead.
He walks toward the open doorway with his weapon raised.
He’s about to go back inside when he glances toward the flickering blue light of the ambulance playing over the remains of the last building. There are fresh footprints in the snow, leading away from the building and into the darkness.
Joona runs toward them, thinking that there must be another exit, that the two buildings might share an underground shelter.
He follows the footsteps at a run, through clumps of grass and scrub.
As he rounds an old fuel tank, he sees a thin figure limping along the edge of the pit.
Joona is moving as quietly as he can.
The figure is leaning on a crutch. He seems to realize he’s being pursued and tries to move faster along the steep cliff.
There are sirens in the distance.
Joona races through the deep snow.
I’m going to get him, he thinks. I’m going to arrest him and drag him back to the cars.
They’re approaching a bright section of the gravel pit containing a large concrete factory. A single floodlight illuminates the bottom of the crater.
The figure stops, turns, and looks at Joona. His mouth is open and his breathing is labored. He’s standing right at the edge.
Joona approaches, his pistol pointed at the ground.
The Sandman’s face is almost identical to Jurek’s, but much thinner.
Far in the distance, Joona can hear the police cars arrive at the old barracks.
“It all went wrong with you, Joona,” the Sandman says. “My brother told me to take Summa and Lumi, but they died before I had the chance. Fate sometimes chooses its own path.”
Flashlight beams circle the barracks.
“I wrote to my brother and asked him about you, but I never found out if he wanted me to take anything else from you,” he says.
Joona feels the weight of the weapon in his tired arm and looks into the Sandman’s pale eyes.
“I thought you’d hang yourself after the car accident, but you’re still alive,” the Sandman says, shaking his head. “I waited, but you just went on living.”
He pauses, then smiles suddenly, looks up, and says, “You’re still alive because your family isn’t really dead.”
Joona raises his pistol, aims the barrel at the Sandman’s heart, and fires three shots. The bullets go straight through his skinny frame. Black blood sprays from the exit wounds between his shoulder blades. The gunshots echo around the gravel pit.
Jurek’s twin brother falls backward. His crutch remains where it is, stuck in the snow.
The Sandman is dead before he hits the ground. His emaciated body rolls down the slope until it hits a discarded stove.
152
Joona sits in the back seat of his car with his eyes closed. His boss, Carlos Eliasson, is driving him back to Stockholm.
“She’s going to be okay. I spoke to a doctor at the Karolinska. Felicia’s condition is serious but not critical. They’re not making any promises, but even so, this is great news. I really think she’s going to make it, I—”
“Have you told Reidar?” Joona asks, without opening his eyes.
“The hospital’s dealing with that. You just need to go home and get some rest, and—”
“I tried to reach you.”
“Yes, I know, I saw I had a bunch of missed calls. You might’ve heard that Jurek mentioned an old brick factory to Saga. There were never very many, but there used to be one in Albano. When we went into the forest, the dogs identified graves all over the place. We’ve been busy searching the whole damn area.”
“But you haven’t found anyone alive?”
“Not yet, but we’re still looking.”
“I think you’re just going to find graves.” He pauses. “Is everything okay at the prison?”
* * *
—
“The nightmare’s over, Joona,” Carlos says. “We’re working on getting the Prison Service Committee to pass the decision to transfer Saga again. We’ll pick her up as soon as they do and clear her record.”
They reach Stockholm. The light around the streetlights looks like fog because of the snow. A bus pulls up beside them, waiting for the lights to change. Exhausted faces look out through the steamed-up windows.
“I talked to Anja,” Carlos says. “She found the records for J
urek and his brother in the Child Welfare Committee’s files in the council archive, and she tracked down the decision from the Aliens Department in the National Archive in Marieberg.”
“Anja’s smart,” Joona says.
“Jurek’s father was allowed to stay in the country on a temporary work permit,” Carlos says. “But he didn’t have permission to keep the boys with him. After they were discovered, the Child Welfare Committee was notified and the boys were taken into custody. Presumably, the authorities thought they were doing the right thing. The decision was rushed through, but because one of the boys was sick, the cases were dealt with separately.”
“They were sent to different places.”
“The Aliens Department sent the healthy boy back to Kazakhstan, and then a different caseworker made the decision to send the other boy to Russia—to Children’s Home Number Sixty-seven, to be precise.”
“I see,” Joona whispers.
“Jurek crossed the border into Sweden in January 1994. Maybe his brother was already at the quarry by that time, maybe not. But by then their father was dead.”
Carlos pulls up smoothly in an empty parking space on Dala Street, not far from Joona’s apartment at 31 Wallin Street. They both get out of the car, walk down the snow-covered pavement, and stop at Joona’s front door.
“As I mentioned, I knew Roseanna Kohler,” Carlos says with a sigh. “And when her children disappeared, I did all I could, but it wasn’t enough.”
“No.”
“I told her about Jurek. She wanted me to tell her everything, wanted to see pictures of him, and…”
“But Reidar didn’t know.”
“No. She said it was better that way. I don’t know….Roseanna moved to Paris after that. She used to call all the time. She was drinking too much.”
Carlos rubs his neck with one hand.
“What?” Joona asks.
“One night, Roseanna called me from Paris, screaming that she’d seen Jurek Walter outside her hotel, but I didn’t listen. Later that night, she killed herself.”
