The Asylum (26 page)

36

THERE IS ONE
thing Jan loves at the pre-school, something he sees every day: the children’s innocent faces. Their honest eyes. Children don’t hide anything – they don’t know how. They haven’t yet learned to lie convincingly, the way adults do.

But when he arrives for a night shift, Lilian is also struggling to hide how she feels this evening. Her red hair is uncombed, her blouse is creased and her eyes are dark and tired. She feels bad.

‘Everything OK, Lilian?’ Jan asks.

‘Brilliant.’

‘Anything wrong?’

She shakes her head. ‘No. I just want to go home.’

It is more likely that she is intending to go out, possibly to Bill’s Bar. Jan thinks that she is looking more and more worn out with every passing day. Perhaps it’s the autumn. Perhaps it’s the drink. She drinks too much, he knows that. But it’s not the sort of thing people talk about.

Thanks, but I’ve got problems of my own
, he thinks.

When Lilian has left he goes to join the children in the playroom. Mira and Leo, the only children who are staying overnight, are sitting there among a sea of building bricks.

Jan smiles and sits down beside them. ‘What a fantastic building!’

‘We know!’ Mira shouts.

As usual Leo looks less pleased, but at least he seems calm today.

Jan picks up a couple of bricks. ‘I’m going to build a hospital.’

Three hours and many games later, it is night once more. Mira and Leo are in bed; they have had supper and a story, and all is peaceful. The children are asleep and Jan is sitting in the staffroom filling out the food order.

He carries on working; time passes. Hidden in his bag is the latest batch of thirty-seven letters which he will soon deliver to the hospital.

One of them is to Rami from him. Eventually, when he got going, he sat there and wrote her a five-page letter. He wrote about their time together in the Unit, the things they talked about. And he wrote about what had happened to him afterwards, how he had become a pre-school teacher and finally ended up here at the Dell.

He promised himself that he wouldn’t deliver any more letters, but that promise has evaporated.

At the end of the letter he wrote that he had never been able to forget her.
I will never forget you
. It wasn’t a declaration of love; it was simply the truth.

He looks up and catches sight of himself. He is sitting opposite the staffroom’s only window, and he can see his reflection floating in the darkness. But suddenly he notices something behind it, slender shadows moving in the night.

Animals – or people?

He leans closer to the glass. If there are people out there they are close to the fence, in the darkest area between two lights.

Jan considers going outside, but decides against it. Instead he carries on with the food order.

Suddenly the doorbell rings, a harsh, long-drawn-out sound. Jan glances towards the door, but remains in the staffroom.

The bell stops ringing, and everything goes quiet. But three minutes later there is a loud bang right in front of him, on the window. He jumps.

A pale face is staring in through the glass. A tall, bony man with a shaven head is standing motionless out there. He is wearing a thick black padded jacket, and underneath it he is dressed in white hospital scrubs. Jan doesn’t recognize him.

‘Can you open up?’ the stranger shouts.

Jan hesitates, and the man goes on: ‘Are you on your own?’

Jan shakes his head.

‘Who else is in there?’ the man demands.

‘Who are you?’ Jan shouts back.

‘Security – night shift. Can you open up?’

Jan doesn’t move. He wonders if the man knows Lars Rettig, but instead asks, ‘Have you got some ID?’

The guard takes out a plastic card and holds it up for a few seconds, just long enough for Jan to see that the face on the card resembles the guard’s, then he puts it away. His voice is harsh and impatient now: ‘Open up!’

Jan will have to trust him; he opens the window, letting in the cold, and asks, ‘What’s happened?’

‘We’re missing a four-four.’

Jan has no idea what this means, and shakes his head. ‘I haven’t seen anything.’

‘Can you give us a call if you do?’ The guard doesn’t wait for a reply; he backs away from the window and disappears into the darkness.

Jan closes the window and the room is silent.

Almost
silent; the clock is still ticking towards midnight, when he is due to leave the package up in the visitors’ room. He ought to postpone it, but that is impossible.

He checks on the two children and goes back to the staffroom. He is waiting for something to happen.

Has someone really escaped?

What should he do?

Stay here
. This is where he’s supposed to be, after all – with the sleeping children. But he has to make one last visit to St Psycho’s. He will have to be careful now that people are moving around the hospital complex, but he just has to do it. The things he has
written
in the letter to Rami are too important; she must have the opportunity to read them.

He waits another twenty minutes. The only thing that happens is that he feels more and more tired, both physically and mentally. He is tired of sitting up in the middle of the night, next to a high wall.

It shouldn’t be like this … so dark and lonely. But that’s the way it is, and at ten minutes to midnight he goes to check on the children one last time. Then he fetches the key card.

One last delivery
. He hangs one Angel in the children’s room, and heads for the door. Everyone has been very conscientious about keeping it closed since the telling-off from Marie-Louise, but now Jan must open it.

All is dark and quiet, and Jan quickly makes his way along the underground corridor. He has become very efficient in his deliveries; this time it takes only four minutes to travel up to the visitors’ room and back down again. His heart is pounding all the time, but no one disturbs him, and the Angel attached to his belt remains silent. At five past midnight he is safely inside the Dell, as if nothing has happened.

Time to sleep. He makes up the sofa bed, then settles down and thinks about his letter to Rami for a little while before closing his eyes.

A rattling noise wakes Jan.

He opens his eyes, but the room is in darkness. Has he slept? He must have done, because the clock by his bed is showing 00:56.

Something is still rattling faintly outside the window, creaking and clattering. It’s the fence. Someone is climbing up the fence.

Jan sits up, blinking in the darkness. He pulls on his jumper and trousers. Then he opens the blind a fraction and peeps out of the window.

He can’t see a thing.

It feels wrong, and at first he can’t understand why. Then he realizes he is used to having a light outside – but the nearest floodlight has gone out.

As he peers through the glass he can just about make out some sort of movement out there.

The rattling continues. He leans closer, staring hard. The noise is coming from the metal fence, and he can see a shadow roughly the height of a man on the other side. Someone is trying to climb up.

The front door is locked, he knows that.

Shouldn’t go out
, he thinks.
Shouldn’t leave the children
.

And yet he goes to the cloakroom and puts on his shoes and jacket. The wind has picked up outside in the playground, and it is much colder. Jan keeps his head down and quickly makes his way round towards the section of the hospital complex where the rattling is coming from.

When he reaches the wooden fence surrounding the Dell and looks up at the metal fence, the noise has stopped. But the shadow is still there, and as Jan looks up he sees it reach for the top of the fence – then suddenly lose its grip. It falls backwards in a short arc, landing with a dull thud in the darkness.

Jan heads over towards the hospital. He has almost reached the fence when a white light suddenly flares into life, shining straight in his face. It comes from a powerful flashlight.

‘Who’s there?’ a voice barks.

‘Jan Hauger … I work at the pre-school.’

‘OK,’ says the voice. ‘I recognize you. You’re my stand-in with the Bohemos.’

The figure takes a step closer, and Jan recognizes the man and his broad shoulders. It’s Carl, the drummer, with the tear-gas canister and handcuffs hanging from his belt. Rettig’s friend, and Hanna’s contact at the hospital.

Jan would like to ask him about that, but Carl gets in first: ‘Have you delivered it?’

‘Delivered what?’

‘The package.’ Carl nods in the direction of the hospital and the visitors’ room, and Jan understands. So Carl knows that Jan is part of the chain involved in smuggling the letters.

No point in denying it. ‘Yes,’ Jan says quietly. ‘I’ve already been up there.’

‘OK, I’ll go and pick it up. When everything’s calmed down.’

‘What happened?’

‘A four-four.’

‘Does that mean someone’s escaped?’

‘Yes,’ says Carl. ‘But the fence stopped him, and we managed to bring him down.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘We’ll sort it. You go back inside. Go and get some sleep.’

Jan nods and is just about to turn away when Carl adds, ‘We have to stop soon.’

He seems to be talking to himself, but Jan asks, ‘You mean this business with the letters?’

‘The whole thing … It’s all starting to get out of control.’

‘What do you mean?’

But Carl doesn’t answer. He simply walks away along the fence and disappears into the darkness.

37

JAN IS AWAKE
at five, long before the children. He has managed only a few hours’ sleep, and has been troubled by unpleasant dreams; he was swimming in a lake and his legs got stuck in the mud at the bottom. He struggled and struggled, but was unable to free himself.

Marie-Louise arrives at half past seven, and he immediately tells her what has happened – or at least the little he knows.

‘Someone escaped?’

She seems horrified by the news, so Jan says, ‘Well, someone tried.’

His memory of the night’s events is already woolly.

‘I’ll find out what’s happened,’ says Marie-Louise.

Then the Dell is open and the day’s activities begin, but while the children are resting after lunch Marie-Louise calls a staff meeting.

Jan sits down at the table, ready for anything.

‘We’ve received a directive from the hospital board,’ Marie-Louise announces. ‘It has been decided that the Dell will be closed at night.’

Everyone absorbs the news in silence, Jan included. But he is surprised – he’s due to do two more night shifts later in the week.

‘So we’re only going to be operating during the day?’ Lilian asks.

‘That’s right.’ Marie-Louise doesn’t seem particularly upset by the decision as she goes on: ‘Having the children here overnight
was
never a permanent solution, we’ve always known that. After all, children should be living in a
proper
home, and now social services think they have found suitable families for both Mira and Leo. So everything will work out perfectly.’

Jan leans forward and asks, ‘When is this going to happen?’

‘Quite soon. We will be working days only from the middle of November.’ Marie-Louise seems to pick up on some hint of anxiety in his expression, because she adds, ‘But there’s nothing for you to worry about, Jan – your temporary contract won’t be affected by this. Nobody will be affected, really – we’ll just have to redo the rota and allocate more day shifts.’ She smiles reassuringly at her staff. ‘It means more companionship and less lone working.’

Jan makes an effort to look pleased, but it is only superficial. He is waiting for an answer from Rami – how is he going to get hold of it now? He is also certain that the Dell is being closed at night for security reasons. Perhaps because of last night’s attempted escape, or because Marie-Louise found the basement door open. Perhaps she no longer trusts her staff.

When the others have left the room, Jan hangs back. ‘Did they say anything about what happened last night?’

Marie-Louise gives a brief nod, as if she would prefer to think about something else. ‘Yes. It was a patient who had been sectioned; he managed to get out of the ward and made it as far as the fence. It happens from time to time. But they caught up with him there, and security has been tightened up … Stepped up a level, they said.’

‘Excellent,’ says Jan, in spite of the fact that increased security at the hospital is the day’s second piece of bad news as far as he is concerned.

The telephone rings among all the furniture in Jan’s flat that evening. He waits a little while before reaching in among the chaos and picking up.

He is expecting it to be his mother in Nordbro, but it is a younger woman’s voice. It takes him a few seconds to realize that it is Hanna Aronsson.

Though today was Hanna’s day off, she asks, ‘Have you heard about the night shifts?’

‘Yes,’ says Jan. ‘How did you find out?’

‘Lilian rang me.’

‘No more evenings for us, then,’ he says. He knows that Hanna understands what he means.

There is a brief silence at the other end of the phone, then she asks, ‘Can you come round to mine for a bit? Number five Bellmans gränd?’

‘OK, but why?’

‘Because I want to return your books and have a little chat.’

Jan puts the phone down. He thinks of Hanna’s blue eyes and wonders if he has made a new friend, just like Rami fifteen years ago.

Hanna lives in a recently built apartment block close to the main square. She opens the door quickly and invites him into a light, dust-free apartment, decorated in shades of pink and white. ‘Hi … come in.’

She isn’t smiling; her expression is tense as she heads towards the kitchen.

Jan follows her, but stops in the living room. He envies her all this light and space. There is a bookcase in the corner, and when he moves closer he sees that she reads non-fiction books about crime. There are titles such as
The Worst Murders in History, Monsters in Our Midst, Charles Manson in His Own Words, The Confessions of Ted Bundy
and
The Serial Killers – A Study in the Psychology of Violence
.