The Sandman (18 page)

He starts fiddling with the mixer tap on the sink. Saga watches him, and gets the strong impression that he’s not telling her the whole truth.

‘In what way is it personal?’ she asks.

‘It’s not important,’ he replies quickly.

‘You’re sure?’

‘What’s important is … that we actually do this, it’s the right thing to do, the only right thing … because we believe the girl can still be saved.’

‘So we’re sending in an agent as quickly as we possibly can – that’s all, no large-scale operation,’ Verner says.

‘Obviously we don’t know if Jurek Walter’s going to say anything, but there’s a chance … and everything suggests that it’s our only chance.’

Saga stands perfectly still with her eyes closed for a long while.

‘What happens if I say no?’ she asks. ‘Will you let the girl die in that damn capsule?’

‘We’ll find another agent,’ Verner says simply.

‘Go ahead, then,’ Saga says, and begins to walk towards the hall.

‘Do you want to think about it?’ Carlos calls.

She stops with her back to the two police chiefs and shakes her head. Light filters through her thick hair with the interwoven ribbons.

‘No,’ she replies, and walks out of the flat.

Saga takes the underground to Slussen, then walks the short distance to Stefan’s studio on Sankt Paulsgatan. At Södermalmstorg she buys a bunch of red roses, wondering if Stefan might have bought roses for her.

She feels relieved to have declined the difficult task of infiltrating Jurek Walter and the secure psychiatric unit.

She strides up the steps and unlocks the door, she can hear the sound of the piano and smiles to herself. She goes in, sees Stefan sitting at the piano and stops. His blue shirt is unbuttoned. He has a bottle of beer beside him and the room smells of cigarette smoke.

‘Darling,’ she says after a brief pause. ‘I’m sorry … I need you to know how sorry I am about what happened yesterday …’

He goes on playing, softly, radiantly.

‘Forgive me,’ she says seriously.

Stefan’s face is turned away, but she has no trouble hearing what he says:

‘I don’t want to talk to you right now.’

Saga holds out the bouquet towards him and tries to smile.

‘Sorry,’ she repeats. ‘I know I’m difficult, but I—’

‘I’m playing,’ he interrupts.

‘But we need to talk about what happened.’

‘Just go,’ he says loudly.

‘I’m sorry I—’

‘And close the fucking door behind you.’

He stands up and points towards the hall. Saga drops the flowers on the floor, goes up to him and pushes him in the chest, so hard that he has to take a step back, knocks over the piano stool and pulls his score down. She follows him, ready to hit him again if he hits back, but Stefan just stands there with his hands by his side, looking her straight in the eye.

‘This isn’t working,’ he says simply.

‘I’m a bit off balance right now, that’s all’ she says.

He picks the piano stool up and gathers his music together. Fear rises within her and she takes a step back.

‘I don’t want you to be upset,’ he says with an emptiness in his voice that transforms her fear into panic.

‘What is it?’ she asks, suddenly feeling sick.

‘This isn’t working, we can’t be together, we …’

He falls silent and she tries to smile, tries to function, but her forehead has broken out in a cold sweat and she feels giddy.

‘Because I was difficult last night?’ she manages to say.

Stefan glances up at her unwillingly.

‘You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, the most beautiful woman in the world … and you’re smart and funny and I ought to be the happiest man alive … I’m probably going to regret this for the rest of my life, but I think we should break up.’

‘I still don’t understand,’ she whispers. ‘Because I got angry … because I disturbed you when you were playing?’

‘No, it’s …’

He sits down again and shakes his head.

‘I can change,’ she says, and looks at him for a moment before going on. ‘But it’s already too late, isn’t it?’

When he nods she turns and leaves the room. She goes out into the hall, picks up the old stool from Dalarna and throws it at the mirror. The splinters fall to the floor, shattering again as they hit the hard tiles. She shoves the front door open and runs down the stairs, straight out into the radiant blue winter light.

Saga runs along the pavement, between the buildings and the bank of snow lining the road. She breathes in the icy air so deeply that it hurts her lungs. She crosses the road, runs across Mariatorget, then stops on the other side of Hornsgatan and gets some snow from a car roof and presses it to her hot, stinging eyes, then runs the rest of the way home.

Her hands are shaking as she unlocks the door. She lets out a lonely whimper as she steps into the hall and closes the door behind her.

Saga lets the keys fall to the floor, kicks off her shoes and walks straight through the flat to her bedroom.

She picks up the phone, dials the number, then stands and waits. After six rings she is put through to Stefan’s voicemail. She doesn’t listen to his message, just throws the phone at the wall as hard as she can.

She staggers, leans forward and grabs the chest of drawers.

Still fully dressed, she lies down on the double bed and curls up like a foetus. She knows all too well when she last felt like this. When she was little and woke up in her dead mother’s arms.

Saga Bauer can no longer remember how old she was when her mother got ill. But when she was five she realised that her mum had a serious brain tumour. The illness changed her mum in terrible ways. The poisoned cells made her distant and increasingly irritable.

Her dad was hardly ever home. She can’t bear to think about how he let them down. As an adult she’s tried to tell herself he was only human, he couldn’t help being weak. She repeats it like a mantra, but her fury at him won’t subside. It’s quite incomprehensible that he kept out of the way and handed the burden to his young daughter. She doesn’t want to think about it, never talks about it, it just makes her angry.

The night the illness finally claimed her mother she was so tired she needed help taking her medication. Saga gave her pill after pill, and ran to get more water.

‘I can’t take any more,’ her mum whispered.

‘You have to.’

‘Just call Daddy and tell him I need him.’

Saga did as her mum asked, and told her dad that he had to come home now.

‘Mummy knows I can’t,’ he replied.

‘But you have to, she can’t take any more …’

Later that evening her mum was very weak, she didn’t eat anything but her medication and shouted at Saga when she knocked over the bottle of pills on the rug. Her mum was in terrible pain, and Saga tried to comfort her.

Her mum just asked Saga to call her dad and tell him she’d be dead before morning.

Saga cried and said she mustn’t die, that she didn’t want to live if her mum died. Her tears were trickling into her mouth as she called her dad once more. She sat on the floor, listening to the sound of her own crying and her dad’s answer-phone message.

‘Call … call Daddy,’ her mum whispered.

‘I’m trying,’ Saga sobbed.

When her mum finally fell asleep, Saga turned out the little lamp and stood by the bed for a while. Her mum’s lips were shiny and she was breathing heavily. Saga curled up in her warm embrace and fell asleep, exhausted. She slept beside her mum until she woke up early next morning, frozen.

Saga gets out of bed, looks at the remnants of the broken phone, takes off her coat and lets it fall to the floor, then goes to the kitchen and
gets a pair of scissors, and heads for the bathroom. She studies herself in the mirror, sees John Bauer’s pretty princess, and thinks about how she could save a lonely girl. Maybe I’m the only person who can save Felicia, she thinks, looking sternly at her own reflection.

A meeting was arranged just two hours after Saga Bauer told her boss that she’d changed her mind and was going to accept the job.

Now Carlos Eliasson, Verner Zandén, Nathan Pollock and Joona Linna are waiting in a flat on the top floor of Tantogatan 71, with a view of the snow-covered ice in Årstaviken and the rainbow arch of the railway bridge.

The flat is furnished in a modern style, with white furniture and inset lamps. On the large dining table in the living room are plates of sandwiches from Non Solo Bar. Carlos stops abruptly and just stares as Saga walks in. Verner breaks off mid-sentence and looks almost scared, and Nathan Pollock slumps down at the table with a sad look on his face.

Saga has shaved off her long hair. She has several grazes on her scalp.

Her eyes are swollen with crying.

Her pale, beautiful head is still graceful, though, with its small ears and long, narrow neck.

Joona Linna walks over and gives her a hug. She holds him hard for a while, pressing her cheek to his chest and listening to the beat of his heart.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ he says against her head.

‘I want to save the girl,’ she replies quietly.

She holds on for a few more seconds, then goes into the kitchen.

‘You know everyone here,’ Verner says, pulling out a chair for her.

‘Yes,’ Saga nods.

She drops her dark green parka on the floor and sits down. She’s wearing her usual clothes, a pair of black jeans and a tracksuit top from the boxing club.

‘If you really are prepared to go undercover in the same unit as Jurek Walter, we need to act at once,’ Carlos says, unable to hide his enthusiasm.

‘I looked through your contract with us and there are a few things that could be improved,’ Verner adds quickly.

‘Good,’ she mutters.

‘We may have a little scope to increase your salary, and—’

‘I don’t really give a shit about that right now,’ she interrupts.

‘You’re aware that there are certain risks associated with this mission?’ Carlos asks cautiously.

‘I want to do this,’ she says firmly.

Verner pulls a grey phone from his bag, puts it on the table next to his usual mobile, writes a short text message, then looks up at her.

‘Shall we set things in motion, then?’ he asks.

When she nods he sends the message, which vanishes with a small whooshing sound.

‘We’ve got a few hours now to prepare you for what you’ll be faced with,’ Joona says.

‘Get going,’ she says calmly.

The men quickly take out folders, open laptops, spread out their papers. Saga feels a shiver run through her arms when she sees how extensive the preparations are.

The table is covered by big maps of the area around Löwenströmska Hospital, the drains, and a detailed plan of the secure psychiatric unit.

‘You’re going to get a conviction from Uppsala District Court, and you’ll be sent to the women’s section of Kronoberg Prison first thing tomorrow morning,’ Verner explains. ‘In the afternoon you’ll be driven to Karsudden Hospital in Katrineholm. That’ll take an hour or so. By then the Prison Service Committee will be evaluating the proposal to transfer you to Löwenströmska.’

‘I’ve started sketching out a diagnosis that you’ll need to look at,’ Nathan Pollock says, giving Saga a careful smile. ‘You’ll be given a
credible medical history, with a juvenile psychiatric record, emergency treatment, placements, diagnoses and all sorts of medication, leading up to the present.’

‘I understand,’ she says.

‘Do you have any allergies or illnesses we ought to know about?’

‘No.’

‘No problems with your liver or heart?’

Wet snow has started to fall outside the borrowed flat on Tantogatan. As the flakes hit the windows they make a clicking sound. On the pale wooden bookshelf there’s a framed photograph of a family in a pool. The dad’s nose is red with sunburn and the two children are laughing as they hold up inflatable crocodiles.

‘To start with, we’ve got very little time indeed,’ Nathan Pollock says.

‘We don’t even know if Felicia is alive,’ Carlos says, and starts tapping the table with his pen. ‘But if she is, it’s extremely likely that she’s suffering from Legionnaires’ disease.’

‘So we may have a week or so,’ Pollock says.

‘But the worst-case scenario is that she’s already been abandoned,’ Joona says, unable to conceal the anxiety in his voice.

‘What do you mean?’ Saga asks. ‘She’s survived more than ten years, and—’

‘Yes,’ Verner interrupts, ‘but one possible explanation for why Mikael was able to escape is that Jurek’s accomplice is ill, or—’

‘He could have died, or he might just have taken off,’ Carlos says.

‘We aren’t going to make it in time,’ Saga whispers.

‘We have to,’ Carlos says quickly.

‘If Felicia doesn’t have access to water, there’s nothing we can do,
she’ll die today or tomorrow,’ Pollock says. ‘If she’s as ill as Mikael, she probably won’t survive more than another week, but at least that gives us a chance … there’s a hypothetical possibility, even if the odds are very low.’

‘If she’s only having to go without food, we may have three or four weeks,’ Verner says.

‘We’ve so little to go on,’ Joona says. ‘We don’t know if the accomplice is carrying on as if nothing’s happened, or if he’s buried Felicia alive.’

‘He may be thinking of keeping her in the capsule for another twenty years,’ Carlos says in an unsteady voice.

‘All we know is that she was still alive when Mikael escaped,’ Joona goes on.

‘I can’t bear this,’ Carlos says, getting to his feet. ‘I just want to scream when I think—’

‘We haven’t got time for tears at the moment,’ Verner interrupts.

‘All I’m trying to say is—’

‘I know, I feel the same,’ Verner says, raising his voice. ‘But in just over an hour the Prison Service Committee will hold an extraordinary meeting to take the formal decision to move patients to the secure unit at Löwenströmska, so—’