The Sandman (46 page)

His thoughts are strange, slow and disintegrating. All he knows is that he has to stop the train.

The heavy train has started to build up speed and is approaching with its wheels screeching. Joona stands in the middle of the track, raises his eyes towards the light and holds up his hand to stop it. The train blows its whistle, and he can just make out the driver’s silhouette inside. The track is shaking with vibrations under his feet. Joona draws his pistol, raises it and shoots out the windscreen of the train.

Fragments of glass fly up over the roof and swirl away. The echo of the shot resounds quickly and harshly between the stacked containers.

Paper is flying round the cab of the train, and the driver’s face is completely expressionless. Joona raises the pistol again and takes aim
straight at him. There’s a thunderous sound as the train brakes. The rails scrape and the ground shakes. The train slides forward with its brakes squealing, and stops with a hiss just three metres away from him.

Joona almost falls as he steps off the track. He picks up the bolt-cutters and turns to the train driver.

‘Open the red containers,’ he says.

‘I don’t have the authority to—’

‘Just do it,’ Joona shouts, throwing the bolt-cutters on the ground.

The driver climbs down and picks up the bolt-cutters. Joona goes with him along the train, and points at the first red container. Without a word the driver clambers up onto the rust-brown coupling and sheers the lock. There’s a rumble as the door opens and large boxes containing television sets tumble out.

‘Next one,’ he whispers.

Joona starts walking, drops his pistol, picks it up out of the snow, and carries on towards the rear of the train. They pass eight containers before they reach the next red one bearing the words Hamburg Süd.

The train driver breaks the lock, but can’t open the heavy catch. He hits it with the bolt-cutters, and the sound of metal against metal echoes desolately around the harbour.

Joona staggers forward, shoves the catch up with a scraping sound and the big metal door swings open.

Disa is lying on the rusty floor of the container. Her face is pale and there’s a look of bewilderment in her wide-open eyes. She’s lost one of her boots, and her hair is stiff and frozen round her head.

Disa’s mouth is frozen in a grimace of fear and sobbing.

There’s a deep cut on the right side of her long, slender neck. The pool of blood beneath her throat and neck is already covered by a film of ice.

Gently Joona lifts her down from the container and takes a few steps away from the train.

‘I know you’re alive,’ he says, falling to his knees with her in his arms.

Some blood is trickling over his hand, but her heart has stopped. It’s over, there’s no way back.

‘Not this,’ Joona whispers against her cheek. ‘Not you …’

He rocks her slowly as the snow falls. He doesn’t notice the car
stopping, and is unaware of Saga Bauer running towards him. She’s barefoot, wearing just trousers and a T-shirt.

‘We’ve got people on their way,’ she cries as she gets closer. ‘God, what have you done? You need to get some help …’

Saga shouts into her radio, swears, and, as if in a dream, Joona hears her force the train driver to take his jacket off, then she wraps it round his shoulders. She sinks down behind him and holds him while the sirens of police cars and ambulances fill the harbour.

The snow is blown from a large circle of ground as the yellow air-ambulance helicopter lands, settling onto its runners. The sound is deafening and the train driver backs away from the man sitting there with the dead woman in his arms.

The rotors are still turning as the paramedics leap out and run over, their clothes flapping round their bodies.

The draught from the helicopter is blowing rubbish up against the high fence. It feels as if all the oxygen is being blown away from them.

Joona is on the point of losing consciousness when the paramedics force him to let go of Disa’s dead body. His eyes are unfocused, and his hands white with cold. He’s muttering incoherently and resists when they try to get him to lie down.

Saga is crying as she watches him being carried away on the stretcher and into the helicopter. She realises that it’s urgent now.

The noise of the rotors changes as the helicopter rises off the ground, swaying in a side wind that’s picked up.

The angle of the rotors shifts, the helicopter leans forward and disappears across the city.

As they cut his clothes off, Joona starts to sink into a death-like torpor. His eyes are still open, but his pupils have expanded and are so fixed that they no longer react to light. It’s impossible to detect any pulse or sign of breathing.

Joona Linna’s body temperature has sunk below 32 degrees as they descend to land on the helicopter pad on building P8 at the Karolinska Hospital.

The police are quickly on the scene at Frihamnen, and after just a few minutes they are able to put out an alert for a silver-grey Citroën Evasion. Jurek Walter’s car was registered by several different surveillance cameras as it drove into the harbour fifteen minutes before Disa Helenius’s car arrived. The same cameras recorded the car leaving the area seven minutes after Joona Linna got there.

Every police car in Stockholm is involved in the search, as well as two Eurocopter 135s. It’s a massive deployment, and just fifteen minutes after the alarm is sounded, the vehicle is observed on the Central Bridge before it disappears into the Söderleden Tunnel.

Police cars are on their way, with sirens and flashing lights, and roadblocks are being set up at the exits when the shock wave from a huge explosion blasts out of the entrance to the tunnel.

The helicopter hovering above lurches and the pilot only just manages to parry the force of the wave. Dust and debris is scattered across the carriageways and railway tracks, all the way down to the snow-covered ice of Riddarfjärden.

It’s half past four in the morning and Saga Bauer is sitting on a rustling sheet of protective paper on top of a couch as a doctor sews up the wounds on her body.

‘I have to go,’ she says, staring at the dusty flat-screen television on the wall.

The doctor has just started bandaging her left wrist when the item about the big traffic accident comes on.

A sombre-voiced reporter explains that a police chase in the centre of Stockholm has ended with a single car crashing with fatal consequences inside the Söderleden Tunnel.

‘The accident happened at half past two this morning,’ the reporter says, ‘which probably explains why no other vehicles were involved. The police have given assurances that the road will be reopened in time for the morning rush-hour, but have otherwise declined to make any comment about the incident.’

The screen shows a cloud of black smoke billowing out of the entrance to the tunnel at a peculiarly high speed. The cloud covers the whole of the Hilton Hotel with rolling veils, then slowly disperses over Södermalm.

Saga refused to go to hospital until she received confirmation that Jurek Walter was dead. Two of Joona’s colleagues from National Crime told her. To save time, their forensics experts had accompanied the fire crews into the tunnel. The violent explosion had torn Jurek Walter’s arms and head from his body.

On the screen, a politician is sitting in the studio with a female presenter. Their faces heavy with sleep, they discuss the problem of dangerous police pursuits.

‘I have to go,’ Saga says, slipping down onto the floor.

‘The wounds on your legs need …’

‘Don’t bother,’ she says, and leaves the room.

Joona wakes up in hospital, feeling frozen. His arms are itching where infusions of warm liquid are slowly being fed into him. A male nurse is standing by his bed, and smiles at him when he opens his eyelids.

‘How are you feeling?’ the nurse asks, leaning forward. Joona tries to read the name-badge, but can’t get the letters to stay still long enough.

‘I’m freezing,’ he says.

‘In two hours your body temperature should be back to normal. I’ll give you some warm juice …’

Joona tries to sit up to drink, but suddenly feels a pain in his bladder. He lifts the insulating blanket off and sees that two thick needles are sticking into his abdomen.

‘What’s this?’ he asks weakly.

‘A peritoneal lavage,’ the nurse says. ‘We’re warming your body up from inside … You’ve got two litres of warm liquid in your abdomen right now.’

Joona shuts his eyes and tries to remember. Red containers, icy slush, and the shock as he jumped from the ship straight into the incredibly cold water.

‘Disa,’ Joona whispers, and feels goosebumps rising on his arms.

He leans back on the pillows and looks up at the heater above him, but can’t feel anything but cold.

After a while the door opens and a tall woman with her hair pulled
up and a tight silk sweater under her doctor’s coat comes in. It’s Daniella Richards, he’s met her many times before.

‘Joona Linna,’ she says in a heavy voice. ‘I’m so sorry—’

‘Daniella,’ Joona interrupts hoarsely. ‘What have you done to me?’

‘You were on the point of freezing to death, in case you hadn’t noticed. We thought you were dead when you were brought in.’

She sits down on the edge of the bed.

‘You have no idea how incredibly lucky you were,’ she says slowly. ‘No serious damage, from the look of it … We’re warming up your internal organs.’

‘Where’s Disa? I have to …’

His voice cracks. There’s something about his thoughts, his brain. He can’t put the words together properly. All his memories are like crushed ice in black water.

The doctor lowers her gaze and shakes her head. She has a small diamond on a necklace round her neck.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Daniella repeats slowly.

As she tells him about Disa, her face starts to quiver with sad little spasms. Joona looks at the veins in her hand, sees her pulse beating, and her ribcage rise and fall under her green sweater. He tries to understand what she’s saying, shuts his eyes, and suddenly everything that’s happened crashes into his consciousness. Disa’s white face, the cut on her neck, the scared set of her mouth and her bare foot in just her nylon tights.

‘Leave me alone,’ he says in a hollow, hoarse voice.

Joona Linna is lying still, feeling the glucose running through his veins and the warm air from the heater above his bed, but he’s not feeling any warmer.

Waves of cold are rolling through his body, and every so often his vision switches off and everything goes black and turns to flaring darkness.

An impulse to grab his gun, put the barrel in his mouth and shoot himself flickers through his thoughts.

Jurek Walter has escaped.

And Joona knows he’ll never be able to see his daughter or wife again. They’ve been taken from him for good, in the same way Disa was torn from his hands. Jurek’s twin brother worked out that Summa and Lumi were still alive. Joona knows it’s only a matter of time before Jurek realises as well.

Joona tries to sit up, but doesn’t have the energy.

It’s impossible.

He can’t escape the feeling that he’s sinking deeper and deeper through the mosaic of ice with every passing second.

He can’t stop feeling frozen.

Suddenly the door opens and Saga Bauer walks in. She’s wearing a black jacket and dark jeans.

‘Jurek Walter’s dead,’ she says. ‘It’s over. We found him in the Söderleden Tunnel.’

She stands at the foot of the bed and looks at Joona Linna. He’s closed his eyes again. It feels like her heart’s about to stop. He looks terribly ill. His face is almost white, his lips pale grey.

‘I’m heading out to see Reidar Frost now,’ Saga goes on. ‘He needs to know that Felicia’s alive. The doctors say she’s going to make it. You saved her life.’

He hears what she says, and turns his face aside, keeping his eyes closed to hold back the tears, and suddenly he understands the pattern.

Jurek is closing a circle of revenge and blood.

Joona repeats the thought to himself, moistens his mouth, takes some deep breathes, then says quietly:

‘Jurek’s on his way to Reidar.’

‘Jurek Walter’s dead,’ Saga repeats. ‘It’s over now—’

‘Jurek’s going to take Mikael again … he doesn’t know that Felicia is free … he mustn’t find out that she—’

‘I’m about to go out and see Reidar, to tell him you saved his daughter,’ she says again.

‘Jurek’s only let Mikael out on loan, he’s going to take him back.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Joona looks at her and the expression in his grey eyes is so cold it makes her shiver.

‘The victims aren’t the ones who were locked up or ended up in graves,’ he says. ‘The victims are the ones who were left behind, the ones who were waiting … until they couldn’t bear to wait any more.’

She puts a calming hand on his.

‘I have to go …’

‘Make sure you’re armed,’ he says.

‘I’m only going to tell Reidar that—’

‘Do as I say,’ he interrupts.

It’s still a long time before dawn when Saga reaches the manor. The old house is nestled in the cold and the depths of the dark morning. There’s only one light visible, in a window on the ground floor.

Saga gets out of the car and walks across the drive, shivering. The snow is untouched and the darkness stretching off over the fields is ancient.

There aren’t even any stars twinkling in the night sky.

The only sound comes from an open stretch of water nearby.

She approaches the house and sees a man sitting at the kitchen table with his back to the window. There’s a book on the table next to him. He’s drinking slowly from a white cup.

Saga carries on across the snow-covered gravel, up the stone steps to the big front door, and rings the bell. A short while later the door is opened by the man who had been sitting in the kitchen.