The Sandman (48 page)

‘I’m a police officer,’ she says, as she hears the stairs creak under someone’s weight. ‘The ambulance is on its way.’

‘He wants Mikael,’ the actor groans.

Mikael is whispering to himself and staring at the locked door, when the key is suddenly pushed out and falls onto the parquet floor with a muffled clunk.

Reidar is standing with his hand pressed against the pain in his chest. His face is wet with sweat. He’s in agony now. He’s tried several times to tell Mikael to run, but he has no voice left.

‘Can you walk?’ Mikael whispers.

Reidar nods and takes a step. There’s a scraping sound from the lock as Mikael puts his father’s arm over his shoulder and tries to lead him towards the library.

Behind them the scraping sound from the lock continues.

They carry on slowly past a tall cupboard, along a wall lined with large tapestries stretched over wooden frames.

Reidar stops again, coughing and gasping for breath.

‘Hold on,’ he says.

He slips his fingers along the edge of the third tapestry and opens a concealed door leading to a servants’ staircase down to the kitchen. They creep into the narrow passageway and gently close the door behind them.

Reidar fastens the little catch and then leans against the wall. He coughs as quietly as he can, feeling the pain radiating down his arm.

‘Keep going down the stairs,’ he whispers in a muffled voice.

Mikael shakes his head and is about to say something when the door in the other room crashes open.

Jurek’s broken in.

They stand there as if paralysed and watch him approach through the fabric covering the hidden door.

He’s creeping forward, crouched down, with the long knife in his hand, peering around him like a predator.

His soft breathing is clearly audible through the door.

Reidar clenches his teeth and leans against the wall; his chest hurts badly, and the pain is spreading to his jaw.

Jurek is so close now that a cloying smell of sweat hits them through the tapestry.

They both hold their breath as Jurek walks past the tapestry door, heading towards the library.

Mikael tries to get Reidar down the narrow staircase before Jurek realises he’s been deceived.

Reidar shakes his head and Mikael looks at him in anguish. He stifles a cough, tries to take a step, then stumbles, making a floorboard creak under his right foot.

Jurek turns and looks straight at the hidden door, and his pale eyes become strangely calm when he realises what he’s looking at.

There’s the sound of a loud bang in the corridor, and splinters from the edge of the tall cupboard fly through the air.

Jurek slips aside like a shadow and takes cover.

Mikael pulls Reidar with him down the narrow staircase towards the kitchen.

Behind them Berzelius comes into the passageway leading to the library. He’s holding Reidar’s old Colt in his hand. The little man’s cheeks are red as he pushes his glasses further up his nose and moves forward.

‘Leave Micke alone!’ he shouts, walking past the tall cupboard.

Death comes so quickly that Berzelius’s main reaction is surprise. At first he feels the tight grip on the wrist holding the revolver, then there’s a burning pain in his side as the rigid knife-blade penetrates his ribs and hits his heart.

There isn’t much pain.

It’s more like a protracted attack of cramp, but at the same time a profuse quantity of warm blood runs down his hip as the blade slips out again.

He realises that he’s wetting himself as he falls to his knees and suddenly recalls the time when he was courting his wife Anna-Karin, long before the divorce and her illness. She had looked so surprised and happy when he came home early from Oslo and stood below her low balcony, singing ‘Love Me Tender’ with four bags of crisps in his arms.

Berzelius slumps over onto his side, thinking that he ought to try to crawl and hide somewhere, but an overwhelming tiredness sweeps over him like a storm.

He doesn’t even notice when Jurek sticks the knife into his body a second time. The blade goes in at a different angle, straight through his ribs, and stays there.

Saga reaches the top of the broad staircase and hurries through the rooms on the upper floor. There’s no one there, no voices. Tactically she tries to check off every dangerous angle and secure each zone as she passes through, but she keeps having to take risks so she can move more quickly.

She aims the pistol at a shiny leather sofa as she passes it, then points it towards the doorway, left, then in.

There’s a wax candle lying on the floor of the long, portrait-lined corridor.

The door to one of the bedrooms is wide open, and the bedclothes are on the floor. Saga hurries past, catching a glimpse of herself as a fleeting shadow in the window to her left.

Then there’s a loud bang from a firearm in one of the rooms up ahead. Keeping close to the right-hand wall, Saga starts to run towards the noise with her pistol raised.

‘Leave Micke alone!’ a man cries.

Running, Saga leaps over an upturned chair, covers the last stretch and stops in front of a closed door.

Carefully she pushes the handle down and lets the door swing open on its hinges.

The smell of a recently fired gun is heavy in the air.

The room is dark and still.

Saga moves more cautiously now.

She’s starting to feel the weight of the pistol in her shoulder. Her finger is trembling on the trigger. She tries to breathe calmly as she leans to her right to get a better view.

There’s a damp thud with a slightly metallic echo.

Something’s moving – a shadow vanishing.

She sees a pool of blood gleaming on the floor next to a tall cupboard.

Stepping forward, she sees a man on the floor with a knife sticking out of him. He’s lying on his side, completely still, with a fixed stare and a smile on his lips. Her first impulse is to rush over to the man, but something stops her.

The room is too hard to read.

She lowers her pistol and rests her arm for a few seconds before raising it again and moving further to the right.

One section of tapestry on the wall is open. Through it Saga can make out a short passageway leading to a narrow staircase. She can hear steps and dragging sounds from below, and raises her Glock towards the opening before moving closer.

The door at the other end of the room is open, leading to a dark library.

There’s a faint click, as though someone were moistening their mouth.

She can’t see anything.

The pistol is shaking in her hand.

The windows in front of her are black and she takes a step forward, holds her breath, then hears someone breathing behind her.

Saga reacts instantly and swings round. It’s still too late. A strong hand grabs hold of her throat and she’s dragged into the corner towards the cupboard with great force.

Jurek’s grip on her neck is so tight that the blood-supply to her brain has been cut off. He looks at her perfectly calmly, holding her quite still. Her vision is starting to go black and the Glock simply drops from her hand.

Impotently, Saga tries to twist free, and just before she loses consciousness she hears Jurek whisper:

‘Little siren …’

He slams her against the cupboard and her head hits the corner,
then he smashes her temple against the stone wall. She falls to the floor, her eyes flickering. She sees Jurek bend over the dead man and pull the knife out of his body. A moment later everything goes black again.

They’re no longer trying to keep quiet. Mikael supports Reidar down the staircase to the narrow servants’ passageway. They turn left and walk slowly along it, past the old cupboard with the Christmas dinner service, and out into the kitchen.

Reidar has to stop, he can’t go any further, he needs to lie down, the cramps in his chest are unbearable.

‘You have to get out of here,’ he gasps, then coughs weakly. ‘Run, run out to the main road.’

On the kitchen table the candle is still burning, its flame flickering. The wax has run down one side of the bottle and onto the linen tablecloth.

‘Not on my own,’ Mikael says. ‘I can’t …’

Reidar takes a deep breath and starts walking again. His eyes are flaring as he leans against the wall, knocking the big Cullberg painting askew.

They walk through the music room and Reidar can hardly feel the floor under his naked feet.

There’s blood on the parquet, but they just continue into the hall. The front door is open and snow has blown in, across the Persian rug and all the way to the broad staircase.

Mikael runs to the wardrobe, pulls out Reidar’s coat and finds the pink nitroglycerine spray. With shaking hands Reidar lifts it to his
mouth, opens wide and sprays some under his tongue, he takes a few more steps, stops and sprays again.

He points at the dish containing the car keys on the other side of the room.

Now they can hear heavy footsteps in the rooms leading from the kitchen. There’s no time. They rush out into the black winter morning.

The air is icy cold.

Snow has blown up over the stone steps. Mikael is wearing trainers, but the cold burns Reidar’s naked feet.

The pain in his chest has vanished and they can move much faster now. Together they run over to Saga Bauer’s car.

Reidar pulls at the door, looks in and sees that the keys are missing.

Jurek Walter emerges onto the steps and catches sight of them in the gloom. He shakes the blood from his knife, then heads straight for them.

They run through the snow up towards the stables, but Jurek is far too quick. Reidar glances across the fields. The dark ice of the river is visible as a curling band through the snow, leading off in the direction of the roaring rapids.

Saga wakes to find blood running into her eyes. She blinks and rolls over onto her side. Her temple is throbbing. She has a splitting headache, her throat feels swollen and she’s having trouble breathing.

She tentatively touches the wound on her temple and groans with pain. With her cheek to the floor she can see that her Glock is lying in the dust under the large chest of drawers by the window.

She shuts her eyes again and tries to work out what’s happened. Joona was right, she thinks. Jurek wants Mikael back.

She has no idea how long she’s been unconscious. It’s still almost dark in the room.

She rolls over onto her stomach and whimpers.

‘Oh, God …’

With a great effort she gets up on all fours. Her arms shake as she crawls across the pool of blood from the dead man towards the chest of drawers.

She stretches for the gun, but can’t reach it.

Saga lies down on the floor, reaches in as far as she can, but only manages to nudge the Glock with her fingertips. It’s impossible. She’s so dizzy that the room is tilting in violent lurches and she has to close her eyes again.

Suddenly she sees light through her closed eyelids. She looks up and notices a strange white glow. It’s bouncing shakily across the ceiling.
She turns her head and sees that it’s coming from the park, sparkling in the ice-crystals on the outside of the window.

Saga forces herself to stand up, gasping as she leans against the chest of drawers for support. A string of bloody saliva is dripping from her mouth. She looks out of the window and sees David Sylwan running over, holding a burning flare in his hand. The bright light spreads out in a blazing circle around him.

Everything else out there is black.

David moves off through the deep snow. He’s holding the flare in front of him, and its glow reaches all the way to the stables in the distance.

That’s when Saga catches sight of Jurek’s back and the knife in his hand.

She bangs on the window and tries to open the latches. She tugs at them, but they’ve rusted into place and are impossible to move.

With ice-cold fingers Reidar tries to open the combination lock on the stable door. The little numbered dials are stiff. His fingertips are sticking to the frozen metal. Mikael whispers to him to get a move on.

‘Hurry up, Dad, hurry up …’

Jurek is pushing through the snow with the knife in his hand. Reidar blows on his fingers and manages to get the last digit. He undoes the lock, slides the catch back and tries to open the door.

There’s too much snow on the ground.

As he tugs at it, he can hear the horses moving in their stalls. They’re snorting quietly and stamping in the darkness.

‘Come on, Dad,’ Mikael shouts, pulling at him.

Reidar opens the door a bit further, turns round and sees Jurek Walter approaching with his vicious-looking knife.

With a practised gesture, he wipes the knife-blade against his trousers.

It’s too late to run.

Reidar holds his hands up in self-defence, but Jurek grabs his neck and forces him back, against the wall of the stable.

‘Sorry,’ Reidar manages to say. ‘I’m sorry that—’

With immense force Jurek thrusts the knife straight through Reidar’s shoulder and pins him to the wall. Reidar screams with pain and his
vision flares. The horses whinny anxiously, their heavy bodies rubbing against the dividing walls of their stalls.

Reidar is stuck. His shoulder is burning with pain. Every second is unbearable. He can feel hot blood running down his arm and hand.

Mikael is trying to squeeze into the stable, but Jurek catches up with him. He grabs hold of the young man’s hair from behind, pulls him out and slaps him so hard across the face that he collapses in the snow.

‘No, no,’ Reidar pants as he sees a bright light approaching from the manor.

It’s David, running towards them with an emergency flare in his hand. It’s crackling with white light.

‘The air ambulance is on its way,’ he yells, but stops when he sees Jurek turn.