The Sandman. Ларс Кеплер
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your little daughter,’ Jurek Walter went on, looking down at his fingernails.
‘Be careful,’ Joona said.
‘Lumi will disappear,’ Jurek whispered. ‘And Summa will disappear. And when you realise that you’re never going to find them … You’re going to hang yourself.’
He looked up and stared directly into Joona’s eyes. His face was quite calm, as if things had already been settled the way he wanted.
Ordinarily the convict is taken back to a holding cell until their destination and transportation to the facility have been organised. But the staff at Kronoberg were so keen to be rid of Jurek Walter that they had arranged transport directly from the Wrangelska Palace to the secure criminal psychology unit twenty kilometres north of Stockholm.
Jurek Walter was to be held in strict isolation in Sweden’s most secure facility for an indeterminate amount of time. Samuel Mendel had regarded Jurek’s threat as empty words from a defeated man, but Joona had been unable to avoid the thought that the threat had been presented as a truth, a fact.
The investigation was downgraded when no further bodies were found.
Although it wasn’t dropped altogether, it went cold.
Joona refused to give up, but there were too few pieces of the puzzle, and what lines of inquiry they had turned out to be dead ends. Even though Jurek Walter had been stopped and convicted, they didn’t really know any more about him than before.
He was still a mystery.
One Friday afternoon, two months after the appeal, Joona was sitting with Samuel at Il Caffé close to police headquarters, drinking a double espresso. They were busy with other cases now, but still met up regularly to discuss Jurek Walter. They had been through all the material about him many times, but had found nothing to suggest that he had an accomplice. The whole thing was on the verge of becoming an in-joke, with the two of them weighing up innocent passers-by as possible suspects. And then something terrible happened.
Samuel’s phone buzzed on the café table next to his espresso cup. The screen showed a picture of his wife Rebecka. Joona listened idly to the conversation as he picked the crystallised sugar from his cinnamon bun. Evidently Rebecka and the boys were heading out to Dalarö earlier than planned, and Samuel agreed to pick up some food on the way. He told her to drive carefully, and ended the call with lots of kisses.
‘The carpenter who’s been repairing our veranda wants us to take a look at the carving as soon as possible,’ Samuel explained. ‘The painter can start this weekend if it’s ready.’
Joona and Samuel returned to their offices in the National Criminal Investigation Department and didn’t see each other again for the rest of the day.
Five hours later Joona was eating dinner with his family when Samuel called. He was panting and talking so fast that it was difficult to make out what he was saying, but apparently Rebecka and the boys weren’t at the house in Dalarö. They hadn’t been there, and weren’t answering the phone.
‘There’s bound to be an explanation,’ Joona said.
‘I’ve called the police, and all the hospitals, and—’
‘Where are you now?’ Joona asked.
‘I’m out on the Dalarö road, but I’m heading back to the house again.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Joona asked.
He had already thought the thought, but the hairs on the back of his neck still stood up when Samuel said:
‘Make sure Jurek Walter hasn’t escaped.’
Joona checked with the secure criminal psychology unit of the Löwenströmska Hospital at once, and spoke to Senior Consultant Brolin. He was told that nothing unusual had occurred in the secure unit. Jurek Walter was in his cell, and had been in total isolation all day.
When Joona called Samuel back, his friend’s voice sounded different, shrill and hunted.
‘I’m out in the forest,’ Samuel almost shouted. ‘I’ve found Rebecka’s car, it’s in the middle of the little road leading to the headland, but there’s no one here, there’s no one here!’
‘I’m on my way,’ Joona said at once.
The police searched intensively for Samuel’s family. All traces of Rebecka and the boys vanished on the gravel road five metres from the abandoned car. The dogs couldn’t pick up any scent, just walked up and down, sniffing and circling, but they couldn’t find anything. The forests, roads, houses and waterways were searched for two months. After the police had withdrawn, Samuel and Joona carried on looking on their own. They searched with a determination and a fear that grew until it was on the brink of being unbearable. Not once did they mention what this was all about. Both refused to voice their fears about what had happened to Joshua, Reuben and Rebecka. They had witnessed Jurek Walter’s cruelty.
Throughout this period Joona suffered such terrible anxiety that he couldn’t sleep. He watched over his family, following them everywhere, picking them up and dropping them off, making special arrangements with Lumi’s preschool, but he was forced to accept that this wouldn’t be enough in the long term.
Joona had to confront his worst horror.
He couldn’t talk to Samuel, but he could no longer deny the truth to himself.
Jurek Walter hadn’t committed his crimes alone. Everything about Jurek Walter’s understated grandiosity suggested that he was the leader. But after Samuel’s family was abducted, there could be no doubt that Jurek Walter had an accomplice.
This accomplice had been ordered to take Samuel’s family, and he had done so without leaving a single piece of evidence.
Joona realised that his family was next. It was probably only good fortune that had spared him this far.
Jurek Walter showed no mercy to anyone.
Joona raised this with Summa on numerous occasions, but she refused to take the threat as seriously as he did. She humoured him, accepting his concern and precautionary measures, but she assumed that his fears would subside over time.
He had hoped that the intensive police operation that followed the disappearance of Samuel Mendel’s family would lead to the capture of the accomplice. When the search first got under way, Joona saw himself as the hunter, but as the weeks went by the dynamic changed.
He knew that he and his family were the prey, and the calm he tried to demonstrate to Summa and Lumi was merely a façade.
It was half past ten in the evening, and he and Summa were lying in bed reading when a noise from the ground floor made Joona’s heart suddenly begin to beat faster. The washing machine hadn’t finished its programme yet and it sounded like a zip rattling against the drum, nevertheless he couldn’t help getting up and checking that all the windows downstairs were in one piece, and that the outside doors were locked.
When he returned, Summa had switched off her lamp and was lying there watching him.
‘What did you do?’ she asked gently.
He forced himself to smile and was about to say something when they heard little footsteps. Joona turned and saw his daughter come into the bedroom. Her hair was sticking up and her pyjama trousers had twisted round her waist.
‘Lumi, you’re supposed to be asleep,’ he sighed.
‘We