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neck stand on end.
‘Everyone was frightened … I was calling for Mum and Dad … and there was a grown-up woman and an old man on the floor … they were sitting on the floor behind the sofa … She tried to calm me down, but … but I could hear her crying the whole time.’
‘What did she say?’ Joona asks.
‘I don’t remember, I don’t remember anything, maybe I dreamed the whole thing …’
‘You just mentioned an old man and a woman.’
‘No.’
‘Behind the sofa,’ Joona says.
‘No,’ Mikael whispers.
‘Do you remember any names?’
He coughs and shakes his head.
‘Everyone was just crying and screaming, and the woman with the eye kept asking about two boys,’ he says, his eyes focused inwardly.
‘Do you remember any names?’
‘What?’
‘Do you remember the names of—’
‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to …’
‘I’m not trying to upset you, but—’
‘They all disappeared, they just disappeared,’ Mikael says, his voice getting louder. ‘They all disappeared, they all …’
Mikael’s voice cracks, and it’s no longer possible to make out what he’s saying.
Joona repeats that everything is going to be all right. Mikael looks him in the eye, but he’s shaking so much he can’t speak.
‘You’re safe here,’ Joona says. ‘I’m a police officer, and I’ll make sure that nothing happens to you.’
Dr Irma Goodwin comes into the room with a nurse. They walk over to the patient and gently put his oxygen mask back on. The nurse injects the sedative solution into the drip while calmly explaining what she’s doing.
‘He needs to rest now,’ the doctor says to Joona.
‘I need to know what he saw.’
She tilts her head and rubs her ring finger.
‘Is it very urgent?’
‘No,’ Joona replies. ‘Not really.’
‘Come back tomorrow, then,’ Irma says. ‘Because I think—’
Her mobile rings and she has a short conversation, then hurries out of the room. Joona is left standing by the bed as he hears her vanish down the corridor.
‘Mikael, what did you mean about the eye? You mentioned the woman with the eye – what did you mean?’ he asks slowly.
‘It was like … like a black teardrop …’
‘Her pupil?’
‘Yes,’ Mikael whispers, then shuts his eyes.
Joona looks at the young man in the bed, feeling his pulse roar in his temples, and his voice is brittle and metallic as he asks:
‘Was her name Rebecka?’
Mikael is crying as the sedative enters his bloodstream. His body relaxes, his sobbing grows more weary, then subsides completely seconds before he drifts off to sleep.
Joona feels oddly empty inside as he leaves the patient’s room and pulls out his phone. He stops, pauses for breath, then calls Åhlén, who carried out the extensive forensic autopsies on the bodies found in Lill-Jan’s Forest.
‘Nils Åhlén,’ he says as he takes the call.
‘Are you sitting at your computer?’
‘Joona Linna, how nice to hear from you,’ Åhlén says in his nasal voice. ‘I was just sitting here in front of the screen with my eyes closed, enjoying its warmth. I was fantasising that I’d bought a facial solarium.’
‘Elaborate daydream.’
‘Well, if you look after the pennies …’
‘Would you like to look up some old files?’
‘Talk to Frippe, he’ll help you.’
‘No can do.’
‘He knows as much as—’
‘It’s about Jurek Walter,’ Joona interrupts.
A long silence follows.
‘I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about that again,’ Åhlén says calmly.
‘One of his victims has turned up alive.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Mikael Kohler-Frost … He’s got Legionnaires’ disease, but it looks as though he’s going to pull through.’
‘What are the files you’re interested in?’ Åhlén asks with nervous intensity in his voice.
‘The man in the barrel had Legionnaires’ disease,’ Joona goes on. ‘But did the boy who was found with him show any signs of the disease?’
‘Why are you wondering that?’
‘If there’s a connection, it ought to be possible to put together a list of places where the bacteria might be present. And then—’
‘We’re talking about millions of places,’ Åhlén interrupts.
‘OK …’
‘Joona. You have to realise, even if Legionella was mentioned in the other reports, that doesn’t mean that Mikael was one of Jurek Walter’s victims.’
‘So there were Legionella bacteria?’
‘Yes, I found antibodies against the bacteria in the boy’s blood, so he’d probably had Pontiac fever,’ Åhlén says with a sigh. ‘I know you want to be right, Joona, but nothing you’ve said is enough to—’
‘Mikael Kohler-Frost says he met Rebecka,’ Joona interrupts.
‘Rebecka Mendel?’ Åhlén asks with a tremble in his voice.
‘They were held captive together,’ Joona confirms.
There is a long silence, then: ‘So … so you were right about everything, Joona,’ Åhlén says, sounding as if he’s about to start crying. ‘You’ve no idea how relieved I am to hear that.’
He gulps hard down the phone, and whispers that they did the right thing after all.
‘Yes,’ Joona says, in a lonely voice.
He and Åhlén had done the right thing when they arranged the car-crash for Joona’s wife and daughter.
Two dead bodies were cremated and buried in place of Lumi and Summa. Using fake dental records, Åhlén had identified the bodies. He believed Joona, and trusted him, but it had been such a big decision, so momentous, that he has never stopped worrying about it.
Joona daren’t leave the hospital until two uniformed officers arrive to guard Mikael’s room. On his way out along the corridor he calls Nathan Pollock and says they need to send someone to pick up the man’s father.
‘I’m sure it’s Mikael,’ he says. ‘And I’m sure he’s been held captive by Jurek Walter all these years.’
He gets in the car and slowly drives away from the hospital as the windscreen wipers clear the snow aside.
Mikael