The Sandman

The staff at the prison were used to most things, but Jurek Walter’s presence troubled them. He made them feel uneasy. Wherever he was, conflicts would suddenly flare up; on one occasion two warders started fighting, with one of them ending up in hospital.

A crisis meeting was held, and new security procedures agreed. Jurek Walter would no longer be allowed to come into contact with other inmates, or use the exercise yard.

When Samuel called in sick, Joona found himself walking alone down the corridor, past the row of white thermos flasks, one outside each of the green doors. The shiny linoleum floor had long, black marks on it.

The door to Jurek Walter’s cell was open. The walls were bare and the window barred. The morning light reflected off the worn plastic-covered mattress on the fixed bunk and the stainless-steel basin.

Further along the corridor a policeman in a dark-blue sweater was talking to a Syrian Orthodox priest.

‘They’ve taken him to interview room two,’ the officer called to Joona.

A guard was waiting outside the interview room, and through the window Joona could see Jurek Walter sitting on a chair, looking down at the floor. In front of him stood his legal representative and two guards.

‘I’m here to listen,’ Joona said when he went in.

There was a short silence, then Jurek Walter exchanged a few words with his lawyer. He spoke in a low voice and didn’t look up as he asked the lawyer to leave.

‘You can wait in the corridor,’ Joona told the guards.

When he was on his own with Jurek Walter in the interview room he moved a chair and put it so close that he could smell the man’s sweat.

Jurek Walter sat still on his chair, his head drooping forward.

‘Your defence lawyer claims that you were in Lill-Jan’s Forest to free the woman,’ Joona said in a neutral voice.

Jurek went on staring at the floor for another couple of minutes, then, without the slightest movement, said:

‘I talk too much.’

‘The truth will do,’ Joona said.

‘But it really doesn’t matter to me if I’m found guilty of something I didn’t do,’ Walter said.

‘You’ll be locked up.’

Jurek looked up at Joona and said thoughtfully:

‘The life went out of me a long time ago. I’m not scared of anything. Not pain … not loneliness or boredom.’

‘But I’m looking for the truth,’ Joona said, intentionally naïve.

‘You don’t have to look for it. It’s the same with justice, or gods. You make a choice to fit your own requirements.’

‘But you don’t choose the lies,’ Joona said.

Jurek’s pupils contracted.

‘In the Court of Appeal the prosecutor’s description of my actions will be regarded as proven beyond all reasonable doubt,’ he said, without the slightest hint of a plea in his voice.

‘You’re saying that’s wrong?’

‘I’m not going to get hung up on technicalities, because there isn’t really any difference between digging a grave and refilling it.’

When Joona left the interview room that day, he was more convinced than ever that Jurek Walter was an extremely dangerous man, but at the same time he couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility that Jurek had been trying to say that he was being punished for someone else’s crimes. Of course he understood that it had been Jurek Walter’s intention to sow a seed of doubt, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that there was actually a flaw in the prosecution’s case.

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The day before the appeal, Joona, Summa and Lumi went to dinner with Samuel and his family. The sun had been shining through the linen curtains when they started eating, but it was now evening. Rebecka lit a candle on the table and blew out the match. The light quivered over her luminous eyes, and her one strange pupil. She had once explained that it was a condition called dyscoria, and that it wasn’t a problem, she could see just as well with that eye as the other.

The relaxed meal concluded with dark honey cake. Joona borrowed a kippah for the prayer, Birkat Hamazon.

That was the last time he saw Samuel’s family.

The boys played quietly for a while with little Lumi before Joshua immersed himself in a video game and Reuben disappeared into his room to practise his clarinet.

Rebecka went outside for a cigarette, and Summa kept her company with her glass of wine.

Joona and Samuel cleared the table, and as soon as they were alone started talking about work and the following day’s appeal.

‘I’m not going to be there,’ Samuel said seriously. ‘I don’t know, it’s not that I’m frightened, but it feels like my soul gets dirty … that it gets dirtier for every second I spend in his vicinity.’

‘I’m sure he’s guilty,’ Joona said.

‘But …?’

‘I think he’s got an accomplice.’

Samuel sighed and put the dishes in the sink.

‘We’ve stopped a serial killer,’ he said. ‘A lone lunatic who—’

‘He wasn’t alone at the grave when we got there,’ Joona interrupted.

‘Yes, he was.’ Samuel started to rinse the dishes.

‘It’s not unusual for serial killers to work with other people,’ Joona objected.

‘No, but there’s nothing that suggests that Jurek Walter belongs to that category,’ Samuel said brightly. ‘We’ve done our job, we’re finished, but now you want to stick a finger in the air and say

.’

‘I do?’ Joona said with a smile. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Perhaps the opposite is the case.’

‘You can always say that.’ Joona nodded.

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