The Sandman

He shakes his head and tries to pull the drip from his arm with tired fingers.

‘Where have you been all this time, Mikael? Where have you been living? Were you hiding? Were you locked up, or—’

‘I don’t know, I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

‘You’re tired, and you’ve got a fever,’ Joona says gently. ‘But you have to try to think.’

33 (#ulink_0b445ba3-1d01-5cfd-8164-3d44d0c29f44)

Mikael Kohler-Frost is lying in his hospital bed, panting like a hare that’s been hit by a car. He’s talking quietly to himself, moistening his mouth and looking up at Joona with big, questioning eyes.

‘Can you be locked up in nothing?’

‘No, you can’t,’ Joona replies calmly.

‘Can’t you? I don’t get it, I don’t know, it’s so hard to think,’ the young man whispers quickly. ‘There’s nothing to remember, it’s just dark … it’s all a big nothing, and I get mixed up … I mix up what was before and how it was in the beginning, I can’t think, there’s too much sand, I don’t even know what’s dreams and …’

He coughs, leans his head back and closes his eyes.

‘You said something about how it was in the beginning,’ Joona says. ‘Can you try—’

‘Don’t touch me, I don’t want you to touch me,’ he interrupts.

‘I’m not going to.’

‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I can’t, I don’t want to …’

His eyes roll back and he tilts his head in an odd, crooked way, then shuts his eyes and his body trembles.

‘There’s no danger,’ Joona repeats.

After a while Mikael’s body relaxes again, and he coughs and looks up.

‘Can you tell me anything about how it was in the beginning?’ Joona repeats gently.

‘When I was little … we were huddled together on the floor,’ he says, almost soundlessly.

‘So there were several of you at the start?’ Joona asks, a shiver running up his spine and making the hairs on the back of his 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?’