The Sandman. Ларс Кеплер

      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.

       26

      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.

       27

      The sun was shining in through the mottled glass in the windows of the Wrangelska Palace. Jurek Walter’s legal representative explained that his client had been so badly affected by the trial that he couldn’t bear to explain the reason why he was at the crime scene when he was arrested.

      Joona was called as a witness, and described their surveillance work and the arrest. Then the defence lawyer asked if Joona could see any reason at all to suspect that the prosecutor’s account of events was based on a false assumption.

      ‘Could my client have been found guilty of a crime that someone else committed?’

      Joona met the lawyer’s anxious gaze, and in his mind’s eye saw Jurek Walter calmly pushing the woman back into the coffin every time she tried to get out.

      ‘I’m asking you, because you were there,’ the defence lawyer went on. ‘Could Jurek Walter actually have been trying to rescue the woman in the grave?’

      ‘No,’ Joona replied.

      After deliberating for two hours, the Chair of the Court declared that the verdict of Stockholm Courthouse was upheld. Jurek Walter’s face didn’t move a muscle as the more rigorous sentence was announced. He was to be held in a secure psychiatric clinic with extraordinary conditions applied to any eventual parole proceedings.

      Seeing as he was closely connected to numerous ongoing investigations, he was also subject to unusually extensive restrictions.

      When the Chair of the Court had finished, Jurek Walter turned towards Joona. His face was covered with fine wrinkles, and his pale eyes looked straight into Joona’s.

      ‘Now Samuel Mendel’s two sons are going to disappear,’ Jurek said in a measured voice. ‘And Samuel’s wife Rebecka will disappear. But … No, listen to me, Joona Linna. The police will look for them, and when the police give up Samuel will go on looking, but when he eventually realises that he’ll never