The Sandman. Ларс Кеплер

that he was being watched, he was pretty much condemned to loneliness.

      The years passed, and the fabricated deaths came to seem more and more real.

      He truly had lost his wife and daughter.

      Joona pulls up behind a taxi outside the main entrance of Södermalm Hospital, gets out and walks through the falling snow towards the revolving glass door.

       32

      Mikael Kohler-Frost has been moved from the emergency room of Södermalm Hospital to Ward 66, which specialises in acute and chronic cases of infection.

      A doctor with tired eyes and a kind face introduces herself as Irma Goodwin, and is now walking across the shiny vinyl floor with Joona Linna. A light flickers above a framed print.

      ‘His general condition is very poor,’ she explains as they walk. ‘He’s malnourished, and he’s got pneumonia. The lab found the antigens for Legionnaires’ in his urine, and …’

      ‘Legionnaires’ disease?’

      Joona stops in the corridor and runs his hand through his tousled hair. The doctor notices that his eyes have turned an intense grey, almost like burnished silver, and she hurriedly assures him that the disease isn’t contagious.

      ‘It’s linked to specific locations with—’

      ‘I know,’ Joona replies, and carries on walking.

      He remembers that the man who was found dead in the plastic barrel had been suffering from Legionnaires’ disease. To contract the disease, you had to have been somewhere with infected water. Cases of infection in Sweden are extremely rare. The Legionella bacteria grow in pools, water tanks and pipes, but cannot survive if the temperature is too low.

      ‘Is he going to be OK?’ Joona asks.

      ‘I think so, I gave him Macrolide at once,’ she replies, trying to keep up with the tall detective.

      ‘And that’s helping?’

      ‘It’ll take a few days – he’s still got a high fever and there’s a risk of septic embolisms,’ she says, opening a door and ushering him through before following him into the patient’s room.

      Daylight is passing through the bag on the drip-stand, making it glow. A thin, very pale man is lying on the bed with his eyes closed, muttering manically:

      ‘No, no, no … no, no, no, no …’

      His chin is trembling and the beads of sweat on his brow merge and trickle down his face. A nurse is sitting beside him, holding his left hand and carefully removing tiny splinters of glass from a wound.

      ‘Has he said anything?’ Joona asks.

      ‘He’s been delirious, and it isn’t easy to understand what he’s saying,’ the nurse replies, taping a compress over the wound on his hand.

      She leaves the room and Joona carefully approaches the patient. He looks at his emaciated features, and has no difficulty discerning the child’s face he has studied in photographs so many times. The neat mouth with the pouting top lip, the long, dark eyelashes. Joona thinks back to the most recent picture of Mikael. He was ten years old, sitting in front of a computer with his fringe over his eyes, an amused smile on his lips.

      The young man in the hospital bed coughs tiredly, takes a few irregular breaths with his eyes closed, then whispers to himself:

      ‘No, no, no …’

      There’s no doubt that the man lying in the bed in front of him is Mikael Kohler-Frost.

      ‘You’re safe now, Mikael,’ Joona says.

      Irma Goodwin is standing silently behind him, looking at the emaciated man in the bed.

      ‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to.’

      He shakes his head and jerks, tensing every muscle in his body. The liquid in the drip-bag turns the colour of blood. He’s trembling, and starts to whimper quietly to himself.

      ‘My name is Joona Linna, I’m a detective inspector, and I was one of the people who looked for you when you didn’t come home.’

      Mikael opens his eyes a little, but doesn’t seem to see anything at first, then he blinks a few times and squints at Joona.

      ‘You think I’m alive …’

      He coughs, then lies back panting and looks at Joona.

      ‘Where have you been, Mikael?’

      ‘I don’t know, I just don’t know, I don’t know anything, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know anything …’

      ‘You’re in Södermalm Hospital in Stockholm,’ Joona says.

      ‘Is the door locked? Is it?’

      ‘Mikael, I need to find out where you’ve been.’

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

      ‘I need to find out—’

      ‘What the hell are you doing with me?’ he asks in a despairing voice, and starts to cry.

      ‘I’m going to give him a sedative,’ the doctor says, and leaves the room.

      ‘You’re safe now,’ Joona explains. ‘Everyone here is trying to help you, and—’

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

      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

      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