The Sandman Read online

  Also by Lars Kepler

  The Hypnotist

  The Nightmare

  The Fire Witness

  Copyright © 2012 by Lars Kepler

  Translation copyright © 2014 by Neil Smith

  Original trade paperback edition published in Canada by McClelland and Stewart in 2014

  Originally published in 2012 by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Sweden, as Sandmannen. Published in the English language by arrangement with Bonnier Group Agency, Stockholm, Sweden.

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Kepler, Lars

  [Sandmannen. English]

  The sandman / Lars Kepler; translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith.

  Translation of: Sandmannen.

  ISBN 978-0-7710-4387-1 (bound).–ISBN 978-0-7710-4392-5 (html)

  I. Smith, Neil (Neil Andrew), translator II. Title. III. Title:

  Sandmannen.

  English.

  PT9877.21.E65S2613 2014 839.73′8 C2013-906876-7

  C2013-906877-5

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, event or localities is entirely coincidental.

  McClelland & Stewart,

  a division of Random House of Canada Limited,

  a Penguin Random House Company

  www.randomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  It’s the middle of the night, and snow is blowing in from the sea. A young man is walking across a high railway bridge, towards Stockholm. His face is as pale as misted glass. His jeans are stiff with frozen blood. He is walking between the rails, stepping over the sleepers. Fifty metres below him the ice on the water is just visible, like a strip of cloth. A blanket of snow covers the trees and oil tanks in the harbour are barely visible; the snow is swirling in the glow from the container crane far below.

  Warm blood is trickling down the man’s lower left arm, into his hand and dripping from his fingertips.

  The rails start to sing and whistle as a night-train approaches the two-kilometre-long bridge.

  The young man sways and sits down on the rail, then gets to his feet again and carries on walking.

  The air is buffeted in front of the train, and the view is obscured by the billowing snow. The Traxx train has already reached the middle of the bridge when the driver catches sight of the man on the track. He blows his horn, and sees the figure almost fall, then it takes a long step to the left, onto the oncoming track, and grabs hold of the flimsy railing.

  The man’s clothes are flapping around his body. The bridge is shaking heavily under his feet. He is standing still with his eyes wide open, his hands on the railing.

  Everything is swirling snow and tumbling darkness.

  His bloody hand has started to freeze as he carries on walking.

  His name is Mikael Kohler-Frost. He has been missing for thirteen years, and was declared dead seven years ago.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Chapter 146

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Chapter 151

  Chapter 152

  Chapter 153

  Chapter 154

  Chapter 155

  Chapter 156

  Chapter 157

&nb
sp; Chapter 158

  Chapter 159

  Chapter 160

  Chapter 161

  Chapter 162

  Chapter 163

  Chapter 164

  Chapter 165

  Chapter 166

  Chapter 167

  Chapter 168

  Chapter 169

  Chapter 170

  Chapter 171

  Chapter 172

  Chapter 173

  Chapter 174

  Chapter 175

  Chapter 176

  Chapter 177

  Chapter 178

  Chapter 179

  Chapter 180

  Chapter 181

  Chapter 182

  Chapter 183

  Epilogue

  1

  Secure Criminal Psychology Unit

  Löwenströmska Hospital

  The steel gate closes behind the new doctor with a heavy clang. The metallic echo pushes past him and continues down the spiral staircase.

  Anders Rönn feels a shiver run down his spine when everything suddenly goes quiet.

  As of today, he is going to be working in the secure criminal psychology unit.

  For the past thirteen years, the strictly isolated bunker has been home to the ageing Jurek Walter. He was sentenced to psychiatric care with specific probation requirements.

  The young doctor doesn’t know much about his patient, except that he has been diagnosed with: ‘Schizophrenia, non-specific. Chaotic thinking. Recurrent acute psychosis, with erratic and extremely violent episodes’.

  Anders Rönn shows his ID at level zero, removes his mobile and hangs the key to the gate in his locker before the guard opens the first door of the airlock. He goes in and waits for the door to close before walking over to the next door. When a signal sounds, the guard opens that one too. Anders turns round and waves before carrying on along the corridor towards the isolation ward’s staffroom.

  Senior Consultant Roland Brolin is a thickset man in his fifties, with sloping shoulders and cropped hair. He is standing smoking under the extractor fan in the kitchen, leafing through an article on the pay gap between men and women in the health-workers’ magazine.

  ‘Jurek Walter must never be alone with any member of staff,’ the consultant says. ‘He must never meet other patients, he never has any visitors, and he’s never allowed out into the exercise yard. Nor is he …’

  ‘Never?’ Anders asks. ‘Surely it isn’t permitted to keep someone …’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Roland Brolin says sharply.

  ‘So what’s he actually done?’

  ‘Nothing but nice things,’ Roland says, heading towards the corridor.

  Even though Jurek Walter is Sweden’s worst-ever serial killer, he is completely unknown to the public. The proceedings against him in the Central Courthouse and at the Court of Appeal in the Wrangelska Palace were held behind closed doors, and all the files are still strictly confidential.

  Anders Rönn and Senior Consultant Roland Brolin pass through another security door and a young woman with tattooed arms and pierced cheeks winks at them.

  ‘Come back in one piece,’ she says breezily.

  ‘There’s no need to worry,’ Roland says to Anders in a low voice. ‘Jurek Walter is a quiet, elderly man. He doesn’t fight and he doesn’t raise his voice. Our cardinal rule is that we never go into his cell. But Leffe, who was on the night-shift last night, noticed that he had made some sort of knife that he’s got hidden under his mattress, so obviously we have to confiscate it.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ Anders asks.

  ‘We break the rules.’

  ‘We’re going into Jurek’s cell?’

  ‘You’re going in … to ask nicely for the knife.’

  ‘I’m going in …?’

  Roland Brolin laughs loudly and explains that they’re going to pretend to give the patient his normal injection of Risperidone, but will actually be giving him an overdose of Zypadhera.

  The Senior Consultant runs his card through yet another reader and taps in a code. There’s a bleep, and the lock of the security door whirrs.

  ‘Hang on,’ Roland says, holding out a little box of yellow earplugs.

  ‘You said he doesn’t shout.’

  Roland smiles weakly, looks at his new colleague with weary eyes, and sighs heavily before he starts to explain.

  ‘Jurek Walter will talk to you, quite calmly, probably perfectly reasonably,’ he says in a grave voice. ‘But later this evening, when you’re driving home, you’ll swerve into oncoming traffic and smash into an articulated lorry … or you’ll stop off at the DIY store to buy an axe before you pick the kids up from preschool.’

  ‘Should I be scared now?’ Anders smiles.

  ‘No, but hopefully careful,’ Roland says.

  Anders doesn’t usually have much luck, but when he read the advert in the Doctors’ Journal for a full-time, temporary but long-term position in the secure unit of the Löwenströmska Hospital, his heart had started to beat faster.

  It’s only a twenty-minute drive from home, and it could well lead to a permanent appointment.

  Since working as an intern at Skaraborg Hospital and in a health centre in Huddinge, he has had to get by on temporary contracts at the regional clinic of Sankt Sigfrid’s Hospital.

  The long drives to Växjö and the irregular hours proved impossible to combine with Petra’s job in the council’s recreational administration and Agnes’s autism.

  Only two weeks ago Anders and Petra had been sitting at the kitchen table trying to work out what on earth they were going to do.

  ‘We can’t go on like this,’ he had said, perfectly calmly.

  ‘But what alternative do we have?’ she had whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Anders had replied, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

  Agnes’s teaching assistant at her preschool had told them that Agnes had had a difficult day. She had refused to let go of her milk-glass, and the other children had laughed. She hadn’t been able to accept that break-time was over, because Anders hadn’t come to pick her up like he usually did. He had driven straight back from Växjö, but hadn’t reached the preschool until six o’clock. Agnes was still sitting in the dining room with her hands round the glass.

  When they got home, Agnes had stood in her room, staring at the wall beside the doll’s house, clapping her hands in that introverted way she had. They don’t know what she can see there, but she says that grey sticks keep appearing, and she has to count them, and stop them. She does that when she’s feeling particularly anxious. Sometimes ten minutes is enough, but that evening she had to stand there for more than four hours before they could get her into bed.

  2

  The last security door closes and they head down the corridor to the only one of the isolation cells that is being used. The fluorescent light in the ceiling reflects off the vinyl floor. The textured wallpaper has a groove worn into it from the food trolley, one metre up from the floor.

  The Senior Consultant puts his pass card away and lets Anders walk ahead of him towards the heavy metal door.

  Through the reinforced glass Anders can see a thin man sitting on a plastic chair. He is dressed in blue jeans and a denim shirt. The man is clean-shaven and his eyes seem remarkably calm. The many wrinkles covering his pale face look like the cracked clay at the bottom of a dried-up riverbed.

  Jurek Walter was only found guilty of two murders and one attempted murder, but there’s compelling evidence linking him to a further nineteen murders.

  Thirteen years ago he was caught red-handed in Lill-Jan’s Forest on Djurgården in Stockholm, forcing a fifty-year-old woman back into a coffin in the ground. She had been kept in the coffin for almost two years, but was still alive. The woman had sustained terrible injuries, she was malnourished, her muscles had withered away, she had appalling pressure sores and frostbite, and had suffered severe brain damage. If the police hadn’t followed and arrested Jurek Walter beside the coffin, he would probably
never have been stopped.