The Asylum

1

Caution! Children playing! Jan reads through the side window of the taxi. The words are printed on a blue plastic sign, and beneath it is the exhortation to DRIVE SLOWLY.

‘Bloody kids!’ the driver yells.

Jan is thrown forward. The taxi has swung around a corner and braked sharply in front of a tricycle.

A child has abandoned the trike virtually in the middle of the road.

The street is in a residential area in the town of Valla. Jan can see low wooden fences in front of white houses, and the big warning notice.

Caution! Children playing! But the streets are empty, in spite of the three-wheeler. There are no children here to necessitate caution.

Perhaps they are all indoors, Jan thinks. Locked inside.

The driver glances at him in the rear-view mirror. He looks close to retirement age, with deep lines etched on his forehead, a Father Christmas beard and a weary expression.

Jan is used to weary expressions; they are everywhere.

The driver had hardly said a word before the sudden outburst when he slammed on the brakes, but as the taxi moves off again he has a question for Jan: ‘The hospital... St Patricia’s... do you work up there?’

Jan shakes his head. ‘No. Not yet.’

‘Not yet? So you’re applying for a job there?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I see,’ says the driver.

Jan lowers his eyes and does not respond. He doesn’t want to reveal too much about himself, and he doesn’t know what he’s allowed to tell other people about the hospital.

The driver goes on: ‘You know there’s another name for that place?’

Jan looks up. ‘No. What’s that?’

The driver gives a little smile. ‘I’m sure they’ll tell you when you get there.’

Jan gazes out of the window at the rows of houses, thinking about the man he is soon to meet.

Dr Patrik Högsmed, senior consultant. His name was at the bottom of a job advert Jan found at the beginning of July:

The wording below the heading was similar to many others that Jan had read:

Much of this applied to Jan. He was a young man, a qualified pre-school teacher, he enjoyed play, and had been something of a drummer in his teenage years — although mostly on his own.

And he didn’t like abusive behaviour, for personal reasons.

But was he open and honest? That depended. He was good at appearing open, at any rate.

It was the contact details that made Jan cut out the advert: Patrik Högsmed, Admin Department, St Patricia’s Regional Psychiatric Hospital, Valla.

Jan had always found it difficult to sell himself, but the advert had stared at him from its place on the kitchen table for several days, and in the end he had called the number below the senior consultant’s name.

A deep male voice had answered. ‘Högsmed.’

‘Dr Högsmed?’

‘Yes?’

‘My name is Jan Hauger, and I’m interested in the position you’re advertising.’

‘What position?’

‘At the pre-school. Starting in September?’

There was a brief silence before Högsmed responded: ‘Oh yes, that position...’ He spoke quietly and seemed distracted. But he continued with a question for Jan: ‘May I ask why you are interested in this post?’

‘Well...’ Jan couldn’t tell the truth; he had immediately started to lie, or at least to conceal things about himself. ‘I’m curious,’ was all he said.

‘Curious,’ said Högsmed.

‘Yes... curious about the working environment and about the town. I’ve spent most of my time working in pre-schools and nurseries in cities. So it would be exciting to move to somewhere slightly smaller, and to compare the way in which a pre-school is run in that kind of place.’

‘Good,’ Högsmed had replied. ‘Of course this is a slightly unusual situation, since the children’s parents are actually patients...’

He had gone on to explain why St Patricia’s Hospital had a pre-school: ‘We started it a few years ago, as an experiment. The central idea is based on research into the critical aspect of a child’s relationship with its parents in terms of the child’s development into a socially mature individual. Both long-term and temporary foster homes always fall short in some respects, and here at St Patricia’s we believe it is extremely important for the child to have both regular and stable contact with the biological mother or father, in spite of the special circumstances. And of course, for the parent, this contact with the child forms part of their treatment.’ The doctor paused, then added, ‘That is what we do here: we treat the patients. We do not punish them, whatever they might have done.’

Jan had listened, and noticed that the doctor hadn’t used the word cure.

Högsmed had concluded with a further question: ‘How does that sound?’

Jan thought it sounded interesting, and had submitted an application along with his CV.

At the beginning of August Högsmed had called him: Jan had been shortlisted for the post, and the doctor wanted to meet him. They had agreed on a time, and then Högsmed had added, ‘I have a couple of requests, Jan.’

‘Yes?’

‘You will need to bring some form of photo ID — your driving licence or passport, just so that we can be sure of who you are.’

‘Of course, that’s fine.’

‘And one last thing, Jan... don’t bring any sharp objects with you. If you do, you won’t be allowed in.’

‘Sharp objects?’

‘Any sharp objects made of metal... No knives.’

Jan arrived in Valla by train — without any sharp objects about his person — half an hour before his interview. He was keeping a close eye on the time, but still felt quite calm. He wasn’t about to climb a mountain; it was just a meeting about a job.

It was a sunny Tuesday in mid September; the streets near the station were bright and dry, but there were very few people around. This was his first visit to Valla, and as he walked out into the square he realized that no one knew where he was. No one. The senior consultant at St Patricia’s was expecting him, of course, but to Dr Högsmed he was just a name and a CV.

Was he ready? Absolutely. He tugged down the sleeves of his jacket and tidied his blond fringe before heading over to the taxi rank. There was just one cab waiting.

‘Can you take me to St Patricia’s Hospital?’

‘No problem.’

The driver might have borne a certain resemblance to Father Christmas, but he didn’t appear to share his jovial nature; he simply folded up his newspaper and started the engine. But as Jan settled down in the back seat their eyes met for a second in the rear-view mirror, as if Father Christmas just wanted to check that his passenger was sane.

Jan thought of asking whether the driver knew what kind of hospital St Patricia’s was, but it was obvious that he did.

They drove out of the square and into the street running alongside the railway line, and eventually turned into a short tunnel leading under the tracks. On the other side was a collection of large brick buildings that looked like some kind of hospital, with façades of steel and glass. Jan could see two yellow ambulances parked in front of the main entrance.

‘Is this St Patricia’s?’

But Father Christmas shook his head. ‘No, the people in here are sick in the body, not in the head. This is the local hospital.’

The sun was still shining; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They turned off to the left once they got past the hospital, drove up a steep hill and came to the residential area where that sign warned drivers about children.

Caution! Children playing...

Jan thinks about all the children he has cared for over the years. None of them were his own; he was employed to look after them. But they grew to be his, in a way, and it was always difficult to say goodbye to them when the job came to an end. They often cried. Sometimes he cried too.

Suddenly he catches sight of some children: four boys aged about twelve are playing hockey by one of the garages.

Or is a twelve-year-old actually a child? When do children stop being children?

Jan leans back in his seat and pushes aside such deep questions. He needs to concentrate on coming up with clear answers. Job interviews are hard work if you have something to hide — and who hasn’t? We all have little secrets that we would prefer not to talk about. So has Jan. But today they absolutely must not come out.

Don’t forget Högsmed is a psychiatrist.

The taxi leaves the upmarket residential area and drives past several blocks of low terraced houses. Then there are no more buildings, and the landscape opens out into an extensive grassy area. And beyond it Jan can see a huge concrete wall, at least five metres high and painted green. Thin strands of taut barbed wire run along the top. The only thing missing is a series of watchtowers with armed guards.

An immense grey building looms behind the wall, almost like a fortress. Jan can see only the uppermost section, with rows of narrow windows below a long tiled roof. Many of the windows are covered with bars.

That’s where they are, behind those bars, he thinks — the most dangerous individuals. Those who cannot be permitted to walk the streets. And that’s where you’re going.

He feels his heart begin to pound as he thinks about Alice Rami, and the possibility that she might be sitting behind the bars at one of those windows, watching him at this very moment.

Calm, keep calm.

Jan is a confident person, cheerful and pleasant, and he really loves children. Dr Högsmed is bound to understand this.

There is a wide steel gate set in the wall, but there is a no-waiting zone directly in front of it, so the taxi stops in the turning area. Jan has arrived. The meter is showing ninety-six kronor. Jan hands over a hundred-kronor note. ‘Keep the change.’

‘Thanks.’ Father Christmas seems disappointed by his tip; four kronor won’t buy any presents for the children. He doesn’t get out of the car to open the passenger door.

Jan can fend for himself.

‘Good luck with the job,’ the driver says as he passes Jan a receipt through the half-open window.

Jan nods and straightens his jacket. ‘Do you know anyone who works here?’

‘I don’t think so,’ says Father Christmas. ‘But most people keep quiet about the fact that they work up here... it means they don’t have to deal with a load of questions about the inmates.’

Jan notices that a smaller door next to the wide gate has opened. Someone is now standing there waiting for him: a man in his forties with thick brown hair and round, gold-framed glasses. From a distance he looks a little bit like John Lennon.

Lennon was shot by Mark Chapman, Jan thinks. Why does he remember that? Because the murder brought Chapman worldwide notoriety overnight.

If Alice Rami is in St Patricia’s, what other celebrities might be locked up in there?

Forget about it, says a voice inside his head. And forget about Lynx too. Concentrate on the interview.

The man waiting in the doorway is not wearing a white coat, just black trousers and a brown jacket, but it is perfectly obvious who he is. Dr Högsmed adjusts his glasses and gazes over at Jan. The assessment has already begun.

Jan looks at the taxi driver one last time. ‘Will you tell me the name now?’

‘What name?’

Jan nods in the direction of the concrete wall. ‘The name of the hospital... What do people call it?’

Father Christmas doesn’t answer immediately; he merely smiles with satisfaction at Jan’s curiosity. ‘St Psycho’s,’ he says eventually.

‘What?’

The driver gestures towards the wall. ‘Say hello to Ivan Rössel for me... He’s supposed to be in there.’

The window is wound up and the taxi pulls away.

2

As he walks over to Dr Högsmed and shakes his hand, Jan works out that it is no ordinary barbed wire that surrounds St Patricia’s psychiatric hospital — it is electrified. The strands of wire form an electric fence a metre high right on top of the wall, with glowing red diodes flashing on each post.

‘Welcome.’ Högsmed looks at him through his spectacles, without a trace of a smile. ‘Did you have any trouble finding your way here?’

‘No, not at all.’

The concrete wall and the electric fence remind Jan of some kind of old-fashioned zoo, a tiger enclosure perhaps, but on the gravel to the right of the gate he spots a little bit of everyday life: a bicycle rack, with ladies’ and men’s bicycles in a row, kitted out with baskets and reflectors. One of them even has a plastic child seat on the back.

The steel door clicks and is slid to one side by invisible hands.

‘After you, Jan.’

‘Thank you.’

Walking in through a prison gate is like taking the first steps into the mouth of a pitch-black cave. An alien, isolated world.

The door slides shut behind them. The first thing Jan sees is a long, white surveillance camera, with the lens pointing straight at him. The camera is fixed to a post next to the door, silent and motionless.

Then he sees another camera on another post closer to the hospital, and yet more attached to the building itself. A yellow sign by the road carries the warning CCTV CAMERAS IN OPERATION 24 HOURS.

They walk past a car park festooned with several more signs: one of them says AMBULANCES ONLY, another POLICE VEHICLES ONLY.

Now he is inside the wall, Jan can see the hospital’s entire pale-grey façade. It is five storeys high, with long rows of narrow windows. Strands of some kind of ivy are creeping around the windows on the ground floor, like big hairy worms.

Jan feels slightly claustrophobic out here, trapped between the wall and the hospital. He hesitates, but the doctor leads the way, walking purposefully.

The path ends at a second steel door. It is closed, but the consultant swipes his magnetic card and waves to the nearest camera; after approximately thirty seconds, the lock clicks open.

They enter a smallish room with a glassed-in reception area, and yet another camera. The place smells of cleaning fluid and wet concrete — the floor has just been mopped. A broad-shouldered shadow is sitting behind the dark glass.

A security guard. Jan wonders if he is armed.

The thought of violence and guns makes him listen out for any noise from the patients, but they are probably too far away. Locked up behind steel doors and thick walls. And why should he be able to hear them? They’re hardly likely to be bellowing or laughing or hammering on the bars with metal mugs. Are they? Their world is more likely to consist of silent rooms, empty corridors.

The doctor has asked a question.

Jan turns his head. ‘Sorry?’

‘Your ID,’ Högsmed repeats. ‘Did you remember to bring it with you?’

‘Of course...’ Jan rummages in his jacket pocket and holds out his passport. ‘There you go.’

‘You hang on to it,’ says Högsmed. ‘Just open it at the page with your personal details and hold it up in front of this camera.’

Jan holds up his passport. The camera clicks and he is registered.

‘Good. We just need to take a quick look inside your bag as well.’

Jan has to unzip his bag and take out the contents in front of Dr Högsmed and the guard: a packet of tissues, a waterproof jacket, a folded newspaper...

‘All done.’

The doctor waves to the guard behind the glass, then leads Jan through a big steel archway — it looks like a metal detector — and on to another door, which he unlocks.

It seems to Jan that the air grows colder and colder as they make their way further into the hospital. After three more steel doors they are in a corridor which ends in a plain wooden door. Högsmed opens it. ‘So, this is where I hang out.’

It’s just an ordinary office. Most of the items in the doctor’s room are white, from the walls to the framed diplomas hanging next to the bookshelves. The shelves are also white, just like the piles of paper on the desk. There is only one personal possession on display: a photograph on the desk shows a young woman who looks tired but happy, holding a newborn baby in her arms.

But on the right-hand side of the desk Jan notices something else: a pile of assorted headgear. Five items, all well worn. A blue security guard’s hat, a white nurse’s cap, a headteacher’s black mortar board, a green hunting cap and a red clown’s wig.

Högsmed indicates the pile. ‘Choose one if you like.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I usually let my new patients choose one of the hats and put it on. Then we talk about why he or she chose that particular hat, and what it might mean... You’re welcome to do the same, Jan.’

Jan reaches out his hand. He wants to choose the clown’s wig, but what does that symbolize? Wouldn’t it be better to be a helpful nurse? A good person. Or a headteacher, who represents knowledge and wisdom?

His hand begins to tremble slightly. In the end he lowers it. ‘I think I’ll pass.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well... I’m not a patient, after all.’

Högsmed gives a brief nod. ‘But I could see you were thinking of choosing the clown, Jan. And that’s interesting, because clowns often have secrets. They hide things behind a painted smile.’

‘Oh?’

Högsmed nods again. ‘John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer, used to do voluntary work as a clown in Chicago before he was arrested; he liked performing in front of children. And of course serial killers and sex offenders are children in a way; they see themselves as the centre of the world, and have never grown up.’

Jan doesn’t say any more, he just tries to smile.

Högsmed stares at him for a few seconds, then he turns and points to a pine chair in front of the desk. ‘Take a seat, Jan.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘I know I’m a doctor, but please feel free to call me Patrik.’

‘OK... Patrik.’

Jan thinks this sounds wrong. He doesn’t want to be on first-name terms with the doctor. He sits down, lets his shoulders drop and tries to relax, glancing quickly at the senior consultant.

Dr Högsmed seems young to be in charge of an entire hospital, but he doesn’t look too good. His eyes are bloodshot. Once he is seated behind his desk, he quickly leans back in the ergonomic office chair, takes off his glasses and opens his eyes wide, staring up at the ceiling.

Jan wonders what on earth Högsmed is up to, then he sees that the doctor has taken out a little bottle of eye drops. He squeezes three drops into each eye, then shuts them tight for a moment.

‘Keratitis,’ he explains. ‘Doctors can be ill too; people sometimes forget that.’

Jan nods. ‘Is it serious?’

‘Not particularly, but my eyeballs have felt like sandpaper for the last week.’ He leans forward, trying to blink away thin tears, before putting his glasses back on. ‘As I said before, welcome to St Patricia’s, Jan. I assume you know what the locals call this place?’

‘I don’t think I...’

The consultant rubs his right eye. ‘Down in the town... the nickname people have come up with for St Patricia’s?’

Of course Jan found out the name only a few minutes ago; it was going round and round in his head when he walked in, along with the name of the murderer Ivan Rössel, but still he looks around as if the answer might be written on the walls. ‘No,’ he lies. ‘What do they call it?’

Högsmed looks slightly strained. ‘I’m sure you already know.’

‘Maybe... The taxi driver mentioned something on the way here.’

‘Did he indeed?’

‘Is it... is it St Psycho’s?’

The doctor gives a quick nod, but still seems disappointed with the answer. ‘Yes, that’s what some outsiders call it. St Psycho’s. Even I have heard the name a couple of times, and I don’t always...’ Högsmed breaks off and leans forward slightly. ‘But those of us who work here never use that term. We use the correct name: St Patricia’s Regional Psychiatric Hospital — or just “the hospital” if we’re short of time. And if you are employed here, I would insist that you use one of those terms.’

‘Of course,’ says Jan, meeting Högsmed’s gaze. ‘I’m not keen on nicknames either.’

‘Good.’ The doctor leans back in his chair. ‘And you wouldn’t be working inside the hospital anyway, if you get the job. The pre-school is separate from the hospital.’

‘Oh?’ This is news to Jan. ‘So it’s not in this building?’

‘No. The Dell is a completely separate building.’

‘But what do you do with... with the children?’

‘What do we do with them?’

‘When they come here, I mean. How do they get to spend time with... with their mother or father?’

‘We have a visitors’ room. The children come in through a sally port.’

‘A sally port?’

‘There’s an underground corridor,’ says Högsmed. ‘And a lift.’

He picks up several sheets of paper from the desk. Jan recognizes them: his application form. Attached is a printout from the criminal records bureau, showing that Jan Hauger has never been convicted of any kind of sexual offence. Jan is used to requesting this proof from the police; it is always required when someone applies to work with children.

‘Now let’s see...’ Högsmed screws up his red eyes and slowly begins to leaf through the form. ‘Your CV looks excellent. You worked as a classroom assistant in Nordbro two years after you left grammar school, then you qualified as a pre-school teacher in Uppsala, and you’ve had several temporary posts at various nurseries and pre-schools in Gothenburg. You’re currently unemployed, it seems, and still living there.’

‘I’ve only been out of work for a couple of months,’ Jan says quickly.

‘But you’ve had nine temporary posts in six years. Is that correct?’

Jan nods without speaking.

‘And nothing permanent so far?’

‘No,’ says Jan, pausing for a moment. ‘For various reasons... I’ve usually been covering for someone on maternity or paternity leave, and naturally they’ve always come back to work.’

‘I understand. And this is also a temporary appointment, of course,’ the doctor says. ‘Until the end of the year, in the first instance.’

Jan can’t ignore the faint implication that he is a restless person. He gestures in the direction of his CV. ‘The children and the parents always liked me... And I’ve always had good references.’

The doctor carries on reading, and nods. ‘So I see, they’re excellent... from your last three employers. They all recommend you without hesitation.’ He lowers the papers and looks at Jan. ‘And what about the others?’

‘The others?’

‘What did the rest of your employers think? Were they unhappy with you?’

‘No. No, they most certainly were not, but I didn’t want to include every single positive—’

‘I understand,’ the doctor interrupts. ‘Too much praise starts to look suspicious. But is it OK if I give them a call? One of the nurseries you worked at in the early days?’

The doctor suddenly seems alert and curious; his hand is already resting on the telephone.

Jan sits there in silence, his mouth half-open. It’s all down to the hats, he suspects — he refused Högsmed’s psychological test. He wants to shake his head, but his neck won’t move.

Not Lynx, he thinks. You’re welcome to call the others, but not Lynx.

He finally manages to move his head to indicate his assent. ‘That’s fine,’ he says, ‘but unfortunately I don’t have the numbers.’

‘No problem — they’ll be on the internet.’ Högsmed casts a final glance at the list of Jan’s former employers, then keys in a series of letters on the computer.

The name of one of the nurseries from the early days. But which one? Which one? Jan can’t see, and he doesn’t want to lean across the desk to find out if it’s Lynx.

Why did he include it in his CV?

Nine years ago! Just one mistake with one child, nine years ago... Is all that business going to be dragged up again?

He breathes calmly, his fingertips resting gently on his thighs. It’s only lunatics who start waving their arms around when they’re under pressure.

‘Excellent, there’s the number,’ Högsmed murmurs, blinking at the screen. ‘I’ll just give them a call...’

He lifts the receiver, keys in half a dozen numbers and glances over at Jan.

Jan tries to smile, but he is holding his breath. Who is the doctor calling?

Is there anyone left from his time at Lynx — anyone who still remembers him? Anyone who remembers what happened in the forest?

3

‘Hello?’

Someone has answered the phone; the doctor leans forward across the desk. ‘Patrik Högsmed, senior consultant at St Patricia’s Hospital... I’m looking for someone who used to work with Jan Hauger. That’s right, H-A-U-G-E-R. He was with you on a temporary basis eight or nine years ago.’

Eight or nine years ago. Jan lowers his head when he hears those words. In that case it has to be one of the nurseries in Nordbro. Either Little Sunflowers or Lynx. Jan left the town where he grew up after that.

‘So that was before your time, Julia? OK, but is there anyone who was there when... Excellent, if you could put me through to the person who was in charge back then... yes, I’ll hold.’

The room falls silent again, so silent that Jan can hear a door closing somewhere down the corridor.

Nina. Jan suddenly remembers that the person in charge at Lynx was called Nina Gundotter. Strange name. He hasn’t thought about Nina for many years — he has pushed all his memories from Lynx into a bottle and buried it.

The white clock is ticking away on the wall; it is quarter past two now.

‘Hello?’

Someone is speaking to the doctor, and Jan digs his fingers into his thighs. He holds his breath as he listens to Högsmed once more introducing himself and explaining his reasons for ringing.

‘So you do remember Jan Hauger? Excellent. What can you tell me about him?’

Silence. The doctor glances briefly at Jan, and carries on listening.

‘Thank you,’ he says after thirty seconds. ‘That’s very helpful. Yes, of course I’ll pass on your regards. Thank you very much indeed.’

He replaces the receiver and leans back. ‘More positive comments.’ He looks encouragingly at Jan. ‘That was Lena Zetterberg at the Little Sunflowers nursery in Nordbro, and she had nothing but good things to say about you. Jan Hauger was enthusiastic, responsible, popular with both parents and children... Top marks.’

Jan begins to smile again. ‘I remember Lena. We got on very well.’

‘Good.’ The doctor gets to his feet and picks up a plastic folder from the desk. ‘Let’s head over to our own excellent pre-school... You do know that we use the term pre-school these days, Jan?’

‘Of course.’

Högsmed holds the door open for Jan.

‘The term nursery has become just as outmoded as playschool,’ he says, before adding, ‘And it’s the same with psychiatric terms; they lose their acceptability over the years. Words such as hysteric, lunatic and psychopath... They are no longer used. We don’t even talk about sick or healthy people at St Patricia’s, we simply refer to functioning or non-functioning individuals.’ He turns to Jan. ‘Because who amongst us can say that we are always healthy?’

A difficult question, and one to which Jan does not reply.

‘And what can we really know about one another?’ the doctor goes on. ‘If you were to meet a man walking along this corridor, Jan, could you tell if he was good or evil?’

‘No... but I suppose I would assume that he wished me well.’

‘Good,’ says Högsmed. ‘Trusting others is mostly a matter of how secure we are in ourselves.’

Jan nods and follows him through the hospital.

Högsmed is ready with his magnetic card once more. ‘This is actually the quickest way to the pre-school,’ he explains as he unlocks the door. ‘You can go through the hospital basement, but it’s a tortuous and not very pleasant route, so we’ll go back out through the gate.’

They leave the hospital the same way they came in. As they pass the security guard’s office Jan glances at the thick safety glass and asks quietly, ‘But some of the patients here must be dangerous, surely?’

‘Dangerous?’

‘Yes — violent?’

Högsmed sighs, as if he is thinking of something tedious. ‘Well, yes, but they’re mostly a danger to themselves. Occasionally they might be violent towards others,’ he says. ‘There are of course certain patients who have destructive impulses, antisocial men and women who have done what you might call bad things...’

‘And can you cure them?’ Jan asks.

‘Cure is a big word,’ says Högsmed, looking at the steel door in front of him. ‘Those of us who are therapists do not attempt to enter the same dark forest in which the patients have lost their way; we stay out in the light and try to entice the patients to come to us...’ He falls silent, then continues: ‘We can see patterns in the behaviour of those who have committed violent crimes, and one common denominator is childhood trauma of various kinds. They have often had a very poor relationship with their parents, with frequent instances of abuse and lack of contact.’ He opens the outer door and looks at Jan. ‘And that is why we run this particular project, the Dell. The aim of our little pre-school is to maintain the emotional bonds between the child and the parent who is a patient here.’

‘And the other parent agrees to these visits?’

‘If they themselves are well. And still alive,’ Högsmed says quietly, rubbing his eyes. ‘Which isn’t always the case. We are not usually dealing with socially stable families.’

Jan refrains from asking any more questions.

Eventually they are back outside in the sunshine again. The doctor blinks in pain at the bright daylight.

They walk towards the high wall. It hadn’t occurred to Jan before, but the air seems so pure on this autumn day. Dry and fresh.

‘After you, Jan.’

The gate in the wall slides open and Jan steps out. Out into freedom. That’s actually the way it feels as he stands there in the street, even though he could have left the hospital whenever he wanted to, of course. No guards would have tried to keep him there.

The steel gate closes behind them.

‘This way,’ says Högsmed.

Jan follows him, gazing across towards the outskirts of the town to the south. Beyond a wide, freshly ploughed field he can see several blocks of small terraced houses. He wonders what the owners of those houses think about the hospital.

Högsmed also glances across at the houses, as if he can hear what Jan is thinking. ‘Our neighbours,’ he says. ‘In the past the town wasn’t quite so extensive, of course, so the hospital was more isolated out here. But we have never had any problems with protests or petitions, unlike some other psychiatric units. I think the families over there know that our operation is secure... that the safety of all concerned is our number-one priority.’

‘Has anyone ever escaped?’

Jan realizes this is a provocative question.

But Högsmed raises his forefinger to indicate the number one. ‘Just one patient during my time here. It was a young man, a sex offender, who had managed to build a rickety structure out of fallen branches in one corner of the grounds. He simply climbed over the fence and disappeared.’ Högsmed looks over towards the houses again and goes on: ‘The police picked him up in the park that same evening, but by then he’d already made contact with a little girl. Apparently they were sitting on a park bench eating ice cream.’ The doctor looks up at the electric fence on top of the wall. ‘Security was tightened up after that, but I’m not convinced that anything nasty would have happened. Sometimes those who run away seek out children simply because they are looking for security. They are small and frightened inside.’

Jan says nothing, he simply keeps on walking along the track in front of the wall. He has guessed correctly; they are heading towards a wooden building north of the hospital. The Dell.

The wall curves away before they reach the Dell, crossing a grassy area before it disappears behind the hospital. There is only a low fence around the pre-school. Jan can see several swings, a red playhouse and a sandpit, but no children. Presumably they’re indoors.

‘How many children do you have here?’ he asks.

‘About a dozen,’ says Högsmed. ‘Three of them are staying here on a permanent basis at the moment, for various reasons. Six or seven come during the day. Then there are a few more whose attendance is more sporadic.’ He opens his folder and takes out a sheet of paper. ‘We do have a small number of rules when it comes to dealing with the children. Perhaps you could read through them now.’

Jan takes the sheet of paper; he stops by the gate leading to the pre-school, and begins to read:

There is a dotted line at the bottom of the page, and when Jan looks up he sees that Högsmed is holding out a pen.

He takes it and signs his name.

‘Good,’ says Högsmed. ‘As I said, I thought it was best if you had a look at it before we go in. All pre-schools have their own rules and regulations, after all. You’re used to that, no doubt?’

‘Absolutely.’

But Jan has never come across any of these rules before. And the order from those in charge at the hospital is crystal clear:

Keep quiet about St Psycho’s.

No problem. Jan has always been good at keeping secrets.

Jan had started work at the Lynx nursery when he was twenty years old, the same hot summer when Alice Rami’s debut album came out — the two events were linked in his mind. He had bought her record when he spotted it in a shop window; he took it home and played it over and over again. Rami and August was the title of the album, but August wasn’t a person’s name; it was her band, which consisted of two guys playing drums and bass guitar. There was a picture of them with Rami, two guys with black spiky hair on either side of her angel-white head. Jan looked at the picture and wondered if either of them was her boyfriend.

The following day he bought a cheap portable CD-player so that he could listen to Rami on his way to work at the nursery. The shortest route was through a dense coniferous forest; he ambled along the paths listening to her whispering voice:

Other texts were about power, darkness, drugs and moon shadows. Jan listened and listened all summer until he knew the words by heart; he felt as if Rami was singing to him. Why not? She even had a song on the album with the name ‘Jan’ in it.

In the middle of August a number of new children started at the nursery. One of them was special. A little boy with blond, curly hair.

Jan was standing by the entrance to Lynx when the boy appeared. He actually saw the boy’s mother first; Jan thought he recognized her. A celebrity or an old acquaintance? Perhaps it was just that the mother looked older — between thirty-five and forty, quite old to have a child at nursery.

Then Jan caught sight of the boy — small and as thin as a rake, but with big blue eyes. Five or six years old. He had golden-blond hair, just like Jan had had at his age, and he was wearing a tight red jacket. He walked towards the nursery holding his mother’s hand, but they went past Lynx and headed for the door leading to Brown Bear.

He thought they were an ill-matched pair: the mother was tall and slim, dressed in a light brown leather jacket with a fur collar, while her son was so small he barely came up to her knees. He was having to trot along with short, scampering steps just to keep up with his mother’s strides.

The boy’s outdoor clothes looked inadequate in the autumn chill. He could do with new ones.

Jan had opened the door of Lynx, on his way into the warmth with half a dozen children in front of him, but he stopped and watched when he saw the mother and child. The boy kept his eyes fixed on the ground, but the mother gave Jan a passing glance and an impersonal nod. He was a stranger to her, an anonymous classroom assistant. Jan nodded back and remained in the doorway long enough to see them walk up the slope and open the door to Brown Bear.

On the outside of the door was a dark-brown bear cut out of chipboard, and on the door Jan had just opened was a yellow lynx. Two forest carnivores. Ever since he had started at the nursery the previous summer, Jan had thought the names sounded wrong; after all, bears and lynx were no ordinary animals. They were predators.

The boy and his mother had disappeared. Jan couldn’t stand here in the doorway, he had work to do. He went to join his own group of children, but he couldn’t forget the brief encounter.

The registers for all the nursery classes were held on the computer, and before Jan set off home accompanied by Rami’s music, he sneaked into the office to find out what the new boy at Brown Bear was called.

He found the name straight away: William Halevi, son of Roland and Emma Halevi.

4

‘Coffee, Jan?’ asks Marie-Louise.

‘Yes please.’

‘A drop of milk?’

‘No thanks.’

Marie-Louise is the supervisor at the Dell. She is between fifty and sixty years old, with light-grey curly hair and deep laughter lines around her eyes; she smiles a great deal and seems to want everyone around her to feel comfortable, whether they are big or small.

And Jan actually does feel comfortable. He doesn’t know what he expected the pre-school to be like, but in here there is no hint of the high concrete wall just a few metres away.

After St Patricia’s bare corridors and Högsmed’s white office, Jan has entered a rainbow world where vibrant children’s drawings cover the walls, where green and yellow wellingtons are lined up in the entrance hall, and where big boxes in the playroom overflow with cuddly toys and picture books. The air in here is slightly warm and heavy, just as it always is in a room where children have been playing.

Jan has been in many bright and clean pre-schools over the years, but the Dell made him feel calm as soon as he walked in. There is harmony in this little place — it feels cosy.

At the moment it is very quiet, because the children are having their nap in the snuggle room. This means that all the staff are free to meet.

There are three younger colleagues at the table with Marie-Louise. Two of them are women. Lilian, who has dark-red hair piled on top of her head, is about thirty-five. She has a sorrowful look in her eyes which she tries to hide; Lilian talks a great deal, moves nervously and laughs just a little too loudly. Hanna, who has straight blonde hair, is perhaps ten years younger; she is wearing a white blouse and pink jeans. Pretty blue eyes; she doesn’t say much.

Lilian and Hanna are not alike, but they do have one interest in common. In the middle of their coffee break they go outside for a cigarette just on the other side of the fence surrounding the Dell; they seem to be very close. Lilian whispers something and Hanna nods.

As Marie-Louise looks out of the window at the two smokers, a small furrow appears between her eyebrows. Then they come back inside, and she is smiling again.

Marie-Louise smiles even more frequently at the fourth employee: Andreas. He doesn’t smoke, he just takes snuff, and with his broad shoulders he looks more like a builder than a classroom assistant. There is something reassuring about Andreas; nothing seems to bother him.

Dr Högsmed is also sitting at the kitchen table. He began by introducing Jan, referring to him as ‘the male candidate’ — which gave away the fact that there was at least one other person under consideration for the post — but since then he has left the staff to do the talking.

But what can they talk about? Jan has just read the rules and regulations, and has no intention of breaking them, not today. So he can’t ask any questions about the hospital, and he can’t talk about the children. He searches for a topic of conversation. ‘Who was St Patricia?’ he asks eventually.

The doctor looks at him. ‘A saint, of course.’

‘But what did she do? Where did she live?’

The only response is silence and shaking heads.

‘We don’t have much to do with saints here,’ says Högsmed with a grim smile.

The room falls silent again, so Jan asks Marie-Louise about working hours.

‘The Dell is staffed around the clock at the moment,’ she replies. ‘We have three children who don’t have placements in foster care for the time being, so they are staying here overnight.’ She pauses. ‘Would that be a problem for you, Jan, having sole responsibility for the children overnight?’

‘Not at all.’

There is a tentative tapping on the kitchen window next to Jan, and when he turns his head he sees that it has begun to rain. Soon heavy drops are spattering against the glass. Beyond the curtain of rain he can just make out the wall and the hospital. He gazes out at the hospital until Lilian asks a question:

‘Do you have any family, Jan?’

That’s a new question. Is Lilian particularly interested in families? He gives her an involuntary smile. ‘My younger brother is studying medicine in London, and my mother lives up in Nordbro. But I’m not married... and I don’t have any children of my own.’

‘What about a girlfriend?’ Lilian says quickly.

Jan slowly opens his mouth, but Marie-Louise leans forward, her expression slightly troubled, and says quietly, ‘That’s personal, Lilian.’

Jan notices that neither Lilian nor Hanna is wearing a ring on her left hand. He shakes his head briefly. No. That could mean either that he’s single, or that he doesn’t want to answer.

‘So what do you do in your spare time, Jan?’ The question comes from Dr Högsmed this time.

‘Oh, this and that,’ he replies. ‘I’m interested in music, I play the drums a bit... and I enjoy drawing.’

‘And what kind of thing do you draw?’

Jan hesitates before replying — this is also beginning to feel rather personal. ‘I’m working on a kind of comic strip... An old dream project.’

‘I see... Is it for a magazine?’

‘No. It isn’t finished, far from it.’

‘You’ll have to show it to the children,’ says Marie-Louise. ‘We read to them a lot.’

Jan nods, but he doubts whether pre-school children will want to read his comic-strip story about the Secret Avenger. There is too much hatred in it.

Suddenly they hear a muted cry from the snuggle room. Marie-Louise stiffens, Andreas turns his head.

‘That sounds like Matilda,’ he says quietly.

‘Yes,’ Marie-Louise agrees. ‘Matilda dreams a great deal.’

‘She’s got a vivid imagination,’ Lilian says. ‘She’s always making up stories.’

That is all Jan hears them say about any of the children. They sit in silence around the table; it is as if they are waiting for more cries from the snuggle room, but nothing happens.

Högsmed rubs his eyes and looks at his watch. ‘OK, Jan, perhaps you’d like to be heading home?’

‘Yes... it’s probably time.’ He understands the hint — the doctor wants rid of him. He wants to hear what the staff think of the male candidate.

‘I’ll be in touch, Jan — I’ve got your phone number.’

Jan says his goodbyes, with a friendly smile and a firm handshake for everyone.

Outside the autumn rain has passed.

There is not a soul in sight by the wall as he walks out through the gate of the Dell. But St Patricia’s itself looks almost alive; the rain has darkened the façade, and the hospital looks like a great stone colossus, looming over the pre-school.

Jan stops and gazes over at the hospital. At all those windows. He is expecting someone to show themselves — a head moving behind the bars, a hand placed against a pane of glass. But nothing happens, and eventually he begins to worry that one of the guards will spot him and think that a lunatic is standing there staring at the place. He sets off, with a final glance at the little pre-school.

St Patricia’s enormous wall is eerily fascinating, but he must stop thinking about it. He must concentrate on the Dell, the little wooden building with its sleeping children.

Pre-schools are like oases of tranquillity and security.

He really wants the job, even though he is still feeling tense following Högsmed’s scrutiny. The hat test. And even worse, the phone call to his former employer.

But what happened at Lynx is not going to happen at the Dell. He had been young then, a twenty-year-old classroom assistant. And totally off balance.

5

After the heavy rain, the autumn air in Valla is cold and fresh. The town looks as if it is contained within some kind of cauldron; it lies below Jan as he walks back through the residential areas, across the railway and down into the centre where the streets are full of pensioners and teenagers. The young people are standing outside the shops, the elderly are sitting on benches. He sees dogs on leads and small groups of birds gathered around the rubbish bins, but very few children.

The next train to Gothenburg leaves in an hour, so Jan has plenty of time to stroll around. For the first time he wonders what it would be like to live in Valla. Today he is a visitor, but if he gets the job he will have to move here.

As he is walking down Storgatan his mobile suddenly rings. A chilly breeze is blowing up the street; he shelters by a wall and answers.

‘Jan?’ The voice is croaky and weak: his elderly mother. She goes on immediately: ‘What are you doing? Are you in Gothenburg?’

‘No, I’ve been... I’ve been for a job interview.’

He has always found it difficult to tell his mother what he is doing. It has always felt too personal.

‘A job interview, that sounds good. Is it in town?’

‘No, a little way out.’

‘Well, I mustn’t disturb you...’

‘It’s OK, Mum. It went well.’

‘And how’s Alice?’

‘Fine... she’s fine. Still working.’

‘It would be lovely if you came up here some time. Both of you.’

Jan doesn’t reply.

‘A bit later in the autumn, perhaps?’ his mother suggests.

There is no hint of criticism in her voice, as far as Jan can tell; just the quiet wistfulness of a lonely widow.

‘I’ll come up soon,’ Jan promises, ‘and I’ll... I’ll check with Alice.’

‘Lovely. And good luck. Remember you have to be happy with your employer as well.’

Jan says a quick thank you and ends the call.

Alice. He happened to mention her name to his mother at some point, and slowly she has taken shape and become his girlfriend. There is no Alice in his life, of course, she was just a dream, but now his mother wants to meet her. Eventually he will have to tell her what the situation really is.

He carries on wandering around the centre of Valla and sees lots of imposing shop windows, but no church. And no churchyard either.

There is a very good local-history museum by the river, with a little café. Jan goes in and buys a sandwich. He sits down by the window and gazes out towards the bus station.

He doesn’t know one single person in Valla — is that frightening or liberating? On the plus side, a stranger can start a completely new life, and choose which details to share if someone should ask where he comes from. The fewer answers the better. He doesn’t need to say a word about his former life. Not a word about Alice Rami.

But it is thanks to his adoration of her that Jan is sitting here.

He first heard about St Patricia’s Hospital at the beginning of June, when his last temporary post at a pre-school in Gothenburg was just coming to an end. It was quite an enjoyable evening; he was almost feeling happy.

He was the only man in a group of women, as usual. His colleagues invited him out for a meal to thank him for his work, and he accepted. Afterwards he did something he had never done before — he asked them back to his small apartment in Johanneberg, a cramped one-room flat which he had taken on as a sublet.

What could he offer them? He rarely drank alcohol; he couldn’t really cope with the taste.

‘I think I might have some crisps at home if you’d like to come back with me.’

His five colleagues were delighted, but Jan had already begun to regret the invitation as he led them up the stairs and unlocked the door.

‘I’m afraid it’s not very tidy...’

‘That doesn’t matter!’ they shouted, giggling and tipsy.

Jan let them in.

His diary was hidden in a desk drawer, along with his drawings of The Secret Avenger. So he had nothing else to hide, apart from the pictures of Alice Rami. If he had known about this visit he would probably have hidden those too, but as his colleagues walked in they saw the framed record sleeve in the hallway, of course, plus a concert poster in the kitchen, and the big poster that had been given away with a music magazine ten years ago, pinned up next to the bookcase.

It was a black and white picture of Rami, standing on a little stage with her electric guitar, legs apart, her spiky hair illuminated by the spotlights, the rest of the band like blurred ghosts behind her. Her eyes were closed, she was twenty years old, and she looked as if she was growling into the microphone. It was the only pin-up of her he had ever found, which was why he had kept it all these years.

One of his colleagues, a few years older than Jan, stopped to look at it. ‘Rami?’ she said. ‘Do you like her?’

‘Sure,’ said Jan. ‘Her music, I mean... Have you heard her sing?’

His colleague answered, her eyes fixed on Rami, ‘I used to listen to her when the first album came out, but that was a long time ago. She never released a follow-up, did she?’

‘No,’ Jan said quietly.

‘And now they’ve put her away.’

Jan looked at her. This was news to him. ‘Put her away? What do you mean?’

‘She’s in some kind of mental hospital. St Patrick’s, on the west coast.’

Jan held his breath. Alice Rami in a mental hospital? He tried to picture it.

Yes, he could see it. ‘How do you know?’ he asked.

His colleague shrugged her shoulders. ‘I heard it somewhere a few years ago, I don’t really remember... it was just gossip.’

‘Do you know why... Why she ended up in there?’

‘No idea,’ she said. ‘But I assume she must have done something stupid.’

Jan nodded without speaking.

St Patrick’s Hospital. He wanted to ask more questions, but didn’t want to appear obsessed with Rami. From time to time over the years he had joined various forums on the internet to search for news of Rami, but had never found anything. This was the best lead so far.

Then nothing happened; the summer drifted by and Jan drifted along with it, out of work. For several weeks he’d been scanning the local ads for jobs in pre-schools in Göteborgs-Posten and had found quite a few to apply for.

Then at the beginning of July the ad from the Dell had appeared. It was very similar to all the rest, but it was the address of the contact person that made Jan cut it out: Dr Patrik Högsmed, Admin Department, St Patricia’s Regional Psychiatric Hospital in the town of Valla, just an hour by train from Gothenburg.

Jan read the advert over and over again.

A pre-school at a psychiatric hospital?

Why?

Then he remembered the rumour: Alice Rami was supposed to be locked up in ‘St Patrick’s Hospital, on the west coast’. St Patrick could be a distortion of St Patricia.

That was when he sat down and picked up the phone to call Dr Högsmed.

Jan had already applied for a dozen jobs at pre-schools in and around Gothenburg, without success. He might as well apply for one more.

6

Jan’s telephone rings at quarter past eight on the following Thursday morning, while he is lying in bed. He crawls out and answers; there is a male voice on the other end.

‘Good morning, Jan! Patrik Högsmed at St Patricia’s here. Did I wake you?’ The doctor’s voice is full of energy.

‘No... it’s fine.’

His own voice is hoarse and slow; he slept heavily, with weird dreams. Was Alice Rami in them? There was definitely a woman, wearing a dark fur coat and standing on a stage, she had climbed into a big box...

The doctor brings him back to the present. ‘I just wanted to let you know that we had a little chat after you left the day before yesterday, the staff at the Dell and I. It was a very productive discussion. Then I went back to the office and gave the matter some thought, and had a word with the hospital management. And now we’ve made our decision.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘So I was wondering if we could go over the terms of your contract now? With a view to you starting work here next Monday?’

Life can change so quickly. A day later Jan is back in Valla, his new home town. But he has no home here yet, so this afternoon he is gazing into a narrow hallway full of furniture and cardboard boxes. He is looking at a flat in a big apartment block, north of the town centre and to the west of St Patricia’s.

A silver-haired old lady in a grey cardigan picks her way through the piled-up boxes; she is so small that they seem to be looming over her.

‘Most of the people who live here are getting on a bit,’ she says. ‘Hardly any families with children, so there’s no noise.’

‘Good,’ says Jan, making his way into the apartment.

‘The rent as a sublet is four thousand one hundred,’ the old lady says, looking sideways at Jan with a slightly embarrassed expression. ‘I’ve hardly added anything to the original rent, so there’s no point in haggling... but it is fully furnished.’ ‘OK.’

Fully furnished? Jan has never seen so much furniture in one flat. Chairs, cupboards and chests of drawers are piled up along the walls. It looks more like a storage facility than a home, and in a way that’s exactly what it is. The furniture and the boxes belong to the woman’s son, who is living in Sundsvall at the moment.

Jan opens a kitchen cupboard and sees rows and rows of bottles on the shelves — rum, vodka, brandy and various liqueurs. All empty.

‘Those aren’t mine,’ the old lady says quickly. ‘The last tenant left them behind.’

Jan closes the door.

‘Is there a loft?’

‘The grandchildren’s bikes are up there. So, are you interested?’

‘Yes. Maybe.’

He has already checked with the housing department in Valla; there are no empty apartments this month, and the waiting time for a rental contract that isn’t a sublet would be at least six months. Under TO RENT in the local paper there was nothing but this furnished three-room flat.

‘I’ll take it,’ he says.

After a late lunch that same day he catches the train back to Gothenburg, picks up his old Volvo from the garage and buys a few cardboard packing cases. Over the weekend he loads his own furniture on to a trailer and drives it to the local tip. Jan is almost thirty, but he owns very little, and feels an attachment to even less. There is a kind of freedom in not having too many possessions.

He moves into the three-room apartment and stows away as many of the old lady’s boxes as possible; he tries to hide all the rubbish in the wardrobes and behind the sofa. Now he has a home of sorts.

He has brought with him his drawing board and the comic strip he calls The Secret Avenger, which is almost two hundred pages long. He has been working on it for fifteen years, but promises himself that he will finish it here in Valla. The finale will of course be a major apocalyptic battle between the Secret Avenger and his enemies, the Gang of Four.

Monday 19 September is a beautiful autumn day; the sun is shining on the trees and streets, and on the big concrete wall surrounding St Patricia’s. At quarter past eight Jan passes through the gate for the second time and meets Dr Högsmed by the security guard’s office in reception.

They shake hands. The doctor’s eyes are clear now. Sharp. ‘Congratulations, Jan.’

‘Thank you, doct— Patrik. Thank you for having confidence in me.’

‘It’s not a question of confidence. You were the best candidate.’

They walk through all the locked doors, meet the head of human resources, and Jan signs his name on various documents. He is a part of the hospital now.

‘Right, that’s it,’ says Högsmed. ‘Shall we head over to your new place of work, then?’

‘Excellent.’

They make their way out of the gate and into the road, but Jan can’t help looking sideways at St Patricia’s.

Högsmed gives him a short lecture: ‘The institution was built at the end of the nineteenth century. Initially it was meant for those who were retarded, to use the terminology of the day, and later it became a mental hospital where compulsory sterilization and lobotomies were carried out on a regular basis... but of course it’s been refurbished since then. Modernized.’

Jan nods, but as they move away from the wall he can see the barred windows again. He thinks about Rami, then about the name the taxi driver mentioned: Ivan Rössel, the serial killer.

‘Are all the patients on the upper floors?’ he asks. ‘Or are they in different parts of the hospital?’

Högsmed raises his hand to stop Jan. ‘We never discuss the patients.’

‘I understand that,’ Jan says quickly. ‘I don’t want to know anything about a particular individual; I was just wondering how many patients there are?’

‘About a hundred.’ The doctor walks on in silence for a few seconds, before continuing in a slightly gentler tone of voice: ‘I know you’re curious about what goes on inside St Patricia’s — it’s only human. Not many people have been anywhere near a psychiatric hospital.’

Jan remains silent.

‘There’s only one thing I can say about what we do,’ the doctor goes on. ‘It’s nowhere near as dramatic as people think. It’s business as usual almost all the time. Most of the patients have suffered serious mental disturbances, with various kinds of trauma and obsessive-compulsive disorders. That’s why they’re here. But’ — Högsmed holds up a finger — ‘that doesn’t mean that the hospital is full of bellowing lunatics. The patients are often calm and completely capable of interaction. They know why they’re here, and they’re... well, almost grateful. They have no desire to escape.’ He falls silent, then adds, ‘Not all of them, but the majority.’

He opens the little gate leading to the pre-school.

‘I can tell you one final thing about the patients: a number of them have been involved in various kinds of substance abuse, and for that reason there is a strict ban on drugs on the wards.’

‘Does that include medication?’

‘Medication is another matter; that’s all controlled by the doctors. But people can’t be allowed to start self-medicating. And we also have restrictions when it comes to using the telephone and watching TV.’

‘So all entertainment is banned?’

‘Absolutely not,’ says the doctor as they approach the nursery door. ‘There’s plenty of paper, pens and pencils for those who want to write or draw, there are radios and lots of books... and we have a great deal of music.’

Jan immediately thinks of Rami with her guitar.

Högsmed goes on: ‘And, of course, if the patient is a parent, we encourage regular contact with the child. Both the patients and their children need security and routine. This is often something they have lacked earlier in life.’

The doctor opens the door and holds up his index finger one last time. ‘Fixed routines are critical in life. So you are doing a very important job here.’

Jan nods. An important job with fixed routines.

He can hear the sound of cheerful shouts and laughter through the open door, and he strides purposefully into the classroom.

He is feeling good now; he is calm. Jan always feels good when he is about to meet children.

Jan used to have an apartment a few kilometres from the Lynx nursery, west of Nordbro town centre. There was an extensive park between the area where he lived and the nursery itself — several kilometres of coniferous forest, with rocks and low hills around a big lake with plenty of birds, all of which created the illusion of wild, remote countryside. He usually cycled to work, but whenever he had time he would walk through the forest, and sometimes he went for walks there when he wasn’t working. He got to know the paths and tracks, and sometimes he turned off to climb on to an area of flat rock, gazing out at the lake and the birds.

One autumn morning as he was strolling to work he discovered the old bunker.

It had been cut into a hillside, with a view across the water. No paths or tracks ran past it, and at this time of year it was very difficult to spot; it resembled nothing more than a large heap of earth, hidden by branches and needles and sycamore leaves. But the rusty metal door stood invitingly ajar as Jan walked by, and it made him stop and scramble up the bank to take a closer look.

He leaned forward; it was pitch dark inside. The walls seemed to be a good twenty centimetres thick. The cement floor looked dry, so he got down on all fours like a potholer and crawled inside. The internal space was bigger than the concrete shell, as it had been dug out of the hillside.

Someone had been enjoying themselves in there, but not recently. Yellowed newspapers and empty beer cans lay tossed in one corner, but apart from that the place was completely empty. There were actually a couple of windows, Jan noticed, but they were no more than long, narrow gaps just below the ceiling, almost completely blocked by earth and leaves. He guessed that the bunker had been used by the army as some kind of observation post — a relic of the Cold War.

He crawled back outside and stood on the slope. He listened. The wind was soughing gently in the trees. There was no sign of anyone at all.

Down below the bunker there was a flat, level expanse of gravel, partly covered by grass and undergrowth. There were no metal tracks, but it could have been the remains of an old railway line that had run along here decades earlier. Perhaps it had been used while the bunker was being built.

Jan clambered down and headed south. The gravelled track led to a narrow gap between two huge rocks. At the end of this gap there was a rusty gate; it was closed, but Jan managed to get it open. He walked up a gentle slope and found himself overlooking the lake about half a kilometre away, and suddenly he knew where he was. The children from Lynx had come up here on a little excursion last summer, just after he started work. No doubt they would be coming here again.

He stopped and thought.

The forest was dense here, but Jan found a path and walked a few hundred metres until he saw the nursery and the green fence surrounding the playground. The early birds from Lynx and Brown Bear were already there, playing outside. He saw little William Halevi sitting at the top of the climbing frame, raising his arms to show everyone that he was brave enough to let go.

William was a courageous boy; Jan had noticed this when the two groups were playing together. In spite of the fact that he was small and skinny, he would always climb the highest and run the fastest.

Jan looked at William, and thought about the bunker in the forest.

And that was how it began; not as a fully fledged plan to lure away a child in the forest, but mostly as a mind game. A pastime which Jan kept to himself.

7

‘THIS IS THE timetable, Jan,’ says Marie-Louise, pointing to the fridge door. ‘We have to stick to these times every day. Sometimes we deliver a child to the hospital when we go to collect one of the others.’

He looks at the piece of paper. It shows a series of names, dates and times relating to handovers in the coming week.

At the top it says Leo: Monday 11–12. Then Matilda: Monday 2–3, and Mira and Tobias: 3–4.

It’s only quarter to nine at the moment.

‘We go with them,’ says Marie-Louise, ‘and we collect them. There are also special occasions when the other parent comes to visit, and in that case they go up together.’

Jan nods. The other parent. She is talking about the mother or father who is free. The one who isn’t locked up.

He has met several of them already; they have popped into the cloakroom to deliver the children who do not live at the Dell. But are they the children’s biological parents, or foster parents? Jan is not allowed to ask, of course. They are all neatly dressed men or women from the age of about thirty upwards. Some looked as if they might be pensioners.

He has stood in the cloakroom with Marie-Louise welcoming the children one by one. All the children who will be at the Dell today have arrived; there are eleven of them.

When children are dropped off there can sometimes be despair and lots of tears, as Jan well knows, while the parents can be exaggeratedly cheerful and talkative in order to hide their anxiety or embarrassment at having to leave their children. But here at the Dell the adults seem somehow subdued. Perhaps it is because of the concrete wall — the shadow of St Psycho’s falls over everyone at the pre-school.

And the children? They are quite shy, for the most part. They smile and whisper and stare at the new person standing next to their teacher, wondering who he is. During all the years he has spent in various pre-schools, Jan has encountered almost exclusively children who are curious and wide-eyed. Children are subdued only when they are really ill. Unlike adults, they can never hide how they are feeling.

‘Unfortunately you’ve missed our feelgood session today,’ says Marie-Louise when she has finished showing Jan around.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s something we do together as a team on Mondays. We just sit down for fifteen minutes and talk about how we’re feeling.’ She smiles at him. ‘But you’ll get the chance to join in next Monday.’

Jan nods without saying anything. He doesn’t want to think about how he’s feeling.

‘So,’ says Marie-Louise, ‘are you ready to start work?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Good.’ She smiles again. ‘I was thinking we might have story time.’

Jan has the honour of choosing a book from the boxes in the playroom, and he pulls out a slender volume from somewhere in the middle: Emil in the Soup Tureen.

‘Story time!’

Jan sits down on a chair by the wall in the playroom, and the children stop playing and settle down on little stools in a higgledy-piggledy semi-circle. They are curious about him, but still quite wary. He understands them.

‘OK, do you remember my name?’

No one speaks.

‘Does anyone remember?’

The children stare at him in silence.

Eventually a little girl with only one front tooth whispers, ‘Jan.’

She is sitting slightly closer to him than the others. Matilda — that was her name, wasn’t it? She looks about five years old, with a centre parting and long, pale-blonde plaits.

‘That’s it — my name is Jan Hauger.’ He holds up the book. ‘And this is Emil — Emil from Lönneberga. Have you seen him before?’

Several of the children nod; he is starting to connect with them.

‘Have you heard the story about the time when Emil got his head stuck in the soup tureen?’

‘Yeees...’

‘Have you heard it lots of times?’

‘Yesss!’

‘Oh, so maybe you don’t want to hear it again?’

‘Yes we do!’ they shout.

Jan smiles at them. All your troubles disappear when you look into the eyes of a child. They absorb all the light in the world, and it shines out of them. He opens the book and begins to read.

The morning passes. Routines are important at the Dell. Marie-Louise seems to want as much order as possible, and the children feel the same. After story time everyone goes out to play. The children put on their coats and boots and go out into the playground, inside the metre-high fence. Almost half the group want to play tag, and Jan has to chase them. The last trace of shyness disappears, and they scream with fear and excitement as he chases them around the sandpit and the playhouse. The playground is not large, but it is very green; shrubs and grass are still growing in the mild autumn weather, and there is no tarmac and hardly any gravel in sight.

Jan can now see the hospital complex from a new angle. There is no wall at the back of St Patricia’s, just a five-metre chain-link fence with a network of electrified wires right at the top.

‘Chase me! Chase me!’

Jan carries on playing. He raises his arms like a real monster, chasing all the children who want to be chased. They hide behind the playhouse, and he creeps around pretending he can’t find them — until he suddenly rounds the corner and bellows like a troll, ‘Boo!’

It’s fun; he is just as happy out here as in the playroom, but suddenly he turns to look towards the hospital — and realizes that someone is standing there staring.

Jan stops dead, and his smile disappears.

A tall, thin old woman is standing behind St Patricia’s fence, dressed in a black coat. Skinny white legs are visible below the coat. She has a rake in one hand, and there is a pile of leaves at her feet. The other hand is clutching the mesh of the fence.

The woman is staring straight at Jan. Her face is pale, but her eyes are almost as dark as her clothes. Her expression is filled with sorrow, or perhaps hatred — it’s impossible to tell.

‘Jan?’

He gives a start and turns around; Marie-Louise is calling to him from an open window.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s almost time for Leo to go over to the hospital; I thought you could come with me so that you can see what we do. Would you like to do that?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Jan nods to her. Marie-Louise closes the window, and he glances over at the hospital again. But the woman behind the fence has disappeared. Only the pile of leaves remains.

The routines continue. The children come inside, take off their coats and boots and go straight to the playroom, where they sit down with a variety of games. Jan has always been fascinated by how disciplined small children can be when they know what they are supposed to do.

When everyone is settled, Marie-Louise looks at the clock. ‘Time to go.’

She takes a magnetic key card out of a cupboard in the kitchen and leads the way to the cloakroom.

‘Leo!’ she shouts. ‘Time to go!’

Beside the coat hooks there is a white door that Jan has not noticed up to now — or at least it hasn’t occurred to him to wonder what lies beyond it.

Marie-Louise swipes the card and keys in a four-digit code, three — one — zero — seven, and the white door opens. ‘My birthday,’ she says. ‘July thirty-first.’

Jan can see a steep stone staircase beyond the door. Marie-Louise switches on the light and turns around, holding out her hand and smiling. ‘Right then, Leo — shall we go and see Daddy?’

Leo hasn’t been playing outside. He is barely five years old; a slight child with skinny legs, dressed in little blue dungarees. He takes Marie-Louise’s hand and walks down the stairs with her, one step at a time. Jan follows in silence.

‘Could you close the door, Jan?’

The shouts and joyful laughter from the pre-school are cut off abruptly. The staircase is as silent as the grave. The walls seem to be made of the same material as the wall surrounding the hospital; any sound is muted down here.

Leo’s little legs plod on down the stairs. Marie-Louise doesn’t speak either; there is a palpable seriousness in the air.

After twenty steps they reach the basement level, and set off along an underground corridor with a concrete floor which is covered in a thin blue carpet. But someone has spent time trying to make the corridor look pleasant: the walls are painted a sunny yellow, and adorned with brightly coloured pictures.

Jan sees that they are pen and ink drawings. He couldn’t have drawn them — they are too cheerful. Laughing mice swimming in a pool, elephants smoking great big pipes, walruses playing tennis.

It feels as if the animals are in the wrong place down here.

‘Here we are,’ Marie-Louise says all of a sudden. ‘We’ve arrived, Leo!’

They have walked some fifty metres and are deep underground now, presumably beneath the hospital itself. To the right there is a white-painted lift door with a narrow pane of glass. But the corridor does not end here; it continues straight on for another eight or ten metres, then turns sharply to the right.

Marie-Louise opens the door of the lift for Leo, and he toddles inside.

Jan also takes a step forward, but she shakes her head. ‘Leo wants to go up on his own,’ she says. ‘The children are allowed to do that if they want to.’

Jan nods. He feels tense, but he had hoped to get as far as the visitors’ room. ‘But we do go up with the children sometimes?’

‘Oh yes,’ says Marie-Louise. ‘You and the child make that decision together.’

When the door is open Jan catches a brief glimpse of the lift. He sees a small metal chamber with two buttons marked UP and DOWN, next to another card reader and a red panic button. CCTV cameras? He can’t see any on the walls or ceiling.

Marie-Louise steps into the lift, swipes her magnetic card and presses the button marked UP. ‘Bye then, Leo!’ she shouts as she closes the door. ‘See you soon!’ Her voice sounds even more exuberant than usual, as if she is trying to chase away a sudden twinge of unease.

Jan catches sight of Leo’s little face looking out of the narrow window. Then the lift makes a clicking sound and begins to move upwards.

‘OK, that’s it, we can head back,’ says Marie-Louise. Her voice sounds calmer now, and she goes on: ‘Someone needs to collect Leo in an hour — perhaps you could do that on your own, Jan?’

‘No problem.’

‘Good.’ Marie-Louise smiles at him. ‘I’ll set the little alarm clock in the kitchen to remind you when it’s time. They send the children down from the visitors’ room on their own dead on the hour, so it’s important that we’re here.’

They go back up the staircase, open the door and they are in the cloakroom once more.

Marie-Louise cups her hand around her mouth and shouts, ‘Time for our fruit, everyone!’

Some of the children pull a face at the word fruit, but most come running, some of them pushing and shoving to get there first. Always a battle.

Everything is just the way it usually is in a pre-school.

But Jan looks at the moving hand on the wall clock several times. He can’t help thinking about little Leo, all alone with his locked-up daddy.

8

There are no CCTV cameras at the Dell, which is a good thing of course. But Jan can’t see a television either.

‘A TV? No, we only have a radio in here,’ Marie-Louise says seriously. ‘If we had a TV we’d soon end up with a whole pile of cartoons the children would want to watch, and a passive child is an unhappy child.’

The children are having great fun in the playroom; they have laid out the thick crash mats on the floor and are pretending to be shipwrecked sailors drifting along on rafts. Jan joins in the game; it feels good after his subterranean trip.

He spots a notice in Marie-Louise’s neat handwriting up on the wall. The children can’t read yet, of course, but it appears to be meant for them:

Lilian is also playing with the children; they leap from mat to mat in order to escape from the sharks swimming in the sea. Just like Jan she joins in the game wholeheartedly, but from time to time he sees a shadow of sorrow pass across her face when she looks at the children.

After a while they sit down on one of the crash mats to recover; he wants to ask her if something is wrong, but Lilian gets in first: ‘Are you settling in OK, Jan?’

It sounds as if she really cares.

‘In Valla, you mean?’ Jan needs to think about what he’s going to say. ‘Yes, although of course I’ve only just moved here. But it seems like a good place... Lovely surroundings.’

‘What do you do in the evenings?’

‘Not much... I listen to some music.’

‘Haven’t you got any friends here?’

‘No... not yet.’

‘Well, why don’t you come down to Bill’s Bar?’ says Lilian. ‘It’s by the harbour, there’s a good house band...’

‘Bill’s Bar?’

‘I hang out there all the time,’ says Lilian. ‘There are usually a few people from St Patricia’s there too. You’ll get to know plenty of new people at Bill’s.’

Should Jan start going to the pub and being sociable? He’s never done it before, but why not? ‘Maybe,’ he says.

They carry on playing with the shipwrecked children until Jan hears the shrill sound of the alarm clock in the kitchen. Good, he has been waiting for it.

He collects the magnetic card, opens the basement door and heads down the stairs and along the corridor alone.

Nothing is moving down there. The pictures on the wall are still there, hanging in straight lines.

It is five to twelve and the window in the door of the lift is still in darkness; Leo has not been sent down yet.

Jan stops. Go up in the lift, he thinks. Go up and have a look around inside St Psycho’s.

But he stays where he is, waiting for the lift for a minute or so, then he looks over towards the other end of the corridor. Over towards that sharp bend to the right. He is a little curious about what there might be around that corner. Another way into the hospital?

The lift has still not appeared, so Jan walks away slowly. He’s just going to have a quick look to see where the corridor goes.

Around the corner the corridor continues for a little distance, and ends at a massive steel door. It is firmly closed, and has a long iron handle. Jan reads the words SAFE ROOM on a white sign next to the door. And underneath it says: This door must be kept locked at all times!

A safe room — Jan knows what that is. It’s like an underground bunker.

A picture of little William comes into his mind, but he pushes it away and reaches for the iron handle.

It moves. It seems possible to open the door.

But at that moment there is a clicking sound in the corridor behind him. The lift door. Jan quickly lets go of the handle and hurries back.

Leo has been sent down via the sally port. He is trying to push open the heavy door, but can’t quite manage it.

Jan helps him. ‘Have you had a nice time, Leo?’

Leo nods without speaking; Jan takes his hand and they set off back towards the Dell.

‘I think it’ll be sing-along time soon. Do you like singing, Leo?’

‘Mm.’

Perhaps it is Jan’s imagination, but Leo seems a little more subdued than he was before his visit to see his father. Otherwise he looks exactly the same. No bleeding scratches on his face, no ripped clothes. Of course not — why shouldn’t he look the same?

They have reached the foot of the staircase leading up to the Dell. Jan is ready with the magnetic card, but glances at Leo one last time and decides to risk asking a question: ‘Was it nice seeing Daddy today?’

‘Mm.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘We talked,’ said Leo. There is a brief silence, then he goes on: ‘Daddy talks a lot. All the time.’

‘Oh?’

Leo nods again and sets off up the stairs. ‘He says everybody hates him.’

9

During his first week at the Dell, Jan works from eight until five every day. And every evening he goes home to his dark apartment. He’s used to it, he’s always come home to a silent apartment, but this one isn’t even his. It doesn’t feel like home.

Sometimes in the evening he sits down at his drawing board and continues working on the Secret Avenger’s struggle against the Gang of Four, but if he is tired he just flops down in front of the TV and stays there.

During the day he learns the names of the children, one by one. Leo, Matilda, Mira, Fanny, Katinka, and so on. He gets to know which ones are chatty and which ones are quieter, which ones get cross when they fall over and which ones start crying if someone happens to bump into them. Which ones ask questions and which ones listen.

The children have so much energy. When they’re not under orders to sit still during assembly, they’re always on the move, always heading off somewhere. They crawl, they run, they jump. Out in the playground they dig in the sandpit, climb and swing — and want to join in everything.

‘Me too! Me too!’

The children fight for space, for attention. But Jan makes sure that no one is excluded from a game, that no one is nudged out of the group and ends up on their own, as he often did.

The group of children at the Dell feels harmonious, and it is easy to forget their proximity to St Psycho’s — until the alarm clock rings in the kitchen and someone has to be taken to or collected from the lift beneath the hospital. But the trips along the underground corridor also become routine, in fact — although Jan does keep a slightly closer eye on Leo, whose father sounds somewhat paranoid.

On Wednesday morning the children go for a little outing into the forest which rises up behind the grounds of the hospital. They put on yellow high-visibility vests over their coats and go out of the gate in a crocodile. Many pre-schools insist that the children hang on to loops attached to a rope when they go on a trip, but here they favour the old method: the children hold hands, two by two.

Excursions into the forest always make Jan feel slightly tense, but he wanders along with Marie-Louise and Andreas between clumps of wilting bracken behind the school. They are very close to St Patricia’s as they follow this little path — the fence is no more than ten metres away.

Marie-Louise leans towards him. ‘We need to make sure the children don’t get too close to the fence.’

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

Marie-Louise looks worried. ‘It could trigger the escape alarm. There’s a whole load of electronic stuff buried by the fence.’

‘Electronic stuff?’

‘Yes... some kind of motion sensors.’

Jan nods, looking over at the fence. He can’t see any sensors, but notices that the fir trees have been planted very close together just inside the fence, perhaps to stop anyone looking in. Beyond the trees he can just catch a glimpse of gravel paths and a couple of low buildings inside the complex — yellow wooden structures that look quite new. Nothing is moving over there.

He suddenly remembers the woman in black, the woman he saw by the fence on Monday. Her dark eyes made him think of Alice Rami, but Rami is the same age as him, and the woman in black looked twice as old.

The children don’t seem remotely interested in the fence; they lumber along in their thick autumn clothes, hand in hand, concerned only with what there is to see straight ahead of them on the path: ants, tree roots, odd bits of rubbish and fallen leaves.

There is a dull, rushing sound up ahead; it is a wide stream, full of swirling black water. It runs along the back of the hospital grounds like a moat, then curves away to the south and disappears along the fence. Jan wonders if the patients find the sound of the water calming.

The children tramp across a little wooden bridge with railings, then they head off upwards into the forest.

‘Oh look!’ It’s little Fanny, three years old and right at the end of the line; she has let go of her friend’s hand and stopped to stare at the ground beside the path. She is gazing at something that is growing there.

Jan stops too, and takes a closer look. Among the leaves beneath the tall trees he can see something that resembles little pink fingers, pushing their way up out of the ground. ‘Oh yes...’ he says. ‘I think it’s a kind of fungus. Pink coral fungus. It looks like fingers.’

‘Fingers?’ says Fanny.

‘No, they’re not real fingers.’

Fanny tentatively reaches out towards the slender pink fungi, but Jan stops her. ‘Leave it, Fanny. I think they’d rather grow in peace... and sometimes they can be poisonous.’

The girl nods and quickly forgets about the fungus as she sets off to catch up with the others.

Jan watches her until she reaches her friends.

He breathes out and thinks of the children at Lynx, although he doesn’t want to. A child can be lost in no time; all it takes is for the path to disappear between two big fir trees, and suddenly you can’t see them any more.

But today there is no danger. The children from the Dell stick close together, the oak trees and birch trees are not as dense as in a coniferous forest, and of course the children are wearing their high-visibility vests, glowing bright yellow among the trees.

Marie-Louise keeps the group together by talking to the children. She points out different kinds of leaves and bushes and explains what they are called, and asks every child a question.

But eventually she claps her hands. ‘OK, play time! But stay where we can see you.’

The children quickly disperse. Felix and Teodor start chasing one another, Mattias runs after them, stumbles over a tree root and falls over, but quickly gets back on his feet.

Jan wanders among the trees, looking around and constantly counting the luminous jackets to make sure no one goes missing. He’s on the ball, keeping an eye on things.

As he moves further away he hears laughter echoing through the forest and catches the odd glimpse of yellow between the trunks. Then he sees Natalie, Josefine, Leo and little Hugo standing in a huddle staring down at the path. Josefine and Leo are holding sticks and poking at the ground. When they spot Jan, they stiffen and smile, looking slightly embarrassed. Josefine meets Leo’s eye, and they start to giggle. Suddenly they drop the sticks and race off, shrieking and laughing, heading into the undergrowth.

Jan goes over to see what they were playing with.

Something tiny. It looks like a little grey-brown scrap of material on the path. But it’s a wood mouse. It is lying among the leaves with its mouth open, gasping for breath: it is dying. The soft, silky fur is flecked with blood. Jan realizes that the children were poking holes in it as part of their game.

No, not a game. A sadistic ritual, to experience the feeling of power over life and death.

Jan is on his own, he has to do something. He gently edges the soft body off the path with his right foot and searches for a big, blunt stone. He picks it up, raises it in both hands, and takes aim.

Thou shalt not kill, he thinks, but he hurls the stone down anyway. It lands on the mouse like a falling meteorite.

Done.

He leaves the stone where it fell and rejoins the group. They are all there, and he notices that Leo is still smiling and looking pleased with himself.

After almost an hour in the forest they make their way home, back across the bridge and along the fence.

When the children are all indoors and have taken off their coats, they are sent to wash their hands, and then it’s time for Jan to accompany Katinka to the lift. She goes up to see her mother by herself.

Then it’s story time. Jan chooses to read about one of the adventures of Pippi Longstocking, which includes her assertion that a person who is really big must also be really kind.

Afterwards he asks Natalie, Josefine, Leo and Hugo to stay behind in the playroom. He gets them to sit down on the floor in front of him.

‘I saw you playing in the forest today,’ he says.

The children smile up at him shyly.

‘And you left something behind on the path... A little mouse.’

Suddenly they seem to understand what he’s talking about, what he wants. Josefine points and says, ‘It was Leo — he stamped on it!’

‘It was poorly!’ counters Leo. ‘It was just lying there on the ground.’

‘No it wasn’t, it was moving! It was crawling!’

Jan lets them bicker for a little while, then he says, ‘But now the mouse is dead. It’s not crawling any more.’

The children fall silent, staring at him.

He speaks slowly: ‘How do you think the mouse must have felt, before it died?’

No one answers.

Jan looks them in the eye, one by one. ‘Did anyone feel sorry for the mouse?’

Still no reply. Leo stares back at him with a defiant expression; the others gaze at the floor.

‘You poked that little wood mouse with your sticks until it bled,’ Jan says quietly. ‘Did anyone feel sorry for the mouse when that happened?’

Eventually the smallest child nods hesitantly.

‘OK, Hugo, good boy. Anyone else?’

After a moment Natalie and Josefine also nod, one after the other. Only Leo refuses to meet Jan’s eye now. He looks at the floor, muttering something about ‘Daddy’ and ‘Mummy’.

Jan leans forward. ‘What did you say, Leo?’

But Leo doesn’t answer. Jan could press him, perhaps even make him cry.

That’s what Daddy did to Mummy.

Is that really what Leo said? Jan thinks he might have misheard, and would like to ask the boy again. But instead he simply says, ‘I’m glad we’ve talked about this.’

The children realize they are free to go; they leap up from the floor and race out.

He watches them go — did they understand his point? He can still remember the telling-off he got from his teacher when he was eight years old; he was playing Nazis with his friend Hans and the other boys in his class. They had marched across the playground in straight lines, shouting ‘Heil Hitler!’ and feeling tough and powerful — they were actually marching in step! — until a teacher came over and stopped them. Then he had mentioned a place they had never even heard of.

‘Auschwitz!’ he had yelled. ‘Do you know what happened there? Do you know what the Nazis did to adults and children in Auschwitz?’

None of the boys knew, so the teacher had told them about the terrible journeys by cattle wagon and the gas ovens and the mountains of shoes and clothes. And that was the end of their Nazi games.

Jan follows the children out of the room; it will soon be sing-along time. Routines — he assumes there are just as many routines over at St Patricia’s. Day after day, the same thing. Fixed times, well-worn tracks.

The children were not being evil when they tortured the mouse. Jan refuses to believe that children can be evil, even if he himself used to feel like a little mouse sometimes when he was at school and came across older boys in the corridor; he never expected any mercy, nor did he receive any.

The week after Jan found the bunker in the forest he started to clean and prepare it.

He was very careful, and always waited until the sun had gone down before he left his apartment and strolled up to the hillside in the forest where the bunker was located. During the course of two weeks he went there three times with some rubbish sacks and a stiff brush concealed in a bag. He clambered up the slope, crawled into the bunker and swept the floor clean. He wanted everything out: dust, cobwebs, leaves, beer cans, newspapers.

Eventually there was nothing left inside but clear surfaces. He aired the bunker by leaving the metal door open, then took along a couple of air fresheners which he placed in the two far corners; they spread an artificial smell of roses throughout the place.

It was October now, and each time Jan went to the bunker there were more dead leaves on the ground. Slowly they piled up, making the concrete structure look even more like part of the hillside. When the door was closed and the old iron bolts had been pushed across, the bunker was very difficult to spot.

The trickiest part was trying to get the new stuff in without anyone seeing him, but he did it under cover of darkness, late at night, just as with the cleaning. He had learned to find his way through the trees to the hillside by now, and he didn’t need any light.

He had found the mattress in a skip, but it didn’t smell unpleasant, and when he got it into the forest he gave it a thorough beating to get rid of all the dust. The blankets and pillows came from a big store outside Nordbro; he had removed all the labels and washed them twice before arranging them on the mattress in the bunker.

The half-dozen toys he carried up in his rucksack came from a couple of other large stores. They were the kind of anonymous goods that were produced in factories in the Far East, and there had to be thousands and thousands of them around: a couple of cars, a cuddly lion, a few picture books.

The last item he acquired was large and quite heavy. ROBOMAN, it said on the box up on the top shelf among the fire engines, spaceships and ray guns. Remote controlled! Voice activated! Record your own messages and watch ROBOMAN move and talk!

The plastic robot could stand erect on a level floor and move its arms. Jan looked at it and tried to think his way back fifteen years to the time when he was only five — he would have thought Roboman was the best thing he’d ever set eyes on, wouldn’t he? Better than a cuddly toy, almost better than a real dog or cat?

He stole Roboman. It was a bold move, but the aisle was empty and he quickly removed the robot and the remote control from the box and dropped them into a big carrier bag from another shop. Then he walked straight out. The girl on the checkout didn’t even look at him. There was no sign of the security guard.

The robot cost almost six hundred kronor, but it wasn’t the price that made him steal it. It was the risk that the checkout girl might remember the slightly unusual purchase if the police started asking questions.

Roboman? Yes, a young man bought it. He looked nice, trustworthy, a bit like a teacher. Yes, I think I could identify him...

10

Sometimes Jan thinks the pre-school is like a zoo.

It always starts late in the day, when everyone is tired: one of the children kicks off, and the others get dragged in. It’s usually one of the boys who has some kind of manic outburst, suddenly becoming hyperactive and hurtling around the rooms, perhaps knocking down someone’s carefully constructed tower of building blocks or trampling all over someone else’s Lego house.

That’s what happens at the Dell on Friday afternoon, when Leo suddenly decides to hit Felix in the face with a cushion. Felix hits him back, roaring at the top of his voice and with tears pouring down his face. Leo starts yelling too, and all at once the entire group is filled with fresh energy; the other boys start wrestling or fighting with cushions, the girls start screaming or sobbing hysterically.

‘Quiet!’ Jan shouts.

It makes no difference. The playroom turns into a blurred mess of agitated children, jumping around and making it feel like a cramped cage.

Jan is the only adult present, and he can feel a wave of panic beginning to rise in his chest. But he puts a stop to it; he breathes in and moves to the centre of the room. Then he raises his voice like a hell-and-damnation pastor: ‘Quiet! Stop that right now!’

Most of the children stop dead, but little Leo carries on. His eyes are wide open and he is flailing around wildly with his cushion.

Jan has to move across and put his arms around him; he feels like a lion tamer. ‘Calm down, Leo. Calm down!’

The little body is struggling in his arms; Jan holds on tightly until Leo stops wriggling completely. The beast has been tamed, but afterwards Jan is exhausted.

‘I’m a bit concerned about Leo,’ he says to Marie-Louise in the kitchen later, when they are doing the dishes.

‘Oh?’

‘There’s so much anger inside him.’

Marie-Louise smiles. ‘That’s energy... He’s got enough energy for all of us!’

‘Do you know anything about his parents?’ Jan asks. ‘Are they both still alive? I think his father...’

But Marie-Louise shakes her head and dries her hands on a tea towel. ‘We don’t talk about that kind of thing, Jan. You know that.’

That evening after work Jan is sitting at home on the old sofa in front of the TV, trying to relax. But it’s difficult. His neighbour on the other side of the wall is celebrating the arrival of the weekend with an early party; Jan can hear the sound of music and clinking glasses.

His first working week at the Dell is over. He ought to celebrate, but it doesn’t feel appropriate somehow. It has passed quickly and has been easy, for the most part. He has done his best and taken his responsibilities seriously, and both the children and his colleagues seem to like him.

Jan has set up his old stereo; he puts on Rami’s album and turns up the volume to drown out the noise of the party. His old favourite comes on: the ballad ‘Your Secret Love’, where Rami sings in her whispering voice:

The song seems to Jan to be about a love which is impossible. If they ever meet again, he will ask Rami if he is right.

If they meet again — to make that happen he will have to get into St Psycho’s, perhaps through the basement. There is always a way into a building for the person who is brave enough.

He turns his back on the cramped room and looks out of the window.

There is not a soul in sight in the car park behind the apartment block, but it is full of cars. He counts eleven Volvos including his own, seven Saabs, two Toyotas and just one Mercedes. People have come home from work and gone indoors to join their families. Perhaps they are all sitting around the kitchen table, or in front of the TV. Perhaps they are busy with their knitting or their stamp collection.

But Jan is alone.

There — he has allowed himself to think the dangerous word, he has admitted his inferiority. He is alone, he is lonely.

He has no friends here in Valla. That is a cold, hard fact. He has nothing to do.

All he really wants to do is to sit here listening to Rami. But he still has boxes to unpack, and during the course of the evening he finds an old book containing drawings and newspaper cuttings. It’s his diary from when he was a teenager; he used to write in it now and again, but sometimes there would be several months between entries.

He opens the diary, picks up a pen and writes down everything that has happened over the past couple of weeks, letting it all out: the move to Valla, the loneliness, the new job, and the dream that it will lead him to Rami.

He has stuck an old photograph on the front of the book. It’s a Polaroid, slightly faded, but he can still see a blond-haired boy looking up in surprise from a hospital bed with its white sheets. It is Jan himself, aged fourteen.

11

After lunch on Saturday Jan goes down to the communal laundry room in the apartment block for the first time, and meets an old man. A white-haired neighbour whose beard is equally white is just leaving the room containing the washing machines.

Afterwards Jan realizes he should have spoken to him rather than merely nodding as the man walked past.

The man is carrying an old laundry bag over his shoulder, and as Jan glances at the fabric bag he can see that there are letters printed on it: T ICIA NDRY. There must be more letters, but they are concealed by the folds of the material.

Jan continues on into the laundry room. But suddenly his brain forms the words: St Patricia’s Laundry.

Could that possibly be right? It is too late to check — by this stage the old man has already left the cellar, the door has closed, and Jan is alone with his washing.

When all his clothes are clean and dry he goes back up to the apartment and tries to make some more room, shifting boxes out of the way, cleaning up and pushing together his landlady’s furniture. Then he eats yet another lonely meal at the kitchen table as darkness falls outside.

And after that? He goes into the living room and switches on the old TV. He sees dolphins swimming along beneath the surface of the water; it seems to be some kind of documentary. He settles down and learns that dolphins are nowhere near as nice and peace-loving as many people think.

Dolphins hunt in packs and often kill seals and other creatures, says the presenter.

Jan switches off the television after half an hour. The apartment is silent — but sounds are seeping in from elsewhere. Somewhere in the building someone is having another party. He can hear the thump of music, the loud slam of an outside door, loud voices and laughter.

Jan thinks about doing a little more drawing on The Secret Avenger; he is getting close to the end. Soon his hero must defeat the Gang of Four. Annihilate them.

The party continues, the laughter gets louder. In the end Jan puts on the stereo to drown out the noise, and gazes out of the window.

I ought to get myself a hobby, he thinks. Or join an evening class.

But what would he like to do? Learn French? How to play the ukulele?

No. After a while he switches off the stereo, puts on a black jacket so that he looks grown up, and goes out.

It is cold outside, and the street lamps have come on. It is quarter past eight. He can hear more music out here, echoing between the buildings. It’s party time — for all those who have friends.

Come down to Bill’s Bar, Lilian had said. I hang out there all the time.

Jan sets off towards the town centre. He wants to get to know his new home town, but what is there to see? Valla is a medium-sized Swedish town, with no great surprises. He passes a pizzeria, a Pentecostal church, a furniture store. A few bored teenagers are sitting around a table in the pizzeria; everywhere else is closed and in darkness.

A footbridge takes him over the motorway, and Jan is almost down by the harbour. He would really like to go down to the quayside to feel the evening breeze coming off the dark sea, but the area is barricaded with gates and a fence which is almost as high as the wall around St Psycho’s.

No, not St Psycho’s. St Patricia’s. Jan must stop using the hospital’s nickname, otherwise he’s going to end up saying it out loud sooner or later.

Beyond the fence there are a few small streets that could be regarded as the town’s harbour area, but there is nothing romantic or adventurous about them. There are just low industrial units surrounded by cracked tarmac.

But there are several cars parked in front of one of the wooden buildings on the side nearest the town, and a welcoming red sign above the entrance says BILL’S BAR.

Jan stops in front of the sign. Visiting bars isn’t something he enjoys. But even the loneliest of creatures is welcome in a bar as long as he behaves himself, so in the end he pulls open the heavy wooden door and walks in.

It is dark and hot inside; there’s the heavy beat of rock music and muted voices. Shadows moving around one another, the sense that everything could just tip over. Bars are a kind of playroom for adults only.

All good children are fast asleep by now.

Jan unbuttons his jacket and looks around. He thinks of a line from a song by Roxy Music about loneliness being a crowded room. He can’t remember when he last walked into a bar alone, because the feeling of being an outsider is always overwhelming in a room full of strangers, chatting and laughing together. Bill’s Bar is just the same. Jan doesn’t believe that everyone in there is the best of friends with everyone else, but that’s how it seems.

He pushes his way over to the bar past heavy bodies that are unwilling to move. A lot of people have gathered in front of a small stage right at the back, where a local rock band is playing.

Jan hands over a note at the bar. ‘A low-alcohol beer, please.’

The classic trick for a lonely person is to chat with the bartender, but he has already whisked away Jan’s money and moved on.

Jan takes a couple of sips and feels slightly less isolated. He has company now — a glass of beer. The drinker’s best friend. But he has hardly ever consumed alcohol, never got drunk — should he try it tonight, just to see what happens?

Nothing. Nothing would happen, apart from the fact that he would stagger home alone and feel terrible tomorrow morning. In a way you have to admire people who just get pissed and don’t give a toss about the consequences; Jan has never been able to do that. He stays in control and is never going to end up unconscious in a swimming pool, like a rock star. Or in a psychiatric unit, like Rami.

The thought of her makes him glance around the bar, wondering about the clientele. He remembers what else Lilian said about Bill’s Bar: There are usually a few people from St Patricia’s there too. Security guards and nurses, he assumes.

Jan takes another sip of his beer. He can smell perfume in the air, and suddenly realizes he is standing between two women in their mid-twenties.

Tall and attractive. Time to act like a grown-up, but he feels like a boy.

The one on the right smells of rose petals. She is wearing a black sweater, she has long brown hair and is drinking something bright yellow. Their eyes meet, but she quickly looks away.

The one on the left has drenched herself in a mandarin-scented perfume; she is wearing a yellow top and a shiny gold jacket. A golden girl. She has green eyes and is drinking perry; Jan glances sideways at her and she actually smiles at him. Why is she doing that?

She doesn’t look away, so he leans over and shouts, ‘This is my first time here!’

‘What?’ she shouts back.

Jan leans a little closer. ‘My first time here!’

‘At Bill’s?’ she asks. ‘Or in town?’

‘Both, really. I moved here a few days ago. I don’t know anybody...’

‘You soon will!’ she yells. ‘You’re going to have a brilliant time here! Loads of surprises!’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely, I can always tell that kind of thing... Good luck!’

With that she turns and disappears into the crowd, like a deer in the forest.

So that was that. A short conversation, and as usual Jan found it difficult to make small-talk with a stranger, but he feels better now. People in here are friendly.

Carry on making contact, an inner voice encourages him. He gets another beer and moves away from the music.

Most tables are fully occupied. There is no room for him to join a group. He sits down at a free table on his own, drinking his beer and staring into space.

Congratulations, your new life starts here. But of course he has thought the same thing before. You can change your job and move to a new town, but nothing changes. You are trapped in the same body, the same dross in your blood, the same memories going round and round in your head.

‘Hi Jan!’

A woman is standing in front of him; he looks up, but it takes a few seconds before he recognizes her. It’s Lilian, with a bottle of beer in her hand.

At the Dell she has looked tired and worn over the past few days, but now there is a fresh energy about her. She is wearing a black, low-cut top and her heavily made-up eyes are shining, perhaps even glittering — that bottle is definitely not her first this evening.

‘Do you like my weekend tattoo?’ she asks, pointing at her cheek.

Jan takes a closer look and sees that Lilian has drawn something: a long, black snake writhing up towards her eye.

‘Definitely.’

‘It’s not dangerous... It’s not poisonous!’

Lilian laughs, her voice slightly hoarse, and sits down uninvited at his table. ‘So you’ve found the best place in town?’ She takes a swig of her beer. ‘That was quick work.’

‘Well, you told me about it,’ says Jan. ‘Are you here on your own?’

Lilian shakes her head. ‘I was with some friends, but they went home when the Bohemos started playing.’ She nods in the direction of the band. ‘Sensitive ears.’

‘Friends from work?’ says Jan.

‘Friends from work — now who would that be?’ Lilian snorts and has another drink. ‘Marie-Louise, maybe?’

‘Does she never come here?’

‘No chance — Marie-Louise stays at home.’

‘Does she have children?’

‘No, just her husband and the dog. But then she’s everybody’s second mum, isn’t she? She’s like a mum to all the kids, and to us. Fantastic... I don’t think she’s ever had a nasty thought in her entire life.’

Jan doesn’t want to give any thought to what other people might think. ‘So what about Andreas, then?’ he says. ‘Does he go out?’

‘Andreas? Not much. He’s got a house and a garden to look after, and a little wife. They’re like a couple of pensioners.’

‘OK,’ says Jan. ‘But Hanna comes here, doesn’t she?’

‘Sometimes.’ Lilian looks down at the table. ‘Hanna’s the one I get on best with at work; you could say she’s my friend.’

There is a brief silence. The music has stopped; the Bohemos seem to have packed up for the night.

‘So Hanna is a good person?’

‘Of course,’ Lilian says quickly. ‘She’s a nice girl. She’s only twenty-six... young and a bit crazy.’

‘What do you mean, a bit crazy?’

‘In all kinds of ways. She might seem quiet and reserved, but she has a very exciting private life.’

‘With different men, you mean?’

Lilian presses her lips together. ‘I don’t gossip.’

‘But she does come here sometimes?’ says Jan. ‘To Bill’s Bar?’

‘She comes with me sometimes, but she prefers the Medina Palace.’

‘The Medina Palace?’

‘The big night club here in town. It’s almost as luxurious as St Patricia’s.’

‘You think St Patricia’s is luxurious?’

‘Absolutely — it’s a luxury hotel.’

Jan looks at her with a blank expression; he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Lilian quickly goes on: ‘Listen... Every room at St Psycho’s costs four thousand per night. Four thousand kronor! Those who are in there don’t have to pay, of course, but that’s what it costs the taxpayer. Doctors, guards, cameras, medication... it all costs money. The patients don’t know how well off they are.’

‘And you and I work there... next door to the luxury hotel.’

‘We do indeed,’ says Lilian. ‘Let’s drink to that!’

Jan carries on chatting to her for another fifteen minutes or so, then stretches and fakes a little yawn. ‘Time for me to head home, I think.’

‘One last beer?’ says Lilian, with a slow wink.

Jan shakes his head. ‘Not tonight.’

Starting to party now would be a big mistake; he will be taking on extra responsibilities next week. On Thursday he will have a timetabled evening shift at the pre-school; for the first time he will be completely alone with the children.

12

‘So how are you feeling, Jan?’ asks Marie-Louise. ‘Would you like to tell us?’

‘Of course... but there isn’t much to say, really. I feel fine.’

‘Is that all? No problems fitting in with the team?’

‘No.’ Jan looks around the table at Andreas, Hanna and Lilian. ‘No problems at all.’

‘We’re all very pleased to hear that, Jan.’

Monday’s feelgood meeting for the staff takes place before the children begin to arrive.

This is Jan’s first time. They are all looking at him, the new boy, but he finds it difficult to relax and talk at the same time.

‘This is an important job,’ he says. ‘I’m well aware of that.’

They stop staring, and a few minutes later the feelgood meeting is over. Thank goodness.

Just before story time, Jan finds a sign of life from Alice Rami. Perhaps.

Little Josefine is helping him. She was one of the children who tormented the mouse in the forest, but Jan is trying to forget that incident, along with Leo’s unsettling words about his father. And today Josefine is just like any other little girl: she is playing with a doll when Jan comes to fetch a book.

‘Is there any particular story you’d like to hear today, Josefine?’

She looks up and nods, several times. ‘The one about the lady who makes animals!’

Jan looks at her. ‘What’s it called?’

‘The Animal Lady!’

Jan has never heard of it, but Josefine goes straight over to the book boxes, rummages through them and pulls out a thin white book, about the size of an LP record. She’s right; the title is The Animal Lady.

‘OK. Fine.’

The book is similar to all the others in the box, but there is no author’s name, and the picture below the title is barely visible; it is just a faint pencil drawing of a small island and a slender lighthouse. It looks as if it is handmade; when Jan looks more closely he can see that someone has cut the pages and stuck them together with ordinary sticky tape.

He flicks through it. The text is written on the right-hand page. On the left-hand page there are pencil drawings, but like the one on the cover they are so faint they are hardly visible.

Jan is curious; he wants to read The Animal Lady. ‘Come along, everyone!’ he shouts. ‘Story time!’

The children settle down among the cushions.

Jan sits down on the chair in front of them and holds up the book. ‘Today we’re going to read about an animal lady.’

‘What does that mean?’ Matilda asks.

Jan looks to Josefine for help, but none is forthcoming.

‘Well... let’s see.’ He opens the book and begins to read:

Jan stops for a moment; he seems to think he recognizes the name Maria Blanker. But where from?

And the word Zylizylon sounds medical. Perhaps it’s some kind of medication?

He looks at the drawing. It shows a little cottage with a tall lighthouse in the background. The house is pale grey, like driftwood bleached by the sun. The lighthouse is as slender as a matchstick.

‘Don’t stop!’ shouts Josefine.

So Jan carries on:

The next picture shows the inside of the cottage: a bare room containing only a table and a chair. A skinny woman with spiky hair and a wide mouth is sitting on the chair, the drooping corners of her mouth protruding like black twigs.

The third drawing shows the thin, grey figure of the animal lady standing in front of the closed iron door of the lighthouse. The picture is so blurred that it is impossible to make out her face. Is she unhappy, or perhaps afraid?

The fourth drawing is dark. The animal lady is sleeping in a narrow bed, like a grey shadow. Above her other shadows crawl and writhe around each other as they emerge from a dark tunnel in the wall.

The atmosphere in the drawing is menacing; Jan turns the page and carries on reading:

‘I want a cushion on my tummy!’ shouts Mattias.

‘What’s a horizon?’ asks Matilda.

‘It’s where the earth ends,’ Jan says. He turns the book around — this page isn’t scary — and shows them the thin line beyond the ferry. He points to it. ‘This is what the horizon looks like. Although it’s just an illusion really; the earth doesn’t end there, it’s as round as a beach ball. You know that, don’t you? So the earth never ends, it just carries on until it comes back behind you...’

The children stare at him in silence. Jan sees that he has got himself all tied up in knots, so he carries on reading:

This picture shows Maria cowering behind closed curtains; they have a chequered pattern which makes Jan think of the barred windows at the hospital. She is pouring hot tea, steaming and bubbling, into a big cup which is all the colours of the rainbow. But what is taminal tea?

This time the drawing shows what Maria could see through her window: a little girl in a thin dress standing in front of the black door of the lighthouse. But one thing distinguishes the girl from the other children, Jan notices. She is not wearing a helmet, and there are no cushions attached to her body.

The children are as quiet as mice. The atmosphere in the room is thick with anticipation.

Jan turns the page.

Jan was expecting the children to ask what a guardian animal is — he doesn’t know either — but no one speaks.

Jan turns the page, ready to read on. He scans the first sentence: They heard a loud roar, and at long last the Great Mr Zylizylon came out of the lighthouse... But before he actually reads it out loud he notices the drawing on the left-hand page, and closes his mouth.

This drawing is clearer than the others, with long, firm pencil strokes. It shows Mr Zylizylon stepping out into the daylight.

Mr Zylizylon is a monster. He is broad and hairy, and he has a leash around his thick neck. It is made of severed human hands. The monster has raised his arms and opened his wide mouth, ready to fall on the guardian animal, which is cowering on the ground in terror.

The children are waiting for Jan to carry on reading.

He opens his mouth. ‘Then...’ He tries to think fast. ‘Then Maria the animal lady and her new friend Amelia went down to the ferry and all the children sailed away from the island. And Maria lived happily ever after in peace and quiet.’

He closes the book. ‘The end!’

But Josefine straightens up. ‘That’s not how it ends!’ she shouts. ‘The monster eats up—’

‘That’s how it ended today,’ Jan breaks in. ‘And now it’s time we had our fruit.’

The children start to get up, but Josefine looks disappointed. Jan keeps the book tucked firmly under his left arm as he hands out bananas with his right hand; when everyone is eating he slips away to the cloakroom and puts the book in his bag.

He wants to read the ending on his own. He’s just borrowing it, he’s not stealing it.

Back home that evening he flicks through The Animal Lady and looks at the words Zylizylon and taminal. Then he switches on the computer and looks them up on the internet. They both exist, and they are both drugs. Drugs that are used to suppress anxiety.

Then he thinks about the name Maria Blanker. Where has he heard it before? He gets out Rami’s only album, Rami and August, and reads through the sleeve notes. He was right. At the bottom, after the usual blurb about which musicians played on the album and who produced it, there is one more line:

Suddenly The Animal Lady feels like a book he is going to have to read over and over again, until he knows the story by heart. He puts it down in front of him on the kitchen table and stares at the cover. Then he glances over at his box of pens and pencils.

Perhaps he won’t just read it? He reaches out and picks up a Faber-Castell. A soft lead pencil. And he begins to fill in the spidery lines in the book, deepening the shadows. It feels so good that he carries on in black ink. Slowly the drawings become clearer, more detailed. The only things Jan doesn’t touch are the faces; he decides to leave them looking vague and indistinct.

The work takes up the entire evening. When the ink has dried he can’t help himself; he goes and fetches his watercolours and begins to do some careful colouring. The sky above the island becomes pale blue, the sea dark blue; Maria’s dress is white and her frog has just a hint of yellow. Mr Zylizylon remains dark grey.

By midnight Jan has finished twelve drawings. He stretches his fingers and straightens his back; he has done a good job. The Animal Lady is starting to look like a real picture book.

Gradually he has become totally convinced that it was Alice Rami, sitting in her room behind the concrete wall, who dreamed up the story of Maria and the Great Mr Zylizylon. She might not want this to happen, but he is going to help her to finish it.

The bunker was ready now, but there were still a few more things to sort out.

By the middle of October Jan had been at the nursery for almost four months, and had got to know the staff in both Lynx and Brown Bear. They were all women, and one of them was Sigrid Jansson. He knew that Sigrid was a cheerful and spontaneous classroom assistant who sometimes found it a little difficult to keep a close eye on the children. Sigrid was kind and pleasant, but her thoughts were often elsewhere. Whenever Jan spoke to her in the playground she was ready to chat, but rarely looked at the children.

At the weekly planning meeting, after the menus and cleaning rota had been discussed, he put up his hand and suggested a little excursion into the forest, a joint outing for the children in Lynx and Brown Bear. He also suggested a date: the Wednesday of the following week, when he knew that he and Sigrid would be on duty. He looked at her encouragingly across the table. ‘Shall we sort it out, Sigrid — you and me? Make packed lunches and take the children out for a couple of hours?’

She smiled at him. ‘Absolutely — brilliant idea!’

He had counted on the fact that she would react positively.

And Nina, who was in charge of the nursery, nodded her agreement. ‘We need to make sure they’re all wrapped up warmly,’ she said, writing the excursion into the timetable.

Jan smiled in turn. The bunker was now clean and well equipped; almost everything was prepared. He just needed to sort out the food.

But the next day he saw William’s mother arrive at Brown Bear to pick up her son, and something trembled inside him. She didn’t look at Jan, but he thought she seemed stressed and tired. Problems at work?

The weariness made her seem more human, and for the first time this didn’t feel like just a mind game any more. For the first time, Jan hesitated. He would be risking his job at Lynx — but then again, it wasn’t much of a job to lose. It was a temporary post, and he had less than two months left.

What was worse was the thought that he could harm a little boy, and he spent a lot of time brooding over that in the days leading up to the excursion. He made the final preparations up in the forest: he left the metal door of the bunker and the iron gate in the ravine wide open, and put up arrows made of red material, like a kind of paperchase along the hillside.

The bunker was going to feel like a hotel room — clean and cosy — and full of food and drink and toys. And lots and lots of sweets.

13

‘Jan! Jan!’ The children shout happily. ‘Over here, Jan!’

Jan really likes the children at the Dell, and they have accepted him completely. Everything feels fine.

His first late shift starts at one o’clock on Wednesday afternoon and ends at ten in the evening. It almost feels like a practice for the night shift, when he will be alone with the three children who are staying at the pre-school all the time at the moment: Leo, Matilda and Mira.

Andreas and the children are out in the playground when Jan arrives. The temperature is only six degrees today, and Andreas has a thick blue woollen scarf wound around his neck.

‘Hi there!’ He is standing there with his hands pushed down into the pockets of his jeans, steady as a rock in the autumn wind.

‘Everything OK?’ says Jan.

‘Absolutely fine,’ says Andreas. ‘We’ve been outside most of the time.’

They let the children play for another fifteen minutes or so, then they go inside where it’s warm and hand out the lunch boxes which have been prepared over in the hospital kitchen.

Andreas stays on for an extra half-hour, but Jan doesn’t want to ask why. Perhaps he’s following orders from Marie-Louise; has she asked him to keep an eye on Jan?

Eventually Andreas leaves; the sun is low on the horizon. Jan is now solely responsible for the Dell.

But everything will be fine; he will take good care of the children.

First of all he gathers them together in the playroom. ‘What would you like to do?’

‘Play!’ says Mira.

‘And what would you like to play?’

‘Safari parks!’ Matilda shouts, pointing. ‘Like over there!’

Jan doesn’t understand until he grasps that she is pointing at the window and the fence outside. ‘That’s not a safari park,’ he says.

‘Oh yes it is!’ Matilda says firmly.

She doesn’t seem to connect her visits to the hospital with the high fence, and Jan decides not to tell her that there is a link.

The most important duties during the evening shift are to serve the evening meal, make sure the children brush their teeth, and put them to bed. So Jan makes cheese sandwiches for Matilda, Leo and Mira, gets out their pyjamas and asks them to get changed. It is pitch dark outside by now; the time is half past seven. All three children are quite tired, and they scramble into their little beds in the snuggle room without protest. He reads them a bedtime story about a hippopotamus who changes places with an ordinary man and finds himself looking after the man’s little girl, then Jan gets to his feet. ‘Goodnight everyone... See you in the morning.’

He can hear suppressed giggles once he has switched off the light. He waits for a moment, wondering whether to say something, but soon everything goes quiet.

Another evening duty is to air the building, so at eight o’clock he gently closes the door of the children’s bedroom and opens the other windows wide, letting the cold evening air rush in.

Jan can hear music coming from outside, but it is not the thump of a disco beat from some party — rather the gentle, slightly melancholy sound of an old Swedish pop classic. It is coming through the window at the back of the pre-school, and when he looks out he can see a glowing dot in the shadows down below St Patricia’s. The dot is moving up and down — someone is standing outside the hospital, smoking and listening to the radio.

The hospital is not full of bellowing lunatics, Dr Högsmed had said. The patients are often calm and completely capable of interaction.

Is the smoker a patient or a nurse? Jan can’t tell in the darkness.

He closes the windows. What can he do now? He goes into the playroom to have a look through the book boxes. Josefine had taken The Animal Lady from the middle of the box on the left; Jan kneels down beside it.

The Animal Lady has provided him with a task. This morning he completed the drawings on three more pages. When it is finished he will put it back in the box — but he wonders if there are any more handmade books in there.

Slowly he goes through each box, past Pippi Longstocking and Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Right at the back he finds more thin books that look handmade; there is no author’s name on them. Jan pulls out three and reads the titles: The Princess with a Hundred Hands, The Witch Who Was Poorly and Viveca’s House of Stone.

He slowly turns the pages in each book, one by one, and sees that these too are handwritten, illustrated here and there with pencil sketches. Just like The Animal Lady, all of them seem to be sad tales about lonely people. The Princess with a Hundred Hands is about Princess Blanka, whose palace has sunk down into a bog. Blanka has managed to reach safety in one of the towers, but she has no control over anything except the hands of other people; she has to get them to do things for her.

The main character in The Witch Who Was Poorly is a sorceress sitting in her cottage deep in the forest, no longer able to cast her spells.

And the third book is about an old woman who wakes up alone in a big, dusty house, with no memory of how she got there.

Jan closes the books and puts them in his bag.

An hour later Marie-Louise arrives.

‘Good evening, Jan!’ She is wearing a scarf and a woolly hat. Her cheeks are glowing red. ‘I had to dig out my winter hat! It gets really cold once the sun has gone down.’

She has a small rucksack with her, and in the staffroom she takes out her knitting and a book entitled Develop Your Creativity. She smiles at Jan. ‘OK, I’ll take over now. You can go home and get some sleep.’

When she pulls a black-velvet eye mask out of the rucksack, Jan asks, ‘Are you going to sleep here?’

‘Oh yes,’ Marie-Louise says quickly. ‘Of course you can sleep when you’re on the night shift; that’s fine... but you’re not allowed to wear earplugs. You have to be able to wake up if anything happens.’

Jan is silent, wondering what could possibly happen, but she goes on: ‘Sometimes the children wake up and need a bit of reassurance, if they’ve had a bad dream, for example. Never anything more serious — and even that doesn’t happen very often.’

‘OK... So how long do they usually sleep?’

‘Some of them can be real sleepy-heads, but I usually get up at half past six when I’m on the night shift, and I wake them half an hour later. They have their breakfast, and the shift is over.’

Jan leaves Marie-Louise and the sleeping children. He goes out into the street and glances to the right. St Patricia’s is just over there, like a big dark aircraft hangar behind the wall.

All of a sudden he stops; someone is standing waiting ahead of him in the street, a tall, dark figure — a man in a black coat, motionless under one of the oak trees lining the pavement. The light from the street lamps barely reaches him, and Jan can see only an indistinct, pale face.

They stare at one another. Then the man moves at last, waving some kind of thin rope he is holding in his hand.

Jan realizes it is a dog lead, and almost immediately the dog itself comes trotting out from behind the oak tree. A white poodle. The man bends down, takes out a little plastic bag and carefully scoops up whatever the poodle has left on the ground. Then they continue with their walk.

Jan slowly breathes out. Get a grip, he thinks as he sets off. There are no lunatics out here on the streets, just dog owners.

The buses into the town centre don’t run at this late hour, but the night air is fresh and he enjoys the walk. It’s only fifteen minutes to his apartment block; when he gets there, most of the windows are in darkness.

My home, he thinks, but of course it doesn’t really feel like home. That will take a long time.

Then he notices someone smoking a pipe on the balcony two floors below his own. It’s the white-haired man from the laundry room, the one who was (possibly) carrying a scruffy laundry bag from St Psycho’s. The man sucks on his pipe and blows big white clouds into the darkness; he seems lost in thought.

Jan stops and raises his hand. ‘Evening.’

The man nods and coughs out another cloud of smoke. ‘Evening.’

Jan heads inside; he pauses on the second floor and sees that the sign on the right-hand door says V. LEGÉN.

Aha. So at least he knows the name of the pipe-smoker now, and which apartment he lives in.

He carries on up the stairs to the darkness of his own apartment, but he doesn’t stay in. He quickly drops off his rucksack containing the picture books, changes his jacket and goes out again.

He’s just going down to Bill’s Bar for a little while. Perhaps he’ll try to become a regular there — that’s something Jan has never been before, not anywhere.

14

‘Cheers!’ Shouts Lilian, raising her glass.

‘Cheers,’ Jan says quietly.

‘Cheers,’ says Hanna, even more quietly.

Lilian drinks the most, knocking back half the contents of her glass. ‘Do you like Bill’s Bar, Jan?’ she asks.

‘I do, yes.’

‘What do you like about it?’

‘Er... the music.’

They are talking loudly, almost the way they do to the children at the pre-school, in order to be heard above the house band. The Bohemos are made up of four youngish men in scruffy leather jackets, standing on a small raised stage. The singer’s hair is pulled back in a blond ponytail, and he delivers rock songs in a hoarse baritone. The stage is cramped, but the band manage a few simple dance steps with their guitars from time to time without bumping into one another. Even though the people in the bar chat away through most of the music, they are still generous enough to give the Bohemos a brief round of applause when each number comes to an end.

Jan prefers Rami’s whispering songs about loneliness and longing, but he still claps politely.

He raises his glass. The beer he is drinking tonight is stronger, and the alcohol has gone straight to his head like a rocket. His mind is floating free.

Right now it would be brilliant to be a regular here, but Jan doesn’t have much of a talent for finding friends in pubs. He realized this earlier in the evening when he pushed his way to the bar without making eye contact with a single person. He finds it difficult to relax in the company of adults; it’s much easier with children.

At least he got a friendly nod from the bartender when he went up for his second beer, and now his colleagues from work have joined him at his table. They just turned up and sat down: Hanna with her blue eyes, Lilian with her red hair.

Lilian empties her third glass and leans across the table. ‘Did you come here on your own, Jan?’

He thinks about quoting Rami — I am a lost soul in a desert of ice — but instead he merely smiles. Mysteriously, he hopes.

‘Oops, empty again.’ Lilian gestures in the direction of the bar. ‘Keep my seat, I’m just going for another.’

Jan and Hanna’s glasses are still half full, but when Lilian comes back she has bought them another drink too. ‘The next round’s on you!’

Jan doesn’t want to drink another drop, but he accepts the glass anyway. They carry on chatting, first of all about the Bohemos; according to Lilian they are definitely the best band in town, even if hardly anyone outside Bill’s Bar has heard of them.

‘They only play at Bill’s as a hobby,’ she says. ‘They’ve got other jobs.’

‘They work up at St Patricia’s,’ says Hanna. ‘Well, a couple of them do.’

Lilian glances at her sharply, as if she has said too much.

‘Do they?’ Jan looks over at the band with renewed interest. ‘At St Patricia’s?’

‘We don’t know them,’ Lilian says.

Jan is feeling good now; he buys the next round. And then Hanna buys three more bottles. The beer is flowing! That’s OK by Jan. After all, he can have a lie-in tomorrow, before his night shift at the Dell.

But Lilian is drinking more than Jan and Hanna put together, and her head is sagging lower and lower. Suddenly she straightens up. ‘Jan... lovely Jan,’ she says, blinking tiredly. ‘Ask me if I believe in love.’

‘Sorry?’

Lilian shakes her head slowly. ‘I don’t believe in love.’ She holds up three fingers. ‘These are the three men I’ve had in my life... The first one took two years from me, the second took four, and I married the third one. And that ended last year. So now I’ve only got my brother. Just one brother. I used to have two, but now I’ve only got one...’

Hanna leans over. ‘Shall we go home, Lilian?’

Lilian doesn’t answer; she empties her glass, puts it down and sighs. ‘OK... Let’s go home,’ she says.

Jan sees that Bill’s Bar is closing up. The music has stopped, the Bohemos have left the stage, tables are emptying around them.

‘Fine,’ he says, nodding. ‘Let’s go.’

He keeps on nodding; he realizes he’s actually drunk for the very first time, and his feet seem to have a mind of their own when he stands up. ‘I am a lost soul in a desert of ice,’ he says, but neither Hanna nor Lilian seems to hear.

The air feels like the inside of a fridge when they get out on to the street, and the alcohol hits Jan over the head like a hammer. He staggers and looks at his watch; it’s almost two o’clock. Late, very late. But he’s free until nine o’clock tomorrow evening. He can sleep all day.

Lilian looks around and spots a taxi across the street. ‘Mine!’ she screeches. ‘See you!’ She makes her way unsteadily over the road, gets into the taxi and is gone.

Hanna is still standing there. ‘Lilian lives quite a long way out... Where do you live, Jan?’

‘Pretty close.’ He raises his left arm and waves it vaguely towards the east. ‘Over there, just across the railway line.’

‘OK, let’s head over there,’ she says.

‘What, back to mine?’

She shakes her head. ‘No, just as far as the railway line. I’ll walk with you. I’m heading in the same direction.’

‘Great,’ says Jan, trying to sober up.

They set off along the pavement, side by side, and after fifteen minutes they reach the tracks running past the town centre.

‘This is where we go our separate ways.’

The sky above them is black, the railway line is empty.

Jan lowers his gaze and looks at Hanna. Her shining blue eyes, her blonde hair, her cool face. She is beautiful, but he knows he isn’t interested in her — not in that way. But he carries on staring in silence.

‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’ Hanna is asking him.

‘The worst thing?’ Jan looks at her. He definitely knows the answer. ‘I’ll have to think about that... so what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’

‘Lots of things,’ says Hanna.

‘Name one.’

She shrugs her shoulders. ‘Being unfaithful, letting friends down... The usual stuff, I suppose.’

‘Oh?’

‘When I was twenty I slept with my best friend’s fiancé, in a boathouse. She found out and broke off the engagement... but we’re friends again now. Kind of.’

‘Kind of?’ says Jan.

‘We exchange Christmas cards.’ She sighs. ‘But that’s my problem.’

‘What is?’

‘I let people down.’ She blinks and looks at him. ‘I expect to be let down, so I get in first.’

‘OK... Thanks for the warning!’

He is smiling, but Hanna isn’t. Silence falls once more. Hanna is beautiful, but all Jan wants to do now is sleep. He turns and looks over at the apartment block where he lives. No doubt they’re all fast asleep now, all those good people. Like the animals, like the trees...

‘So what about you, Jan?’

‘What?’

Hanna is staring at him. ‘Do you remember the worst thing you’ve ever done?’

‘Maybe...’

What did he actually do, that time at Lynx? Jan tries to remember. But the buildings are tilting around him and he seems to be feeling even more drunk, and suddenly the words just come out of their own accord: ‘I once did something stupid... at a nursery in my home town. In Nordbro.’

‘What did you do? What did you do, Jan?’

‘I was looking after the children, it was my first temporary post, and I made a mess of things... I lost a child.’ Jan stares down at the ground, smoothing out an uneven patch of grass with his foot.

‘You lost a child?’

‘Yes. I took a group of children out into the forest, along with a colleague... the group was much too big, really. And when we set off home we didn’t have the right number of children with us. One boy got left behind in the forest, and it was... it was partly my fault.’

‘When was this?’

Jan keeps his eyes fixed on the ground. Lynx. He remembers everything, of course. He remembers the air in the forest, just as cold as it is tonight.

‘Nine years ago... almost exactly nine years ago. It was in October.’

Don’t say any more, he thinks, but Hanna’s blue eyes are gazing intently at him.

‘What was the name of the boy?’

Jan hesitates. ‘I don’t remember,’ he says eventually.

‘So what happened in the end?’ Hanna asks.

‘He was... everything was fine. In the end.’ Jan sighs and adds, ‘But the parents were absolutely devastated, they just broke down completely.’

Hanna shrugs. ‘Idiots... I mean, it was their kid who ran off. They hand over their precious little ones and then expect us to take all the responsibility. Don’t you agree?’

Jan nods, but he is already regretting his confession. Why did he tell her about Lynx? He’s pissed, he’s a drunk. ‘You won’t say anything about this, will you?’

Hanna is still looking at him. ‘To one of the big bosses, you mean?’

‘Yes, or to...’

‘I won’t say anything, Jan. It’s cool.’ She yawns and looks at her watch. ‘I need to go home... I’ve got to get up early for work in the morning.’ She stands on tiptoe and gives him a quick hug. A little bit of warmth in the night. ‘Sleep well, Jan. See you at work.’

‘OK.’

He watches her set off towards the town centre, like a blonde dream figure. Alice Rami is also like a dream to Jan — she is just as vague and indistinct as a poem or a song. All girls are like dreams...

Why did he tell Hanna about Lynx?

Jan’s head slowly begins to clear, and with clarity comes regret.

He shakes his head and unlocks the door. Time to sleep, then work. He’s behaved like an obedient dog for two weeks, and now it’s time for his reward. A night shift all by himself up at the Dell.

15

‘This is the emergency telephone,’ says Marie-Louise, pointing to a grey phone on the wall in the staffroom, next to Jan’s locker. ‘All you have to do is pick up the receiver and wait, and it rings through automatically.’

‘Where to?’

‘To the main security office by the entrance to the hospital. They’re on duty around the clock over there, so someone will always answer.’ She gives Jan a slightly embarrassed smile and adds, ‘Sometimes it’s nice to know that there’s somebody not too far away at night... although I’m sure you’ll be fine here, won’t you?’

‘Absolutely.’ Jan nods and straightens his back so that he looks alert.

Marie-Louise runs her hand slightly nervously over her throat. ‘Obviously you must ring them if anything happens, but we’ve never needed to do that up to now...’ She quickly turns away from the emergency phone, as if she would prefer to forget about it. ‘So, any questions?’

Jan shakes his head. Marie-Louise has gone through all the routine procedures twice, so he is well prepared. And stone-cold sober. He felt quite shaky when he woke up this morning after the night in Bill’s Bar, but he’s fine now.

It is the Friday evening of his second week at the Dell, and his first night shift — his first night shift ever, in fact. He is on duty from nine thirty in the evening until eight o’clock on Saturday morning, but he has been told that he doesn’t need to stay awake all the time. There is a sofa bed in the staffroom and he can sleep all night, as long as he wakes up if one of the three children needs help or reassurance.

‘Everything seems very clear,’ he says.

‘Good,’ says Marie-Louise. ‘Did you bring your own bedlinen?’

‘I did. And my toothbrush.’

Marie-Louise smiles and seems satisfied. She has already put on her coat and her woolly hat, and she opens the door to face the darkness outside. ‘In that case I will wish you a peaceful night, Jan. Hanna will come and take over in the morning, and I’ll see you tomorrow evening. Goodnight!’

The door closes. Jan locks up behind her and looks at the clock. Twenty past ten. There isn’t a sound inside the Dell.

He goes into the staffroom and makes up the narrow sofa bed, then he has a sandwich in the kitchen before brushing his teeth.

But these are just the routine tasks he’s supposed to carry out; the problem is that he doesn’t feel the least bit tired. What else can he do? What does he want to do?

Check on the children.

Quietly he pushes open the door of the children’s bedroom, and listens to their soft breathing in the darkness. Matilda, Leo and Mira are fast asleep in their beds. Even Leo is lying completely still. According to Marie-Louise, none of the children normally wakes until it’s time to get them up in the morning.

Normally. But when is anything ever normal?

Jan leaves the door ajar and goes into the dining room at the back of the school. He stands by the window looking out, without switching on the light.

St Psycho’s is also virtually in darkness. Floodlights illuminate the fence, but the complex beyond is full of shadows. Grey shadows on the grass, black shadows beneath the fir trees. No one is outside smoking tonight.

The hospital itself looms up some forty or fifty metres away, and there are lights in only four of the windows up at the top of the building. It looks as if the light is coming from white strip-lighting in a corridor — just like the ones down in the basement.

The basement. The way into the hospital — although it isn’t really, because there are locked doors down there too. And the door to the basement is also locked, of course.

Jan thinks about that door for a while. And the underground corridor, and the sally port. Then he goes back into the kitchen and opens one of the drawers. There they are, the magnetic cards. He picks one of them up.

Can he remember the code? Of course he can, it was Marie-Louise’s birthday. He has delivered or collected a child on a dozen occasions and keyed in the code at least twenty times since he arrived at the pre-school. He taps it in again and swipes the card, and the lock clicks.

Open. So it works at night too.

The steep staircase looks like a precipice, or the mouth of a cave leading straight down into the underworld. It is dark down there, but not pitch black; a faint light is just visible along the corridor.

The light from the lift up to the hospital.

Jan hesitates and looks around furtively. The cloakroom is empty, of course — he locked the outside door when Marie-Louise went home.

He leans forward, reaches out and presses the switch. The strip-lights flicker and hum into life down below in the corridor. He can see the steep staircase clearly now, with the carpet leading towards the lift like a welcome mat. He can’t see the actual door of the lift, but if he just went down four or five steps he would probably be able to see it in the distance.

Rami, are you there?

He moves down two steps in silence, then stops with his hand clutching the rail. He listens. There isn’t a sound to be heard, neither in front of him nor behind him.

He moves down another step, then three more in quick succession. He can see the door of the lift now. The light in the little window tells him that the lift is down in the basement. It is standing there waiting for him.

One more step.

But he is finding it more and more difficult to move his legs. There is a mental barrier. He is thinking too much about the children, about Leo, Matilda and Mira; they are fast asleep in their bedroom and he is responsible for them, just as he was responsible for William nine years ago.

He can’t do this. He glances at the sally port leading to the hospital one last time, then turns and goes back up the stairs.

When he reaches the cloakroom he closes the door behind him and checks to make sure it’s locked. Then he turns off all the lights except for the nightlight in the hallway, and goes to bed. He shuts his eyes in the darkness and lets out a long breath.

But it is difficult to get to sleep. Impossible. Now it’s dark it seems to Jan that the pre-school is full of sounds. Clicking, tiptoeing, whispering... Someone is lying there in the hospital just yearning, someone who wants him to come.

Alice Rami.

Jan closes his eyes, but she is gazing at him, her eyes glowing. Come here, Jan. I want to look at you.

He’s not aware that he has fallen asleep until the alarm clock starts buzzing beside him. The display shows 06.15. It is still dark outside, but it is morning. He sees bare walls around him and realizes that he is in the little staffroom at the Dell.

Almost time to wake Leo, Matilda and Mira.

His first night shift is over, but there are many more to come, and as he gets out of bed he suddenly gets an idea about how he can go down into the basement at night without worrying about the children.

Baby monitors.

It was Wednesday afternoon, and time for the outing from the nursery. When Jan and Sigrid set off with seventeen children, the time was twenty-five past one. That meant there were at least four hours left until sunset, which left a good safety margin. The group would be back by four at the latest.

The temperature outdoors was eleven degrees today, cloudy but with no wind. As they gathered outside the gate Jan noted that Sigrid had nine children from Brown Bear with her. Little William was one of the group; he was wearing a warm, dark-blue jacket with white reflective stripes, and a bright-yellow woolly hat.

Jan had brought eight children from Lynx. The whole group was made up of nine boys and eight girls, and it was quite difficult to count them when they were all together; as usual the children got excited as soon as they left the playground, and once they moved off the path and in among the trees they became even noisier. They kept on surging back and forth between the trees, screaming and jumping and leaping on top of one another. It felt as if they might just race off in all directions at any moment.

The children should have been walking in a crocodile, holding hands, but Sigrid was busy tapping away on her mobile phone, and didn’t seem to notice how unruly the group was. Jan could see that she had received a text message with lots of exclamation marks, from a friend perhaps.

He made no real attempt to impose any order on the children. He simply shouted, ‘Come along, everyone!’ and increased his pace.

The children kept up with him, and in less than quarter of an hour they had climbed the slope and were deep in the forest. The fir trees were more tightly packed here, and the path was narrowing.

‘Do you know where we are, Jan?’ Sigrid had switched off her phone and seemed to be looking around for the first time.

‘Of course.’ He smiled at her. ‘I know my way around here pretty well. If we carry on we’ll come to a clearing soon, and we can stop for our snack.’

And he was quite right; the fir trees gave way to a large, circular glade. Once they were back in the light, the children calmed down.

Their picnic consisted of cinnamon buns and strawberry juice. The children were quite tired by this stage, and it was comparatively easy to get them to sit down and eat together. But once the food was gone they all got a fresh burst of energy, racing around in the undergrowth, pushing and shoving and shouting at one another.

Jan looked at his watch: twenty past three. He caught Sigrid’s eye and felt his heart pounding faster as he asked her, seemingly in all innocence, ‘Shall we play for a little while longer before we head back?’

Sigrid was still full of life. ‘Absolutely!’

‘Well, why don’t we split up?’ suggested Jan. ‘You play with the girls and I’ll take the boys.’

She nodded, and Jan raised his voice and shouted to the boys, ‘Playtime!’

He gathered them around him — William Halevi and the other eight.

‘Quick march!’ Like a sergeant in the marines he took command and marched the boys along the path, deeper into the forest.

16

They are small, made of white plastic, and they look just like cheap walkie-talkies. Electronic baby monitors. There are lots of different kinds, but the one Jan has chosen is called Angelguards. Guardian angels.

‘This model is actually our top seller,’ says the assistant. ‘It’s incredibly reliable, the nine-volt battery lasts for several weeks, and it transmits using a completely different frequency from mobile phones and radios. And it has an integral nightlight, which can also be used as a torch.’

‘Excellent,’ says Jan.

He is standing in a shop full of things for children: clothes, books and buggies. They sell every imaginable kind of protection and barrier and lock and alarm for little ones — ergonomic spoons and bibs that light up and little tubes to suck the snot out of a baby’s nose — but Jan is interested in only one thing: the baby monitors.

‘What’s the range?’

‘At least three hundred metres, in any conditions.’

‘Does it work through metal and concrete as well?’

‘Absolutely... Walls are no problem.’

Jan buys the Angelguards. The young sales assistant probably thinks he is yet another anxious father, because he winks at him and says, ‘These angels are set to transmit one way only, so you can hear the child, but the child can’t hear you.’

‘Brilliant,’ says Jan.

‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘Oh, both... and they’re different ages,’ Jan answers quickly. ‘I’ve got three.’

‘And they’re restless sleepers?’

‘No, no, things are usually pretty quiet, but, I mean, you want to make sure they’re safe, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’ The assistant places the Angels in a bag. ‘That will be three hundred and forty-nine kronor, please.’

In the evening Jan cycles up to the Dell with the Angels in his rucksack. He wonders whether to show them to Marie-Louise — perhaps demonstrating them with the same enthusiasm as the shop assistant — but she would probably dislike them just as much as a couple of TV screens. So when he arrives at exactly half past nine he says nothing; he simply puts his rucksack in his locker and takes over from Marie-Louise.

Matilda, Leo and Mira are fast asleep tonight too, and Marie-Louise doesn’t stay as long this time. Perhaps she is beginning to trust Jan.

‘Did you feel tired today?’ she asks.

‘A bit drowsy.’

‘But you slept well here last night?’

‘Absolutely. So did the children.’

Marie-Louise goes off to catch her bus at quarter to ten, and Jan locks the door behind her.

The door leading to the basement is also locked, he notices.

Now he is alone again, alone with the children.

A light is showing in exactly the same four windows up on the top floor of St Patricia’s as yesterday; he is certain it’s a corridor up there with lights that are left on all night, just like the nightlight at the pre-school.

He stops gazing up at the hospital; he has a lot to do tonight. He tidies up the boots in the cloakroom, he listens to the sports programme on the radio (keeping the volume very low, so as not to wake the children), then he has a sandwich and a cup of tea in the kitchen for his supper.

But all the time he is thinking about today’s major purchase: the Angels.

Shortly after eleven o’clock he takes them out of his rucksack and opens the door to the children’s bedroom, which is in darkness. The children lie motionless beneath their small duvets, and Jan moves silently into the room. He stands still in the darkness for a minute or so, listening to the faint sound of their breathing. A reassuring sound.

Then he switches on one of the Angels, the transmitter, and hangs it on a hook on the wall between Leo’s and Matilda’s beds.

Leo moves slightly and mumbles something to himself, but doesn’t wake up.

Jan creeps out of the room and switches on the other Angel, the receiver. The speaker on the front is small and round, and completely silent. When Jan holds it up to his ear, he hears nothing but a faint rushing sound. It rises and falls, like little waves gently lapping against the curve of a sandy shore. Presumably it is the children’s breathing he can hear — he hopes so.

With the Angel attached to his belt he walks around the building, making up his bed and brushing his teeth.

Of course he could always try to convince himself that he has bought the Angels to help him monitor the children when he is asleep, but at quarter to twelve he takes a key card out of the drawer in the kitchen and opens the door leading to the basement.

He switches on the light, looks down the stairs and suddenly remembers a few lines by Rami:

Jan takes one step down the stairs. He’s just going to go down and have a little look. He listens. Silence — even the Angel’s little speaker is silent.

Calmly and cautiously he walks down the stairs and into the corridor.

No cameras here. Marie-Louise said there were no CCTV cameras down in the basement. He believes her. He is invisible. Jan’s shadow glides along beneath the strip-lights, but he cannot be seen.

The brightly coloured animal pictures are still on the wall, but the one with the mice is slightly crooked. He quickly straightens it.

The lift is waiting, as if it has been summoned just for him. He stands in front of the door, thinking. What if he were to step inside, press the button and let the lift carry him upwards, straight up to the corridors of St Psycho’s?

Do they have a camera by the door of the lift up there? Maybe, maybe not. If not, he could just go up and step out, see what happens. Pretend he got lost. Or that he’s one of the patients...

But Jan doesn’t open the door. He listens to the Angel, even turns up the volume, but it remains silent. He wants to whisper a faint ‘Hello?’ into the speaker.

You can hear the child, the assistant said, but the child can’t hear you.

You can do whatever you like, thinks Jan. He walks past the lift and carries on along the corridor. He turns the corner and is faced by the second steel door, the wider one. The one that leads to the safe room.

He reaches out his hand, presses down the heavy handle — and it gives a bit. He grabs hold of it with both hands and pushes harder. Something clicks, and the heavy door is ajar: he can move it. It is stiff, but slowly it swings wide open.

The safe room inside is in total darkness. No windows.

Jan holds one arm out in front of him, cautiously feeling his way along the cold concrete wall. He takes one step into the room, still feeling his way, and eventually he finds the light switch. The strip-light on the ceiling flickers into life. He is standing at one end of a long, rectangular room, like a wide corridor — it extends some twelve or fifteen metres. This is where the patients will sit, if war comes.

Jan takes another step forward. But the next second a loud voice bounces off the bare walls.

‘Mummy?’

Jan gives a start. The metallic cry is coming from the speaker attached to his belt; it sounds like a little girl’s voice. Matilda, perhaps.

He holds his breath and listens. He doesn’t hear any more cries, just a soft scraping noise, but if the children are waking up he can’t stay down here.

His nerves are getting the better of him, but Jan ventures one last curious look at the safe room. It is almost completely empty, with a blue fitted carpet and white walls, but there is a mattress on the floor, along with a few pillows.

And on the left at the far end of the room Jan notices another wide door. It is also made of steel, and it is closed. Is it unlocked? He can’t tell.

Who is waiting on the other side? Alice Rami? Ivan Rössel, the serial killer?

‘Mummy?’ Matilda is calling out again, and Jan turns around. He quickly closes the door of the safe room and hurries back along the corridor. Right now it feels as if coming down here at all was absolutely the wrong thing to do.

Two minutes later he locks the door leading to St Patricia’s basement and goes straight to the children’s room.

Jan opens the door and listens in the darkness. All is silent once more. He tiptoes into the middle of the room and stands there for several minutes, but none of the children move. They are fast asleep. He listens to their breathing and tries to calm himself, tries to slow his own breathing to match theirs, but it is difficult.

He ought to follow their example and get some sleep. It is ten past twelve.

He will go to sleep. Otherwise the risk is that he will stay up later and later, turning the day upside down.

But he doesn’t really want to get into bed or to go to sleep. He is thinking.

It’s a mind game, which is exactly how that business with William in the forest started. Jan is thinking about how he can get into St Psycho’s, without anyone seeing him and without the children being affected.

17

The hour is late and as sluggish as treacle in Bill’s Bar, but his recent shift pattern at the pre-school has turned Jan into a night owl. On his mornings off he has slept until ten, then in the evenings stayed up until well after midnight. A new lifestyle for him, but in spite of the fact that he hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol, he is always tired.

The Bohemos have just finished playing after a whole hour of jamming, and Jan’s glass of alcohol-free beer is almost empty. At the next table two young men are energetically discussing self-defence.

‘What about a knife, then?’ one of them says.

‘A knife is a whole different ball game,’ says the other. ‘You can’t defend yourself if he’s got a knife.’

‘No, I know that, but...’

‘I mean, if you come at him with your fists he’ll just slash them to bits.’

The first man laughs. ‘In that case I’d better make sure I’ve got a sword!’

Jan doesn’t attempt to join in the conversation, he just finishes his beer. There is no sign of anyone he knows in here tonight; no Lilian or Hanna. No one. He has no friends, and he is ready to go home alone. And sleep. Alone.

Suddenly a shadow falls over his table. ‘Hi.’

Jan looks up. A man about his own age has stopped opposite him. A total stranger with black eyebrows and a blond ponytail.

No, come to think of it, Jan recognizes him — he’s one of the Bohemos. The lead singer. He’s taken off the leather jacket he always wears on stage, and is now dressed in a white cotton sweater with a towel looped around his neck. After a long evening under the spotlights both are drenched in sweat.

‘How’s things?’ he says.

Jan doesn’t quite know what to say, but opens his mouth anyway. ‘Fine.’

The singer sits down at the table. His voice is slightly hoarse after the gig, but it is warm and friendly. He wipes his forehead with one end of the towel. ‘We don’t know each other,’ he says. ‘I know that... but it’s cool.’

‘Absolutely,’ Jan answers uncertainly.

‘But I’ve seen you,’ the singer goes on. ‘Have you seen me?’

‘No... what exactly do you mean?’

‘I’ve seen you through the fence, when I’m doing my other job. You’ve started cycling to the pre-school now, haven’t you?’

Jan puts down his glass; he is slowly beginning to understand, and automatically lowers his voice. ‘So you work at St... at the hospital?’

The man nods. ‘Night security.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I work nights in the security department.’

Jan feels a shudder down his spine, and his pulse begins to race. He thinks about the underground corridor and the safe room, and suspects that he has been filmed down there. Filmed, or observed. He is waiting for a posse of guards to rush out and hurl him to the ground, grab hold of his arms, search him, interrogate him...

But the singer from the Bohemos is still sitting there smiling, apparently unconcerned. ‘I know your name is Jan,’ he says. ‘Jan Hauger.’

Jan nods. ‘And what’s your name?’

‘Rettig... Lars Rettig.’

‘Right. A bit of a coincidence, meeting up like this.’

Rettig shakes his head. ‘I know who you are. I wanted to meet you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we need help.’

‘With what?’

‘To help those who are lost.’

‘Lost?’

‘The patients in St Psycho’s... Would you like to help them feel better?’

Jan doesn’t say anything. He shouldn’t really be sitting here talking to a hospital security guard about their place of work — what happened to the confidentiality agreement? But he has begun to relax. Lars Rettig doesn’t seem to be after him.

‘Maybe,’ Jan says. ‘But what’s it all about?’

Rettig doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, as if he were planning a little speech. But then he looks around, leans forward and lowers his voice. ‘It’s about all the things we’re not allowed to do. We’re sick and tired of it.’

‘Who’s we?’

But Rettig gets to his feet without answering the question. ‘We can talk more another time. I’ll be in touch.’ He nods encouragingly, and adds, ‘You’ll help us, Jan, I just know it. I can see it in your eyes.’

‘What can you see?’

Rettig shoots him another smile. ‘That you are ready to protect the weak.’

18

All the children are walking around clutching animals. It is cuddly-toy day at the Dell, and those who don’t have a toy of their own are allowed to borrow one out of the basket. That includes the staff. So there are teddy bears and tigers and giraffes with wobbly legs in every room. Mira is carrying around a red and white striped snake, and Josefine has a pink elk.

Guardian animals, Jan thinks.

He has chosen a golden-yellow lynx. He found it in the basket, and when everyone else had taken what they wanted, he picked it up. It’s quite a shabby lynx, but at least it doesn’t smell.

‘What’s its name?’ asks Matilda.

‘This is... Lofty the Lynx, and he comes from the forest... a forest far, far away from here.’

‘So why isn’t he there any more?’ Matilda wants to know.

‘Because... he likes the children here at the Dell,’ says Jan. ‘He wants to see where you live... He wants to play with you.’

Leo is holding on to a one-eyed cat; he is clutching it so tightly that its body has become elongated and dented.

‘What’s the name of your animal, Leo?’

‘Freddie.’

‘And what kind of animal is it?’

‘Don’t know... but look!’ He holds out his small clenched fist, and opens it.

On his palm Jan sees the cat’s other eye: Leo has plucked it out.

Jan looks into Leo’s face and wonders whether it is innocence or unhappiness he sees there. Jan doesn’t know. He only knows that in some parts of the world it is not cuddly toys that children carry around, but rifles and machine guns.

How can he help the children? How can he help just one child, like Leo?

You are ready to protect the weak, the singer from the Bohemos had said. That may well be true, but there isn’t much Jan can do.

Several of the children will be visiting the hospital this Monday too. Jan has begun to learn how the children react to these interruptions to their normal daily routine. Some of them, like Mira and Matilda, are happy to be seeing their parent, and get quite giggly as their little legs scamper down the stairs to the basement. Others, like Fanny and Mattias, remain calm as they make their way to the lift without speaking.

But there are also children who are very tense when Jan goes to collect them.

Josefine, the five-year-old who found the book about the Animal Lady, probably shows the clearest indications of anxiety. She always looks a little frightened when he goes to fetch her.

‘All right,’ she says quietly when he asks her how she’s feeling.

He doesn’t believe her. Not entirely.

This Monday Josefine is due in the visitors’ room at two o’clock, and when Jan goes to pick her up from the playroom five minutes beforehand, she is busy building a Lego house.

‘OK, Josefine — time to go!’

She doesn’t respond; she just keeps on building her house.

‘Come along, Josefine!’ he says.

She still won’t look at him, but silently gets to her feet. Without protest she follows him towards the stairs. Her pink elk is tucked underneath her arm; during assembly this morning she told everyone that his name was Ziggy.

Jan looks at Josefine and the elk, and thinks once more about the guardian animals. When they reach the underground corridor he asks, ‘Do you remember that book about the Animal Lady, Josefine?’

She nods.

‘But how did you know it was in the book box?’

‘I put it there,’ she says.

‘I see... so someone gave it to you?’

‘She gave me a few.’

‘Who did?’

‘A lady.’

They have reached the lift, and Jan stops. ‘Would you like me to come up with you, Josefine?’

She nods again silently, and they step into the lift.

‘Are you not feeling very happy?’ he asks as they are travelling upwards.

Josefine shakes her head.

‘Who are you going to see?’

‘A lady,’ the child says quietly.

A lady? Jan recalls that Josefine has been brought to school and picked up by several different people: sometimes a woman, sometimes an older man. Of course he isn’t allowed to ask any questions about Josefine’s family, but still he bends down and says, ‘You’re going to see your mum, aren’t you?’

Josefine nods. And the lift stops.

This is actually the first time Jan has accompanied a child up to the visitors’ room. He peeps out and sees a bright, clean room with a big sofa, parlour palms in pots, and a table with several children’s books on it. But there are no CCTV cameras, as far as Jan can see.

The room is empty, but there is a closed door with a key pad at the other end.

‘Out you come, Josefine.’

As Jan holds the door open she takes a tentative step into the room, then she turns around and whispers, ‘Can you stay?’

He makes a sad face. ‘I’m not allowed to do that, Josefine... unfortunately. You’ll have to see your mum without me.’

Josefine shakes her head, and Jan doesn’t know what else to say. The visitors’ room is still empty, but he keeps his hand on the door of the lift. He doesn’t want to leave Josefine alone.

There is a metallic click from the door at the other end of the room; it opens and a man in a pale-red nurse’s uniform appears. It isn’t Lars Rettig; this man is younger than Rettig. Shorter and more powerfully built too, with black hair cropped very close. He looks familiar.

Is he part of the security team who work the day shift? He reminds Jan of one of those fighting dogs that are ready to leap forward and sink their teeth into a tyre — or a throat.

His keys are attached to a thick belt around his waist, along with several white plastic loops. Next to them is a container which looks like a small metal Thermos flask. Handcuffs and tear gas?

The man takes three long strides away from the door and Jan tenses as if bracing himself for an attack; he almost jerks backwards.

But the man stops in the middle of the room and stares at Jan. ‘Thanks,’ he says.

Jan holds up a hand in acknowledgement, but doesn’t move. He can see a shadow over by the doorway. Someone else is waiting on the other side — someone who doesn’t want to step forward and show herself. A patient from St Psycho’s, Jan realizes. Josefine’s mother?

‘Thanks,’ the man says again. ‘We’ll take over now, that’s fine.’ His voice sounds mechanical, emotionless.

‘Good.’ But Jan doesn’t think it’s fine at all. His heart is pounding, his fingers are trembling. Security guards and police officers make him nervous.

He is almost convinced that Rami is Josefine’s mother. That Rami is standing in the corridor, less than ten metres away from him. If he waits just a little bit longer he will see her, he will be able to talk to her.

But the guard takes another long stride into the room, his gaze fixed on the lift, and Jan has to go. He looks at Josefine one last time, gives her a reassuring smile and raises his voice: ‘See you soon, Josefine. I’ll come and get you. Do you remember my name?’

Josefine blinks. ‘Jan.’

‘That’s it... Jan Hauger.’

He has said his name so loudly and clearly that Josefine’s mother must have heard him. It feels as if this is important. Then he closes the lift door and goes back to the Dell.

His legs are shaking after his encounter with the guard, but his mind is full of Rami.

He is sure he was so close up there — so close to making contact with her at last, to being able to explain why things turned out as they did with little William, deep in the forest.

‘Shall we play hide-and-seek?’ Jan asked.

It was the right time to make the suggestion now; he and the nine boys were out of sight of Sigrid and her group. The question sounded more like an order, and the boys didn’t object.

‘You’re it, Jan!’ Max shouted.

Jan agreed; of course he was going to be the one looking for them. But he wagged a finger at them and continued in the same firm tone of voice: ‘Run away one at a time. I’ll tell you which direction to go in. Then hide. You are to wait there until I find you, or shout to tell you to come out. Understood?’

The boys nodded, and he began: ‘Max, you go that way.’ He pointed to some boulders about twenty metres away, and Max turned and sped off.

‘Not too far!’ Jan shouted after him, then chose the next child. ‘Paul, you go that way...’ One by one he sent them off among the fir trees, but always in virtually the same direction.

In the end there was only little William left.

Jan walked over to him. He had never been this close to the boy before, and he crouched down so that he was on the same level. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, as if he didn’t know.

‘William,’ the boy answered quietly, glancing away shyly; this was the first time Jan had spoken to him. To William, he was just another grown-up.

‘OK, William...’ Jan pointed. ‘You can go in that direction, down that little path. Can you see the red arrow?’

William looked, and seemed to spot the arrow, almost a metre in length, which Jan had already fixed to the rocky hillside. He nodded.

‘Follow all the arrows you see down there, William — and when they come to an end, that’s where you hide. I think there’s a fantastic hiding place there. Do you understand?’

The boy nodded again, and Jan placed a hand on his head.

‘You won’t need this,’ he said, taking off the yellow woolly hat. ‘We’ll put it in your pocket.’ Jan pretended to tuck William’s hat into his pocket, but it was just a trick — in fact it stayed hidden in his clenched fist. ‘Off you go!’

William turned and ran, scampering through the forest as fast as he could, just like the other boys — but in a completely different direction.

Jan stood up and watched him go. William had reached the first arrow and set off along the ravine, without any hesitation.

The forest was silent, but Jan felt as if he were standing in the eye of a hurricane. So many things could go wrong — a chaotic maelstrom of risks and potential misjudgements whirled around him.

Calm down, said an inner voice. Just stick to the plan.

He could hear the sound of drums. They were beating inside his head, beating and beating.

He took a deep breath. ‘Stay in your hiding places!’ he shouted. ‘I’m coming, ready or not!’

That wasn’t true. Jan didn’t set off to search for the eight boys who had hidden themselves; instead he made his way through the undergrowth towards the ravine, where the ninth boy had disappeared.

William.

Jan broke into a run.

19

The main entrance to Jan’s apartment block locks automatically at eight o’clock every evening; after that you need a key or an entry code to get in.

He has been back from work for a couple of hours by this stage; he has had dinner and settled down at the kitchen table with the picture books from the Dell in front of him. He has finished the first book, The Animal Lady; he has improved the illustrations and coloured them in. He wonders what Rami would think of the result.

He has made a start on the next book, Viveca’s House of Stone. He is thinking about how to fill in the faint pencil drawings as he reads through the text.

Jan reads the page twice, then begins to ink in the drawing. Viveca is a skinny woman with big eyes. Her head is sticking up out of a coffin.

Jan notices that the name Blanker is in this book too, just as it was in The Animal Lady.

He reads on, captivated by the story, as he goes over the thin pencil lines.

At that point Jan’s doorbell suddenly rings with a loud, cheerful tone. He gives a start and glances towards the hallway. Who’s there? Jan has spent eight hours with pre-school children, and he wants his peace and quiet.

The bell keeps on ringing. He quickly hides the picture book in one of the kitchen drawers, then answers the door.

‘Evening, Jan!’ A blond man is standing there smiling. It is Lars Rettig from Bill’s Bar, wearing his leather jacket. ‘Am I disturbing you?’

Jan feels as if he has been caught out somehow, but shakes his head. ‘No... no, it’s fine.’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Sure. For a while.’

The evening chill from the street still clings to Rettig’s jacket, and spreads through the hallway as he takes off his shoes and carries on into the living room. He has a carrier bag in one hand.

‘Sorry to push in... I didn’t want to stand out there drawing attention to myself.’ He looks at all the furniture and boxes piled up along the walls. ‘Wow, you’ve got plenty of rubbish.’

‘That’s not mine,’ Jan says quickly. ‘It’s a sublet.’

‘Right.’ Rettig sits down on the sofa, still looking around. ‘And you’ve got drums... Do you play?’

‘A bit.’

‘Cool.’ Rettig’s eyes flash: he has had an idea. ‘You could come and do some jamming with us if you want. Our drummer in the Bohemos has just become a dad, so he can’t always make the rehearsals.’

‘OK,’ says Jan, without even thinking. He feels a shiver of anticipation, but keeps the impassive mask in place: ‘Perhaps I could come along and help out if you like... but I’m not all that good.’

Rettig laughs. ‘Or else you’re just being modest. But we can give it a try, can’t we?’ He takes something out of the bag. It’s a steaming-hot kebab with bread, wrapped in foil. He looks at it hungrily, then glances at Jan. ‘Want some?’

‘No thanks — you carry on.’

Jan closes the outside door and stands in the doorway of the lounge. ‘How did you know where I live?’

‘I checked the hospital computer... Every employee’s address is on there.’ Rettig takes a bite of his kebab. ‘How are you getting on at the nursery?’

‘Fine... but it’s a pre-school.’

‘OK, pre-school.’

Jan doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, then he asks, ‘So you really do work at St Patricia’s?’

‘Indeed I do. Four nights a week, with lots of free time in between. That’s when I play with the Bohemos.’

‘And you’re a security guard there?’

Rettig shakes his head. ‘We prefer the term care worker. I work with the patients, not against them. Most of them are no trouble at all.’

‘And do you see them often?’

‘Every day,’ says Rettig. ‘Or every night, I should say.’

‘Do you know their names?’

‘Most of them,’ says Rettig, taking another bite. ‘But new faces come along at regular intervals. Some are allowed to go home, others are admitted.’

‘But you know the names of the ones... the ones who’ve been in there a long time?’

Rettig holds up a hand. ‘One thing at a time... We can chat about our guests, but first of all I want to know if you’ve decided.’

‘Decided what?’

‘Whether you want to help them.’

Jan takes a couple of steps into the room. ‘I’d be happy to hear more... At Bill’s Bar you said something about there being too many things you’re not allowed to do.’

Rettig nods. ‘That’s what it’s all about. There’s too much bureaucracy at St Patricia’s, too many rules... particularly when it comes to the closed wards. The daytime security team rules the roost up there.’ He sighs gloomily at the thought of his colleagues on the day shift, and looks up at the ceiling. ‘The patients are not allowed to write letters to whoever they like, and their post is checked. They’re hardly ever allowed to watch TV or listen to the radio, they get searched all the time...’

Jan nods, remembering how he had to open his bag when he first went inside the hospital.

‘You just get tired of all the supervision, that’s all,’ Rettig says. ‘Some of us have been talking about this, and we think well-behaved patients ought to have a little more contact with the outside world.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Through letters, for example. People write to the patients. Their parents, their friends, their brothers and sisters write to them... But the daytime security team stop the letters. Or they open them and have a good snoop... So we want to try and smuggle the letters in.’

Jan looks at him. ‘And how would that work? Nobody from the pre-school is allowed into the hospital.’

‘Oh yes they are,’ Rettig says quickly. ‘You are, Jan. You and your children.’

Jan doesn’t say anything, so Rettig goes on: ‘You’re allowed to go up to the visitors’ room, unsupervised. There are no cameras in there, no checks. And at night that room is completely empty. Anyone could go up and leave a bundle of letters in there... letters that could then be collected by me and taken into the hospital.’

Jan glances around sharply, as if Dr Högsmed is standing behind him in the apartment. ‘And these letters,’ he says. ‘Where do they come from?’

Rettig shrugs his shoulders. ‘From the people who write them. People send all kinds of stuff to the hospital, but most of it gets stopped. So I’ve got to know this guy in the sorting office in town, and he’s started putting aside all handwritten letters addressed to St Patricia’s. Then he gives them to me.’

Rettig looks pleased with himself, but Jan isn’t smiling.

‘So you don’t know anything about these letters? You don’t know what’s in them?’

‘Yes, we do,’ says Rettig. ‘Paper, paper with words on it... They’re just ordinary letters.’

Jan’s expression is doubtful. ‘I’m not smuggling drugs.’

‘It’s not drugs. Nothing illegal.’

‘But you are breaking the rules.’

‘We are.’ Rettig nods. ‘But so did Mahatma Gandhi. For a good cause.’

Silence falls.

Jan clears his throat. ‘Can you tell me a bit about the patients?’

‘Which ones?’

Jan doesn’t want to mention Rami’s name, not yet. ‘I’ve seen an old woman up there,’ he says. ‘Grey hair, dressed in a black coat. She goes around sweeping up the leaves just inside the fence... I wondered if she works at St Patricia’s, or if she’s a patient.’

Rettig has stopped smiling. ‘She’s a patient,’ he says quietly. ‘Her name is Margit. But she’s not as old as you might think.’

‘Really? I’ve seen her standing by the fence, watching the children.’

‘She’s done that ever since the pre-school opened,’ says Rettig. ‘Whenever she’s allowed outside she goes and stands by the fence.’

‘Does she like children?’

Rettig doesn’t answer at first. ‘Margit had three children of her own,’ he says eventually. ‘She was married to a potato farmer in Blekinge... This was twenty-five years ago. Her husband used to leave the farm on Fridays and go into town to meet customers. But one day Margit found out from a neighbour that he had a room in a hotel in town, a room where he used to entertain his girlfriend... maybe several girlfriends. So she went to the gun cupboard and took out his shotgun.’

Jan looks at him. ‘She went to the hotel and shot him?’

Rettig shakes his head. ‘She took the children out to the barn and shot them. First of all the two oldest, then she reloaded and shot the little one.’ He sighs. ‘She’s been locked up in St Patricia’s ever since.’

The room is now deathly quiet.

Rettig has stopped eating. He shakes himself, as if he wants to forget what he has said, then goes on: ‘But Margit is kept well away from your children, there’s no need to worry... She’s kept away from all children.’

Jan slowly opens his mouth. ‘I don’t think I wanted to know that.’

‘Well, now you do know,’ Rettig says. ‘There’s a lot we don’t want to know about the people around us... I know way too much, personally.’

‘About the patients?’

‘About everyone.’

Jan nods slowly. He is thinking about the children’s books hidden in his kitchen. He has secrets of his own.

‘And it’s only letters you want me to take in? Nothing else?’

‘No drugs, no weapons, just letters,’ Rettig insists. ‘Think about it, Jan. I work there. Do you think I want people like Ivan Rössel to get their hands on drugs or knives?’

Jan stares at him. ‘Is Ivan Rössel in there?’ He recognizes the name from the newspapers and TV. And the taxi driver mentioned him too.

‘He is.’

‘Ivan Rössel the serial killer?’

‘That’s right,’ Rettig answers in a subdued voice. ‘We’ve got quite a few celebrities among the guests at our establishment... If you only knew.’

Alice Rami, Jan thinks. But out loud he simply asks, ‘So when do you want an answer about the letters?’

‘Preferably now.’

‘I need to give it some thought.’

Rettig leans forward. ‘There’s a place down by the harbour; we use one of the rooms for our rehearsals. We can meet up there, do some jamming with the Bohemos... and afterwards we can have a chat. How about that?’

Jan isn’t sure, but he accepts the invitation anyway.

‘Come down there tomorrow, about seven. It’ll be cool, as they say.’

When Rettig has gone and Jan has locked the front door, he immediately regrets his decision. Why did he agree to play with the Bohemos? He’s heard them, and they’re too good for him.

He glances over at his drums, wanting to sit down and practise right away, but it’s too late at night. Instead he goes into the kitchen and gets out the four hidden books: The Animal Lady, The Princess with a Hundred Hands, The Witch Who Was Poorly, Viveca’s House of Stone. He almost knows the stories off by heart now. He knows the princess shouts, ‘I’m not unhappy, I just like unhappiness!’ when she first arrives in the village, and he knows that the first symptom of the witch’s illness is that her hair melts.

So why does he keep on reading the books, over and over again? Perhaps he is searching for some kind of hidden message. If these are Rami’s books, she must have had some ulterior motive when she asked Josefine to hide them in the pre-school.

And perhaps he finds a message in the end, because as he leafs through The Animal Lady for perhaps the fiftieth time, he suddenly sees a little patch of ink right in the bottom right-hand corner of the first page, below the text. There’s nothing odd about that, but there is a similar mark on the next page, the same size and in almost exactly the same place. And on the next page.

Jan looks more closely; he has been concentrating on the pages with the pictures, and hasn’t noticed this mark in the margin before.

It looks like a little animal. A squirrel?

He flicks through the pages, and the squirrel begins to move. It’s an illusion created by the movement of the pages: the squirrel scampers along, all the way through the book.

He goes through the books over and over again, and eventually he gets them in the right order. The marks on the hundred or so pages of the four books form a short animated film. The black squirrel first appears in the bottom corner of the first page of The Animal Lady, then skitters up across the pages of The Princess with a Hundred Hands and Viveca’s House of Stone, before finally disappearing into space at the top of the penultimate page of The Witch Who Was Poorly.

Jan stares at the squirrel’s progress.

A sign. That’s what it feels like, a sign especially for him.

20

The room where the Bohemos rehearse smells of sweat and dreams. It’s not far from the harbour, just a few blocks away from Bill’s Bar. The room is as bare as a scruffy youth centre — apart from the egg boxes. Hundreds of egg boxes have been stuck to the walls in order to reduce the echo.

Jan is sitting behind the drum kit, establishing the rhythm and being swept along by it at the same time. The Bohemos started with the classic ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, with a steady four-stroke beat which Jan was able to follow with no problem. That got them going, and now they have been playing old rock songs for almost an hour.

From time to time Rettig has turned around from his place at the microphone and nodded to Jan; he seems pleased. ‘A bit softer on the snare, Jan!’

Jan nods and obliges. After all those years of sitting alone at home accompanying bands on his stereo, it’s a strange feeling to be playing with real live musicians. He was a bit shaky at first, but he’s getting better and better.

The drum kit he’s using is an old Tama, not quite as good as his own; the skin on the bass and snare is worn and almost split in places. But it means he can be a bit less careful as he provides the backing.

‘Good,’ says Rettig. ‘Tighter and tighter.’

Two other members of the Bohemos have turned up. The bass guitarist is called Anders, and the rhythm guitarist is Rasmus. They are both about the same age as Rettig, and play without speaking. Jan has no idea what they think of the fact that he has taken over from Carl, the usual drummer; they haven’t said a word to him all evening, just glanced over at the drums occasionally.

Jan wonders whether Carl, Anders or Rasmus are also care workers at the hospital.

At quarter past eight they stop and start packing away. The two other band members leave immediately with their guitar cases, but Rettig hangs around. Jan stays too; he knows that Rettig is waiting for an answer.

‘You play well,’ Rettig says. ‘A bit of an African vibe going on there.’

‘Thanks,’ says Jan, getting up from his seat. ‘I enjoyed it.’

‘You’ve played in bands before, I assume?’

‘Oh yes,’ Jan lies.

The room is silent among all the egg boxes. Rettig walks over and picks up his black case by the door. He looks at Jan. ‘Have you made a decision? About what we discussed yesterday?’

‘I have.’ He takes a moment. ‘It’s International Children’s Day today, October fourth,’ he says. ‘Did you know that, Lars?’

Rettig shakes his head and starts to dismantle the microphone stand. ‘Isn’t it cinnamon-bun day?’

‘That too,’ says Jan. After another brief pause he asks, ‘Have you got kids, Lars?’

‘Why?’

‘Spending time with children makes you wiser.’

‘Probably. But I haven’t got any kids, unfortunately,’ says Rettig. ‘I’ve got a girlfriend, but no kids. How about you?’

‘No. None of my own.’

‘Like I said... have you decided?’

‘One last question,’ says Jan. ‘What do you get out of this?’

Rettig hesitates. ‘Nothing, not directly.’

Jan looks at him. ‘And indirectly?’

Rettig shrugs his shoulders. ‘Not much. We charge a small fee... a handling fee for delivery. Forty kronor per letter. But that’s not going to make us rich.’

‘And it’s just letters?’

Jan has asked this same question several times, of course, but Rettig is a patient man.

‘Absolutely, Jan. Just ordinary letters.’

‘OK, I’ll do it. I’ll give it a try, anyway.’

‘Excellent.’ Rettig quickly leans forward. ‘This is how it works. You get a package from me, and the next time you’re on the night shift you take it into the hospital through the basement. At night, as close to midnight as possible.’ He takes a sheet of paper out of his bag. ‘But only on certain nights... This is the schedule; it shows you when one of us is working.’

‘One of you... You and who else?’

Rettig lowers his voice. ‘Carl, our drummer. He does the same job as me. OK, so between eleven and midnight you take the lift up to the visitors’ room. Check that no one is in there before you open the door... but there won’t be. You hide the envelope under the sofa cushions, then you go back to the children. They’ll be asleep, I presume?’

Jan nods, thinking about the electronic Angels he has bought.

‘Any questions?’

‘Not about the delivery... But I would like to know more about the patients, as I said before.’

Rettig smiles wearily and puts his guitar in its case. ‘The carers are not allowed to talk about those they care for. You know that, don’t you?’

‘What do they do up there?’

‘Not much. They’re waiting, just like the rest of us. We’re all just waiting.’

Jan remains silent for a few seconds, then eventually he asks, ‘I was just wondering... Is there anyone up there called Alice Rami?’

Rettig shakes his head; he doesn’t even have to think about it. ‘No,’ he says. ‘There’s Anna and Alide, but no Alice.’

‘Anyone called Blanker, then?’

Rettig considers for a moment before answering. ‘There is a Blanker... Maria Blanker.’

Jan leans closer. ‘How old is she?’

‘Not very old.’

‘Thirty?’

‘Maybe, between thirty and thirty-five... But she’s pretty shy. She’s on one of the women’s wards, and she keeps herself to herself.’

The women’s wards, Jan thinks. So there’s more than one.

‘Does she have a child at the pre-school?’

Rettig is taking longer and longer to answer. ‘Maybe. I think she has the odd visit.’

‘From a child?’

Rettig nods. ‘A girl.’

‘Do you know her name?’

Rettig shrugs and looks at his watch. ‘I need to get home,’ he says, placing his bag on the table. ‘So, this business with the letters... When’s your next night shift, Jan?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Perfect.’

Rettig takes out a large white envelope, several centimetres thick. It is marked in red ink: S.P. ‘Can you deliver this?’

Jan takes the envelope and sees that it has been carefully sealed. He doesn’t try to open it, but weighs it in his hands.

It is soft. A bundle of letters — nothing else? It seems so; Jan can’t feel any hard objects or little bags of powder.

‘No problem.’ He smiles at Rettig, still trying to convince himself that this is a good idea.

21

Hanna Aronsson is working at the Dell the day after Jan’s practice session with the Bohemos, and she is just coming out of the children’s room when he walks into the cloakroom. She looks very tired, and quickly puts her finger to her lips when she sees him.

‘Ssh...’

Jan realizes that she has only just got the children off to sleep. He waves to her and goes into the staffroom, quickly placing his rucksack in his locker. The rucksack containing the envelope; his secret mission as a postman.

Then he joins Hanna in the kitchen; she is busy unloading the dishwasher.

‘Are they all fast asleep?’

‘I hope so.’ She sighs. ‘They’ve been a real handful tonight. Bad-tempered and bickering non-stop.’

‘Oh? How many of them are there?’

‘Three... Leo, Matilda and Mira, as usual.’

There is an awkward silence; this always happens when Jan is alone at work with Hanna. It’s easy to talk to the other staff at the Dell, but Hanna doesn’t say anything beyond what is absolutely necessary.

Although of course there is something Jan wants to discuss with her, and after a moment he takes a deep breath. ‘Hanna, what I said to you last week, when we were walking home...’

‘What?’

‘That I used to work at a nursery... and I lost one of the boys in the forest.’

She nods; he can see that she remembers.

‘Did you... did you mention it to anyone else?’

Hanna’s expression is blank, as usual. ‘No.’

‘Good,’ Jan says.

It looks as if Hanna is about to say something else, or ask a question, but instead she puts away the last of the dishes and closes the cupboard doors. ‘That’s me done for today, then.’

‘Fine. Do you have any plans for this evening?’

‘I don’t know... I might go to the gym.’

Jan could have guessed that Hanna was a gym bunny. She is slender but looks toned and fit. Not skinny like Rami.

Ten minutes later Hanna has gone home, and Jan has locked the outside door. Now he is alone in the Dell, and of course he has no TV or stereo — just the sound of all the rock songs he played with the Bohemos the previous evening echoing in his head. It was good fun; he wonders if Lars Rettig will invite him to play with the band again.

Maybe, if he carries off his task this evening.

The children are fast asleep, and there is nothing for Jan to do. It’s going to be a long wait until eleven o’clock. He sits in the kitchen with a book, but often gazes out into the darkness, towards the hospital.

When it is quarter to eleven at long last, he fetches the thick envelope and both Angels from his locker.

He feels slightly foolish, but he still puts on his cycling gloves and wipes the whole envelope with a duster to make sure he hasn’t left any fingerprints or strands of hair on it. Just in case Dr Högsmed finds it.

At five to eleven he switches on the Angel transmitter and hangs it in the children’s bedroom, then he opens the basement door with the key card. The other Angel is attached to his belt and he is carrying the envelope in his left hand as he walks down the stairs and along the corridor, past the animal pictures.

The lift is waiting for him; he steps inside and presses the button. The metal chamber shudders and begins to move upwards.

Jan is not used to going up to the hospital without any children, and doing so in the middle of the night feels most peculiar.

The lift stops with a jolt. Jan checks through the window and sees that the visitors’ room is in darkness. There is no sign of life.

Slowly, carefully, he opens the door a fraction. He waits, he listens, but there isn’t a sound. Eventually he steps out on to the carpet. As always when he is inside St Patricia’s he feels an all-consuming curiosity, a nagging desire to find out more.

The furniture in the room is a collection of angular shadows, but there is a small amount of light cast by the lift behind him, and from the pane of glass in the door leading into the main hospital. Jan peers through it and sees a long, deserted corridor. And the door is locked, of course — he won’t be able to get any further this way.

All he can do is go over to the sofa, lift up the left-hand seat cushion, and tuck the envelope underneath as far as possible before rearranging the cushions. There. Job done.

With a final glance at the sofa, Jan gets in the lift and travels back down to the basement; he walks slowly up the stairs, then goes to the staffroom to make up his bed. But as usual he finds it difficult to get to sleep.

He’s involved now. He’s been working here for less than three weeks, and he’s already a part of some kind of smuggling operation.

It’s Rami’s fault. If it is in fact Rami who is Josefine’s mother, using a new name: Maria Blanker.

He lies awake in the darkness, wishing he had opened the envelope Rettig gave him. Were any of the letters for her?

The clock was ticking. Of course Jan couldn’t hear it as he ran through the forest, but he could feel the seconds racing by; time was passing quickly. He had so much to do in such a short period of time.

The high walls of the ravine rose above him, and he could see the second red arrow. There were no signs in the undergrowth to show that little William had passed this way — but then he couldn’t have gone any other way.

Jan carried on through the open iron gate, then slowed down. He was out of the ravine now, and he stopped and gazed up ahead.

He had placed the final red arrow under a couple of heavy stones on the ground, some twenty metres beyond the end of the ravine. It was pointing up the slope, towards the open door of the concrete bunker.

William was nowhere to be seen.

Jan could feel the blood pounding in his ears like a bass drum as he clambered up the slope. For the last two metres up to the steel door he became a cat, slinking along without making a sound.

He reached the entrance to the bunker, bent down and listened. Yes, there was someone in there. He could hear a child snuffling within the concrete walls. Jan hoped he wasn’t crying — and that he was just a little boy with a runny nose from being out in the cold.

Silently he reached out and slowly closed the door. Slowly, slowly... and when it was completely shut he shot both bolts across.

The previous evening he had hidden the robot’s remote control in a plastic bag under a stone next to the bunker. He took it out and pressed the button, bringing the toy to life. He couldn’t see it, of course, but he heard his own voice, distorted and metallic, echoing inside the bunker.

‘Wait here, William,’ said the robot’s loudspeaker. ‘Everything is all right, just wait here.’

Jan put back the remote control and turned away. He climbed down on to level ground and raced back towards the ravine, grabbing the red arrow on the way. He screwed it up and tucked it into his jacket pocket, then did the same with arrow number two. He slammed the iron gate shut, and when he emerged from the ravine he removed the final arrow.

He was out of breath, but didn’t slow down. Up the slope, the drums still pounding in his ears. When he reached the spot where the game of hide-and-seek had started, he looked at his watch. Three thirty-five. It felt as if it had taken much longer, but he and the boys had been playing for only ten minutes.

Suddenly he spotted a pale-green jacket between the fir trees. A little boy, crouching down in the undergrowth and trying to hide. Then he saw another of the boys slightly further away, then another.

He knew exactly where the boys were now. William was also in the right place. The plan was working; it was time for Jan to relax.

He smiled and cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘I’m coming to get you! I can see you!’

22

Before setting off for his night shift on Friday, Jan picks up an empty coffee cup and leaves his flat. He’s not going out this evening, just down two flights of stairs to visit his neighbour behind the door marked V. LEGÉN.

He can’t hear a sound; he has rung the bell on two previous occasions, but no one has answered. He tries again.

This time someone is coming; then there is a rattling sound. Legén has put the chain on the door, but he opens it just a fraction.

‘Evening,’ says Jan, holding up the cup.

His neighbour doesn’t say a word.

‘My name is Jan Hauger... I live upstairs,’ Jan goes on. ‘I wondered if you could spare some sugar? I’m making a cake.’

Legén stares at him like a weary boxer facing his arch enemy. He’s not in a good mood today. But he takes the cup and turns away. Jan silently steps forward and peers into the hallway.

It is dark and untidy, and it stinks of tobacco. The fabric bag he last saw down in the cellar is lying on the floor, next to the shoe rack. The text is clearly visible now: ST PATRICIA’S LAUNDRY. He was right.

Jan is wearing a satisfied smile when his neighbour returns with the cup half-full of sugar.

‘Perfect. Thanks very much.’

He is about to carry on chatting; he was intending to point to the bag and say that he actually works at St Patricia’s too, but Legén simply nods and slams the door shut. There is a click as the key turns in the lock.

Jan goes back up to his flat and tips the sugar into the bin in the kitchen.

He cycles to the pre-school at around nine o’clock, thinking all the time about the envelope he left in the visitors’ room on the Wednesday night. It should have been collected by now, and will have had some effect on the patients, although he isn’t sure what that might be.

But nothing whatsoever has changed. The concrete wall is as solid as ever, the floodlights shine out and everything is just the way it always is when he arrives at the Dell. Lilian is waiting for him tonight, and she has already put the children to bed.

‘Evening, Lilian.’

‘How are you, Jan?’ Lilian looks tired, but her voice is loud and brisk. Sometimes it seems as if the children are a little bit afraid of her, in spite of the fact that she enjoys playing with them. There is something tense yet fragile about her, Jan thinks.

‘Fine, thanks,’ he replies. ‘Ready for the weekend?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Will you be out enjoying yourself?’

‘I certainly will.’ But there is no sense of anticipation in her voice. Lilian quickly pulls on her jacket, but she doesn’t ask what Jan will be doing, and she doesn’t wish him a nice weekend. She just gives him one last glance, then leaves.

Jan is alone again, getting ready for the night.

He checks on the sleeping children, then carries out the usual routines before getting undressed. He is in bed by eleven, but as usual he finds it difficult to get to sleep. The pre-school is too warm and stuffy, the sofa bed feels narrow and uncomfortable, and out there in the kitchen a key card is longing for him to come and get it out of the drawer. But not as much as he is longing to use it.

Jan sighs in the darkness. But he is going to stay in bed. He is not going to go down into the basement. There is no easy way into the hospital in any case, he knows that now. The door leading out of the visitors’ room is locked. But Rettig must have a key, if he is able to go in and fetch the envelope Jan hid under the sofa cushions.

Have the patients received their letters yet? Presumably. Perhaps Lars Rettig is creeping around the corridors at this very moment, handing them out.

Jan turns over on to his side, still toying with the idea of finding a secret route into the hospital.

Perhaps via the safe room in the basement? It has two exits, and he doesn’t know where the second one leads. He doesn’t even know if it’s possible to open it. It might lead straight into the hospital, or it might have been bricked up. But if he doesn’t go down and try it, he will never know.

It’s quarter to twelve. The children are asleep, and the key card is calling to him. St Psycho’s is out there, like a huge mountain waiting to be climbed simply because it is there. Like Mount Everest. But many climbers have lost their lives on Everest...

No, it’s better to think of the hospital as a cave to be explored. Jan has never heard of anyone dying in a cave, although of course it could have happened.

He makes up his mind. Throws back the covers and sits up in the darkness.

Just a quick look in the safe room, and then he’ll be able to sleep.

Ten minutes later he is down in the underground corridor. The Angel is switched on and attached to his belt, he has turned on the light and walked down the stairs. The lift window is dark — the lift is up on the ground floor, but he doesn’t press the button to call it down. Instead he carries on along the corridor, around the corner and all the way up to the steel door.

It is closed, and of course the sign is still there (This door must be kept locked at all times!), but Jan grabs hold of the big handle and opens it. He remembers where the light switch was, and flicks on the main overhead light.

The safe room looks exactly the same as when he peeped in last time. A fitted carpet, a few pillows, a mattress. No one has been in here. Or have they? The mattress is lying on the floor now — wasn’t it propped up against the wall the last time he was here? He can’t remember. There’s an empty wine bottle — surely that wasn’t here before?

There isn’t a sound. Cautiously Jan steps inside. He leaves the door open and walks over to the other end of the room. There is the exit which might lead deeper into the hospital: another closed steel door with a long handle.

Jan grabs hold of the handle and presses it downwards. It gives perhaps a centimetre, then stops dead. He stands on tiptoe, tenses his arms and puts all his strength into trying to move the metal bar, but to no avail.

The hospital is not going to let him in.

He lets out a long breath, and suddenly he hears something. A sound. A faint vibration in the floor. A low whining noise is coming from the corridor, through the concrete walls, and at first Jan can’t work out what it is, but then he recognizes it. The whine carries on, getting louder all the time.

It’s the sound of the lift. The lift has begun to descend from the visitors’ room; it’s on its way down to the basement.

Jan lets go of the door handle. He listens intently.

The lift stops in the basement with a clicking sound. There is complete silence for a couple of seconds, then Jan clearly hears the sound of the metal door opening.

Someone steps out into the corridor.

23

Jan stays where he is, protected by the thick walls of the safe room. He doesn’t move a muscle.

Make your mind up, he thinks.

All he did when the lift door opened was to reach out and switch off the light in the safe room, to avoid giving himself away. But ever since he has been in the same place, frozen to the floor.

He is standing completely still, just listening, with no idea of what to do. Every sound he can hear now is coming from the basement, bouncing around the sharp corners and echoing between the concrete walls.

He clearly hears the door of the lift close, and thinks he can hear footsteps moving across the thin carpet of the corridor. Quiet steps, gradually moving away.

Someone is calmly walking away from the lift and along the corridor.

Someone is on the way up the stairs to the Dell.

On the way up to the three sleeping children: Leo, Mira and Matilda.

Jan must move, and in the end he manages it. He turns around and takes one step towards the door. His shadow moves across the wall. Two steps. Three.

But suddenly the light in front of him goes out. The shadow disappears; the corridor is in total darkness.

Jan realizes what has happened: the person who came out of the lift has now reached the top of the stairs, and switched off the light.

The door leading to the pre-school rattles as it opens, then closes again. The visitor from St Psycho’s must have had a key card with him or her.

And now the visitor is inside the Dell. And Jan, who is responsible for the children up there, is trapped.

He has his own card and can get out of the basement, but that won’t be enough. He needs a weapon. Something with which to defend himself and the children, anything at all. He gropes around in the darkness of the safe room, finds the empty wine bottle on the floor and picks it up.

A kind of club. He can grab the bottle by the neck and hold it up in front of him.

Out in the corridor it is almost pitch dark, with only a faint yellow glow from the window of the lift, and he gropes his way along the wall towards the stairs.

He has almost forgotten the Angel on his belt, but suddenly he hears muted, metallic sounds coming from the little box. Scraping sounds, then something that sounds like breathing. The sound of someone who has crept into the children’s bedroom.

Someone is with the children.

Jan’s heart begins to pound, he increases his speed.

Most of the patients in the hospital are not dangerous, that’s what Dr Högsmed said. And yet right now he can’t help thinking about those who are dangerous. About Ivan Rössel, the serial killer. And Margit, the old woman, with her smoking shotgun...

Fuck. Jan moves along with short, rapid steps, feeling his way. The concrete wall feels like sandpaper to his touch.

He hears a thud; he has knocked down one of the animal pictures, but he doesn’t stop. All at once his shoe hits something hard. The bottom step. He climbs the stairs cautiously, one by one, until his hands brush against the door. But it’s locked.

Jan will have to unlock it, but suddenly he can’t remember the code. His mind has gone completely blank. Marie-Louise’s birthday — but exactly when is it?

When?

He turns up the volume on the baby monitor and hears the sound of scraping footsteps, someone moving inside the room where the children are sleeping. A visitor from St Psycho’s.

The code, what’s the code?

Jan needs to think. He tries to relax, and gradually coaxes out the numbers; they pop into his head, one by one. Three, one, zero, seven. He fumbles in the darkness, keys in the numbers, swipes the card and hears the lock click.

Slowly he opens the door, the bottle raised in front of him. The small rooms in the Dell are silent now.

He takes two steps into the cloakroom, turns and sees that the door of the children’s room is standing wide open. It was closed when he left. The hand holding the bottle is slippery with sweat.

Three children are sleeping in there — Leo, Matilda and Mira. He abandoned them. Holding his breath he moves as quietly as he can towards the doorway.

A room in darkness.

He peeps in, expecting to see a big black shadow looming over the beds, but he sees nothing.

Nothing is moving in there. The three children are safely tucked up, their breathing quiet and even. Jan tiptoes in and listens, but the room is small; there is nowhere for anyone to hide.

It’s empty. So where has the visitor from the hospital gone?

Jan leaves the children, closes the door and switches on the light in the hallway. Then he goes from room to room, checking every corner, but he can’t find any sign of the visitor.

Eventually he returns to the hallway. The outside door is closed, but when he presses down the handle he discovers it isn’t locked. Someone has unlocked it and gone outside.

Jan opens the door and looks out, but there is no one in sight. ‘Hello?’ he calls out into the night, mostly to hear the sound of his own voice.

No answer. The playground is empty, the street beyond is deserted.

He closes the door against the cold, locks it and exhales. He looks at the clock: quarter past twelve.

There is one last thing he must do before he goes to bed: he must go down to the basement and hang the picture back on the wall. And of course he must replace the bottle — an empty wine bottle would be a little difficult to explain if Marie-Louise found it in the pre-school.

When he comes back up, he also jams a chair under the handle of the door leading to the basement so that no one will be able to open it from the other side — not even if they have a key card.

At eight o’clock the following morning, Jan goes home. The rest of the night was uneventful, when he finally managed to get to sleep. His heart was pounding as he lay in bed, but he felt lonely rather than afraid.

Our operation is secure, Dr Högsmed had said. The safety of all concerned is our number-one priority.

Jan has not found a way to get to Rami, not yet. But one thing he does know now: someone is using the pre-school as a sally port. As a way out of the hospital.

He hopes it isn’t a patient.

24

The second envelope from Rettig is delivered to Jan that morning when he is back in his own bed. His mind has drifted off into a warm, soothing dream about love, but he is abruptly woken at nine o’clock. He can’t work out why at first, but then it dawns on him that it was the clatter of the letter box.

He no longer remembers the dream; he might as well get up. When he peers out into the hallway there is an envelope lying there which looks familiar. This one is pale yellow, that’s the only difference. But it is just as thick as the first one, with the letters S. P. printed on the front.

This time Jan does something he didn’t have the courage to do last time: he opens the envelope. He takes it into the kitchen, places it on the table and studies the seal. It’s ordinary transparent sticky tape — the kind you can buy just about anywhere — and that’s what makes him begin to pull at it, teasing it away from the back of the envelope.

He hesitates for a brief moment. Is it wrong to open letters that shouldn’t ever be delivered anyway? He pushes the question aside.

When he has removed the tape it is very easy to slide a sharp knife under the flap and gently work it open. He reaches inside and removes the contents.

Rettig wasn’t lying. The envelope contains letters, nothing else. Jan counts thirty-four, in all colours and sizes. There are names on the front in pen or pencil, in different handwriting, all with the same address: St Patricia’s Hospital.

Jan slowly looks through the names, and notices that one particular name comes up several times: Ivan Rössel. Rössel the serial killer has received nine letters altogether.

There are no other names on the letters that Jan recognizes. There is nothing for Alice Rami, or Maria Blanker.

Jan rubs his eyes and thinks. If he can’t get in to see Rami, perhaps he can send a letter to her? What does he have to lose?

He has a set of stationery in one of the kitchen drawers. His mother gave it to him when he left home, with handmade envelopes and thick paper, but in ten years he has hardly ever used it.

He picks up a pen and stares at the empty sheet of paper for a few seconds, wanting to fill it with words. There is so much to say. But in the end he writes just one question: DEAR SQUIRREL — WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET OVER THE FENCE?

He signs his own first name. He considers adding his address, then realizes that Lars Rettig or one of the other care assistants will almost certainly see the envelope containing Rami’s reply. If she replies. So he writes Jan Larsson, and his old address in Gothenburg.

Then he places the sheet of paper in an envelope, writes Maria Blanker, St Patricia’s Hospital on the front, seals it and tucks it in among all the rest.

Jan has the package for the patients at St Patricia’s in his rucksack when he arrives at the Dell the following day. He will be staying on for the evening shift; he will be alone with the children for three hours, which will give him plenty of time to nip over to St Psycho’s when they have fallen asleep.

Everything seems quiet at the Dell, but when he walks into the staffroom he sees Marie-Louise sitting at the table with a strange man. He stops dead in the doorway, feeling a chill run down his spine. He suddenly remembers the events of Friday night: the unidentified visitor who emerged from the lift and walked out into the night through the pre-school.

But when he looks at the man properly he recognizes the glasses and the thick brown hair. And the mouth which rarely smiles.

‘Hello, Jan. How are you?’

Dr Högsmed has come to visit. Jan almost expects to see a collection of hats in front of him on the table, just waiting to be picked up — but there is only a half-empty coffee cup.

He quickly forces a smile and goes over to shake hands. ‘Fine thanks, Doctor.’

‘Patrik, Jan.’

Jan nods. Of course he will never be able to think of Högsmed as anything other than Doctor, but he can pretend.

Högsmed studies his face. ‘So, have you got the hang of all the routines?’

‘Absolutely,’ Jan replies. ‘I love it here.’

‘That sounds excellent.’

Jan’s smile is becoming more rigid by the moment. He thinks about the letters in his rucksack. It isn’t open, of course, but does Högsmed suspect anything? Has Lars Rettig been found out?

Eventually the doctor looks away and turns to Marie-Louise. ‘Is he behaving himself?’

Högsmed sounds unconcerned, and Marie-Louise answers emphatically, ‘Oh yes, we’re very pleased with Jan! He’s become a real favourite with the children, a real playmate.’

Jan hears the praise, but he still can’t relax. He would prefer to slip away, out of the room and away from Dr Högsmed. When Marie-Louise asks if he’d like a coffee, he quickly shakes his head. ‘Thanks, but I had one just before I came out. I get a bit shaky if I have too much,’ he says, then adds, ‘Caffeine, I mean.’

Then he goes off to join the children in the playroom. Behind him Högsmed leans over and quietly says something to Marie-Louise, but the children are shouting and laughing, making it impossible for Jan to eavesdrop.

‘Come on, Jan!’

‘Come on, we’re going to build something!’

Natalie and Matilda draw him into the game, but he finds it difficult to chat and joke as usual today. He keeps looking over at the door, waiting to feel a hand on his shoulder, a harsh voice asking him to come for a little chat. An interview with the security team up at the hospital.

But it doesn’t happen. When he glances into the staffroom a little while later, the table is empty. Högsmed has gone.

At last Jan can relax, or try to. He shouldn’t go across to deliver the letters this evening — what if Dr Högsmed calls in again? But he doesn’t want them sitting in his locker either.

The time passes slowly but at last it’s evening. Most of the children are picked up, the staff go home. Jan warms up a stew with dill and potatoes for the three children who are left, then he reads them a story and eventually manages to get them to sleep.

By this stage it is quarter to nine. Rettig told him to go up to the hospital later than this, but Jan is too impatient. He has just about an hour before Andreas arrives to take over; that’s plenty of time.

He waits for a little while, checks on the sleeping children one last time, then heads down into the basement with the Angel attached to his belt and the envelope hidden underneath his jumper.

Quickly, a postman has to work quickly.

The lift is waiting for him. He takes a deep breath and travels up to the visitors’ room. Everything is quiet; it is deserted and in darkness. Jan quickly makes his way over to the sofa, lifts up the cushion and stops — there is already an envelope lying there. But it isn’t the one he left a few days ago. This one is larger and thicker, and there are five words scrawled on the front: OPEN THIS AND POST CONTENTS!

A reply from St Psycho’s. Jan stares at the envelope. Then he grabs it, tucks it under his jumper and puts the big yellow envelope in its place.

When Jan gets back to the Dell, everything is still perfectly quiet. Thirty minutes later the outside door opens. Jan gives a start, but it is only Andreas, cheerful and calm as usual. Andreas is a steady character, apparently with no worries in his life. ‘Hi, Jan. Everything OK?’

‘Everything’s fine. All our little friends are fast asleep.’

Jan smiles and puts on his jacket, then opens up his locker and takes out his rucksack, where he has hidden the new envelope. He is full of anticipation; it almost feels like Christmas Eve.

‘Good luck, Andreas. See you tomorrow.’

When Jan gets home he is still thinking about Dr Högsmed. He locks the door behind him and pulls down the kitchen blinds. Then he takes out the envelope and opens it.

Forty-seven letters come tumbling out — almost a full deck of cards of large and small letters, all neatly stamped and addressed to various people in Sweden, apart from two. One is destined for Hamburg, and one is going all the way to Bahia in Brazil. There is no sender’s name on any of them.

Jan is fascinated; he lays out the letters in front of him like a game of solitaire. He moves them around on the kitchen table, studying the handwriting; some of it is very controlled and deliberate, some spiky and scrawled. Eventually he gathers them all up.

He is in charge of them now. He could throw them away.

When he is lying in bed an hour later, he wonders which patients have written all those letters. Ivan Rössel, perhaps. He got a lot of letters last time; does he reply to those who write to him?

And has Rami written to anyone? At least there is a letter from him up in the visitors’ room, waiting for her...

Jan falls asleep and is quickly back in the same warm dream he had before. He remembers it clearly now: he is with Alice Rami. She and Jan are living together out in the country, on a farm with no fences of any kind. They are striding along a meandering gravel track, free and unafraid, with all of life’s mistakes far behind them. Rami has a large brown dog on a lead. A St Bernard, or a Rottweiler. It is a guard dog, of course, but it’s a nice dog, and Rami is totally in control of it.

Sigrid walked into Lynx at twenty past four; Jan saw her out of the corner of his eye. They had been back from the forest for over half an hour by that stage, and the nursery was just in the process of closing.

Everything had gone well on the way home — apart from the fact that there had been sixteen children in the group instead of seventeen. But Jan hadn’t mentioned it, and neither Sigrid nor any of the children had noticed that William was missing.

Personally, he could hardly think of anything else.

A short while ago he had taken a break, an apparently completely normal break to which he was entitled. He had popped out of the nursery for ten minutes and walked to the nearest postbox. It was three blocks away from Lynx, and on the way there he stopped in a dark doorway and took out William’s hat.

The previous evening he had prepared a stamped addressed envelope. He pushed the hat inside, sealed the envelope and dropped it in the postbox. Then he quickly walked back to work.

When Sigrid arrived at the nursery Jan was standing in the cloakroom chatting to a woman whose name he couldn’t remember at that particular moment — but she was Max Karlsson’s mother, and she had come to pick him up.

Sigrid came over and interrupted the conversation, her voice low and anxious. ‘Sorry, Jan... could I have a quick word?’

‘Of course, what is it?’

She drew him slightly to one side. ‘Have you got any extra children here?’

He looked at her, pretending to be surprised. ‘No, we’ve only got four left; the rest have already been collected. Why do you ask?’

Sigrid looked around the cloakroom. ‘It’s William, little William Halevi... His dad is waiting over at Brown Bear, he’s come to pick William up... but he’s not there.’

‘Not there?’

She shook her head. ‘Is it OK if I just have a look around here, in the other rooms?’

‘Of course.’

Jan nodded and Sigrid went into the nursery. Meanwhile Jan opened the door for Max and his mother and waved them off.

Three minutes later, Sigrid was back, biting her lip and looking even more worried. ‘I don’t know where he is...’ She ran a hand over her spiky hair. ‘I don’t remember if William was with us when we left the forest... I mean, he was definitely there on the way up, I remember that, but I don’t know if... I’m not sure if he was with us on the way back. Do you remember?’

Jan furrowed his brow, as if thinking deeply. He had a vivid mental picture of William running along the ravine, but he answered quietly, ‘Sorry... I wasn’t really keeping a tally of the children from Brown Bear.’

Sigrid didn’t say anything. They looked at one another and she rubbed her face, as if she was trying to wake up. ‘I’d better get back to his dad. But I think... I think we’re going to have to call the police.’

‘OK,’ said Jan. He felt a hard icicle drop down somewhere between his lungs, spreading its chill right through his belly.

We’re going to have to call the police.

It had begun. And Jan was no longer in control.

25

Like a criminal, a spy or a secret courier, Jan is careful not to run any risks with the letters from St Psycho’s. He takes a long detour on his journey to work the next morning and quickly stuffs the whole lot in a postbox on a deserted street. Good luck. Forty-seven letters from patients, on their way out into the world.

Frost and patches of ice are starting to appear on the roads now; he will have to stop cycling soon if he wants to avoid skidding. It’s lethal.

Small feet come racing up to him in the cloakroom when he arrives at the Dell. It’s Matilda, and her eyes are shining. ‘The police are here!’

She’s joking, of course.

‘Oh yes?’ Jan says calmly, unbuttoning his jacket. ‘And what do they want? Have they come to have a glass of squash with us?’

Matilda looks confused until he winks at her. Pre-school children can say just about anything; they find it difficult to distinguish between what is true and false, between reality and fantasy.

But the police actually are there. Not at the pre-school, but at the hospital. When Jan looks out of the kitchen window a quarter of an hour later, he sees a police car parked over by the entrance, with two uniformed officers walking along the inside of the perimeter fence. Their eyes are fixed on the damp ground, as if they are looking for something.

Only then does Jan feel a small beat of anxiety in the back of his mind. This always happens when he sees police officers, ever since what happened at Lynx.

Marie-Louise comes into the kitchen.

‘What are the police doing here?’ Jan asks.

‘I don’t know... something seems to have happened up at the hospital.’

She doesn’t sound concerned, but Jan presses her. ‘Has someone escaped?’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ says Marie-Louise. ‘But I’m sure we’ll find out tomorrow when the report comes out.’

She is referring to Dr Högsmed’s weekly report. It comes through to the computer in the pre-school and Marie-Louise prints it out, but so far it has made very dull reading.

Jan waits, but there is no peremptory knock on the door of the pre-school. The next time he looks out of the window the police car has gone.

He starts to relax and forgets the visit, until it is almost ten o’clock and time for Felix to be escorted to the visitors’ room. Marie-Louise comes over to him in the playroom and says quietly, ‘No visits today, Jan — they’ve been postponed.’

‘Oh?’ Jan automatically lowers his voice as well. ‘Why’s that?’

‘There’s been a death up at the hospital.’

‘A death?’

Marie-Louise nods, and whispers, ‘A patient died last night.’

‘But how?’

‘I don’t know... but it was obviously unexpected.’

Jan doesn’t ask any more questions; he carries on playing with the children. Tag and hide-and-seek. But his mind is elsewhere. He keeps on thinking about the letters he left in the visitors’ room last night. Love letters, but perhaps threatening letters as well.

Where does Lars Rettig live? What’s his telephone number? Jan can’t find him in the directory, and he can think of only one way of getting hold of him, so that evening after work he goes into town. First of all he calls in at Bill’s Bar, but the Bohemos are not playing tonight.

Jan doesn’t give up; he carries on to the place where they rehearsed the other day. The door is closed, but he can hear the sound of guitars coming from inside, and the beat of the snare drum. It makes Jan feel forgotten, excluded.

He knocks, but nothing happens.

Then he bangs on the door with the flat of his hand, but the music continues. In the end he opens the door and sticks his head inside.

The music stops. First the guitars, then the drums. Four heads turn towards him.

‘Hi, Jan.’ Lars Rettig has decided to acknowledge him, after a brief silence.

‘Hi, Lars. Could we have a quick word, please?’

‘Sure — come on in.’

‘I meant... just the two of us.’

Jan feels as if they are all staring at him. The musicians behind Rettig have stopped in mid-movement; they are ready to carry on playing as soon as Jan leaves. Carl, the drummer, is a new face, but Jan thinks he has seen him somewhere before.

‘OK,’ Rettig says. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

The Gang of Four, Jan thinks. Perhaps the members of the Bohemos all work at St Psycho’s.

He recognizes Carl now. The guard dog with the big jaws. He was the one who met little Josefine as she came out of the lift, with a canister of tear gas on his belt.

Carl is staring at the door, his expression grim. Jan moves back, but no doubt Carl has already seen him.

Rettig comes over. ‘I haven’t got much time, Jan, just a couple of minutes... Let’s go outside.’

They walk along the deserted pavement for about ten metres before Rettig stops. ‘OK, we can talk here.’

Jan finds confrontation difficult, but he pulls himself together. ‘Who died last night?’

Rettig just looks at him. ‘Who died?’

‘We heard this morning, they said someone had died at St Patricia’s.’

Rettig seems to hesitate, but eventually he replies. ‘It was a patient.’

‘A man or a woman?’

‘A man.’

‘One of the letter-writers?’

Rettig looks around, then leans closer. ‘Don’t mention the letters.’ He smiles at Jan, but it is a tense smile.

Jan wonders if Rettig knows that he slipped an extra letter into the envelope, a message for the patient he thinks is Alice Rami. There is always that risk.

‘I just want to know what this business with the letters is all about,’ he says. ‘Why they’re important to you. Can you tell me?’

At first Rettig doesn’t answer, but then he lowers his gaze. ‘My brother is inside,’ he says. ‘My half-brother, Tomas.’

‘At St Patricia’s?’

Rettig shakes his head. ‘Prison. Tomas is in Kumla, he got eight years for robbery with violence. And he would really like to receive letters, lots of letters... but most are stopped. And I’m not allowed to have any contact with him at all, or that’s the end of my job.’ He sighs. ‘So I’m doing something on the sly for those poor bastards in St Patricia’s instead.’

Jan nods. Perhaps this is true. ‘But the person who died... was he one of the letter-writers?’ he asks again. ‘Or someone who got a letter last night?’

‘No.’ Rettig sounds weary as he replies. ‘He was a paedophile who was in there because he’d been sectioned; he certainly didn’t have any pen friends. He only had one friend left, and that was an extra head attached to his left shoulder. He was quiet and pleasant, but his extra head wasn’t nice at all. Of course he was the only one who could see it... but he said it was the head that made him want to do things to little girls. He had no contact with anyone outside the hospital; even his lawyer couldn’t bring himself to visit him, so he just got more and more depressed.’

‘What did he do?’

Rettig shrugs his shoulders. ‘Well, this morning he got a fresh burst of energy. He and his extra head managed to get into a room without any bars at the window, then they threw themselves out, straight down on to the stone terrace from the fifth floor.’

‘This morning?’

Rettig begins to move back towards the rehearsal room. ‘Yup. We found him at half past six, but the doctor thought he’d probably jumped at around four. That’s when the loneliness gets to us the most, don’t you find?’

Jan has no answer to that; just hearing about the suicide is making him feel bad, as if it were his fault. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’m asleep then.’

26

The concrete wall by the pre-school carries with it a feeling of hopelessness. Hopelessness and brutality. Sometimes Jan is filled with those feelings when he stares at the wall, so when he is out in the playground with the children he often looks across at the school’s other neighbours, the rows of terraced houses.

Everyday life goes on over there — cars come and go, children walk to school, lights are switched on in bedrooms on dark mornings and switched off at night. The people in the houses have their daily routines, just as everyone in the pre-school does.

It is the middle of October, and dark clouds come scudding across from the coast. The children are playing outside, but suddenly icy raindrops begin to spatter the ground, and Jan quickly takes everyone into the playroom. It will soon be time for their health assessment anyway. Hanna Aronsson, who turns out to have trained as a nurse in the past, calls the children into the staffroom one by one and checks them over, examining their pupils and measuring their blood pressure and heart rate.

‘Fit as fleas,’ she says afterwards.

They gather in the snuggle room, where Marie-Louise leads the weekly suggestion session. The children always have lots of requests.

‘I’d like a pet,’ says Mira.

‘Me too!’ Josefine shouts.

‘But why?’ asks Marie-Louise. ‘You’ve got your cuddly toys, haven’t you?’

‘We want real animals!’

‘Animals that move!’

Mira looks at Marie-Louise and Jan, her eyes pleading. ‘Please... please can we have a pet?’

‘I want stick insects!’ Leo shouts. ‘Lots of stick insects!’

‘A hamster,’ Hugo says.

‘No, I want a cat,’ says Matilda.

The children are excited, but Marie-Louise is not smiling. ‘Animals have to be looked after,’ she says.

‘But we will look after them!’

‘They have to be looked after all the time. And what happens when there’s nobody here?’

‘Then they can live here on their own, in a cage,’ says Matilda with a smile. ‘We’ll just lock them in with loads of food and water!’

Marie-Louise still isn’t smiling; she shakes her head. ‘Animals shouldn’t be left locked up.’

That evening Jan is alone with two of the children, and they both fall asleep quickly. From this week it is only Leo and Mira who will be staying overnight; Matilda now has a foster family who pick her up at five o’clock each day. There is an elderly woman and a man in a grey cap; they seem friendly and reliable. Jan can only hope this is true. But how can you know? He thinks back to Rettig’s comment on the patient who killed himself: He was quiet and pleasant, but his extra head wasn’t nice at all.

We have to be brave enough to trust people. Don’t we? Jan is very trustworthy — except for those few minutes at night when he leaves the sleeping children alone and takes the lift up to the hospital.

He does it again this evening, his heart pounding. The memory of hearing someone coming down in the lift and walking out through the pre-school lingers on, but nothing has happened since, and he is trying hard to forget that night.

His pulse rate increases in the empty visitors’ room, because there is a new envelope waiting for him under the sofa cushions with the instruction OPEN THIS AND POST CONTENTS! Jan would like to open the envelope in the staffroom at the Dell, but he can’t take the risk; it’s twenty to ten, and any minute now Hanna will be arriving to take over.

Sure enough, she comes in from the cold at ten to ten.

‘Everything OK?’ Strands of blonde hair have escaped from beneath her woolly hat, and her cheeks are glowing; she seems unusually exhilarated.

Jan just nods to her and pulls on his jacket. ‘They went off at about half-seven. Things are much calmer with just the two of them.’

He has nothing more to say to Hanna, and picks up his rucksack containing the hidden envelope — but suddenly he realizes he still has one of the key cards in his back pocket. He closed the door leading to the basement when he came back from the visitors’ room, but forgot to return it to the kitchen drawer.

Idiot.

He turns around. ‘I think I forgot something...’

‘What?’ Hanna asks.

But he is already in the kitchen.

‘Did you forget to put back the card?’ Hanna is right behind him, still wearing her leather coat and woolly hat. Her cheeks are not quite so red now.

‘Yes...’ Jan closes the drawer and straightens up. ‘This afternoon, after the last handover.’

‘I’ve done that too.’

Jan doesn’t know if she really believes him, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He wishes her goodnight and sets off home. At least he hasn’t forgotten the envelope from the hospital; it is safely hidden in his bag.

As soon as he gets in his fingers rip open the envelope. His hands are trembling as he sorts through the letters on the kitchen table. It isn’t nerves, but anticipation. He dare not believe that there will be a reply from Rami already, but—

Yes, there is a letter addressed to Jan Larsson, at his old address. Rettig has let it through, if he noticed it at all.

Jan picks it up and puts it to one side. He gathers up the remaining twenty-three letters and places them on the hall table; he will go out and post them late tonight. But first of all he opens his own letter.

There is just one sheet of white paper inside, with three sentences firmly printed in pencil, and no signature:

Jan places the letter on the table in front of him. Then he fetches a sheet of paper and sits down to write a reply. But what should he call her? Alice? Maria? Or Rami? In the end he writes just a few short sentences, as neatly and legibly as possible:

That is all he writes for now; he can’t send a letter to Rami anyway until it is time for the next delivery.

Rami must remember where they were neighbours, and when. She must remember those days in the Unit.

Jan has worn long-sleeved shirts and jumpers ever since. He pulls up his right sleeve now and looks at the faint pink lines following the veins. His own mark, his memory of his schooldays.

He could just as easily have pulled up his left sleeve; the razor blade has left long scars on both arms.

The first thing Jan heard when he woke up was sorrowful music.

Slow guitar chords in a minor key. They sounded close, they were coming from the other side of the wall, and they just kept on and on. Someone was sitting there playing, the same simple chords over and over again.

Jan was lying in a bed, a sturdy bed with rough sheets. He opened his eyes and saw a broad bedstead made of stainless steel. A hospital bed.

The walls around his bed were high and white. He was in a hospital room.

He listened and listened to the guitar music, unable to move; there was no strength in his arms and legs. His stomach and his head were throbbing.

His throat remembered tubes — soft tubes worming their way down to suck out the mess in his guts. The taste of bile, the smell of sour milk.

That’s what happens when you have your stomach pumped. It was terrible. His empty stomach was aching and felt like a balloon, pushing up towards his throat. He wanted to be sick, but he didn’t have the strength.

He heard voices approaching, but closed his eyes and disappeared once more.

The next time Jan woke up, the guitar music had stopped. He closed his eyes again, and when he eventually looked up a tall man with long hair and a brown beard was leaning over him.

He looked like Jesus, dressed in a T-shirt with a yellow smiley on the front.

‘How are you feeling, Jan?’ His voice echoed in the bare room. ‘My name is Jörgen... Can you hear me?’

‘Jörgen...’ Jan whispered.

‘That’s it, Jörgen. I’m a nurse here. Are you OK?’

He wasn’t OK, but nodded anyway.

‘Your mum and dad have gone home,’ said the man. ‘But they’re coming back. Do you remember their names?’

Jan didn’t say anything; he was thinking. It was strange. He could remember Mum and Dad’s voices going on and on, but not their names.

‘No?’ said Jörgen. ‘What about your name, then? What’s your name?’

‘Jan... Hauger.’

‘Good — well done, Jan. Would you like to have a shower?’

Jan stiffened in his bed. No shower. He shook his head.

‘OK... Try to get a little more sleep then, Jan.’

Jörgen floated backwards, away from the bed and out of the shimmering room.

Time passed. Jan heard a clicking sound. When he moved his head he could see that the door of his room was ajar. Something was moving out there. An animal? No. A pale face was looking in at him: a tall, slender girl of about his own age, with chalk-white hair and brown eyes. She stood there staring at him, her expression neither friendly nor malicious.

Jan swallowed; his mouth was dry. He tried to raise his head. ‘Where am I?’

‘In the Psych Unit.’

‘In the what?’

The girl looked at him meaningfully. ‘The Unit.’

Jan said nothing. He didn’t understand. The girl didn’t say anything more either; she just carried on looking at him, then suddenly she raised her arms and pointed a little black box at him. There was a pop and a flash.

He blinked. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Hang on a minute.’ She pulled a square of paper out of the camera, took two steps into the room and threw it down next to his pillow. ‘There you go,’ she said quietly.

Jan looked at the piece of paper, picked it up and watched as a picture started to appear. It was one of those photographs that developed itself, and he saw a pale face and a thin body gradually beginning to take shape. It was him, lonely and afraid in a hospital bed.

‘Thanks,’ he said. But when he looked up at the door, the girl had disappeared.

There was silence for a minute or so, and then the guitar began to play again.

Jan was feeling slightly better, and sat up. The main light was switched off and the blinds were closed, but he could see that the bed was standing in a small, bare room — almost a cell — with a desk and a chair on which his jeans and T-shirt lay neatly folded. His shoes were on the floor, but somebody had removed the laces.

His arms were itchy; he touched them and felt the bandages. They were wrapped around his forearms, as if he were an Egyptian mummy.

Someone had saved him and now he had woken up, even though he wanted to go on sleeping. Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping in the Unit.

The Unit?

He found out a couple of days later that it was an abbreviation, a nickname. At some point the full name, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit, had been shortened to save time.

Whatever it was called, the Unit was a place for those who were disturbed and those who were lost.

Jan had led the small group of police officers and nursery staff straight up into the forest, but after a few hundred metres he had veered off, moving further and further away from the place where the game of hide-and-seek had started.

The officer in charge was standing on the path with his legs apart; Jan thought he had hard eyes. ‘Is this where he disappeared?’

Jan nodded.

‘You’re absolutely sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

The officer was at least one metre ninety, dressed in black boots and dark blue overalls. He had five colleagues with him. They had arrived in three patrol cars and parked on the road down below the forest.

William’s father hadn’t joined the search party; he had gone to fetch his wife. Jan had caught a glimpse of his face outside the nursery; it was stiff and terrified.

The police officer was still staring at Jan. ‘So you had nine children when you started the game just here... and eight when you finished it?’

Jan nodded again. ‘That’s right. Nine boys to begin with.’

‘Didn’t you notice that one of them was missing?’

Jan glanced sideways, avoiding the policeman’s gaze. He didn’t need to pretend to be nervous now — he was nervous. ‘No, unfortunately I didn’t... The group was very boisterous, both when we walked up into the forest and on the way home. And this boy, William, he wasn’t a Lynx.’

‘A lynx? What are you talking about?’

‘That’s the name of my section of the nursery — Lynx.’

‘But surely you were responsible for him today, during the excursion?’

‘Well, yes,’ Jan conceded, his expression resigned. ‘Me and Sigrid.’

He glanced over at her. Sigrid Jansson was standing among the fir trees about ten metres away, her eyes red from weeping. When the police had arrived at the nursery and started to ask questions, she had more or less broken down, which was why the officer in charge had turned his attention to Jan.

‘And when William went off to hide, which direction did he go in?’

‘That way.’ Jan pointed south. Even though the lake wasn’t visible from here, he knew that it lay in that direction — in exactly the opposite direction from the one William had taken.

The police officer straightened up. He sent one man down to search in and around the nursery, then looked at the others. ‘OK, let’s move!’

The group spread out and began to search, but they all knew time was short. It was ten past five, the autumn sun had already set — it was dark and grey among the trees. In half an hour the light would fade, and in an hour it would be pitch dark.

Jan followed as straight a route as possible through the trees, appearing to search as carefully as everyone else. He called for William and looked around, but of course he knew they were searching in completely the wrong place. He shouted, but all the time he was thinking about how thick the concrete walls of the bunker were.

27

It’s a few days before Rettig delivers another envelope to Jan. But by then Jan has met the nocturnal visitor to the pre-school.

The sun shines on these October days, and life is looking better and better; the shadows from the Unit and Lynx are slowly fading. In Jan’s opinion he is a totally reliable colleague at this stage, popular with both the children and the other members of staff. The letters he smuggles into St Psycho’s cannot alter the fact that he is an extremely conscientious pre-school teacher.

After all, he likes the children. Perhaps it is a sense of guilt, or the fear of being found out, that makes him work so hard for the welfare and security of the children, building a solid foundation for lifelong learning and enabling them to develop into responsible and ethically aware citizens, and all the other excellent aims he learned about during his professional training.

The other members of staff sneak out occasionally for a bit of fresh air or a quick smoke, but Jan remains with the children all the time. He jokes with them, listens to them, calms them down, dries their tears and sorts out all their little arguments. He spends a great deal of time with Leo, trying to gain his trust.

Sometimes when he is in the middle of a game he can see no difference between himself and the children. The years fall away, he is five or six years old and able to live completely in the present. No demands, no worries about the future, no anguish because of his loneliness. Just cheerful shouts and a warm feeling of total involvement. Life is going on here and now.

But sometimes he catches a glimpse of someone moving behind the perimeter fence at St Patricia’s, and he abandons the game for a moment and thinks of Rami.

Rami the animal lady, Rami like an animal in a cage.

In a safari park the predators are enclosed together with the herbivores. But the difference between the dangerous animals and those that are harmless is always difficult to see.

The squirrel wants to be free, Rami wrote. And he wants to get inside St Psycho’s to see her. He wants to talk to her, just like before.

‘Jan!’ the children shout. ‘Look, Jan!’

Sooner or later one of the children starts tugging at his arm, and he is back in the moment.

It is afternoon, and the sun disappears behind the bare trees in the west. The autumn sky quickly grows dark. Jan has one last evening shift, then four days off.

He puts the children to bed and is due to be relieved at ten. When he happens to glance outside just before nine thirty, he sees a man and a woman walking along the street, side by side.

The woman is Lilian, but who is the man? They are walking so close together that they look like a married couple, but surely Lilian is divorced? Jan watches the man hug her outside the pre-school, then turn and disappear into the darkness.

In spite of the hug Lilian doesn’t seem particularly happy when she walks in; she is frowning, in fact.

Jan is feeling very calm; he has devoted all his attention to the children this evening. ‘Is it cold outside?’ he asks.

‘What? Yes... yes, it is cold. It’s almost winter, after all.’

‘Typical. I’ve got a few days off and I’m going away.’

‘Great.’

Lilian doesn’t ask where he is going; she seems stressed. She hangs up her coat in the cloakroom, looks wearily at the clock and then at Jan. ‘I’m a bit early,’ she says, ‘but you can go if you want.’

Jan looks back at her. ‘I could stay for a while.’

‘No, you go. I’ll be fine.’ Lilian pushes past him and goes into the kitchen. The furrow in her brow is still there, and she hasn’t asked a single question about the children.

Jan gazes after her for a long time. ‘OK then,’ he says eventually. ‘I’ll go.’

He puts on his jacket and shoes and takes his rucksack out of his locker with exaggerated movements, making sure she can hear him. It’s almost like theatre. ‘I’m going now... Bye then!’

‘Bye.’

He closes the door behind him. It is very cold now the sun has gone, and as he walks away from the outside lights at the Dell, it is like wading into a deep pond; the playground is in total darkness. But his eyes slowly grow accustomed to the gloom, and out in the street he sees a figure dressed in a dark padded jacket and a black hood approaching from the bus stop.

The shadow is heading towards the pre-school. Towards him.

Jan moves instinctively to one side. He hides behind the playhouse, waiting and listening.

He hears the rattle of the gate as it opens and closes. The front door of the pre-school opens and closes.

Jan steps out. The playground is empty. To the left of the playhouse he sees the three swings, swaying gently in the night breeze. He goes over and sits down on the biggest one, which is made from an old tyre.

He pushes his hands deep in his pockets and waits. For what? He isn’t sure, but he is warmly dressed and he can sit here for a while.

He remains motionless on the swing, gazing across at the hospital and the illuminated fence. From time to time he glances over at the windows of the pre-school, and once he sees Lilian dashing past in the dining room. She is alone; there is no sign of a visitor.

Quarter past ten. Nothing is happening. The lights begin to go out in the houses on the far side of the field as weary mums and dads go to bed. Jan shivers and gives himself a shake, but remains where he is.

Ten minutes later he is too cold, and he is starting to get tired of this. He is just about to make a move when the front door of the pre-school opens. Jan freezes. He sees a figure step out on to the porch.

It isn’t Lilian; it’s the visitor in the padded jacket and hood. A lithe figure moving quickly away from the building. The figure does not look over in the direction of the swings, but walks straight down the path and out through the gate. Jan hears the sound of heels clicking on the tarmac.

He gets up slowly and takes a few steps towards the gate.

The figure in the padded jacket has reached the first street lamp. It turns its head and gazes up at the hospital, and at the same moment a cigarette lighter flares into life — and Jan sees that the figure is his colleague, Hanna.

Hanna Aronsson. The youngest member of staff at the Dell, and the quietest. Since the evening when they walked home from Bill’s Bar together, she has hardly spoken to Jan. And he has made a point of avoiding her, after telling her about Lynx and William that night when he’d had too much to drink.

Jan leaves his bike by the gate and silently follows Hanna down the street, staying out of the pools of light cast by the street lamps. She is heading for the bus shelter. She stops there, smoking her cigarette.

Jan stops too, fifty metres away.

What is he going to do? He needs to make his mind up before the bus comes, and eventually he walks up to the shelter, a tense smile on his face. ‘Evening, Hanna!’

Her blue eyes look up and lock on to him. There is no answering smile. ‘Jan.’

He stops a couple of paces away from her and lets out a long breath. ‘That’s it then — no more work for a few days!’

‘Right,’ says Hanna.

‘So what have you been doing this evening?’

She carries on staring at him, but doesn’t answer, so in the end he tries again: ‘Where are you off to?’

Hanna drops the cigarette butt and stamps on it. ‘Home.’

Jan lowers his voice, even though they are alone in the bus shelter. ‘Have you been visiting someone at the hospital?’

She doesn’t answer this time either. Jan hears a rumbling noise behind them; the bus into the town centre is approaching. When they get on, Hanna goes right to the back of the bus, glancing over her shoulder as if she wants to get away from Jan. But he follows and sits down next to her.

The bus is almost empty, but he speaks quietly. ‘Can we have a chat first, Hanna? Before you go home?’

‘What about?’

He jerks his head backwards, in the direction of St Patricia’s. ‘About what you do up there.’

28

Jan and Hanna end up at the Medina Palace, at her suggestion. The night club is in the cellar of the Tureborg, Valla’s only luxury hotel, a towering structure of steel and glass which seems to aspire to being a real skyscraper. As pre-school teachers coming straight from work they’re not exactly dressed for the occasion, and Jan actually has milk stains on his jumper after Matilda knocked her glass over during break. The suited and booted bouncer opens the door for them, but his expression is slightly dubious.

‘Do you come here often?’ Jan jokes.

‘Sometimes.’

Hanna has already smoked two cigarettes since they got off the bus; she answers him quietly, looking down at the floor as they walk into the club.

Into an enormous playroom.

Jan has never been to a real night club, not even in Gothenburg, and when he sees the high, black ceilings adorned with long, curved pipes, and the cold metal surfaces of the walls, he knows he shouldn’t be here. But there aren’t many people in the club this Thursday evening. The music is just right — quiet enough for them to be able to talk, but loud enough to stop anyone eavesdropping.

Jan chooses a glass table in the corner — a secluded table for sharing secrets. ‘What are you having?’

‘Something with orange juice in it.’

Jan goes over to the bar. The selection is more upmarket than at Bill’s Bar; there is a range of cocktails, champagne, cognac... He goes back with two glasses of orange juice, but when Hanna takes her first sip, she looks disappointed.

She nods in the direction of the bar. ‘I said something with orange juice in it... Can you go and get me a proper drink?’

‘Like what?’

‘Something to calm me down.’

Jan looks at her. ‘You mean vodka or something?’

‘Good idea.’

Five minutes later they are staring at their drinks in silence.

‘So you crept up on me this evening,’ Hanna says eventually.

‘Well, I don’t know about that... I thought Lilian seemed a bit tense when she arrived, so I waited in the playground to see if I could find out why.’

Hanna gazes down at the table. ‘Did you know I was up at the hospital?’

‘No, but I know someone has been there and then left via the school, so I’ve been wondering who it might be. Have you been up there often?’

Hanna takes a huge gulp of her drink, as if her vodka and orange juice was a health drink after a sauna. Jan takes a small sip of his.

‘A few times,’ Hanna says. ‘I haven’t kept count.’

‘And how long has this been going on for?’

‘Since May. I’d been working at the Dell for four months by then.’

‘And Lilian knows about this?’

Hanna gazes at him with her blue eyes; she seems to be wondering how much to tell him, and in the end she says, ‘Yes. I mean, we’re friends, so she keeps an eye out for me... I only go up there when she’s on nights.’

‘No,’ says Jan. ‘You were up there one night when I was working. I heard you coming down in the lift. Then you went out through the Dell.’

‘You’re right... I was late that night.’

‘And you were in the visitors’ room at the hospital tonight?’

Hanna nods without speaking.

‘What do you do up there?’

No reply.

‘Are you meeting someone? Is it one of the guards?’

Hanna takes a couple of sips and peers into her half-empty glass. Then she changes the subject. ‘I get so bloody tired of the kids sometimes. I enjoy the job most of the time, but when I’ve been with them for too long I start to get a bit panicky. They just want to do the same things, over and over again. Play the same games...’

Jan has never actually seen Hanna playing with the children; usually she just stands there watching them while they play on their own. But he smiles. ‘Everybody feels like that now and again.’

Hanna sighs. ‘I feel like that nearly all the time. I can’t cope with hordes of kids, somehow.’

Jan sees the children from the Dell in his mind’s eye. Cheery faces. Josefine, Leo and all the others. ‘You should try to see them as individuals,’ he says. ‘They’ve all got their own character.’

‘Oh yes? They sound like a troupe of monkeys to me. They spend all bloody day screaming; I’m practically deaf when I get home after work.’

Hanna empties her glass and an awkward silence falls.

Jan stands up. ‘I’ll get another round in.’

She doesn’t object. When he returns with fresh drinks he wants to get back to the previous topic of conversation, so he looks around before asking, ‘So do you know someone up at the hospital, then?’

Hanna hesitates, but then mumbles that she does.

‘Who is it?’

‘I’m not telling you. Who do you go to see?’

‘Nobody,’ Jan says quickly. ‘Not one of the patients, anyway.’

‘But you want to get to them, don’t you? I mean, you were down in the basement that night when I came back... Why do you go creeping around down there?’

Now it is Jan’s turn to fall silent. ‘Curiosity,’ he says eventually.

‘Yeah, right.’ Hanna smiles wearily at him. ‘But there’s no point in searching for a way in down there.’

‘Oh? But you get through the sally port without any problems?’

She nods quickly. The vodka seems to be making her more relaxed. ‘I’ve got a contact. In the hospital, I mean. Someone I can trust.’

‘A guard?’ Jan immediately thinks of Lars Rettig.

‘Kind of.’

‘Who is it?’

‘I’m not saying.’

This is like a game of chess, Jan thinks. A game of chess in a night club.

The music is louder now, and the place no longer seems quite so big. More people have arrived and begun to fill up the tables and the stools by the bar. It’s only to be expected, of course; the Medina Palace is a night club, with the emphasis on night — people arrive late, and now they’re here to stay. The night people.

But no one comes to join Jan and Hanna; they are sitting very close together now, as if they have been friends since childhood.

‘You and I should trust each other too,’ Jan says.

Hanna’s blue eyes are cool. ‘Why?’

‘Because we can help each other.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, in different ways...’ Jan breaks off. He has grasped that Hanna might be able to help him meet Rami, but he doesn’t know how.

Hanna’s glass is empty. She looks at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go.’ She starts to get up, a little unsteadily.

‘Wait,’ Jan says quickly. ‘Stay a bit longer. I’ll get us another drink. Do you like liqueurs?’

Hanna sits down again. ‘Maybe.’

‘Good.’ He dashes over to the bar; he is as fast as Rami’s squirrel, and he comes back with four small glasses on a tray. A double round of coffee liqueurs, to save time. ‘Cheers, Hanna.’

‘Cheers.’

The drink tastes sweet and the world becomes even more noticeably wrapped in cotton wool. The beat of the music grows louder, and he leans closer to her. ‘So what do you think of Marie-Louise?’

Hanna gives a little smile. ‘Miss Control Freak,’ she says with a snigger. ‘She’d have a heart attack if that thing you told me about happened at our place.’

‘What thing?’

‘That business with the boy who disappeared in the forest.’

Jan gives a curt nod, but keeps his eyes fixed on the table. He doesn’t want to talk about William, so he changes the subject. ‘Is Lilian married?’

‘No. She was, but it didn’t work out... Her husband kind of got bored.’

Jan doesn’t ask any more questions, but he wonders about the man who walked Lilian to work this evening. Has she got a new boyfriend?

Jan is quite pleased when there is a brief silence, because it means he can have another drink. He tries to pull himself together, and looks at Hanna over the top of his glass. ‘Shall we play a game?’

Hanna empties her own glass. ‘What kind of game?’

‘A guessing game.’

‘What about?’

‘I’ll try to guess who you meet at St Psycho’s, and you try to guess who I want to meet up there.’

‘St... We’re not supposed to call it that.’

‘I know.’ Jan gives her a conspiratorial smile. ‘OK, I’ll go first... Is it a man?’

Hanna gazes at him tipsily, then nods. ‘And yours? Is it a woman?’

Jan nods in return, and goes on: ‘Is it someone from your past? Someone you knew before he ended up in St Psych— St Patricia’s?’

She shakes her head. ‘Did you know this woman?’

Jan nods and sips his drink. ‘I met her before... years and years ago.’

‘Is she famous?’ Hanna asks with a smile.

‘Famous?’

‘Yes. Did people talk about her, did she have her name and her picture in the papers? Because of some crime?’

Jan shakes his head; he isn’t lying. After all, Rami was never famous — not as a criminal, anyway. She wasn’t very well known at all; as far as he is aware, she never appeared on television. He raises his glass to Hanna. ‘And your friend on the inside,’ he says. ‘Is he famous?’

Hanna stops smiling; her gaze slides sideways. ‘Maybe,’ she says quietly.

Jan carries on looking at her. Suddenly another name comes into his head, a very well-known name, but it’s such a stupid idea that he almost laughs out loud. ‘Is it Rössel? Ivan Rössel?’

Hanna visibly stiffens — and suddenly it isn’t funny any more.

Jan puts down his glass. ‘Surely that’s not who you’re meeting up there, Hanna? Not Ivan Rössel? He’s a murderer!’

She opens her mouth and hesitates briefly, then gets to her feet. ‘I have to go.’

And that’s exactly what she does, without another word. Jan watches her go, a straight-backed pre-school teacher with blonde hair, making a beeline for the exit.

He stays where he is, holding on to his glass. It’s empty, but Hanna’s second coffee liqueur is still standing there untouched, so he reaches out and knocks that back as well. It tastes horrible, but he drinks it anyway.

Then he gazes blankly into space, suddenly remembering what Lilian said about Hanna Aronsson: She’s young and a bit crazy, but she has a very exciting private life.

A bit crazy? She must be, if she’s sneaking into St Psycho’s and hanging out with Ivan Rössel.

The child-killer.

That’s what one of the newspapers called him, and another referred to him as Ivan the Terrible.

What is Hanna doing with Rössel?

29

Ivan Rössel is smiling at Jan as if they are good friends. He has broad shoulders and black, curly hair that flops down over his forehead; he looks like a middle-aged rock star. He wears the satisfied expression of a man who seems to enjoy being photographed. Or a man who thinks he is smarter than the photographer.

The photograph was taken by the police, and it is on Jan’s computer screen.

Rössel was not a rock musician when the police arrested him, nor a celebrity of any kind; he was a high-school teacher of chemistry and physics at a school here on the west coast. Unmarried and with no close friends. Rössel was popular with the pupils, but some of his colleagues found him arrogant and boastful at times.

His elderly mother has also spoken to a number of newspapers, describing him as ‘a good boy with a kind heart’.

Needless to say, most of the articles about Rössel that Jan finds on the internet are concerned with the murders of young men and women allegedly committed by the teacher in various places in southern Sweden and Norway. He has been dubbed the child-killer, but in fact he is suspected of murdering teenagers. And his only conviction is for a series of arson attacks.

Rössel was a pyromaniac — or at least fires occurred remarkably frequently in houses and shops wherever he was living, and on two occasions people died as a consequence. Someone broke in at night, stole money and valuables, then set fire to the place.

It wasn’t until Rössel had been arrested and sentenced to long-term psychiatric care for the fires and the burglaries that the police began to investigate another remarkable coincidence: the fact that several teenagers had been murdered or had vanished without a trace in the areas where Rössel had been living.

Many aspects of the murder investigation have been kept under wraps, but the newspapers keep on repeating the few details that were made public. Ivan Rössel was not only a teacher, he was also a great camping enthusiast. He owned a large, soundproofed caravan which he would set up in a secluded corner of some Swedish or Norwegian campsite early in the summer. There he would stay until the beginning of the autumn term, keeping himself to himself but undertaking lots of excursions in the area. A number of teenagers were found murdered in the vicinity of the campsites on which he had stayed, and one young man disappeared without a trace. Nineteen-year-old John Daniel Nilsson went outside for a breath of fresh air during a school dance in Gothenburg one evening in May, and never came back.

Jan actually remembers that particular case; he had been living in Gothenburg when John Daniel disappeared, six years ago.

Once Rössel had been locked up for the arson attacks, the police began to investigate the connection between him and the young people who had died or disappeared. But by that time Rössel’s caravan had just happened to catch fire, his car had been scrapped, and any evidence was lost. And Rössel himself refused to admit anything.

There are many articles about Rössel’s background and camping trips — hundreds of articles — but after reading half a dozen Jan has had enough.

Rössel is incarcerated, and St Patricia’s seems to be the right place for him. Surely Hanna Aronsson can’t be interested in such a disturbed individual? Or can she?

Instead Jan begins to search for another name on the internet: St Patricia’s. But he doesn’t find any pictures or long articles, just brief facts and statistics about the hospital from the Prison Service. And a link to St Patricia takes him in completely the wrong direction, to a website about patron saints. He learns that St Patricia was a nun, a member of the Order of St Clare in Stockholm in the fifteenth century. Patricia helped orphaned children, the sick and the old, and the poorest of the poor in the narrow alleyways of the city.

There are just a few lines about the saint, nothing more.

Jan shuts down the computer, stands up and starts to pack. He is going to visit his elderly mother and his childhood home in Nordbro for the first time in six months.

The smells at home are the same. The smells of his mother, her perfumes and pot-pourri. His father died three years ago, but the smell of his tobacco and his aftershave still lingers in the room; it has impregnated the walls.

Jan walks around among all the memories.

There is an old photo of Jan and his brother Magnus, three years his junior, on top of the TV. They are eight and five, smiling at the camera. Next to it there is a recent picture of Magnus as an adult in front of Big Ben, his arm around a girl. Magnus is studying medicine at King’s College; he lives in Russell Square in London with his fiancée, who comes from Kensington, and he has a bright future.

Jan looks around the living room and notices that the parquet floor and the glass tables are thick with dust. ‘You ought to do a bit more housework, Mum.’

‘I can’t do the housework... Daddy used to do the housework.’

Jan’s mother always referred to her husband as Daddy.

‘Couldn’t you get someone in to do a bit of cleaning?’

‘Out of the question — I can’t afford it.’

His mother spends most of her time sitting in the shabby leather armchair in front of the television, huddled in her dressing gown and pink slippers. Sometimes she stands motionless by the window. Jan wants to get her moving, help her to make decisions, acquire new friends. She has spent too much of her life living through her husband.

Perhaps she is already bored with not having to go to work, only a couple of years after her retirement. She doesn’t seem particularly pleased to have Jan home.

‘Weren’t you supposed to bring your girlfriend with you?’ she asks all of a sudden.

‘No,’ Jan says quietly. ‘Not this time.’

Of course Jan has no girlfriend to show around Nordbro. He has no old friends to catch up with in the neighbourhood either, so later that afternoon he takes a long, solitary walk through the town where he grew up.

As usual, on his way to the centre he passes the residential home where Christer Vilhelmsson is cared for along with the other brain-damaged patients, but it is windy and he is not sitting outside today.

Christer was in Year 11 when Jan was in Year 10, and since Jan is now twenty-nine, his schoolmate must be thirty. Time passes, even if Christer himself perhaps does not notice.

Christer was sitting outside on the patio just once when Jan walked past, on a sunny spring day four years ago. He was in a deckchair rather than a wheelchair, but Jan had wondered if he was actually able to walk. Even from the road, from a distance of some fifty metres, Jan could see that this twenty-six-year-old man was an adult only in physical terms. The blank expression and the way he constantly nodded to himself with his head slightly tilted to one side showed that time had gone backwards for Christer Vilhelmsson that night out in the forest. The car that had hit him in the darkness had hurled him into the ditch and back to his childhood.

Jan had stood there gazing at his former schoolmate for a minute or so; once upon a time he had been terrified of Christer. Then he had gone on his way, feeling neither joy nor sorrow.

When he reaches the main square he goes into Fridman’s ironmongery, as he has done a couple of times in the past. Torgny Fridman, the owner’s son, has taken over, and this Saturday afternoon Torgny himself is standing behind the counter. He is a slim man of about thirty, with short, pale-red hair.

Jan goes towards the back of the shop to look at axes. He has no wood to chop, but still he picks up several different types of axe, weighing them in his hands and swinging them experimentally through the air.

At the same time he keeps glancing over at the till. Torgny Fridman has acquired a dark-red beard. He is standing behind the counter chatting to his customers, a family with children. He doesn’t look in Jan’s direction. Fifteen years have gone by, and Torgny seems to have forgotten him. Why should he remember? It is only Jan who remembers.

He picks up the biggest axe, which is almost a metre in length.

The bell on the shop door pings.

‘Daddy!’ A little boy in a white jumper and jeans which are too big comes racing in, hurtling towards the counter. Behind him is a woman, smiling broadly.

Torgny greets the boy with outstretched arms, picks him up and whirls him around. For a moment he is just a father delighted to see his son, not an ironmonger.

Jan stares at them for a few seconds. The axe is heavy, heavy and perfectly balanced. Raise it above your head, higher, higher...

He puts it down and leaves the shop without saying hello. He and Torgny were never friends, and they never will be.

The last stop on Jan’s tour is Lynx.

The nursery where he worked as a twenty-year-old lies a couple of kilometres from the town centre. He wonders if he really wants to go there, but in the end he does.

The place is all closed up; it is Saturday, after all. He stops by the main door and looks at the wooden building; not much has changed. It is still coated with a brown oil-based paint, but it seems smaller than when he was last here. The painted lynx that used to be on the door has gone; maybe the name has been changed to something gentler now, like Wood Anemone or Mountain Hare. Or the Dell, perhaps.

So this is where he worked, all those years ago. In many ways he was still a lost child when he was at Lynx, even if he didn’t realize it at the time. He wonders if anyone from those days is still here. Nina, the supervisor? Sigrid Jansson definitely isn’t — she left at approximately the same time as him.

She was broken by that stage. During their last few weeks at the nursery they had avoided one another when they were out in the playground at the same time; there was a strange atmosphere every time Sigrid looked at him. Perhaps it was just a lingering sorrow over everything that had happened, but to him her silence seemed cold and dismissive, or possibly even full of mistrust.

He had often wondered if Sigrid suspected anything, if she had worked out how Jan had made his preparations on the day William disappeared.

Finally, before he goes back to his mother’s house, Jan wanders down to the Nordbro pond. It lies below his family home like an almost circular cauldron, and Jan knows the black water well. At night it looks like dark blood.

Fifteen years earlier he was on his way to the bottom of that pond, on his way down through whirling bubbles to the final great coldness — until a neighbour jumped in and pulled him out at the very last moment.

When Jan’s parents came to visit him in the Unit, the words attempted suicide hovered between them like a black cloud, but they were never mentioned.

It was hardly possible to make any sort of conversation at all. Jan lay beneath the covers, staring at his parents in silence. He suddenly noticed that his brother wasn’t with them.

‘Where’s Magnus?’

‘At a friend’s,’ his mother said, adding hastily, ‘He... he doesn’t know anything.’

‘Nobody knows about this,’ said his father.

Jan nodded. Eventually his mother went on, keeping her voice low: ‘We’ve spoken to your doctor, Jan.’

His father scowled. ‘He wasn’t a doctor, he was a psychologist.’

His father didn’t like psychologists. At the dinner table the previous year he had talked about a colleague at work who was seeing a therapist, and had called it ‘tragic’.

His mother chimed in, ‘That’s right, he’s a psychologist. Anyway, he said you’d be in here for a few weeks. Maybe four, or maybe a little bit longer. Is that OK, Jan?’

‘Mm.’

The room fell silent again. Jan suddenly noticed there were tears running down his mother’s cheeks. She quickly wiped them away, just as his father asked, ‘Have they spoken to you yet, the psychologists?’

Jan shook his head.

‘You don’t have to speak to them, you know,’ said his father. ‘You don’t have to answer any questions, or tell them anything.’

‘I know.’

When had he last seen his mother cry? Probably at his grandmother’s funeral the previous year. The atmosphere in this room was very similar to the atmosphere in the chapel, when they were all sitting there staring at the coffin.

His mother blew her nose and attempted to smile. ‘Have you got to know anyone in here?’

Jan shook his head again. He didn’t want to get to know anyone, he just wanted to be left in peace.

His mother didn’t say much after that. She didn’t cry any more, but she sighed wearily a few times.

His father didn’t say another word; he just sat there in his grey suit, rocking back and forth on his chair as if he wanted to get up. From time to time he looked at his watch. Jan knew he had a lot of work, and wanted to get home. When he looked at his son, his expression was irritated and impatient.

That look made Jan nervous, it made him want to get out of bed and forget everything that had happened, just go home and be normal.

His mother suddenly raised her head. ‘Who’s that playing?’

Jan listened too, and heard the sound of soft guitar music coming from the room next door. He knew who was playing. ‘It’s my neighbour... Some girl.’

‘There are girls in here too?’

Jan nodded. ‘It’s mostly girls, I think.’

His father looked at his watch again and got up. ‘Shall we make a move, then?’

Jan looked at his mother. ‘You go... I’ll be fine.’

His mother stood up too. She reached out to touch his cheek, but her hand didn’t quite get there. ‘Yes, I suppose we’d better go,’ she said. ‘We haven’t got long left on our parking ticket.’

Nobody said anything else until his mother turned back in the doorway. ‘I nearly forgot... Somebody rang you yesterday, Jan. A friend of yours.’

‘A friend?’

‘He wanted to know how you were... I gave him the number of this place.’

Jan just nodded. A friend? He couldn’t think of a single friend who might have phoned. Someone from his class? Presumably.

When his parents had left he felt as if he could breathe again. He sat up and slowly climbed out of bed. He went over to the desk and looked out of the window. There was a wide grassy area out there, wet after the winter — and beyond it a high fence with barbed wire along the top. He looked at it for a long time.

The Unit was no ordinary hospital, Jan realized.

He was a prisoner here.

30

Jan is back in Valla. He has cleaned his flat: he is expecting a visit from Hanna.

It was his idea to meet up this evening; when he went back to work at the Dell after his long weekend off, Hanna was also on duty, and when the staffroom was empty he stuck a note in her jacket pocket, with his address and a question: COFFEE AT MINE, 8 O’CLOCK? JAN H.

He didn’t get an answer from her before he left, but bought bread on the way home anyway. She has to come — they have shared interests.

Shared secrets.

And Hanna rings his doorbell fairly punctually, at five past eight. She doesn’t say much as she walks in, but Jan is pleased. ‘I’m glad you came.’

‘Thanks.’

Jan tries to relax; he leads her into the kitchen, makes tea and offers sandwiches. Then he makes small-talk about work, but eventually they get to the subject he really wants to discuss: St Patricia’s. ‘The women up there... Are they separated from the men?’

Hanna looks at him, her expression blank as usual. The air in Jan’s kitchen suddenly feels thick and heavy, but it is still better to ask Hanna about the hospital than Lars Rettig. ‘Yes,’ she says eventually, ‘there are a couple of women’s wards... One secure and one open.’

‘Are they close together?’

‘Not exactly next door, but I think they’re on the same floor.’

‘And which floor is that?’

‘The third, I think. Or the fourth... I’ve never been in there.’

Jan tries to come up with more questions, but suddenly Hanna has something to say: ‘Tell me who it is, Jan.’

‘Who what is?’

‘The person in the hospital that you’re in love with... What’s her name?’

She is staring at him, but Jan refuses to meet her gaze.

‘It’s different,’ he says.

‘What do you mean, different?’

‘Different from you and Ivan Rössel.’

Hanna slams down her teacup. Her blue eyes are cold. ‘What do you know about how things are between us? You don’t know anything, you don’t know why I got in touch with him... How can you make a judgement?’

Jan looks down at the table. The atmosphere is suddenly icy. But he was right — it is Rössel she has met up with in the visitors’ room.

‘I’m just guessing,’ he says. ‘But you do like him, don’t you?’

Hanna is still staring at him. ‘You have to see the person beyond the crime,’ she says eventually. ‘Most people can’t do that.’

‘If you’re sneaking in to see Rössel, surely you must like him?’ Jan says. ‘Even though he’s done... bad things?’

It takes a while before she answers. ‘I don’t see him,’ she says. ‘The contact is through one of the guards. Ivan is working on a project to make the time pass more quickly in there... and I’m helping him.’

‘With what? What’s he doing?’

‘It’s a writing project. He’s working on a manuscript.’

‘A book?’

‘Kind of.’

‘What, like the memoirs of a murderer?’

Hanna’s mouth tightens. ‘He’s a suspect. He’s never confessed.’ She sighs. ‘He says his book will explain everything... People will realize that he hasn’t done anything.’

‘And he believes that?’

‘Yes, he does.’ Hanna’s voice is more animated now. ‘Ivan feels really terrible about how things have turned out; there’s a much greater risk that he’ll take his own life rather than anyone else’s. Right now it’s only my letters that are keeping him going...’

She stops, and Jan doesn’t know what to say. The intense look in Hanna’s eyes makes him uneasy; he doesn’t really want to talk about Rössel any more.

Neither does Hanna, apparently. ‘I have to go soon.’ She looks at her watch, then at Jan. ‘So are you going to tell me now?’

‘Tell you what?’

‘Her name... the woman you’re seeing up there?’

Jan lowers his gaze. ‘I haven’t seen her yet.’

‘So what’s her name, then?’

Jan hesitates. He has two names to choose from — Rami or Blanker — but he decides on the least well known. ‘Wait a minute,’ he says. ‘I’m just going to fetch something.’

He goes into the living room and comes back with the picture books: The Princess with a Hundred Hands, The Animal Lady, The Witch Who Was Poorly and Viveca’s House of Stone. He puts them down in front of Hanna. ‘Have you seen these before?’

Hanna shakes her head.

‘They were up at the pre-school. They’re handmade... so this is probably the only copy of each one that exists. And somebody must have put them in the book box.’

‘Marie-Louise usually puts books in there,’ says Hanna.

‘Not these... I think one of the children was given them by their parent up in the visitors’ room.’

Hanna leafs through the books, then looks up at Jan. ‘Who wrote them?’

‘She calls herself Maria Blanker,’ he says. ‘She’s Josefine’s mother... I’m almost sure of it.’

‘Blanker... So she’s the one you want to meet at the hospital?’

‘Yes... Do you know who she is?’

‘I’ve heard a few things about her,’ Hanna says quietly.

‘From Rössel?’

She shakes her head. ‘From Carl... my contact.’

Jan recognizes the name, of course. The drummer from the Bohemos.

Hanna is still looking at the books. ‘Can I borrow them?’

Jan hesitates. ‘OK,’ he says eventually. ‘Just for a few days.’

She gathers up the books and gets to her feet; it’s time to go home.

But Jan has one last question: ‘Is Maria Blanker on the secure ward or the open ward?’

‘I don’t know where she is, I’ve never been inside,’ says Hanna, before adding, ‘But I should think she ought to be on the secure ward.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Blanker is psychotic. She’s completely out of it. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.’

‘Do you know what she’s done?’

‘She’s dangerous.’

‘Is she a danger to herself?’ Jan asks. ‘Or to others?’

Hanna shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. So you’re going to have to go in and ask her.’

Jan smiles at the joke, but Hanna isn’t smiling. ‘I’m serious,’ she says. ‘There’s always a way in, if you’re willing to take it.’

‘But everything is locked at St Patricia’s.’

‘One way is open.’

‘And you know about this?’

She nods. ‘I know where it is, but it isn’t that easy to get through... Do you suffer from claustrophobia, Jan?’

Being locked in wasn’t all that bad, surely — not if you had plenty of food and drink, and you were warm enough? And a talking robot to keep you company?

Jan convinced himself that this was true, over and over again, whenever he thought about William inside the bunker.

In fact, being locked up behind thick concrete walls could make you feel really safe and secure.

It was half past eight in the evening, and the police had called off the search for William half an hour ago. They had continued after darkness had fallen, using torches, but it had all been very badly organized, in Jan’s opinion. And they found nothing. William had vanished without a trace; he could have stepped off the edge of the world.

Or at least disappeared from solid ground. The police had spent the last hour searching the long shore of the lake, and Jan realized they were afraid that the five-year-old had fallen in the water.

Lynx had become an assembly point for the search parties. But they were all tired now, and many of those who had been out looking for the boy were on their way home. When daylight came on Thursday morning, the search would resume, with increased manpower.

Jan had walked back to Lynx with an older police officer, who had puffed and panted his way through the forest. ‘Bloody hell... I hate this kind of thing. Let’s hope he makes it through the night, but there’s not much chance of that.’

‘Well, it’s quite mild at the moment,’ said Jan. ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine.’

But the officer didn’t appear to be listening. ‘Bloody hell,’ he repeated. ‘I remember once a kid was found dead on a forest track... He’d been hit by somebody’s car, then they’d hidden him in the forest, like a sack of rubbish.’ He looked at Jan with weary eyes. ‘You never forget something like that.’

When Jan got back to the staffroom he suddenly heard a dull throbbing noise in the distance, a noise which quickly grew to a deafening racket above the nursery.

He looked over at Nina Gundotter, the nursery supervisor. She was waiting by the telephone as if she thought William might ring up sooner or later to tell them where he was.

‘Is that a helicopter?’ he asked.

Nina explained, ‘The police requested it. They couldn’t get hold of any dogs, but they’re going to fly over the forest now using thermal-imaging cameras.’

Jan nodded. He went over to the window to look at the thermometer; it was showing nine degrees. An autumn temperature — it wasn’t bitterly cold out there, but it wasn’t warm either. Unfortunately the wind had got up, but of course Jan knew that William was sheltered from the wind.

He had been standing fairly close to Nina when she had approached one of the police officers to ask about their strategy, but the response had been evasive.

‘We’ll search the lake, of course, but that won’t happen until tomorrow, when it’s light,’ the officer had said, speaking very quietly.

All but two of the staff had returned to the nursery this evening. White candles had been placed on the tables and in the windows, which gave the whole place a church-like atmosphere.

After fifteen or twenty minutes the sound of the helicopter died away. Jan turned to his boss. ‘I think I need to go home and try to get some sleep. I’ll come back first thing; it’s my day off, but I’ll come in anyway.’

Nina nodded. ‘I’m going shortly myself,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing more we can do tonight.’

Since arriving at the nursery Nina had not uttered one word of criticism to Jan. On the contrary, she appeared to support him completely, blaming the whole thing on Sigrid, who had a different supervisor over at Brown Bear: ‘She should have checked.’

Jan shook his head. The last time he’d seen Sigrid she had been lying on the sofa in the Brown Bear staffroom; she had been given some kind of sedative when they got back from the forest.

‘Neither of us was really on top of things today,’ he said, pulling on his jacket. ‘It was pretty chaotic up there... We had too many children with us.’

Nina sighed. She looked over at the dark windows, then at the telephone. ‘I think someone else has found him in the forest,’ she said. ‘Someone who has taken him home with them... I’m sure William is fast asleep in a warm bed somewhere, and the police will get a phone call first thing in the morning.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Jan, buttoning his jacket. ‘See you in the morning.’ With a final nod to Nina, he left the nursery.

It felt colder than nine degrees when he got outside, but that was probably just his imagination. It wasn’t winter yet, far from it. A warmly dressed person just couldn’t freeze to death, even if he was lying out in the open. Sheltered from the wind, behind a concrete wall, for example, he would be fine for several days.

Jan set off. As he passed the brightly lit windows of Brown Bear he caught a glimpse of the staff keeping vigil inside, along with William’s parents. Jan could see the mother slumped in a chair, a cup of coffee in front of her. She looked terrible.

Jan wanted to stop and stare for a while, but he kept on going.

At the edge of the forest he stood and listened; he could hear nothing but the wind soughing in the trees. The sound of the helicopter had completely disappeared by now. It might come back later with its thermal-imaging camera, but that was a risk he would have to take.

Jan looked around one last time, then stepped over the little ditch by the side of the road and headed off among the trees. He powered up the slope.

William had been alone and locked inside the bunker for over four hours now. But he had warm blankets, food and drink, and toys; he’d be fine. And soon Jan would be there with him.

31

With each autumn evening that passes, St Patricia’s grey façade seems a little colder and darker to Jan. As he cycles past the wall on this particular evening, the hospital behind the wall looks like a great fortress. Pale, shimmering lights are visible in many of the windows, but they do not convey a welcoming atmosphere. Shadows seem to be moving inside the rooms, gazing out with longing from behind the bars.

Is one of the windows ajar up there?

Is that guitar music he can hear in the night?

No. Just his imagination.

Jan quickly cycles on past the hospital and down to the pre-school, away from the wall. It is Sunday, and only two months to go until Christmas. He is free this weekend but has come down anyway; he and Hanna parted company four days earlier with a kind of promise to help each other. Or at least not to give each other away.

‘You can’t get into the hospital through the sally port,’ Hanna had said in Jan’s kitchen. ‘Nobody gets in that way... I’ve never got past the visitors’ room.’

‘So your friend Carl... he lets you and Rössel meet up there?’

‘No, Ivan stays in his room. I send him letters.’

More secret letters, Jan thought. But he merely asked, ‘So how do I get in, then?’

‘Through the basement,’ Hanna said. ‘I can show you the entrance, if you like.’

Jan definitely liked the idea. He remembered that Högsmed had talked about a way from the hospital to the pre-school through the basement. But it’s not a very pleasant route, the doctor had said.

What does that mean? Are there rats in the basement? Or people?

He arrives at the Dell and cautiously opens the door, knowing perfectly well that he’s not supposed to be there tonight.

‘Hello?’ he says quietly. ‘Hanna?’

There’s a brief silence, then he hears her voice from the kitchen: ‘Come in... everything’s fine.’

Jan steps inside and closes the door. ‘All quiet?’

‘Yes — I managed to get them off. But they were like little monsters this evening, running around and screaming, just pushing me to the limit all the time.’

Jan says nothing; he knows that Hanna isn’t particularly fond of the children.

As he takes off his jacket he notices that it is almost half past nine. He keeps his shoes on and takes a couple of steps towards the kitchen and the drawer where the keys are kept, but Hanna holds out her hand.

‘Here.’ She has already taken out one of the key cards, and passes it to Jan.

‘Thanks.’

‘You haven’t changed your mind?’

Jan shakes his head and goes over to the door leading to the basement. It feels a little odd to enter the code and open the door in front of someone else at this late hour.

He turns around. ‘See you later.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m coming down with you.’

He has no time to object; she switches on the light and sets off down the stairs, and all Jan can do is follow her.

He uses the underground corridor every day to deliver and collect the children, and by this stage Jan is heartily sick of the pictures on the walls. The smiling mice seem to be sneering at him.

They won’t be using the lift tonight. Hanna leads the way to the safe room. Jan hasn’t been here for more than two weeks — not since he stood there and heard someone coming down in the lift in the middle of the night. Someone who turned out to be Hanna.

‘So there’s a secret passageway here?’ Jan wants to know.

‘Secret... Well, it’s hidden.’ She presses down on the handle and opens the steel door. Then she turns around and looks at Jan. ‘Are you sure about this?’

Jan nods.

‘Come on, then.’

When Hanna switches on the light and Jan steps into the safe room, he suddenly has a picture in his mind’s eye of a frightened little five-year-old boy sitting on a mattress in there. His heart skips a beat — but the light comes on to reveal a completely empty room.

The mattress and the pillows are still there, just as he remembered them. And the steel door at the far end of the room is still closed.

Hanna walks over to the door. ‘Here it is.’

‘That door is locked,’ Jan says. ‘I’ve already tried it.’

‘I mean the floor.’ She is pointing downwards.

‘The floor?’

Jan walks forward — and feels something uneven beneath his feet. He looks down at the blue fitted carpet, but he is standing on something underneath it, something small and narrow.

The carpet covers the entire floor, but it isn’t stuck down. Hanna goes over to one corner and lifts it up. Together they pull the carpet back towards the middle of the room. It comes away easily, and Jan can see grey concrete.

‘A bit further,’ Hanna says. ‘Nearly there.’

She seems eager now, urging him on. They carry on pulling at the carpet, and suddenly Jan sees a hatch in the floor, half a metre wide and made of corrugated metal.

‘That’s the way in,’ Hanna says.

Jan looks at the hatch, then at her. ‘The way into the hospital?’

Hanna nods. ‘It goes right under the wall.’

‘Where does it come out?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

Jan pulls the carpet back so that the whole of the hatch is exposed, and notices that there is an iron handle. ‘How did you find it?’

‘I did the same as you down here, looking around, checking things out... and I’ve had more time than you.’

‘Has Rössel been helping you?’ asks Jan.

She shakes her head.

Jan bends down, grabs hold of the iron handle and lifts off the hatch cover. He puts it to one side and gazes down into a big, square hole. But this isn’t a drain; it’s some kind of electrical conduit with thick cables running beneath the basement floor. It isn’t very deep, perhaps a metre, but it seems to be the beginning of a narrow passage under the concrete, leading towards the locked door. Everything is pitch black down there.

‘Are you going down?’ Hanna asks.

‘Maybe.’

Jan hesitates. He kneels and peers into the passageway. The hole is so dark that he can’t see how far it goes. There are some old water pipes next to the cables, and swirling balls of dust. There is a faint smell of mould, or perhaps mud, but the concrete in the tunnel looks dry.

Dry, and wide enough for him. There should be room to climb in and crawl under the floor.

Are there rats’ nests down there? Maybe. He listens, his ear cocked towards the underworld, but all is silent. ‘Hello?’ he whispers.

There is no reply, not even an echo.

Jan gets to his feet. He carefully replaces the cover, but leaves the carpet as it is, and looks at Hanna. ‘I’m just going back upstairs... I need more light.’

‘From what?’ she asks.

‘From an Angel.’

32

Hanna stares at the equipment Jan has just taken out of his locker.

‘What’s that?’ she asks.

‘An electronic baby monitor. Have you never seen one before?’

‘No.’ She shakes her head as she contemplates the two plastic boxes. ‘What are they for?’

Jan looks at her. ‘It’s obvious you haven’t got kids... They enable you to keep a check on the children while they’re asleep.’

‘But why can’t you just go and see if they’re OK?’

‘Not everybody has time... or it’s a question of security, I suppose. If the children are safe, the parents feel secure.’ He thinks about William Halevi, and adds, ‘If the parents don’t feel secure, they’re unhappy.’

Hanna takes one Angel, but doesn’t look convinced. ‘So what are you going to do with them now?’

‘I’m going to use one as a torch,’ he says. ‘And if I leave the other one with you, you’ll be able to hear me.’

‘And that will somehow make you feel more secure?’

‘A bit.’

Hanna weighs the Angel in her hand and says, ‘I can listen, but I can’t do any more. I mean, if you need any help down there, I can’t—’

‘It’s enough if you can hear me,’ Jan interrupts her.

It would be a lifeline. A bit like going into a cave with a rope around your ankle.

‘Are you afraid?’ she asks.

‘No. I left the fear in the pocket of my other trousers,’ he says. He smiles, but doesn’t relax. He doesn’t know what is going to happen, he doesn’t know if the guards patrol regularly, but if he meets anyone down there he had better hope it is Lars Rettig, or some friend of his. If they are to be trusted.

Five minutes later he is standing beside the hole in the basement floor. It is almost half past ten now, but down here there is a feeling of timelessness. In the underworld it is always night.

He holds up the Angel and switches on the lamp. ‘OK,’ he says into the microphone. ‘I’m going in.’ His voice echoes in the safe room, but he doesn’t know whether Hanna can hear him or not.

Supporting himself with his hands, he lowers his legs to the bottom of the electrical conduit, just about a metre below the floor of the basement. Once he is in, it is easier to bend down and point the lamp into the passageway; he can see that it carries on straight ahead, into the darkness.

He kneels down, breathing in the dry, dusty air. ‘I’m going in.’

He makes his upper body as flat and narrow as possible, bends his head and creeps along on his hands and knees. He manages it without banging his head. It’s like crawling into a crypt, with immovable blocks of stone on all sides, and the thick ceiling pressing against his back.

Claustrophobia? He has to keep the fear away, not think about coffins and locked sauna doors. He can breathe, he can move. The passageway is wide enough for him to move forward without too much difficulty — he just can’t turn around. All he can do if anything happens is to shuffle backwards.

But what could possibly happen?

Jan coughs, feeling a sudden desire for water. It’s dusty, but he keeps on going. His shadow dances jerkily over the concrete in the glow of the lamp.

When he shines the light ahead of him, he can see that the passageway ends in a grey concrete wall some ten metres away — or perhaps it just bends to one side.

He speaks into the Angel again: ‘I think... I think I’m underneath the door of the safe room now.’

He feels slightly ridiculous, talking to himself. And how certain is he that the security guards up at the hospital don’t have the right sort of technical equipment to pick up every word he is saying? Not certain at all.

He lowers the Angel, grits his teeth and keeps on moving forward. He listens for scrabbling noises or squeaks, but he can’t see any rats. Not yet, anyway. There are little black lumps on the floor that could be droppings — or dead flies. He doesn’t want to look too closely.

First one leg, then the other. Crawl, just crawl.

Suddenly Jan notices something on the roof of the passageway, perhaps five metres away. He lifts up the lamp again and sees that there is another hatch cover up ahead, made of corrugated metal, just like the one behind him.

The sight makes him crawl faster, as best he can. His head and shoulders keep banging against the concrete, his hands and knees are growing numb as they press against the floor — but at last he makes it.

He puts down the Angel in front of him and reaches up, almost convinced that the cover will be locked or screwed down.

But it isn’t. It is loose, and he places the palms of his hands against the metal and pushes upwards. There is a scraping sound, and the heavy cover moves. He is able to push it to one side, slowly and carefully. To his ears the screech of the metal is deafeningly loud as it moves across the concrete floor, bit by bit, but he keeps on going.

A black hole opens up above him; there is no light. The room above is pitch dark, and when he has finished shifting the cover, there is absolute silence.

Jan slowly gets to his feet with the Angel in his hand. He is now standing upright in a square hole in a concrete floor, an opening which is an exact copy of the one he climbed into — but behind him, by the light of the Angel, he can see what must be the other side of the locked door of the safe room.

He clambers laboriously out of the hole. ‘It’s worked,’ he whispers into the Angel. ‘I got through, I’m in... some kind of cellar.’ Then he switches off the transmitter; it feels wrong to be talking out loud, or even whispering, down here in the silence. He raises the lamp, sweeping it around him like a sabre. But the Angel is not a weapon; Jan has nothing with which he could defend himself, and he feels a bit like a four-year-old who has been left all alone in a big, dark house.

The air is stale here. There are no carpets on the floor, no colourful drawings on the walls. Still, having got out of the cramped tunnel, he ought to be feeling better than he actually does.

He is standing in an empty corridor which leads straight ahead, then disappears into the darkness around a corner. When he moves forward and looks around the corner, he sees a dark doorway seven or eight metres further ahead, on the left-hand side.

Jan hesitates, then begins to edge silently and cautiously towards the open doorway. He is in a completely unfamiliar environment now, and he is totally alone. But he blinks into the darkness and manages to summon up Alice Rami’s face — not as she looked when they met as teenagers, but as he has imagined she will look as an adult, the way he has imagined her during all those lonely nights. Beautiful, intelligent, experienced. Perhaps a little weary, bearing the marks of the years that have passed, but strong and smiling.

Rami, his first love, his only girlfriend.

He gropes for a light switch along the walls, but fails to find one. Without the light of the Angel he would be in total darkness down here, but the beam has grown noticeably less bright over the past couple of minutes, and he has no spare batteries.

At the end of the corridor he raises the Angel and peers into the room beyond. It is an enormous cellar which appears to go on for ever. Jan can see white tiles on both the floor and the walls. The floor is grey with dirt and dust, and black mould has spread over every pale surface.

Is it a shower room? No, he can see decrepit bookshelves and steel tables along the walls. Further away there are some yellow plastic curtains, half closed around rusting beds and low washstands.

This is some kind of laboratory; it looks as if it has been closed up and abandoned for decades.

Jan looks around the tiled walls and feels his heart pounding.

He has found his way into St Psycho’s.