The chief physician pulls his card through a third security lock and taps in a code. There’s a beep and the door opens.
“So why would he want a knife?” asks Anders as he hurries through the door. “If he wanted to kill himself, he’d already have done so by now, right?”
“Maybe he likes knives,” Roland replies.
“Do you think he plans to escape?”
“He hasn’t tried it once during all these years.”
They have reached another locked gate.
“Wait a minute,” Roland says. He holds out a small box with yellow earplugs.
“You just said he doesn’t scream.”
Roland looks extremely tired as if he hasn’t slept in weeks. He looks at his new colleague for a while and sighs heavily before he starts to explain.
“Jurek Walter will talk to you, very calmly, very pleasantly,” he says. His tone is serious. “Later this evening, when you’re driving home, you’ll find yourself driving into the lane of oncoming traffic and crash into a truck, or you’ll go past a hardware store and buy an ax before you pick up your children from day care.”
“Are you trying to scare me?” asks Anders with a smile.
“Not really, but I want you to be careful,” Roland says. “I’ve had to enter his room once before, sometime last year, because he had a pair of scissors in there.”
“He’s an old man, right?”
“Don’t worry. We’re going to make it through this all right.”
Roland’s voice dies away and his expression is vague and hard to read. Then he says, “Before you walk through these doors, make sure you look as bored as possible. Your days are boring, boring, boring. You act like you’re doing nothing that you haven’t done a thousand times before.”
“I’ll try.”
Roland’s face is tense. His gaze is hard and nervous.
“We’re going to act as if we’re giving him his usual dose of Risperdal.”
“But?”
“But instead we’re giving him an overdose of Eutrexa,” the chief physician says.
“Intentionally give an overdose?”
“I did it the last time, so, yes, all right. At first he was extremely aggressive. It lasted a short time. Then the muscle relaxant worked. First the face and tongue-he wasn’t able to speak properly. Then he fell on the floor and lay on his side. He was breathing. Then there were a number of cramps, like epilepsy. It took a while. After that, he was tired and dazed, almost out of it, unable to move. When that happens this time, we’ll run in and grab the knife.”
“Why not just use a barbiturate?”
“That would be better,” Roland nods. “But it’s best to keep to the kinds of drugs he’s already getting.”
They walk through the final grid gate into the ward devoted to Jurek Walter. Ahead is a metal door painted white, with a small bulletproof glass window, a boom, and a slot.
Roland Brolin gestures to Anders to wait. He is moving cautiously.
Perhaps he is afraid of being surprised.
He keeps his distance from the glass and moves sideways. Then his face relaxes and he waves to Anders to join him. They stand in front of the window and look into a large room without windows.