The Sandman

119

In the attic flat at Rörstrandsgatan 19, the members of Athena Promacho are listening to the conversation between Jurek Walter and Saga Bauer.

Johan Jönson is sitting at his computer in a grey tracksuit top. Corinne is at her desk, transcribing the whole conversation onto her laptop. Nathan Pollock has drawn ten flowers in the margin of his notebook, and has written down the words ‘high-voltage electricity wires, big diggers, red clay’.

Joona is merely standing by the speaker, feeling a cold shiver run up his spine as Saga talks about her grandfather. She mustn’t let Jurek inside her head, he thinks. Susanne Hjälm’s image flits through his memory. Her dirty face and the terrified look in her eyes down there in the cellar.

‘Why can’t you go there if you want to?’ he hears Jurek ask.

‘It’s my dad’s house now,’ Saga Bauer replies.

‘And you haven’t seen him for a while?’

‘I haven’t wanted to,’ she says.

‘If he’s alive, he’s waiting for you to give him another chance,’ Jurek says.

‘No,’ she replies.

‘Obviously that depends on what happened, but—’

‘I was little, I don’t remember much,’ she explains. ‘But I know I used to call him all the time, promising I’d never be a nuisance again if he’d come home... I’d sleep in my own bed and sit nicely at the table and... I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘I understand,’ Jurek says, but his words are almost drowned out by a rattling sound.

There’s a whining noise, then the rhythmic thud of the running machine.