The Sandman

135

The lights in the ceiling go out. Saga is lying on her side in bed, with her eyes open.

God, what should I have done? She’s burning up with anguish.

Her feet, ankles and knees ache from the kicks.

She doesn’t know if she could have saved Bernie by intervening. Maybe she could have, maybe Jurek wouldn’t have been able to stop her.

But there was no doubt that she would have exposed herself to danger and ruined any chance of saving Felicia.

So she went into her room and kicked at the door. Which had been desperate and pathetic, she thinks.

She kicked on the door as hard as she could, hoping that the guards would wonder where the noise was coming from and finally glance at their monitors.

But nothing happened. They didn’t hear her. She should have kicked harder.

It felt like an eternity before any voices and footsteps approached.

She’s lying on her bed and trying to tell herself that the staff got there in time, that Bernie is now in intensive care, that his condition is stable.

The outcome depends on how tightly the noose squeezed the arteries in his neck.

She’s thinking that Jurek might have tied a bad noose, even though she knows that wasn’t the case.

Since Saga returned to her room all she’s done is lie on her bed, feeling frozen. Dinner was dished out by the girl with the piercings, but she’s only eaten the peas and two mouthfuls of potato from the fish gratin.

Saga lies in the darkness thinking about Bernie’s face as he shook his head with a look of total helplessness in his eyes. Jurek moved like a shadow. He conducted the execution dispassionately, simply doing what he had to, kicking the chair away and then walking to his room without hurrying.

Saga switches on the lamp by her bed, then sits up and puts her feet on the floor. She turns her face towards the CCTV camera in the ceiling, towards its black eye, and waits.

As usual, Joona was right, she thinks as she stares at the camera’s round lens. He thought there was a chance that Jurek would approach her.

He had actually started talking to her in such a personal way that even Joona ought to be surprised.

Saga thinks of how she broke the rule about not talking about her parents, her family. She just hopes that the officers listening don’t think she lost control of the situation. She persuades herself it was an attempt to deepen the conversation,. She was perfectly aware of what she was doing when she told serial killer Jurek Walter about one of the most difficult periods of her life.

She’s never forgotten what Jurek Walter has done, but she hasn’t felt threatened by him. That’s probably benefitted the infiltration, she thinks. She’s been more scared of Bernie. Up until the moment when Jurek hanged him with the lead.

Saga massages her neck with her hand, and goes on staring at the eye of the camera. She must have been sitting like that for over an hour now.