The Sandman

144

Saga stops abruptly. Her breathing has become shallow but she forces herself not to show her feelings. She has to remind herself who’s in charge of this situation. He may believe that he’s deceiving her, but in actual fact she’s the one deceiving him.

Saga adopts a neutral expression, then turns slowly to face him.

‘Codeine,’ Jurek says, smiling joylessly. ‘Codeine phosphate only comes in the form of twenty-five-milligram tablets... I know precisely how many it takes to kill a human being.’

‘Mum told me to give her the pills,’ she explains hollowly.

‘But I think you knew she’d die,’ he says. ‘I’m sure your mum thought you knew... She thought you wanted her to die.’

‘Fuck you,’ she whispers.

‘Maybe you deserve to be locked up here for ever.’

‘No.’

He looks at her with terrifying gravity in his eyes, with metallic precision.

‘Maybe it will be enough if you get one more sleeping pill,’ he says. ‘Because yesterday Bernie said he had some Stesolid wrapped in a piece of paper, in a crack under his sink... Unless he only said it to buy time.’

Her heart speeds up. Bernie hid sleeping pills in his room? What’s she going to do now? She has to stop this. She can’t let Jurek get hold of the sleeping pills. What if there are enough for him to carry out his escape plan?

‘Are you going into his room?’ she asks.

‘The door’s open.’

‘It would be better if I did it,’ she says quickly.

‘Why?’

Jurek is giving her a look that seems almost amused, while she tries desperately to come up with a reasonable answer.

‘If they catch me,’ she says, ‘they’ll just think I’m addicted and—’

‘Then we won’t get any more pills,’ he retorts.

‘I think I can get more from the doctor anyway,’ she says.

Jurek considers this, then nods.

‘He looks at you as if he were the one who was captive.’

She opens the door to Bernie’s room and goes inside.

In the light from the dayroom she can see that his room is an exact copy of hers. When the door closes behind her, everything goes dark. She walks over to the wall, feeling her way round, picking up the smell of stale urine from the toilet, then she reaches the sink, the edges of which are wet, as if it’s recently been cleaned.

The doors to the dayroom will be closing in a few minutes.

She tells herself not to think about her mother, just concentrate on the job at hand. Her chin starts to tremble, but she manages to pull herself together, stifling the tears even though her throat feels as if it’s going to burst. She kneels down and runs her fingers across the cool underside of the sink. She reaches the wall and feels along the silicone seal, but can’t find anything. A drop of water falls on her neck. She blinks in the darkness, reaches further down, touches the floor. Another drip falls between her shoulder blades. She suddenly notices that the basin is sloping slightly. That’s why the water on top is dripping onto her instead of draining back into the bowl.

She pushes the basin up with her shoulder and feels along the underside where it joins the wall. Her fingers find a crack. There it is. A tiny package, tucked inside. Sweat is running from her armpits. She pushes the basin up further. It creaks as she tries to grab hold of the package. Carefully she manages to pull it out. Jurek was right. Pills. Tightly wrapped in toilet paper. She’s breathing hard as she crawls out, tucks the package in her trousers and stands up.

As she feels her way to the door to the dayroom she thinks about having to tell Jurek she didn’t find anything, that Bernie must have been lying about the pills. She reaches the wall, quickly moves along it until she finds the door and emerges into the dayroom.

Blinking hard against the bright light, Saga looks round. Jurek isn’t there. He must have returned to his room. The clock behind the reinforced glass tells her the doors to the dayroom will be locked in a few seconds.