The Sandman

147

It’s been almost twenty-four hours since Joona Linna was picked up from Nikita Karpin’s house by the men from the FSB, the new Russian security service. They haven’t answered any questions at all, and he hasn’t been given any explanation as to why his passport, wallet, watch and mobile have been confiscated.

After sitting in a café for hours, they took him to a bleak concrete block of flats, led him along one of the walkways and into a two-room apartment.

Joona was taken to the furthest room, which contained a dirty sofa, a table with two chairs, and a small closet concealing a toilet. The steel door was locked behind him and then nothing happened until a couple of hours later, when they gave him a warm paper bag containing soggy food from McDonald’s.

Joona has to get in touch with his colleagues and ask Anja to look for Vadim Levanov and his twin sons, Igor and Roman. Maybe the names would lead to new addresses, maybe they’d be able to identify the gravel pit where the father worked.

But the metal door has remained locked, and the hours are passing. He’s heard the men talk on the phone a couple of times, but apart from that it’s been silent.

Joona has been dozing off and on, curled up on the sofa, but snaps awake towards morning at the sound of footsteps and voices in the next room.

He turns the light on and waits for them to come in.

Someone coughs, and he hears voices talking irritably in Russian. Suddenly the door opens and the two men from the previous day come in. They’ve both got pistols in their shoulder-holsters and are carrying on a rapid-fire conversation in Russian.

The man with silver-grey hair pulls out one of the chairs and puts it in the middle of the floor.

‘Sit down here,’ he says in good English.

Joona gets up from the sofa and notices the man step back as he walks slowly over to the chair and sits down.

‘You’re not here on official business,’ the thick-necked man with black eyes says. ‘Tell us why you went to see Nikita Karpin.’

‘We were talking about the serial killer, Alexander Pichushkin,’ Joona replied in a toneless voice.

‘And what conclusions did you reach?’ the man with the silvery hair asks.

‘The first victim was his presumed accomplice,’ Joona says. ‘We were talking about him... Mikhail Odichuk.’

The man tilts his head, nods a couple of times, then says amiably:

‘Naturally, you’re lying.’

The man with the thick neck has turned away and drawn his pistol. It isn’t easy to see, but it might be a high-calibre Glock. He’s hiding the gun with his body as he feeds a bullet into the chamber.

‘What did Nikita Karpin tell you?’ the man with grey hair goes on.

‘Nikita believes that the accomplice’s role was—’

‘Don’t lie!’ the other man roars, and turns round, holding the pistol behind his back. ‘Nikita Karpin no longer has any authority, he isn’t in the security service.’

‘You knew that – didn’t you?’ the man with black eyes asks.

Joona is thinking that he might be able to overpower the two men, but without his passport and money it would be impossible to get out of the country.

The agents exchange a few words in Russian.

The man with cropped white hair takes a deep breath and then says sharply:

‘You discussed material that has been declared confidential, and we need to know exactly what you were told before we can take you to the airport.’

For a long time none of them moves. The white-haired man looks at his phone, says something to the other one in Russian, and gets a shake of the head in response.

‘You have to tell us,’ he says, putting his phone in his pocket.

‘I’ll shoot you in your kneecaps,’ the other man says.

‘So, you drive out to Ljubimovka, meet Nikita Karpin and—’

The white-haired man breaks off as his phone rings. He answers, looking stressed, exchanges a few short words, then says something to his colleague. They have a short conversation that gets more and more heated.

148

The man with black eyes is stressed, and moves aside and takes aim at Joona with the pistol. The lino floor creaks under his feet. A shadow slips away and the light from the standard lamp reaches his hand. Joona can now see that the black pistol is a Strizh.

The white-haired man rubs one hand over his head, barks an order, looks at Joona for a few seconds, then leaves the room and locks the door behind him.

The other man walks round and stops somewhere behind Joona. He’s breathing hard, and having trouble standing still.

‘The boss is on his way,’ he says in a low voice.

There’s the sound of angry shouting behind the steel door. The smell of gun-grease and sweat is suddenly very noticeable in the small room.

‘I have to know – do you understand?’ the man says.

‘We were talking about serial ki—’

‘Don’t lie!’ he yells. ‘I have to know what Karpin said!’

Joona can hear his impatient movements behind his back, can feel him coming closer, and sees a faint shadow flit across the floor.

‘I have to go home now,’ Joona says.

The man with black eyes moves quickly, presses the barrel of the pistol hard against the back of Joona’s neck, from a position just to the right of him.

His rapid breathing is clearly audible.

In a single movement Joona pulls his head out of the way, twists his body, moves his right arm back and knocks the gun aside, then stands up. He throws the man off balance and grabs the barrel of the pistol, twisting it down before jerking it upwards and breaking the man’s fingers.

The man howls and Joona concludes his violent movement by ramming a knee into his kidneys and ribs. One of the man’s legs is lifted from the floor by the force of the blow, and he tumbles backwards, crushing the chair beneath him.

Joona has already moved out of the way and turned the pistol on him when he rolls onto his side, coughing, and opens his eyes. He tries to get up but coughs again, then lies there with his cheek to the ground, inspecting his wounded fingers.

Joona removes the magazine and puts it on the table, takes the bullet out of the chamber and then dismantles the entire pistol.

‘Sit down,’ Joona says.

The man with black eyes groans with pain as he gets up. His brow is beaded with sweat, and he sits down and frowns at the pieces of the gun.

Joona puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out a sweet.

‘Ota poika karamelli, niin helpottaa,’ he says in Finnish.

The man looks at Joona in astonishment as he unwraps the yellow cellophane and pops the sweet in his mouth.

The door opens and two men come in. One is the man with silver-grey hair, the other an older man with a full beard, wearing a grey suit.

‘Sorry for the misunderstanding,’ the older man says.

‘I need to get home urgently,’ Joona says.

‘Of course.’

The bearded man accompanies Joona out of the flat. They take the lift down to a waiting car and drive off to the airport together.

The driver carries Joona’s bag and the bearded man goes with him through check-in, the security control, all the way to the gate and onto the plane. Only when boarding is complete does Joona get his mobile phone, passport and wallet back.

Before the bearded man leaves the plane, he hands Joona a paper bag containing seven small bars of soap and a fridge magnet of Vladimir Putin.

Joona barely has time to send a text to Anja before he is told to switch his phone off. He closes his eyes and thinks about the bars of soap, and wonders if the entire interrogation could have been arranged by Nikita Karpin as a test to see if Joona had the sense to protect his source.