The Sandman

149

It’s already evening by the time Joona’s plane lands in Stockholm after a connection in Copenhagen. He switches his phone on and reads a message from Carlos, telling him that a big police operation is underway.

Maybe Felicia’s already been found?

Joona tries to get hold of Carlos as he hurries past the duty-free shops, down into the baggage collection area and through the arrival hall, then over the bridge to the garage. Tucked inside the compartment for the spare wheel is the shoulder-holster containing his black Colt Combat Target .45 ACP.

He drives south as he waits for Nathan Pollock to answer his phone.

Nikita Karpin said that Vadim Levanov had expected the boys to make their way to the place where they were last together if they ever tried to find him.

‘And where was that?’ Joona had asked.

‘Visiting workers’ accommodation, barrack number four. That was also where he took his own life, much later.’

Joona is heading down the motorway towards Stockholm at a hundred and forty kilometres an hour. The pieces of the puzzle have been coming thick and fast, and he’s confident that he’ll soon be able to see the overall picture.

Twin brothers forced to leave the country, and a father who commits suicide.

The father was a highly educated engineer, but was doing manual labour in one of Sweden’s many gravel pits.

Joona puts his foot down as he tries to get hold of Carlos again, then Magdalena Ronander.

Before he has time to pull up Nathan Pollock’s number, his phone rings and he answers at once.

‘You should be grateful I’m here,’ Anja says. ‘Every police office in the whole of Stockholm is out at Norra Djurgården...’

‘Have they found Felicia?’

‘They’re busy searching the forest beyond the Albano industrial estate, they’ve got dogs and—’

‘Did you read my text?’ Joona interrupts, his jaw clenched with stress.

‘Yes, and I’ve been trying to work out what happened,’ Anja says. ‘It hasn’t been easy, but I think I’ve managed to track down Vadim Levanov, even if the spelling of his name has been westernised. It looks like he arrived in Sweden in 1960, with no passport, from Finland.’

‘And the children?’

‘I’m afraid there’s no mention of any children in the records.’

‘Could he have smuggled them in?’

‘During the fifties and sixties Sweden absorbed loads of visiting workers, the welfare state was being expanded... but the regulations were still very old-fashioned. Visiting workers were thought incapable of looking after their children and Social Services used to place them with foster families or in children’s homes.’

‘But these boys were extradited,’ Joona says.

‘That wasn’t unusual, especially if there was a suspicion that they were Roma... I’m talking to the National Archives tomorrow... There was no migration authority in those days, so the police, Child Welfare Commission and Aliens Department used to take the decisions, often fairly arbitrarily.’

He turns off at Häggvik to refill the tank.

Anja is breathing hard down the phone. This can’t be allowed to slip away, he thinks. There has to be something here that can lead them forward.

‘Do you know where the father worked?’ he asks.

‘I’ve started investigating all the gravel pits in Sweden, but it may take a while because we’re dealing with such old records,’ she says wearily.

Joona thanks Anja several times, ends the call, and pulls up at a red light as he watches a young man push a pram along the footpath at the side of the road.

Snow is blowing along the carriageway, swirling up into the man’s face and eyes. He squints as he turns the pram round to pull it up over a bank of snow.

Joona suddenly remembers what Mikael said about the Sandman being able to walk on the ceiling, and other muddled things. But he had said three times that the Sandman smells of sand. It may just have been something from the old fairytales, but what if there was a connection to a gravel quarry, a sand pit?

A car horn sounds behind Joona and he starts driving again, but pulls over to the side of the roads shortly afterwards and calls Reidar Frost.

‘What’s going on?’ Reidar asks.

‘I’d like to talk to Mikael – how is he?’

‘He feels bad about not being able to remember more – we’ve had the police here several hours each day.’

‘Every little detail could be important.’

‘I’m not complaining,’ Reidar says hurriedly. ‘We’d do anything, you know that, that’s what I keep saying, we’re here, twenty-four hours a day.’

‘Is he awake?’

‘I can wake him – what did you want to ask?’

‘He’s said that the Sandman smells of sand... is it possible that the capsule is near a gravel pit? At some gravel pits they crush stone, and at others—’

‘I grew up near a gravel pit, on the Stockholm Ridge, and—’

‘You grew up near a gravel pit?’

‘In Antuna,’ Reidar replies, slightly bewildered.

‘Which pit?’

‘Rotebro... there’s a large gravel works north of the Antuna road, past Smedby.’

Joona pulls out onto the opposite carriageway and drives back to the motorway, heading north again. He’s already fairly close to Rotebro, so the gravel pit can’t be far away.

Joona listens to Reidar’s weary, rasping voice whilst hearing simultaneously – like a double-exposure – Mikael’s peculiar fragments of memory: the Sandman smells of sand... his fingertips are made of porcelain and when he takes the sand out of the bag they tinkle against each other... and a moment later you’re asleep...