The Sandman

175

Mikael is whispering to himself and staring at the locked door, when the key is suddenly pushed out and falls onto the parquet floor with a muffled clunk.

Reidar is standing with his hand pressed against the pain in his chest. His face is wet with sweat. He’s in agony now. He’s tried several times to tell Mikael to run, but he has no voice left.

‘Can you walk?’ Mikael whispers.

Reidar nods and takes a step. There’s a scraping sound from the lock as Mikael puts his father’s arm over his shoulder and tries to lead him towards the library.

Behind them the scraping sound from the lock continues.

They carry on slowly past a tall cupboard, along a wall lined with large tapestries stretched over wooden frames.

Reidar stops again, coughing and gasping for breath.

‘Hold on,’ he says.

He slips his fingers along the edge of the third tapestry and opens a concealed door leading to a servants’ staircase down to the kitchen. They creep into the narrow passageway and gently close the door behind them.

Reidar fastens the little catch and then leans against the wall. He coughs as quietly as he can, feeling the pain radiating down his arm.

‘Keep going down the stairs,’ he whispers in a muffled voice.

Mikael shakes his head and is about to say something when the door in the other room crashes open.

Jurek’s broken in.

They stand there as if paralysed and watch him approach through the fabric covering the hidden door.

He’s creeping forward, crouched down, with the long knife in his hand, peering around him like a predator.

His soft breathing is clearly audible through the door.

Reidar clenches his teeth and leans against the wall; his chest hurts badly, and the pain is spreading to his jaw.

Jurek is so close now that a cloying smell of sweat hits them through the tapestry.

They both hold their breath as Jurek walks past the tapestry door, heading towards the library.

Mikael tries to get Reidar down the narrow staircase before Jurek realises he’s been deceived.

Reidar shakes his head and Mikael looks at him in anguish. He stifles a cough, tries to take a step, then stumbles, making a floorboard creak under his right foot.

Jurek turns and looks straight at the hidden door, and his pale eyes become strangely calm when he realises what he’s looking at.

There’s the sound of a loud bang in the corridor, and splinters from the edge of the tall cupboard fly through the air.

Jurek slips aside like a shadow and takes cover.

Mikael pulls Reidar with him down the narrow staircase towards the kitchen.

Behind them Berzelius comes into the passageway leading to the library. He’s holding Reidar’s old Colt in his hand. The little man’s cheeks are red as he pushes his glasses further up his nose and moves forward.

‘Leave Micke alone!’ he shouts, walking past the tall cupboard.

Death comes so quickly that Berzelius’s main reaction is surprise. At first he feels the tight grip on the wrist holding the revolver, then there’s a burning pain in his side as the rigid knife-blade penetrates his ribs and hits his heart.

There isn’t much pain.

It’s more like a protracted attack of cramp, but at the same time a profuse quantity of warm blood runs down his hip as the blade slips out again.

He realises that he’s wetting himself as he falls to his knees and suddenly recalls the time when he was courting his wife Anna-Karin, long before the divorce and her illness. She had looked so surprised and happy when he came home early from Oslo and stood below her low balcony, singing ‘Love Me Tender’ with four bags of crisps in his arms.

Berzelius slumps over onto his side, thinking that he ought to try to crawl and hide somewhere, but an overwhelming tiredness sweeps over him like a storm.

He doesn’t even notice when Jurek sticks the knife into his body a second time. The blade goes in at a different angle, straight through his ribs, and stays there.