The Sandman

87

The Athena group sit completely still and listen to the broadcast from the dayroom in real time. The sound quality is bad, muffled and distorted by loud scraping noises.

‘Is it going to sound like this the whole time?’ Pollock asks.

‘She hasn’t positioned the microphone yet. Maybe it’s in her pocket,’ Johan Jönson replies.

‘As long as she doesn’t get searched...’

They listen to the recording again. They can hear the rasping of Saga’s trousers, her shallow breathing, the sound of steps on the running machine and the drone of the television. Like a group of blind people, the members of Athena Promacho are being guided through the closed world of the secure unit with the help of hearing alone.

‘Obrahiim,’ a slurred voice says.

The entire group are suddenly very focused. Johan Jönson raises the volume slightly and adds a filter to reduce the hissing.

‘There he is,’ the man continues. ‘I’d turn him into my slave, my skeleton slave.’

‘I thought that was Jurek to start with,’ says Corinne.

‘Fucking hell,’ the voice goes on. ‘Look at those lips... I’d...’

They listen in silence to the other patient’s aggressive torrent of words, and hear a guard come in and break up the confrontation. After the intervention there’s a short period of silence. Then the patient starts to interrogate Saga about Karsudden in a very thorough, suspicious way.

‘She’s handling it well,’ Pollock says through clenched teeth.

Eventually they hear Saga leave the dayroom without having managed to position the microphone.

She swears quietly to herself.

She’s surrounded by silence until the electronic lock on the door clicks shut.

‘Well, at least we know that the technology seems to work,’ Pollock says.

‘Poor Saga,’ Corinne whispers.

‘She should have positioned the microphone,’ Johan Jönson mutters.

‘It must have been impossible.’

‘But if she gets found out, then...’

‘She won’t be,’ Corinne says.

She smiles, then throws out her arms, spreading the pleasant scent of her perfume through the room.

‘No Jurek so far,’ Pollock says, glancing over at Joona.

‘What if he’s being held in total isolation? All this will have been in vain,’ Jönson sighs.

Joona says nothing, but he’s thinking that something was being conveyed by the recording. For several minutes it was as if he could feel the almost physical presence of Jurek. As if Jurek were in the dayroom even though he hadn’t said anything.

‘Let’s listen to it one more time,’ he says, looking at the clock.

‘Are you going somewhere?’ Corinne asks, raising her neat black eyebrows.

‘I’m meeting someone,’ Joona says, returning her smile.

‘Finally, a bit of romance...’