The Sandman - Ларс Кеплер Joona Linna

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Samuel laughed.

      Joona looked out at the road, at the building with its closed doors, the rusting balconies, the windows that shone blackly.

      ‘We’ll give it three more days,’ he said.

      Samuel pulled out the silver-coloured flask of yoich, as he called his chicken soup.

      ‘I don’t know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,’ he said seriously. ‘Nothing about this case makes sense … we’re trying to find a serial killer who may not actually exist.’

      ‘He exists,’ Joona replied stubbornly.

      ‘But he doesn’t fit with what we’ve found out, he doesn’t fit with any aspect of the investigation, and—’

      ‘That’s why … that’s why no one has seen him,’ Joona said. ‘He’s only visible because he casts a shadow over the statistics.’

      They sat beside each other in silence. Samuel blew on his soup, and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. Joona hummed a tango and let his eyes wander from Roseanna’s bedroom window to the icicles hanging from the guttering, then up at the snow-covered chimneys and vents.

      ‘There’s someone behind the building,’ Samuel suddenly whispered. ‘I’m sure I saw movement.’

      Samuel pointed, but everything was in a state of dreamlike peace.

      A moment later Joona saw some snow fall from a bush close to the house. Someone had just brushed past it.

      Carefully they opened the car doors and crept out.

      The sleepy residential area was quiet. All they could hear were their own footsteps and the electric hum from the substation.

      There had been a thaw for a couple of weeks, then it had started to snow again.

      They approached the windowless gable-end of the building, walking quietly along the strip of grass, past a wallpaper shop on the ground floor.

      The glow from the nearest streetlamp reached out across the smooth snow to the open space behind the houses. They stopped at the corner, hunched over, trying to check the trees as they got denser towards the Royal Tennis Club and Lill-Jan’s Forest.

      At first Joona couldn’t see anything in the darkness between the crooked old trees.

      He was about to give Samuel the signal to proceed when he saw the figure.

      There was a man standing among the trees. He was as still as the snow-covered branches.

      Joona’s heart began to beat faster.

      The slim man was staring like a ghost up at the window where Roseanna Kohler was sleeping.

      The man showed no sign of urgency, had no obvious purpose.

      Joona was filled with an icy conviction that the man in the garden was the serial killer whose existence they had speculated about.

      The shadowy figure was thin and crumpled.

      He was just standing there, as if the sight of the house gave him a sense of calm satisfaction, as if he already had his victim in a trap.

      They drew their weapons, but were unsure of what to do. They hadn’t discussed this in advance. Even though they had been keeping watch on Roseanna for days, they had never talked about what they would do if it transpired that they were right.

      They couldn’t just rush over and arrest a man who was simply standing there looking at a dark window. They may find out who he was, but they might well be forced to release him.

       23

      Joona stared at the motionless figure between the tree trunks. He could feel the weight of his semi-automatic pistol and the chill of the night air on his fingers. He could hear Samuel’s breathing beside him.

      The situation was beginning to seem slightly absurd when, without warning, the man took a step forward.

      They could see he was holding a bag in one hand.

      Afterwards it was hard to know what it was that convinced them both that they had found the man they were looking for.

      The man just smiled up at the window of Roseanna’s bedroom, then vanished into the bushes.

      The snow covering the grass crunched faintly beneath their feet as they crept after him. They followed the fresh footprints through the dormant forest until they eventually reached an old railway line.

      Far off to the right they could see the figure on the track. He passed below an electricity pylon, crossing the tangle of shadows thrown by its frame.

      The railway was still used for goods traffic, and ran from Värta Harbour right through Lill-Jan’s Forest.

      Joona and Samuel followed, sticking to the deep snow beside the tracks to avoid being seen.

      The railway line carried on beneath a viaduct and into the expanse of forest. Suddenly everything got much quieter and darker again.

      The black trees stood close together with their snow-covered branches.

      Joona and Samuel silently speeded up so as not to lose sight of him.

      When they emerged from the curve around Uggleviken marsh they could see that the railway line stretching out ahead of them was empty.

      The man had left the track somewhere and gone into the forest.

      They climbed up onto the rails and looked out into the white forest, then started to walk back. It had been snowing over recent days and the snow was largely untouched.

      Then they found a set of footprints they had missed earlier. The skinny man had left the rails and headed off into the forest. The ground beneath the snow was wet and the prints left by his shoes had darkened. Ten minutes before they had been white and impossible to see in the weak light, but now they were dark as lead.

      They followed the tracks into the forest, towards the large reservoir. It was almost pitch-black among the trees.

      The murderer’s footprints were crossed three times by the lighter tracks of a hare.

      At one point it was so dark that they lost his trail again. They stopped, then spotted the tracks again and hurried on.

      Suddenly they could hear high-pitched whimpering sounds. It was like an animal crying, like nothing Joona and Samuel had ever heard before. They followed the footprints and drew closer to the source of the sounds.

      What they saw between the tree trunks was like something out of some grotesque medieval story. The man they had followed was standing in front of a shallow grave. The ground around him was covered with freshly dug earth. An emaciated, filthy woman was trying to get out of the coffin, crying and struggling to clamber up over the edge. But each time she was on her way up, the man pushed her down again.

      For a couple of seconds Joona and Samuel could only stand there, staring, before taking the safety catches off their weapons and rushing in.

      The man wasn’t armed, and Joona knew he ought to aim at the man’s legs, but he couldn’t help aiming at his heart.

      They ran over the dirty snow, forced the man onto his stomach and cuffed both his wrists and feet.

      Samuel stood panting, pointing his pistol at the man as he called emergency control.

      Joona could hear the sob in his voice.

      They had caught a previously unknown serial killer.

      His name was Jurek Walter.

      Joona carefully helped the woman up out of the coffin, and tried to calm her down. She just lay on the ground gasping. When Joona explained that help was on the way, he caught a glimpse of movement through the

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