Amante cleared his throat again and looked like he wasn’t having any trouble at all imaging the men’s horror.
Julia ignored him and looked back at the table again, where the dead body grinned at her with its wrecked smile. She had to admit that the pathologist’s theory was good. Logical, in light of the evidence. The perpetrator appeared to be extremely methodical, ice-cold in his thoroughness and attention to detail. But she still couldn’t shake the feeling the grimacing face gave her. A feeling of rage, of hatred.
Someone wanted you to disappear, she thought. Wanted to make sure you’d never be found. Someone you’d upset so badly that he destroyed your face. That’s what happened, isn’t it?
The dead body didn’t answer. Just went on smiling at her, as if her words amused him.
* * *
Twenty-two pills. Twenty-two white, oblong pills that he’d paid for with just as many nightmare-filled nights.
David Sarac had surreptitiously googled sleeping pills. Taking into account his emaciated body and generally poor state of health, he had worked out that twenty pills would be enough for what he wanted to achieve. But with twenty-five there would be no doubt, so he had another three nights to struggle through. Three nights of lying curled up in bed, drifting in the indistinct borderland between sleep and wakefulness, while everything that had happened out on the island replayed in his head. Always in the same order. First the snow. Heavy flakes falling on a frozen forest. A silent, dark old house. Then a low bass note, a threatening rumble on the horizon, growing louder and louder as the winter thunder approaches. Then suddenly beams of light from headlights cutting through the trees. The sound of powerful engines, of gunfire and shouted orders. Flashes from gun barrels creating a ghostly shadow play as the howls of anger, pain, and terror grow ever louder.
The thunder keeps building in intensity in the background, swallowing up all other sound until it transforms into the roar of the flames consuming the old house. A rain of sparks flies through the night sky, and the stench of gunpowder, soot, and burning flesh makes his throat sting. Just when he thinks it’s all over, when he thinks he’s finally on his way out of the nightmare, he finds himself in the middle of it again. Feels the heat of the pressure wave as it knocks him flying. The bullet hitting him in the neck, filling his airways with liquid iron. The blood on the white ground. His own blood. That of others. All of it sucked up by the snow crystals around him, until he’s lying on his back in a sea of carmine red. He hears himself laugh. A shrill laugh that sounds more like a sob. His head falls back on the snow. The world slowly starts to dissolve at the edges. Curling up like a burning photograph until it fades to black.
All this is your fault, David, the voices whisper.
It was your plan. Your fault.
Then the film starts over again. Unless he’s lucky enough to wake up, that is. Wake up locked away in a nursing home in the middle of nowhere. “For your own good, David,” as the senior consultant had said during their first conversation.
But he didn’t complain, couldn’t see any reason to do so. In a few days he was planning to leave it all behind: the island of Skarpö, the nightmares, and this place.
He scratched at the red scar running across his neck. Caught at it with his nails until it started to sting. The whispers were right. He should have died out there in the snow along with the others. Should have drowned in his own blood. It would have been a fitting punishment for his sins. Some things were simply too broken to mend.
But instead, against all the odds, he had survived. Had made a mockery of the justice he had tried to implement. David Sarac, heroic police officer. The hero who had to be kept locked away in a secure unit for his own good. But what was the alternative? For him to tell the truth about what had happened out on Skarpö? The reason why all those men had died out there in the snow? That was hardly an option, either for him or his superiors. A public relations disaster that must be avoided at all costs. That was why he was where he was. Planning his own escape.
It had taken time to build up the stock of pills. The staff had been very vigilant during the first week. They followed their routines to the letter, forcing him to open his mouth and stick his tongue out every time he took a sleeping pill. He had been careful. Played along and gained their confidence. He couldn’t afford to fail. If just one of the caregivers started to suspect, he’d find himself in the suicide wing and his plan would be thwarted.
He glanced out through the window. Between the trees he could just make out the little lake in the distance. He had explored the park during a couple of short walks when he was still considering other options beside the pills. But the light and all the sensory impressions out there had been too sharp. They exhausted his broken brain and forced him to stagger back into the safety of the building. But at least he knew that there was a fence and a heavy metal gate by the jetty. Floodlights, alarms, and cameras too, just as there were along the high brick wall by the road, and the double fence facing the dark forest on the other side. Barriers he wouldn’t have to confront. Because now he had the pills. He closed his hand around the plastic bag. Moved the pills one by one through his fingers. Counted them again. Even numbers, odd numbers.
Odds and evens.
Sarac shivered and pulled the blanket up over his legs. In spite of the heat in the gloomy little room, his fingertips and the end of his nose were always cold. He looked down at the notepad on his lap and tried to put his thoughts into words. But as usual they wouldn’t play ball. The senior consultant had suggested that he try to write down what he felt, and that was his task in advance of his next therapy session. Of course he could ignore the whole thing, tell the psychologist to go to hell and shut himself away in his room the way a couple of the other patients did. But he was keen to go on acting compliant for a few more days.
Janus, he had written. Not much to offer, really, and certainly not the sort of thing he was thinking of telling anyone.
I owe everything.
Debts I can’t escape till the day I die.
The loop of music was back in his head again. The lyrics that had helped him unpick his stroke-damaged brain last Christmas. Helped him reveal his own secrets. And his sins.
Anxiety tightened its grip around his heart and lungs.
Debts I can’t escape till the day I die.
He put the pad down and took the bag of pills out of the pocket of his cardigan. Moved the tablets around again like pearls on a strand.
Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two. Only three more performances to go. Then the film of his life would be over at last.
* * *
Julia Gabrielsson turned the wheel and changed lanes abruptly as she put her foot down and with satisfaction felt the car respond instantly. It hadn’t driven more than a couple of thousand kilometers and still had that new-car smell, which was obviously preferable to the odors that would become ingrained in the seats over time. Fast food, various bodily fluids, and, not least, tedium. She had worked out a long time ago that you had to push yourself forward on Mondays, when jobs that had come in over the weekend were allocated. That way you could get hold of a decent car so you didn’t have to drive about in one of the worn-out old patrol cars that were parked in the far corner. So she always got in at six o’clock on Monday mornings and raided the key cabinet before going down to the gym. She made sure she was back in time for the morning meeting at a quarter past eight, alert, fresh from the shower, eager to get to work, and with the key to the best car in her pocket, while her bleary-eyed colleagues were sipping their first cups of coffee and wishing it was still the weekend.
She liked cars, liked driving fast. Dad used to practice his J-turns and controlled slides with her in the works parking lot every winter once she turned thirteen, and she had beaten the crap out of all the guys on the emergency