Читать книгу The Sandman - Ларс Кеплер - Страница 35

Throughout this period Joona suffered such terrible anxiety that he couldn’t sleep. He watched over his family, following them everywhere, picking them up and dropping them off, making special arrangements with Lumi’s preschool, but he was forced to accept that this wouldn’t be enough in the long term.

Joona had to confront his worst horror.

He couldn’t talk to Samuel, but he could no longer deny the truth to himself.

Jurek Walter hadn’t committed his crimes alone. Everything about Jurek Walter’s understated grandiosity suggested that he was the leader. But after Samuel’s family was abducted, there could be no doubt that Jurek Walter had an accomplice.

This accomplice had been ordered to take Samuel’s family, and he had done so without leaving a single piece of evidence.

Joona realised that his family was next. It was probably only good fortune that had spared him this far.

Jurek Walter showed no mercy to anyone.

Joona raised this with Summa on numerous occasions, but she refused to take the threat as seriously as he did. She humoured him, accepting his concern and precautionary measures, but she assumed that his fears would subside over time.

He had hoped that the intensive police operation that followed the disappearance of Samuel Mendel’s family would lead to the capture of the accomplice. When the search first got under way, Joona saw himself as the hunter, but as the weeks went by the dynamic changed.

He knew that he and his family were the prey, and the calm he tried to demonstrate to Summa and Lumi was merely a façade.

It was half past ten in the evening, and he and Summa were lying in bed reading when a noise from the ground floor made Joona’s heart suddenly begin to beat faster. The washing machine hadn’t finished its programme yet and it sounded like a zip rattling against the drum, nevertheless he couldn’t help getting up and checking that all the windows downstairs were in one piece, and that the outside doors were locked.

When he returned, Summa had switched off her lamp and was lying there watching him.

‘What did you do?’ she asked gently.

He forced himself to smile and was about to say something when they heard little footsteps. Joona turned and saw his daughter come into the bedroom. Her hair was sticking up and her pyjama trousers had twisted round her waist.

‘Lumi, you’re supposed to be asleep,’ he sighed.

‘We forgot to say goodnight to the cat,’ she said.

Every evening Joona would read Lumi a story, and before he tucked her in for the night they always had to look out of the window and wave to the grey cat that slept in their neighbours’ kitchen window.

‘Go back to bed now,’ Summa said.

‘I’ll come and see you,’ Joona promised.

Lumi mumbled something and shook her head.

‘Do you want me to carry you?’ he asked, and picked her up.

She clung onto him and he suddenly noticed her heart beating fast.

‘What is it? Did you have a dream?’

‘I only wanted to wave to the cat,’ she whispered. ‘But there was a skeleton out there.’

‘In the window?’

‘No, he was standing on the ground,’ she replied. ‘Right where we found the dead hedgehog … he was looking at me …’

Joona quickly put her in bed with Summa.

‘Stay here,’ he said.

He ran downstairs silently, not bothering to get his pistol from the gun cabinet, not bothering to put shoes on, and just opened the kitchen door and rushed outside into the cold night air.

There was no one there.

He ran behind the house, climbed over the neighbours’ fence and carried on into the next garden. The whole area was quiet and still. He returned to the tree in the garden where he and Lumi had found a dead hedgehog in the summer.

There was no doubt that someone had been standing in the tall grass, just inside their fence. From there you could see very clearly in through Lumi’s window.

Joona went inside, locked the door behind him, fetched his pistol, and searched the whole house before going back to bed. Lumi fell asleep almost instantly between him and Summa, and a little while later his wife was asleep beside him.