The Sandman. Ларс Кеплер

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       22

      Joona slumped down slightly in his seat and followed the figure’s progress in the rear-view mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of its face.

      The branches of a rowan tree swayed as he passed.

      In the grey lights from the substation Joona saw that it was Samuel.

      His colleague was almost half an hour early.

      He opened the car door and sat down in the passenger seat, pushed the seat back, stretched out his legs and sighed.

      ‘OK, so you’re tall and blond, Joona … and it’s really lovely being in the car and everything. But I still think I’d rather spend the night with Rebecka … I want to help the boys with their homework.’

      ‘You can help me with my homework,’ Joona said.

      ‘Thanks,’ 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.