touch me,’ he interrupts.
‘I’m not going to.’
‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I can’t, I don’t want to …’
His eyes roll back and he tilts his head in an odd, crooked way, then shuts his eyes and his body trembles.
‘There’s no danger,’ Joona repeats.
After a while Mikael’s body relaxes again, and he coughs and looks up.
‘Can you tell me anything about how it was in the beginning?’ Joona repeats gently.
‘When I was little … we were huddled together on the floor,’ he says, almost soundlessly.
‘So there were several of you at the start?’ Joona asks, a shiver running up his spine and making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
‘Everyone was frightened … I was calling for Mum and Dad … and there was a grown-up woman and an old man on the floor … they were sitting on the floor behind the sofa … She tried to calm me down, but … but I could hear her crying the whole time.’
‘What did she say?’ Joona asks.
‘I don’t remember, I don’t remember anything, maybe I dreamed the whole thing …’
‘You just mentioned an old man and a woman.’
‘No.’
‘Behind the sofa,’ Joona says.
‘No,’ Mikael whispers.
‘Do you remember any names?’
He coughs and shakes his head.
‘Everyone was just crying and screaming, and the woman with the eye kept asking about two boys,’ he says, his eyes focused inwardly.
‘Do you remember any names?’
‘What?’
‘Do you remember the names of—’
‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to …’
‘I’m not trying to upset you, but—’
‘They all disappeared, they just disappeared,’ Mikael says, his voice getting louder. ‘They all disappeared, they all …’
Mikael’s voice cracks, and it’s no longer possible to make out what he’s saying.
Joona repeats that everything is going to be all right. Mikael looks him in the eye, but he’s shaking so much he can’t speak.
‘You’re safe here,’ Joona says. ‘I’m a police officer, and I’ll make sure that nothing happens to you.’
Dr Irma Goodwin comes into the room with a nurse. They walk over to the patient and gently put his oxygen mask back on. The nurse injects the sedative solution into the drip while calmly explaining what she’s doing.
‘He needs to rest now,’ the doctor says to Joona.
‘I need to know what he saw.’
She tilts her head and rubs her ring finger.
‘Is it very urgent?’
‘No,’ Joona replies. ‘Not really.’
‘Come back tomorrow, then,’ Irma says. ‘Because I think—’
Her mobile rings and she has a short conversation, then hurries out of the room. Joona is left standing by the bed as he hears her vanish down the corridor.
‘Mikael, what did you mean about the eye? You mentioned the woman with the eye – what did you mean?’ he asks slowly.
‘It was like … like a black teardrop …’
‘Her pupil?’
‘Yes,’ Mikael whispers, then shuts his eyes.
Joona looks at the young man in the bed, feeling his pulse roar in his temples, and his voice is brittle and metallic as he asks:
‘Was her name Rebecka?’
Mikael is crying as the sedative enters his bloodstream. His body relaxes, his sobbing grows more weary, then subsides completely seconds before he drifts off to sleep.
Joona feels oddly empty inside as he leaves the patient’s room and pulls out his phone. He stops, pauses for breath, then calls Åhlén, who carried out the extensive forensic autopsies on the bodies found in Lill-Jan’s Forest.
‘Nils Åhlén,’ he says as he takes the call.
‘Are you sitting at your computer?’
‘Joona Linna, how nice to hear from you,’ Åhlén says in his nasal voice. ‘I was just sitting here in front of the screen with my eyes closed, enjoying its warmth. I was fantasising that I’d bought a facial solarium.’
‘Elaborate daydream.’
‘Well, if you look after the pennies …’
‘Would you like to look up some old files?’
‘Talk to Frippe, he’ll help you.’
‘No can do.’
‘He knows as much as—’
‘It’s about Jurek Walter,’ Joona interrupts.
A long silence follows.
‘I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about that again,’ Åhlén says calmly.
‘One of his victims has turned up alive.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Mikael Kohler-Frost … He’s got Legionnaires’ disease, but it looks as though he’s going to pull through.’
‘What are the files you’re interested in?’ Åhlén asks with nervous intensity in his voice.
‘The man in the barrel had Legionnaires’ disease,’ Joona goes on. ‘But did the boy who was found with him show any signs of the disease?’
‘Why are you wondering that?’
‘If there’s a connection, it ought to be possible to put together a list of places where the bacteria might be present. And then—’
‘We’re talking about millions of places,’
