They have reached the foot of the staircase leading up to the Dell. Jan is ready with the magnetic card, but glances at Leo one last time and decides to risk asking a question: ‘Was it nice seeing Daddy today?’
‘Mm.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘We talked,’ said Leo. There is a brief silence, then he goes on: ‘Daddy talks a lot. All the time.’
‘Oh?’
Leo nods again and sets off up the stairs. ‘He says everybody hates him.’
9
During his first week at the Dell, Jan works from eight until five every day. And every evening he goes home to his dark apartment. He’s used to it, he’s always come home to a silent apartment, but this one isn’t even his. It doesn’t feel like home.
Sometimes in the evening he sits down at his drawing board and continues working on the Secret Avenger’s struggle against the Gang of Four, but if he is tired he just flops down in front of the TV and stays there.
During the day he learns the names of the children, one by one. Leo, Matilda, Mira, Fanny, Katinka, and so on. He gets to know which ones are chatty and which ones are quieter, which ones get cross when they fall over and which ones start crying if someone happens to bump into them. Which ones ask questions and which ones listen.
The children have so much energy. When they’re not under orders to sit still during assembly, they’re always on the move, always heading off somewhere. They crawl, they run, they jump. Out in the playground they dig in the sandpit, climb and swing — and want to join in everything.
‘Me too! Me too!’
The children fight for space, for attention. But Jan makes sure that no one is excluded from a game, that no one is nudged out of the group and ends up on their own, as he often did.
The group of children at the Dell feels harmonious, and it is easy to forget their proximity to St Psycho’s — until the alarm clock rings in the kitchen and someone has to be taken to or collected from the lift beneath the hospital. But the trips along the underground corridor also become routine, in fact — although Jan does keep a slightly closer eye on Leo, whose father sounds somewhat paranoid.
On Wednesday morning the children go for a little outing into the forest which rises up behind the grounds of the hospital. They put on yellow high-visibility vests over their coats and go out of the gate in a crocodile. Many pre-schools insist that the children hang on to loops attached to a rope when they go on a trip, but here they favour the old method: the children hold hands, two by two.
Excursions into the forest always make Jan feel slightly tense, but he wanders along with Marie-Louise and Andreas between clumps of wilting bracken behind the school. They are very close to St Patricia’s as they follow this little path — the fence is no more than ten metres away.
Marie-Louise leans towards him. ‘We need to make sure the children don’t get too close to the fence.’
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
Marie-Louise looks worried. ‘It could trigger the escape alarm. There’s a whole load of electronic stuff buried by the fence.’
‘Electronic stuff?’
‘Yes... some kind of motion sensors.’
Jan nods, looking over at the fence. He can’t see any sensors, but notices that the fir trees have been planted very close together just inside the fence, perhaps to stop anyone looking in. Beyond the trees he can just catch a glimpse of gravel paths and a couple of low buildings inside the complex — yellow wooden structures that look quite new. Nothing is moving over there.
He suddenly remembers the woman in black, the woman he saw by the fence on Monday. Her dark eyes made him think of Alice Rami, but Rami is the same age as him, and the woman in black looked twice as old.
The children don’t seem remotely interested in the fence; they lumber along in their thick autumn clothes, hand in hand, concerned only with what there is to see straight ahead of them on the path: ants, tree roots, odd bits of rubbish and fallen leaves.
There is a dull, rushing sound up ahead; it is a wide stream, full of swirling black water. It runs along the back of the hospital grounds like a moat, then curves away to the south and disappears along the fence. Jan wonders if the patients find the sound of the water calming.
The children tramp across a little wooden bridge with railings, then they head off upwards into the forest.
‘Oh look!’ It’s little Fanny, three years old and right at the end of the line; she has let go of her friend’s hand and stopped to stare at the ground beside the path. She is gazing at something that is growing there.
Jan stops too, and takes a closer look. Among the leaves beneath the tall trees he can see something that resembles little pink fingers, pushing their way up out of the ground. ‘Oh yes...’ he says. ‘I think it’s a kind of fungus. Pink coral fungus. It looks like fingers.’
‘Fingers?’ says Fanny.
‘No, they’re not real fingers.’
Fanny tentatively reaches out towards the slender pink fungi, but Jan stops her. ‘Leave it, Fanny. I think they’d rather grow in peace... and sometimes they can be poisonous.’
The girl nods and quickly forgets about the fungus as she sets off to catch up with the others.
Jan watches her until she reaches her friends.
He breathes out and thinks of the children at Lynx, although he doesn’t want to. A child can be lost in no time; all it takes is for the path to disappear between two big fir trees, and suddenly you can’t see them any more.
But today there is no danger. The children from the Dell stick close together, the oak trees and birch trees are not as dense as in a coniferous forest, and of course the children are wearing their high-visibility vests, glowing bright yellow among the trees.
Marie-Louise keeps the group together by talking to the children. She points out different kinds of leaves and bushes and explains what they are called, and asks every child a question.
But eventually she claps her hands. ‘OK, play time! But stay where we can see you.’
The children quickly disperse. Felix and Teodor start chasing one another, Mattias runs after them, stumbles over a tree root and falls over, but quickly gets back on his feet.
Jan wanders among the trees, looking around and constantly counting the luminous jackets to make sure no one goes missing. He’s on the ball, keeping an eye on things.
As he moves further away he hears laughter echoing through the forest and catches the odd glimpse of yellow between the trunks. Then he sees Natalie, Josefine, Leo and little Hugo standing in a huddle staring down at the path. Josefine and Leo are holding sticks and poking at the ground. When they spot Jan, they stiffen and smile, looking slightly embarrassed. Josefine meets Leo’s eye, and they start to giggle. Suddenly they drop the sticks and race off, shrieking and laughing, heading into the undergrowth.
Jan goes over to see what they were playing with.
Something tiny. It looks like a little grey-brown scrap of material on the path. But it’s a wood mouse. It is lying among the leaves with its mouth open, gasping for breath: it is dying. The soft, silky fur is flecked with blood. Jan realizes that the children were poking holes in it as part of their game.
No, not a game. A sadistic ritual, to experience the feeling of power over life and death.
Jan is on his own, he has to do something. He gently edges the soft body off the path with his right foot and searches for a big, blunt stone. He picks it up, raises it in both hands, and takes aim.
Thou shalt not kill, he thinks, but he hurls the stone down anyway. It lands on the mouse like a falling meteorite.