Eventually he switches the Angel’s transmitter back on. ‘I’ve gone further into the basement,’ he begins, ‘but I don’t think this area is in use any more. The lights don’t work.’
The Angel in his hand is silent, but he hopes Hanna is listening.
‘OK, I think I’m going to turn back soon...’
Then he stops; he doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with the idea of talking down here. With each word he utters, the sense that someone is listening grows stronger. Attentive ears, lurking somewhere in the darkness.
‘See you soon,’ he whispers, hoping once more that Hanna can hear him before he switches off the transmitter.
The corridor takes a sharp turn, and he edges along it. It leads to yet another large tiled room with steel benches and white plastic curtains; is this a different room, or has he been here already?
Just keep walking. One step, then two, three, four...
Jan had been a little bit scared of encountering rats when he crawled out from under the floor, but now he realizes that he is in fact the rat. He is the one who daren’t let out a squeak as he cautiously moves across the concrete floor, alert to the slightest sound.
In the big room the shadows gather around him. Fear of the dark begins to creep up on him, so he turns to the right and tries to stick close to the wall.
At first glance these rooms also look as if they have been closed up for many years, but gradually Jan begins to discover signs of more recent visits. On a wooden shelf beside some dark-glass containers, he sees a rolled-up football programme from a local match, and when he opens it up he finds it is from the previous season.
There is more graffiti on the walls, in black felt-tip pen. Just below the ceiling someone has scrawled JESUS SAVE ME IN THY BLOOD, and on another wall nearer the floor are the words I WANT A HOT WOMAN! It looks as if both sentences have been written with the same pen.
It is chilly in the underworld, yet Jan is sweating.
He pulls a cracked plastic curtain aside and discovers an old desk. He tries to open the drawers, but they are locked.
He gives up and stares thoughtfully at the ceiling. Rami is somewhere up above him. There are two wards for the women in the hospital, according to Hanna. But how is he going to get up there?
And where is Ivan Rössel? Here in the darkness he feels palpably close; Jan recalls his smile on the computer screen. But Rössel and the other violent patients must be kept behind locked doors, surely?
Suddenly Jan hears a low, rumbling sound in the distance, followed by an extended cry, like an echo.
He doesn’t know exactly which direction the sound is coming from; perhaps it is just his imagination, but it makes him stop and listen, motionless.
He hears nothing more, but eventually he turns around. It’s a combination of the noise, the darkness, the isolation down here. The hour is late, and the light from the Angel is growing weaker and weaker. He shines the beam around the big room — but which of the doorways did he actually come through? He can’t remember.
He chooses the one on the right. Beyond it there is a long corridor, and suddenly he can see light. He keeps on walking, turns a corner and finds himself in a fairly large hallway with subdued lighting. On the far side is a wide glass door with a green sign that says EXIT, and through that door there is a pale-stone flight of stairs leading upwards.
Jan believes that he has found the way up to the wards, and eagerly steps forward — then stops abruptly. There is a metal box with a black, staring lens up above the glass door.
A camera.
If he walks over to the door, the camera will pick him up. So he turns around, goes back into the big room, and chooses the opening on the left.
This corridor is only three metres long and ends in a closed steel door.
Jan is lost.
There is panic in his head and legs now, but he suppresses it, turns around and slowly makes his way back across the tiled floor. It’s fine, he will find the way if he just keeps moving and tries every door. He sweeps the dying light of the Angel across the wall and chooses a doorway at random. This time the long corridor feels both alien and familiar at the same time; he passes two more closed doors, and this time the corridor ends in an ordinary wooden door.
He lowers the Angel and opens the door, to be met by a sudden brightness. Strip-lights on a low ceiling. Warm air smelling of bleach rushes towards him, and he sees large white machines with dials and flashing lights. Huge fans and electric motors are whirring and throbbing, and there are baskets full of bedlinen and clothes, as well as a rail attached to the ceiling.
This is a laundry, Jan realizes — St Patricia’s Hospital laundry.
He is not alone. A tall, thin man in grey overalls is standing with his back to Jan only five or six metres away, folding sheets. The man has an Mp3 player attached to his belt, his earphones are on, and he hasn’t yet noticed Jan. But if he turns around...
Jan doesn’t wait for that to happen; he closes the door quickly and silently. Then he goes back down the corridor and into the tiled room, heading for the other doorways. He nearly got caught just now — and yet he feels calmer. There are people down here after all, ordinary people doing their jobs.
That is when he hears more sounds, much closer this time: someone is singing, chanting quietly. Several voices in harmony. It sounds like an old hymn, but there is too much of an echo in the tiled room to enable Jan to make out any words.
Staff or patients?
Jan doesn’t want to know who is singing like this so late at night. He moves cautiously forward, keeping close to the wall. Ready to run.
Eventually he finds the right way. He recognizes the very first corridor with the little cells, and from there he makes his way through the first tiled room and back to the safe room. He feels almost completely at ease now.
He doesn’t need to crawl under the floor this time: from this side he can open the steel door and make his way back to the Dell.
He is in the warmth and the light once more, and Jan switches off the Angel.
It is almost midnight, but Hanna is still awake when he gets back. She stares at him intently; she seems almost excited, and for a moment he forgets Rami.
‘I heard you,’ she says, holding up the other Angel. ‘Clear as a bell.’
‘Good.’
‘Did you see anything down there?’
‘Not much.’ He breathes out and wipes his forehead. ‘It’s like a labyrinth, with corridors and old wards, and I think I heard voices...’
‘Did you find a way up to the wards? Or a lift?’
Jan shakes his head. ‘I only got as far as the laundry... There were people in there.’
‘People? Men and women?’
‘A man. A member of staff, I assume — but he didn’t see me.’
Hanna nods, but doesn’t seem particularly interested. ‘So it was a wasted visit.’
‘No,’ says Jan. ‘I’ve learned my way around down there.’
Jan could see the fence with its barbed wire every time he sat at the desk in his room. It was impossible to avoid; it was at least twice his height. First of all there was a lawn, then the fence, and beyond it a path disappearing in the direction of the town.
The fence kept him trapped inside the Unit, he understood that — but it also protected him from the rest of the world.
What had he done to end up in here?
He looked at the bandages around his wrists. He knew what he had done.
He asked Jörgen for paper and pens so that he could do some drawing. He drew a rectangle and started on a new comic strip. The Secret Avenger, his own superhero, was fighting the Gang of Four at the bottom of a dark ravine. The Secret Avenger was immune to everything but bright light, so the gang were trying to get him with laser beams.