She looks sharply at Rössel. ‘Is this true?’
‘I did what I had to do,’ he replies. ‘And now it’s your turn.’
Hanna stays put; she is staring at the spade. ‘No.’
‘Yes,’ says Rössel in a louder voice.
Jan can see Leo stretching in the shadows on the ground; he isn’t fully awake, but he’s getting there.
A metre or so from Jan’s leg is the Angel, the only light on the hillside. And even closer, right next to him, he can see his spade.
Rössel sighs and gets out the bottle again. He takes a swig and nods. ‘I’ll take care of it.’
Jan reaches out and closes his fingers around his spade as Hanna looks at Rössel once more.
‘Ivan, we don’t need to—’
He cuts her off abruptly. ‘I’m going to do it now.’
But Jan’s time has come, and he finally takes his chance. In one single rapid movement he is on his knees, raising the spade with both hands like a long, slender club.
‘Leo!’ he yells to the boy. ‘Run! Just get away from here!’
Leo is on his feet. He has begun to move.
Jan strikes. The spade comes crashing down and there is a crunching noise from the Angel. The light goes out.
The autumn night sweeps in; it is almost pitch dark now. The only discernible light is coming from the buildings far below. Jan has already dropped the spade, and he shouts again, ‘Run towards the lights, Leo!’
The drums are pounding inside his head, several beats per second. There isn’t much time now.
He sees a small body disappearing into the darkness, running away. Leo has torn off the blindfold.
‘Run!’
Jan gets to his feet, using the spade for support.
‘Don’t move!’ Rössel bellows.
He is standing in front of Jan like a black shadow, with his own spade raised high above his shoulders. And then he strikes, two hard blows that shake the handle of Jan’s spade; the third blow knocks it out of Jan’s grasp, and it clatters away across the stones.
But Rössel’s spade is also useless — the handle has split and cracked in the middle. He tosses it away and takes something else out of his pocket, holding it up in front of him.
Not the tear gas, but the razor.
‘Jump,’ Rössel says.
Jan backs away holding his hands up in front of him, but his leg is still hurting and won’t obey him properly. He stumbles over a stone or a root, dangerously close to the sheer drop. He tries to pretend that there is solid ground everywhere, but the dizziness is taking hold.
Rössel moves forward with the razor at the ready. He makes a rapid swiping movement and the back of Jan’s hand burns with pain and begins to bleed. Several veins have been slashed.
Rössel holds the blade up even higher. ‘Jump,’ he orders again. ‘You might survive.’
But Jan doesn’t move any further backwards. He looks at Rössel’s outstretched hand, the hand holding the razor, and fumbles under his jumper. He has no weapon, of course, but he does have the plastic loops he took from Carl. Thin, strong loops that can catch something and hold it fast.
He removes one of the loops and reaches out.
Rössel isn’t fast enough. Jan grabs hold of his hand and manages to slip the loop over both their hands. All he has to do now is pull, and his own wrist is firmly attached to Rössel’s. Jan can now control the razor, and keep it away from him.
Rössel is breathing hard in the darkness, tugging and jerking. He tries to transfer the razor to his left hand so that he can cut himself free, but Jan grabs hold of that hand too.
They are holding on to each other like a couple about to start dancing, and there is no escape: Jan is trapped by Rössel and Rössel is trapped by Jan.
Rössel keeps on fighting, but Jan won’t let go.
He closes his eyes. He hopes that Leo got away. That he heard Jan’s shouts and ran down the slope, heading towards the lights.
‘Give up,’ Rössel says. ‘Before you die.’ He is breathless and his voice has lost all trace of softness. The predator has emerged, the beast that has been hiding behind the self-possessed teacher.
Jan is finding it impossible to regain his balance, and Rössel cannot let him go. Jan opens his eyes. They are moving inexorably towards the sheer drop. He and Rössel, bound together in a macabre embrace. They are both panting, breathing in time with one another.
‘Your turn, my friend!’ Rössel shouts.
Jan is losing the battle, he is on the point of being hurled out into the void. And there is nothing to hold on to. Only Ivan Rössel.
He turns to look for help. Leo has gone, and there is just one lone figure by the pine tree. Hanna is standing motionless in the undergrowth, watching them. She is frozen to the spot; she can do nothing.
But Leo got away. He fled from the predator, out of the forest. He is strong, he will make it.
Jan is happy with that victory.
He feels the edge of the solid ground beneath his feet, but he does not hesitate. Just one small step backwards into the darkness.
One step, and he takes Rössel with him over the edge.
56
‘Is everyone feeling all right?’ Marie-Louise asks.
No one responds to her gentle query.
Hanna is as quiet as her colleagues this morning. She has no words. She has come back to work and is trying to look calm, even though she can hardly breathe. So much has gone wrong. She feels as if she is sitting in the middle of a storm, with no idea of when it will pass.
It is Wednesday now. The Dell has remained closed since the chaotic fire drill, and meanwhile the rumours about St Patricia’s have been growing. There have been newspaper articles about what happened, reports on the radio, and the TV news has shown pictures of the closed hospital gates.
Marie-Louise doesn’t ask any more questions. She turns her head. ‘Dr Högsmed is here today to give us an update and fill in one or two gaps. I think we all need some kind of...’ She falls silent, unable to find the right words. ‘Doctor,’ she says.
‘Thank you, Marie-Louise.’
Högsmed has been sitting at the table with his head bowed, as if he has hardly slept over the past few days. But now he straightens his back and begins to speak: ‘So... We had rather a dramatic start to the weekend. Dramatic and tragic. As you know we had scheduled a major fire drill for Friday night, but it became rather more complicated than we had intended. This was because a real fire was discovered on the fourth floor, just before the actual drill was due to begin.’
The doctor pauses. There is absolute silence around the table. Hanna looks out of the window at St Psycho’s.
‘As a consequence of this fire,’ Högsmed goes on, ‘a certain amount of confusion arose with regard to the dividing line between the actual emergency and the drill. This meant that we had very poor control over some areas, and the patients were able to wander around freely. Possibly as a result of this chaos there was a fatal attack on one of the security guards on the fourth floor, followed by the escape of the man who started the fire. One of our most dangerous patients.’
Ivan, Hanna thinks. Was he dangerous? Yes. But he was also loving and considerate. She sits quietly at the staffroom table with Andreas. They are the only two who have turned up today. The chairs on either side of Hanna are empty.
One of them is Lilian’s, of course, but she has been signed off due to ill health.
The other chair was Jan Hauger’s.
Hanna had seen Jan fall over the edge of the precipice high above the forest, along with Ivan — two dark figures locked together, neither of them prepared to let go.