‘Excellent.’
They make their way out of the gate and into the road, but Jan can’t help looking sideways at St Patricia’s.
Högsmed gives him a short lecture: ‘The institution was built at the end of the nineteenth century. Initially it was meant for those who were retarded, to use the terminology of the day, and later it became a mental hospital where compulsory sterilization and lobotomies were carried out on a regular basis... but of course it’s been refurbished since then. Modernized.’
Jan nods, but as they move away from the wall he can see the barred windows again. He thinks about Rami, then about the name the taxi driver mentioned: Ivan Rössel, the serial killer.
‘Are all the patients on the upper floors?’ he asks. ‘Or are they in different parts of the hospital?’
Högsmed raises his hand to stop Jan. ‘We never discuss the patients.’
‘I understand that,’ Jan says quickly. ‘I don’t want to know anything about a particular individual; I was just wondering how many patients there are?’
‘About a hundred.’ The doctor walks on in silence for a few seconds, before continuing in a slightly gentler tone of voice: ‘I know you’re curious about what goes on inside St Patricia’s — it’s only human. Not many people have been anywhere near a psychiatric hospital.’
Jan remains silent.
‘There’s only one thing I can say about what we do,’ the doctor goes on. ‘It’s nowhere near as dramatic as people think. It’s business as usual almost all the time. Most of the patients have suffered serious mental disturbances, with various kinds of trauma and obsessive-compulsive disorders. That’s why they’re here. But’ — Högsmed holds up a finger — ‘that doesn’t mean that the hospital is full of bellowing lunatics. The patients are often calm and completely capable of interaction. They know why they’re here, and they’re... well, almost grateful. They have no desire to escape.’ He falls silent, then adds, ‘Not all of them, but the majority.’
He opens the little gate leading to the pre-school.
‘I can tell you one final thing about the patients: a number of them have been involved in various kinds of substance abuse, and for that reason there is a strict ban on drugs on the wards.’
‘Does that include medication?’
‘Medication is another matter; that’s all controlled by the doctors. But people can’t be allowed to start self-medicating. And we also have restrictions when it comes to using the telephone and watching TV.’
‘So all entertainment is banned?’
‘Absolutely not,’ says the doctor as they approach the nursery door. ‘There’s plenty of paper, pens and pencils for those who want to write or draw, there are radios and lots of books... and we have a great deal of music.’
Jan immediately thinks of Rami with her guitar.
Högsmed goes on: ‘And, of course, if the patient is a parent, we encourage regular contact with the child. Both the patients and their children need security and routine. This is often something they have lacked earlier in life.’
The doctor opens the door and holds up his index finger one last time. ‘Fixed routines are critical in life. So you are doing a very important job here.’
Jan nods. An important job with fixed routines.
He can hear the sound of cheerful shouts and laughter through the open door, and he strides purposefully into the classroom.
He is feeling good now; he is calm. Jan always feels good when he is about to meet children.
Jan used to have an apartment a few kilometres from the Lynx nursery, west of Nordbro town centre. There was an extensive park between the area where he lived and the nursery itself — several kilometres of coniferous forest, with rocks and low hills around a big lake with plenty of birds, all of which created the illusion of wild, remote countryside. He usually cycled to work, but whenever he had time he would walk through the forest, and sometimes he went for walks there when he wasn’t working. He got to know the paths and tracks, and sometimes he turned off to climb on to an area of flat rock, gazing out at the lake and the birds.
One autumn morning as he was strolling to work he discovered the old bunker.
It had been cut into a hillside, with a view across the water. No paths or tracks ran past it, and at this time of year it was very difficult to spot; it resembled nothing more than a large heap of earth, hidden by branches and needles and sycamore leaves. But the rusty metal door stood invitingly ajar as Jan walked by, and it made him stop and scramble up the bank to take a closer look.
He leaned forward; it was pitch dark inside. The walls seemed to be a good twenty centimetres thick. The cement floor looked dry, so he got down on all fours like a potholer and crawled inside. The internal space was bigger than the concrete shell, as it had been dug out of the hillside.
Someone had been enjoying themselves in there, but not recently. Yellowed newspapers and empty beer cans lay tossed in one corner, but apart from that the place was completely empty. There were actually a couple of windows, Jan noticed, but they were no more than long, narrow gaps just below the ceiling, almost completely blocked by earth and leaves. He guessed that the bunker had been used by the army as some kind of observation post — a relic of the Cold War.
He crawled back outside and stood on the slope. He listened. The wind was soughing gently in the trees. There was no sign of anyone at all.
Down below the bunker there was a flat, level expanse of gravel, partly covered by grass and undergrowth. There were no metal tracks, but it could have been the remains of an old railway line that had run along here decades earlier. Perhaps it had been used while the bunker was being built.
Jan clambered down and headed south. The gravelled track led to a narrow gap between two huge rocks. At the end of this gap there was a rusty gate; it was closed, but Jan managed to get it open. He walked up a gentle slope and found himself overlooking the lake about half a kilometre away, and suddenly he knew where he was. The children from Lynx had come up here on a little excursion last summer, just after he started work. No doubt they would be coming here again.
He stopped and thought.
The forest was dense here, but Jan found a path and walked a few hundred metres until he saw the nursery and the green fence surrounding the playground. The early birds from Lynx and Brown Bear were already there, playing outside. He saw little William Halevi sitting at the top of the climbing frame, raising his arms to show everyone that he was brave enough to let go.
William was a courageous boy; Jan had noticed this when the two groups were playing together. In spite of the fact that he was small and skinny, he would always climb the highest and run the fastest.
Jan looked at William, and thought about the bunker in the forest.
And that was how it began; not as a fully fledged plan to lure away a child in the forest, but mostly as a mind game. A pastime which Jan kept to himself.
7
‘THIS IS THE timetable, Jan,’ says Marie-Louise, pointing to the fridge door. ‘We have to stick to these times every day. Sometimes we deliver a child to the hospital when we go to collect one of the others.’
He looks at the piece of paper. It shows a series of names, dates and times relating to handovers in the coming week.
At the top it says Leo: Monday 11–12. Then Matilda: Monday 2–3, and Mira and Tobias: 3–4.
It’s only quarter to nine at the moment.
‘We go with them,’ says Marie-Louise, ‘and we collect them. There are also special occasions when the other parent comes to visit, and in that case they go up together.’