The Asylum (16 page)

22

BEFORE SETTING OFF
for his night shift on Friday, Jan picks up an empty coffee cup and leaves his flat. He’s not going out this evening, just down two flights of stairs to visit his neighbour behind the door marked V. LEGÉN.

He can’t hear a sound; he has rung the bell on two previous occasions, but no one has answered. He tries again.

This time someone is coming; then there is a rattling sound. Legén has put the chain on the door, but he opens it just a fraction.

‘Evening,’ says Jan, holding up the cup.

His neighbour doesn’t say a word.

‘My name is Jan Hauger … I live upstairs,’ Jan goes on. ‘I wondered if you could spare some sugar? I’m making a cake.’

Legén stares at him like a weary boxer facing his arch enemy. He’s not in a good mood today. But he takes the cup and turns away. Jan silently steps forward and peers into the hallway.

It is dark and untidy, and it stinks of tobacco. The fabric bag he last saw down in the cellar is lying on the floor, next to the shoe rack. The text is clearly visible now: ST PATRICIA’S LAUNDRY. He was right.

Jan is wearing a satisfied smile when his neighbour returns with the cup half-f of sugar.

‘Perfect. Thanks very much.’

He is about to carry on chatting; he was intending to point to the bag and say that he actually works at St Patricia’s too, but
Legén
simply nods and slams the door shut. There is a click as the key turns in the lock.

Jan goes back up to his flat and tips the sugar into the bin in the kitchen.

He cycles to the pre-school at around nine o’clock, thinking all the time about the envelope he left in the visitors’ room on the Wednesday night. It should have been collected by now, and will have had some effect on the patients, although he isn’t sure what that might be.

But nothing whatsoever has changed. The concrete wall is as solid as ever, the floodlights shine out and everything is just the way it always is when he arrives at the Dell. Lilian is waiting for him tonight, and she has already put the children to bed.

‘Evening, Lilian.’

‘How are you, Jan?’ Lilian looks tired, but her voice is loud and brisk. Sometimes it seems as if the children are a little bit afraid of her, in spite of the fact that she enjoys playing with them. There is something tense yet fragile about her, Jan thinks.

‘Fine, thanks,’ he replies. ‘Ready for the weekend?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Will you be out enjoying yourself?’

‘I certainly will.’ But there is no sense of anticipation in her voice. Lilian quickly pulls on her jacket, but she doesn’t ask what Jan will be doing, and she doesn’t wish him a nice weekend. She just gives him one last glance, then leaves.

Jan is alone again, getting ready for the night.

He checks on the sleeping children, then carries out the usual routines before getting undressed. He is in bed by eleven, but as usual he finds it difficult to get to sleep. The pre-school is too warm and stuffy, the sofa bed feels narrow and uncomfortable, and out there in the kitchen a key card is longing for him to come and get it out of the drawer. But not as much as he is longing to use it.

Jan sighs in the darkness. But he
is
going to stay in bed. He is
not
going to go down into the basement. There is no easy way into the
hospital
in any case, he knows that now. The door leading out of the visitors’ room is locked. But Rettig must have a key, if he is able to go in and fetch the envelope Jan hid under the sofa cushions.

Have the patients received their letters yet? Presumably. Perhaps Lars Rettig is creeping around the corridors at this very moment, handing them out.

Jan turns over on to his side, still toying with the idea of finding a secret route into the hospital.

Perhaps via the safe room in the basement? It has two exits, and he doesn’t know where the second one leads. He doesn’t even know if it’s possible to open it. It might lead straight into the hospital, or it might have been bricked up. But if he doesn’t go down and try it, he will never know.

It’s quarter to twelve. The children are asleep, and the key card is calling to him. St Psycho’s is out there, like a huge mountain waiting to be climbed simply because it is there. Like Mount Everest. But many climbers have lost their lives on Everest …

No, it’s better to think of the hospital as a cave to be explored. Jan has never heard of anyone dying in a cave, although of course it could have happened.

He makes up his mind. Throws back the covers and sits up in the darkness.

Just a quick look in the safe room, and then he’ll be able to sleep.

Ten minutes later he is down in the underground corridor. The Angel is switched on and attached to his belt, he has turned on the light and walked down the stairs. The lift window is dark – the lift is up on the ground floor, but he doesn’t press the button to call it down. Instead he carries on along the corridor, around the corner and all the way up to the steel door.

It is closed, and of course the sign is still there (
This door must be kept locked at all times!
), but Jan grabs hold of the big handle and opens it. He remembers where the light switch was, and flicks on the main overhead light.

The safe room looks exactly the same as when he peeped in last time. A fitted carpet, a few pillows, a mattress. No one has been in
here.
Or have they? The mattress is lying on the floor now – wasn’t it propped up against the wall the last time he was here? He can’t remember. There’s an empty wine bottle – surely that wasn’t here before?

There isn’t a sound. Cautiously Jan steps inside. He leaves the door open and walks over to the other end of the room. There is the exit which might lead deeper into the hospital: another closed steel door with a long handle.

Jan grabs hold of the handle and presses it downwards. It gives perhaps a centimetre, then stops dead. He stands on tiptoe, tenses his arms and puts all his strength into trying to move the metal bar, but to no avail.

The hospital is not going to let him in.

He lets out a long breath, and suddenly he hears something. A sound. A faint vibration in the floor. A low whining noise is coming from the corridor, through the concrete walls, and at first Jan can’t work out what it is, but then he recognizes it. The whine carries on, getting louder all the time.

It’s the sound of the lift. The lift has begun to descend from the visitors’ room; it’s on its way down to the basement.

Jan lets go of the door handle. He listens intently.

The lift stops in the basement with a clicking sound. There is complete silence for a couple of seconds, then Jan clearly hears the sound of the metal door opening.

Someone steps out into the corridor.

23

JAN STAYS WHERE
he is, protected by the thick walls of the safe room. He doesn’t move a muscle.

Make your mind up
, he thinks.

All he did when the lift door opened was to reach out and switch off the light in the safe room, to avoid giving himself away. But ever since he has been in the same place, frozen to the floor.

He is standing completely still, just listening, with no idea of what to do. Every sound he can hear now is coming from the basement, bouncing around the sharp corners and echoing between the concrete walls.

He clearly hears the door of the lift close, and thinks he can hear footsteps moving across the thin carpet of the corridor. Quiet steps, gradually moving away.

Someone is calmly walking away from the lift and along the corridor.

Someone is on the way up the stairs to the Dell.

On the way up to the three sleeping children: Leo, Mira and Matilda.

Jan
must
move, and in the end he manages it. He turns around and takes one step towards the door. His shadow moves across the wall. Two steps. Three.

But suddenly the light in front of him goes out. The shadow disappears; the corridor is in total darkness.

Jan realizes what has happened: the person who came out of
the
lift has now reached the top of the stairs, and switched off the light.

The door leading to the pre-school rattles as it opens, then closes again. The visitor from St Psycho’s must have had a key card with him or her.

And now the visitor is inside the Dell. And Jan, who is responsible for the children up there, is trapped.

He has his own card and can get out of the basement, but that won’t be enough. He needs a weapon. Something with which to defend himself and the children, anything at all. He gropes around in the darkness of the safe room, finds the empty wine bottle on the floor and picks it up.

A kind of club. He can grab the bottle by the neck and hold it up in front of him.

Out in the corridor it is almost pitch dark, with only a faint yellow glow from the window of the lift, and he gropes his way along the wall towards the stairs.

He has almost forgotten the Angel on his belt, but suddenly he hears muted, metallic sounds coming from the little box. Scraping sounds, then something that sounds like breathing. The sound of someone who has crept into the children’s bedroom.

Someone is with the children.

Jan’s heart begins to pound, he increases his speed.

Most of the patients in the hospital are not dangerous, that’s what Dr Högsmed said. And yet right now he can’t help thinking about those who are dangerous. About Ivan Rössel, the serial killer. And Margit, the old woman, with her smoking shotgun …

Fuck
. Jan moves along with short, rapid steps, feeling his way. The concrete wall feels like sandpaper to his touch.

He hears a thud; he has knocked down one of the animal pictures, but he doesn’t stop. All at once his shoe hits something hard. The bottom step. He climbs the stairs cautiously, one by one, until his hands brush against the door. But it’s locked.

Jan will have to unlock it, but suddenly he can’t remember the code. His mind has gone completely blank. Marie-Louise’s birthday – but exactly when is it?

When?

He turns up the volume on the baby monitor and hears the sound of scraping footsteps, someone moving inside the room where the children are sleeping. A visitor from St Psycho’s.

The code, what’s the code?

Jan needs to think. He tries to relax, and gradually coaxes out the numbers; they pop into his head, one by one. Three, one, zero, seven. He fumbles in the darkness, keys in the numbers, swipes the card and hears the lock click.

Slowly he opens the door, the bottle raised in front of him. The small rooms in the Dell are silent now.

He takes two steps into the cloakroom, turns and sees that the door of the children’s room is standing wide open. It was closed when he left. The hand holding the bottle is slippery with sweat.

Three children are sleeping in there – Leo, Matilda and Mira. He abandoned them. Holding his breath he moves as quietly as he can towards the doorway.

A room in darkness.

He peeps in, expecting to see a big black shadow looming over the beds, but he sees nothing.

Nothing is moving in there. The three children are safely tucked up, their breathing quiet and even. Jan tiptoes in and listens, but the room is small; there is nowhere for anyone to hide.

It’s empty. So where has the visitor from the hospital gone?

Jan leaves the children, closes the door and switches on the light in the hallway. Then he goes from room to room, checking every corner, but he can’t find any sign of the visitor.

Eventually he returns to the hallway. The outside door is closed, but when he presses down the handle he discovers it isn’t locked. Someone has unlocked it and gone outside.

Jan opens the door and looks out, but there is no one in sight. ‘Hello?’ he calls out into the night, mostly to hear the sound of his own voice.

No answer. The playground is empty, the street beyond is deserted.

He closes the door against the cold, locks it and exhales. He looks at the clock: quarter past twelve.

There is one last thing he must do before he goes to bed: he must go down to the basement and hang the picture back on the wall. And of course he must replace the bottle – an empty wine bottle would be a little difficult to explain if Marie-Louise found it in the pre-school.

When he comes back up, he also jams a chair under the handle of the door leading to the basement so that no one will be able to open it from the other side – not even if they have a key card.

At eight o’clock the following morning, Jan goes home. The rest of the night was uneventful, when he finally managed to get to sleep. His heart was pounding as he lay in bed, but he felt lonely rather than afraid.

Our operation is secure
, Dr Högsmed had said.
The safety of all concerned is our number-one priority
.

Jan has not found a way to get to Rami, not yet. But one thing he does know now: someone is using the pre-school as a sally port. As a way out of the hospital.

He hopes it isn’t a patient.

24

THE SECOND ENVELOPE
from Rettig is delivered to Jan that morning when he is back in his own bed. His mind has drifted off into a warm, soothing dream about love, but he is abruptly woken at nine o’clock. He can’t work out why at first, but then it dawns on him that it was the clatter of the letter box.

He no longer remembers the dream; he might as well get up. When he peers out into the hallway there is an envelope lying there which looks familiar. This one is pale yellow, that’s the only difference. But it is just as thick as the first one, with the letters S. P. printed on the front.

This time Jan does something he didn’t have the courage to do last time: he opens the envelope. He takes it into the kitchen, places it on the table and studies the seal. It’s ordinary transparent sticky tape – the kind you can buy just about anywhere – and that’s what makes him begin to pull at it, teasing it away from the back of the envelope.

He hesitates for a brief moment. Is it wrong to open letters that shouldn’t ever be delivered anyway? He pushes the question aside.