St Psycho’s is sleeping.
Jan tugs the door further towards him. He sees a long, wide corridor with pale-yellow walls. The glow of the ceiling lights is subdued, perhaps because it is night time. There isn’t a soul in sight. He can smell disinfectant, so there must be cleaners around somewhere.
And patients.
And security guards, of course. Rettig and Carl and their friends.
Jan pulls himself together and steps out of the storeroom. The corridor extends in both directions, with rows of closed doors on both sides. The black hands on a large, round clock above the door are showing quarter to twelve.
Jan tucks a couple of the pieces of paper he has left into the lock to keep the door open. Then he moves along the vinyl floor, as quietly as possible.
Suddenly he feels like a fourteen-year-old again, back in the corridors of the Unit. There is the same silence, the same cold walls and closed doors.
A surprising sense of calm descends on him. Being here in the Corridor of the Closed Doors is almost like coming home.
He looks to the right and begins to count the unmarked doors. The seventh looks just like the rest — but to Jan’s eyes it seems to shine with a greater luminosity, and it is waiting for him just seven or eight metres away.
He moves along slowly, past all the other doors. On each one there is a steel handle, with a small metal hatch beside it.
He has almost reached his goal. Should he knock on Rami’s door, or try to open it?
Jan makes a decision: he will knock.
‘Excuse me? Who are you?’
The sound of a voice makes him jump.
He has been caught. A security guard has opened the door at the far end of the corridor, and is staring at him. But it isn’t Rettig or Carl — this is a middle-aged woman.
She takes a couple of steps towards him. ‘Where have you come from?’
Jan blinks, desperately searching for an answer. ‘From the laundry.’
‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ the woman says. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I got lost,’ Jan says.
The woman stares, but doesn’t say anything else; suddenly she turns and hurries away. To fetch help?
Jan needs to get away.
He glances at Rami’s door one last time. So close, but there is nothing he can do right now. There is nothing he can give her.
No — maybe there is one thing.
He opens the small metal hatch in the wall next to her door and peers inside. The box is empty apart from a couple of sheets of paper. A menu, and information about a forthcoming fire drill.
Quickly he unclips the Angel from his belt and slips it into the box, hiding it beneath the sheets of paper. Then he closes the hatch.
The corridor is still empty, and Jan rushes back to the storeroom. He removes the pieces of paper that were keeping the door open, but pushes one of them right into the lock to hold the catch pressed in. As he silently closes the door he hears heavy footsteps in the corridor. The guards are on their way.
The lift is just as cramped as before, but this time he clambers inside without hesitation. He presses the button on the far right, and the lift clunks into life.
Jan keeps his eyes closed all the way down.
When the lift stops he quickly opens the hatch; he is impatient and less tentative now. It is well after midnight, and he wants to get out of the hospital.
He gropes his way along, out of the laundry and through the tiled rooms. He has no Angel to help him this time, but somewhere up ahead he can see a flickering light.
And he can hear singing — is someone singing hymns down here?
He fumbles his way forward, staring down at the tiled floor. Where are the bits of paper? He can’t see them in the darkness.
The light grows stronger as he shuffles down the long corridors. Eventually he turns a corner and sees a doorway filled with light; there are candles burning in a couple of wooden sconces on the walls.
He is standing in a narrow room with a bank of wooden benches. A few grey sacks have been thrown on the floor. It’s a small chapel, and right at the front he sees an altarpiece — an old, cracked image of a woman with a gentle smile. He moves closer and is able to read the name PATRICIA painted in angular letters on the frame of the picture.
Patricia, the hospital’s patron saint.
He turns away — but the grey sacks have begun to move.
They are patients. Three men in grey tracksuits, with grey faces. One older man with heavy jowls, and two younger men with shaved heads. They are staring at Jan, their expressions blank and empty. Perhaps it’s because of the medication.
The older man points to the altar. His voice is mechanical. ‘Patricia needs peace and quiet.’
‘So do we,’ says one of the others.
‘Me too,’ Jan says quietly.
‘Do you live here?’ one of the patients asks.
‘Yes,’ Jan replies. ‘I live down here.’
The older man nods, and Jan takes a step past the three men. Slowly and carefully. Rettig has warned him. But the patients remain motionless, and Jan goes back out into the corridor.
Eventually he finds one of his scraps of paper on the floor. And then another. They show him the way, and he hurries along, following the white trail. He hears voices in the chapel behind him — the men have started singing hymns again. Jan speeds up, heading towards the end of the corridor.
Into another corridor, around several corners in this labyrinth — and at last he is back in the safe room.
He shuts the steel door behind him, then scurries along the familiar corridor, past the animal pictures and up the stairs. His adventure is over.
The last thing he does at the top of the stairs is to listen for footsteps from down below. But no one is pursuing him.
He closes the door and breathes out, but he can’t relax. He checks on the children, and has a terrible shock.
Only one head is visible in the beds. It is Leo’s. Mira’s bed is empty.
Jan is utterly panic-stricken; he can’t move. You let them down. Another child is missing. Missing, missing—
Then he hears the toilet flush in the bathroom.
Mira is almost six; she has learned how to go to the toilet on her own, without calling for an adult. She emerges from the bathroom and walks straight past him, still half asleep. She hasn’t even noticed that he wasn’t there.
‘Goodnight, Mira,’ he says behind her.
‘Mm,’ she replies, and gets back into bed.
A few minutes later she seems to have dropped off, and Jan is gradually able to wind down. He removes the other Angel from the children’s room and puts it in his locker. If things work out this will be his link to the hospital. A way of transmitting secret messages.
43
‘Is everyone feeling ok?’ Marie-Louise asks.
There are a few indistinct mumbles.
The response is muted. Winter is on its way. It is late autumn, a weary grey Monday morning at the Dell, with an excess of darkness and very little light.
Jan says nothing, but no one seems to notice his silence. His night shift actually finished an hour ago, but in spite of his tiredness he has stayed on to attend the morning meeting. He wants to know if his visit to the hospital has been discovered — if Dr Högsmed has sent over a report about an intruder. The security guard was quite a long way from him, she can’t possibly have seen his face all that clearly, but...
Marie-Louise doesn’t mention it. She is behaving exactly the way she always does, except that she is slightly more subdued. Perhaps it’s because of the autumn darkness outside the window.
Lilian is positively drooping. Her head is bent over her coffee cup so that the red hair covers her face; she seems to be half asleep. When Marie-Louise turns to her, Lilian doesn’t look her in the eye.