Five floors beneath the police station’s most modern addition is an area with two apartments, eight guest rooms, and two sleeping areas. It has been created to guarantee security for leaders of the department during crises and catastrophes. For the past decade, the guest rooms have also been used for witness protection. The walls are a cheerful yellow, and pleasant-looking books line a nice bookshelf. It’s obvious that the people staying in these rooms have plenty of time to read. There are no windows, but light behind a sheer curtain mimics one and tries to distract the mind from the thought of being deep underground in a bunker.
Penelope Fernandez lies on a hospital bed here, chilled. They tell her it’s because the IV-drip speed into her arm is being increased.
“We’re giving you liquids and nutritional supplements,” Daniella Richards, the doctor, tells her. In a soft voice, Dr Richards continues to explain what she’s doing as she tapes the catheter to the inside of Penelope’s elbow.
Penelope’s wounds have been cleaned. Her injured left foot has been stitched and bandaged and the gash on her back has been washed clean and taped shut, while the deep wound on her hip got the eight stitches it needed.
“I now want to give you a bit of morphine for the pain.”
“Mamma,” Penelope says. “I want to talk to Mamma.”
“I understand,” the doctor replies.
Warm tears run along Penelope’s cheeks and into her hair and ears. She hears the doctor ask the nurse to prepare an injection of 0.5 millilitres of morphine. The friendly Dr Richards tells Penelope they will let her rest now, but if she needs anything, she can push the glowing red button.
“There’s always going to be someone with you, if you want something or just for a bit of company,” she says.
Now Penelope Fernandez can feel a sense of peace in the room. She closes her eyes as the morphine’s warmth spreads through her body and pulls her down into sleep.
There’s a slight crunch when a woman wearing a black niqab crushes two small figures of sun-dried clay under her sandalled foot. A girl and her little brother turn to fragments and dust. The veiled woman is walking along carrying a heavy load of grain and doesn’t even notice what she’s doing. Two boys whistle and point and cry out that the slave children are dead and soon only infants will be left. All the Fur will die.
Penelope forces the memory of Kubbum away, but before she can fall into sleep again, for an instant she feels the weight of the tons of stone, earth, clay, and cement above her. It feels as if she just keeps falling and falling and falling, falling into the centre of the earth.
Penelope Fernandez wakes up abruptly. She can’t open her eyes. The morphine has made her body too heavy. But she knows she’s in a hospital bed in a protected bunker deep beneath the police station. She doesn’t need to flee any longer. Her relief is followed by a massive wave of pain and sorrow. She doesn’t know how long she’s slept, or if she should just let herself drift off again. She opens her eyes anyway.
She blinks, but sees nothing. Not even the alarm button next to the bed is lit. There must have been a power cut. She’s about to scream, but forces herself to be quiet when the door to the hallway clicks open. She stares into the darkness and hears her own heart pounding. Her body tenses and her muscles are ready to leap. Someone touches her hair. Almost unnoticeable. She lies completely still and feels someone do it again, stealthily, fingers twisting slowly into her locks. She is about to say a prayer when the person near her jerks her out of her bed by the hair. She screams as he throws her into the wall so that the framed pictures break and the IV stand falls over. She falls onto the floor surrounded by shards of glass. He keeps hold of her hair and pulls her back up, flips her over, and bangs her face against the bed’s locked wheels. Then he pulls out a knife with a black blade.
Penelope wakes up. She’s fallen out of bed. A nurse is rushing to her. All the lights are on and Penelope realises that she’s had a nightmare. She is helped back into bed, the nurse speaking calmly. Then rails are pulled up around the bed to keep her from falling out again.
The sweat on her body cools off after a while. She doesn’t want to move. She is lying on her back with the alarm button clutched in her hand and she stares at the ceiling. There’s a knock at the door. A young woman comes in. She has a colourful band plaited into her long hair, and she looks at Penelope with a gentle seriousness. Behind her is a tall man with spiked blond hair and a friendly, symmetrical face.
“My name is Saga Bauer,” the woman says. “I’m from the Security Service. This is my colleague, Joona Linna, from CID.”
Penelope looks at them without expression and then looks down at her bandaged arms, all her scabs and bruises and the catheter in her arm.
“We’re so sorry for all you’ve been through the past few days,” the woman says. “And we can understand you might want to simply be left alone now. But we can’t do that just yet. We need some information from you.”
Saga Bauer pulls the chair from the tiny desk and then sits down beside the bed.
“He’s still after me, isn’t he?” Penelope asks.
“You’re safe here,” Saga answers.
“Tell me he’s dead.”
“Penelope, we must—”
“You couldn’t stop him,” she says weakly.
“We’ll catch him. I promise,” Saga says. “But you have to help us.”
Penelope shuts her eyes.
“This must be so hard, but we do need a few answers,” Saga continues softly. “Do you have any idea why this might be happening?”
“Ask Björn,” she mumbles. “Maybe he knows.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you have to ask Björn,” Penelope whispers. She slowly opens her eyes. “Ask him. Maybe he knows.”
Spiders and insects must have gotten on her body from the woods. They’re running over her body. She tries to scratch her forehead, but Saga calmly stops her hands.
“He was hunting you,” Saga says. “I can’t even imagine how terrible it must have been. But did you recognise the person after you? Have you ever met him before?”
Penelope shakes her head so slightly it’s hardly noticeable.
“We didn’t think so either,” Saga says. “But perhaps you can give us a good description of him, or something recognisable such as a tattoo or a special mark?”
“No,” Penelope whispers.
“Then could you help our artist draw a picture of him? We don’t need too much to begin a search through Interpol.”
The man from CID comes closer, and his unusual grey eyes look like stones polished in a stream.
“I thought I just saw you shake your head,” he says. His voice is also calm. “When Saga asked if you recognised him, you shook your head just a little, right?”
Penelope nods.
“Then perhaps you did see him,” Joona says in a friendly way. “Perhaps you’re not sure if you’d seen him before or not.”
Penelope stares straight ahead and remembers how the killer moved so leisurely, as if he had all the time in the world, and still how everything happened so horribly fast. In her mind, she sees how he must have aimed up as she hung from the helicopter’s lifeline. She sees him raise his weapon and fire. No hurry, no nervousness. Again she sees his face illuminated by the flash of lightning. How they looked right at each other.
“We understand that you must be frightened,” Joona says. “But we—”
He stops speaking as a nurse comes into the room and tells Penelope that they’re still trying to reach her mother.
“She’s not home and she’s not answering her mobile phone.”
Penelope moans and looks away, hiding her face in her pillow. The nurse places a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“I don’t want to hear!” Penelope sobs. “I don’t want to!”
Another nurse hurries in and says she will add just a bit more tranquilliser to Penelope’s IV.
“Please, I must ask you to leave,” the nurse says hastily to Saga and Joona.
“We’ll be back soon,” Joona says. “I know where your mother might be. I’ll get her for you.”
Penelope stops crying, but her breaths still come quickly. She hears the rustling noise as the nurse prepares the infusion and she thinks that this entire room reminds her of a prison cell. Her mother wouldn’t want to come here. She bites her lip and tries to keep her tears back for a little while longer.
There are days when Penelope thinks she remembers her first years. The smell of steaming unwashed bodies. The cell where she was born. The wash of a torch beam across the faces of the prisoners. How she felt as her mother lifted her up over others to someone else before her mother disappeared with the guards. How a tune is hummed into her ear.