Free Dreamless by Jorgen Brekke Page A

don’t. Please, please don’t,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
    “You’re not going anywhere, dear,” he said.
    And finally she understood.
    She huddled on the floor. He threw himself at her, yanked her up, and kicked her in the stomach. She flew backward, rammed against the far wall, and then pitched forward. Slowly, she got back on her feet, motioned to him with one hand, muttering something, and then dropped to her knees. He lifted her up and pressed her back against the wall as he struck her. It was like hitting a mattress. Then everything inside her seemed to surrender all at once, and she sank to the floor. Her knees buckled; her head drooped. But then, a fraction of an inch at a time, she pulled herself up again.
    She couldn’t speak; she couldn’t hear; she couldn’t see. It was beyond his comprehension how she was able to breathe or stay upright. But she raised her head, made a few gurgling noises, and stretched her arms out to the sides. She stood like that for a moment; then she stumbled toward him. A clear tone issued from her throat, as if she were trying to sing one last time. Or maybe it was a plea.
    He punched her on the chin. She fell to the floor like a sack of cement, and this time she didn’t get up.
    “… where time and death unite beauty and foulness in the same dust…”
    Behind him he could hear Åkerström’s fervent bass voice.
    The music filled the entire basement, coming from the little CD player next to the mattress outside the storeroom. The music made his thoughts float. He felt exhausted, as if all the blows had struck him instead of her, and he collapsed onto the mattress with the images of her motionless body imprinted on his retinas.
    Now, several days later, he could still conjure up those images. They brought him peace.
    *   *   *
    Singsaker could feel the pressure against his chest, and the blood being pumped into the spongelike network of capillaries just under the surface of his skin. He had opened his eyes and could see the darkness below him, blurry through the salt water, like a question with no answer, a case with no resolution.
    He hovered like that, staring through the waters with both arms stretched out to the sides. This numbness in his skin bordered on paralysis. It was no longer possible to determine whether he was freezing or warm. His body had somehow been set free, as well as his thoughts. It felt like an eternity, though it lasted only a few seconds. He couldn’t hold his head under the ice-cold water any longer than that. Then he kicked his legs. It was a reflex and not a controlled action, but it happened every time he did this, and he shot upward. He still had his eyes open, and he could see the sun flailing like a golden octopus on the surface where a thin membrane of slushy ice had settled. He broke through, gasping for air at just about the same spot he’d jumped in. The surrounding water was still full of bubbles. Then he bellowed like a kid:
    “What the fuck! It’s just as bad every time!”
    “And just as good,” replied Thorvald Jensen, who was already sitting on the dock with a towel wrapped around him.
    Singsaker swam quickly over to the ladder and climbed up to join his colleague.
    “Good?” he said, grabbing the other towel from the dock. “It’s times like this that make me think it might actually snow in hell.”
    Jensen smiled.
    “Even Dante knew that. Wasn’t it the traitors who ended up in Cocytus, the ice sea in the ninth inner circle of hell?”
    “So if I betray you and give up this insane ice-bathing thing, is that where I’ll end up too?” asked Singsaker, smiling wryly.
    “Ironic, isn’t it?’ said Jensen.
    They had issued a challenge to each other after the crazy homicide case in the fall. It was Jensen’s idea. They would go swimming once a week all winter long. People said it was good for the health. Singsaker couldn’t say whether that was why he’d accepted the challenge, or if it