Free Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel by Erik Boman Page A

and runs out.
    The other passengers who had retreated to the other end of the car rush out and back away from John. Parents carrying their children jog towards the exits. Men and women shout at their phones to make themselves heard over the wind and those around them: Yes, a fight. On the train. I think someone’s dead.
    John looks along the tracks. They continue onto a soaring bridge that connects the suburbs with the city. He hefts his bag, jumps down onto the tracks, and steps over the live rail to reach the maintenance walkway wedged between the rail and a thirty-metre drop down to the frozen strait. Two fences on each side provide a handhold.
    John enters the walkway and runs up on the bridge, towards the city.
    *

John
    The cavern’s domed ceiling is almost lost in darkness, but the glow from Miriam’s lantern is enough to illuminate the barrier that cuts the cavern in half. John slowly walks closer while the frost stings his feet.
    It could be a natural rock wall, running across the cave and reaching up almost halfway to the ceiling, but as his eyes adjust, details start to emerge. First lines, shadows within shadows, then curves and hard corners. Slowly, the geometry grows into familiar shapes.
    “No,” John whispers, his arms hanging slack along his sides.
    A row of rectangles turns out to be three windows, each divided into six smaller panes. In the middle of the wall is a large double door with metal doorknobs and small circular windows. Above the door is a huge clock.
    Staring, he takes a cautious step closer. He cannot see the colour of the wall, but he knows it will be made of red bricks, battered from a thousand thrown pebbles. The window frames will be white, their paint worn and flaking. Years of bare hands and mittens will have polished the fake brass doorknobs down to a silvery hue. Above the door, right under the clock, will be a bell the size of a dinner plate.
    The building is his old junior school.
    He peers at the clock in black-painted steel. The second hand is missing, just as it always had been. As a child, he used to think the teachers removed it to hide the fact that time sometimes really stood still.
    Some details are wrong: colours are too pale, the windows too tall and the door too small. What is right, however, is the threat radiating from the building, the invisible menace of never-ending days and rough shoves.
    John sits down, ignoring the chill that burns through his jeans; it is warmer here than it had been on the frozen lake, but not much. He looks down, away, blinks hard, rubs at his eyes, and opens them again. The school is still there. It is waiting, its dark windows staring back at him. The building is both forbidding and summoning, and the conflicting impressions are nauseating.
    “No,” he says again. “This can’t be.” Tears run down his cheeks, and soon he racks with hard, sharp sobs. He has gone insane. This is all the proof he needs.
    Miriam sits down next to him and puts her arm around his shoulders. “If it’s any comfort,” she says, “this is the hardest part.”
    “What – part?” John manages to ask when his crying abates.
    “Acceptance.” She holds him closer. “The watershed room. Here is where you begin again.”
    “It’s my damn school.” John wipes tears off his cheeks. “Right over there. But it can’t be, because it’s not here . It’s in a suburb, outside. I remember that much.” He stares at the school, hoping it will sink back into the shadows. Being lost is better; this way, his madness is a tangible horror rubbed in his face. “I’m losing my mind,” he says quietly. “Maybe I already have.”
    She looks at him sideways with a warm smile. “No, sweetheart. You’re getting your mind back.”
    “What?”
    “Think. What happened at your old school that was so important? Not just all the formative years, but something more special. An insight or an activity that stood out.”
    He searches what is left of his mind, if only to