The Asylum by Johan Theorin Read Free Book Online

the trees. There was no sign of anyone at all.
    Down below the bunker there was a flat, level expanse of gravel, partly covered by grass and undergrowth. There were no metal tracks, but it could have been the remains of an old railway line that had run along here decades earlier. Perhaps it had been used while the bunker was being built.
    Jan clambered down and headed south. The gravelled track led to a narrow gap between two huge rocks. At the end of this gap there was a rusty gate; it was closed, but Jan managed to get it open. He walked up a gentle slope and found himself overlooking the lake about half a kilometre away, and suddenly he knew where he was. The children from Lynx had come up here on a little excursion last summer, just after he started work. No doubt they would be coming here again.
    He stopped and thought.
    The forest was dense here, but Jan found a path and walked a few hundred metres until he saw the nursery and the green fence surrounding the playground. The early birds from Lynx and Brown Bear were already there, playing outside. He saw little William Halevi sitting at the top of the climbing frame, raising his arms to show everyone that he was brave enough to let go.
    William was a courageous boy; Jan had noticed this when the two groups were playing together. In spite of the fact that he was small and skinny, he would always climb the highest and run the fastest.
    Jan looked at William, and thought about the bunker in the forest.
    And that was how it began; not as a fully fledged plan to lure away a child in the forest, but mostly as a mind game. A pastime which Jan kept to himself.

7
    ‘THIS IS THE timetable, Jan,’ says Marie-Louise, pointing to the fridge door. ‘We have to stick to these times every day. Sometimes we deliver a child to the hospital when we go to collect one of the others.’
    He looks at the piece of paper. It shows a series of names, dates and times relating to handovers in the coming week.
    At the top it says
Leo: Monday 11–12
. Then
Matilda: Monday 2–3
, and
Mira and Tobias: 3–4
.
    It’s only quarter to nine at the moment.
    ‘We go with them,’ says Marie-Louise, ‘and we collect them. There are also special occasions when the other parent comes to visit, and in that case they go up together.’
    Jan nods.
The other parent
. She is talking about the mother or father who is free. The one who isn’t locked up.
    He has met several of them already; they have popped into the cloakroom to deliver the children who do not live at the Dell. But are they the children’s biological parents, or foster parents? Jan is not allowed to ask, of course. They are all neatly dressed men or women from the age of about thirty upwards. Some looked as if they might be pensioners.
    He has stood in the cloakroom with Marie-Louise welcoming the children one by one. All the children who will be at the Dell today have arrived; there are eleven of them.
    When children are dropped off there can sometimes be despair and lots of tears, as Jan well knows, while the parents can be exaggeratedly cheerful and talkative in order to hide their anxiety or embarrassment at having to leave their children. But here at the Dell the adults seem somehow subdued. Perhaps it is because of the concrete wall – the shadow of St Psycho’s falls over everyone at the pre-school.
    And the children? They are quite shy, for the most part. They smile and whisper and stare at the new person standing next to their teacher, wondering who he is. During all the years he has spent in various pre-schools, Jan has encountered almost exclusively children who are curious and wide-eyed. Children are subdued only when they are really ill. Unlike adults, they can never hide how they are feeling.
    ‘Unfortunately you’ve missed our feelgood session today,’ says Marie-Louise when she has finished showing Jan around.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘It’s something we do together as a team on Mondays. We just sit down for fifteen