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Joona daren’t leave the hospital until two uniformed officers arrive to guard Mikael’s room. On his way out along the corridor he calls Nathan Pollock and says they need to send someone to pick up the man’s father.

‘I’m sure it’s Mikael,’ he says. ‘And I’m sure he’s been held captive by Jurek Walter all these years.’

He gets in the car and slowly drives away from the hospital as the windscreen wipers clear the snow aside.

Mikael Kohler-Frost was ten years old when he disappeared – and he was twenty-three when he managed to escape.

Sometimes prisoners manage to escape, like Elisabeth Fritzl in Austria, who escaped after twenty-four years as a sex-slave in her father’s cellar. Or Natascha Kampusch, who fled her kidnapper after eight years.

Joona can’t help thinking that, like Elisabeth Fritzl and Natascha Kampusch, Mikael must have seen the man holding him captive. Suddenly a conclusion to all this seems possible. In just a few days, as soon as he is well enough, Mikael ought to be able to show the way to the place where he was held captive for so long.