The Devil's Sanctuary by Marie Hermanson Page A

that he had gone to with Max on his first evening there. He could hardly ask anyone because that would reveal him as a new arrival. He decided that the simplest thing to do was to follow the others.

14
    THE PATIENTS’ cafeteria turned out to be a large open space with modern furnishings and glass walls facing the park. There was a choice of Oriental chicken or vegetarian pasta bake, and Daniel took the chicken. There were plenty of seats, and he was able to get a table to himself. Several other patients were also sitting on their own.
    He had just started eating, surprised at how good it was, when someone said close beside him, “I saw you by the pool.”
    Daniel looked up. Alongside his table stood a man of about his age, slightly overweight, with a denim vest and his thinning blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He was balancing a tray of food in one hand as he pulled out the chair opposite Daniel with the other. He sat down and grinned. “I don’t ask for permission before sitting down.” He began to eat, quickly and hungrily. “But then, neither do you,” he added with a pointed look.
    Daniel tried to think of a suitable response.
    The man held up his hand to stop him. He looked like a small-town rocker.
    “It’s cool, mate. You did exactly the right thing. It’s high time someone used that chair. He’s not coming back, is he?”
    “Who isn’t coming back?” Daniel asked cautiously.
    “Block. We’ll never see him again. Maybe that’s just as well.”
    Daniel nodded thoughtfully. This was what he had been worried about. Meeting someone who knew Max and spoke to him about things that only Max could know. Or else the man was a complete madman and was talking nonsense.
    “Block’s been transferred,” the man said with his mouth full, as he stared straight ahead over Daniel’s shoulder.
    “Oh. Has he?” Daniel said.
    Something told him that Max hadn’t been entirely honest in his description of the clinic and its patients.
    “And we both know why.”
    “Of course,” Daniel muttered as he struggled with a troublesome chicken thigh. He would have to avoid this man in the future.
    “Block wasn’t the man he pretended to be.”
    Daniel lowered his cutlery and held his breath. This conversation was distinctly uncomfortable.
    “And we don’t like that.” The man was eyeing some patients who had just arrived. He watched them carefully as they sat down over by the glass wall, then lost interest and turned back toward Daniel as he went on. “We’re the same, you and me. We don’t like people who sail under false flags.”
    For several unbearably long and silent seconds he stared at Daniel with pupils so sharp that Daniel felt he’d been speared with a fork. Then the man said, “Maybe it was you who got him transferred?”
    “No,” Daniel said, horrified. “Definitely not. I had nothing to do with it.”
    The man took out a toothpick and began to clean his teeth. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Daniel with an amused expression.
    “It’s okay,” he said. “Do you need anything?”
    He closed one nostril with his index finger and sniffed through the other.
    Daniel shook his head, excused himself, and left the dining room.
    He walked quickly up the slope toward Max’s cabin. He would have to avoid encounters of that sort in the future. He wouldn’t be eating in the dining room again.
    Max had said that he would be away for three, possibly four days. Today was Tuesday. That meant Max would be back on Thursday evening, or Friday at the latest.
    Daniel pulled out his brother’s worn Bermuda shorts, which he had carelessly tossed in a wardrobe. He dug through the pockets. The shorts smelled of smoke and had soot stains from the previous day’s campfire. In the back pocket he found Max’s wallet. Max could hardly have any objection to Daniel using his wallet, seeing as he had gone off with his.
    He decided to go down to Hannelores Bierstube for dinner at seven o’clock. On his previous