Page 11 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

The photograph shows a man frozen solid in a lake. He is on his knees with the water up to his waist, and his severed head is lying on the ice in front of him.

There is little doubt that this latest murder was carried out by the same perpetrator, turning the prosecutor’s theory completely on its head.

Seventeen-year-old Hugo Sand will be released without charge.

Joona enlarges the image and studies the wound on the man’s throat.

A single stroke.

The axe had a wider blade this time, and was swung horizontally.

The bright lighting in the office is reflected in the dark sections of the images on the screen, in the blood that has flowed down the victim’s back.

Early that morning, Joona sat down to read the printouts from Hugo’s phone.

The teenager has three close friends and occasionally exchanges brief messages with his father, but it is the texts to and from his girlfriend, Olga Wójcik, that are most interesting.

On a couple of occasions, the pair touch upon their plans to take a trip to Canada next summer, and it is clear that they have been trying to save enough money for the flights.

In one message, Hugo writes that he feels low and exhausted after school, and Olga replies that she will give him medicine and take care of him.

The reference to medicine may well just be part of some private game, but Joona instinctively associated her words with the traces of benzodiazepine found in Hugo’s blood and had just decided to bring her in for questioning when the call came in from Edsviken Tennis Club.

A group of children from a preschool class had found the body, and one of their teachers had called 112 as they ushered them away from the jetty and the shore.

Joona immediately got in touch with Kronoberg Remand Prison to make sure Hugo hadn’t escaped, and learned that he had fallen out of bed during the night and was currently in the medical wing.

The crime scene had been cordoned off into an inner and outer perimeter by the time Joona arrived. He spoke to Erixon and his team of forensic technicians, and didn’t leave until he had a clear understanding of what had happened there.

Sitting at his desk now, he remembers the divers in their dry suits, gathering chunks of ice in the hope of securing biological matter or fibres, taking samples and examining the lake bed.

They photographed those parts of the victim that were beneath the surface of the water and then transferred him onto dry land.

Once that was done, they turned their attention to his severed head and removed large sections of the thin ice, preserving them in various cool bags.

Joona leans in to his computer screen and studies the close-up shots of the victim’s broken windscreen. It has bowed inwards in a fine web of cracks, and the driver’s seat is covered in tiny chunks of glass beneath the oval-shaped hole left by the axe.

There is a knock at the door, and Magda Brons, the secretary to the head of the National Crime Unit, comes into the room, jewellery jingling. She tells him that the doors of the large meeting room are now open.

‘He’d like you to come right away.’

‘OK,’ says Joona.

The new head of the NCU is a man by the name of Noah Hellman.

He is just thirty-eight, and has never worked as a police officer in any real sense.

Instead, he has a doctorate in political science and spent several years as the Security Service’s representative on the Police Authority’s national management committee.

The other bosses like him, and he is already popular with the rest of the department, a skilled media communicator with his own professional Instagram account.

Joona makes his way down the corridor, past the curtained windows and over to the open door.

In addition to a number of bar stools and a drinks trolley, Noah has had a pool table installed in the meeting room, and he is busy chalking his cue when Joona comes in.

He looks up and gives him a boyish smile.

‘My man,’ he says.

‘Magda said you wanted to see me?’

Noah is wearing a pair of red trainers, jeans and a pale-blue overshirt. He is clean-shaven, but his dirty blond hair is getting in his eyes.

‘The murder at the tennis club .?.?. What similarities are there with the previous one?’ he asks.

‘The victim is male, around the same age, and he was killed with an axe .?.?. His wallet and phone are both missing, too,’ Joona replies.

‘Was the first man robbed?’

‘Hard to say. There wasn’t any money in his wallet, and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.’

‘What about differences?’

‘I haven’t examined the body,’ Joona begins. ‘But the first victim was completely dismembered, while this—’

There is a loud crack as Noah knocks the cue ball into the pack, and Joona’s mind drifts back to the two divers transferring the victim into a body bag.

His blood hadn’t yet coagulated, and it seeped through the frozen surface of his neck wound.

The shirt he was wearing had ridden up, and he had a long, vertical gash across his chest, likely from the edge of the ice when he slumped to his knees.

Aside from his severed head, the only other sign of injury was the fact that he was missing half a hand.

The divers zipped up the bag and dragged it ashore, causing the yellowed reeds around them to bend and break, and a dusting of snow to dance in the air.

‘What were you going to say?’ Noah asks as he moves around the table.

‘That the killer left this victim immediately after the fatal blow.’

‘I’ve seen the pictures, of course, but I’m having a little trouble making sense of what happened where.’

‘The victim was in the passenger seat in his car, with the backrest fully reclined, when he was first attacked,’ Joona explains.

‘That much I got.’

‘The axe missed him; there was no blood in the car.’

‘So he ran down to the water?’

‘He climbed over the centre console when the windscreen broke and escaped through the driver’s side door while the perpetrator moved around the bonnet.

They swung the axe again, severing the fingers on his left hand and striking the wall of a building nearby.

The victim then ran and tried to hide in the reeds – bleeding heavily and in shock – but he was followed.

He entered the water, possibly in an attempt to swim away, and that’s where the perpetrator caught up with him. ’

Noah studies Joona with a sceptical smile.

‘You sound pretty damn confident.’

‘We haven’t been able to lift any footprints from the gravel in the parking area, but it’s still possible to read the different stages – the damage to the car, the blood spatters on the ground .?.?.’

‘I believe you, I believe you, it all sounds plausible enough. I’m listening.

It’s just that I’m not a proper police officer.

’ Noah smiles. ‘I’m a careerist, a fucking careerist. I’ll be totally open about that.

Today, I’m head of the NCU, and tomorrow, I’ll probably be the district police chief .

.?. I’m sociable, I like going for after-work drinks, but I also make sure that things get done. ’

‘That’s all that matters,’ says Joona.

‘Liking after-work drinks? No, but seriously, I’m all for a bit of fun around here, but I also want to keep the press on a tight leash, if you catch my drift.’

‘I can take care of myself.’

‘You know, I was warned about you, Joona, but I wanted to make up my own mind .?.?. and so far, I like what I see. The prosecutor tells me she doesn’t think we have any chance of a conviction with the teenager, so she’s dropping the preliminary investigation.

The case is back in our lap now, and plenty of people are desperate to take over, but I want you to do it. ’

‘Thanks.’

‘We’re in the process of recruiting a new partner for you – and don’t just tell me you want to work with Saga Bauer again.’

‘I want to work with Saga.’

‘Who doesn’t?’ Noah jokes. ‘I mean, she’s one of the best. Truly. But it’s too soon.’

‘Then I’d rather work alone.’

‘Ha. I knew you’d say that. The trouble is I need team players.’

‘You need all sorts.’

‘Maybe so, but—’

‘If I solve this case, I want you to bring Saga back into the group.’

‘It’s your job to solve cases. You can’t start negotiating—’

‘I do more than just my job.’

‘So I hear,’ Noah says wearily.

‘Which means I can negotiate.’

‘No, it—’

‘Yes.’

Noah sighs and rests the pool cue on his shoulder.

Joona knows how Saga seems, and he also knows that she has a long way to go before she finds inner peace.

In an act of self-loathing following the death of her half-sister, Saga sought out one of the surgeons who had been present in the operating theatre. She began a relationship with him in order to be humiliated and punished, to brand herself with shame.

The last time Joona visited her apartment on Tavastgatan, the place was a physical manifestation of her state of mind.

On the kitchen table, there was a mouldy loaf of bread beside an open jam jar with a spoon inside.

Saga was sleeping in a narrow bed without any sheets, and she spent most of her time reading scientific articles and medical textbooks on child surgery and the treatment of palpitations.

The only thing she knew for sure was that she never wanted to become emotionally attached to anyone again.

Joona knows that Saga comes into the office every day and that she does everything that is asked of her in her part-time job with the Intelligence Unit, but her true potential is woefully underused.

She needs to feel needed, otherwise she will go under.

Noah chalks his cue and moves around the table again.

‘Hugo Sand has been released,’ he says. ‘Though he’s not quite off the hook for the first murder yet – assuming they’re definitely connected.’

‘They are.’

‘Personally, I don’t think it’s possible for someone to chop people to pieces with an axe in their sleep,’ Noah says as he hits the cue ball, which slams into the yellow with a loud crack.

‘No, but who knows?’

‘It seems more likely that Hugo killed the man and then fell asleep. Maybe he’s got narcolepsy or something .?.?. and now he’s using an old sleepwalking diagnosis to explain what he was doing at the scene.’

‘The thought did cross my mind.’

‘And then you dismissed it?’

‘No.’

‘So you genuinely think he was sleepwalking?’ Noah asks, in a different tone of voice.

‘I’ve been reading up on it, and it really could be that simple,’ says Joona. ‘He used to go to the campsite a lot when he was younger, and something made him go back there in his sleep.’

‘What, and by coincidence it just happened to be at the same time a murder took place?’

‘One coincidence is nothing. Almost all witnesses are coincidental,’ says Joona. ‘It’s only when we’ve got several links that we can start talking about connections.’

‘What, and we’ve only got one coincidence so far?’

‘Exactly.’

‘So he could be either a witness or a perpetrator?’

‘Or neither.’

‘But you don’t think so?’

‘No.’

‘So what’s the next step?’

‘I’m going to pay Hugo a visit, apologise on behalf of the justice system and interview him as a potential witness.’

‘Even though you think he could be guilty?’