Page 14 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

Olga and Hugo are in bed, their limbs entwined. Her eyes follow the shifting circle of light on the ceiling, and before long she hears him fall asleep. She should get up and take a shower, she thinks, but instead she lets her eyelids droop.

When she wakes, the bed is empty. The room is cold, and Olga wonders whether Hugo has gone home. It is one in the morning, and the candle on the chest of drawers has almost burned out.

The flame flares upwards every now and again, then quickly shrinks back.

The floor creaks underfoot as she gets up and squints out into the hallway.

The bathroom is dark.

She hears a series of soft bangs through the walls.

Olga shudders and moves over to the hook on the wall. She takes down her thin robe, pulls it on and ties the belt around her waist.

The flame surges again, as though in one last show of strength. The warm glow pulses over the ceiling and walls.

Olga walks out into the hall and sees her own shadow on the floor in front of her before the light from the bedroom fades.

‘Hugo?’

The bathroom door is ajar.

She can hear a faint clinking, scraping sound from somewhere, and she stops to listen, searching for movement in the dark gap between the bathroom door and its frame.

There are another couple of thuds, possibly from the kitchen this time.

Olga keeps moving, eyes darting between the bathroom and the greyish gloom up ahead.

She passes the doorway and feels herself tense now that she can no longer keep one eye on the darkness.

The metallic scraping sound starts up again, seemingly from the living room.

She glances back and sees the shifting glow of the candle in the bedroom, then makes her way through the open glass door.

The sofa, coffee table, bar cart, bookshelf and TV are all wrapped in a nocturnal dusk.

Olga gasps when she notices the shape behind the curtains over the balcony door.

‘Hugo?’ she whispers.

The figure slowly turns around and stares at her through the thin fabric.

It is Hugo.

His arms are hanging limply by his sides, and a large kitchen knife catches the light in his right hand. The fabric over his face ripples with every breath.

‘What are you doing?’ she asks, though it dawns on her that he must be sleepwalking the minute the question leaves her mouth.

Hugo takes a lingering step forward from behind the curtain. He is wearing his black jeans and an inside-out T-shirt. His glazed eyes are locked on her face, and his lips are moving softly, as though he is trying to speak but can’t find the right words.

‘Put the knife down,’ she says, swallowing hard. ‘I want you to—’

Olga stops talking as he starts moving straight towards her, striding across the floor.

She stumbles back into the bar cart, causing the bottles to clink and a carafe to fall to the floor.

It breaks with a loud crash, and shards of glass scatter across the carpet.

Olga turns around and runs out into the hall with her robe fluttering behind her, but she slips and crashes into the wall.

She can hear his heavy footsteps as she hurries back to the bedroom and slams the door so hard that the key jumps out of the lock.

A faint flame is still flickering in the base of the candle.

The belt of Olga’s robe is caught in the door.

Her heart is racing.

She grips the handle with both hands and sees, in the fading light, that the key has landed over a metre away from her.

The flame shrinks, taking on a bluish hue.

There is a soft crackling sound, and the room is plunged into darkness. The powerful scent of wax fills the air.

Olga can hear that Hugo has stopped just outside. He tries the handle, but she manages to hold it steady. His hands move across the door, the tip of the knife scraping against the frame. With her foot, she searches blindly for the key.

Right then, Hugo tugs on the belt of her robe. She sways, still gripping the handle, and feels the heat from the friction as he pulls the belt clean out of the loops holding it in place.

She tries to breathe as quietly as she can, but her hands are clammy and her legs have started to shake.

In the dim city light filtering in through the curtains, she can make out the shapes of her furniture and the dark sheen of the key.

Olga manages to nudge it towards her with her foot, and she takes one hand off the handle and bends down.

Just as she reaches the key, Hugo makes another attempt to open the door.

She loses her grip and quickly straightens up.

Olga throws her weight against the door, pushes the key into the lock and turns it with trembling hands.

Hugo starts muttering to himself, then wanders off down the hallway.

Olga waits for a moment with her ear pressed against the wood. She hears the same scraping sound as earlier, followed by a single thud. After that, nothing.

She grabs her phone from the bedside table and turns on the torch.

She then unlocks the door and uses it to illuminate the hallway in front of her as she leaves the bedroom.

Following the bloody footprints, she makes her way past the bathroom and through the door into the living room.

Hugo is back behind the curtain, and has just managed to open the balcony door.

Olga watches as he drops the knife, steps outside and swings one leg over the railing.

*?*?*

Bernard and Agneta are in their sunroom, drinking tea and eating crispbread with cheese. It is quarter past one in the morning, and the only source of light in the room is a frosted tealight holder on the table.

Agneta is wearing a cardigan over her nightgown, and has removed her makeup and applied night cream to her face, neck and hands. Bernard is in a pair of blue tracksuit bottoms and a faded T-shirt from the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

‘You don’t have to stay up for my sake, you know,’ he tells her for the third time.

‘It’s OK, I want to .?.?. Let’s just drink our tea and try to work out whether there’s anything else we can do.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’ve called all of his friends?’

‘Yes.’ Bernard sighs.

‘How can it be that none of them know anything?’

‘I think they were telling the truth. That’s how it felt, anyway .?.?. They said that Hugo has a girlfriend but they’ve never met her, didn’t even know her name.’

‘Maybe he really is in love.’

‘Almost sounds that way.’

Bernard’s hand shakes as he breaks off a piece of crispbread, spreads a thin layer of butter and adds two slices of cheese.

‘I tried to find Olga online,’ says Agneta. ‘But there are too many of them. Thousands. What I said might—’

‘We don’t even know if Olga is her real name.’

Agneta turns towards the water. The houses on Bjornholmen, in the middle of the narrow inlet, are all dark.

‘Your anxiety is infectious,’ she says. ‘But the fact is .?.?. I know he has school in the morning, but he’s a seventeen-year-old with a girlfriend, and it’s only one a.m. Maybe it’s not so unusual?’

‘Except he’s in the middle of a serious episode at the moment, which means he isn’t sleeping well and could nod off anywhere – on the metro, in a bar .?.?.’

Bernard finishes his crispbread and sweeps the crumbs into a small heap on the table in front of him.

‘I appreciate that you tried to talk to him, anyway. I know it isn’t easy,’ Agneta says softly.

‘No, it .?.?.’ He trails off and takes a sip of tea.

‘What?’ she asks.

‘He’ll be eighteen soon, and I’m just so scared of driving him away. I desperately want him to be a part of my life.’

‘Of course.’

‘And I think he needs me, too, even if he can’t see that himself right now,’ Bernard says, checking once again that he hasn’t switched his phone to silent. ‘I’m just afraid he’ll do something stupid, in desperation .?.?.’

‘I know.’

‘I’d never forgive myself.’

‘For what?’

Bernard gestures dejectedly before getting up to pour more tea.

‘You know it isn’t right to let him be so rude to me,’ Agneta says calmly. ‘It isn’t helping him, nor is it showing him love .?.?.’

‘No, but—’

‘And it’ll end up wrecking our relationship.’

‘We can’t let that happen,’ he says, looking her in the eye.

‘No.’

‘You know, I’ve been thinking about when we first met .?.?. We were so in love, head over heels, but Hugo never had a say in any of this. It feels as though it was my fault things moved so quickly. I needed to forget Claire, and Hugo needed a mum.’

‘Especially since she doesn’t make any effort to contact him.’

‘She does, just not often enough.’

‘Hugo misses her.’

‘This might not be the right word, but it’s as though she left a void inside him,’ says Bernard.

He turns to the window, watching a light out in the dark strait.

‘I’ve been in his life for as long as Claire was,’ says Agneta.

‘I know that,’ he replies, meeting her sad eyes. ‘But it isn’t about you; you’ve done everything right.’

Agneta loathes herself whenever she turns her frustrations on Claire and allows resentment to cloud her thoughts.

It’s just that Claire had everything, a perfect young son, and she still chose the drugs over him. She never even manages to reach out to him on his birthday, doesn’t have the energy to call at Christmas.

Agneta sips her tea, then lowers her cup and makes an effort to change the subject.

‘How are you getting on with your new book?’

‘Let’s throw a veil over that, to paraphrase Henning Mankell,’ he replies.

‘Come on, tell me. Is it going well?’

‘Yes, though I’ve been thinking that I should probably try something new soon.’

‘I know there are so many demands on you, so much expectation. I do. But at the same time .?.?. you can’t just plagiarise yourself because that’s what everyone wants. You need to find the magic in your writing, as you always say,’ she tells him, pressing a hand to her heart.

‘I love romance.’

‘I know, but your mind could be slightly tainted from all the years of—’

‘Tainted?’ he asks with a smile.

‘Sorry,’ she says, holding her tongue.

‘So what should I do? Write a crime novel or—?’

‘No, but I did actually have an idea.’

‘OK.’

‘I hope you’ll take this the right way,’ she says. ‘But I think you should write an honest and deeply human true crime book about all of this. You, me, Hugo .?.?. the police and two murders.’

He puts his cup down and studies her. ‘I’d have to talk to Hugo first.’

‘Of course.’

‘But it’s not a bad idea.’

‘I could help with the research,’ she says. ‘I have contacts on the force, and—’

‘We could write it together,’ he says, getting to his feet excitedly.

‘I’d love that.’

Bernard runs a hand through his hair and looks down at her.

‘On an equal footing, you and me,’ he says, pacing about the room.

‘My name first.’ She grins. ‘Just kidding.’

‘No, I agree, your name first,’ he says, with a newfound intensity that makes her laugh. ‘This is such an exciting idea. I really do think this could be something, I—’

Bernard stops abruptly when his phone starts ringing. The name Hugo, followed by three red hearts, flashes up on the screen.

‘Hugo?’

‘Is that Bernard?’ asks a woman’s voice.

‘Yes, who is this?’

‘It’s Olga.’

‘What’s going—’

‘Hugo was sleepwalking,’ she interrupts him. ‘He was trying to climb over the railing on my balcony when I found him.’

‘Is he hurt?’

‘No, he’s fine, just a few scratches. But he’s really shaken .?.?.’

Agneta moves over to Bernard so that she can hear what Olga is saying.

‘When he woke up and realised how bad it could’ve been, he flipped,’ she says. ‘He started pacing about, telling me all this weird stuff from the caravan .?.?.’

‘He can be quite groggy if he’s woken from an episode of sleepwalking,’ says Bernard.

‘I didn’t know what to do.’

‘Can I talk to him?’

‘He’s in the shower.’

‘Do you know whether he has his pills with him?’

‘Yeah, he took some Atarax.’

‘Good.’

‘But I still think it would probably be best if he went home. I didn’t want to put him in a taxi without checking you were there first.’

‘We’re here, but I’ll come and get him myself,’ says Bernard, turning towards the hallway. ‘Where do you live?’

‘Jenny Linds gata .?.?. Number eight.’

‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

‘OK, I’ll bring him out.’

‘Thank you for ringing,’ Bernard tells her before ending the call.