Page 19 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)
A cluster of bare trees races by on the right-hand side of the road, followed almost immediately by a small, frostbitten churchyard.
After leaving school for the day, Hugo caught the commuter train to Uppsala, where he changed to the number eight bus.
He is listening to music and gazing out of the window as the road winds its way past dark fields, barns and corrugated steel buildings, but when the bus approaches Ultuna, he presses the stop button, gets up and moves towards the middle doors.
He gets off outside the old specialist rehabilitation unit.
The air is raw and damp on his face.
With his rucksack slung over one shoulder, he starts walking along Dag Hammarskjolds v?g.
Hugo remembers his father driving him out here when he was younger, explaining that Ultuna had once been a cult site for the Old Norse god Ull.
As ever, he turns off onto the narrow road past the pumping station.
For the past fifteen years, the psychologist and neurologist Lars Grind has been running a sleep research project here in collaboration with the university hospital, treating and studying various parasomnias with a particular focus on somnambulism.
Hugo was admitted to the specialist rehabilitation unit when he was six, and was later moved over to the newly established Sleep Science Lab.
He remembers next to nothing from his first meeting with Lars Grind, nor any of the nights of careful monitoring while the doctors tried out various medications.
Lars started giving Hugo a lift to and from the clinic, and eventually became good friends with his parents, coming over for dinner at their house and buying him Christmas presents.
The modern industrial building housing the most advanced sleep research facility in the country is on the other side of a high fence. Signs warning passersby about alarms, security firms and video surveillance shake in the wind.
The metal roof is currently the same shade of white as the overcast sky.
Hugo pauses in front of the gates, reports his arrival over the video intercom and waits to be buzzed in.
He makes his way into the building through the main entrance, saying hello to the woman behind reception before continuing down the hallway to Lars Grind’s office.
The pink WILLKOMMEN sign is already illuminated, but Hugo still knocks before opening the door and stepping inside.
‘ Bienvenue , welcome,’ the doctor says with a smile as he looks up from his computer.
‘Thanks.’
Lars Grind is a short man with a wiry frame and a bald head. He has a thin face, with delicate features and pronounced cheekbones.
He gets up from his desk, and the skin around his eyes creases as he shakes Hugo’s hand.
‘Sit, sit,’ he says.
Lars doesn’t really seem to have aged since he first met him, Hugo thinks. His eyes might be a little wearier and the shiny patch on his shaved head a little bigger, but he still dresses the same and still wears aftershave that smells like wet goat.
‘You might not have had a confirmation, but you’ll graduate this spring,’ Lars says with a smile.
‘That’s the plan,’ Hugo replies as he sits down.
‘Good.’
Lars knew Claire, and for a time Hugo occasionally tried to ask about her. In the end, however, he stopped because the doctor always looked so pained as he tried to think of something positive to say.
That might also be why Hugo avoids having dinner with him as much as he can without seeming rude.
‘Shouldn’t you have uncovered all the mysteries of sleep by now?’ he asks.
‘Ah, ha ha. Yes, you might think so, but we’ve probably a way to go yet,’ says Lars, holding up his thumb and index finger. ‘In all seriousness, though, we’ve just started trialling a few alternative medicines alongside melatonin and clonazepam.’
‘Like what?’
‘Microdoses of tramadol.’
‘Unexpected.’
‘Not really, but it took a little while to get it approved,’ Lars explains, fiddling with a small carved monkey wearing a Santa hat.
‘I was actually going to ask if we could just up my melatonin a bit and see how it goes at home,’ says Hugo.
Lars puts the monkey to one side.
‘I know where you’re coming from, but you’re already on a fairly high dose,’ he replies, straightening the signet ring on his little finger. ‘I’d like to do a thorough assessment of you today, including neurological status, before we start trying to get the right medications at the right level.’
‘So I’m stuck here?’ Hugo jokes, though a real sense of unease has crept up on him.
‘You’ll be home in time for Christmas,’ Lars assures him with a wry smile.
‘If only in my dreams,’ Hugo mumbles, running his fingers through his long hair.
‘No, really .?.?. You’ll be home by then, because I’m coming over for oysters on the twenty-sixth,’ Lars says, opening a document on his computer.
‘Right.’
‘So, tell me. I hear you’ve had a few incidents lately?’
‘You could say that.’
Lars gives him a long, searching look.
‘This murder business was rather horrible,’ he says with a dark undertone in his voice.
‘Insane.’
‘How have you been? Are you sleepwalking every night at the moment?’
‘Pretty much, yeah.’
‘And each time is advanced?’ Lars asks, clasping his thin hands on the desk in front of him.
‘I’ve managed to get out – except when I was locked up.’
‘OK, we’ll start with the usual questionnaire,’ says Lars. ‘And tomorrow we can get going with the in-depth interviews and self-assessment.’
The printer starts to whirr, and when it stops, thirty seconds later, Lars gets up, reaches for the sheets of paper and staples them together. The doctor has a dark bruise on his throat, Hugo notices. Almost as though someone has tried to choke him with one hand.
*?*?*
With Lars Grind’s printed questionnaire in his hand, Hugo strolls through to the spacious dayroom with its knotted pine tables and chairs. A heavyset man with a shaved head is sitting with his back to him, reading a book in the glow of a pink table lamp.
Hugo tiptoes over to him.
The man’s orange fleece is snug over his broad shoulders, and he has a roll of fat at the top of his neck.
Hugo pauses beside him, taking in his shaved head, bushy black beard, thick forearms and short, stubby fingers.
‘Boo!’ he says.
The man’s chair creaks as he slowly turns around and looks up with a frown.
‘Hugo? What the hell are you doing in Uppsala?’
‘No idea, I woke up here.’
The man laughs and gets up to embrace Hugo, but he is so tall that his arms hug the air above the teenager’s head.
‘Where the fuck did he go?’ Bo mumbles, as he always does, before bending down to give him a proper hug.
Bo Balderson is from Kiruna, in the far north of Sweden. He works in the forestry industry and, like Hugo, is both a sleepwalker and one of Lars Grind’s longstanding patients.
He has a white plaster on the bridge of his nose and a bandage around one wrist. On the table beside his coursebook in constitutional law, there is an empty coffee cup.
When they last met at the Sleep Lab, Bo had made the journey south after being handed a suspended sentence for assault. He had left the construction site barracks in his sleep one night and seriously injured the foreman.
Bo’s solicitor lodged an appeal on the grounds of lack of intent, citing a 2016 Prosecution Authority report on somnambulism that determined that a person could commit both violent and sexual acts while sleepwalking.
‘How long have you been here?’ Hugo asks.
‘Almost two weeks.’
‘Is Rakia still around?’
Bo squints at Hugo. ‘You’ve got a thing for her, huh?’
‘Bien s?r,’ Hugo replies disarmingly.
‘Don’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ He grins.
Bo laughs. ‘She’s still here. It’s the same as ever. New PhD students, new administrators, but otherwise it’s like time stood still .?.?.’
Hugo takes a seat opposite Bo and turns his attention to the questionnaire.
He flicks past the information section and the rules of conduct, enters the wi-fi password on his phone and starts answering the questions.
He crosses box after box, lying about his drug use and alcohol intake but otherwise sticking to the truth.
‘We the only ones here?’ he asks after a few minutes.
‘Nah, man, the place is packed. There’s a cute girl who screams so loud I nearly shat myself, and a little ghost kid too .?.?. A nerdy guy in a sailor suit.’