Page 32 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

Joona hangs up his coat and jacket by the door to the investigation room and turns on the electric Advent candles in the window.

His curly blond hair is getting long, and is still as messy as it was when he first woke that morning.

If Valeria had been there, she would have told him to run his fingers through it, if nothing else.

He sits down at the meeting table with his colleagues Rikard Roslund and Stina Linton.

Rikard is a detective inspector, and has had to fight to keep his position since the new boss arrived. He has sharp features, thin lips and hazel eyes. His short hair is reddish brown, and almost shimmers like bronze beneath the harsh lighting in the office.

Stina is an experienced detective superintendent who joined the NCU from Malmo a few years back.

She has pale skin, a small, plump mouth and furrowed cheeks.

Her short black bob is flecked with grey, and she wears black-rimmed glasses and a self-imposed uniform of a brown or grey sweater with trousers and flat shoes.

Their chairs creak as they return to their desks to search for any mention of Miss Liza online. Working methodically, they trawl through the various sites used to sell and procure sex – Real Escort, Happy Escort, Escort 46 – with no real idea whether the ads are real or scams.

Joona finds a Flashback thread in which someone describes the current situation with the robber as being like Russian roulette for johns. He reads the jokey, mocking, aggressive conversation from start to finish, but none of the posts mention a specific location, name or alias.

With a sigh, he turns to the window. He can see the reflection of the small, pointed bulbs from the Advent candles in each of the three layers of glass, and notices that delicate snowflakes have started to fall over the dark park outside.

‘I’ve got her,’ says Stina, turning her screen towards the others.

The ad for Miss Liza is at the very bottom of the page, meaning she isn’t one of the site’s verified users.

The first picture is of a pretty, wide-eyed blonde with dimples.

She looks to be somewhere around twenty, and is perched on the edge of a gilded armchair in her underwear.

In the second picture, she is naked, shot from behind in a lavish hotel room.

Alongside the images, there is a list detailing her height, weight, hair, eye and skin colour, her waist and hip measurements, bra size, pubic hair preference, piercings, and so on.

Beneath that, the services she offers are provided: vaginal, anal and oral sex, oral sex without a condom, CIM, CIF, COB, strap-on, cunnilingus, rimming and domination.

Her phone number and payment details are also given, as are her prices – which vary depending on the time and location of any meeting.

‘OK, so who’s going to call her?’ Stina asks as she takes off her glasses.

‘I can do it,’ Rikard volunteers. ‘So long as I know what to say.’

‘Make up a name,’ Joona tells him. ‘And book a session with her today.’

‘Today? It’s just that I have to go home and take the dog out,’ he explains, leaning back in his ergonomic chair.

‘Would seven thirty work?’ asks Joona.

‘Sure, I guess so.’

‘We need to pick somewhere quiet, but still close to town,’ Joona continues.

‘I don’t know why, but the Dialog Hotell in Lidingo immediately sprang to mind,’ says Stina.

‘Good,’ says Joona.

‘Seven thirty, Dialog Hotell,’ Rikard repeats. ‘What service should I ask about?’

‘Sex without a condom,’ Stina suggests.

‘That’s not listed on her page.’

‘Exactly. Say you’ll make do with oral otherwise.’

‘OK,’ he sighs. ‘Should I try to negotiate on the price?’

‘Maybe .?.?.’

‘No, tell her you’d be willing to pay more if she does what you’ve asked for. That way she’ll know you’ve got money,’ says Joona.

Rikard signs the log, and Stina opens a plastic pouch and hands him a clean, untraceable phone.

Joona plugs in an external microphone, starts the recording and puts on a pair of headphones. Rikard takes a deep breath, runs through what he is going to say and hits dial, but the number is no longer in use.

‘Shall we keep looking?’ asks Stina, lowering her headphones to the desk.

‘Yes – both for Miss Liza and the picture of her linked to different names,’ Joona replies, rolling up his shirt sleeves.

He has a large pink scar on his forearm, from a training exercise in urban warfare in the Netherlands. A red-hot round from an M240 Bravo grazed his arm, melting his jacket onto his skin.

Stina prints out two A3 copies of the photographs of Miss Liza and pins them up on the wall.

The three detectives then go through to the pantry for coffee and gingerbread before returning to the investigation room, sitting down at their computers and divvying up the remaining websites between themselves.

A sluggish fly buzzes through the office and lands between the blue and red folders in an open filing cabinet.

It doesn’t take long for Rikard to find another two ads featuring the same name, picture and telephone number on different sites.

Joona scrolls through ladys.one, and sees the images flicker by: young women in bikinis, bare breasts, underwear, smiling faces, genitals and backsides. He loads the next page and has just started skimming over the near-identical ads from another sixty sex workers when he stops dead.

This time, the blonde girl with the dimples is calling herself Cherry Pop. The services she offers are the same, but the phone number is different.

‘I’ll call her,’ says Rikard, reaching for the burner phone.

They start the recording, and Rikard composes himself and dials the number, but yet again it is no longer in use.

The team continue their search, sipping their increasingly cold coffee.

After half an hour, Rikard gets up to go to the toilet.

Stina puts in some eyedrops, opens a new website called Escort Heaven and, as ever, clicks to confirm that she is over eighteen.

Just ten ads in, she spots the familiar photograph of the young blonde woman. On this page, her name is Jezebel.

‘I’ve got a new number,’ she says as Rikard comes back into the room.

‘New number,’ he mutters, taking a seat at his desk.

‘For Jezebel this time.’

They repeat the same process as earlier, putting their headphones on and starting the recording. Rikard enters the new number and hits dial. It rings twice before going to voicemail.

‘You’ve reached Jezebel,’ says a sensual female voice. ‘Leave your name and how you’d like to be contacted, plus the service you’re looking for, and I’ll get back to you.’

‘Hi, my name is Roger,’ says Rikard. ‘You can reach me on this number. I’m interested in meeting at a hotel tonight. Regular sex, maybe a two-hour session .?.?. I’ll tip well if it’s really good. Give me a call if you’re interested.’

He hangs up.

‘Nice,’ says Joona.

‘You should be an actor,’ Stina says with a grin.

‘Right? I’ve got it,’ he jokes. ‘Rich guy, confident on the outside, but with serious mummy issues.’

The team have just started closing the tabs for various websites when the untraceable phone rings, and they quickly put on their headphones and start the recording again. Rikard takes a few seconds to compose himself before he answers.

‘Roger speaking.’

‘You called me a few minutes ago,’ a woman replies. ‘Are you free to talk?’

‘Hold on a sec .?.?. let me just close the door,’ Rikard tells her, pausing briefly. ‘OK. Hello.’

‘How do you want to pay?’

‘However you like. American Express, cash, crypto.’

‘Cash is best.’

‘No problem.’

Stina has started picking the bobbles from her dark-grey sweater and piling them up beside her keyboard.

‘You mentioned regular sex. What did you have in mind?’

‘Nothing weird, we just do the deed. No stress. Normal.’

‘OK.’

‘Ideally without a condom,’ he says, lowering his voice a little.

‘No.’

‘Plenty of people do.’

‘Not me.’

‘I’ll pay extra,’ he says.

‘How much?’

‘I don’t know .?.?. Double if you let me come inside you.’

‘Double double,’ she says.

‘OK.’

‘Where should we meet?’

‘There’s a place in Lidingo, the Dialog Hotell .?.?. It’s perfect, because the reception closes at six.’

‘I’ll find it.’

‘Tonight, seven thirty.’

‘Eight would be better for me.’

‘OK. I’ll text you the room number once I’m there.’

‘See you later, then,’ she says, ending the call before he has time to say another word.

They take off their headphones, stop the recording and look up at each other.

‘She sounded nice,’ says Stina.

‘She actually did,’ Rikard says with a smirk.

‘But if she’s the person we’re hoping she is, she’s extremely dangerous and violent. Don’t forget that .?.?. She’s probably unwrapping a brand-new axe as we speak,’ Stina reminds him.

‘Nah, I trust her,’ Rikard jokes. ‘I think she really liked me.’

‘I’m going to go and see Noah about backup,’ Joona says, getting up and leaving the room.