Page 35 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

Rikard lumbers along the corridor on unsteady feet. He glances down at his bloodied hand with a strange, dreamlike feeling as he passes the cleaning cart, then pauses outside the dining room, straining to see whether he can hear anything from the lobby between ragged breaths.

The pain radiating from the back of his head is almost unbearable.

His legs are like jelly.

Rikard turns into the dining room, crosses the bowing laminate floor and tries to open the patio doors.

He feels a searing pain in his injured wrist as he tugs at the handle.

The door is locked.

Panting heavily, he takes a step back and kicks it as hard as he can. His foot makes a dull thud as it hits the glass, but the door doesn’t budge.

He has just turned around and started scanning the room for somewhere to hide when he sees Jezebel coming towards the dining room from reception. She pauses outside, uses his pistol to tap on the window in the door, and waves.

Rikard grabs the microwave oven, yanking out the plug in the process, and carries it back over to the patio doors. Lifting it above his head, he hurls it through the glass.

Jezebel opens the door and fires his gun. The bullet slams into the wall two metres away from him.

Rikard kicks out the shards of glass and crawls through the hole to the patio. The broken window crunches beneath him. He steps over the low hedge and starts running towards the petrol station.

He can hear a large vehicle approaching, and the cold air claws at his lungs.

Jezebel is right behind him.

Up ahead, on the other side of the fence around a HVAC firm, Rikard spots a security guard with a torch.

‘Help!’ he shouts.

The guard glances in his direction and then starts walking towards his car. He turns off the torch, gets in behind the wheel and takes out his phone.

Rikard runs out into the road just as a lorry appears from the right.

The driver slams on the brakes, and the tyres screech against the tarmac. The man turns the wheel, and the heavy vehicle thunders past Rikard with only inches to spare.

It crosses the hard shoulder, careens into the ditch and slams into a lamppost. The light goes out, and the post topples like a felled trunk, bringing down a banner for Christmas trees with it.

The lorry crashes through a couple of bushes and a low fence before making it up the embankment to the road on the other side. Soil and debris spray across the tarmac. The trailer sways as the driver accelerates, and a moment later it vanishes out of sight.

‘God .?.?.’

Heart racing, Rikard is hurrying towards the roundabout in the yellow light from the petrol station when he notices Jezebel approaching from the side. He stops, turns to face her and holds up both hands.

‘I’m a police officer, I—’

She pulls the trigger, and the bullet slams into his vest. Rikard feels a burning sensation on the left-hand side of his torso, and he staggers back, grabs a branch in an attempt to stay upright, and hears the gunshot echo between the buildings.

*?*?*

Joona is driving at 210 kilometres an hour when he brakes and turns sharply to leave the motorway. His tyres scrape against the edge of the island in the middle of the road, and he accelerates along the 264 in the darkness.

He turned on his hidden blue lights and left the rest of the tactical unit behind on the E18.

The connection with Rikard had dropped just before he left Lidingo through the Northern Link tunnel, and Joona realised that his colleague had decided to go in, that something unforeseen had drawn him into a situation, despite the direct order to hold back.

Industrial buildings race by outside, fleets of machinery and high fences.

He is approaching the hotel at high speed when he passes an articulated lorry with two broken headlights.

To one side of the road, a lamppost is lying in the ditch.

There are dark skid marks across the carriageway, with earth and clumps of grass dragged across the tarmac.

From the petrol station nearby, yellow light floods out across the road.

Joona is planning to drive straight over the roundabout to get to the hotel when he spots Rikard on the grass in the middle.

His colleague’s face is bloody.

Joona lifts his foot from the accelerator and stamps on the right-hand pedal. He feels the brakes shudder through the car.

Somewhere nearby, a gun goes off.

The sharp crack reverberates between the buildings.

Rikard is hit in the abdomen, and he grabs a branch, tearing off the dead leaves as he staggers back before managing to regain his balance.

A blonde woman wearing a black coat over a pink dress is standing a few metres away from him with a Glock 45 in her hand.

She is breathing heavily.

The magazine is clearly empty, but she pulls the trigger repeatedly before tossing the gun to the ground.

Joona’s car shakes as it mounts the kerb at the side of the road and comes to a halt on the yellowed grass. He opens the door and pulls his own weapon from his shoulder holster as he runs towards the roundabout.

The woman takes a utility knife from her coat pocket, drops the black sheath and starts walking towards Rikard.

Joona pauses when he reaches the cobbles by the edge of the roundabout and takes aim at the woman.

‘Police! Stop and drop your weapon!’

She half-turns to look at him, gripping the red handle tight.

‘Police!’ Joona repeats as he moves closer. ‘Throw the knife towards me!’

The woman looks distraught, mascara running down both cheeks. She turns away from Joona and looks down at the knife in her hand.

‘I just want to talk to you,’ Joona says calmly. ‘But first I need you to drop the knife.’

He can hear the tactical unit’s sirens approaching through the industrial estate.

The woman shakes her head and turns away from him, hunching over to slash at her wrist. She groans in pain.

Joona starts running.

‘Get down on the ground!’

She sways unsteadily on her high heels.

Joona takes aim at her again, and has just held out a hand to help her when she lashes out unexpectedly.

A lightning-fast jab of the knife, like a snakebite.

The blade slams into his protective vest.

The woman yanks the knife back and swings it up towards his throat.

Joona blocks her arm, locking it and jerking it upwards, breaking her shoulder. She screams, and the knife drops to the grass.

He kicks out her feet from beneath her, and she lands heavily on her back. Her pearl necklace hits her in the face.

As Joona uses his foot to knock the knife away from her, he notices that there is no blood on her wrist.

She only pretended to cut herself.

He rolls her onto her front and feels the heat radiating from her body as he cuffs her arms behind her back.

Her right heel has snapped, and is hanging loosely from the red leather.

Rikard stumbles back and slumps to the grass as the tactical units finally arrive. He lies down, staring up at the night sky.

Joona is the only one still on his feet.

His colleagues’ headlights illuminate him from all four sides, building a cross of light in the otherwise deserted industrial estate.

From above, the roundabout resembles an old drawing of the solar system, with rings of cobbles, gravel and more cobbles around a central circle of grass.