Page 43 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

It is seven thirty in the morning, and Joona is walking down a corridor in the women’s wing of Kronoberg Remand Prison with the duty officer.

During the day, the inmates’ cell doors are all left unlocked, and there is nothing but a red line marking the staff area.

They pass the day room, where a grey-haired counsellor from a visiting addiction team is talking to a thin woman who is clawing at her forearms.

Ann-Charlotte Olsson is being held on suspicion of drugs offences, handling stolen goods, weapons offences and violations of the law governing flammable and explosive substances.

The forensic investigation is ongoing amid the wreckage of the farm in Rickeby.

Joona’s ears are still ringing after the explosion, as though the sound of the wind blowing through the trees in a forest follows him wherever he goes.

Peck was conscious when he was airlifted to hospital, and remains in a serious but stable condition. Gregory has been suspended from duty, and a case has been opened by the Special Prosecutor’s Office.

The first three police cars arrived at the scene ten minutes after the explosion, and just twenty minutes later the yard and road up to the farm were packed with emergency vehicles. Their blue lights swept over the fields and the bare trees, illuminating the increasingly heavy snowfall.

The fire was put out, and the children were looked after by two female officers while they waited for social services to arrive.

As they walk down the corridor, the prison officer tells Joona that they are trying to create a humane atmosphere in this particular wing.

‘I’m not saying the women here are angels, but just about all of them have been forced into crime or addiction by men .?.?. threatened, abused and raped.’

Someone has been baking, and the sweet aroma of cinnamon and caramelised sugar fills the air.

After forcing the front door, Joona entered what was left of the farmhouse and found Ann-Charlotte dozing on the sofa in front of the TV.

She is a tall woman with large breasts, glasses and short blonde hair, and is wearing pink velour trousers and a Taylor Swift T-shirt.

There was a pack of oxycodone on the table in front of her, alongside an empty ice cream tub with a spoon in it.

‘He actually did it, huh?’ she slurred, unable to fully open her eyes. ‘I was starting to think it was all just talk .?.?.’

The officer pauses outside a door and gives it a firm rap.

‘Lotta? You’ve got a visitor,’ he says, opening the door slightly. ‘Can we come in?’

Through the narrow gap, Joona gets a first glimpse of her sitting on the narrow bed in a green prison-issue tracksuit and a pair of slippers.

Lotta has an angry-looking rash around her mouth, and her glasses are dirty, her eyebrows plucked to thin lines.

The small room smells of stale coffee and hand cream.

‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,’ Joona tells her, taking a step forward, ‘but forensics have confirmed that ?ke Berg died in the explosion at your farm .?.?. My condolences.’

‘Boom,’ she says flatly.

She picks up a pot from the table, opens the gold plastic lid and pushes a pouch of snus beneath her top lip.

‘I’m going to be recording our conversation from now on,’ Joona continues, taking out his phone.

‘?ke was a conspiracy theorist,’ she says, her eyes on the wall.

‘Which is pretty bloody convenient, especially for blokes .?.?. you know? Means it’s not your fault that life turned out the way it did.

You’re a winner, you’re smart, you really see what’s going on in the world, but since everything’s rigged against you, there’s no point even trying. ’

‘Ann-Charlotte, you’re being held here on suspicion of a number of different crimes,’ Joona begins. ‘But I’m here to talk about—’

‘I don’t know where he got the idea that social services were trying to take the kids and sell them, but he was obsessed with it,’ she goes on. ‘Really put his foot down and decided he’d be willing to die for the sprogs, even though he’d barely paid them any notice for years.’

‘I know this is a lot, but—’

‘But the truth is it’s really bloody hard for social services to take your kids away, even if you wish they would,’ she says, burping quietly.

‘We had hundreds of reports, concerned chats, and they did millions of investigations .?.?. But, like, I already know I’m not mum of the year.

I’ve got a bad back, I pop all sorts of pills and the kids don’t go to school.

Even the bailiffs had given up. There was nothing left to take wh—’

‘Listen,’ Joona interrupts her. ‘A witness saw you at Bred?ng Campsite early in the morning on 26 November.’

Her eyelids flutter. ‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

Lotta’s thin lips curl into a crooked smile.

‘OK, except .?.?. I’ve never been there, didn’t even know it existed .?.?. Why the hell d’you think I’d be running about some shitty campsite when I’ve got a yard full of crap at home?’

‘We found your DNA.’

‘At the campsite?’

‘Yes .?.?. A strand of hair.’

‘One of mine?’ She massages the back of her neck.

‘When did you cut your hair?’

‘Last spring.’

‘This short?’

‘Shorter,’ she says, running a hand over her scalp. ‘I’ve sold it a few times, to a wigmaker on Storgatan.’

‘You sold your hair?’

‘Never thought of that, did you?’ she replies with a grin.

‘No.’

‘So you killed my man and blew the farm to pieces for a fucking wig?’

‘A prosecutor will be taking over the preliminary investigation into the drugs offences, weapon offences and—’

‘That was all ?ke.’

‘OK.’

‘You’ll be needing tighter bars if you’re planning to lock him up,’ she says, leaning back.

Joona leaves the room and walks back down the corridor. The sweet scent of buns is gone, and this time all he can smell are the drains.

From behind one of the steel doors, a woman screams.

Joona knows that they will have to track down the person who bought the wig, but above all he needs to head back over to the Sleep Lab with Erik Maria Bark and beg Hugo Sand to agree to another hypnosis session. The teenager must have seen something other than the blonde hair and the shiny coat.

As Joona leaves the prison, there is just one thought going through his mind. He thinks he can see a pattern among the victims, at long last. They are all men who have taken sexual risks.