Page 44 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

It is almost midnight, and the sky is a murky shade of black, flickering orbs of snow pulsating around the streetlamps.

Hugo pushes his hands beneath his armpits in an attempt to warm them up as he approaches the doorway on Jenny Linds gata. He heads straight inside, so cold that he is shaking, and brushes the wet snow from his head. He then climbs the stairs and presses a finger to the worn buzzer.

On hearing it ring, he takes a step back, runs a hand through his damp hair and unbuttons his coat.

Olga slowly opens the door and stares out at him from the dim hallway in her leopard print bra and black leather skirt.

‘Sorry for just turning up like this,’ he says, ‘but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

Her kohl-lined eyes are heavy, her expression oddly indifferent and her pink lips parted slightly.

‘Hugo?’ she mumbles.

‘I don’t want to cause any trouble .?.?.’ he explains as her heady perfume fills his nose.

‘What’re you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in Uppsala?’ she asks in a flat tone of voice.

‘I bailed. Couldn’t just sit there like some fucking lab rat.’

‘Man, what the hell .?.?.’

Her blonde hair is loose, the soft waves resting on her shoulders.

‘I wanted to ask if I could sleep over,’ he says with a rising sense of unease.

‘Sleep over? God, just go back to the clinic,’ she slurs, trying to close the door.

‘I can’t.’ Hugo flashes her an involuntary smile as he reaches for the handle.

‘It’s not going to work this time, though,’ she mumbles.

‘Just one night.’

She sighs and turns away from him, reaching behind her back to scratch between her shoulder blades as she walks through to her bedroom. She has goosebumps on her slim legs, he notices, and her muscular arms are dotted with dark bruises.

Hugo closes the door and follows her in.

The pink lampshade on the ceiling casts a circle of light onto the smooth bedspread.

On the floor by the mirror, a thin young man in loose black clothing is doing his makeup. He has a shaved head and an old scar stretching from his left temple to beneath his ear.

‘We were just heading out,’ Olga says, pulling on a purple blouse with a fitted waist.

‘Hi,’ says Hugo.

The young man glances up with a pair of big, dark eyes, then turns to Olga with a blank look on his face. His rose gold signet ring flashes as he rubs his pale lips.

‘Hachim is from Morocco. He doesn’t speak much Swedish,’ she explains before saying something to him in French.

‘I could wait here,’ Hugo offers.

‘No, it .?.?. You can’t. It’d be better if you just came with us, but .?.?. God, I said I’d help him with a job and—’

‘I get it.’

‘Do you? Because I don’t think you do.’

‘Are you high?’

Her thin bracelets clink softly as she buttons her blouse.

‘ On y va , Hachim. The car’ll be here in three minutes,’ she says as she hurries out of the bedroom.

Hugo dumps his bag on the floor by the bed and follows them out into the hall. Olga laces up her shabby boots and reaches for her black leather jacket from the hanger. Hachim pulls on a thin white jacket and a pair of trainers.

They leave the apartment and make their way down the stairs.

A small, dirty Uber is waiting outside the pizzeria. Snowflakes swirl through the air in the light from the streetlamps.

‘It’d be better if you just went home,’ says Olga.

‘I can’t,’ Hugo replies, fiddling with the silver coin around his neck.

They squeeze into the backseat with Olga in the middle, and as they leave H?gersten, Hugo tries to find his belt in the sandy cracks between the seats.

‘Where are we going?’ he asks.

‘Just some place.’

Olga leans her head against Hachim’s shoulder and whispers to him in French, trying to get him to relax, to smile.

The car takes them along Sodert?ljev?gen, heading towards central Stockholm. There is still a lot of traffic on the roads, and the streetlamps and headlights illuminate the car at regular intervals.

‘Man, you have no idea what I’ve been through these past few days,’ Hugo begins.

‘I guess I would’ve asked if I cared .?.?. No, sorry. I do,’ she says. ‘But I don’t have time to play mum right now .?.?. I’ve got something important to do, and you can’t ruin this for me, that’s all.’

‘Ruin what?’

‘I mean, just the fact that the police want to talk to me all of a sudden isn’t exactly what I need right now.’

‘Sorry, but .?.?.’

Hugo trails off and stares out through the side window with burning cheeks.

After twenty minutes, the Uber drops them off in an area of old factory buildings in Hjorthagen.

The air is freezing, and Hugo can hear music coming from several directions.

Above the road, a pair of trainers are hanging from a cable, swinging in the breeze.

The windows of one of the buildings in front of them have all been boarded up, and there are construction fences and concrete pillars blocking it off from the road. The saw-tooth roof and tall chimneys almost seem to be straining up towards the low sky.

The people queuing outside are penned in between riot barriers. A woman flicks a cigarette in Hugo’s direction, and sparks fly from the glowing tip as it hits the ground by his feet.

Olga waves to one of the doormen and they bypass the line, joining a throng of people in the dark entranceway. Hachim blows on his fingers in an attempt to warm them up.

They pass the cloakroom and head through to a club with black walls and loud music.

Red lights flash above the half-empty dancefloor.

On the stage, a heavily made-up woman in a blue wig and silver bikini is laughing and vogue-dancing.

A new track begins, and Hugo feels the bass pulsing through his chest as he watches the woman drop into the splits and roll over onto her stomach to writhe around in some sort of stylised mock intercourse.

‘Hugo, hang back,’ Olga snaps.

A stocky man in a black vest barges through a group of people and comes over to them.

He has hairy shoulders and enormous biceps.

He grips Olga’s face with one hand, squeezing her cheeks so hard that he forces her mouth open, then stares aggressively at her, shouts something into her ear, shoves her back and walks away.

‘What was all that about?’ asks Hugo.

‘Nothing I can’t handle.’

They push their way over to a black rubber door and walk along a row of toilet cubicles, eventually coming out in a gloomy courtyard. Despite the snow, three men in dark coats are smoking beside a couple of old industrial ovens.

The ground is littered with rubbish, old plastic drums, car tyres, a broken umbrella and empty egg cartons.

On an oil drum, a man with scarred cheeks and a silver sequin shirt is busy shooting up.

By the door of the building opposite, a huge man in black combat gear is holding an automatic rifle.

‘Olga,’ he says joylessly as they approach.

‘VIP guests,’ she replies with a smile.

He doesn’t reciprocate the gesture, just stares at her with a neutral expression. Hachim seems uncomfortable and says something in French. Hugo pulls his coat tighter and notices a piece of silver tape with the word REDRUM written in red ink on the top of the doorframe.

The burly bouncer allows them to pass without another word.

Olga opens the door, and the others follow her into a narrow corridor lit by the pale-green glow of an emergency exit sign.

Agitated voices reach them through the walls.

They walk past a number of closed doors, and in a red plastic bucket on the floor, Hugo notices three mobile phones.

Olga opens a metal door to a room containing a blue denim sofa, a low coffee table with a grubby glass top and a couple of yellow plastic folding chairs.

‘You can wait here, Hugo,’ she says, shooting him a quick glance.

‘But I don’t understand what—’

‘You don’t need to understand.’

‘Great,’ he says, moving into the room.

The door swings shut behind him, and he hears their footsteps fade down the corridor. The room smells like dust and old fabric. Beside an empty Coca-Cola fridge, he notices, there is a dented suitcase.

Hugo slumps onto the sofa, unbuttons his coat and leans back. He fiddles with the ring in his lower lip, checks his phone and sees that he has ten missed calls from his dad.

Coming to the club was a mistake, he thinks. Olga is stressed, and she is taking that out on him. He should have just gone home, eaten dinner and studied for his exam.

Muffled voices and music drift through the walls.

In the corner, there is a floor lamp without a shade, the bare bulb casting a circle of light onto the rough wall.

After around twenty minutes, the door opens and Olga comes into the room and hands him a plastic glass of beer.

‘Thanks. I just wanted—’

‘I need you to stay here till I come to get you,’ she says.

‘OK, but how long are—’

‘Did you hear what I just said?’

‘I heard you.’

Her thin bracelets are caught on her hands, and she lifts both arms into the air to shake them back.

‘Take this,’ she says, putting a small white pill on the arm of the sofa.

‘What is it?’

‘Just trust Olga.’

She looks down at her phone, then turns around and leaves the room.

Hugo sips his beer, wipes the head from his top lip and lowers the cup to the table. His eyes drift over to the little white pill.

He pops it into his mouth and washes it down with a mouthful of beer. It leaves a bitter taste on his tongue, and he takes another swig of beer to rinse it away.

Hugo is messing about on his phone when he starts to feel a pleasant prickling sensation in his knees and toes. It slowly spreads upwards, making his lips tingle.

He looks around the windowless room, at the closed door, the dented metal and the worn handle.

There is a soft whirr from the vent up by the ceiling, dust swirling in the glow of the lamp.

Hugo reaches for his phone again, but his mind starts to drift, and he struggles to focus.

A quiet euphoria takes hold of him.

The beat of the music rises, and he hears voices and footsteps in the corridor outside.

Smiling, he pushes his phone back in his pocket. He hears the rushing sound of water in a pipe and tips his head back against the cushion.

Hugo closes his eyes and wakes an instant later when someone’s palm strikes his cheek.

Anxiety surges through his veins, and his heart starts racing.

He is standing in the middle of a room full of monitors and desks, and a burly man with a tattooed face grips his throat with one hand and hits him again with the other.

‘Answer me!’ he shouts. ‘Or I’ll tear your fucking arms off!’

‘Sorry, I—’

‘Who the fuck are you?’

Hugo realises that he must have been sleepwalking. Through a pane of glass, he can see a number of brightly lit booths containing webcams.

‘I’m Hugo. I came here with Olga.’

In one of the booths, a young man with a wet towel over his face is strapped to a tilted table and a broad-shouldered man wearing a latex hood seems to be raping him. The young man’s body is tense, his back arched in a long, drawn-out convulsion.

‘Did she say you should be here?’ the tattooed man asks, his grip tightening on Hugo’s throat.

‘No, I—’

‘This isn’t a goddamn playground,’ the man snarls as he lets go of him.

‘I got lost and—’

‘Get the fuck out of here!’

In the next booth, a slim man with a thick chain around his neck is on his knees. He has an apathetic look on his bloody face, an older man’s penis in his mouth.

In the third booth, a boy is curled up on the floor in his underpants, catatonically shaking his head.