Page 47 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

Ida quickly brushes her teeth and dabs a few drops of perfume onto her throat before leaving the bathroom. She finds Linus right where she left him in the kitchen, still nursing his glass of wine.

‘Would you like to see the bedroom?’ she asks.

‘OK.’

‘You all right?’ She smiles, but her brow is knotted.

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Come on.’

He finishes the last of his wine and puts the glass down.

‘You know .?.?. I’ve joined the Civil Rights Defenders,’ he tells her. ‘Or their network, anyway. To try to protect democracy.’

‘That’s great. I’d like to do something like that too,’ she says, glancing towards the bedroom.

‘It’s free, so it wasn’t a big deal in that sense .?.?. But I think we could really make a difference if we—’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Right now, I’m thinking that I .?.?. that maybe I should try to focus on Swedish democracy.’

‘I feel safer already,’ she says with a grin.

Ida looks down at her phone again. Her son Oliver has type one diabetes, and she can’t help but feel anxious.

She tells herself that she should relax, that his friend’s mum is a nurse and that she knows what she is doing, that she will check his blood sugar levels and that he has a spare insulin pen with him, just in case.

‘Could I use your bathroom?’ asks Linus.

‘Nope, sorry,’ she replies with a laugh. ‘Just kidding. It’s through here.’

He smiles as he follows her out into the hall, where the walls are clad in dark green paper.

‘Sweden is actually ranked first globally in terms of freedom,’ he tells her as they walk. ‘But at the same time, the safeguards we have for democracy are incredibly weak.’

‘Oh?’ she says, pausing outside the bathroom.

‘It’s hard to believe, but there’s basically nothing protecting the constitution. The independence of the judiciary isn’t guaranteed either .?.?. I mean, the system is working at the moment, but it might not be in five years’ time, and that should probably worry us more than it does.’

‘I’ll be in the bedroom, which is just there .?.?.’ she says, pointing to another doorway.

He locks the bathroom door behind him, and Ida heads back into the kitchen.

She pours herself another glass of wine and carries it through to the bedroom.

After taking a sip, she lowers it to the nightstand, then checks her phone and switches it to silent.

She dims the lights, and has just started to fold back the bobbled bedspread when Linus comes into the room.

Ida moves over to him, standing on her tiptoes to give him a quick peck on the lips.

‘Shall we take our clothes off?’ she whispers.

‘Now?’ he asks, swallowing hard.

‘We can get under the covers.’

They undress, half turned away from each other. Ida tosses her dress onto the armchair, and Linus neatly folds his shirt and balls up his socks. Her bra straps have left deep grooves in her skin, and he keeps his underpants on as they get into bed.

They lie face to face, gazing into each other’s eyes, and quickly warm up.

Oddly enough, Ida doesn’t feel any guilt. What they are doing feels natural. Right.

The mattress creaks as she wriggles towards him, and they kiss, calling each other Bumper and Amy, Perfect Amy. Ida laughs softly, her lips against his throat, then kisses him. She strokes his cheek and kisses him again.

‘Come here,’ she whispers, trying to pull him on top of her.

‘I don’t have any condoms.’

‘It’s OK, I’m on the pill,’ she lies.

His hands are like ice, and she shivers as he strokes her breasts.

‘Come on.’

Linus pulls down his boxers and climbs on top of her. His entire body seems to be shaking, and he doesn’t have much of an erection, but still manages to enter her when she parts her thighs and closes her eyes.

‘No stress,’ she whispers.

He lies still for a moment, then starts moving a little, to avoid slipping out.

Ida groans quietly. She is incredibly wet, but she doesn’t know whether he is getting any harder; she can barely feel him. She has been looking forward to this moment for so long.

Linus begins thrusting a little harder, and she sighs and grips his buttocks, pulling him towards her and trying to get him to pause deep inside her. She wants him to keep going, to get harder and fill her, flip her over and do her from behind.

‘Don’t stop,’ she whispers, right as he lets out a loud groan and slumps down on top of her.

His back is sweaty, his heart pounding and his breath hot on her throat. He pulls out and rolls over onto his back.

‘Sorry,’ he says, looking away.

‘Come on, don’t say sorry. That felt great.’

‘I don’t usually .?.?. you know .?.?.’

‘We can do it again, a hundred times,’ Ida tells him as she gets out of bed.

She opens the connecting door to the nursery, where the passageway has been reconfigured as a linen closet, and takes two clean towels from the shelf. The doorway at the other side is blocked by the large cupboard containing all of Oliver’s toys.

Sven Erik doesn’t want their son to get into the habit of climbing into bed with them, which means that Oliver just lies there screaming for his mum until she goes through to see him.

Ida and Linus take a shower together. She hands him one of the towels when they step out of the cubicle, but she notices that his back is still beaded with water as he gets dressed in the bedroom.

His hands seem to be shaking as he buttons his shirt.

‘You can stay over, if you like,’ she says, pulling on a purple robe. ‘I could make lemon pasta.’

‘Thanks, but I have to get back and do some work .?.?.’

‘Sure.’

She follows him down to the front door, and they kiss three times before he leaves. Ida locks the door behind him and turns out the light in the hallway.

The endorphins are still making her body tingle as she wanders through to the lounge. She doesn’t want to stand in the window and watch him drive away, but she does it anyway.

Linus walks over to his car and uses the fob to unlock the doors.

As the lights flash, Ida thinks she catches a glimpse of a blonde woman standing by the gateposts.

Up in the bedroom, her phone starts ringing.

Ida climbs the stairs, automatically peering down at the cuddly toy she spotted earlier by the door to the boiler room and the garage.

As she reaches the kitchen, she decides that the woman by the driveway could be the Russian’s new wife. Last spring, the old one got bored of taking the Dachshund out for walks in her fancy Gucci clothes and moved back to St Petersburg.

Her phone has stopped ringing by the time Ida reaches the bedroom, but she sees that she has a missed call from Sven Erik.

Oliver also sent her a message saying goodnight an hour ago, but she was too busy having sex with Linus to notice, and it is now too late to reply.

She tightens the belt of her robe and peers out at the lights from Linus’s car through the hedge. He drives slowly down the road and turns right, and then it looks as though he stops on the hill and turns off the headlights.

Logically, she knows that his car just pulled out of view, behind the neighbours’ extension or something similar, but it really does feel as though he has come to a halt.

The wind howls around the house, and she hears the loose drainpipe out back creaking.

Ida goes through to the kitchen and opens another bottle of red wine. It is the same type as earlier, only older, from long before she was born.

Probably really expensive, she thinks as she fills her glass, swirls the wine and takes a sip.

‘Great Merlot,’ she says, imitating Linus.

The wine leaves a dry, lingering taste of wood in her mouth.

In the windows, the darkness beyond the reflected kitchen looks impenetrable.

Out of nowhere, Ida feels a rush of fear that Linus has hit a child on the hill. She knows it is nothing but a dark fantasy, but he did have a glass of wine.

With a smouldering sense of anxiety, she picks up her phone and sends him a red heart. He doesn’t reply, and she gazes out into the darkness, thinking about the Aftonbladet interview with the boy who witnessed a bloody axe murder while he was sleepwalking.

Ida puts her phone down and realises that she can’t remember whether she locked the door after he left. She goes to the top of the stairs and pauses, listening for sounds like a child left home alone. Other than the usual creaking of the wooden floors, the house is quiet.

With one hand on the banister, she starts making her way down the stairs.

‘Fuck!’

A deer bolts across the floor in the lounge, past the sofa and towards the hall.

She will never get used to these reflections in the glass, she thinks. Sven Erik’s enormous barbecue always looks like some sort of covered grand piano in the lounge.

The reflections create the illusion that it is snowing inside, that there are great tits swooping over the table and rabbits hopping over the rug.

A few clumps of dust blow out from beneath the sofa and roll towards Ida’s feet, and she turns around and sees the curtains rippling in the sudden draught.

The door to the guest room swings shut with a click.

Ida moves out into the dark hallway.

The only source of light is the little green LED on the alarm unit.

As she grips the handle, she remembers that she locked the door when Linus left.

Outside, the drainpipe shakes again.

Ida turns around and starts making her way back towards the lounge, but stops dead when she sees that the Russian woman is now standing on the deck.

Her dog must have escaped, she thinks, and is just about to go out and ask if the woman needs any help when she realises with a shudder that the windows have tricked her again.

The woman is in the house.

Adrenaline floods through her veins.

Ida turns back around. She thinks she can see the figure reflected in the reeded glass in the front door, and she slowly sinks to the floor.