Page 59 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)
After saying goodnight to Valeria in Brazil and Lumi in France, Joona sits down at his desk and gazes out at the rooftops beneath the dark December sky, at the Advent stars in windows and balconies decorated with fairy lights and spruce branches.
He takes notes as he reads through his colleagues’ reports from their interviews with the victims’ families and friends, from their door knocking rounds, reviews of the CCTV footage and lists of forensic evidence.
Joona calls Saga, who answers with a subdued hello after seven rings.
‘How are you, really?’ he asks.
‘Fine.’
‘I want you to know that I’ve been nagging Noah non-stop about bringing you in as my partner.’
‘Thanks, but I’m OK with it, being on desk duty.’
‘Are you?’
‘No, but .?.?. Maybe I’m just not cut out for operative work.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘I’m not sure anymore.’
‘I miss you, Saga,’ says Joona. ‘Do you have any plans tomorrow evening? I could cook, bring you up to speed on the case.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ she replies, a little too quickly.
‘Another time.’
‘Sorry,’ she whispers, her voice softer now. ‘I just can’t handle seeing anyone right now. I can barely stand to be with myself.’
‘You know you can always call me.’
‘Thanks, Joona,’ she says, swallowing hard.
They end the call, and he sits quietly for a moment, thinking about the fact that she struggles to spend time with other people, whereas it is loneliness that eats away at him.
It is late, but rather than going to bed, Joona gets up and locks his pistol in the gun cabinet. He leaves his police ID on top of the chest of drawers, then heads out and takes the lift down to the garage.
There isn’t much traffic on the roads as he drives over to Hjorthagen, where he parks the car and walks around the block to join the queue for the Sauna nightclub.
‘By four a.m. the dancefloor is so hot that everyone wants to strip off and roll around in the snow,’ a famous DJ had written on Instagram.
The people in the queue around Joona are all dressed to the nines, chatting drunkenly, laughing and peering longingly at the doors up ahead.
The area is clearly undergoing a dramatic transformation, but in the void between the traditional industries moving out and the redevelopment work beginning, pop-up venues seem to be flourishing.
The club is in a large building with a windowless brick facade.
Agneta told Joona that Olga Wójcik works at an exclusive members’ club called Redrum, which can only be accessed by getting past the bouncer on the door across the rear courtyard from Sauna.
Joona waves when he spots Stina Linton coming around the corner. She has taken off her glasses and tied her hair back with neon yellow bands, applied some red lipstick and swapped her usual outfit for a pair of black jeans and a thin leather jacket.
‘Very nice,’ he says.
‘Any excuse,’ she replies with a smile.
The heavy bassline that seeps out onto the cold street every time the door opens is like some sort of irresistible scent.
The line moves forward, snaking around the riot fences in the makeshift holding area and past the doorman.
Joona and Stina reach the front and get inside. They pay at the desk, sign their names on an exclusive members’ list, pass through a metal detector and a pat down, and make their way through the throng to the dancefloor.
Joona can feel the pulsing music in his chest as they push past the dancing, jumping people beneath the pink strobe lights.
The air is hot and damp.
On the little stage, there is a golden Christmas tree.
Joona leads Stina around the bar to a dark rubber door that opens onto a row of toilet cubicles.
The black-and-white-tiled floor is wet.
There is a strong stench of urine and vomit, and five women are queuing for the ladies’ toilets.
A man with a glittery face is dozing in one corner, a scrap of sooty foil in a red trilby on the floor beside him.
They pass a number of beer kegs, and someone starts pounding on the wall.
Joona opens the metal door at the far end of the corridor, and freezing air floods inside. He and Stina make their way down a metal staircase to a vacant plot of land.
The ground is strewn with bricks, broken glass, car tyres and boxes of wet books.
Behind a heap of concrete and twisted reinforcement steels, a woman is smoking heroin, and by the door to the other building – the one housing Redrum – there is a man in a bulletproof vest, black combat pants and boots.
He is at least six foot five, with a black Colt 933 – a modern assault rifle with a short barrel – in one hand.
‘Stop,’ he says calmly.
‘We’re here to see Olga Wójcik,’ Joona tells him.
‘Nope.’
‘Do you know her?’ asks Stina.
‘You should head back to the party.’
‘Could you go and get Olga?’ Joona asks.
‘Nope.’
‘It’s important,’ Joona explains, taking a step forward.
‘You’re not coming in,’ the guard tells him, switching his rifle to semi.
As he does so, Joona catches a glimpse of a tattoo on the inside of the man’s wrist. A dragonfly and a sword.
‘Noordwijk,’ he says.
‘Why d’you say that?’ the guard asks.
‘Did you train with Rinus Advocaat?’
‘I would’ve given ten years of my life for the chance, but they booted me out before I got that far .?.?. Hang on, you’re not Joona Linna, are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shit,’ the man mumbles, fixing his eyes on Joona. ‘Everyone used to talk about you.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘Joona Linna,’ the guard repeats, shaking his head with a smile.
‘We need to get in.’
‘I’ll let you in, and I’ll let you out, but I have to stay here. They’ve got my kid sister.’
‘What goes on in there?’
‘Don’t know, and I don’t want to know,’ he replies, opening the door for them.
Joona and Stina make their way inside, and the door slams shut behind them. The green glow from the emergency exit sign overhead illuminates a corridor with vinyl flooring and peeling patterned wallpaper. Droplets of condensation glisten on the pipe on the ceiling.
Joona feels a brief sting of a migraine behind one eye, and he sees Stina anxiously push back a few locks of hair from her face.
They start walking and hear a muffled scream through the walls.
A bloody sanitary towel has been dumped on the floor, along with a few long strips of toilet paper.
They are approaching a door that has been left ajar, and pale light spills out into the corridor through the gap.
Somewhere up ahead, a man with a deep voice shouts aggressively.
Joona slowly moves over to the doorway and peers into the small control room on the other side. There is no sign of anyone, but he notices a thin column of smoke curling up towards the ceiling from the cigarette in the ashtray, and the large computer monitor is displaying eight livestreams.
Through a grubby window, he can see a studio containing a number of booths fitted with webcams.
In one, a naked boy with a look of apathy on his face is sitting in a pool of blood on a workout bench. His skinny body is covered in bruises, old and new.
‘God,’ Stina whispers, taking out her phone.
A large man with a tattooed face steps forward and holds a gun to the boy’s head as another man starts hitting him on the thigh with a long, thin dildo.
The two detectives continue past the control room as Stina quietly calls command to explain the situation and emphasises that it is urgent.
‘Ten minutes. They’ll be here in ten minutes,’ she tells Joona.
They pass the dented steel door to the studio and a small cloakroom cluttered with trainers, clothes and bags.
The corridor is dark.
Behind them, they hear raised voices.
Against one wall, there are a number of empty wine bottles and a car battery.
Joona meets Stina’s eye. She looks frightened.
The next door is propped open, with a rolled newspaper wedged above the bottom hinges.
Joona pops his head inside.
A naked lightbulb illuminates a room with a carpet covered in rubbish, old popcorn and a pair of broken glasses.
Olga is sitting beside a young man on the stained denim sofa.
She is wearing a tight-fitting silver dress and heels, eating salad from a small red tub.
In a flat tone of voice, she tells the young man that everything will be fine, that he will be able to send money home.
Olga glances up at Joona with a spaced-out look on her face. The skin around one of her eyes is bruised and swollen, and her dark roots are showing through her dyed blonde hair.
With her free hand, she reaches up to wipe her mouth.
‘Olga,’ Joona says as he strides over to her. ‘We’re from the police, we need—’
‘Joona!’ Stina shouts.
A stocky man in a pair of sliders, tracksuit bottoms and a sweaty basketball vest straining over his rounded belly has burst into the room and stabbed her in the back.
Joona snatches the fork from the carton in Olga’s hand and swings around. He drives it into the man’s throat, pulls it out and hits him again.
Blood sprays across the man’s hairy shoulders.
He lets go of the knife, sways unsteadily, and crashes into the floor lamp.
Stina collapses onto all fours, spluttering for air.
The man with the tattooed face runs into the room with his pistol raised. There is a loud crack, and the bullet hits the brick wall behind Joona.
Dust swirls around the hole.
Joona pulls the knife out of Stina’s back and slams it into the man’s chest before he has time to pull the trigger again.
The man takes a confused step back.
Joona snatches the pistol from him and points it at the doorway just as a third man appears.
He immediately holds up his hands and backs away.
The man with the tattooed face slumps to the floor. Beneath the knife, his torso is slick with blood.
Joona keeps the gun trained on the doorway as he helps Stina to her feet. The man with the hairy shoulders is slumped over a Coca-Cola fridge, blood dripping from his mouth and around the fork in the side of his neck.
‘Olga, you’re coming with us,’ Joona tells her.
The young man is still sitting on the sofa, and he turns to Olga with huge pupils as she gets to her feet.
Joona leaves the room, secures the corridor and then waves for them to follow him.
They move as quickly as they can, past the control room and straight over to the door beneath the glowing emergency exit sign.
Behind them, there is shouting and heavy footsteps.
As they emerge from the building, Joona hears the roar of a helicopter approaching.
The bouncer with the semi-automatic rifle stares at them without a word.
They hurry across the yard, and Joona helps Stina up the staircase, dragging Olga behind him. Once they are inside, they pass the toilets and make their way through the rubber door to the crowded dancefloor.
The music is deafening.
Joona keeps the gun hidden by his side as he cuts across the dancefloor to the exit. A tall man blows him a kiss as he passes.
The metal detector starts beeping, but the doorman quickly moves out of the way when Joona points the gun at him.
They leave the club and head out into the cold air, past the long line of revellers.
Joona can hear the sirens from a large number of emergency vehicles approaching from several directions.
*?*?*
While the operation at the club continues, Joona gets into the back of the patrol car where Olga is being held.
The knife had punctured Stina’s right lung, and her lips had started to turn blue by the time the paramedics arrived to take care of her.
There are currently at least ten police cars and a command unit outside the club, in addition to four ambulances and a fire engine.
Their blue lights sweep gloomily over the dark brick facades, and a police helicopter hovers overhead.
Joona is thinking about the fact that he killed the man with the tattooed face, causing yet another raven to land heavily in the darkness of his soul.
He runs a hand through his hair and studies Olga’s remarkably symmetrical face and bruised eye. She has begun to come down, and her mascara is streaky, her breathing agitated, whistling softly through the piercings in her cheeks.
‘Jacek’s going to kill me,’ she mutters, not for the first time.
‘Olga, listen. I’m in charge of a separate investigation, and you’ve been called in for questioning.’
‘Yeah, I know, but I can’t talk to the cops.’
‘Yet here you are.’
‘Do I have any choice?’
She purses her lips, breathing through her nose and the tiny holes in her cheeks.
‘When you woke Hugo while he was sleepwalking at your apartment, he started talking about the campsite in Bred?ng,’ Joona begins.
‘Yeah, he was totally manic.’
‘What did he say?’
‘What did he say? I was in shock, and he was really fucking incoherent. Babbling about my balcony door, the lock, the knife, the snow falling on the campsite and dark caravans. I don’t know, I was just trying to calm him down, to keep him still.’
‘Did he see the killer?’
‘I don’t think so. That’s not the impression I got, anyway, but he did say something about a bloody tooth. One with a gold crown.’
Olga mutters in Polish as a line of men in handcuffs file out through the doorway, and the ambulances fill up with young men wrapped in blankets.
Joona decides that it is time to hand her over to his colleagues and head home to get some sleep.
The investigation has just taken a significant step forward.
Very few people know that the serial killer has extracted teeth from her victims, which means that Hugo really was able to see the reality behind his nightmare and that – temporarily, at least – the detail was stored somewhere in his memory.