Page 60 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

Following the murder of Ida Forsgren-Fisher, the investigation has been given top priority. They currently have five targeted victims – including Lucia Pedersen – and two dead witnesses.

Photographs of the victims have been pinned up on the wall in the meeting room, alongside pictures from the crime scenes and some of the forensic evidence.

The Widow could easily have crossed the border into Norway by now.

But she isn’t done yet, thinks Joona. She is just lying low while she watches her next victim.

He doubts her Opel even made it past V?ster?s. Most likely is that it disappeared somewhere in the network of backroads between the small, sparsely populated hamlets like Villberga, Grillby and Haga.

Joona is sitting at the table with his boss, Noah Hellman, and his colleagues, Bondesson, Rikard Roslund and Anna Andersson. They are joined by Goran Bergh, from the West Region, and Omar Nasri. Frida Nobel has also stepped in to replace Stina Linton, who will be on sick leave for at least a month.

They began the meeting with the boss taking them through that morning’s press conference, explaining that the pressure from both the politicians and the media has risen exponentially.

Joona then played the recording from the second hypnosis session, in which Hugo Sand witnessed the murder through the window at the rear of the caravan.

Rikard tried to say something about the human aspect of the case, and was so moved by his own words that he had to leave the room to compose himself.

Joona’s eyes drift over the pictures of the victims, comparing their wounds, severed limbs, cuts, bruises and livor mortis spots.

‘We need to remember that the investigatory machine usually works,’ says Omar, running a hand over the table. ‘We’re following the new guidelines, and the wheels are all turning like they’re supposed to .?.?. just slowly. Frustratingly slowly, it feels like.’

‘Yeah,’ Anna says with a sigh.

‘Let’s be bloody honest here,’ Goran snaps, getting to his feet. ‘It’s not frustrating , it’s fucking torture to be stuck behind a desk when people are having their heads chopped off .?.?.’

‘Let’s take it easy, OK?’ Noah tells him.

‘We’re all feeling the pressure, but that’s natural,’ Frida says, blushing.

‘Is it?’ Goran replies.

‘This is an incredibly difficult situation,’ she continues. ‘But we really do have the skills and the knowledge to—’

‘Oh, come off it,’ he snaps, tugging up his baggy jeans.

‘Plus, we’re still a bit shaken from the hunt for the Spider,’ Anna rounds off.

‘I doubt that’ll ever pass,’ Rikard mutters.

Goran takes his seat again, pressing his hands to his face.

‘We might have the skills,’ says Omar, holding up a forensic report. ‘But so far, this case is nothing but loose ends. More and more evidence, but no breakthroughs. No DNA, no fingerprints or decoded messages, nothing that can help us narrow down the perp.’

‘Joona, I need more energy here,’ says Noah, turning to him with bloodshot eyes.

‘This is one of the best teams I’ve ever had.’

‘Then give me a breakthrough. Anything .’

‘OK.’

‘What do you mean, “OK”? Tell me what you’ve seen,’ says Noah.

‘If I solve this case before Christmas, you’ll bring Saga in as my partner.’

‘Sorry.’ The boss smiles. ‘But you haven’t given me anything concrete. The investigation is already up to seven thousand pages. There’s no way you’re going to solve it in the next week.’

‘But if I do .?.?.’

‘Drop it, Joona.’

‘No.’

‘Please. I promise we can have a chat about Saga once this is all over, but right now I need you to show me your hand.’

‘ Nuolet ,’ he says in Finnish, taking out his phone.

Joona dials Nils ?hlén’s number. There is a click, and they briefly hear the professor singing along with ‘Stargazer’ by Rainbow before the music stops.

‘You’re on loudspeaker,’ says Joona. ‘So everyone can hear you tell me that you’re not done with the autopsy.’

‘Same here .?.?. so Chaya can hear you tell me you want some preliminary thoughts anyway,’ ?hlén replies.

‘Do you have any?’

‘We’re not done with the autopsy yet, but Ida Forsgren-Fisher had unprotected sex shortly before she was killed,’ ?hlén begins.

‘Any sign of rape?’

‘Nope.’

‘Her son was staying over at a friend’s house,’ says Joona. ‘And her husband was in Tenerife while she was having sex and getting killed by someone else .?.?. which fits the pattern.’

‘What pattern?’ Noah asks, glancing over to the others.

Joona turns to Anna, who is standing by the board.

‘What kind of health issues does Ida’s son have?’ he asks.

‘Type one diabetes.’

‘Which means?’ Noah presses Joona.

‘The victims are all people who – in the Widow’s eyes – prioritise their sexual pleasure, their lust—’

‘One of the seven deadly sins,’ Rikard speaks up.

‘Over the needs of a sick child,’ Joona rounds off.

‘Do all of them have sick kids?’ Noah asks, his voice a little too loud.

‘Lucia Pedersen, Ida Forsgren-Fisher, Pontus Bandling and Nils Nordlund all did,’ says Anna.

‘We still don’t know the real motive, the psychological driving force,’ Joona continues. ‘But I really do think the Widow uses the kids as a pretext.’

‘And you can tell that because four of the victims had children with some form of illness?’

‘The Widow shows concern for them,’ says Joona. ‘Pumping up the tyres on a kid’s bike, leaving a girl a new inhaler, and—’

‘Joona is the smartest guy on earth,’ Goran interjects, feigning admiration.

‘I’m really not.’

‘Don’t be shy,’ he teases.

‘I’m still on the line,’ Nils ?hlén reminds them.

‘Could you send us a picture of Ida’s torso?’ Joona asks him.

‘Which half?’

‘The one with the scratches.’

‘Scratches?’

‘Above her navel.’

‘No other pictures?’ ?hlén asks.

‘Not right now.’

‘Great, so now we’re focusing on a couple of scratches,’ Goran mutters, glancing over to the others in search of support.

‘You heard what Hugo Sand saw through the window,’ Joona explains as his computer pings. ‘He described the Widow dragging the tip of the blade over the victim’s torso .?.?.’

The colour printer begins to whirr, and Joona gets up to retrieve the image. He pins it on the wall and reaches for the corresponding photographs of the other victims, so that the four torsos are hanging in a row.

Joona grabs a yellow highlighter and traces over the scratches on two of the pictures. The superficial cut on Nils Nordlund’s torso is a vertical line, around twenty-five centimetres in length. On Ida Forsgren-Fisher’s body, there are two scratches, forming a small, open V.

‘Letters?’ Rikard suggests.

‘I think they’re incomplete arrows, or different parts of an arrow .?.?. judging by the proportions,’ says Joona.

↓

He repeats the process with the two other victims. On Josef Lindgren’s stomach, there is a short, diagonal mark stretching from the left-hand side to the mid-point of his torso. The cut on Pontus Bandling’s stomach is almost a perfect mirror image, and together they form another small V.

‘The tip of an arrow,’ says Rikard.

‘OK, great, but what does this mean?’ asks Noah.

‘I don’t know,’ Joona replies honestly.

‘The clock is ticking, for God’s sake, and .?.?.’

Noah trails off when he sees Frida Nobel hold up her phone to get the others’ attention.

‘We’ve finally got a bit of a breakthrough with the wig,’ she says.

‘Go on,’ Noah tells her. He looks like he is almost on the brink of tears.

‘Stina has been working from hospital, and she managed to get in touch with the wigmaker, Carl M. Lundh’s.

It took a while, because the records were destroyed after being digitised,’ Frida continues.

‘But Stina reached out to one of their retired employees to ask if he remembered who might have bought the wig made from Lotta’s hair and he just got back to her.

It turns out he’d saved the whole physical record index in his attic. ’

‘Of course he had,’ Noah says with a grin.

‘Lotta has sold her hair twice, but it’s the first one that fits, timewise.’

‘OK.’

‘The first wig was bought by a woman called Veronica Nagler.’

‘Nagler,’ Rikard mumbles, logging into his computer. He runs a quick search and looks up from the screen. ‘She’s dead .?.?. An accident over six years ago.’

‘Great,’ Goran sighs.

Rikard connects his computer to the projector and shows the team the photographs from the police report.

‘She’s not the killer, but there must be some connection,’ says Frida. ‘There has to be.’

‘Maybe she’s an early victim?’ Anna suggests.

In the images, a woman with a bald head is sprawled across a ladder on the ground beneath an apple tree. Bright red apples have spilled out of a dented metal bucket. She is wearing a striped cotton nightie, and her brown floral clogs are on the ground by the trunk.

‘Are there any pictures from the autopsy?’ asks Joona.

‘Yep,’ Rikard replies.

He clicks a few times, and the first of the images fills the projection screen.

A naked woman with grey skin is laid out on the stainless-steel autopsy table.

Her eyes are wide open, her dark tongue lolling out of her mouth.

She doesn’t have any hair, and there is a clear injury to the side of her head.

Her torso is covered in cuts and scrapes, from the notch between her collarbones, down between her breasts, to her pubic bone.

‘The ladder slipped. She probably got those grazes from the rungs and then cracked her head on one of the rocks there,’ says Noah, turning to Joona.

Rikard brings up another photograph in which a deeper mark is visible among all the other scrapes, a cut in the shape of an arrow.