Page 69 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

Hugo is lying back on the neatly made bed in his suite. The curtains are drawn, and Erik, Joona, Agneta and Lars Grind are standing around him in the dimly lit room.

He checks his phone as Erik goes over the process for the third time, explaining how hypnosis works and that it is really just a matter of relaxation and focus.

Joona has noticed that the teenager seems more subdued than normal.

He isn’t his usual defiant, sarcastic self, and seems to have resigned himself to what is happening with an air of melancholy.

He answers any questions directed at him, but otherwise he has been sitting quietly, and he also seems oddly curt with Dr Grind.

Erik thanks Hugo for putting his faith in him, then pulls a chair over to the head of the bed and sits down.

‘I promised Bernard that Hugo wouldn’t suffer as a result of this session,’ says Agneta.

‘Of course.’

‘Because he’s had terrible anxiety after both previous attempts.’

‘It was fine,’ Hugo mutters, putting his phone down on the bedside table.

Erik has dark circles beneath his eyes, but his deep laughter lines mean that his face still looks relatively happy.

‘Hypnosis certainly isn’t meant to leave any lasting unease – the opposite, in fact .?.?. But with that said, we will be focusing on some particularly difficult memories, at least for a few minutes.’

‘I just don’t want to think about it beforehand,’ says Hugo.

‘Which is fine. All I want to say is that I’ll be here with you every step of the way, to minimise the risk of any additional trauma. And before I lift you out of the hypnosis, I’ll also leave you with some positive suggestions.’

‘I’ll be here as a kind of referee, too,’ says Lars Grind. ‘I’ll put a stop to things if I think it’s having even the slightest negative impact on you. You can trust me, Hugo.’

The teenager avoids the doctor’s eye.

‘OK, then we’re agreed?’ asks Agneta.

‘Yes. But I also need you all to let me do my job,’ Erik replies.

‘You’re very good at what you do, no doubt about that,’ Agneta adds. ‘And as I say, Bernard and I are both glad that Hugo wants to help the police stop a killer, but that can’t come at any price.’

‘Stop. It’s fine,’ Hugo mumbles, straightening his necklace.

As the conversation peters out and a sense of calm settles over the room, Erik begins the process of helping Hugo to become relaxed and receptive.

He takes his time, working through each of the muscle groups in turn, getting the teenager to focus on his breathing and repeating that he is safe, that the bed is comfortable and that his eyelids are growing heavier.

There is a strange smell in the room, Joona notices, like rancid aftershave.

Agneta has wrapped her arms around herself, and is standing with her head bowed, a deep frown between her brows.

Lars Grind pinches his lower lip between his index finger and thumb.

Hugo’s eyes are closed, his tongue just visible between his slightly parted lips.

As Erik talks, Joona notices that the teenager’s breathing – the rising and falling of his chest – begins to follow the same rhythm.

The hypnotist has taken them down to the seabed twice now, he thinks, and they have found the wreck.

During the first session, they caught a glimpse of the murderer, wearing a wig and carrying an axe. During the second, that was followed by vivid segments of the killing itself through the window at the back of the caravan.

They didn’t have enough time for Erik to find an accessible route into the caravan. The minute Hugo sets foot inside, he still jumps forward to the moment when the police officer woke him on the floor.

Traumatic imagery, followed by a blank.

In his nightmare – which drives his sleepwalking – Hugo is following his mother, the pair of them running away from a man who seems to be some sort of living stack of human bones.

In reality, he saw a man being murdered through a window and fell back into the grass without waking up.

He got to his feet and went into the caravan in an attempt to save his mother, who only existed in the dream.

The sights he witnessed there were so awful that he was unable to file them away in the usual place.

Episodic memory is stored first in the hippocampus, then consolidated in the neocortex. Most of it is forgotten, though some of it does linger among the nerve cells and synapses.

‘You are now deeply relaxed, listening only to my voice,’ says Erik.

The hypnotist guides Hugo through a scene in which he is leaving a party and making his way down a long wooden staircase.

He starts talking about the light from the chandelier gleaming on the varnished handrail, the red carpet, the brass stair rods, Hugo’s soft footsteps and the way the murmur of the guests, the music and the clinking of glasses all get fainter and fainter.

Erik watches the teenager’s slow breaths in and out, successively making his voice more monotone.

He counts down from one hundred, talking about the stairs and reminding Hugo to focus on his voice, to let everything else fade like the sound of the party on the floor above.

‘Thirty-two, thirty-one .?.?. You are still making your way down the stairs,’ says Erik.

‘And in a few minutes, when I get to zero, you will be back at the campsite in Bred?ng, in area G. It’s the middle of the night, and you are sleepwalking .

.?. You have plenty of time to stop and look at whatever you want.

You’re calm, and you’re in complete control of the situation .

.?. This time, you won’t see any of the nightmare that brought you here.

Your mum isn’t here and you aren’t being chased by a skeleton man .

.?. The campsite is closed for the winter, the sky is dark, and it has just started to snow. ’

The perpetrator probably wasn’t still in the caravan when Hugo went inside, Joona thinks.

From his own reading of the blood at the scene, the actual violence was over relatively quickly.

Despite the brutal dismemberment of the victim post-mortem, all of the blood – regardless of whether it had sprayed, spattered, been trampled or dragged – was coagulated to the same degree.

Standing quietly around the bed, Joona and the others all find themselves breathing slowly and in unison as Erik continues towards zero. It is as though the whole room is now in a kind of trance, following the hypnotist’s diving bell into the dark abyss.

The heat from the radiator causes the curtains to billow outwards from the wall.

Joona studies Hugo’s face and notes that it now looks soft and childlike, relaxed.

Erik lowers his voice and leans into the young man.

‘Thirteen, twelve, eleven .?.?. You have now reached the bottom of the stairs, and you can no longer hear the party,’ he says.

‘Ten, nine .?.?. You’re walking straight down the hall .

.?. Eight, seven, and through the main doors .

.?. Six, five, out onto the stone steps .

.?. Down the last few, four, three, two, one .

.?. and zero, you are now back in the campsite. ’

Agneta rubs her mouth, unable to tear her eyes away from Hugo.

‘It’s night, and the snow is falling on the grass and the caravans,’ says Erik. ‘But you can see a light up ahead.’

‘Yes,’ Hugo mumbles.

‘The light is coming from the windows in the caravan.’

‘Yes.’

‘There is someone there .?.?. in the darkness outside.’

‘A woman .?.?. with blonde hair,’ Hugo says, licking his lips. ‘She’s holding an axe, and she goes over to the door and opens it.’

‘You catch a glimpse of her face in the window,’ says Erik.

‘No,’ Hugo whispers.

‘This time you do, because the door opens very slowly.’

‘She’s looking down, so I can only see a bit of her forehead and eyebrow,’ Hugo says, squirming anxiously.

Grind holds up a warning hand to Erik.

‘None of this is dangerous, Hugo. You’re safe and relaxed .?.?. You can describe her forehead to me, and there is no need to be afraid.’

‘It’s white .?.?. like bone. With a deep groove between her eyebrows.’

‘What about her eyes?’

‘I can’t see them.’

‘Focus on her hand on the handle. Can you see any jewellery? Any tattoos or—’

‘She’s wearing white latex gloves.’

‘What about a watch? Does that mean she isn’t wearing a watch if—’

‘The caravan rocks when she goes inside and closes the door,’ Hugo continues. ‘The man raises his voice, and I can hear noises .?.?.’

Hugo’s chin has begun to tremble.

‘What are you doing now?’

‘I’m freezing, I’m shaking .?.?.’

‘There’s no need to focus on that – you’ll be warm again soon,’ says Erik. ‘Can you feel it? You’re warm now, walking towards the caravan through the falling snow.’

‘I step over her canvas bag and make my way around the caravan.’

‘You step over her bag and look down at it,’ says Erik.

‘Yes.’

‘What do you see?’

‘I see a bag. Made of thick fabric, canvas .?.?. I see a short crowbar, a roll of kitchen paper and a bloody plastic pouch, but then I look up at the caravan .?.?. at the shadows moving over one of the windows.’

‘Look at the bag again.’

‘It’s half open, and there’s a keyring with a picture of a train inside a big G on the zip. The strap is frayed along the edge,’ he mumbles.

‘What sort of plastic pouch can you see?’

‘A tooth, a bloody tooth,’ says Hugo, taking a trembling breath.

Lars Grind clears his throat, catches Erik’s eye and shakes his head.

‘Could we maybe slow down a bit?’ Agneta whispers.

‘Just listen to my voice, Hugo,’ says Erik, putting a hand on his shoulder.

‘If you hear anyone else speak, just focus on my words. You’re standing in the snow, and you step over the bag, walk around the back of the caravan, climb up onto a breezeblock and look in through the window.

You notice that time is moving more slowly inside the caravan than it is outside. ’

‘The glass is all fogged up .?.?. and there’s a grey rubber seal hanging loose at the bottom of the window, from the curved corner,’ Hugo tells him in a gruff voice.