Page 7 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

Agneta wakes at six thirty to the sound of Bernard’s electric razor through the closed bathroom door.

It takes her a few seconds to remember where she is.

While the police search their home, she and Bernard have decided to make the best of a bad situation by checking in to the Grand H?tel in central Stockholm.

Her plan was to enjoy a lie-in while he set an alarm and drove back to the house to welcome the police and prove himself cooperative.

Agneta dozes off again, noticing little more than a faint waft of toothpaste as he kisses her on the forehead and leaves the room.

At eight o’clock, she gets up to open the door for her breakfast trolley, pours herself a coffee and eats a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in bed.

The sky grows bright above the green copper roof of the palace on the other side of the water.

Agneta doesn’t have to be at the newsroom by Telefonplan for another two hours, and she drinks a little more coffee and thinks back to dinner last night.

She had changed into a black crochet skirt woven with shimmering gold thread, a yellow silk blouse that hugged her chest and a pair of gold sandals with a stiletto heel.

‘Spare me, Aphrodite,’ Bernard said as he held the heavy door for her.

She walked down the quiet hotel corridor ahead of him, swaying her hips from side to side.

‘I’m on my knees,’ he called after her, tucking the key card into his breast pocket.

She had laughed and continued over to the lifts, pressed the button and heard the whirr of machinery on the other side of the brass doors.

Bernard checked his phone for what felt like the hundredth time. He was worried, and had been trying in vain to get hold of both Hugo and his solicitor all evening.

They left the lift and made their way down the stairs to the restaurant, where they were shown to a small table at the very back of the room and immediately ordered two glasses of champagne.

They tried to have a nice time while they ate, with Bernard telling the story of when he found himself sitting beside Salman Rushdie on a small plane on the way to a literary festival.

‘So, you know, with my fear of flying and the fatwa against him .?.?. Selfishly, all I could think about was myself, and I was completely panic-stricken. Still, we had a good chat and became friends during the flight.’

Agneta had heard the story before, but she laughed all the same. His fear of flying probably stemmed from the bus crash he survived as a child, she thought.

She had felt the scar beneath the hairs on his chest the first time they had sex, and had asked him about it later, while they smoked a joint together in bed.

Bernard had told her all about the accident, saying that it had attracted a lot of press coverage and that it was one of the reasons why seatbelts were now required by law in all buses.

It was also the reason he drove so slowly, with traffic building up behind him.

Agneta put down her cutlery, sipped her wine, leaned forward and took a deep breath.

She decided to revisit their earlier conversation about Hugo, explaining that she felt they were stuck in a rut as a family and that that was why she had said she was thinking of going to stay with her mother.

‘It’s just .?.?. I don’t really know. At first – when Hugo was younger, I mean – it was all quite easy .?.?. but as he got older, he started to pull away, and now he’s always so angry at me.’

‘I don’t know what’s up with him,’ Bernard said. ‘You’ve done everything right – more than right. You even said you’d like to adopt him.’

‘I would, but .?.?.’

She trailed off as their next course arrived: brisket of beef and coriander in a steamed bun. Agneta thanked the waiter and sat quietly as Bernard was served a dish of langoustines in a dill broth.

‘I’ll do anything to make you stay,’ he said, his face solemn.

‘If I felt like you were doing that, or even something close, it would be different,’ she said. ‘But I just feel so alone in this relationship, and I have for a while now.’

‘And that’s because of Hugo?’

‘Yes, or .?.?. because of the way you are with him.’

‘It’s just that .?.?. You know what he’s like. If I give him even the slightest criticism, he puts that face on, immediately .?.?. And if I don’t stop, he gets up and walks away, and then I don’t see him for days.’

‘But that’s all just a fucking power play,’ she said, as quietly as she could.

‘I’ll be a better man from now on,’ Bernard promised.

‘Was that you or the langoustines talking?’ she attempted to joke.

‘I’m being serious. I’m going to try.’

‘You’re already a good man,’ she said, holding his gaze.

Agneta looked down and realised that her big mistake had been to tell Hugo that she wanted to adopt him at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Bernard had been thrilled and hugged her, but Hugo’s face had hardened and he had turned and stormed off to his room without another word.

Deep down, she knows that it was more to do with her own vanity than anything, to her trying to be a better mother than Claire.

Agneta doesn’t know how she could have been so stupid.

She suspects that one of the reasons she blurted out what she did at New Year was because her own adopted mother had provided her with so much love and comfort. Her birth mother died of breast cancer in a shanty town outside of Dakar, Senegal, when she was just three.

‘Bernard .?.?. what I said about going to stay with Mum feels a bit hasty now, considering all this madness with Hugo,’ she said with a sigh. ‘It’s not all your fault; I’ve made plenty of mistakes too .?.?.’

‘So does that mean you’ll stay?’

‘We need to stick together and be there for each other. That’s all that matters right now.’

‘Thank you, that’s a huge relief,’ he said, his eyes welling up.

After a main course of crispy kale, roast venison with celeriac cream and a quick glass of grappa to finish off, they went back up to their room.

Agneta pours herself more coffee, grabs a Danish pastry and gets back into bed.

The tip of her tongue has just touched the vanilla cream when Bernard calls.

‘Good morning,’ she says.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No, I’m just eating breakfast. What’s happening with Hugo?’

‘The whole thing seems so bloody bureaucratic. I spoke to his lawyer, or whatever he’s called.

He has a meeting with the prosecutor this afternoon,’ Bernard tells her.

‘I understand that they have to take this seriously, but throwing a teenager in a cell? That’s just not right .

.?. not unless there’s a very good reason. ’

‘Are you going to be there for the meeting?’ she asks.

‘We’ll see. I said I’d like to be, but I honestly don’t know. I just want to get Hugo home, run him a nice hot bath and cook him a juicy Salisbury steak.’

‘How are they getting on with the search?’

‘They’ve just this minute finished .?.?. They were mostly focused on his room, took all of his gadgets and seemed pretty interested in your underwear drawer, but they didn’t touch my little jar.’

‘God, that never even crossed my mind .?.?. Lucky you’re a white man.’

‘Pale, stale and male.’

On his desk, Bernard has a glass jar labelled DAGENS NYHETER CULTURE that is jam-packed with cannabis. Every now and again, after a long day at work, he likes to roll a joint and smoke it with Agneta on the veranda overlooking the lake.