Page 75 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

The yard outside the building is full of emergency vehicles as the tactical operatives lead the suspect out.

Joona notices that one of the grey-haired man’s boots has come off in the hallway, and he bends down to pick it up before following them out into the cold air.

Blue lights sweep through the falling snow, over the brick building, the shipping container, the trees and brush.

The tactical commander has fastened the earflaps on his hat beneath his chin. The tip of his nose has turned red, and he has his hands buried deep in his pockets.

‘Good work,’ he says.

‘Thanks .?.?. though it’s hard to believe he’s the Widow,’ Joona replies, shaking the blood from his hand.

Over by one of the ambulances, the man has been strapped to a gurney, his hands cuffed to the railings on each side.

‘Where’s Leica? Has someone got Leica?’ he wheezes.

A paramedic steps forward to examine the man’s ears.

Blue light pulses up the side of the silo.

Joona is having the cut on his arm treated and bandaged when one of the local officers comes over.

‘I don’t know what all this is about .?.?.’ he says, ‘but I think you’ve got the wrong guy.’

‘He’s wanted in Stockholm,’ the tactical commander replies.

‘Right, but Boris never leaves Grillby. That’s the main problem with him, from our point of view.’

‘Go on,’ says Joona.

‘It was just a dumb rumour .?.?. No one knows where it started, but it kept on building, and in the end Boris had to quit his job at the school library. His life fell apart, he started avoiding people. Just stayed home all day, didn’t pay any of his bills and wound up losing his house.’

‘In that case, it might not even be the right car,’ the commander speaks up.

Joona walks over to the forensic technicians and asks if they have any Bluestar to hand, waiting as they open the bottle and fit the spray nozzle.

‘Thanks,’ he says, carrying it over to the old Opel, which is parked by the silo.

The driver’s side window is open, and Joona can smell the pine scent of the air fresheners as he peers inside.

The interior of the car has definitely seen better days, but it also looks as though it has recently been cleaned.

In the footwell by the passenger seat, there is a roll of kitchen paper and some cleaning products.

Taking care not to touch anything, Joona reaches inside with the bottle of Bluestar and spritzes a few times.

An icy blue glow appears almost immediately on the seams and piping around the edge of the driver’s seat, on the floor mat and the grooved rubber pedals.

Blood seems to have dripped down the gear stick, and the back of the wheel is practically quivering with bluish light.

On the windscreen, a couple of bright smears reveal that someone has used a cloth in an attempt to clean the glass.

The entire car is like a fluorescent underwater world.

It must have been completely drenched in blood before it was cleaned.

‘Damn,’ the tactical commander mutters.

Joona returns the bottle to the forensic technicians and asks them to try to find the car’s vehicle identification number as quickly as they can. It has been scraped off the window, but should also be punched into the metal beneath the passenger seat.

He then heads over to the grey-haired man on the gurney. His eyes are bloodshot and his face red from the tear gas.

‘Sorry, like,’ he wheezes.

‘I need to ask you a few questions before you go,’ Joona tells him.

‘Huh?’ The man cocks his head to hear him better.

‘Do you know whose car that is?’

‘The Opel? Nah .?.?. Been here years. Probably deregistered.’

‘How often do you come here?’

‘Every other week, maybe. Never stay long anywhere, me,’ the man replies, baring his rotten teeth in a grin. ‘I own Grillby. The whole place is mine.’

‘Have you ever seen anyone else here?’ Joona asks.

‘Other than the kids trying to get into the silo or riding about on their motocross bikes, y’mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘The washing machine was on once, and another time there was a light on in the container .?.?. When I got here yesterday, the key wasn’t in the electric cabinet, and then the door broke.’

Joona walks over to the tactical unit’s van, takes out a dark red canister of acetylene and a silver oxygen tank, carries them over to the shipping container and attaches the cutting torch.

There is a steel cover over the sturdy padlock on the container, preventing anyone from breaking in with a hacksaw or bolt cutters.

Joona pulls on a pair of thick gloves and ignites the torch with a lighter.

He directs the surging flame at one edge of the steel cover, heating the metal to over 2,000 degrees before switching to a jet of pure oxygen.

The flame shrinks to a white blade, cutting through the thick metal like butter.

Sparks rain down on the ground, and the cover drops with a thud, hissing as it hits the snow.

Joona repeats the process with the polished steel padlock, then turns off the gas and opens the door.

The shipping container is full of old furniture.

Joona pulls off his gloves, turns on his torch and guides the beam over display cabinets, speckled mirrors, bookshelves, chairs and floor lamps.

Towards the rear, a number of dressers and varnished wardrobes have been stacked right up to the roof.

In front of them, there are two chandeliers hanging on hooks. The crystals are dusty, their plugs yellowed from age.

Behind him, Joona hears Jamal talking to the commander about packing up and clearing out before the storm hits. The wind seems to be growing stronger by the minute.

The beam of his torch sweeps across a secretaire, a sideboard and an open box of tarnished silver cutlery.

At the front of the container, there is a dusty dining table on a Persian carpet.

A number of leaf panels made from the same dark wood have been propped up against the side wall, beside a gold pendulum clock.

Joona points his torch at the rug on the floor and notices a number of indentations.

The heavy piece of furniture seems to have been moved a few centimetres to one side.

He sets the torch down, lifts the end of the table and uses his foot to push the rug out of the way before lowering it again.

A soft clang reverberates through the container.

Joona bends down and rolls back the rug to reveal a square of fibreboard.

He lifts it out and reaches for his torch.

Beneath the board, there is a hole in the bottom of the container, with a narrow spiral staircase leading straight down into some sort of well.

The beam of his torch shakes.

Stale air fills his nose.

He can’t hear a sound from inside.

Joona turns around, crawls beneath the table and shuffles into the hole feet first.

His colleagues’ voices fade as he makes his way down the stairs.

Each step makes the structure shake, and he grips the cold handrail tightly.

The staircase has been screwed into the walls of the well, and something comes loose and clatters down the shaft.

Joona’s torchlight flickers.

Roughly four metres down, the well seems to open out into a concrete-lined space, possibly an old storage tank of some kind.

Joona has just reached the bottom and turned around when his torch goes out.

The stagnant air is heavy with the stench of damp, chlorine and rotten meat.

He pauses and shakes his torch, and the light comes back on.

The gravel crunches underfoot as he takes a step forward, and he hears the staircase creak behind him.

The acoustics are oddly flat.

Everything sounds so close, so intimate.

The beam of his torch wanders across the damp wall, over the thick spiderwebs in the corner, flashing when it hits a couple of glass jars on a rough wooden shelf.

Joona slowly pans back and stops.

There are five dusty jars on the shelf, all filled with what looks like formaldehyde.

In the first, he can see a grey ear wearing a gold earring. The ragged flesh where it was severed from its owner is still pink.

In the next jar, Joona can only make out a couple of coins in a pale sludge.

In the third, a pearl necklace is resting on top of two vertebrae filled with pink bone marrow.

The reflected light dances across the low ceiling, where rust from the reinforcement steels has seeped through the concrete.

Joona hears a couple of tinny shouts overhead, and he moves forward again, swinging his torch in the other direction, where a brownish-red arrow has been daubed on the wall.

It is pointing straight down at a large plastic drum.

The light fades again, and Joona hits the torch, crouches down and shines it on the drum. It is filled with vacuum-packed necklaces, bloody earrings, a rotten finger wearing a diamond ring, stained bank notes and watches.

A number of heavy metallic thuds reach him from the container above.

Joona turns around and sees a dirty mattress in the corner, a bulging rubbish bag in a pool of yellowed water, and some blue plastic bottles of chlorine.

A fly buzzes right by his ear.

At the top of the stairs, the door to the shipping container creaks. Someone shouts Joona’s name, and he replies, makes his way back up to the surface, crawls out from beneath the table and gets to his feet.

The commander of the tactical unit is waiting for him in the falling snow, radio in hand. A cloud of pale breath hangs in the air around his mouth.

‘The deregistered car and property are both owned by the same person,’ he says, sounding stressed.

‘Who?’

‘Lars Hjalmar Grind.’