Page 77 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

Thor and his partner Nolan are standing behind their black van in a residential area on the outskirts of Uppsala.

The rest of the tactical unit is currently getting into position, climbing over the low white fence at the edge of Lars Grind’s property.

The operatives have familiarised themselves with pictures of the suspected perpetrator – a man who, with nothing but an axe, has killed two armed officers and at least nine civilians – and every member of the unit is wearing a bulletproof vest, breathing mask and helmet.

Thor slots the curved magazine into his automatic rifle and pushes the charging handle and safety catch forward with his thumb.

He has an anxious lump he just can’t shift in his throat.

Leaves and debris blow through the air with the swirling snowflakes, and the fierce gusts of wind push branches, broken mailboxes and fallen bicycles along the street.

The flagpoles creak as they bend.

In a garden nearby, a string of Christmas lights has come loose, and is whipping around a tree.

Once everyone is in position, Thor and his partner walk down the paved path to the front door with their guns lowered.

The house is dark.

The storm tugs at the trees and bushes, and one of the men has to duck as a red plastic sledge blows over the fence.

Thor glances down at his watch and gives the order. His men break three windows and toss tear gas canisters inside.

They force the door at the rear of the property while Thor does the same at the front.

Nolan heads in first, with his rifle raised.

Thor follows him in, and their tactical lights sweep through the thick tear gas, over the walls and the coats hanging on hooks, flashing in a mirror.

On Saturday, his wife Kristina left the house wearing nothing but a pink camisole.

He realised she must have taken too much of her medication when he spotted her through the kitchen window, feet bright red from the cold, plasters on both knees and dark pubic hair bared for all to see.

She got into the car and reversed straight into the hedge, where she got stuck.

By the time he got to her, she had thrown up all over herself, and the white froth from the partially broken-down pills was clinging to the corners of her mouth.

He got her back into the house, and she started rambling incoherently about an old man who suffocated himself with a dildo. Repeating that there is a crackling grey force beneath all staircases, trying to make weak people stop breathing.

Once the ambulance had taken her away, Thor slumped down on the unmade bed and cried in a way he hadn’t since he was a boy.

Nolan clears the toilet to the left.

Thor steps over a pair of black rubber boots on the brown-tiled floor and makes his way through to the kitchen, quickly swinging around to one side as Nolan moves past him and checks the other.

The knives gleam in the light from their rifles.

Thor finds himself staring at the reflection of the kitchen in the dark window: Nolan turning without a sound and being swallowed up by the black doorway.

A small blob of gun grease glistens on the barrel of his rifle.

Thor licks his lips, turns around and thinks about the fact that Kristina’s frightened ideas often revolve around the underside of staircases.

She has told him about the two young boys who were found suffocated when she was a girl. They were sitting opposite each other beneath a staircase at the end of a bridge, their mouths and throats packed with clay.

He hears the heavy footsteps of the rest of his team, and he follows Nolan into a smoky living room, secures the right-hand side and sees tactical beams sweeping past the stairs to the floor above.

The shadows from the spindles spread like fingers on the wall, and shards of glass from one of the broken windows glitter on the blue carpet.

For a few seconds, in the smoke drifting through the house and the shafts of lights cutting through the darkness, Thor feels as though he has slipped into some kind of alternate reality.

Everything becomes hollow and echoing.

The wooden floor beneath the rug creaks as he moves forward.

On a shelf, gaudy souvenirs cast sloping shadows against the wall.

The door of a sideboard slowly swings open.

Thor tries to swallow his anxiety as he makes his way over to the stairs.

He hears a metallic thud underfoot, as though he has just stepped on a metal hatch or the floor of a construction lift.

Nolan shouts something from behind his mask.

In the corner beneath the stairs, the smoke is twisting like a tornado, a rotating column. Thor swallows, and his mind has just drifted back to Kristina’s words about the suffocating forcefield when Nolan runs past him and up the stairs.

As though in a trance, Thor lumbers after him, staring down at the smoke between the steps, the way it is writhing in the corner. He pauses and pokes himself in the mouth, but is dragged back to reality when he hears Nolan fire his Heckler & Koch on the first floor.

Thor breaks into a run, heart pounding. Nolan has just blasted through the lock on the bathroom, kicked the door open and stopped dead.

*?*?*

The wipers sweep snow and debris from the windscreen as Joona drives at high speed through the dark community, listening to Thor tell him that the raid on Lars Grind’s property is complete.

‘The place was empty. No sign of anyone,’ he says.

Joona asks him to check for hidden rooms or cellar spaces before they head over to the Sleep Lab.

As he speaks, the storm sweeps in from one side with full force, sending a tsunami of snow surging across the road.

Joona can see almost nothing but white, and he slows to a crawl.

The blizzard completely envelops the car, clogging up the windows on the left-hand side in just a matter of seconds.

Joona’s thoughts drift back to what Hugo said while he was under hypnosis for the first time: that it was both high summer and darkest midwinter at the campsite.

Snow was falling on the parasols and the sunbathers.

Erik latched onto the brief moment at the rear of the caravan, then began to erase the nightmare from the things the teenager had really seen.

During the second session, Hugo described the killer chopping off both of the victim’s feet, something that hadn’t happened in reality.

It wasn’t until the third attempt that they managed to almost completely bypass the nightmare, and Hugo was able to see the real victim with the straggly dyed hair.

This time, his description was a perfect match for ?hlén’s forensic report: the attack had begun with a blow to the head, followed by the severing of one leg – in the middle of the thigh. After that, the victim was beheaded, and the killer got to work dismembering him.

In the white chaos, hazy grey shapes start to emerge. Optical illusions of giants getting to their feet and lashing out around their surroundings.

A powerful gust pushes the car to the side, making it shake as the tyres hit the rumble strips at the edge of the road.

Joona thinks back to the second session, when Hugo stepped up onto a breezeblock behind the caravan. Erik worked methodically to refine that memory, enabling him to peer inside while still blending reality with nightmare.

Hugo described the victim lying on his back, which he had been, but in the dream version both of his feet had been severed. The skeleton man carved the start of an arrow onto his torso, just as someone had in reality, then hacked at the victim’s face with his axe.

Joona tries switching to his fog lights, and the swirling snow globe up ahead does look a little different, but it is hard to tell whether it really improves his visibility.

His thoughts turn to the incredibly precise nature of Hugo’s dreams. The parquet floor, the blood running along a brass edging strip, the broken vase and the lamp with a snakeskin shade.

With increasing anxiety, Hugo described the chain of events leading up to the fatal blow – including the blood that sprayed across the window.

The wheel jolts in Joona’s hands, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as he realises how it all fits together.

The pieces of the puzzle fall into place, forming a perfect picture.

Joona is convinced he has the answer, but he calls the warden at Hall Prison and asks to speak to Gerald Pedersen, explaining that it is urgent.

The serial killer they are hunting is incredibly dangerous, no doubt about that. In addition to his seven intended victims, he has also killed two witnesses and two police officers.

Petrus Lyth was taken out with an axe blow to the back of the head, like a bull. Danny Imani was beheaded while he was on his knees.