Page 80 of The Sleepwalker (Joona Linna #10)

Bernard reaches for the candle and cups his hand around the flame as he makes his way down the stairs.

Agneta can feel her legs shaking as she follows him.

She is thinking about his drawings of boys with arrows on their chests, the swarm of red arrows raining down from the sky.

The stairs creak beneath her feet.

She finds a pack of beta blockers in her back pocket, and she quietly pops out one of the pills, turns her head and swallows it dry.

Their bedroom is warm and filled with the comforting scent of burning birch. The glow from the flames makes it look as though the walls are pulsing softly.

Instinct is screaming at Agneta to run, to flee down the stairs, through the hall and out into the storm, but she also knows she needs to tread carefully. She can’t afford to show a shred of fear while she waits for her moment: after he goes to sleep or takes a bath.

Bernard pours two glasses of wine and hands one of them to her. She has to grip it with both hands to stop the dark red liquid from shaking too much.

‘Cheers, my love,’ he says.

‘Cheers,’ she replies with a smile, trying to endure him stroking her arm.

She sips her wine and puts the glass down on the bedside table, suddenly remembering the faint pencil arrow on the wall above their bed, behind the Fontana painting.

She had completely forgotten about it until now.

Bernard pulls an armchair over to the woodburner and sits down on the footstool, gazing into the flames.

‘Sit down.’

He swirls the wine in his glass and seems a little more relaxed than earlier, his hand resting on her thigh for a moment once she is sitting in the chair.

Agneta feels the heat on her face and tries to avoid looking at the little axe in the wood basket, the one he uses to split logs.

‘What is it about mankind and fire?’ he asks without looking up. ‘I mean, we worship it, but we’re also afraid of it .?.?.’

‘Mmm.’

How could she have failed to notice anything suspicious all this time? Is it because she simply looked away, chose not to see what was so obvious?

No, he must have somewhere secret that he goes.

Lars Grind’s industrial unit, she realises. The one with the big silo. Bernard used to drive over there from time to time, when he needed peace and quiet to write. She remembers that she and Hugo went out with him once, the last time, to collect his things.

‘What do you think?’ he asks.

‘About what?’

‘Fire.’

‘Oh, I don’t know .?.?. I used to love going to the spring bonfires when I was little,’ she says, aware that fear has made her voice a little shriller than usual. ‘My friends and I cycled from party to party, eating sweets and throwing firecrackers.’

‘For me, my whole childhood – at least until the age of ten or so – is like a different world. Some kind of strange film,’ Bernard says.

‘I can’t quite believe that boy is the same person sitting here with you now.

There are still fragments of him in me, of course – the taste of blood in his mouth, the way he gritted his teeth to stop himself from sobbing in fear, but . .?.’

Agneta wonders if Bernard is trying to work out whether she saw the picture of him on the pebbly beach.

She feels guilty for having let him pull the wool over her eyes, for not having worked it out sooner. Bernard has never been violent towards her, not once, but he does have a strong sense of justice, and has always stood on the side of children.

‘I think it probably varies from person to person,’ she replies. ‘I feel like I have a pretty strong sense of who I was then .?.?. starting from when I was around five, maybe.’

‘I know, but I never talk about my childhood .?.?. And you never ask.’

‘I have asked, but I’ve always had the sense that you don’t want to talk about it.’

‘What sense would that be, Agneta?’ he asks, a new sharpness to his voice.

‘It’s just something I felt,’ she replies, swallowing hard.

With a rising sense of panic, Agneta realises that Bernard must have noticed the elastic band on the desk.

‘Do you have any idea why I’ve never shared all my happy childhood memories with you?’

‘You mentioned a bus accident.’

‘Yes, a little accident that ended with my mother taking her own life right in front of me,’ he says in a neutral tone.

‘My God .?.?.’

‘With an axe.’ He smiles.

Agneta finds herself thinking about Bernard’s scar, that it has always been hidden beneath his chest hair since she first met him. She knows exactly how it feels beneath her fingertips.

She also knows she asked him about it once, at the start of their relationship, and that he said he was in a bus accident as a child.

But that wasn’t true.

‘Fire is the serial killer’s element,’ Bernard says, more to himself than anything. ‘He burns and spreads like a forest fire unless someone stops him.’

He gets up, refills his wineglass and gazes out into the darkness on the other side of the window before sitting down again.

Agneta knows that she needs to get away from him, no matter the cost, before his rain of red arrows hits her.

‘Shall I go and get some more wood?’ she asks, as naturally as she can.

‘We’ve got enough here.’

‘Not to last until morning,’ she says, suddenly queasy.

‘We’ll see.’

The wind rumbles in the chimney, and the light from the fire flickers over the floor lamp with the grey snakeskin shade.

Bernard dips a finger into his wine and absentmindedly draws a faint line on the table.

‘What do you think about the Widow? Are we really looking for a woman?’ he asks, taking a sip.

‘Almost all serial killers are men,’ she replies, hiding her trembling lips behind her hand until she manages to compose herself.

‘Loners.’

‘Antisocial.’

‘Like authors,’ he points out with a strange smile.

‘No.’ She smiles back.

‘With a loveless, or violent upbringing,’ he continues.

‘Torturing animals used to be one of the traits, but .?.?.’

‘I know, who hasn’t tortured an animal or two? I’m kidding, of course, but I just read the report from the latest FBI convention, and they’ve taken a step back from the whole bed- wetting, animal-torturing, pyromaniac angle.’

‘Mmm, to avoid inadvertently ruling anyone out,’ she says with a nod.

A sudden gust dampens the fire for a moment. The windows rattle, and a branch breaks with a loud crack outside.

‘Do you think it was the Widow who came over here? To stop Hugo? Who hit me and took the gold and cash to make it look like a break-in?’

‘Or maybe it was just a break-in.’

‘But if it was the killer, she might come back.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Agneta whispers.

‘It’s not like we can call the police now.’

‘Stop.’

The blizzard is howling around the house with such force that it almost feels like the wind might pick it up and carry it away, like a carousel in a tornado.

‘No phone, no internet. Not even any emergency calls,’ Bernard says with a smile.

‘Could we stop talking about this?’ she begs him, eyes welling up.

‘Sorry, I just can’t help myself.’

‘Very funny,’ she mumbles.

‘You trust me, don’t you?’ he teases her, putting on a creepy voice.

‘Now you’re just trying to make me uncomfortable.’

‘Are you really scared?’

‘No, I’m not. It’s just tough .?.?. with the break-in and the fact that Hugo was named in the press .?.?.’

‘And this storm, which is forecast to last several days,’ Bernard says, dipping his finger into the wine and using it to complete an arrow pointing straight at her on the table.