Page 107 of The Sleepwalker

‘Kimberly got there at nine p.m. and left at two the next morning,’ she replies. ‘My driver can confirm that.’

‘Is there anything else I should know?’

‘I don’t even know what happened to him.’

‘Still.’

‘I’m not sure, this is all a bit much. You could leave your card.’

Joona reaches for his phone and shares his contact details with her before getting up from his chair.

‘One piece of advice .?.?. talk to your family before they hear what happened from elsewhere,’ he says.

‘I’m going to go and see our daughter now,’ she says, standing up too.

‘Yes, it would probably be good for you to be together now.’

‘Amanda is going through a bit of a difficult period at the moment,’ she explains. ‘She suffers from schizophrenia and is currently on the psychosis ward at the University Hospital, which is reassuring, but it’s not going to be easy to break the news to her.’

39

For the team at the NCU, Friday began before the sun had even risen with a festive Saint Lucy’s day procession. It meant that Joona had glitter in his hair during the morning meeting, where he found out that it would be two weeks before the National Forensic Centre would have time to process their samples.

Three frustrating days followed, involving nothing but interviews with the victims’ friends and relatives, more fruitless rounds of door knocking and attempts to locate the Opel. They trawled through vast amounts of material from the CCTV cameras around the campsite, tennis club and Älvkarleby, but failed to find even a single sighting of the Kadett.

* * *

Joona’s apartment is dark when he gets home. He turns on the light in the kitchen, puts a pot of potatoes on to boil, fries the meat patties he made that morning and whips up a quick cream and cognac sauce. Earlier that day, he sent a message to Saga asking if she would like to join him for dinner, but she replied the way she always does: ‘Thanks, but I can’t make it tonight.’

In silence, Joona sets the table for one, opens a bottle of non-alcoholic beer and sits down to eat, adding lingonberry jam and pickled cucumber to his plate.

He misses Valeria so much that he finds it nearly impossible to avoid thinking about Leila’s glowing needles and twisting columns of smoke.

His soul has sustained a number of deep wounds over the years, and in his darkest moments he has occasionally turned to opium. The drug enables him to sink to the very bottom, almost on the brink of death, before returning to the surface.

He doesn’t want to go back there now, to feel the opium’s cold embrace, largely because he wouldn’t be able to bear seeing the disappointment in Valeria’s eyes once she realised what he has done.

I’m weaker than I am strong, he thinks. But my greatest weakness is that I have to keep pushing myself forward, that I’m incapable of giving up.

Joona does the dishes, wipes the table and is just putting the leftover food into the fridge when his phone rings. He moves back over to the table, sees that Agneta is calling, and immediately picks up.

‘Are you free to talk?’ she asks.

‘Of course.’

‘I’ve got the results already,’ she says. ‘Paid slightly more for the express service. As I understand it, we’ve got a good match considering it was mitochondrial DNA.’

‘How good?’

In the background, he catches Bernard saying something in an excitable voice.

‘There’s only one mutation separating them,’ Agneta continues. ‘Which means the match could only be the child, mother or sister of the killer.’

‘Could you—’

Joona stops talking when he hears his phone ping, and he sees that Agneta has shared a contact with him:

Elisabeth Olsson