Page 142 of The Sleepwalker

Joona glances out onto the balcony.

There are no footprints in the snow, just small pockmarks from the shards of glass that fell when the glass in the door broke.

The bed has been heaved onto its side against one wall.

Joona opens the door to the linen cupboard and studies the passageway for a moment, then leaves the bedroom and heads through to the nursery.

The large toy cupboard is at an odd angle, away from the wall.

This must be how Ida got out, he thinks.

The killer broke through the bedroom door, realised the room was empty and smashed the door to the balcony.

Joona steps over a small toy crocodile and makes his way back out into the kitchen. There is a broken wineglass on the brown-tiled floor, he notices.

He goes back down the stairs and says hello to the forensictechnician working in the lounge.

‘The lock was drilled out,’ the man says, nodding to the sliding patio doors.

Joona thanks him for the information, turns back out of the lounge and opens the door to the boiler room.

The killer sealed every exit and got into the house via the deck.

Joona moves past the humming ground source heat pump.

The forensic technicians’ lights from the garage seep into the room through the cracks around the door up ahead.

In addition to the axe, the killer had a power tool and a drill bit with a hardened tip.

Joona opens the door to the garage and pauses on the first step plate, dazzled by the glare.

Every inch of the room is illuminated, banishing any shadows beneath the bikes with flat tyres, skis and gardening tools.

Erixon comes into the garage with a folding chair beneath his arm. Without a word, he sits down, sighs and looks around the crime scene.

The air is heavy with the stench of blood and faeces.

It is as though time has ground to a halt here.

More than half the floor is covered in blood, and there are also spatters on the walls and across the ceiling, on the stacks of car tyres and a blue roof box.

Dark blood has also trickled down the side of a plastic box full of baubles.

A red-and-blue children’s bicycle with pictures of Spider-Man on the frame stands as some sort of mute spectator to the massacre, the tread marks from its tyres visible at the very edge of the pool of blood.

Joona composes himself and forces his eyes to linger on every detail, piecing together the sequence of events in his mind.

The dismemberment that took place here is the most brutalto date.

The woman’s head has been severed from her body and chopped into several pieces, and her fingers are scattered across the rough concrete floor, alongside segments of her arm and legs and feet.

The lower half of her torso is lying belly down, with bare buttocks, while the top half is slumped on its side, wrapped in a purple silk robe.

On a segment of leg, stretching from thigh to knee, there are a number of visible cuts and superficial axe wounds.

Joona attempts to read the room, methodically working his way between ragged flesh, blood-drenched cuts, bone marrow, cartilage and brain tissue.

‘I’m so sorry this happened to you,’ he says as he pulls on a new pair of latex gloves.