Page 143 of The Sleepwalker

‘You’re still talking to the dead, I see,’ Erixon mumbles.

‘Sometimes.’

Joona isn’t sure why he does it. Perhaps it is simply his way of showing respect to the victim, however cold and clinical the crime scene investigation might be.

He wants to tell Ida that he sees her as an individual, as someone in need of integrity, dignity, and some form of justice.

There is a soft squelching sound as Joona moves forward and gently turns the two pieces of her torso over.

As a result of the sheer amount of blood she has lost, the livor mortis is practically non-existent, nothing but a small, pale cloud where the upper section of her thigh was touching the floor.

She has grazes on her hips, and her blonde pubic hair is matted with blood. Her robe has fallen open to reveal a creamy white breast, and above her belly button, there are two cuts in the shape of a V. A few centimetres of her crudely severed spine are visible, and thick blood is still seeping out of the mangledtissue.

The killer seems to have been overcome by an almost chaotic rage.

It reminds Joona of the kind of atrocities sometimes committed by soldiers after being whipped up into a frenzied thirst for revenge, with the key difference being that this deed has nothing sexual about it. None of the wounds are directed at the genitals, anus, breasts or mouth.

Ida hasn’t been tortured, but this time the dismemberment was central.

She fled to the garage, and the door hit the plank of wood screwed to the outside, preventing her from escaping. She tried to crawl through the gap, was dragged back inside and killed almost immediately, Joona thinks as he takes off his gloves.

‘Done already?’ Erixon asks.

‘No, but the case has just taken a pretty sharp turn, and I need to talk to the team before heading over to Uppsala to speak to Hugo Sand again.’

Erixon makes a half-hearted gesture to the body parts and blood on the floor.

‘You didn’t look, but there aren’t any defensive wounds on her arms,’ he says.

‘Of course not.’

‘No?’

‘She was killed too quickly for that.’

‘With a blow to the spine or the back of her head, you think?’

‘Her spine,’ Joona replies as he leaves the garage.

50

It is almost four in the afternoon, and Agneta and Hugo are driving to the Sleep Science Lab in her quiet Lexus. The pale sun set more than an hour ago, and the sky is now dark again.

The traffic thins out once they pass the turnoff to the airport.

Agneta is in the right-hand lane, behind a white van on which someone has drawn a crude heart in the dirt.

That morning, Hugo called Lars Grind to say that he would like to come back to the lab and that he would be willing to undergo more hypnosis if the police were still interested.

Agneta took a beta blocker and offered to drive him to Uppsala, because Bernard was fired up and wanted to write about Hugo’s interview, the intruder and the security cameras. Singing ‘La donna è mobile’, he headed up to his office in the attic with a handful of ginger biscuits and a whole pot of coffee.

Looking back now, it feels surreal that the three of them sat huddled together in the bedroom until the security firm got to the house. The two guards searched every room and then knocked on the door. Bernard got up to speak to them, and Hugo returned the poker to the stand by the stove.

When the police arrived ten minutes later, they took over from the guards and spoke to the family in the kitchen. The officers checked the security footage and photographed the footprints around the house. There were signs of attemptedentry on Hugo’s window, and in the corner by the sunroom they discovered that the intruder had drawn a full-sized door on the wall in black spray paint.

It was two in the morning by the time they had the house to themselves again. Bernard swept and mopped the hallway floor, cleaning up the mud and snow the guards and police officers had trampled in. The three of them then slept together in the main bedroom with the door locked, Hugo on a mattress on the floor and Agneta and Bernard in their usual bed.

None of them said anything, but they were all thinking the same thing: that the intruder hadn’t been apprehended, and that none of the cameras had caught him leaving the property.