Page 17 of The Sleepwalker

He needs to get out, run away and call the police. His hands grope the window frame, but the latch has been removed.

The aggressive shouts of the men reach him through the ceiling, and there is a loud crash as the carafe breaks on the floor.

The smell of smoke drifts through the house.

Hugo tries pulling on the window frame, but it won’t budge, seems to have been screwed shut from the outside.

He hears gunfire, two salvos of three shots, followed by a woman screaming. It must be Agneta, but her voice sounds so panicked that he barely recognises it.

Hugo’s father shouts, ‘Don’t touch her!’ and more gunshots ring out.

In the room above, shattered glass crashes to the floor.Agneta screams again, and Hugo hears her being dragged out of bed and away.

Heart racing, he starts hitting the windowpane with both hands. Despite the darkness, he realises that there is some sort of solid material covering the glass. Beneath a small hatch with horizontal metal slats, there is also – oddly enough – a laminated notice about evacuation in case of fire.

Hugo hears quick footsteps coming down the stairs, someone shouts a command, and door after door is kicked in along the hallway.

Trying not to make a sound, he tiptoes back over to his bed. His hands shake as he plumps up his pillows to make them look like a body beneath the covers.

They will be here any minute now.

He crawls beneath the bed, right up against the wall, and holds his breath as his door is kicked open.

* * *

It is light when Hugo wakes beneath the bed, and he feels a rush of anxiety when he remembers where he is. His body aches as he crawls out and straightens up. The yellow blanket he was given the night before is rolled up on his bed. He sits down on the edge of the mattress and stares at his hands. One of his knuckles is caked in dried blood, the bruises like dark clouds beneath his skin.

Hugo realises he must have been sleepwalking again, but he remembers only fragments of his nightmare.

Shouting and shots from the floor above.

His remand hearing took place yesterday afternoon, and the prosecutor cited the ‘special grounds’ covered by paragraph twenty-three of the Young Offenders (Special Provisions) Act in her argument for keeping him in custody.

When the district court ruled that they agreed with the prosecutor, Hugo turned to look at his father. Bernard’s eyes had welled up, and his chin was trembling with repressed emotion.

Hugo was remanded in custody on suspicion of murder and transferred to Kronoberg Prison.

Because he is not yet eighteen, he cannot be held for any longer than three months before charges are brought against him.

His first night in detention is now over, and he feels a rising sense of panic.

Hugo tucks a lock of hair back behind his ear and takes in his cramped cell. His eyes wander over the wall-mounted bed, the shelf, the chair and dented pine desk.

He doesn’t have a toilet, but can always pee in the sink if necessary.

There are five thick horizontal bars over the window. Behind that, there is a dusty void, then another pane of glass.

The sky is dark above the rooftops.

Hugo is still wearing the soft green sweatpants and T-shirt he was given in custody, and he catches a strong whiff of sweat from himself. The white slippers are on the flecked grey floor.

This is already unbearable.

He missed his meeting with theKULTeditorial team yesterday.

Makes no difference, he tells himself. The job wouldn’t have suited him anyway. His life will be way too unstructured before he goes on his big trip.

Hugo was only seven when his parents split up. Claire had never been happy in Sweden, and she got hooked on synthetic opioids and moved back to Québec. At first, she wrote to him every week, but as the years passed their correspondence became increasingly infrequent, and she began to forget his birthdays. After Bernard met Agneta, virtually all contact withClaire stopped, and it has now been two years since he last heard from her. For all he knows, she could be in rehab, or maybe she just moved.