Page 170 of The Sleepwalker

‘Olga, listen. I’m in charge of a separate investigation, and you’ve been called in for questioning.’

‘Yeah, I know, but I can’t talk to the cops.’

‘Yet here you are.’

‘Do I have any choice?’

She purses her lips, breathing through her nose and the tiny holes in her cheeks.

‘When you woke Hugo while he was sleepwalking at your apartment, he started talking about the campsite in Bredäng,’ Joona begins.

‘Yeah, he was totally manic.’

‘What did he say?’

‘What did he say? I was in shock, and he was really fucking incoherent. Babbling about my balcony door, the lock, the knife, the snow falling on the campsite and dark caravans. I don’t know, I was just trying to calm him down, to keep him still.’

‘Did he see the killer?’

‘I don’t think so. That’s not the impression I got, anyway, but he did say something about a bloody tooth. One with a gold crown.’

Olga mutters in Polish as a line of men in handcuffs file out through the doorway, and the ambulances fill up with young men wrapped in blankets.

Joona decides that it is time to hand her over to his colleagues and head home to get some sleep.

The investigation has just taken a significant step forward. Very few people know that the serial killer has extracted teeth from her victims, which means that Hugo really was able to see the reality behind his nightmare and that – temporarily, at least – the detail was stored somewhere in his memory.

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Following the murder of Ida Forsgren-Fisher, the investigation has been given top priority. They currently have five targeted victims – including Lucia Pedersen – and two dead witnesses.

Photographs of the victims have been pinned up on the wall in the meeting room, alongside pictures from the crime scenes and some of the forensic evidence.

The team has managed to find a blurry image of a pale-blue Opel without registration plates on the E18 close to Enköping and, after scouring the footage from a large number of other cameras in the region, have established that the car doesn’t show up anywhere else.

The Widow could easily have crossed the border into Norway by now.

But she isn’t done yet, thinks Joona. She is just lying low while she watches her next victim.

He doubts her Opel even made it past Västerås. Most likely is that it disappeared somewhere in the network of backroads between the small, sparsely populated hamlets like Villberga, Grillby and Haga.

Joona is sitting at the table with his boss, Noah Hellman, and his colleagues, Bondesson, Rikard Roslund and Anna Andersson. They are joined by Göran Bergh, from the West Region, and Omar Nasri. Frida Nobel has also stepped in toreplace Stina Linton, who will be on sick leave for at least a month.

They began the meeting with the boss taking them through that morning’s press conference, explaining that the pressure from both the politicians and the media has risen exponentially. Joona then played the recording from the second hypnosis session, in which Hugo Sand witnessed the murder through the window at the rear of the caravan. Rikard tried to say something about the human aspect of the case, and was so moved by his own words that he had to leave the room to compose himself.

Joona’s eyes drift over the pictures of the victims, comparing their wounds, severed limbs, cuts, bruises and livor mortis spots.

‘We need to remember that the investigatory machine usually works,’ says Omar, running a hand over the table. ‘We’re following the new guidelines, and the wheels are all turning like they’re supposed to .?.?. just slowly. Frustratingly slowly, it feels like.’

‘Yeah,’ Anna says with a sigh.

‘Let’s be bloody honest here,’ Göran snaps, getting to his feet. ‘It’s notfrustrating, it’s fucking torture to be stuck behind a desk when people are having their heads chopped off .?.?.’

‘Let’s take it easy, OK?’ Noah tells him.

‘We’re all feeling the pressure, but that’s natural,’ Frida says, blushing.

‘Is it?’ Göran replies.