Page 219 of The Sleepwalker

Two black vans are parked on the street outside.

During the drive from Uppsala, as his eyes recovered from the tear gas, Thor reminded his team that it is not OK toshootthe lock out of a door.

He is the last to get out of the van, and the snow immediately peppers his grey-flecked beard. He turns his back to the wind and walks over to his team behind the other van.

In the deserted building site next door, a crane has blown over, crushing a loader.

‘Listen up,’ Thor says quietly. ‘There really aren’t enough of us for this, given the size of the place, but the comms systems are all down because of the storm .?.?. That means no backup, but we’re here now and we have a job to do before we can head home and give our boys and girls a squeeze.’

The plan is to enter the lab from two sides simultaneously, storming the main door and the staff entrance, searching every room, finding the suspected killer and arresting him. Considering there are patients and researchers inside, they willneed to make it clear that they are police officers, and should only use tear gas or stun grenades if they have no other option.

‘This fucking weather,’ Nolan mutters as he makes his way over to the fence with a pair of bolt cutters.

‘There’s no such thing was bad weather, just bad clothing,’ two of the operatives retort in unison.

Nolan cuts a large hole in the fence, bends back the sharp edges and uses cable ties to hold it open.

Thor turns on the light on his helmet and decides that he probably needs to talk to someone about the impact Kristina’s problems are having on him, eating away at his sense of calm and making him see things that aren’t there.

‘Wouldn’t it have been easier just to shoot a hole in it?’ one of the men jokes as he ducks through the opening.

Thor exchanges a look with Nolan and points out their approach.

Four men from the team make their way over to the main entrance while Thor and Nolan run across to the staff door.

There is an ominous groaning sound as the wind tugs at the metal roof.

The beam from Thor’s helmet light illuminates Nolan’s back, making his rectangular reflector badge flash in the darkness.

They round a concrete pillar and continue towards the carport, where four cars are parked beneath the flat rain cover.

A few pieces of white plastic garden furniture skid across the ground.

There is so much snow on Thor’s visor that he has to stop and take it off before he can continue, squinting up ahead.

It feels as though he is in some sort of dream world, a pale chaos twisting in all directions, changing speed and causing the laws of gravity to stop working.

The powerful gusts of wind slam against the building, making the snow swirl upwards.

Nolan continues towards the first car.

The drifting flakes have blown in beneath the rain cover, piling up against the wall of the building like a wave ready to break.

Thor feels feverish, and realises that he has begun to fixate on irrelevant details.

He wipes the snow out of his eyes and follows his colleague.

On the ground by a red car, there is a dead magpie.

Nolan runs over to the concrete loading dock and up the steel steps, pausing by the door and taking out an angle grinder.

Thor’s back is sweaty, and he feels a sudden rush of fear that someone is about to charge towards him through the haze.

With a whimper, he turns around and raises his rifle.

He hears a loud scraping, screeching sound, and sees sparks flying from the angle grinder, scattering across the loading dock.

Thor lowers his rifle and takes his finger from the trigger. His torchlight bounces off the cars.