Page 225 of The Sleepwalker

Perhaps he was the one who killed all those people with an axe. Who beheaded, dismembered and carved arrows into their flesh.

Who killed men and women, witnesses and police officers.

‘Shall we go downstairs?’ he asks, glancing into the empty Järvsö cabinet.

‘Let’s,’ she replies, getting up.

Agneta meets his eye, and it is as though she can see the cogs turning in his mind, trying to work out whether his cover has been blown. She feels like a panicked wasp inside a crushed nest when he smiles suddenly and announces that he is going to open a bottle of wine.

With a sinking feeling, Agneta realises that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if he knew what she now knows about him.

78

Bernard reaches for the candle and cups his hand around the flame as he makes his way down the stairs.

Agneta can feel her legs shaking as she follows him.

She is thinking about his drawings of boys with arrows on their chests, the swarm of red arrows raining down from the sky.

The stairs creak beneath her feet.

She finds a pack of beta blockers in her back pocket, and she quietly pops out one of the pills, turns her head and swallows it dry.

Their bedroom is warm and filled with the comforting scent of burning birch. The glow from the flames makes it look as though the walls are pulsing softly.

Instinct is screaming at Agneta to run, to flee down the stairs, through the hall and out into the storm, but she also knows she needs to tread carefully. She can’t afford to show a shred of fear while she waits for her moment: after he goes to sleep or takes a bath.

Bernard pours two glasses of wine and hands one of them to her. She has to grip it with both hands to stop the dark red liquid from shaking too much.

‘Cheers, my love,’ he says.

‘Cheers,’ she replies with a smile, trying to endure him stroking her arm.

She sips her wine and puts the glass down on the bedside table, suddenly remembering the faint pencil arrow on the wall above their bed, behind the Fontana painting.

She had completely forgotten about it until now.

Bernard pulls an armchair over to the woodburner and sits down on the footstool, gazing into the flames.

‘Sit down.’

He swirls the wine in his glass and seems a little more relaxed than earlier, his hand resting on her thigh for a moment once she is sitting in the chair.

Agneta feels the heat on her face and tries to avoid looking at the little axe in the wood basket, the one he uses to split logs.

‘What is it about mankind and fire?’ he asks without looking up. ‘I mean, we worship it, but we’re also afraid of it .?.?.’

‘Mmm.’

How could she have failed to notice anything suspicious all this time? Is it because she simply looked away, chose not to see what was so obvious?

No, he must have somewhere secret that he goes.

Lars Grind’s industrial unit, she realises. The one with the big silo. Bernard used to drive over there from time to time, when he needed peace and quiet to write. She remembers that she and Hugo went out with him once, the last time, to collect his things.

‘What do you think?’ he asks.

‘About what?’