Page 227 of The Sleepwalker

‘Loners.’

‘Antisocial.’

‘Like authors,’ he points out with a strange smile.

‘No.’ She smiles back.

‘With a loveless, or violent upbringing,’ he continues.

‘Torturing animals used to be one of the traits, but .?.?.’

‘I know, whohasn’ttortured an animal or two? I’m kidding, of course, but I just read the report from the latest FBI convention, and they’ve taken a step back from the whole bed-wetting, animal-torturing, pyromaniac angle.’

‘Mmm, to avoid inadvertently ruling anyone out,’ she says with a nod.

A sudden gust dampens the fire for a moment. The windows rattle, and a branch breaks with a loud crack outside.

‘Do you think it was the Widow who came over here? To stop Hugo? Who hit me and took the gold and cash to make it look like a break-in?’

‘Or maybe it was just a break-in.’

‘But if it was the killer, she might come back.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Agneta whispers.

‘It’s not like we can call the police now.’

‘Stop.’

The blizzard is howling around the house with such force that it almost feels like the wind might pick it up and carry it away, like a carousel in a tornado.

‘No phone, no internet. Not even any emergency calls,’ Bernard says with a smile.

‘Could we stop talking about this?’ she begs him, eyes welling up.

‘Sorry, I just can’t help myself.’

‘Very funny,’ she mumbles.

‘You trust me, don’t you?’ he teases her, putting on a creepy voice.

‘Now you’re justtryingto make me uncomfortable.’

‘Are you really scared?’

‘No, I’m not. It’s just tough .?.?. with the break-in and the fact that Hugo was named in the press .?.?.’

‘And this storm, which is forecast to last several days,’ Bernard says, dipping his finger into the wine and using it to complete an arrow pointing straight at her on the table.

79

The road is blanketed in snow, muffling the sound of Joona’s tyres as he drives through one dark community after another following the power cut.

He tries to reach Hugo and Agneta again, but the phone network is still down. Even the police comms system stopped working an hour ago. The backup reserve is meant to last seven days in a situation like this, but the Tetranät base stations all seem to have been knocked out, too, probably because of fallen masts.

Despite the stress bubbling inside him, Joona knows he can’t drive any faster. He passes an abandoned bus at the side of the road, and a second later it is gone, swallowed up by the swirling white.

When the blizzard rolled in over the fields and meadows, enveloping his car, his mind was cast back to Hugo’s hypnosis sessions, to the nightmare-addled second attempt and the stripped-back third.