Page 44 of The Sleepwalker

Jack caught a glimpse of a face. He has been thinking about it all day and knows he would be able to give a good description –both of the bloody figure and of the car, which had a cluster of air fresheners hanging from the rear-view mirror.

‘I’ll do it,’ he mutters to himself. ‘I’ll call it in.’

He looks down at his phone. It would be good to head into one of the nearby shops to warm up for a bit, but he doesn’t have time.

He needs to get over to the playground.

Jack walks down the alleyway towards the square, unlocks one of the e-scooters and sets off for Edsviken.

When he reaches Neptunusvägen, he slows down and lets the scooter fall into the grass by the side of the road. He takes off his rucksack and shoves his mittens inside, then pushes back his hood and makes his way over to the black van.

As ever, one of the tinted side windows is slightly open. He knows Ibra will be sitting on the other side, in a bulletproof vest and with a Glock in his hand.

Jack pushes the black bag of money through the gap, and the van pulls away.

He opens the gate to the dark playground and hears the hinges creak. The frozen sand is hard underfoot, crunching beneath his shoes.

He cuts between the miniature climbing wall and a pale-blue slide, and walks over to the swings by the back wall and the dark trees.

Jack looks around, thinking about the bloody figure he saw in the blinking light. About the axe in their hand, and the way they were moving over the dead grass like some sort of demon.

Glancing over to the tennis club, he notices that the police have cordoned off the area around the courts with blue and white tape.

A knot of anxiety settles in his gut.

There are two deer in the middle of the grass, and they both raise their heads, suddenly on high alert.

The wind blows a plastic ball along the edge of the wood.

Jack reaches into the tyre swing and finds the stash, but when he tries to take it out he realises that it is stuck.

The deer bolt away, and he hears a branch break among the trees.

He doesn’t want to rip the bag and risk losing any of the drugs.

He takes out his phone, turns on the torch and has just got onto his knees to get a better look when he hears something rustle behind him.

Jack turns his head and sees a person striding towards him, but he doesn’t have time to get up before something slams into his head.

His teeth smash together, and his phone drops to the sand. His head feels heavy and unsteady.

Jack is still on his knees, and he knows that he should pull his knife to defend himself, but he feels oddly weak.

Blood trickles down his face and neck, dripping onto his phone and turning the beam of light from his torch pink.

Somehow, as his field of vision starts to shrink, he understands that the blade of an axe has just sliced through his hat and skull, burying itself deep in his brain.

Jack just has time to think about his little brother’s sulky face, his fair eyebrows and the dinosaur plaster on his forehead, and then he loses consciousness.

16

The sunlight filtering in through the dirty windows at the National Crime Unit makes the flecks of dust shimmer in the air.

Joona is at his desk in the investigation room.

Through the closed door, he can hear the monotonous whirr of the printer in the copy room, spitting out sheet after sheet of paper at high speed.

The autopsy has yet to take place, but everyone on the team is convinced that the young drug pusher found dead in the playground by Edsviken Tennis Club was killed because he saw something when Nils Nordlund was beheaded.