Page 48 of The Sleepwalker

‘That I’ve come here so that you – now that you’re a witness rather than a suspect – can tell me anything you might have been advised not to share before. Anything that might have made you look suspicious even if you were innocent.’

‘I just told the truth,’ Hugo says, fiddling with the ring in his lower lip.

‘You said that you sleepwalked to the campsite and woke up in the caravan when one of the police officers fired his weapon. That, for you, it was like you jumped from being awake in your bed at home to lying on the bloody floor. In your first interview, you said that you didn’t remember anything between those two points, but I think you do.’

‘Nope.’

‘But sleepwalkers see their surroundings, even though they’re not awake. They don’t crash into furniture, they’re capable of unlocking doors, and so on,’ Joona points out.

‘That doesn’t mean they remember it, though.’

‘But you do, don’t you?’

‘You don’t have to answer that,’ says Bernard.

‘What do you remember?’

‘Don’t answer that,’ Bernard repeats. ‘You don’t have to—’

‘It’s fine, Dad,’ Hugo snaps. ‘I want to help, but I really don’tremember. I never do. I think the dreams are too powerful.’

‘What dreams?’

‘Intense nightmares .?.?. They’re the reason I sometimes wake up in weird places.’

‘Do you remember the dreams afterwards?’ Joona asks as he takes a sip of his coffee.

‘Bits and pieces,’ Hugo replies with a shrug.

‘So do you remember any bits and pieces from the night you woke up in the caravan?’

‘No idea, but it’s always the same thing: I have to get away. None of it means anything.’

‘But what did you see when you woke up?’

‘I was fucking terrified. They were screaming at me, and there was blood everywhere.’

‘That’s your immediate impression, but what did you reallysee?’ Joona presses him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘There was a lot of blood in that room, but it wasn’teverywhere.’

‘No, OK,’ Hugo says wearily.

‘I’m looking for specific observations. Details.’

‘I’ve told you what I remember.’

‘We often register more than we realise.’

‘Do we?’ Hugo sighs.

He gets up, takes a glass from the cabinet above the counter and stands with his back to the room as he runs the cold tap.

‘You’re wearing a silver ring in one nostril, another in your lower lip, and six earrings. The one in your left lobe is a garnet heart. Your dad doesn’t like it when you bite your nails, but you do it anyway, whenever you’re stressed. You broke your collarbone as a child, and you’re wearing a washed-out T-shirt fromActes Sud, which is a French publisher, but—’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Hugo says, turning off the tap once hisglass is full.