Page 58 of The Sleepwalker

A crystalline powder the colour of wax.

He halves the pile using a tarot card, shapes it into two long lines, then gets up and hands a narrow silver tube to Kimberly.

Holding her hair back with one hand, she bends down, snorts her line and wipes her nose. Breathing heavily, she lets out a loud groan, staggers back, slumps onto the bed and curls up in the foetal position.

‘You OK?’

‘Fuck, fuck,’ she pants.

‘Kimberly?’

‘What?’

‘Are you OK?’

‘Good,’ she says with a smile.

Pontus takes the tube from her hand and moves back overto the mirror on the table. He bends down over the powdered methamphetamine and inhales.

As he straightens up, he feels a burning sensation in his nose and sinuses. The powder leaves a bitter taste at the back of his throat, and his eyes have just started to water when the drug kicks in with frightening force.

‘Christ,’ he hears himself mutter.

The hairs on the back of his neck are standing on end, and a lust-filled electricity floods through his veins as a veil of crushed ice passes over him.

Pontus gropes for something to steady himself against, slumps onto the bed and falls to the floor. His heart is racing, and he is breathing rapidly through his half-open mouth.

The first wave of euphoria is overwhelming, all-encompassing.

‘Yeah? You OK?’ she asks.

‘Almost, just give me a second,’ he says, trying to blink away the blindness.

From the almost unbearable peak, he slowly sinks to a plateau where he knows he might stay for hours.

Kimberly throws her dress to the floor and stands in front of him, legs apart, in her sheer black underwear.

Pontus gets up on trembling legs, his mind crystal clear and flash-lit from the inside. He unbuttons his shirt as he circles her with his eyes fixed on her crotch.

‘Come on, then,’ she says, backing up towards the bed. ‘Come on, for God’s sake.’

He pushes her onto the covers, pinning her down with one hand between her breasts as he yanks off her knickers with the other.

They have been married for twenty years, and have a twenty-two-year-old daughter.

Pontus is the vice chancellor of Dalarna University, andspends four days a week in Falun before returning home to Uppsala, where they have a grand apartment on the top floor of a late nineteenth-century building.

Her real name is Caroline Bandling, and she is the managing director of BC Group, a financial advisory and management company. Kimberly is simply her persona when she meets her husband at basic motels and hostels somewhere between Falun and Uppsala.

21

Under influence of the methamphetamine, the couple have been having sex non-stop for four hours when Kimberly’s phone pings for the second time with a reminder about a video call with a major investor in California at 03.45.

The fire has died down in the stove.

They haven’t had anything to eat or drink, and have barely exchanged a single word, but she has had more than twenty orgasms, Pontus five or six.

Kimberly turns on the light and takes a quick shower before getting dressed – not bothering with her underwear – and calling her driver.