Page 68 of The Sleepwalker

‘You should call him.’

‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’

‘I should probably get going anyway. I have to be up early in the morning,’ she says.

Dr Erik Maria Bark is a specialist in psycho-traumatology and disaster psychiatry, and spent four years leading a ground-breaking research project into deep hypnotic group therapy at the Karolinska Institute. He is a member of the European Society of Hypnosis, has written a major standard work on the subject, and is now considered one of the foremost authorities on clinical hypnosis in the world.

24

The three northbound lanes of the motorway are clogged with dirty cars, buses and lorries, a steady stream of traffic flowing past industrial units selling cut-price sports gear, furniture and building materials.

As Joona and Erik drive to Uppsala in Joona’s car, he tells his friend that Valeria’s father has passed away. She didn’t make it in time for the funeral, but she is currently in Brazil to support her mother.

Joona thinks about the small box of dark chocolate coins Valeria gave him before she left. She knows all too well that he loves chocolate, but also that he doesn’t think he deserves anything sweet.

‘Would you do me a favour and just eat them?’ she said with a smile. ‘Eat the chocolate and think of me.’

‘I’ll be thinking of you anyway.’

‘So stubborn,’ she sighed.

Joona has decided that he will allow himself one of the coins once he makes a concrete step forward in the case.

Erik starts talking about how beautiful he thought their summer wedding was, laughing at the fact that his son Benjamin got drunk and tried to flirt with Lumi.

‘He didn’t stand a chance,’ the doctor continues with a smile.

Joona pictures Valeria in her thin, pearl-white weddingdress, a crown of lingonberry leaves in her hair.

Their guests’ voices echoed through the church they had decorated with foliage, between the limewashed walls and the vaulted ceiling, the runestones and the medieval altarpiece.

Tears had started spilling down his cheeks when he felt how much Valeria’s hand was shaking as he pushed the ring onto her finger.

Their friends and family stood up as the newlyweds left the church to Bytt-Lasse’s melancholy bridal march.

Lumi’s smiling face. Valeria’s boys and their families.

And then the scent of light summer rain on the steps outside, veils of mist rising from the fields and meadows.

Joona realises he is driving a little too fast.

To the left of the motorway, the ground slopes up towards the top of the esker and the old gravel pit.

A place that is etched deep inside him.

It was here, many years ago, that he made one of the decisions that would darken his soul. He knew he had changed forever as he watched the body roll down the slope, tumbling like a corpse into a mass grave.

Joona doesn’t feel any instinct to kill, but he is capable of killing on instinct if that is what the situation demands of him – as he was taught by Lieutenant Rinus Advocaat. Assessment, decision and action have to take place simultaneously.

He maintains his tight grip on the wheel until they have passed Rosersberg Palace, and he runs a hand through his hair, glances over to Erik and then resumes their earlier conversation about their visit to the Sleep Science Lab.

When Joona called Erik, he told him all about the preliminary investigation, the brutal murders and Hugo Sand’s remarkable role in what had happened.

‘Sleepwalking – and sleepwalking during REM sleep, in particular – is a complex thing .?.?. And as I say, it’s not really myspecialism,’ Erik explains now.

‘I think I’m starting to understand how it works from Hugo’s point of view,’ says Joona. ‘He seems to remember fragments of some kind of panicked dream that takes place in his parents’ house, but never anything he actually experiences, despite having his eyes open.’

‘Because the dream overpowers everything else going on in his brain,’ Erik says with a nod.