Page 93 of The Sleepwalker

His legs are like jelly.

Rikard turns into the dining room, crosses the bowing laminate floor and tries to open the patio doors.

He feels a searing pain in his injured wrist as he tugs at the handle.

The door is locked.

Panting heavily, he takes a step back and kicks it as hard as he can. His foot makes a dull thud as it hits the glass, but the door doesn’t budge.

He has just turned around and started scanning the room for somewhere to hide when he sees Jezebel coming towards the dining room from reception. She pauses outside, uses his pistol to tap on the window in the door, and waves.

Rikard grabs the microwave oven, yanking out the plug in the process, and carries it back over to the patio doors. Lifting it above his head, he hurls it through the glass.

Jezebel opens the door and fires his gun. The bullet slams into the wall two metres away from him.

Rikard kicks out the shards of glass and crawls through the hole to the patio. The broken window crunches beneath him. He steps over the low hedge and starts running towards the petrol station.

He can hear a large vehicle approaching, and the cold air claws at his lungs.

Jezebel is right behind him.

Up ahead, on the other side of the fence around a HVAC firm, Rikard spots a security guard with a torch.

‘Help!’ he shouts.

The guard glances in his direction and then starts walking towards his car. He turns off the torch, gets in behind the wheel and takes out his phone.

Rikard runs out into the road just as a lorry appears from the right.

The driver slams on the brakes, and the tyres screech against the tarmac. The man turns the wheel, and the heavy vehicle thunders past Rikard with only inches to spare.

It crosses the hard shoulder, careens into the ditch and slams into a lamppost. The light goes out, and the post topples like a felled trunk, bringing down a banner for Christmas trees with it.

The lorry crashes through a couple of bushes and a low fence before making it up the embankment to the road on the other side. Soil and debris spray across the tarmac. The trailer sways as the driver accelerates, and a moment later it vanishes out of sight.

‘God .?.?.’

Heart racing, Rikard is hurrying towards the roundabout in the yellow light from the petrol station when he notices Jezebel approaching from the side. He stops, turns to face her and holds up both hands.

‘I’m a police officer, I—’

She pulls the trigger, and the bullet slams into his vest. Rikard feels a burning sensation on the left-hand side of his torso, and he staggers back, grabs a branch in an attempt to stay upright, and hears the gunshot echo between the buildings.

* * *

Joona is driving at 210 kilometres an hour when he brakes and turns sharply to leave the motorway. His tyres scrape against the edge of the island in the middle of the road, and he accelerates along the 264 in the darkness.

He turned on his hidden blue lights and left the rest of the tactical unit behind on the E18. The connection with Rikard had dropped just before he left Lidingö through the Northern Link tunnel, and Joona realised that his colleague had decided to go in, that something unforeseen had drawn him into a situation, despite the direct order to hold back.

Industrial buildings race by outside, fleets of machinery and high fences.

He is approaching the hotel at high speed when he passes an articulated lorry with two broken headlights.

To one side of the road, a lamppost is lying in the ditch.

There are dark skid marks across the carriageway, with earth and clumps of grass dragged across the tarmac.

From the petrol station nearby, yellow light floods out across the road.