Page 99 of The Sleepwalker

Joona leans across the table.

‘You were parked beside the john’s Mercedes, which was over by the gates. When you reversed out of the bay, you would have pulled towards the Opel. You must have seen it in the rear-view mirror.’

‘Yeah, it .?.?.’

She trails off and starts picking at the scratch on the table again.

‘Did you see anything in the rear lights?’

‘There were some of those little tree things that smell like pine in the windscreen,’ she says, licking her lips.

‘Air fresheners?’

‘Yeah, but that was the weird thing,’ she says, meeting his eye. ‘There were probably fifteen of them hanging off the mirror, in a big bunch.’

36

Amina Abdallah feels the chill through her wetsuit as she wades out into the freezing river with her lemon-yellow kayak.

Half an hour ago, she pulled into a parking bay by the end of the bridge and loosened the straps on the roof rack. The sun was high in the sky, but a stubborn band of last night’s snow was still lingering in the shade up against the wall.

Amina carried the kayak and the rest of her gear down to the pebbly shore just below the Älvkarleby Power Station.

She is now getting ready to set off, and can feel the current pushing her kayak to the right over and over again.

Strictly speaking, she should be in the kitchen at home right now, but she needed to get out, to clear her head.

The roar from the turbines and the surging water is almost deafening.

Her older brother Ali has just come back from Wadi Halfa, and though he is crashing at her place in Skutskär, he seems to expect to be treated like some sort of king. In his view, she should be serving him sugary tea between meals, waiting on him hand and foot and addressing him as ‘Your Excellency’.

Ali spent three years working on the railway in Sudan, but after injuring his knee he flew back to Sweden, leaving his wife and three kids behind. Now, he spends his days slumped on Amina’s sofa, watching Arabic-language TV with the Koran inone hand.

He goes on and on about how unfair life is, pushing conspiracy theories, talking about moral decay and repeating disinformation – claiming the Swedish authorities steal Muslim children and that it’s against the law to burn the Torah but not the Koran.

Ali doesn’t have a job, but Amina works in a nursery and does extra shifts cleaning offices at the weekend. She supports her mother and little sister, does all of the shopping and cooking, and looks after her uncle’s kids every Friday.

‘I’ll find you a good Nubian husband,’ Ali told her, not for the first time, as she set down a plate of booza in front of him.

‘I don’t want a husband,’ she replied.

‘I’m ashamed of you. Everyone is.’

‘Well, don’t be,’ she mumbled as she left the room.

She balances her paddle across the kayak, adjusts her helmet and straightens the tow line around her waist, then looks out at the river and the writhing current.

Amina has signed up for the Swedish kayak cross and white water kayaking championships, and has been told that she has a good chance of getting onto the national team if she wins.

The competition will be held in Åmsele next summer.

She has no idea whether she is good enough, and knows she should really join a club of some kind, but she doesn’t have time to socialise. All she wants is to get out onto the water.

Amina first started kayaking in high school, but she has only ever been out on her own since then, for fun, and doesn’t know how she might get on at the championships.

Despite that, she dreams of winning.

A spruce branch floats by, and she waits for it to pass before gripping both sides of the cockpit and lifting herself up. She swings both feet inside and lowers herself onto the seat.