Page 13 of The Sleepwalker
‘Hugo woke in the middle of a road with a lorry blasting its horn and slamming the brakes on .?.?. He’d got out of bed, gone down the stairs, unlocked the front door and walked almost two kilometres.’
Hugo smiles apologetically, but his face turns serious when he notices Joona’s eyes on him.
‘How often do you wake up in other places?’
‘Pretty often.’
‘And do you know where you are when you wake up?’
‘It varies.’
‘Have you ever been to Bredäng Campsite before?’ Joona holds Hugo’s eye.
‘Yeah .?.?. I used to go there all the time with my friends. I’ve taken girls there, too, smoked hash.’
‘You never mentioned that,’ says Bernard.
‘Wonder why .?.?.’ Hugo mumbles.
‘As I understand it, sleepwalkers often have their eyes open. Is that the case for you?’ asks Joona.
‘Yes, he does,’ Bernard replies on his son’s behalf.
‘Do you remember any of what you see?’
‘Nope.’
‘So you have no idea whether you murdered the man in the caravan?’
4
Tiny snowflakes swirl across the tarmac in the half light on Göran Greiders väg, giving Joona the sense of slowly driving a motorboat down a grey canal.
He is thinking about the fact that it isn’t unusual for killers to be found at the scene of the crime, drunk or on drugs, regretful or paralysed by their deeds. But Hugo Sand was fast asleep on the bloody floor with a severed arm beneath his head.
Joona passes the Department of Neuroscience and turns off towards the National Board of Forensic Medicine, where electric Advent candles glow in every window. Nils Åhlén’s white Porsche is parked a few metres from a slanting charging post surrounded by shards of red plastic from a broken taillight.
He parks, gets out of the car and fills his lungs with the cool air.
A sudden rush of anxiety for Valeria washes over him, and he takes out his phone and dials her number, but the call goes straight to voicemail.
She has gone to Brazil to be with her mother. Her father’s death didn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but her mother has really been struggling with the loss.
Joona makes his way up the steps into the building and finds Lisette Josephson waiting on one of the sofas in reception.
Following a request from the Prosecution Authority, Joonais here to support her. At present, the focus of the preliminary investigation is to find sufficient grounds to charge Hugo Sand, and to do so as quickly as possible.
Joona says hello and sits down opposite her. Lisette glances at the clock on her phone and says that she has time to take him through the latest developments before they go in.
‘You asked about CCTV, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be that easy this time,’ she says in a weary tone. ‘The owner of the campsite managed to wipe the entire hard drive while he was trying to save the footage.’
‘Can it be recovered?’
‘Apparently not, according to our IT guys.’
‘OK.’
Muffled rock music drifts through to them from the autopsy room. Drums, bass and rhythm guitar.
