Page 154 of The Sleepwalker
‘Please, sit down. I’ve done time in Kumla. I know how popular the police are in a place like this.’
‘But .?.?.’
‘I’ve spoken to the warden. This will be registered as a meeting with your lawyer.’
‘OK, but what the hell .?.?. I thought this was about me transferring to Fosie,’ he says, taking a seat again.
‘Gerald, it’s going to take a little while to organise your release. It’s a process that starts with the prosecutor reopening the case,’ Joona explains.
‘You think I’ll be released?’
‘There’ll be a High Court review, and you’ll be acquitted on all charges.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes.’
Gerald nods slowly as he tries to process the news.
‘So I’ll get to see my daughter again, tell her that I’m innocent?’ he says after a moment, wiping the tears from his cheeks.
Joona gives him some time, allowing him to repress the wave of emotion and compose himself, to put on a hard face again before he continues.
‘You’ll be exonerated, which is one thing. The other is finding the real killer.’
‘Amen.’
‘Whoever murdered Lucia must have been to your house before,’ says Joona. ‘He or she knew that you had an axe in the woodshed and that your daughter has asthma.’
‘Could it have been one of her .?.?. acquaintances?’ Gerald asks. ‘Lucia was a notorious cheat. She swore she’d stop after we got married, but I don’t know how long that lasted. She tried to claim that it wasn’t about me, that she was talking to a psychologist, and I thought she’d get bored of it, told everyonethat we had an open relationship and that it was good for us.’
‘Are you thinking of anyone in particular?’
‘Nah, it wasn’t exactly like I wanted to be buddies with them,’ he says with a sad smile. ‘The few times I caught her at it, I just went over to my mum’s and slept there.’
‘Did you ever see anyone who seemed different to her usual type?’ Joona asks.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Not necessarily a man.’
There is a loud knock at the door. The lock rattles, and the guard with the ginger beard comes into the room.
‘Gotta go,’ says Gerald, getting up from the table. ‘Thank you for this, though. I can hardly believe it .?.?. Don’t go getting hit by a bus or anything, will you? I’ve got to get out of here. I need to get my daughter back.’
* * *
As he drives back to Stockholm, Joona learns that the officers knocking on doors in the neighbourhood where Ida Forsgren-Fisher was murdered have found another dead body. Former Chancellor of Justice Rutger von Reisen was sprawled in a frozen pool of blood on his driveway, killed by a deep axe wound to the back of his head. His black Labrador was keeping watch beside him, and started barking as the officers approached.
In all likelihood, Rutger witnessed Ida’s murder while he was out walking his dog that night.
54
The news is reporting that the huge snowstorm is currently over St Petersburg, and that it will hit the east coast of Sweden with full force in just a few days’ time.
The sky is dark and the air so cold that Bernard turns around and heads home earlier than usual, before he hits ten thousand steps.
It doesn’t matter, he thinks. He is sure he read somewhere that eight thousand is more than enough.
