Page 157 of The Sleepwalker
She gazes through the pane of glass in the door to the side of the house they rarely use nowadays, towards Hugo’s old bedroom and games room.
A sudden draught around her feet gives her goosebumps.
There must be a window open somewhere.
The thought of the serial killer getting into the house through the door she spraypainted onto the wall flickers through Agneta’s mind, and she shudders and starts making her way down the stairs to the library, heart racing.
After eight steps, she stops – at the very heart of the house – to listen. It is so quiet that she can hear the weary snapping of the rope against the flagpole outside.
She needs to ask Bernard what he saw, because if itwasthe killer then she is going to call Joona Linna right away and demand protection.
Agneta glances over her shoulder before she continues down the stairs, crosses the library and goes through to the kitchen. She is relieved to see that Bernard’s laptop is on the table. Sheopens the cupboard beneath the sink and takes out a sponge and a bottle of cleaning spray, then heads out into the hall and pulls on her faded leather jacket and a pair of green wellington boots.
It has started snowing again, and the tyre tracks left by the ambulance are barely visible.
Agneta cuts across the gravel, turns the corner and pauses outside Hugo’s window, peering in at his unmade bed and the piles of clothes on the floor for a moment before continuing along the end of the house and gazing down towards the lake.
The islands and holms have vanished in the haze, and the ice on the surface of the water is blanketed beneath a dusting of white snow.
Agneta rounds the corner again and makes her way over to the spraypainted door on the wall: a tall rectangle complete with a doorstep, hinges, a handle and lock.
She wets the sponge and starts scrubbing at the paint with a rising sense of unease. By the time she stops twenty minutes later, dropping the bottle and sponge to the ground, her fingers are aching from the cold. The paint is almost gone, but there is still a faint shadow of a doorway there, as though it were made of smoke.
Agneta hurries back around to the front of the house, opens the door and checks that there are no damp footprints on the floor before going in and locking the door behind her.
She picks up her phone from the chest of drawers and sees that she has a message from Bernard. He will be allowed to come home tomorrow, he writes, followed by three red hearts.
As Agneta makes her way through to the library, she tries calling him, but he doesn’t pick up. She climbs the stairs, thinking about the stack of letters again, and with no real plan, she continues up to the attic.
The intruder has trampled on the cigar box containing Bernard’s old lucky pens.
She picks her way over to the desk, rights the chair, reaches for the stack of letters and sits down. Agneta takes a deep breath and then loosens the elastic band. Flicking through the letters, she realises that they are all from Hugo’s mother, Claire.
Agneta knew, of course, that he got letters from time to time, but she has always made sure to maintain a certain distance from their relationship.
For years, Bernard must have gone into Hugo’s room, retrieved the letters from the floor or the bin, and saved them for him.
She reads them in chronological order, starting with the years after Claire first moved back to Québec, written to a small child.
Some of the later letters have been crumpled, and one has actually been torn to pieces, but Bernard must have taped it back together.
Perhaps Hugo got sick of his mother’s constant excuses and lies about doing better, about starting various treatment programmes and deciding to get clean.
From his perspective, the whole thing is heartbreaking.
Claire writes that she is working as a translator and that she hopes she will have enough money to travel back to Sweden soon.
Agneta dries the tears from her cheeks and feels a lump in her throat as she unfolds the last letter in the stack and reads:
Älskade Hugo, mon fils bien-aimé,
I spoke to Dad on the phone and he tells me that you’re doing well at school, that you’re learning to write and that you are incredibly gifted – a wonder boy!!!
I’m sorry to have let you down again by missington anniversaire. It broke my heart, but the truth is that I finally found a place at a great treatment centre in Ontario. I was in the middle of a detox programme and had no contact with the outside world.
I’m out now, on a methadone programme – methadone maintenance treatment – and I’m feeling good, working at a small garden centre.
The hardest part is that my sponsor says I need to cut off all contact with everyone for a while, until I’m strong enough to come back and try to fix the things I broke.
