Page 43 of The Sleepwalker
Jack moves over to the wall beside him. He already has a wrapper of twenty fentanyl pills in his hand, and he puts it into the dead bush beside the steps. The man takes the pills, shovesthem in his pocket and leaves a small plastic chutney jar in the same place. He then takes one last drag, drops his half-smoked cigarette to the ground and gets up and leaves without another word.
Jack puts the jar straight into his rucksack. He knows he doesn’t need to count the money inside, but he will probably do so all the same.
Leaning back against the grubby brown metal door, he checks the time on his phone. His first shift will be over in forty minutes.
That morning, Jack took his little brother to school as always. He talked about how important it is that he studies hard if he wants to be an archaeologist, that he needs to get top grades.
‘I know, I can do it,’ his brother had replied.
‘You should look a bit happier, then.’
Jack himself left school without any qualifications. He has ADHD, but because he was caught with THC in his urine, he was never given any help. Instead, he wound up in this alleyway, self-medicating with amphetamine and racking up debt.
A cute girl with plaits and a skateboard under one arm pauses a few metres away and peers back towards the square.
‘What you looking for?’ he asks.
‘I heard you sold GHB,’ she says, nervously eyeing him up.
‘Just ran out,’ he lies, in an attempt to protect her.
‘OK.’
‘But I’ve got some E if you want it.’
She nods and happily pays triple the street price for two hits before hurrying away.
A gust of wind blows dust and rubbish over the cracked tarmac.
Jack can’t stop thinking about what he saw yesterday, when he went to drop off the money.
The set-up is always the same: Jack hands over the cash toIbra, who is waiting by the playground in his black van, then he goes to collect the new stash from the tyre swing.
Yesterday, after Ibra drove off, Jack climbed the low fence and grabbed the vacuum pack from the swing. As he straightened up, he noticed a white Volvo parked over by the tennis club, and realised there was music coming from it.
A weird, old-fashioned song, carried on the wind.
Jack shoved the package in his rucksack and left the playground through the gate. The hinges creaked, chirping like a nest full of baby birds.
He got on his e-scooter and started riding along Neptunusvägen in the dark. The only streetlamp wasn’t working properly, the bulb flickering on and off.
He remembers thinking that people must still try to knock them out with a single kick, like they did when he was a kid.
There was an old car parked at the end of the road, and for a split second, the streetlamp illuminated its windscreen.
With a sudden sense of watchfulness taking over him, he cruised alongside the rocks marking the edge of the grass.
Snatches of the strange music reached him on the breeze.
Jack could see the tall fence around the red clay tennis courts, but beyond that everything was dark.
The streetlamp light continued to flicker on and off, and in its sudden glow he saw a bloody figure clutching an axe in one hand.
The brief bursts of light made it look like they were staggering towards the old car across the yellowed grass.
Jack sped up, swinging around the car and away from the lake. His legs felt like jelly all the way back to Kista.
He can’t get what he saw out of his head, and knows he should call the cops to leave an anonymous tip-off.
