Page 86 of The Sleepwalker
It doesn’t take long for Rikard to find another two ads featuring the same name, picture and telephone number on different sites.
Joona scrolls through ladys.one, and sees the images flicker by: young women in bikinis, bare breasts, underwear, smiling faces, genitals and backsides. He loads the next page and has just started skimming over the near-identical ads from another sixty sex workers when he stops dead.
This time, the blonde girl with the dimples is calling herself Cherry Pop. The services she offers are the same, but the phone number is different.
‘I’ll call her,’ says Rikard, reaching for the burner phone.
They start the recording, and Rikard composes himself and dials the number, but yet again it is no longer in use.
The team continue their search, sipping their increasingly cold coffee. After half an hour, Rikard gets up to go to the toilet. Stina puts in some eyedrops, opens a new website called Escort Heaven and, as ever, clicks to confirm that she is over eighteen. Just ten ads in, she spots the familiar photograph of the young blonde woman. On this page, her name is Jezebel.
‘I’ve got a new number,’ she says as Rikard comes back into the room.
‘New number,’ he mutters, taking a seat at his desk.
‘For Jezebel this time.’
They repeat the same process as earlier, putting their headphones on and starting the recording. Rikard enters the new number and hits dial. It rings twice before going to voicemail.
‘You’ve reached Jezebel,’ says a sensual female voice. ‘Leave your name and how you’d like to be contacted, plus the service you’re looking for, and I’ll get back to you.’
‘Hi, my name is Roger,’ says Rikard. ‘You can reach me on this number. I’m interested in meeting at a hotel tonight. Regular sex, maybe a two-hour session .?.?. I’ll tip well if it’s really good. Give me a call if you’re interested.’
He hangs up.
‘Nice,’ says Joona.
‘You should be an actor,’ Stina says with a grin.
‘Right? I’ve got it,’ he jokes. ‘Rich guy, confident on the outside, but with serious mummy issues.’
The team have just started closing the tabs for various websites when the untraceable phone rings, and they quickly put on their headphones and start the recording again. Rikard takes a few seconds to compose himself before he answers.
‘Roger speaking.’
‘You called me a few minutes ago,’ a woman replies. ‘Are you free to talk?’
‘Hold on a sec .?.?. let me just close the door,’ Rikard tells her, pausing briefly. ‘OK. Hello.’
‘How do you want to pay?’
‘However you like. American Express, cash, crypto.’
‘Cash is best.’
‘No problem.’
Stina has started picking the bobbles from her dark-grey sweater and piling them up beside her keyboard.
‘You mentioned regular sex. What did you have in mind?’
‘Nothing weird, we just do the deed. No stress. Normal.’
‘OK.’
‘Ideally without a condom,’ he says, lowering his voice a little.
‘No.’
