Page 172 of The Sleepwalker
‘Which means?’ Noah presses Joona.
‘The victims are all people who – in the Widow’s eyes – prioritise their sexual pleasure, their lust—’
‘One of the seven deadly sins,’ Rikard speaks up.
‘Over the needs of a sick child,’ Joona rounds off.
‘Do all of them have sick kids?’ Noah asks, his voice a little too loud.
‘Lucia Pedersen, Ida Forsgren-Fisher, Pontus Bandling and Nils Nordlund all did,’ says Anna.
‘We still don’t know the real motive, the psychological driving force,’ Joona continues. ‘But I really do think the Widow uses the kids as a pretext.’
‘And you can tell that because four of the victims had children with some form of illness?’
‘The Widow shows concern for them,’ says Joona. ‘Pumping up the tyres on a kid’s bike, leaving a girl a new inhaler, and—’
‘Joona is the smartest guy on earth,’ Göran interjects, feigning admiration.
‘I’m really not.’
‘Don’t be shy,’ he teases.
‘I’m still on the line,’ Nils Åhlén reminds them.
‘Could you send us a picture of Ida’s torso?’ Joona asks him.
‘Which half?’
‘The one with the scratches.’
‘Scratches?’
‘Above her navel.’
‘No other pictures?’ Åhlén asks.
‘Not right now.’
‘Great, so now we’re focusing on a couple of scratches,’ Göran mutters, glancing over to the others in search of support.
‘You heard what Hugo Sand saw through the window,’ Joona explains as his computer pings. ‘He described the Widow dragging the tip of the blade over the victim’s torso .?.?.’
The colour printer begins to whirr, and Joona gets up to retrieve the image. He pins it on the wall and reaches for the corresponding photographs of the other victims, so that the four torsos are hanging in a row.
Joona grabs a yellow highlighter and traces over the scratches on two of the pictures. The superficial cut on Nils Nordlund’s torso is a vertical line, around twenty-five centimetres in length. On Ida Forsgren-Fisher’s body, there are two scratches, forming a small, open V.
‘Letters?’ Rikard suggests.
‘I think they’re incomplete arrows, or different parts of an arrow .?.?. judging by the proportions,’ says Joona.
↓
He repeats the process with the two other victims. On Josef Lindgren’s stomach, there is a short, diagonal mark stretching from the left-hand side to the mid-point of his torso. The cut on Pontus Bandling’s stomach is almost a perfect mirror image, and together they form another small V.
‘The tip of an arrow,’ says Rikard.
‘OK, great, but what does this mean?’ asks Noah.
