Page 29 of The Sleepwalker
‘If I solve this case, I want you to bring Saga back into thegroup.’
‘It’s your job to solve cases. You can’t start negotiating—’
‘I do more than just my job.’
‘So I hear,’ Noah says wearily.
‘Which means I can negotiate.’
‘No, it—’
‘Yes.’
Noah sighs and rests the pool cue on his shoulder.
Joona knows how Saga seems, and he also knows that she has a long way to go before she finds inner peace.
In an act of self-loathing following the death of her half-sister, Saga sought out one of the surgeons who had been present in the operating theatre. She began a relationship with him in order to be humiliated and punished, to brand herself with shame.
The last time Joona visited her apartment on Tavastgatan, the place was a physical manifestation of her state of mind. On the kitchen table, there was a mouldy loaf of bread beside an open jam jar with a spoon inside. Saga was sleeping in a narrow bed without any sheets, and she spent most of her time reading scientific articles and medical textbooks on child surgery and the treatment of palpitations.
The only thing she knew for sure was that she never wanted to become emotionally attached to anyone again.
Joona knows that Saga comes into the office every day and that she does everything that is asked of her in her part-time job with the Intelligence Unit, but her true potential is woefully underused.
She needs to feel needed, otherwise she will go under.
Noah chalks his cue and moves around the table again.
‘Hugo Sand has been released,’ he says. ‘Though he’s not quite off the hook for the first murder yet – assuming they’re definitely connected.’
‘They are.’
‘Personally, I don’t think it’s possible for someone to chop people to pieces with an axe in their sleep,’ Noah says as he hits the cue ball, which slams into the yellow with a loud crack.
‘No, but who knows?’
‘It seems more likely that Hugo killed the man and then fell asleep. Maybe he’s got narcolepsy or something .?.?. and now he’s using an old sleepwalking diagnosis to explain what he was doing at the scene.’
‘The thought did cross my mind.’
‘And then you dismissed it?’
‘No.’
‘So you genuinely think he was sleepwalking?’ Noah asks, in a different tone of voice.
‘I’ve been reading up on it, and it really could be that simple,’ says Joona. ‘He used to go to the campsite a lot when he was younger, and something made him go back there in his sleep.’
‘What, and by coincidence it just happened to be at the same time a murder took place?’
‘One coincidence is nothing. Almost all witnesses are coincidental,’ says Joona. ‘It’s only when we’ve got several links that we can start talking about connections.’
‘What, and we’ve only got one coincidence so far?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So he could be either a witness or a perpetrator?’
