Page 80 of The Sleepwalker
Joona is now on his way over there, driving past the University of the Arts and the brutalist concrete building housing the Swedish Film Institute beneath a dark winter sky.
It doesn’t take him long to reach the huge warehouses and storage tanks on the outskirts of the port, and he turns off onto Sandhamnsgatan and pulls up outside Tiffany’s building.
Her apartment is on the ground floor, with bars over the windows.
The stairwell is shabby but clean.
Joona rings the buzzer on a door with a label forTOP SOLUTIONSon the letterbox, then waits as she studies him through the peephole. The lights in the stairwell go out, but he presses the button on the wall and they immediately come back on.
He hears the security chain rattle, and the door opens.
‘I’ve got an appointment at nine,’ he says.
Tiffany Eklund is a slim woman in her thirties. Her dyed blue hair is growing out, and she has chapped lips, a swollen eye and dark bruises on her cheek and throat. Her pink fluffy dressing gown is untied, and beneath it she is wearing nothing but a pair of silver hotpants and a see-through bra.
The air in her hallway smells like sweat, chewing gum and old clothes.
Tiffany sniffs loudly and turns around on unsteady legs, leading him past a small kitchen nook where there are two packs of quick-cook macaroni on a shelf.
Joona takes off his coat, drapes it over his arm and follows her into a cramped room. The sheets on the bed are crumpled, and the floral curtain is drawn over the only window. On the little dining table, there is a plastic bag full of makeup and medication. He notices a box of condoms on the nightstand, beside a pump bottle of lube, a pack of gummy dummies and a roll of kitchen paper.
As Tiffany sits down on the edge of the bed with a sigh, her robe opens wider. She has a number of tattoos, piercings in her bellybutton and nipples, and a pale scar down one side of her torso.
Joona pulls the only chair across the scratched linoleum floor and drapes his coat over the backrest, then sits down oppositeher and holds up his ID.
‘Right, so you’re a cop who thinks he’s getting freebies, huh?’ she says impatiently.
‘I just need to ask you a few questions.’
‘Yeah, sure, everyone needs something .?.?. Not my problem,’ she says, staring at him with an open mouth.
Her makeup looks several days old, like she has just touched it up rather than washing her face and starting afresh.
‘I’d like—’
‘You’re so fucking ugly,’ she cuts him off. ‘If I had a knife, I’d slice your face right off, and I’d be doing you a fucking favour.’
One of her legs has started bouncing up and down, and she mumbles ‘God’ and glances towards the hallway.
On the floor beneath the table, there is a pink perfume bottle with the words SHEER LOVE on the gold label.
‘I’ll go once you’ve answered m—’
‘Go fuck yourself! You hear that? If people see me with a pig .?.?. who’s gonna pay for that, huh? You’ll scare ’em all off.’
She reaches up to scratch her head, and Joona notices that she has needle marks on her wrist and the back of her hand.
‘I can pay you to talk,’ he explains.
‘It’ll cost you double.’
‘OK.’
She agitatedly rubs the corner of her mouth and stares at him.
‘C’mon, then. Didn’t you want to talk? What the fuck is this?’ she asks.
‘I was wondering if—’
