The animals are hanging in one of three pines in a small clump in the middle of a field between the Gota Canal and Ljung Church. Over by the canal the leafless trees are lined up in silent tribute, and some eight hundred metres to the east the white, coffin-like church building seems to be dispersing into the atmosphere, only held back by the dubious colours of the surrounding buildings, the ochre-coloured school, the buttercup-yellow head-teacher’s house.
The bodies seem drained of blood, hanging by their necks from the lowest branches of the smallest pine. The snow is flecked red with frozen blood that must have poured from the wounds in the animals’ bodies and throats. A Dobermann, a pig and a year-old lamb. The dog’s mouth has been held closed with black and yellow hazard-warning tape.
Under the tree, in the blood and snow, there are cigarette butts and other rubbish, and in the snow Malin can see marks left by a ladder.
The farmer, a Mats Knutsson, is standing beside her in padded green overalls.
‘I was taking a drive round my land in the car. I usually do at this time of year, just to keep an eye on things, and then I saw this in the tree; it looked odd from a distance.’
‘You haven’t touched anything, have you?’
‘I haven’t been anywhere near them.’
Zeke, increasingly suspicious of all life out on the plain.
‘The whole lot of them seem inbred,’ he snarled in the car on the way out to the crime-scene. ‘What the fuck does this mean?’
‘Well, it can’t be the Murvall brothers.’
‘No, they’re in custody.’
‘Could it be Jimmy Kalmvik and Joakim Svensson?’
‘It’s possible. According to Fredrik Unning, they’ve tortured cats before.’
‘We’ll have to talk to them again.’
‘The same with Skoglof and Valkyria Karlsson.’
A few metres beyond the branch where the animals are hanging, someone has written MIDWINTER SACRIFICE in the snow in uneven letters. Not using blood from the animals, but red spray-paint; Malin can see that much with her naked eye. Karin Johannison, who has just arrived, is crouched down, combing the ground with the help of a colleague Malin has never seen before, a young girl with freckles and tousled red hair under a turquoise hat.
Beyond the red lettering someone has urinated in the snow, spelling out the letters VAL, but then their bladder must have run dry.
Zeke, beside the tree, points up at the animals. ‘Their throats have been cut. Drained of blood.’
‘Do you think they were still alive?’
‘Not the dog. They can kick up a real fuss when their instincts kick in.’
‘The marks from the ladder,’ Malin says. ‘Between the bodies. These cleared patches in the snow must be from a metal ladder, and these holes in the crust of the snow where the feet went in.’
Borje Svard is walking up and down as he talks into his mobile.
He ends the call.
‘You see that dog up there in the tree. He must have been completely bloody helpless towards the end. The bastards couldn’t even leave his mouth alone. As far as I can tell, he’s an excellent example of the breed, which means he was bought from a kennel, probably tagged. So we’ll be able to track down his owner from the tax register. So get him down. Now!’
‘I just need to finish off here first,’ Karin calls, looking up at them with a smile.
‘Well, hurry up,’ Borje says. ‘He shouldn’t be left hanging there.’
‘Will we need the heater again this time?’ Karin asks.
‘No fucking heater,’ Borje yells.
‘Not for the animals,’ Zeke says. ‘What do you think, Malin?’
Malin shakes her head. ‘It looks like we can get what we need here without it.’
They hear a vehicle approaching. They all recognise the sound of a police van and turn round. The van drives up as close as it can get on the road, and they see Karim Akbar get out and call in their direction.
‘I knew it, I knew it. That there was something in the ?sir angle. In what that professor said. In those believers.’
Someone taps on Malin’s shoulder and she turns round.
Farmer Knutsson is standing behind her, apparently unconcerned by the fuss. ‘Do you need me here, or can I go? The cows…’
‘Go on,’ Malin says. ‘We’ll call you if there’s anything else.’
‘And the animals?’ The farmer gestures towards the tree.
‘We’ll get them down.’
Just as she finishes the sentence she sees the car from the
Daniel, she thinks, where have you been?
But it isn’t Daniel who gets out of the car. Instead it’s the photographer with the nose-ring and a nicotine- wrinkled, grey-haired journalist whom Malin recognises: Bengtsson, an old hand, complete with a pipe and a genuine loathing of computers and word-processors.
Well, Malin thinks, Karim can take care of him, seeing as he’s here.
Shall I ask about Daniel? Malin thinks. But once more she brushes the thought aside. How would that look? And how much do I care?
‘Get the dog down at once,’ Borje says.
Malin can see the frustration and anger in his body, all the emotion he’s focusing on the dead dog in the tree.
She wants to say, Calm down, Borje, he can’t feel anything hanging up there, but she keeps quiet, thinks, Anything he felt is long gone now.
‘We’re done here,’ Karin says, and behind her Malin hears the click of the photographer’s camera, and how Bengtsson is interviewing Karim in his hoarse voice.
‘What conclusions do you…’
‘Groups of… connection… teenage boys…’
Then Borje rushes towards the animals in the tree, leaps up and tries to grab the dog, but he can’t reach his limp legs, flecked with small clumps of congealed blood.
‘Borje, for fuck’s sake,’ Malin says, but he jumps again and again and again, trying to break the law of gravity in his attempts to save the dog from his helpless hanging.
‘Borje,’ Zeke shouts. ‘Have you gone mad? They’ll be here with a ladder soon, then we can get the dog down.’
‘Shut up.’
And Borje catches hold of the dog’s back legs, his hands seem to stick to them and reluctantly the dog follows the weight of Borje’s body and the branch bends in an arching bow and the knot that held the dog in the tree gives way. Borje shouts, groans as he falls back into the red snow.
The dog lands beside him, his lifeless eyes wide open.
‘This winter’s sending everyone mad,’ Zeke whispers. ‘Completely fucking crazy.’
48
From the field Malin can see the forests where Maria Murvall was attacked and raped; the end of the trees is like a black band against the white sky. She can’t see the water, but knows that the Motala River runs over there, bubbling like an overgrown stream under its thick covering of ice.
On a map the forest doesn’t look anything much, a strip maybe thirty or forty kilometres across, stretching from Lake Roxen up towards Tjallmo and Finspang, and towards Motala in the other direction. But inside the forest it’s possible to disappear, get lost, run across things that are incomprehensible to human beings. It is possible to be
