The house is constructed of sandstone, with green shutters over the windows. In front of the porch, painted Mediterranean blue, stands a Range Rover.
It ought to smell of lavender, thyme and rosemary, but instead it smells of ice. At the end of the avenue leading to the house is a gate where someone has put up a sign saying: ‘Finca de Hambergo’.
The green-painted door of the house opens and a man in his forties with bleached hair puts his head out.
‘Thanks for coming so quickly. Come in.’
The ground floor of the house is a single open room, hall, kitchen and living room in one. When Malin sees the stone walls, the patterned tiles, the open kitchen cupboards, terracotta floor and earth colours, she feels transported to Tuscany or Majorca. Or Provence, maybe?
She’s only been to Majorca, and the buildings didn’t look like this. The flats where she and Tove were staying looked more like an overblown version of the council blocks in Skaggetorp. But nonetheless, she knows from interior design magazines that this is what the dream of the south looks like for a lot of people.
Dennis Hamberg notices them staring.
‘We wanted it to look like a mixture of an Andalusian
‘Where are your family now?’
‘In town, shopping.’
And you’ve got the urge to talk to someone, way out here on a desolate winter plain, Malin thinks.
‘And the break-in to the barn?’
‘Of course. Follow me.’
Dennis Hamberg pulls on a black Canadian Goose parka and leads them across the yard to a red-painted barn, and points to the marks left by a crowbar in the door frame.
‘This is where they got in.’
‘More than one?’
‘Yes, there are loads of footprints inside.’
‘Okay, we’ll have to try not to stand on them,’ Zeke says.
Prints from trainers and heavy boots. Military? Malin wonders.
In the barn there are several cages of rabbits. There’s a single lamb in a pen, and in a square of concrete a black sow lies suckling something like ten piglets.
‘Iberico. Pata Negra from Salamanca. I’m going to make ham.’
‘This was where they took a pig?’
‘Yes, they took one of the young ones. A lamb too.’
‘And you didn’t hear anything?’
‘Not a sound.’
Malin and Zeke look round, then go back out into the yard, followed by Dennis Hamberg.
‘Do you think there’s any chance I’ll get the animals back?’ he says.
‘No,’ Zeke says. ‘They were found hanged in a tree outside Ljung this morning.’
The muscles in Dennis Hamberg’s face seem to wither away instantly, his whole body shudders, then he pulls himself together and tries to get a grip on something that seems completely incomprehensible.
‘What did you say?’
Zeke repeats what he said.
‘But things like that don’t happen here.’
‘It looks like they do,’ Malin says.
‘We’ll be sending out a forensics team to conduct a search.’
Dennis Hamberg looks across the fields, pulling his hood over his head.
‘Before we moved here,’ he says, ‘I never knew how windy it could get. Sure, it’s windy in Egypt, on the Canary Islands, in Tarifa, but not like this.’
‘Do you have a dog?’ Malin asks.
‘No, but we’re going to get cats before summer.’ And then Dennis Hamberg thinks for a moment before asking, ‘The animals, will I have to identify them?’
Malin looks away, over the fields, and can hear from Zeke’s voice that he’s suppressing a laugh.
‘Don’t worry, Dennis,’ he says. ‘We can assume the animals are yours. But if you’d like to identify them, I’m sure that can be arranged.’
49
Borje Svard clenches his fists in his pockets, feeling something approaching, something intangible. It’s there in the air he breathes, and he recognises it. It’s a feeling that something’s about to happen, that an event has meaning for him in a way that goes far beyond his understanding.
The condensation on the windscreen increases with every breath.
The owner of the Dobermann, according to the tax register, is called Sivert Norling, and he lives at 39 Olstorpsvagen in Ljungsbro, on the side of the river where the roads lead up towards the forests near Hultsjon. It only took a few minutes to find out the owner’s name, thanks to some helpful people in Stockholm.
Start with this.
The whole of his police instinct feels it. Closest, most possible. Skoglof and Valkyria Karlsson will have to wait.
And now he and Johan Jakobsson are there. He wants to see what the bastard looks like, if it was the owner who did it. Either way, you have to keep a closer eye on your dog than to let a group of nutters get hold of it.
The whitewashed wooden house is squeezed in between other similar seventies constructions. The apple and pear trees are fully grown and in the summer the hedges are presumably tall enough to stop prying eyes.
‘No point waiting,’ Borje says. ‘You never know. We might be getting close.’
‘So how are we going to do it?’ Johan wonders.
‘We ring the bell.’
‘Okay. That would be a start.’
They get out of the car, open the gate in the fence and go up the steps. Ring the bell.
They ring three, four times before they hear sluggish steps inside the house.
A lad in his late teens opens. He’s wearing black leather trousers, has long black hair hanging over pierced nipples. His skin is as white as the snow in the garden and the cold doesn’t seem to bother him.
‘Yeah?’ he says, and looks blearily at Borje and Johan.
‘Yeah?’ Borje says. ‘Are you Sivert Norling?’ he asks, holding up his police ID.
‘No, that’s the old man.’
‘And you are?’
‘Andreas.’
‘Can we come in? It’s cold out here.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Your dog. A Dobermann. Is it missing?’
‘I haven’t got a dog.’
‘According to the tax office you do.’
‘It’s the old man’s dog.’
Johan looks at the boy’s hands. Small dots of red.
‘I think you’d better come with us,’ he says.
‘Can I put a top on?’
‘Yes-’
