preliminary report to you tomorrow evening.'
'That's great,' said Knutas gratefully. 'One more thing-could you tell if there was any sign of a sexual assault?'
'She has no external injuries to indicate that. Whether she'd had intercourse is something that we will hopefully know by tomorrow.'
Knutas thanked him and put down the phone. He leaned back in his chair. A perpetrator who killed horses and women and drained the blood from their bodies. A ritual murderer.
It pained him to think about Martina Flochten. She'd had her whole life ahead of her. She was a student interested in archaeology. She had come to Gotland to help out on an excavation of the island's cultural treasures- and here she had met with such a cruel fate.
Patrick Flochten had fallen to pieces when the police told him the news of his daughter's death. Knutas was going to visit him later in the day, and he shuddered at the thought of seeing him. Dealing with family members of a victim was one of the most difficult parts of his job; he'd never gotten used to it. It was worst of all when young people were involved.
Possible connections between the decapitated horse and the murder of Martina were now being investigated. The question was: What kind of person would drain the blood out of his victim?
The police had to start by looking at the circle of people surrounding Martina, which included the students taking the course and their teachers. Knutas had gone over the list of students. Most of them were young, and there was almost an equal number of Swedes and foreigners.
He looked at the names and addresses and birth dates. Nearly all were between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, with a few exceptions. One woman from Goteborg was only nineteen, the British woman was forty-one, and one of the Americans was fifty-three. Knutas slowly spun his chair around.
Who was present during Martina's stay here? The students in the course, the teachers, the staff at the Warfsholm hotel and youth hostel. Surely she couldn't have met very many other people. That was where they had to start. Take them one by one as fast as possible, and at the same time find out who she'd met during the weeks she'd spent in Visby studying theory. Knutas sighed. He realized that his upcoming vacation was going to have to be postponed. Lina had probably already realized as much. He knew that it would be difficult for her to change her vacation, so she and the children would probably take the planned trip to Denmark. He could join them if the case was solved quickly. Even though at the moment it seemed very complicated, he could always hope for a miracle.
He might as well contact the National Criminal Police at once; they were going to need help. He thought about Martin Kihlgard. Although the inspector from the NCP had his bad points, they knew each other so well by now that he would probably be the easiest person to deal with. Knutas picked up the phone and punched in the number. It surprised him how relieved he felt when he heard his colleague's voice on the line.
Anyone who passed by the building wouldn't suspect a thing. It looked like any other dreary warehouse made of gray sheet metal with several parking slots near the unremarkable entrance. No one would believe that inside those walls were unimaginable treasures that had lain buried and forgotten for thousands of years, treasures that had been used by people in a different era, a different life. Utterly unlike anything that was familiar to people nowadays.
He used to come over here late at night when he was sure that all the employees had gone home. Then he had the whole place to himself. The same feeling of reverence struck him every time he opened the door and entered the first room.
He could roam up and down the aisles for hours. Pull out an archive storage rack here and there, take out something at random: an animal bone, a bead, a spearhead, or a nail. It didn't matter. For him no relic was more valuable than any other. Sometimes he would sit on the floor, holding an artifact in his hand. Everything around him would melt away, and the treasure in his hand became the focus. It spoke to him, whispered to him. He thought he could hear voices, echoes from the past. It was the same magical experience each time. Occasionally he had tried to transport himself into the same state as he did at home, but it never worked. This place had something different about it, maybe because it contained so much history from so long ago.
He was convinced that spirits lived in these objects. In here he also sensed a contact with the gods-they listened to him, and he heard their voices. They told him what he was supposed to do, gave him solace, and stood by him when he needed them. Nor did they hesitate to give him praise when he'd done something that was to their liking. He received guidance from them; he didn't know how he could have managed without their help. They told him what they wanted for themselves and what things they thought he could keep. He gladly did their bidding and was offered rewards when the time was ripe. His relationship with them went both ways, based on give and take, just like any human relationship.
Some of the artifacts he kept at home; others he sold off. That was a necessity. He had a responsibility, and he didn't hesitate to accept it. All the hidden things that were dug out of the earth belonged to him and his kinsmen; that was a feeling that had become stronger and stronger over the years. It was better for him to take care of the relics than for them to end up in a display case in some museum in Stockholm. If they were going to disappear from the island, he might as well be the one who decided where they would go. With his fingertips he caressed the shelves in the aisles. They were neatly marked with stickers and numbers, yet it was seldom that anyone checked to see that the drawers actually contained what was listed on the labels. That was why he was able to keep going, undetected. He had started out slowly many years ago and then just kept on. This was his world, and no one could take it away from him. He would never let go of his hold on it.
For the first time in his life he felt that he truly had something important to do. It was a task that he undertook with the greatest seriousness.
The investigative team had decided that all the students in the course, along with their teachers, should be interviewed before the night was over, so they had divided up the individuals for questioning. Jacobs-son and Knutas took one of the students with whom Martina had had the most contact: Mark Feathers, an American. They also had one of the teachers in the group assigned to them: Aron Bjarke.
The long workday was drawing to a close, and Knutas was genuinely tired. He was in charge of questioning Bjarke; Jacobsson was present as a witness. When they sat down in the interview room, Knutas couldn't hold back a yawn. He immediately apologized.
Bjarke had taught landscape reconstruction and phosphate analysis during the introductory two weeks of theory. He was a tall, middle-aged man with dark blond hair and a nondescript face. His hairline was receding a bit; otherwise he looked younger than his forty-three years. His chin was adorned with a well-trimmed beard, and his eyes were green with thick, curling lashes.
'What do you know about Martina Flochten?' Knutas began.
'Not much, I have to admit. She was a sweet, lively girl who showed a great deal of interest in the Viking Age in particular. I had the impression that she was more knowledgeable than most of the others. In general, she seemed extremely engaged in the subject.'
If the teacher hadn't spoken with such a marked Gotland accent, Knutas would have sworn that he was from the mainland. There was something about his clothes and his style of wearing them, something slightly elegant and big city-like about his neatly pressed slacks and jacket. His voice and manner of speaking, strangely enough, didn't match his appearance. At the same time, there was something disarming about him. He gave Knutas a friendly look as he waited for the next question.
'Did you socialize with her outside of class?'
'No, at least not alone. But the whole group got together several times. We had dinner at the home of one of the other teachers, we went out for a beer, and we played a game of kubb in Almedalen. But we were all together, as a group.'
'Were you at Warfsholm on Saturday night?'
'No, I've hardly seen the students since they moved out to Frojel and started excavating.'
'Where were you on Saturday night?'
The soft-spoken teacher looked surprised at the question. 'Am I a suspect?'
'Not at all. This is purely a routine question that we're asking everyone,' Knutas explained. 'What were you doing on Saturday night?'
'Nothing special. I was home watching TV.'
'Alone?'
