Karlsson after Malin found her out at the oak?’
‘We’ve tried to get her on the phone, and we’re aiming to catch up with her today,’ Borje Svard replies. ‘We’ve also spoken to twenty other people with links to Rickard Skoglof, but none of them seems to have the slightest connection to Bengt Andersson. But we still have one big question to answer: what was she doing out at the crime-scene? Like that? And why?’
‘Disorderly conduct,’ Johan says. ‘Isn’t that what meditating naked comes under?’
‘She wasn’t harming anyone,’ Malin says. ‘I called Goran Kalmvik’s woman in Oslo and she confirmed his story. And I’m hoping to talk to Niklas Nyren today. It feels like he’s the only unturned stone left in this line of inquiry.’
‘Well, we’ll simply have to keep going,’ Borje says, and these words are no sooner out of his mouth than there’s a knock at the door, and before anyone has time to shout ‘come in’, police constable Marika Gruvberg opens the doors and looks in.
‘Sorry to interrupt. But a farmer’s found some animal carcasses hanging in a tree in a field. We’ve only just taken the call.’
Circles, Malin thinks.
Seven circles.
Everything points downwards.
Shades of greyish white keep changing and blurring, impossible to detect with the naked eye, and it’s hard to tell the difference between land and sky.
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.’
