‘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 wiped out among the mud and decaying leaves, the unpicked mushrooms on their way to becoming part of the undercurrent of the forest. Long ago people in these areas believed in trolls, fairies, goblins and cloven-footed monsters, all wandering among the trees and trying to lure people to their doom.
What do people believe in today? Malin wonders, looking over at the church tower instead of the forest. Ice hockey and the Eurovision Song Contest?
Then she glances at the animal bodies in the snow.
Borje Svard with his earpiece in. He’s scribbling a number on a scrap of paper, then makes a call on his mobile.
Zeke on another phone.
Dennis Hamberg, a farmer outside Klockrike, has reported a break-in at his farm, very upset: ‘Two organically
