happens quickly. The one-year-olds take turns to lie on guard outside the lair when the others go off hunting. When the adults return, the youngsters come forward, tails wagging. Begging and whimpering and licking the corners of the older wolves’ mouths. In reply the adult wolves bring up red mounds of the meat they’ve swallowed. If there’s anything left over, the babysitters can have it.
Yellow Legs doesn’t go off on her own. During this period she stays with the pack and the new cubs. She lies on her back playing the helpless prey beneath two of them. They hurl themselves at her, one sinks his needle-sharp teeth into her lips and the other attacks her tail like a mad thing. She pushes the one who was dangling from her lip aside and places her enormous paw on top of it. It’s all the cub can do to free itself. Wriggling and struggling. Finally it escapes. Gallops around her on its fluffy paws, comes back and throws itself at her head, growling recklessly. Bites her ear aggressively. Then all of a sudden they fall into a deep, peaceful sleep. One lying between her front legs, the other with its head on its sibling’s stomach. Yellow Legs takes the opportunity to have a little doze as well. She snaps half-heartedly at a wasp that comes too close, misses, the sleepy hum of insects above the flowers. The morning sun rises above the tops of the pine trees. The birds swoop through the air, hunting for food to regurgitate into the gaping mouths of their babies.
Playing with cubs makes you tired. Happiness flows through her like spring water.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 8
Inspector Sven-Erik Stalnacke woke up at half past four in the morning.
Bloody cat, was his first thought.
It was usually his cat Manne who woke him up around this time. The cat would leap up from the floor, landing with a surprisingly heavy thud on Sven-Erik’s stomach. If Sven-Erik just grunted and turned on his side, Manne would stalk up and down the side of Sven-Erik’s body like a mountain climber on top of a high ridge. Sometimes the cat would let out a terrible wail, which meant that he either wanted food, or to be let out. Usually both. Straightaway.
Sometimes Sven-Erik tried refusing to get up, muttered “it’s the middle of the night you stupid bloody cat,” and wrapped himself in the bedclothes. Then the promenade up and down his body was carried out with the claws extended further and further each time. In the end Manne would scratch Sven-Erik’s head.
Pushing the cat onto the floor or shutting him out of the bedroom didn’t really help. Then Manne started on the soft furnishings and curtains with all his might.
“That cat’s too bloody crafty,” Sven-Erik always said. “He knows I’ll put him outside when he does that. And that’s exactly what he wanted all along.”
He was a man who commanded respect. Strong upper arms, broad hands. Something in his face and bearing bore witness to years of dealing with most things, human misery, fired-up troublemakers. And he found pleasure in being ruled by a cat.
But this morning it wasn’t Manne who’d woken him. He woke up anyway. Out of habit. Maybe because he was missing that stripy young man who constantly terrorized him with his demands and whims.
He sat up heavily on the edge of the bed. He wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. This was the fourth night the bloody cat had been missing. He’d gone missing before for one night, occasionally two. That was nothing to worry about. But four.
He went downstairs and opened the outside door. The night was like gray wool, on the way toward the day. He gave a long whistle, went into the kitchen, fetched a tin of cat food and stood on the steps banging the tin with a spoon. No cat. In the end he had to give up, he was getting cold in just his underpants.
That’s the way it is, he thought. That’s the price of freedom. The risk of getting run over or taken by the fox. Sooner or later.
He spooned coffee into the percolator.
Still, it’s better that way, he thought. Better than Manne getting weak and ill, and having to be taken to the vet. That would have been bloody awful.
The percolator got going with a gurgle, and Sven-Erik went up to the bedroom to get dressed.
Maybe Manne had made himself at home somewhere else. That had happened before. He’d come home after two or three days and hadn’t been the least bit hungry. Obviously well fed and well rested. It was probably some old dear who’d felt sorry for him and taken him in. Some pensioner who had nothing else to do but cook him salmon and give him the cream off the top of the milk.
Sven-Erik was suddenly filled with an unreasoning anger against this unknown individual who took in and adopted a cat that didn’t belong to the person in question. Didn’t this person realize that there was somebody worrying and wondering where the cat had gone? You could tell Manne wasn’t homeless, with his shiny coat and affectionate ways. He’d get him a collar. Should have done it a long time ago. It was just that he was afraid he’d get caught up somewhere. That’s what had stopped him, the thought of Manne caught in some undergrowth starving to death, or hanging in a tree.
He ate a good breakfast. The first few years after Hjordis had left him, breakfast had usually consisted of a cup of coffee, drunk standing up. But he’d mended his ways since then. He shoveled down spoonfuls of low fat yogurt and muesli without really tasting it. The percolator had fallen silent, and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the kitchen.
He’d taken over Manne from his daughter when she moved to Lulea. He should never have done it. He realized that now. It was nothing but bloody trouble, that’s all it was, bloody trouble.
Anna-Maria Mella was sitting at the kitchen table with her morning coffee. It was seven o’clock. Jenny, Petter and Marcus were still asleep. Gustav was awake. He was bouncing around in the bedroom upstairs, clambering all over Robert.
In front of her on the table lay a copy of the horrific drawing of the hanged Mildred. Rebecka Martinsson had made copies of a number of papers as well, but Anna-Maria didn’t understand a bloody word. She hated numbers and maths and that sort of thing.
“Morning!”
Her son Marcus ambled into the kitchen. Dressed! He opened the door of the refrigerator. Marcus was sixteen.
“So,” said Anna-Maria, looking at the clock. “Is there a fire upstairs, or something?”
He grinned. Picked up milk and cereal and sat down opposite Anna-Maria.
“I’ve got an exam,” he said, spooning down milk and cornflakes. “You can’t just jump out of bed and dash in at the last minute. You have to prime your body.”
“Who are you?” said Anna-Maria. “And what have you done with my son?”
It’s Hanna, she thought. God bless her.
Hanna was Marcus’ girlfriend. Her keen attitude toward schoolwork was catching.
“Cool,” said Marcus, sliding the drawing of Mildred toward him. “What’s this?”
“Nothing,” answered Anna-Maria, taking the drawing off him and turning it upside down.
“No, seriously. Let me have a look!”
He took the picture back.
“What does this mean?” he said, pointing at the grave mound visible behind the dangling body.
“Well, maybe that she’s going to die and be buried.”
“Yes, but what does it mean? Can’t you see it?”
Anna-Maria looked at the picture.
“No.”
“It’s a symbol,” said Marcus.
“It’s a grave mound with a cross on top.”
“Look! The outlines are twice as thick as in the rest of the picture. And the cross carries on down into the ground and ends in a hook.”
