Joakim was still sitting slumped on the bench, motionless. There was no light in the prayer room, and yet it
wasn’t completely dark. He could make out the wooden walls, the window, and the drawing of Jesus’ empty tomb. There was a faint, pale glow around him, as if from a distant moon.
The storm continued to howl over the roof.
He was not alone.
His wife, Katrine, was sitting beside him. He could see her pale face out of the corner of his eye.
And the benches behind him had filled up with visitors. Joakim could hear the faint sound of creaking, just like when the congregation in a church is impatiently waiting to go up and take Communion.
They started to get up.
When Joakim heard this, he stood up too, with the unpleasant feeling of being in the wrong place on the wrong night. Soon he would be discovered-or unmasked.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Trust me.”
He pulled at Katrine’s cold hand and tried to get her to stand up, and in the end she obeyed him.
He heard creaking steps approaching. The figures behind him had begun to move out into the narrow aisle.
There were so many of them when they were gathered together. More and more shadows seemed to fill the room.
Joakim couldn’t get past them. All he could do was stay where he was in front of the bench-there was nowhere to go now. He stood completely still, not letting go of Katrine’s hand.
The air grew colder around them, and Joakim shivered. He could hear the rustling sound of old fabric, and the floor creaked faintly as the chapel’s visitors spread out around him.
They wanted so much warmth that he was unable to give them. They wanted to take Communion. Joakim was freezing now, but still they pressed forward to reach him. Their jerky movements were like a slow dance in the narrow room, and he was drawn along with them.
“Katrine!” he whispered.
But she was no longer with him. Her hand slipped from his grip and they were separated by all the movement in the room.
“Katrine?”
She was gone. Joakim turned around and tried to push his way through the crowd to find her again. But no one helped him, everyone was standing in his way.
Then suddenly he heard something more than the wind through the cracks in the barn: someone shouting, then several dull bangs. It sounded as if someone were shooting with a rifle or a pistol-like a volley of shots somewhere down below the hayloft.
Joakim stiffened and listened. He could no longer hear any other sounds, no voices or movements inside the room.
The pale light that had been seeping through the wall from the bulb in the loft suddenly went out.
The electricity had gone out, Joakim realized.
He stood still in the pitch darkness. It felt as if he were completely alone now, as if all the others in the room had gone away.
After several minutes a flickering light began to glow somewhere in the barn. A pale yellow glow that rapidly increased in strength.
39
Tilda blinked away the drops of melted ice flakes from her eyes and cautiously pressed a fistful of snow against her throbbing nose. Then she got up slowly on unsteady legs, her pistol in her right hand. Her head was aching just as much as her nose, but at least she was able to stand upright.
The manor was in complete darkness now, and the soft drifts between the buildings had turned into hills with blurred contours. Beyond them the barn rose up, like a cathedral in shadow. The electricity seemed to have gone out at Eel Point-perhaps throughout the whole of northern Oland. It had happened before, when a tree blew down onto one of the main power lines.
Martin was lying motionless a couple of yards away from Tilda. She couldn’t see his face, but his lifeless body was already well on the way to being covered by the snow.
She took out her cell phone and called the emergency
number. It was busy. She tried the police station in Borgholm, but couldn’t get through there either.
When she had put the cell phone away, she glanced around the inner courtyard, but couldn’t see the man who had shot at her. She had returned his fire-had she hit him?
She looked over toward the steps. There was no sign of Henrik Jansson either.
Keeping her pistol trained on the barn, Tilda moved backwards until she bumped into the bottom step.
Her eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness. She moved quickly up the steps to the house, bending low, and peered in through the open door.
The first thing she saw inside the veranda was a pair of boots. A dark figure dressed in outdoor clothes was half lying on the rag rug just inside the door. He was breathing heavily.
“Henrik Jansson?” said Tilda.
There was silence for a few seconds.
“Yes?” he said eventually.
“Don’t move, Henrik.”
Tilda crept through the doorway, keeping her pistol trained on him. Henrik stayed where he was, gazing wearily at the gun, and made no attempt to get away. He was clutching the edge of the rug with one hand; the other was pressed against his stomach.
“Are you hurt, Henrik?” she asked.
“I’ve been stabbed… in the stomach.”
Tilda nodded. More violence. She wanted to scream and swear at someone, but instead she picked up his knife, hurled it out into the snow, then checked his pants and jacket. No more weapons.
She took a sterilizing pack out of her pocket along with the second and last bandage and passed them over to Henrik.
“Martin’s lying out there,” she said quietly. “He’s been shot. He didn’t make it.”
“Was he a cop?” said Henrik.
Tilda sighed. “He used to be… he’s a tutor at the Police Training Academy.”
Henrik opened the sterilizing pack and shook his head. “They’re crazy.”
“Who, Henrik? Who shot Martin?”
“There are two of them,” he said. “Tommy and Freddy.”
Tilda looked at him suspiciously and he shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s what they call themselves…Tommy and Freddy.”
Tilda remembered the two men at the races in Kalmar.
“So you broke in here together? You’re partners?”
“We were.” He pulled up his sweater and began to wipe the wound in his stomach. “It was Tommy who did this.”
“What are they carrying, Henrik?”
“They’ve got a hunting rifle. An old Mauser…I don’t know if they’ve got anything else.”
Tilda bent down and held the compress while Henrik tied the pressure bandage.
