“Now lie down on your stomach,” she said.
“Why?”
“I’m going to put the handcuffs on.”
He looked at her. “If they shoot you, they’ll come after me next,” he said. “Am I supposed to sit here in handcuffs, waiting for them?”
Tilda thought it over for a few seconds, then hung the cuffs back on her belt.
“I’ll be back.”
She turned and jumped down from the steps, crouching between the drifts as she took a last glance at Martin’s body.
With her knees and back bent, she began to move through the snow, over toward the barn.
She blinked to help her see through the snowflakes more easily and stayed on the alert as she moved forward, all the time expecting to be shot at.
A long, billowing snowdrift ran along a couple of yards from the barn, and behind it she found traces of the gunman.
A pair of boots had been trampling around, and there was the outline of someone who had been lying down in the snow. But both the man and his gun were gone, and she couldn’t see any sign of blood.
He must have gone back inside the barn.
Tilda thought about Martin’s blood-covered back and stayed where she was, out in the courtyard. The broad doorway gaped like the opening of a cave. She didn’t want to go in there.
A little further away to the right was another entrance-a narrow door made of wooden planks, painted black. She began to move slowly toward it, pressed against the stone wall, the fine snow whirling down and melting on the back of her neck.
When Tilda reached the door, she grabbed the handle and pulled the door open as far as she could before the snow stopped it.
She peered inside.
Pitch black. The electricity was still off.
With her pistol at the ready she moved inside onto the earth floor, straight into the darkness and silence.
She stayed by the wall for a while, listening for sounds; her nose was beginning to throb again. It was impossible to tell if anyone was lying in wait for her in the shadows.
The storm was more distant in here, but high above her the great roof squeaked and creaked. After a minute or so she started moving again, silently and cautiously. There was no snow to contend with, of course, but the floor was uneven-sometimes it was earth, sometimes stone.
When she saw a broad shadow looming up ahead of her, she almost aimed her pistol at it-until her boot hit an enormous rubber tire. Above the tire was a hood with the logo McCORMICK.
Tilda had bumped into an old tractor-a rusty monster on wheels that must have been parked there for years.
She crept silently past it. When she saw old cans of paint and piles of planks on the floor, she realized she was in a storeroom at the eastern end of the barn.
A faint thud came from somewhere in the barn. She turned her head quickly-but nothing moved behind her.
There were two of them in here, Henrik had said. Oddly enough Tilda had the feeling that there were in fact many more people here in the barn-figures keeping watch in the shadows around her. It was a vague but unpleasant feeling, and she was unable to shake it off.
Her eyes were beginning to grow accustomed to the darkness, and she could see the stone wall opposite.
Suddenly she heard a faint tinkling sound to her left. From inside the barn.
A second or so later it grew a little lighter around her, and she saw that there was a doorway in the wooden wall beside her. It ought to lead into the barn. The light was coming from the barn; a flickering, dancing glow.
Tilda caught the smell of smoke and suspected she knew what had happened. She hurried to the door and looked into the barn.
A fire was burning next to the steep wooden staircase a few yards away, leading up to the hayloft, and there was the acrid smell of paraffin mixed with smoke. Someone had gathered a big heap of old hay, then smashed a burning bottle of paraffin against the floor. The fire had taken hold by now, and the flames had already begun licking at the planks of the staircase.
A tall man was standing beneath the loft on the far side of the fire. He was about the same age as Henrik and was holding a black hood or cap in one hand; he didn’t appear to have noticed her. The man’s gaze was fixed on the growing flames and his face was shiny. He looked excited.
A framed oil painting was propped against a wooden pillar beside him, but there was no sign of any gun.
Tilda looked around one last time-no one was lurking behind her-then she took a deep breath and stepped out into the barn. She was holding the pistol with both hands.
“Police!” she shouted. “Stand still!”
The man looked up and gazed at her, more surprised than anything.
“Get down on the floor!”
The man remained standing, his mouth open.
“My brother’s looking for a way out,” he said. “Around the back.”
Tilda moved forward until she was only two paces from the man.
He moved backwards and to one side, toward the door, and Tilda followed him.
“Down on the floor!”
If he didn’t give up, would she shoot him? She didn’t know. But she was aiming straight at his head.
“Lie down!”
“Okay, okay…”
The man nodded and got down on his stomach, with some effort.
“Hands behind your back!”
Tilda was by his side and had unhooked the handcuffs from her belt.
She quickly grabbed his wrists, pulled them back, and slipped on the cuffs. He was secure now, lying on the stone floor, and she was able to search him. He had a mountain knife in the pocket of his pants, but that was the only weapon. And pills, lots of pills.
“What’s your name?”
He seemed to be considering the question.
“Freddy,” he said eventually.
“Your real name.”
He hesitated. “Sven.”
Tilda found that difficult to believe, but merely said, “Okay, Sven… just keep calm.”
When she got up, she could hear the crackling of the fire. The flames had nowhere to go along the stone floor, but had got a hold on the staircase and were climbing up toward the edge of the loft.
Tilda couldn’t see a fire blanket or extinguisher, nor any buckets she could use to carry water.
She pulled off her uniform jacket and beat at the steps, but the flames simply moved aside and grew. The fire seemed to want to reach up toward the storm-more than half the staircase was burning now.
Could she try to kick the whole staircase away from the edge of the loft?
She raised her foot and took aim-then she saw a shadow approaching out of the corner of her eye. She spun around.
It was a tall man wearing jeans and a sweater, hurrying toward the staircase out of the darkness of the barn. He stopped and looked at the fire, then at Freddy and finally at Tilda.
She almost didn’t recognize him-but it was Joakim Westin.
“I can’t put it out!” she yelled. “I’ve tried…”
Westin just nodded. He seemed calm, as if there were worse things in the world.
“Snow,” he said. “We have to smother it.”
“Okay.”
But where had Westin come from? He looked pale and tired, but didn’t seem particularly surprised to have visitors. Even the fire didn’t seem to bother him much.
