Before the Frost

30

He chose the location for his ceremonies with great care. This was something he had learned as early as during his flight from Jonestown: where could he rest, where would he feel safe? There were no ceremonies as such in his world back then; that came later, when he had reestablished a connection to God that was finally going to help fill the emptiness that threatened to consume him from the inside.

Now it was more important than ever not to make any mistakes in selecting the places where his assistants prepared their assignments. Everything had gone well until now, until the unfortunate incident where a woman accidentally hit upon one of their hideouts and was killed by his disciple, Torgeir.

I never saw Torgeir’s weakness for what it was, he thought. The poor little rich boy that I plucked out of the sewer in Cleveland had a temper I never succeeded in taming. I treated him with infinite patience and listened to him talk. But he carried a powerful rage behind those locked doors.

He had tried to get Torgeir to explain his actions. Why this senseless fury at a woman stumbling down the wrong path? They had even talked about what they should do in the event that someone chose to follow the abandoned path one day. They always had to remain alert to the possibility that the unexpected could happen. Torgeir had not been able to give him an answer. The plan had always been to meet unexpected visitors in a cordial fashion, then remove themselves from the area as soon as was practical. Torgeir had chosen the opposite approach. A fuse had blown in his brain. Instead of giving the woman a friendly welcome, he had reached for an axe. Why he dismembered her body he couldn’t say, nor why he saved the head and posed the hands as if in prayer. Then he had put the remaining body parts in a sack with a heavy rock, removed his clothes, and swum out into the middle of the nearest pond, where he let the whole parcel sink to the bottom.

Torgeir was strong — that had been among his first impressions of the drunk man he encountered in one of Cleveland’s worst slums. He was simply going to walk on when he heard the man sprawled in the gutter moan a few slurred words in a language that sounded like Danish or Norwegian. He had stopped and bent down, understanding that God had sent this man his way. Torgeir Langaas had been near death. The physician who later examined him and prepared the rehabilitation program had been very insistent on this point: there was no room left for any more alcohol or drugs in his body. Only his natural strength had saved him. But now his organs were using their last reserves. His brain was damaged and would perhaps never recover large portions of memory that were missing.

It was a moment he would always remember, the day when a homeless Norwegian by the name of Torgeir Langaas looked up at him with eyes so bloodshot they glowed like a rabid dog’s. But it wasn’t the look that had made such an impression, it was what he said, because in Torgeir’s confused mind the face bending down toward him belonged to God. He had grabbed his coat with his massive hands and directed his putrid breath into his redeemer’s face.

“Are you God?” Torgeir asked.

In that moment everything that had been unresolved in his life — his failures, dreams, and hopes — were reduced to a single point, and he answered:

“Yes, I am your God.”

In the next moment he had been beset with doubts, although there was no reason his first disciple couldn’t be one of the lowest. But who was he? How had he ended up here?

He had walked away and left Torgeir there, but his curiosity got the better of him. He returned to the slum the very next day. It’s like stepping down into hell, he thought, lost souls everywhere. In looking for Torgeir he came close to being mugged several times, but at last an old man with an oozing, stinking sore in the place where his left eye should have been told him that there was a Norwegian with large hands who sometimes took shelter behind a rusty bridge pillar. That was where he found him. Torgeir Langaas was sleeping, snoring loudly. His body reeked of sweat and urine and his face was badly cut.

It didn’t take more than a couple of sessions under the crumbling bridge to get Torgeir’s life story. He had been born in Baerum in 1948, heir to the Langaas shipping enterprise, a company that specialized in oil and cars. His father, Captain Anton Helge Langaas, had studied the shipping industry during his years at sea. Langaas Shipping was an offshoot of the established Refsvold Shipping Company. The parting had not been amicable. Nor was it known where Captain Helge Langaas had initially made the fortune that forced the unwilling board members of the Refsvold Shipping Company to admit him into their midst. Rumors abounded.

Captain Langaas waited to marry until his company was in the black and he was financially secure. In a gesture of contempt for the shipping aristocracy, he chose a wife who was as far from the sea as it was possible to be and still be in Norway, from a village in the forests east of Røros. There he found a woman called Maigrim who delivered mail to the isolated farms of the region. They built a large house in Baerum outside Oslo and had three children one after the other: Torgeir, and then two girls, Anniken and Hege.

Torgeir Langaas sensed what his parents wanted of him from an early age, but realized just as early that he would never be able to live up to their expectations. He never quite understood the role he was supposed to play in life, nor what the play was about, nor why he had been chosen for the starring role. He started rebelling in early adolescence. Captain Langaas fought a battle that was doomed from the outset. Finally he capitulated and realized that Torgeir would never take over his place in the family business. Instead, he turned to his daughters. Hege resembled her father, showed a focused determination even as a child, and retained an executive position within the company at twenty-two years of age. At that point Torgeir had already started his long slide into oblivion with a focused determination of his own. He had already developed several addictions, and despite Maigrim’s best efforts, none of the expensive clinics nor therapists called in to help did any good.

The final breakdown came one Christmas. Torgeir gave his family presents of rotting meat, old tires, and dirty cobblestones. Afterward he tried to set fire to himself, his sisters, and his parents. He ran away, with no intention of ever returning, a considerable amount of money to his name. When his passport expired and was not renewed, he was wanted by the International Police, but no one found him in the Cleveland streets where he was drifting. He kept his financial assets hidden from those around him, changing his bank, changing everything except his name. He still had five million Norwegian crowns to his name when the man he came to see as his savior turned up in his life.

But I did not take adequate stock of his weakness, he thought again. The rage that would lead to uncontrolled violence. Torgeir was blinded by his fury and hacked the woman to pieces. But there was also something of value even in this unexpected reaction and capacity for brutality. Setting fire to animals was one thing, killing a person quite another. Apparently Torgeir would not hesitate to commit such an act. Now that all the necessary animals had been sacrificed, they would proceed to the next level: human sacrifice.

They met at the Ystad train station. Torgeir had taken the train from Copenhagen, since he sometimes lost his sense of concentration when driving. Torgeir had bathed — that was part of the purification process that always preceded the ritual sacrifice. It was important to be clean. Jesus always washed his feet. He had explained to Torgeir that everything was there in the Bible. It was their map, their guide.

Torgeir carried a small black bag in his hand. He knew what was in it and did not have to ask. Torgeir had long since proved himself to be reliable — except with regard to the woman in the forest, which had caused an unnecessary amount of publicity and activity. Newspapers and television stations were still broadcasting the news. The act they were planning now had already been postponed for two days, and he had felt it best that Torgeir use his Copenhagen hideout while they lay low and waited it out.

They walked up toward the center of town, turned a corner when they reached the post office, and continued on to the pet store. There were no customers inside. The woman behind the counter was young. She was busy putting cans of cat food on a shelf when they arrived. There were hamsters, kittens, and birds in the cages. Torgeir smiled but said nothing; there was no point in letting her hear his Norwegian accent. While Torgeir walked around the store and made a mental note of how he would carry out his actions, his savior selected and bought a packet of birdseed. Then they left the store and walked down past the theater and toward the harbor. It was a warm day, and a number of sailboats were still coming and going.

That was the second part of their preparations, to be close to the water. Once, they had met by the shores of Lake Erie, and from then on they always sought out a body of water when they had important preparations to make.

“The cages are close together,” Torgeir said. “I’ll spray with both hands in either direction, light the lighter, and run. Everything will be on fire within a few seconds.”

“And then?”

“Then I say: ‘The Lord’s will be done.’ ”

“And then?”

“I go to the left, then right. Not too fast, not too slow. I stop on the main square and make sure no one is following me. Then I walk up to the newsstand by the hospital, where you’ll be waiting.”

They paused their conversation and looked at a small boat on its way into the harbor. The engine was loud and hacking.

“These are the last animals. We have reached our first goal.”

Torgeir was about to kneel right then and there on the pier. He dragged him up by his arm.

“Never in public.”

“I forgot.”

“Are you calm?”

“Yes.”

“Who am I?”

“My father, my shepherd, my savior, my God.”

“Who are you?”

“The first disciple. Found on a street in Cleveland, saved and helped back into life. I am the first apostle.”

“What else?”

“The first priest.”

Once I made sandals for a living, he thought. I dreamed of greater things and had to run away to escape my shame, my sense of failure, my sense of having destroyed those dreams by my inability to live up to them. Now I make people in the same way I once cut out soles, insteps, and straps.

It was four o’clock. They walked around the city and sat on various park benches, remaining silent the whole time. They were past words now. From time to time he looked over at Torgeir. He seemed calm and focused on the task at hand.

I’ve made him happy, he thought. A man who grew up spoiled but also stifled and desperately unhappy. Now I bring joy to his life by taking him seriously and giving him a purpose.

They wandered from bench to bench until it was seven o’clock. The pet store closed at six. Many people were out in the streets in the warm evening. That was to their advantage.

They went their separate ways. He walked up to the main square and turned around. Their plans ticked like a timer in his head. Now Torgeir was breaking down the front door with the crowbar. Now he was inside, closing the broken door behind him, listening for signs of anyone in the store. Now he was dropping the bag, taking out the bottles of gasoline and the lighter.

He heard the boom and thought he saw a flash of light behind the buildings. A plume of smoke rose up into the sky. He turned and started walking away. He heard the first sirens even before he had made it to the appointed meeting place.

It’s over, he thought. We are reviving the Christian faith, the Christian dictates of a righteous life. The long years in the desert have come to an end.

The simple beast who feels pain but lacks comprehension is no longer our concern.

Now we turn to the human being.

31

When Linda got out of the car at Mariagatan, she smelled something that reminded her of a week-long vacation she had taken with Herman Mboya to Morocco. They had chosen the cheapest package deal and bunked in a cockroach hotel. It was during that week that she had begun to think they didn’t have a future together. The following year they had gone their separate ways; Herman had returned to Africa and she had started down the path that finally led her to the police academy.

The smell was what triggered the memory. Mounds of garbage were burned at night in Morocco. But no one burns their trash in Ystad, she thought. Then she heard the fire trucks and police sirens. There was a fire in the center of town somewhere. She started to run.

The fire was still raging when she arrived, panting like a house-bound old woman. When had she gotten this out of shape? She saw tall flames leap up through the roof. The families that lived in the upper stories had been evacuated. A badly damaged baby carriage had been abandoned in front. Firefighters were busy securing the surrounding buildings. Linda made her way up to the police tape.

Her father was quarreling with Svartman about a witness who had not been interviewed thoroughly, and to top it off had been allowed to disappear.

“We’ll never get this madman if we can’t even follow the simplest of routines.”

“Martinsson was in charge of it.”

“And he’s told me twice that he delegated it to you. Now you’ll have to track down the witness somehow.”

Svartman left, clearly feeling wronged. They’re like angry bulls, Linda thought. All this time and energy spent marking their territory.

A fire truck that was backing up toward the rescue operation knocked a hose loose, which started whipping around, spraying water. Wallander jumped to the side, and caught sight of Linda at the same time.

“What happened here?” she asked.

“One or more firebombs in the store. Torched animals, same as the swans and the calf.”

“Any clues?”

“One witness, but no one seems to know where the person went.”

Wallander was so furious he was shaking. This is how he’ll die, Linda thought suddenly. Exhausted, outraged by an oversight in a pressing criminal investigation.

“We have to get these bastards,” he said, interrupting her train of thought.

“I think this is different.”

“What is it?”

He looked at her as if she knew the answer.

“I don’t know. It’s as if it were really about something else.”

Höglund called out to Wallander.

Linda watched him walk away, a large man with his head pulled down into his shoulders, stepping carefully over the hoses and the smoking remains of what had once been a pet store. Linda’s gaze fell on a teary-eyed young woman watching the blaze. The owner, she mused. Or simply someone who loves animals. There were a number of spectators, all silent. Burning buildings always inspire dread, she thought. A house on fire is a reminder that our own home could one day burn to the ground.

“Why aren’t they asking me questions? I don’t get it.”

Linda turned around and saw a woman in her twenties pressed up against a nearby wall. She was talking to a friend. A waft of smoke made them both pull back even farther.

“Why don’t you just go over and tell them what you saw?” her friend said.

“I’m not going to go out of my way for the police.”

The witness, Linda thought and took a step closer.

“What did you see?” she asked.

The woman eyed her suspiciously and Linda saw that she was slightly walleyed.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Linda Wallander. I’m a police officer.”

Well, it’s almost true, she thought.

“How could someone kill all those animals? And I heard there was a horse in there too. Is that true?”

“No,” Linda said. “What did you see?”

“A man.”

“What was he doing?”

“He started the fire that burned all those animals. I was walking from the direction of the theater. I was going to mail some letters, which I do several times a week. When I was about halfway to the post office, about a block from the pet store, I noticed someone walking behind me. I was startled because he had been walking almost soundlessly. I let him pass me. Then I started following him, trying to walk as quietly as he did, I don’t know why. But after a few feet I realized I had left a letter in the car so I turned around and went back for it.”

Linda lifted her hand.

“How long did it take you to go back and get the letter?”

“Three or four minutes. The car was parked by the delivery entrance to the theater.”

“What happened when you started back for the post office? Did you see the man again?”

“No.”

“And when you walked past the pet store, what did you do?”

“I glanced at the window — but I’m not so interested in hamsters and turtles.”

“What did you see?”

“A blue light inside the store. It’s always on. It’s some kind of heat lamp, I think.”

“Then what happened?”

“I mailed my letters and started walking back to the car. It took another three minutes or so.”

“And then?”

“Then the store exploded, or it felt that way. I had just walked past it. There was a sharp light all around me. I threw myself down onto the street. Then I saw that the store was in flames. An animal must have gotten loose, and it ran past me with its fur on fire. It was horrible.”

“What did you do then?”

“It all happened so fast. But I saw a man standing on the other side of the street. The light was so strong that I was positive; it was the man who had overtaken me on the street. He was carrying a bag in his hand.”

“Had he been carrying it before?”

“Yes. I forgot to mention it. A black bag, like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag.”

Linda knew what they looked like.

“What did you do?”

“I called out to him to help me.”

“Were you hurt?”

“I thought so. It was such a loud bang and then that terrible light.”

“Did he help you?”

“No, he just looked at me and walked away.”

“In what direction?”

“Up toward the main square.”

“Had you ever seen him before?”

“Never.”

“How would you describe him?”

“He was tall and strong-looking. Maybe bald, or with very short hair. He had a dark blue coat, dark pants. His shoes I had looked at when he walked past and I wondered how he could walk so quietly. They were brown and had thick rubber soles, but they weren’t running shoes.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“He shouted something.”

“Who was he talking to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was there anyone else there?”

“Not that I could see.”

“What did he say?”

“It sounded like ‘The Lord’s will be done.‘”

“‘The Lord’s will be done’?”

“I’m sure of the word ‘Lord,’ but the word ‘will’ sounded like it was pronounced in a foreign language. Danish, maybe. Or Norwegian, more like it. Yes, that’s it. The guy sounded like he was speaking Norwegian.”

Linda’s heart beat a little faster. It has to be the same guy, she thought. Unless there’s a Norwegian conspiracy at work. But that seems a little far-fetched.

“Did he say anything else?”

“No.”

“What’s your name?”

“Amy Lindberg.”

Linda fished a pen out of her pocket and wrote down Amy’s phone number on her wrist.

They shook hands.

“Thanks for listening to me,” Amy Lindberg said, and she turned to rejoin her friend.

The mysterious Torgeir Langaas, Linda mused. He keeps cropping up in my life when I least expect it.

She could see that the firefighting operation had reached a new stage. Workers were moving more slowly, a sign that the blaze would soon be contained. She saw her dad talking to the fire chief. When his head turned in her direction she pulled herself back even farther, although it was impossible for him to see her in the shadows. Stefan Lindman walked by with the young woman she had seen earlier, who had cried as she watched the fire. It suits him to comfort crying women, she thought. I, on the other hand, almost never cry. I stopped all that when I was still little. She watched Lindman lead the woman over to a patrol car. They said a few words to each other, then he opened the door for her and she climbed in.

The conversation with Amy Lindberg kept coming back to her. The Lord’s will be done. But what exactly did this god want? That a pet store burn to the ground, that some helpless animals die in unimaginable terror and pain? First it was swans, she thought. Then the calf: singled out, charred, dead. And now a whole store full of pets. It was clearly the work of the same man, one who had calmly regarded his work and said: The Lord’s will be done.

Linda walked over to Lindman, who looked at her with surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m just a curious onlooker. But I need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“The fire.”

He thought for a moment.

“I have to go home and eat something anyway,” he said. “You can come along.”

Stefan’s apartment was located in one of three high-rises scattered arbitrarily across an area dotted with a few single-family homes and a paper-recycling center.

His was the middle building. The glass in the front door had been smashed and replaced by a piece of cardboard in which someone had also kicked a hole. Linda saw a message scribbled on the wall: LIFE IS FOR SALE. SPREAD THE WORD.

“I read that every day,” Stefan said. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

He unlocked the apartment and handed her a hanger for her coat. They walked into the living room, which was furnished with a few simple pieces, randomly scattered around the room.

“I don’t have anything to offer you except water or beer,” he said. “This is just a place for me to camp out.”

“Where are you moving? You said something about Knickarp.”

“I’m renovating a house out there. It has a large garden. I’m looking forward to it.”

“I’m still at my dad’s,” Linda said. “I’m counting the days until I get out of there.”

“You have a good father.”

She was taken aback.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. You have a good father. I didn’t.”

Some newspapers were lying on a side table. She pulled over a copy of the Borås Daily.

“I’m not nostalgic,” he said. “I subscribe to it because I enjoy reading about everything I’ve managed to escape.”

“It was that awful?”

“I knew I had to leave when it was clear I was going to survive the cancer.”

He fell silent. Linda wasn’t sure how to change the subject. Then he stood up.

“I’ll get the beer and some sandwiches.”

He came back with two glasses. Linda declined the sandwich.

She told him how she had overheard the conversation between Amy Lindberg and her friend and subsequently asked her some questions. Stefan listened attentively. She continued to talk, going back to the incident when Anna thought she saw her father in the street in Malmö. The shadowy figure of a Norwegian, who was perhaps named Torgeir Langaas, kept appearing in her account.

“Someone is killing animals,” she said in conclusion. “Someone has also killed a person, cut her up into pieces. And Anna has disappeared.”

“I understand your concern,” Stefan said. “Not only because of the vaguely disturbing possibility of a return by Anna’s father. We also have the menacing presence of an unknown person, someone who says ‘The Lord’s will be done’. Perhaps not aloud, but the intent is there in all his actions. You’ve also learned that your friend Anna is religious. These random facts are starting to look like pieces of a grotesque puzzle, not least the morbid detail of allowing two severed hands to go on pleading for mercy after death. From everything you’ve said and from what I already know of the case, it’s clear that there’s a religious dimension to all of this that we haven’t taken as seriously as we perhaps should have.”

He drank the last of his beer. There was a rumble of thunder in the distance.

“It’s out over Bornholm,” Linda said. “There are often thunder-storms out there.”

“It’s an easterly wind. That means it’s on its way here.”

“What do you think about what I just told you?”

“That it’s true. And that what you’ve told me will impact our investigation.”

“Which investigation?”

“Birgitta Medberg. Anna’s disappearance has not been a priority up to this point. I guess that will change now.”

“Am I right to be scared?”

He shook his head hesitantly.

“I don’t know. I’m going to write down everything you’ve told me, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to do the same. I’ll let my colleagues know about this tomorrow.”

Linda shivered.

“Dad will be furious that I went to you first and not him.”

“Why don’t you blame it on the fact that he was so busy with the arson?”

“He keeps saying he’s never too busy when it comes to me.”

Stefan helped her put on her coat. She thought again that she was genuinely attracted to him. His hands on her shoulders were gentle.

She returned to Mariagatan. Her father was waiting for her at the kitchen table, and she could tell from his face that he was angry. You bastard, she thought. Couldn’t you at least have waited until I got home?

She sat down across from him and braced herself.

“If you’re just going to rant and rave I’m going to bed. No, I’ll leave. I’ll sleep in the car.”

“You could at least have talked to me. This amounts to a breach of trust, Linda. A huge breach of trust.”

“For Christ’s sake — you were in the middle of a pet massacre. A street was going up in flames.”

“You shouldn’t have taken it upon yourself to talk to that girl. What gave you the right to do that? How many times do I have to tell you this is not your business? You haven’t even started working yet.”

Linda pulled up her sleeve, and showed him Amy Lindberg’s phone number.

“Will that do? I’m going to bed.”

“I find it deeply disturbing that you don’t even have enough respect for me not to go behind my back.”

Linda’s eyes widened.

“Go behind your back? Who said anything about going behind your back?”

“You know what I’m saying.”

Linda swept a salt shaker and a vase of withered roses to the floor. He had gone too far. She rushed out into the hallway, grabbed her coat, and slammed the front door behind her. I hate him, she thought, fumbling in her pocket for the car keys. I hate his endless nagging. I’m not spending another night in this place.

She tried to calm herself when she reached the car. He expects me to feel guilty, she thought. He’s waiting for me to go back and tell him that little Linda Caroline had a moment of rebellion but takes it all back now.

“Well, I’m not going back,” she said aloud. “I’ll stay with Zeba.” She was about to start the car when she changed her mind. Zeba would talk, ask questions, discuss the situation. Linda didn’t have the energy for that. She drove to Anna’s apartment instead. Her dad could sit at the kitchen table and wait until the end of the world as far as she was concerned.

She put the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

Anna was standing in the hall with a smile on her face.

32

I knew it had to be you. No one else would drop by like this, like a thief in the night. You probably intuited I had come back and woke up. Isn’t that it?” Anna said cheerfully.

Linda dropped her keys.

“I don’t understand. Is it really you?”

“It’s me.”

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

Anna frowned.

“Why are you relieved?”

“I’ve been worried sick about you.”

Anna lifted her hands in apology.

“I’m guilty, I know. Do you want me to apologize or tell you what happened?”

“You don’t have to do either right now. It’s enough that you’re here.”

They went into the living room. Even though Linda was struggling to come to terms with the fact that Anna was back and sitting in her usual chair, she noticed that the framed blue butterfly was still missing.

“I came over because I had a fight with my dad,” Linda said. “I thought I would sleep on your couch since you were away.”

“You can still sleep here even though I’m back.”

“He made me so mad. My dad and I are like two roosters fighting on a dung heap. The more we struggle, the more we get mired into the muck. We were arguing about you, actually.”

“About me?”

Linda stretched out her hand and brushed Anna’s arm with her fingertips. Anna was wearing a robe on which the sleeves had been cut off for some reason. Anna’s skin was cold. There was no doubt that it really was Anna who had come back and not an impostor. Anna’s skin was always cold. Linda could remember that from their childhood when they — with the tingling feeling of exploring forbidden territory — had played dead. The game had made Linda warm and sweaty, but Anna had been cold, so cold in fact that they stopped playing. It had scared them both.

“I was so worried about you,” Linda said. “It’s not like you to disappear and not be home when we had agreed to meet.”

“You have to remember my world was turned upside-down. I thought I had seen my father. I was convinced he had come back.”

She paused and looked down at her hands.

“What happened?” Linda asked.

“I went to look for him,” she said. “I didn’t forget about our plans, but I thought you would understand. I had seen my father for a second and I had to find him again. I was so worked up I was shaking and couldn’t drive. I took the train down to Malmö and set out to look for him. It was an absolutely indescribable experience. I walked up and down the streets using all my senses, thinking there had to be a trace of him somewhere, a scent, a sound.

“It took me several hours to get from the station to the hotel where I had seen him. When I walked into the hotel lobby a fat lady was half-sleeping in the chair I had been sitting in. I became furious; she had taken my place! No one had the right to sit in the holy chair where I had seen my father and he had seen me. I walked up to her and shook her arm. I told her she had to move because the furniture was going to be replaced. She did as I asked, although I still don’t understand how she could think I was part of the hotel staff in my raincoat and with wet hair stuck to my cheeks. I sat down in the chair when she had left. There was no one outside. But I thought if I just stayed there long enough he would return.”

Anna stopped talking and left to go to the bathroom. Thunder rumbled in the distance. She came back and continued:

“I sat in the chair until the receptionists started looking at me suspiciously. I booked a room, but tried to spend as little time as possible there. To conceal my true purpose I pretended to be reading and taking notes. On the second day the fat lady came back. She must have been spying on me and felt that she had found me out because she said ‘You thief — you stole my seat!’ She was so worked up I thought she was going to hyperventilate. I thought to myself that no one would make up a lie about sitting in a chair in hopes of catching a glimpse of a father they hadn’t seen in twenty years. So I told her the truth and she believed me. She sat down in the chair next to me and said she’d be happy to keep me company while I waited. It was crazy. She talked nonstop, mainly about her husband, who was attending a conference in men’s hatwear. You can laugh — I didn’t, of course — but it was true. She told me all about it in excruciating detail, about the rows of somber men in airless conference rooms meeting to decide which kinds of hats to order for the new season. She talked and talked until I was ready to strangle her. But then her husband appeared. He was as fat as she was, and was wearing a broad-brimmed and probably very expensive hat. She and I had never actually introduced ourselves. As she was about to leave with her husband, she said to him, ‘This young lady is waiting for her father. She’s been waiting a long time for him.’ And the man asked, ‘How long?’ while he tipped his elegant hat. ‘Almost twenty-five years,’ she told him. And he looked at me, thoughtfully but also with great respect. And the entire hotel lobby, with its polished, sterile surfaces and strong smell of commercial-grade cleaning agents, was transformed into a church. He said, ‘One can never wait too long.’ Then he put his hat back on, and I watched them leave the hotel. The whole situation was absurd, almost unbelievably so, but that’s what made it so real.

“I stayed in that chair for close to two days before I realized that my father was not going to reappear. I decided to go out and look for him, though I kept the room. There was no master plan to my search. I walked through the parks, along the canals and the various harbors. My father had left me and Henrietta because he sought a freedom he couldn’t have while he was with us. Therefore I looked for him in the open spaces. There were times when I thought I had found him. I would get so dizzy I’d have to lean against a wall or a tree, but it was never him. All the longing I had been bottling up for so long finally turned to rage. There I was, still looking for him, still wanting so badly to find him, and he had simply chosen to humiliate me by showing himself to me once and then disappearing again. Naturally I started to doubt myself. How could I be sure that it had been him? Everything spoke against it. The last night I was there, I ended up in Pildamm Park. It was three o’clock in the morning and I called out into the darkness: ‘Daddy, where are you?’ But no one answered. I stayed in the park until dawn, and then I suddenly felt as though I had been through the final trial in my relationship with him, as though I had been wandering in a fog of delusion, thinking he was going to show himself to me, and when at last I emerged into the light I accepted that he didn’t exist. Well, maybe he does exist, maybe he’s not actually dead. But for me, from that point on, he was just going to be a mirage, a dream, that I could evoke from time to time at will, nothing more. All of those years I had always believed deep down that he was out there somewhere. Now, at the very moment that I believed he had finally returned, I realized he was never coming back at all. Now that I could no longer hold on to the idea of him as a living, breathing person, to be mad at, to keep waiting for, he was finally gone for real.”

The storm clouds had moved on to the west. Anna stopped talking and looked down at her hands. Linda almost had the impression she was making sure none of her fingers were missing. She tried to imagine what it would be like if her own father had disappeared when she was a child. It was an impossible thought. He had always been there, a big enveloping shadow, sometimes warm, sometimes cold, circling her and keeping his eye on her. Linda suddenly wondered if following in his footsteps and becoming a police officer was going to be the greatest mistake of her life. Why did I do it? she asked herself. He’s going to crush me with all the kindness, understanding — even jealousy — he should really be giving to another woman and not to his own daughter.

She pushed her thoughts away. She was being unfair, to him as well as to herself.

Anna looked up from her hands.

“It’s over,” she said. “It was no more than a reflection in the glass. I can return to my studies. Let’s not talk about it anymore. I’m sorry I worried you so much.”

Linda wondered if she had heard about the death of Birgitta Medberg. That was still an unanswered question — what connection was there between her and Anna? And what about Vigsten in Copenhagen? Was the name Torgeir Langaas in any of her journals? I should have plowed through them while I had the chance, Linda thought callously. Reading one page or a thousand makes no difference once you’ve crossed the line.

Somewhere inside her the sliver of anxiety was still there, gnawing away at her. But she decided that her questions would have to wait until later.

“I went to see your mother,” Linda said. “She didn’t seem particularly worried. I took that as a sign that she knew where you were. But she didn’t seem to want to tell me anything.”

“I didn’t tell her I thought I saw my dad.”

Linda thought about what Henrietta had claimed, that Anna regularly reported sightings of her father. Who is lying, or not telling the whole truth? Linda decided it wasn’t important for the moment.

“I went to see my mother yesterday,” Linda said. “I was going to surprise her, which in fact I did.”

“Was she happy?”

“Not particularly. I found her in the kitchen, stark naked, drinking vodka.”

“Is she an alcoholic?”

“That remains to be seen. I guess anyone can have a bad day.”

“You’re right,” Anna said. “Well, I need to get some sleep. Do you want me to make up the couch for you?”

“No, I’m going home,” Linda said. “Now that I know you’re back I can sleep in my own bed, even though I’ll probably have another fight with my dad first thing tomorrow morning.”

Linda got up and walked out into the hall. Anna remained in the doorway to the living room. The storm had passed.

“I didn’t tell you what happened at the end of my trip,” Anna said. “I saw someone I wasn’t expecting. This morning I was having a cup of coffee at the train station while I waited. Suddenly someone came over to my table. You’ll never guess who it was.”

“Since I’ll never guess, it must have been the fat lady.”

“Right. Her husband was standing guard over one of those huge old-fashioned trunks. It must have been full of wonderful hats all set to become the latest fashion. The fat lady was sweating and her cheeks were flushed. She leaned over to me and asked me if I had seen him. I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I said yes, I had seen him. Everything had gone well. Her eyes filled with tears, then she said, ‘May I tell my husband? We are returning to Halmstad now, and meeting a young woman who has been reunited with her father is a memory to cherish for life.’ ”

“I’ll come by tomorrow,” Linda said. “Let’s go out like we were planning a week ago.”

They agreed to meet around noon. Linda gave Anna the car keys.

“I borrowed your car when I was looking for you. I’ll fill it up for you tomorrow.”

“There’s no need to do that. You shouldn’t have to pay for being worried about me.”

Linda walked home. The storm clouds were gone but there was a light rain. The wind had died down. Linda stopped and drew in the smell of asphalt and damp earth. Everything is all right, she thought. I was wrong. Nothing has happened.

But the niggling splinter of anxiety remained. She kept thinking about what Anna had said: I saw someone I wasn’t expecting.

33

Linda woke up with a start. Her curtains were askew, letting in a ray of sunlight that reflected off the roof of a building across the street. She stretched her arm out into the light. When does the day start? she wondered. Every morning she had the feeling that she had a dream right before waking up that told her it was time: the day is about to begin.

She sat up. Anna was back. Linda held her breath for a moment to rule out the suspicion that it had all been a dream. But Anna had really been there in that funny robe with the sleeves cut off. Linda lolled back onto the bed and put her hand back in the ray of sun. Summer will be over soon, she thought. I start work in five days. Then I get a new apartment and my father and I won’t rub each other raw anymore. Soon it will be fall, and one morning there will be frost on the ground. She looked at her arm bathed in sunlight. We’re still in the time before the frost.

She got up when she heard her father rattling around in the bathroom. She couldn’t help laughing — no one else was able to make such a racket in a bathroom. It was as if he were engaged in a fierce battle with the soaps, faucets, and towels. She put on her robe and walked out into the kitchen. It was seven. Her father appeared, drying his hair.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said.

Without waiting for an answer he walked over to her and bent his head.

“Can you tell if I’m losing my hair?”

She flicked through his wet hair.

“There’s a little spot right here.”

“Damn it. I don’t want to go bald.”

“Grandpa didn’t have much hair either. It must run in the family. You’d look like an American army officer if you cut it all off.”

“I don’t want to look like an American army officer.”

“Anna’s back.”

Wallander stopped in the middle of filling a pot of water.

“Anna Westin?”

“She’s the only Anna I know who’s been missing. Yesterday when I left I went over to her place to sleep. And there she was, just standing in her hall.”

“What had happened?”

“She had gone to Malmö and stayed in a hotel. She was looking for her dad.”

“Did she find him?”

“No. Finally she realized she had imagined the whole thing. Then she came back. That was yesterday.”

Wallander sat down.

“She spends a few days in Malmö looking for her father. She checks into a hotel and tells no one — not a friend nor her mother — where she is. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any reason to doubt her word?”

“Not really.”

“What does that mean? Yes or no?”

“No.”

Wallander filled the rest of the pot.

“So I was right. Nothing had happened.”

“Birgitta Medberg’s name was in her journal. As is Vigsten’s. I don’t know how much Lindman told you during your gossip session yesterday.”

“It was no gossip session. He was very thorough — I think he’s going to be the new Martinsson when it comes to making clear, concise reports. I’m going to have Anna come down to the station so she can answer a few questions for us. You can tell her that, but don’t mention Medberg, and no more independent investigating from your side, understood?”

“Now you’re starting to sound like a patronizing chief inspector,” Linda said.

He looked surprised.

“I am an inspector,” he said. “In case you didn’t know. But I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being patronizing.”

They ate their breakfast in silence, each with a section of the Ystad Allehanda. At half past seven Wallander got up to leave, but he changed his mind and sat down again.

“You said something the other day,” he said tentatively.

Linda immediately knew what he was thinking of. It amused her to see him so embarrassed.

“You mean what I said about you needing a little action?”

“What did you really mean by that?”

“What do you think? Isn’t it self-explanatory?”

“My sex life is my business.”

“You don’t have a sex life.”

“It’s still my business.”

“Even if it’s nonexistent? Anyway, I don’t think it’s good for you to be alone. For every week that passes, you just gain more weight. All those extra pounds scream out how lonely you are — you might as well hang a sign around your neck saying ‘I need to get laid.’”

“You don’t have to raise your voice.”

“Who could possibly hear us?”

Wallander got up, quickly.

“Forget it,” he said. “I’m going.”

She watched him as he rinsed out his coffee cup. Am I too hard on him? she thought. But if I don’t do it, who will?

Linda called Anna at around ten o’clock.

“I just want to make sure I didn’t dream the whole thing.”

“And I realize now how much I worried you. But I called Zeba, so she knows I’m back.”

“And Henrietta?”

“I’ll talk to her later. Are you still coming over at noon?”

“I’ll be there.”

Linda didn’t put the receiver down right away after they ended the conversation.

That little sliver of anxiety was still inside her somewhere. It’s a message, she thought. My body is trying to tell me something, like dreams where everything leads back to you even though it may seem like you’re dreaming about someone else. Anna has returned. She’s unhurt and everything seems normal, but I keep wondering about two names that appeared in her journal: Birgitta Medberg and Vigsten. And then there’s a third person, a Norwegian by the name of Torgeir Langaas. I won’t be able to shut the door on these thoughts until I get some answers.

She went out and sat on the balcony. The air was cool and fresh after the previous night’s thunderstorm. The paper had said the rain had caused sewers to overflow in Rydsgård. A dead butterfly lay on the balcony floor. That’s another question I need answered, Linda thought. The blue butterfly on the wall.

She put her legs up on the balcony railing. Only five more days, she thought. Then I’ll no longer be in limbo.

Linda didn’t know where the thought had come from, but she went inside and called information. The hotel was run by the Scandic Corporation. She was put through, and a cheerful man’s voice picked up. She sensed the trace of a Danish accent.

“I’d like to speak to one of your guests, Anna Westin.”

“One moment.”

The first lie is easy, she thought. Then it gets harder.

The cheerful voice returned.

“I have no one registered under that name.”

“Perhaps she’s already checked out. I know she was staying at your hotel.”

“Anna Westin, you said? Is that W-e-s-t-i-n?”

“Yes.”

“One moment.”

This time he returned almost immediately.

“There’s been no guest by that name in the last two weeks, at least. Are you sure you have the right spelling of the name?”

“She definitely spells it with a ‘W.’”

“We’ve had a Wagner, Werner, Wiktor with a ‘W,’ Williamsson, Wallander...”

Linda squeezed the receiver.

“Excuse me. What was the last name?”

“Williamsson?”

“No, Wallander.”

The cheerful voice took on a steely edge.

“I thought you said you were looking for someone by the name of Westin.”

“But her husband’s name is Wallander. Perhaps she had booked them under his name?”

“Please hold the line for a moment.”

It can’t be, she thought. This isn’t happening.

“I’m afraid that isn’t right either. The only Wallander we’ve had was a woman who was staying in a single room.”

Linda couldn’t speak.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

“Was her first name Linda, by any chance?”

“Yes, it was, actually. I’m sorry I can’t do anything more for you. Perhaps your friend was staying elsewhere. We also have a wonderful establishment outside Lund.”

“Thank you.”

Linda almost slammed the phone down. At first she had felt surprise, but now it was anger. She knew she should speak to her father and not keep working on her own. Right now this is the only question that matters to me, she thought. Why would Anna go to Malmö to look for her father and book a room under my name?

She tore a piece of paper from a pad lying out on the kitchen table and crossed out the word “asparagus” already written on it. He doesn’t even eat asparagus, she thought irritably. By the time she was ready to start jotting down all of the names and events associated with Anna’s disappearance, she no longer knew where she should begin. Eventually she drew the outline of a butterfly and started filling it in with blue. Then the pen ran out and she got another. One of the wings was blue, the other black. This is a butterfly that doesn’t exist anywhere but in the realm of imagination, she thought. Just like Anna’s dad. Reality is full of other things, such as burning swans, a butchered body in the forest, a mugger in Copenhagen.

At eleven she walked to the harbor, strolled out onto the pier, and sat down on a bollard. She tried to think of a reasonable explanation for Anna using her name. A dead wild duck floated in the turbid water. When Linda finally stood up, she still had not thought of a reasonable explanation. It must exist, she thought. I just can’t think of it.

She rang Anna’s doorbell at exactly twelve o’clock. The anxiety she had felt earlier was gone. Now she was simply on her guard.

34

Torgeir Langaas opened his eyes, surprised that he was still alive, as always. His life should have ended in that Cleveland gutter, his body disposed of by the state of Ohio.

He lay still in what had once been the maid’s room off the kitchen — a room Vigsten had forgotten all about — and listened to noises issuing from the apartment. A piano tuner was working on the baby grand. He came every Wednesday. Torgeir Langaas had enough of an ear to know that the tuner only needed to make very minor adjustments to the pitch. He imagined old Vigsten sitting on a chair by the window, his eyes following the tuner as he worked. Langaas stretched out. Everything had gone according to plan yesterday evening. The pet store had burned to the ground; not a single mouse or hamster had escaped. Erik had stressed how important this last animal sacrifice was, how crucial it was that nothing go wrong. Erik came back to this point over and over: that God allowed no mistakes.

Every morning Langaas recited the oath that Erik had taught him, first and foremost disciple: “It is my duty to God and my Earthly Master to follow the orders I receive without hesitation and undertake whatever actions necessary to teach the people what will happen to those that turn away from Him. Only by accepting the Lord through the words of his only true prophet will redemption be possible, and with it the mercy of being counted among those who will return after the great transformation.”

He folded his hands in prayer and mumbled the verses from Jude that Erik had taught him: “And the Lord, when he had saved his people from Egypt’s land, afterward smote those who had not believed in Him.” You can turn every room into a cathedral, Erik had told him. The church you seek is here and everywhere.

Langaas whispered his oath, closed his eyes, and pulled the blankets up to his chin. The piano tuner hit the same high-pitched note again and again. Erik’s words were what had sparked the memory of his grandfather who, despite his diminishing comprehension, had spent his last few years alone in his house by Femunden. One of Langaas’s sisters had spent a whole week with him without his registering the fact. Langaas had told Erik about his idea and received his cautious blessing. Frans Vigsten had appeared as if from nowhere. Langaas sometimes wondered if Erik had steered Vigsten in his direction. Langaas had been at a café in Nyhavn, testing himself to see if he could resist the multitude of temptations that came his way. The old man had been there drinking wine. Suddenly he had come over to Langaas and asked:

“Could you please tell me where I am?”

Langaas had realized he was senile rather than drunk.

“At a café in Nyhavn.”

The old man had lowered himself onto a chair across from him, and after a long silence asked:

“Where is that exactly?”

“Nyhavn? In Copenhagen.”

“I can’t seem to remember where I live.”

They found the address on a piece of paper in Vigsten’s wallet. Nedergade.

“My memory comes and goes,” he said. “But this may be where I live, where my piano is, and where I receive my students.”

Langaas had helped him into a cab, and then accompanied him to Nedergade. Vigsten’s name appeared on the list of residents in the entryway. Langaas followed him up into the apartment. Vigsten recognized the smell of stale air.

“This is where I live,” he said. “This is what it smells like.”

Then he had wandered off into the recesses of the large apartment and appeared to completely forget about the man who had helped him home. Langaas found and pocketed a spare set of keys before he left. A few days later he returned and made the maid’s room into another of his temporary residences. Vigsten had still not realized that he served as a host to a man who was waiting to be transported to a higher state. He could tell Vigsten had long since forgotten about their meeting in Nyhavn. Vigsten assumed he was a pupil. When Langaas said he had in fact come to service the radiators, Vigsten had simply turned his back and forgotten about him in that instant.

Langaas looked down at his hands. They were large and strong, and they no longer shook. It had been many years since he had been lifted from the gutter, and he had not had a drop of alcohol or any drugs since then. Erik had always been there, supporting him. Torgeir knew he could never have done it without him. It was through Erik that he had his faith, the strength he needed to continue living.

I am strong, he thought. I wait in my hiding places for my instructions. I follow them to the letter and return into hiding. Erik never knows exactly where I am, but I can always sense when he needs me.

I have received this strength from Erik, he thought. And I have only one small weakness left that I have not been able to shake off. The fact that he kept a secret from Erik was a source of great shame. The prophet had always spoken openly to him, the man from the gutter. He had not concealed any part of himself, and he had demanded the same from the man who would be his disciple. When Erik had asked him if he was free of all secrets and weaknesses, he had answered yes. But it had been a lie. There was one link to his old existence. For the longest time he had resisted the task that awaited him. But when he woke up this morning, he knew he could no longer put it off. Setting fire to the pet store last night had been the final step before he was lifted to the next level. He could wait no longer. If Erik did not discover his weakness, then surely God would turn his anger on him. This fury would also strike Erik, and that was an unbearable thought.

He got up and dressed. Through the window he saw that it was overcast and windy. He hesitated between the leather jacket and his long coat, then decided on the jacket. He fingered the pigeon and swan feathers that he picked up from the streets when he walked. Perhaps this collecting is also a form of weakness, he thought. But it is a weakness for which God forgives me. He got off the bus at City Hall, walked over to the train station, and bought the morning paper. News about the Ystad pet store that had burned down was on the front page. A police officer from Ystad had commented, “Only a sick person could do something like this; a sick person with sadistic tendencies.”

Erik had taught him to keep his cool, whatever happened. But reading that his actions were regarded as a kind of twisted sadism outraged him. He crumpled up the newspaper and threw it into the trash. As penance for this weakness he gave fifty kronor to a drunk who was asking for spare change. The man stared after him, slack-jawed. One day I’ll come back and beat you to a pulp, Langaas thought savagely. I’ll crush your face with a single blow, in the name of the Lord, in the name of the Christian uprising. Your blood will be spilled and join the river that will one day lead us to the promised land.

It was ten o’clock. He went to a café and ate breakfast. Erik had ordered him to lie low this day. His instructions were simply to seek out one of his hiding places and wait. Maybe Erik knows I still have a weakness, he thought. Maybe he’s known all along but wants to see if I have the strength to deliver myself of it on my own?

God makes his plans well, he thought. God and Erik, his servant, are no dreamers. Erik has explained how God organizes everything down to the very last details of a person’s life. This is why this day has been granted to me, in order that I should rid myself of my one remaining weakness, and stand prepared at last.

Sylvi Rasmussen had come to Denmark in the early 1990s, along with a boatload of other illegal immigrants in a ship that had landed off the west coast of Jutland. At that point she had already undertaken a long and at times terrifying journey from her home in Bulgaria. She had traveled in trucks and in trailers hitched up to tractors, and she had even spent two terrible days sealed in an increasingly airless container. Her name back then wasn’t Sylvi Rasmussen, it was Nina Barovska. She borrowed the money for her trip, and when she arrived on that deserted beach in Jutland, two men were waiting for her. They took her to an apartment in Aarhus, where they raped and beat her again and again for a week and then — when they had broken her will — took her to an apartment in Copenhagen where they forced her to work as a prostitute. She had tried to escape after a month, but the two men cut off her little finger from each hand and threatened to do something worse if she ever tried to escape again. She didn’t. To make her existence more bearable, she started using drugs and hoped she would not have to live too long.

One day a client whose name was Torgeir Langaas had come in to see her. He became a regular and she would try to talk to him, desperately trying to make the time they spent together more human, less cold. But he always shook his head and mumbled unintelligible responses. Although he was gentle, she would sometimes break into uncontrollable shivers after one of his visits. There was something vaguely threatening about him, something uncanny, even though he was her most loyal and generous client. His large hands always touched her gently, but he still frightened her.

He rang her doorbell at eleven o’clock. He invariably came to see her in the mornings. Since he wanted to spare her the moment of realization that she was to die this day in the beginning of September, he grabbed her from behind as they were on their way into the bedroom. His large hands reached for her forehead and neck and snapped her spine. He put her body on the bed, pulled off her clothes, and tried to make it look like a sex crime. When he was done, he looked around and thought that Sylvi had deserved a better fate. If circumstances had been different, he would have wanted to bring her along to the promised land. But Erik set the rules, and he demanded that his disciples be free of all worldly weakness. And now he had achieved this state. Woman, desire, was finally gone from his life.

He left the apartment. He was ready. Erik was waiting for him. God was waiting.

35

Her grandfather had often complained about difficult people, a category that included almost everyone, and he consequently did his best to minimize contact with other people. However, as he said, one could never avoid them completely. Linda had been particularly struck by the image he had used.

“They’re like eels,” he said. “You try to keep hold of them, but they wiggle free of your grasp. The thing about eels is also that they swim at night. By that I don’t mean you only meet difficult people at night — if anything, they seem most likely to come with their idiotic suggestions in the morning. Their darkness is of a different order; it’s something they carry inside. It’s their total obliviousness to the difficulty they cause others by their constant meddling. I have never meddled in other people’s lives.”

That was the biggest lie of his life. He had died without recognizing the extent to which he himself had often meddled in the decisions, dreams, and actions of those around him, trying in particular to bend his two children to his will.

These thoughts about difficult people came unbidden to Linda just as she was about to ring Anna’s doorbell. She paused, her finger hovering a few centimeters from the buzzer. Anna is a difficult person, she thought. She doesn’t seem to understand the worry she caused, and how her actions affect me.

When she finally rang the doorbell, Anna opened, smiling, dressed in a white blouse and dark pants. She was barefoot and had pulled her hair back into a loose knot.

Linda had decided to bring it up right away to clear the air. She threw her jacket over a chair and said:

“I have to tell you I read the last few pages of your journal. I only did it to see if there was any explanation for your disappearance.”

Anna flinched.

“Then that was what I sensed,” she said. “It was almost as if there was a different smell when I opened the pages.”

“I’m sorry, but I was so worried. I only read the last couple of pages, nothing more.”

We lie to make our half-truths seem more plausible, she thought. Anna may see through me. The journal will always be between us now. She’ll always be asking herself what I did and didn’t read.

They walked into the living room. Anna stood by the window, her back to Linda.

Linda realized she no longer knew Anna. She looked at her friend, who stood with her back turned, thinking she might as well be looking at an enemy.

“There’s one question you still need to answer.”

Linda waited for her to turn around but she didn’t.

“I hate talking to people’s backs.”

Still no reaction. You may be a difficult person, Linda thought. But sometimes difficult people go too far. Grandpa would have thrown an eel like this into the fire and let it writhe to death in the flames.

“Why did you check into that hotel under my name?”

Linda tried to interpret Anna’s back while she simultaneously wiped the sweat from her neck. This will be my curse, she had thought back in the first month of her police training. There are laughing policemen and crying policemen, but I’m going to be known as the perspiring policewoman.

Anna burst into laughter and turned around. Linda tried to judge if her laughter was genuine.

“How did you find out?”

“I called the hotel.”

“May I ask why?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you ask them, exactly?”

“It’s not so hard to figure out.”

“Tell me.”

“I asked if an Anna Westin was still there or if she had checked out. They didn’t have an Anna Westin, but they did have a Wallander, they said. It was that simple. But why did you do it?”

“What would you say if I told you I didn’t know why I used your name? Maybe I was afraid my father would run away again if he found out I had checked into the hotel where we saw each other. If you want the truth, it’s that I don’t know.”

The phone rang, but Anna made no move to pick it up. The answering machine switched on and then Zeba’s chirpy voice filled the room. She was calling for no reason, she informed them happily.

“I love people who call for no reason with so much positive energy,” Anna said.

Linda didn’t answer. She had no room to think about Zeba.

“I read a name in your diary: Birgitta Medberg. Do you know what’s happened to her?”

“No.”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

“I was looking for my father.”

“She’s been found murdered.”

Anna looked closely at her.

“Why?”

“I don’t know why.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying she was murdered. The police don’t know who did it, but they’re going to want to talk to you about her.”

Anna shook her head.

“What happened? Who would want to kill her?”

Linda decided not to reveal any details about the murder. She simply sketched out the news in broad brush-strokes. Anna’s dismay seemed completely genuine.

“When did this happen?”

“A few days ago.”

Anna shook her head again, left the window, and sat down in a chair.

“How did you know her?” Linda asked.

Anna looked narrowly at her.

“Is this a cross-examination?”

“I’m curious.”

“We rode horses together. I don’t remember the first time we met, but there was someone who had two Norwegian Fjord horses that needed exercising. Birgitta and I both volunteered to ride them. I didn’t know her at all. She never said very much. I know she mapped old pilgrimage trails. We also shared an interest in butterflies. But I don’t know anything more about her. She wrote to me fairly recently and suggested we buy a horse together. I never replied.”

Linda tried to remain alert for any hints that Anna was lying. I’m not the person who should be doing this, she thought. I should be driving a patrol car and picking up drunks. Dad should be talking to Anna, not I. It’s just that damn butterfly. It should be hanging on the wall.

Anna had already followed her gaze and read her mind.

“I took the butterfly with me when I went to look for my dad. I was going to give it to him, but then when I realized it was all my imagination, I threw it into the canal.”

It could be true, Linda thought. Or else she lies so well I can’t tell.

The phone rang again. Ann-Britt Höglund’s voice came into the room. Anna looked at Linda, who nodded. Anna picked up the receiver. The conversation was brief and Anna didn’t say much. She hung up.

“They want me to come in now,” she said.

Linda got up.

“Then you’d better go.”

“I want you to come with me.”

“Why?”

“I’d feel more secure.”

Linda hesitated.

“I’m not sure it’s appropriate.”

“But I’m not accused of anything. They just want to have a conversation with me, at least that’s what the woman said. And you’re both a police officer and my friend.”

“I’m happy to go down there with you, but I’m not sure they’ll let me stay in the room when they talk to you.”

Höglund came out into the reception area at the police station to meet Anna. She looked disapprovingly at Linda. She doesn’t like me, Linda thought. She’s the kind of woman who prefers young men with piercings and an attitude. Höglund had put on weight. Soon you’ll be dumpy, Linda thought with satisfaction. I still wonder what Dad saw in you when he courted you a few years ago.

“I want Linda to be there,” Anna said.

“I don’t know if that will be possible,” Höglund said. “Why do you want her to be there?”

“I have a tendency to make things more complicated than they are,” Anna said. “I just want her there for support, that’s all.”

Höglund shrugged and looked at Linda.

“You’ll have to ask your father if it’s OK,” she said. “You know where his office is. He’s waiting in the small conference room two doors down from there.”

Höglund left them and marched off.

“Is this where you’ll be working?” Anna asked.

“Hardly. I’ll be spending time in the garage and in the front seat of patrol cars.”

The door to the small conference room was half open. Wallander was leaning back in his chair, a cup of coffee in his hand. He’s going to break that chair, Linda thought. Do cops have to get so fat? I’ll have to take early retirement. She pushed the door open. Wallander didn’t seem particularly surprised to see her with Anna. He shook Anna’s hand.

“I would like Linda to stay,” she said.

“Of course.”

Wallander threw a glance behind them into the corridor.

“Where’s Höglund?”

“I don’t think she wanted to come along,” Linda said, seating herself as far away from her father as possible.

That day Linda learned something important about police work from both Anna and her father. Wallander impressed her by steering the conversation with imperceptible yet total control. He never confronted Anna directly; he approached her from the side, listening to her answers, encouraging her even when she contradicted herself. He gave the impression of having all the time in the world, but never let her off the hook.

What Anna taught her was through her lies. She appeared to be trying to keep her lies to a minimum, but without success. Once, when Anna bent down to pick up a pencil that had rolled off the table, Linda and her father exchanged a look.

When it was over and Anna had gone home, Linda sat down at the kitchen table at home and tried to write down the conversation exactly as it had progressed, like a screenplay. What was it Anna had said? Linda started to write, and the exchange slowly reproduced itself on paper.

Slowly, but surely, Linda thought. He has all the time in the world.

A slight hesitation, Linda thought as she wrote. An imperceptible tremor at times, but here she actually stumbled. What was she hiding? Linda thought about what she had seen in the hut and broke out into a sweat.

And right here he had suddenly sat up in his chair, Linda thought, a tactical maneuver telling Anna to be on her guard.

Anna had looked over at Linda in surprise, then narrowed her eyes. There goes that friendship, Linda had thought at the time. If it wasn’t gone already, that is.

At this point Wallander’s manner changed. He leaned toward Anna, still friendly, but now he clearly meant business.

Anna was very calm, Linda thought. Too calm. Calm in the way that only someone who knows what’s coming can be. But then she retracted her conclusion. It was possible, but she shouldn’t make the leap prematurely.

Then came the abrupt finish. After her last answer his hands came down on the table.

He had escorted them both back to the reception area. Linda noticed that Anna was tense. She must be wondering what she said without knowing. My dad is still questioning her, but he’s doing it inside her head, waiting to see what she’s going to say.

Linda pushed the paper away and stretched her back. Then she called her father on his cell phone.

“I don’t have time to talk. I hope you found it instructive.”

“Absolutely. But I don’t think she was telling the truth.”

“I think we can safely assume she wasn’t telling us the whole truth. But the question is why. Do you know what I think?”

“No, tell me.”

“I think her father has actually returned. But we can talk more about that tonight.”

Wallander came back to the apartment just after seven o’clock. Linda had cooked dinner. They sat down at the kitchen table and he had just started discussing the grounds he had for thinking that Anna’s father had returned when the phone rang.

She could tell from his face that it was something serious.

36

They had arranged to meet in a parking lot between Malmö and Ystad. Even a parking lot could become a cathedral if you chose to see it that way. The balmy September air rose from the ground like pillars for this towering yet invisible church.

He had told them to be there at three, instructing them to wear normal clothes since they would be impersonating tourists from Poland on a shopping trip in Sweden. Alone or in small groups, they would arrive from different directions and receive their final instructions from Erik Westin, who would have Torgeir Langaas at his side.

Westin had spent the last few weeks in a mobile home in a camping area in Höör. He had given up the apartment in Helsingborg and bought a cheap used mobile home in Svedala. His beat-up Volvo had transported it to the camping lot. Apart from his meetings with Langaas and the plans they had carried out together, he had spent all his time in the mobile home, praying and preparing for the task ahead. Every morning he looked into the little mirror on the wall and asked himself if he was staring into the eyes of a madman. No one could become a prophet without a great deal of inborn humility, he would think to himself. To be strong was to be able to ask oneself the hardest questions. Even if his commitment to the task God had assigned him never wavered, he still needed to be sure that he was not carried away with pride. But the eyes gazing steadily back at him from the mirror only confirmed what he already knew: that he was the anointed leader of the new age. There was nothing misguided about the great task that lay before them. Everything was already spelled out in the Holy Book. The Christian world had become mired in a bog of misconceptions and had tried God’s patience to the point that He had simply given up, waiting for the one who was prepared act as His true servant, to step in and set things right.

“There is only one God,” Erik Westin said at the beginning of all his prayers. “One God and his only son, whom we crucified. This cross is the symbol of our only hope. The cross is plainly made — of wood, not gold or precious marble. The truth lies in poverty and simplicity. The emptiness we carry inside can only be filled by the Holy Ghost, not material goods or riches, however tempting they may appear to us.”

He had carried on long conversations with God. He had also thought a great deal about Jim Jones, the false prophet, the fallen angel. He thought about the exodus from the United States to Guyana, the initial period of joy and then the terrible betrayal that had led to murder. In his thoughts and prayers there was always a place for those who had died in the jungle. One day they would be set free from the evil that Jim Jones had committed and would be uplifted to the highest realms, where God and the angels awaited them.

During this last little while, he had also felt affirmed and accepted by those he had once left behind. They had not forgotten him. They understood why he had left and why he had now returned. One day when everything was over, he would withdraw from the world and take up the life he had left so long ago: sandal-making. He would have his daughter by his side and all would be fulfilled.

The time had come at last. God had appeared to him in a vision. All sacrifice is made for the creation of life, he thought. No one knows if they have been chosen to live or to die. He had reinstituted the ritual sacrifices with their origins in the earliest days of Christianity. Life and death went hand in hand; God was both logical and wise. Killing in order to sustain life was an important practice in combating the emptiness that existed inside man. And now the moment was here.

On the morning of the day that they were to meet in the parking lot, Erik Westin went down to the dark lake that still retained some of the summer’s heat. He washed himself thoroughly, clipped his nails, and shaved. He was alone in the remote camping area. After Langaas called, Westin threw his cell phone into the lake. Then he put on his clothes, taking his Bible and money with him to the car and driving a short distance up the road. Then there was only one thing left to take care of. He set fire to the mobile home, and drove away.

Altogether there were twenty-six of them, seventeen men and nine women, and each had a cross tattooed on his or her chest above the heart. The men were from Uganda, France, England, Spain, Hungary, Greece, Italy, and the United States. The women were American and Canadian, with the exception of a British woman who had lived in Denmark for a long time. It had taken Erik four years to build the core group of the Christian army he planned to lead into battle.

Now they were meeting each other for the first time. A light rain fell as they assembled in the parking lot. Westin had parked his car on a hill overlooking the lot. He kept an eye on the proceedings with the help of a telescope. Langaas was there to receive them. He had been instructed to say that he didn’t know where Westin was. Westin had often explained to him that secret agreements of this nature could strengthen people’s belief in the holy task that awaited them. Westin looked into the telescope. There they were, some in cars, some on foot, two on bikes, one on a motorcycle, and a few more who walked out from a small forested area next to the parking lot as if they had been camping there. Each one carried only a small backpack. Westin had been very strict on this point; no one was to have a large amount of luggage or wear unusual attire. Nothing that would attract attention to God’s undercover army.

He trained the lens on Langaas’s face. Langaas was leaning against the sign posted on one side of the parking lot. It would not have been possible without him, Erik thought. If I hadn’t stumbled across him in that dirty Cleveland street and managed to transform him into an absolutely, ruthlessly devoted disciple, I would not yet be ready to give my army marching orders.

Langaas turned his head in the direction they had agreed upon. Then he stroked his nose twice with his left index finger. All was ready. Westin packed up his telescope and started walking down to the parking lot. There was a dip beside the road that meant he could walk right up to them without being seen. That way he would seem to appear out of nowhere. When he walked among them everyone stopped what they were doing, but no one talked, as he had instructed.

Langaas had arrived in a truck, into which they now loaded the bicycles and motorcycles, then let the people climb in after them. The cars would have to be left behind. Westin drove and Langaas sat up front with him. They turned off to the right and found their way to Mossby Beach, where they parked. Everyone walked down to the beach. Torgeir carried two large baskets with food. They sat closely pressed together among the sand dunes, like a bunch of tourists who found the weather a little too cold.

Before they started to eat, Westin said the necessary words:

“God demands our presence. He decrees the battle.”

They unpacked the baskets and ate. When the food was gone, Westin ordered them to rest. Langaas and Westin walked down to the water’s edge. They went through the plan one last time. A large cloudbank moved in, darkening the sky.

“We’re getting just what we wanted,” Langaas said. “It would be a good night for catching eels.”

“We are getting what we need, for we are the righteous and the just,” Westin said.

They waited until it was evening, then climbed back into the truck. It was half past seven when Westin swung back onto the road and headed east. He turned north just past Svarte, passing the highway from Malmö to Ystad, and then continued on a road that went west, past Rannesholm Manor. Two kilometers past Hurup he drove onto a small dirt road, turning off the engine and the headlights. Langaas climbed out of the car. In the rearview mirror Erik could see two of the American men climbing off the truck: Peter Buchanan, a former hairdresser from New Jersey, and Edison Lambert, a jack-of-all-trades from Des Moines.

Westin felt his pulse quicken. Was there anything that could go wrong? He regretted even thinking the question. I’m not crazy, he thought. I place my trust in God and his plan. He started the engine and pulled back out onto the road. One motorcycle overtook him, then another. He continued driving north, throwing a glance at Hurup Church where Langaas and the two Americans were headed. Half a mile north of Hurup he turned left toward Staffanstorp, then turned left again after stopping in front of an abandoned farm for ten minutes. He stepped out of the truck and motioned for those still in the back to follow him.

He checked the time: right on schedule. They walked slowly in order to accommodate the few who were older, or less fit, like the British woman, who had been operated on for cancer six months ago. Westin had debated whether or not to include her, but after consulting with God he received the answer that she had survived her illness precisely so that she could complete her mission. They followed a road that led to the back of Frennestad Church. Westin felt in his pocket for the key that Langaas had made for him. Two weeks ago he had tried it, and it had turned without a single squeak. He stopped them when they reached the churchyard. No one said anything, and all he could hear was breathing. Only calm breaths, he noted. No one is panting, no one seems anxious, not even she who is going to die.

Westin looked down at his watch again. In forty-three minutes Langaas, Buchanan, and Lambert would set fire to the church in Hurup. They started walking again. The gate opened without a sound. Langaas had oiled it yesterday. They walked single-file up to the church. Westin unlocked the doors. It was cool inside; one person shivered. He turned on the flashlight and looked around. Everyone seated themselves in the front pews, as they had been instructed. The last missive Westin had distributed included 123 detailed instructions that were to be memorized down to the letter. He knew they had done so.

Westin lit the candles that Langaas had placed near the altar. In the dim light he could see Harriet Bolson, the woman from Tulsa, seated on the far right. She was completely calm. God’s ways are inscrutable, he thought. But only to those who do not need to understand them. He looked down at his watch. It was important that the two actions, the burning of Hurup Church and that which was to take place in Frennestad Church, be synchronized. He looked over at Harriet Bolson again. She had a thin, worn face even though she was only thirty years old. Perhaps her face shows the traces of her sin, he thought. She can only be cleansed through fire. He turned off the flashlight and walked into the shadows by the pulpit. He reached into his backpack and pulled out the rope that Langaas had bought in a maritime store in Copenhagen. He placed it in front of the altar, then checked his watch again. It was time. He turned and motioned for everyone to stand. He called them up one by one. He handed one end of the rope to the first person.

“We are irrevocably bound together,” he said. “From now on, from this day forward, we will never need a rope again. We are bound by our loyalty to God and our task. We cannot tolerate for the Christian world to sink any deeper into degradation. The world will be cleansed through fire, and we must start with ourselves.”

While he was uttering the last words he had slowly moved so that he stood in front of Harriet Bolson. At the same moment that he tied the rope around her neck she understood what was about to happen. It was as if her mind went blank from the sudden terror. She didn’t scream or struggle. Her eyes closed. All my years of waiting are finally over.

The church in Hurup started burning at a quarter past nine. When the fire trucks were on their way they received reports that Frennestad Church was on fire as well.

Langaas and the two Americans had already been picked up. Langaas took Westin’s place and drove the truck to the new hideout.

Westin remained behind in the darkness. He sat up on a hill close to Frennestad Church. He watched the firemen try to douse the blaze, in vain. He wondered if the police would make it inside before the roof caved in.

He sat there in the darkness and watched the flames. He thought about how he would one day watch the fires burning with his daughter by his side.

37

That night two churches in roughly the same area, a triangle bounded by Staffanstorp, Anderstorp, and Ystad, burned to the ground. The heat was so intense that at dawn only the bare, smoking skeletons of the buildings remained. The bell tower of Hurup Church collapsed, and those who heard it said it sounded like a howl of bottomless despair.

The warden of Frennestad Church was the first to make it into the burning building, in hopes of saving its unique mass staves dating from the Middle Ages. Instead, he made a gruesome discovery that would haunt him for the rest of his life. A woman in her thirties lay in front of the altar. She had been strangled by a thick rope pulled so tightly it had almost removed her head from her body. He rushed screaming from the scene and fainted on the front steps.

The first fire truck arrived a few minutes later. It had been on its way to Hurup when it had received fresh instructions. None of the firefighters fully understood what had happened, whether the first alarm had been a mistake or if two churches were actually on fire at the same time.

There was a similar state of confusion at the police station during the first few minutes when the two calls came in. When Wallander got up from the dinner table, he was under the impression that he was going to Hurup, where a woman had been reported dead. Since he had drunk some wine with dinner, he asked for a patrol car to pick him up.

It was only as they were leaving Ystad that he learned of the misunderstanding: the church in Hurup was on fire, but the dead woman had been found in Frennestad Church. Martinsson, who was driving, started shouting at the switchboard operator to try to determine once and for all how many damned churches were on fire.

Wallander sat quietly for the duration of the ride, not only because Martinsson was driving with his usual recklessness, but because he sensed that his worst fears were being confirmed. The animals that had been killed were only the beginning. Lunatics, he thought, satanists, fanatics. As they drove through the darkness he thought he was beginning to discern a logic to the events, if only dimly.

By the time they pulled up outside the burning church in Frennestad, they at least had a clearer idea of the current situation. The two churches had caught fire at almost exactly the same time. In addition there was a dead woman in Frennestad. They sought out the fire chief, Mats Olsson, to whom, it turned out, Martinsson was distantly related. In the midst of the intense heat and chaos, Wallander heard them give greetings to their respective wives. Then they went into the church. Martinsson let Wallander take the lead, as he usually did at a crime scene, and as he was more than willing to do even in the devastating heat. The aisle provided them with a route, and a fireman preceded them with a hose. The dead woman lay in front of the altar with a rope around her neck. Wallander tried to imprint the scene on his memory. It had to be staged. He turned to Mats Olsson.

“How long can we stay?”

“The roof is going to cave. We’re not going to be able to put it out in time.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“How long?”

“Ten minutes. I can’t let you stay any longer.”

No technicians would be able to make it to the scene in time. Wallander put on a helmet that someone handed him.

“Go out and see if anyone in the crowd has a camera, or better yet a video camera,” he said. “Confiscate it. We’re going to need to document this.”

Martinsson left. Wallander started to examine the dead woman. The rope was thick, like a ship’s hawser. It lay around her neck with the ends outstretched. Two people pulling in different directions, he thought. Like the olden days when criminals were ripped apart by tying them to two horses that were sent off in different directions.

He glanced at the ceiling. The flames were starting to come through. There were people running all around him carrying objects from the church. An older man in his pajamas was straining to rescue a beautiful old altar cabinet. There was something touching about their struggle. These people have realized they’re losing something precious, he thought.

Martinsson returned with a video camera.

“Can you figure out how to use it?”

“I think so,” Martinsson answered.

“Then you be our photographer. Take full shots, details, from all angles.”

“Five minutes,” Olsson said. “That’s all you have.”

Wallander crouched down beside the dead woman’s body. She was blond and bore an uncanny resemblance to his sister Kristina. An execution, he thought. First animals, now people. What was it Amy Lindberg thought she heard? “The Lord’s will be done?”

He quickly searched the woman’s pockets. Nothing. He looked around. There was no handbag. He was about to give up when he saw a breast pocket on her blouse. Inside was a piece of paper with a name and address: HARRIET BOLSON, 1250 5TH AVENUE, TULSA.

“Time’s up,” Mats Olsson said. “Let’s go.”

He rounded up the people left in the church and hurried them out. The body was carried away and Wallander took the hawser.

Martinsson called in to the station.

“We need information on a woman from Tulsa,” he said. “All registers, local, European, international. Highest priority.”

Linda turned off the TV impatiently. She knew that the spare keys to her dad’s car were on the bookshelf in the living room. She picked them up, then headed out the door and jogged down to the police station.

Wallander’s car was parked in the corner. Linda recognized the car next to it as Höglund’s. Linda fingered the Swiss army knife in her pocket, but this was not a night for slashing tires. She had heard him mention Hurup and Frennestad. She unlocked the car door and drove as far as the water tower. There she pulled over and got out a map. She knew where Frennestad was, but not Hurup. She found it, turned off the light, and headed out of Ystad. Halfway to Hörby she turned left, and after a few kilometers she could see the smoke from Hurup Church. She drove as close as she could, then parked and walked up to the church. Her dad wasn’t there. The only police officers were young cadets, and it struck her that if the fire had started only a few days later she could have been one of them. She told them who she was and asked where her father was.

“There’s another church on fire,” she was told. “Frennestad Church. They have a casualty.”

“What’s going on?”

“It looks like arson — two churches don’t just catch fire at the same time. But we don’t know what happened in Frennestad Church, only that there’s a body.”

Linda nodded and walked away. A sudden noise made her turn around. Parts of the church roof collapsed and a shower of sparks shot up toward the sky. Who would burn a church? she wondered. But she couldn’t answer that question any more easily than she could imagine what kind of person set fire to swans, cattle, or animals in a pet store.

She got back into the car and drove to Frennestad. There too she saw the burning church from a distance. Burning churches are something I associate with war, she thought. But here there are churches burning in peacetime. Can a country be engaged in an invisible war against an unseen enemy? She was unable to pursue this thought any further. The road leading up to the church was blocked by cars. When she caught sight of her father in the light of the fire, she stopped. He was talking with a firefighter. She tried to see what he was holding. A hose? She walked closer, pushing past people who were crowded together outside the restricted area. He was holding a rope, she realized finally. A hawser.

Nyberg walked up to Wallander and Martinsson, who were standing outside the church. He looked irritated, as usual.

“I thought you should take a look at this,” he said, holding out his hand.

It was a small necklace. Wallander took out his glasses. One side of the frame broke when he put them on. He swore and had to hold the glasses with one hand.

“It looks like a shoe,” he said.

“She was wearing it,” Nyberg said. “Or had been. The chain broke when the rope was pulled tight. The necklace fell inside her blouse. The doctor found it.”

Martinsson took it and turned toward the fire to get more light.

“An unusual motif for a pendant,” he said. “Is it really a shoe?”

“It could be a footprint,” Nyberg said. “Or the sole of a foot. Once I saw a pendant in the shape of a carrot. A diamond was placed where the greens would have been. That carrot cost four hundred thousand kronor.”

“It may help us identify her,” Wallander said. “That’s what counts right now.”

Nyberg walked back over to the low wall next to the graveyard and started yelling at a photographer who was taking pictures of the burning church. Wallander and Martinsson walked down to the barricades.

They saw Linda and waved her over.

“Just couldn’t stay away?” her dad said. “You can come with us.”

“How is it going?”

“We don’t know what we’re looking for,” Wallander said slowly. “But these churches didn’t set fire to themselves, that much is certain.”

“They’re working on tracing Harriet Bolson,” Martinsson said. “They’ll let me know the minute they find something.”

“I’m trying to understand the significance of the rope,” Wallander said. “Why a church, and why an American woman? What does it mean?”

“A few people, at least three but maybe more, come to a church in the middle of the night,” Martinsson said.

Wallander stopped him.

“Why more than three? Two who commit the murder and one victim. Isn’t that enough?”

“Theoretically, yes. But something tells me there were more, maybe many more. They unlocked the door. There are only two existing keys. The minister has one, and the church warden who fainted has the other. They’ve both confirmed possession of their keys. Therefore we have to assume these people used a sophisticated pass key or a copy,” Martinsson said.

“A group, a society. A band of people who chose this church to execute Harriet Bolson. Is she guilty of something? Did she become victim to a kind of religious extremism? Are we dealing with satanists or some other kind of lunatic fringe? We don’t have the answers.”

“Another thing,” Wallander said. “What about the note I found on her body? Why was it left behind?”

“So that we would be able to identify her. Perhaps it was a message to us.”

“We have to confirm her identity,” Wallander said. “If she so much as visited a dentist in this country, we’ll know.”

“They’re working on it.”

Martinsson sounded affronted.

“I don’t mean to get on your case. What’s the word?”

“Nothing, as of yet,” Martinsson said. “Then there’s another thing. Whoever saw a pendant necklace shaped like a shoe or a sandal?”

He shook his head and walked away.

Linda held her breath. Had she heard him correctly?

“What was it he said? What have you found?”

“A note with a name and address.”

“Apart from that. Something else?”

“A pendant necklace.”

“That looked like something?”

“A footprint. A shoe. Why do you ask?”

She ignored his question.

“What kind of shoe?”

“Maybe a sandal.”

The light from the fire grew brighter in spurts as gusts of wind caught the flames.

“May I remind you that Anna’s dad was a sandal-maker before he disappeared? That’s all.”

It took a moment to click in his mind. Then he nodded slowly.

“Good,” he said. “Very good. That may just be the opening we need. The question is, where does it leave us?”

38

Wallander had tried to send Linda home to get some sleep, but she had insisted on staying. She had curled up in the back seat of a patrol car and only woke up when he rapped sharply on the window. He’s never learned the art of waking a person gently, she thought. My father doesn’t simply wake people up, he tears them from their dreams.

She stepped out of the car and shivered. Shreds of fog drifted over the fields. The church had burned to the ground, and only the gaping, sooty walls remained. Thick smoke still rose from the caved-in roof. Most of the fire trucks were gone; only two crews were needed for the mop-up. Martinsson had left, but she could see Lindman in the distance. He came over to her and handed her a cup of coffee. Her dad was speaking with a journalist on the other side of the police line.

“I’ve never seen anything like this landscape before,” Lindman said. “Not in the west, not up in Härjedalen. Here Sweden simply slopes down into the sea and ends. All this mud and fog. It’s very strange. I’m trying to find my feet in a landscape that’s completely alien to me.”

Linda mumbled that fog was fog, mud was mud. What could possibly be strange about something so ordinary?

“Anything new on the woman?” she asked.

“Not yet. But she’s definitely not a Swedish citizen.”

“Any reason to think she’s not the person named in the note?”

“No. It’s far-fetched to think the murderer would leave a false name.”

Wallander came walking over. The journalist disappeared down the hill.

“I’ve talked to Chief Holgersson,” he said. “Since you’re already involved in the fringes of this investigation, we may as well let you in on the whole thing. I’d better get used to having you around. It’ll be a little like having a ball constantly bouncing up and down by my side.”

Linda thought he was making fun of her.

“At least I can still bounce. That’s more than some people I know.”

Lindman laughed. Wallander looked angry, but controlled himself.

“Don’t ever have children, Lindman,” he said. “You see what I have to deal with.”

A car swung onto the road leading up to the church. Nyberg got out.

“He’s freshly showered,” Wallander noted. “Ready for another day of unpleasantness, no doubt. He’ll keel over and die the day he retires and no longer has to be digging in the mud with rainwater up to his knees.”

“He acts like a dog,” Lindman said in a low voice. “Have you noticed? It’s almost as if he’s sniffing around, and wishing he could just get down on all fours.”

Linda had to agree: Nyberg really did look like an animal intent on picking up a scent.

Nyberg joined their group, seeming not to notice Linda. He smelled strongly of aftershave.

“Do we have any idea how the fires started?” Wallander asked. “I talked to Olsson and he said both churches started burning in several places. The church warden who came on the scene early said that it looked like the fire was burning in a circle, which would imply that it caught in several places at once.”

“We haven’t found anything yet,” Nyberg said. “But it’s clearly arson.”

“There’s a difference between the two cases,” Wallander said. “The fire in Hurup seems to have started more in the manner of an explosion. Someone in one of the neighboring houses said it sounded as if a bomb had gone off. The blazes were started in different ways, but synchronized.”

“It’s a definite pattern,” Lindman said. “Starting a fire to distract attention from the murder.”

“But why a church?” Wallander asked. “And why would you strangle a person with a hawser?”

He looked over at Linda.

“What do you see in all this?”

She felt herself blushing. The question had come so suddenly that she was unprepared for it.

“The site has been chosen deliberately,” she started hesitantly. “Strangling someone with a rope seems akin to torture. But this is also something that has to do with religion, like an eye for an eye, death by stoning, or living burial. Why not strangle someone with a hawser?”

Before anyone had a chance to respond, Lindman’s cell phone rang. He listened, then held it out to Wallander.

“We’re starting to get information from the States,” he said. “Let’s go back to Ystad.”

“Do you need me?” Nyberg asked.

“I’ll call if we do,” Wallander said. Then he turned to Linda.

“But you should be there,” he said. “Unless you want to go home and sleep first.”

“You know there’s no need to even ask.”

He threw a glance at her.

“I’m trying to be considerate.”

“Think of me as a police officer and not your daughter.”

They were silent in the car, both from lack of sleep and a fear of saying something that would irritate the other.

Once they had parked in front of the station, Wallander walked off toward the district attorney’s office. Lindman caught up with Linda just outside the front door.

“I remember my first day as a police officer,” he said. “I was still in Borås and had been to a party with friends the night before. The first thing I did when I walked through the front doors of the station was rush into the restroom and throw up. What do you plan to do?”

“Not that, at any rate,” Linda said.

Höglund was standing by the reception desk. She still only barely registered Linda’s presence, and Linda decided to treat her the same way from now on.

There was a message for Linda: Chief Holgersson wanted to speak to her.

“Have I done anything wrong?” Linda said.

“I wouldn’t think so,” Lindman said, then left.

I like him, Linda thought. More and more, actually.

Holgersson was on her way out when Linda walked down the corridor to her office.

“Kurt has explained the situation to me,” Holgersson said. “We’re going to let you sit in on this one. It’s a strange coincidence that one of your friends is involved.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Linda said. “She might be.”

The door to the conference room was closed at nine o’clock. Linda sat in the seat her father had pointed out to her. Lindman sat next to her. She looked at her father sitting at the head of the table drinking mineral water. He looked the way she had always imagined him in these situations: thirsty, his hair standing on end, prepared to jump into yet another day of a complicated criminal investigation. But it was an overly romanticized image and therefore a false one, she knew. She shook it off with a grimace.

She had always been under the impression that he was good at his job, a skillful investigator, but today she realized that he had talents she hadn’t even imagined. Among other things, she was impressed by his ability to keep so many facts in his head, scrupulously arranged according to time and place. While she listened to him, something stirred in her at a much deeper level. It was as if she only now understood why he had had so little time for her or Mona. There had simply been no room for them. I have to talk to him about this, she thought. When all of the events have been explained and everything is over, we have to talk about the fact that he prioritized work over us.

Linda stayed behind in the room when the meeting was over. She opened a window and thought about everything that had been said. Her father had set his bottle of mineral water down and summarized the very unclear situation they were in: “Two women have been murdered. Everything starts with these two. Maybe I’m being too presumptuous in assuming the same perpetrator is responsible for both deaths, since there is no obvious connection, no motive, not even any similarities. Medberg was killed in a hut hidden away deep inside the Rannesholm Forest, and now we find another woman, most probably a foreigner, strangled with a thick rope inside a burning church. The only connections we have found between these events are tenuous, accidental — not really connections at all. On the outskirts of this is another murky series of events. That is why Linda is here.”

Wallander slowly picked his way across the terrain that involved everything from swans set on fire to severed hands. It was as if he proceeded with antennae stretched out in every direction at once. It took him one hour and twelve minutes without a break or repetition to reach his conclusion: “We don’t know yet what has happened. Behind the two dead women, the burning animals, and the torched churches lies something else that we can’t quite put our fingers on. We don’t know if what we have here marks the culmination of something, or simply the beginning.”

At the words “simply the beginning,” Wallander sat down, but continued to speak.

“We’re still waiting for information regarding the woman we believe to be named Harriet Bolson. While we wait, I’m going to open this up for general discussion, but before I do I’d like to make a final comment. I have a feeling that the animals weren’t burned to satisfy the perverted desires of a sadist. It may have been a form of sacrifice, or an act with its own twisted logic. We have Medberg’s praying hands and also a Bible that someone sat and wrote commentary in. And now something that looks like a ritual killing in a church. We have an eyewitness who claims she heard the man who set fire to the pet store shouting the words ‘The Lord’s will be done’ or something in that vein. All of these things may point to a religious message, perhaps the work of a sect or a few crazed individuals. But I doubt the latter. There is an organized quality to this cruelty that speaks against it being the work of a single person. But are we talking about two or a thousand? We don’t know. That’s why I want us to take the time to discuss the matter without prejudice before we continue our investigation. I think we’ll be more effective if we allow ourselves to push everything else aside and concentrate on this point for a moment.”

But this discussion was averted by a door opening and a woman announcing that American faxes about Harriet Bolson had started to come in. Martinsson left and returned with a few papers, among them a blurred photograph of a woman. Wallander held his broken glasses in front of his face and nodded. The dead woman was Harriet Bolson.

“My English is not quite what it should be,” Martinsson said and passed the papers over to Höglund, who started to read aloud.

Linda had picked up a notebook as she walked into the room. Now she started making notes, without being clear about why she was doing so. She was involved in something without being fully involved, but she sensed that her father had an assignment for her that he would present to her when the time was ripe.

Höglund said the American police seemed to have covered the case thoroughly — but perhaps it hadn’t been so hard, since Harriet Jane Bolson had been registered as a missing person since January 12, 1997. That was when her sister, Mary Jane Bolson, had gone to the Tulsa police and filed the report. She had initially tried to reach her sister on the phone for a week without success. Then she had gotten in her car and driven the 300 kilometers to Tulsa, where her sister lived and worked as archivist and secretary to a private art collector. Mary Jane had found her sister’s apartment empty. She was also not at her workplace. She seemed in fact to have disappeared without a trace. Mary Jane and all of Harriet’s friends had described her as a reserved but conscientious and friendly woman who had had neither a drug addiction nor any other vice that might help explain her disappearance. The police in Tulsa had completed a preliminary investigation and maintained a current file on her case, but during the last four years nothing had turned up. No clues, no sign of life, nothing.

“A police officer by the name of Clark Richardson is eagerly awaiting our reply and confirmation of the fact that the woman we’ve found really is Harriet. He would like the information as soon as possible.”

“Which we can supply him with immediately,” Wallander said. “It’s her, there’s no doubt about it. Is there really no theory about her disappearance?”

Höglund scoured the documents.

“Harriet was unmarried,” she said. “She was twenty-six when she disappeared. She and her sister were daughters of a Methodist pastor in Cleveland, Ohio. Prominent, it says. They had a happy childhood, no evidence of trouble, studies at various universities. Harriet had a position in Tulsa with a very good salary. She lived simply with regular habits. She worked hard all week and went to church on Sundays.”

“Is that it?” Wallander asked when Höglund finished reading.

“That’s it.”

He shook his head.

“There has to be something more to her story,” he said. “We need to know everything about her. That will be your job. Pour on the charm. Give Officer Richardson the idea that this is the most important murder investigation in Sweden right now. Which it probably is, for that matter.”

This was followed by a short period of open discussion. Linda listened attentively. After half an hour her father tapped the table with his pencil and ended the meeting. Everyone except Linda and her father left the room.

“I want you to do me a favor,” he said. “Talk to Anna, hang around, but don’t ask any questions. Try to figure out why Medberg’s name was really in her journal. And Vigsten. I’ve asked my colleagues to look a little closer at him.”

“Not the old man,” Linda said. “He’s senile. But there was someone else there, someone who kept himself hidden.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” he said impatiently. “Have you understood what I’ve asked you?”

“Act normal,” Linda answered, “but try to get answers to these questions.”

He nodded and stood up.

“I’m worried,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happening, and I’m afraid of what’s next.”

Then he looked at her, stroked her briefly and almost shyly on the cheek, and left the room.

Linda invited Zeba and Anna to join her for coffee down at the harbor the same day. They had just sat down when it started to rain.

39

Zeba’s son played happily with a toy car that squeaked because it was missing two of its wheels. Linda looked at him. Sometimes he could be almost unbearably needy and attention-seeking. Other times, like now, he was peaceful, lost in thought about the invisible roads his little yellow car was traveling.

The café was almost empty at this time of day. A few Danish sailors in one corner were hunched over a nautical map. The young woman behind the counter yawned.

“Girl talk,” Zeba said suddenly. “Why don’t we have more time for that?”

“Talk away,” Linda said. “I’m listening.”

“What about you?” Zeba asked, turning to Anna. “Are you listening?”

“Of course.”

They were quiet. Anna pushed a teaspoon around in her cup, Zeba folded a pinch of snuff into her upper lip. Linda sipped her coffee.

“Is this all there is?” Zeba asked. “In life, I mean.”

“What are you thinking of?” Linda asked.

“All our dreams. What became of them?”

“You dreamed of having children,” Anna said. “At least that seemed like your main goal.”

“You’re right. But all the other stuff. I was such a dreamer! Especially when I was drunk out of my mind, you know the way you drink when you’re a teenager, when you end up on your hands and knees, throwing up in a bush, having to fight off a guy who’s looking to take advantage of the situation. But I never even realized any of my dreams. I drank them away, you could say. When I think of all the things I was going to do: be a fashion designer, rock star — fly a jumbo jet, for God’s sake.”

“It’s not too late,” Linda said.

Zeba put her chin on her hands and looked at her.

“Of course it is. Did you really dream about becoming a policewoman?”

“Never. In my dreams, if you can call them that, I was always going to devote my life to theater or refinishing old furniture. Not very exciting.”

Zeba turned her head to Anna.

“What about you?”

“I wanted to find a meaning with my life.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Anna shook her head.

“It’s not the kind of thing you can talk about. You either find it or you don’t.”

Linda thought Anna seemed to be on her guard. From time to time she looked at Linda as if she was thinking: “I know you’re trying to see through me.” But I can’t be sure, Linda thought.

The Danish sailors got up to leave. One of them patted Zeba’s boy on the head.

“His existence hung by a thread for a while,” Zeba said.

Linda raised her eyebrows.

“What do you mean?”

“I was close to having an abortion. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and think I really did it, that he doesn’t exist.”

“I thought you wanted a baby.”

“I did. But I was scared. I didn’t think I’d be up to it.”

“Thank God you didn’t do it,” Anna said.

Both Zeba and Linda were taken aback by her emphatic declaration. She sounded stern, almost angry. Zeba was immediately put on the defensive.

“Something as abstract as god makes no sense in that context. Maybe you’ll understand when you get pregnant one day.”

“I’m against abortion,” Anna said. “That’s just the way it is.”

“Having an abortion doesn’t mean you’re ‘for’ abortion,” Zeba said calmly. “There can be other reasons for it.”

“Like what?”

“Like being too young. Or too sick.”

“I’m against abortion, period,” Anna repeated.

“I’m happy I had my boy,” Zeba said. “But I don’t regret the abortion I had when I was fifteen.”

Linda was taken by surprise, and so was Anna. She seemed to stiffen and stared at Zeba.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Zeba said. “I was fifteen years old — what would you have done?”

“Probably the same thing,” Linda said.

“Not me,” Anna said. “It’s a sin.”

“Now you sound like a priest.”

“I’m just telling you what I think.”

Zeba shrugged.

“I thought this was girl talk. If I can’t talk about my abortion with my friends, who am I supposed to talk to?”

Anna stood up.

“I have to go now,” she said. “I forgot about something I have to do.”

She disappeared out the door. Linda thought it was strange that she left without even saying good-bye to Zeba’s son.

“What got into her?” Zeba said. “It’s enough to make you think she had an abortion herself and can’t talk about it.”

“Maybe she did,” Linda said. “You think you know everything about a person, but the truth often comes as a surprise.”

Zeba and Linda ended up staying longer than they had planned. With Anna gone, the atmosphere became more lighthearted. They giggled like teenagers. Linda followed Zeba home, and they said good-bye outside Zeba’s building.

“What do you think Anna will do?” Zeba asked. “Say that we can’t be friends anymore?”

“I think she’ll realize she overreacted.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Zeba said. “But I hope you’re right.”

Linda went home. She lay down on the bed, closed her eyes, and drifted off. Now she was walking to the lake again, where someone had seen burning swans and called the police. Suddenly she opened her eyes. Martinsson had said they would check the phone log of calls to the station that night. That meant the conversation was preserved on a cassette tape. Linda couldn’t recall anyone commenting on what the man had sounded like. It was a Norwegian by the name of Torgeir Langaas. Amy Lindberg had also heard someone who spoke either Norwegian or Danish. She got out of bed. If the man who called in had an accent, we may be able to determine a link between the burning animals and the man who bought the house behind the church in Lestarp.

She walked out onto the balcony. It was ten o’clock and the air was chilly. It will be fall soon, she thought, the frost is on its way. It will crunch under my feet by the time I become a police officer.

The phone rang. It was her dad.

“I just wanted to let you know I won’t be home for dinner.”

“It’s ten o’clock, Dad. I ate dinner hours ago.”

“Well, I’ll be here for another couple of hours.”

“Do you have time to talk?”

“What’s up?”

“I was thinking of taking a walk down to the station.”

“Is it important?”

“Maybe.”

“I can’t give you more than five minutes.”

“I only need two. Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t all emergency calls to the police get recorded and stored?”

“Yes. Why?”

“How long are they kept?”

“For a year. Why are you asking?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there.”

It was twenty to eleven when Linda walked into the station. Her dad came out into the deserted reception area and met her. His room was full of cigarette smoke.

“Who’s been here?”

“Boman.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s our D.A.”

Linda was suddenly reminded of another district attorney.

“Where did she go?”

“Who?”

“The one you were in love with? She was a D.A. back then.”

“That was a long time ago. I flubbed my chances.”

“How?”

“One’s worst embarrassments should be kept to oneself. There are other attorneys here now, and Boman is one of them. I’m the only one who lets him smoke.”

“You can’t even breathe in here now!”

Linda opened the window.

“What was it you wanted?”

Linda explained.

“You’re right,” he said when she had finished.

Wallander stood up and motioned for her to follow. They bumped into Lindman in the corridor. He was carrying a stack of folders.

“Put those down and come with us,” Wallander said.

They went to the archive where the cassette tapes were stored. Wallander gestured for one of the officers on duty to come over and talk to him.

“The evening of the twenty-first of August,” he said. “A man called and reported sighting burning swans at Marebo Lake.”

“I wasn’t working that night,” the officer said after studying a log book. “It was Undersköld and Sundin.”

“Call them.”

The officer shook his head.

“Undersköld is in Thailand and Sundin is at a satellite intelligence conference in Germany. It’ll be hard to get hold of them.”

“What about the tape?”

“I’ll find it for you.”

They gathered around a cassette player. Between a call about a suspected car theft and a drunk man who was calling for help “looking for Mom” was the call about the burning swans. Linda flinched when she heard the voice. It sounded as if he was trying to speak Swedish without an accent, but couldn’t disguise his origins. They played the tape several times.

That was the end of the call. Wallander was listening through headphones that he then passed to Lindman.

“He has an accent, no doubt about it. I think he sounds Danish.”

Or Norwegian, Linda thought. What’s the difference?

“I’m not sure it’s Danish,” Lindman said and passed the headphones to Linda.

“The word he uses for ‘burning,’” she said. “Is it the same in both Norwegian and Danish?”

“We’ll find out,” Wallander said. “But it’s embarrassing that a police cadet has to be the one to bring this up.”

They left the room after Wallander had left instructions about keeping the tape readily available. He led the others to the lunchroom. A group of patrol officers sat around one table, Nyberg and some technicians around another. Wallander poured himself a cup of coffee, then sat down by a phone.

“For some reason I still remember this number,” he said.

He held the receiver to his ear. It was a brief conversation. Wallander asked the person he was speaking with to come down to the station as soon as possible. It was clear that this person was resistant to the idea.

“Perhaps you would prefer I order a patrol car with blaring sirens,” Wallander said. “And have the officers handcuff you so your neighbors wonder what you’ve been up to.”

He hung up.

“That was Christian Thomassen,” he said. “He’s first mate on one of the Poland ferries. He’s also an alcoholic, though currently dry. He’s Norwegian and should be able to give us a positive identification.”

Seventeen minutes later, one of the largest men Linda had ever seen entered the station. He had huge feet stuffed into enormous rubber boots, was close to two meters tall, and had a beard down to his chest and a tattoo on his bald pate. When he sat down, Linda discreetly stood up to see the tattoo more clearly. It depicted a compass card. Christian Thomassen smiled at her.

“It’s pointing south-southwest,” he said. “Straight into the sunset. That way the Grim Reaper will know which way to take me when the time comes.”

“This is my daughter,” Wallander said. “Do you remember her?”

“Maybe. I don’t remember too many people, to be honest. I’ve survived my drinking, but most of my memories haven’t.”

He stretched out his hand so she could shake it. Linda was afraid he would squeeze too hard. His accent reminded her of the man on the tape.

“Let’s go in,” Wallander said. “I want you to listen to a recording for us.”

Thomassen listened carefully. He asked to hear the conversation four times, but stopped Lindman when he was about to play it for a fifth time.

“He’s Norwegian,” Thomassen said. “Not Danish. I was trying to hear where in Norway he’s from, but I can’t pinpoint it. He’s probably been away from Norway for a long time.”

“Do you think he’s been here a long time?”

“Not necessarily.”

“But you’re sure that he’s Norwegian?”

“Yes. Even if I’ve lived here for nineteen years and drunk myself silly for eight of those years, I haven’t completely forgotten where I came from.”

“That’s all we needed to know,” Wallander said. “Do you need a ride back?”

“I came down on the bike,” Thomassen said, smiling. “I can’t ride when I’ve been drinking. I just fall over and hurt myself.”

“A remarkable man,” Wallander said to Linda after he left. “He has a beautiful bass voice. If he hadn’t been so lazy and drunk so heavily he could have been an opera singer. I suspect he would have become world famous, for his sheer size if nothing else.”

They went back to Wallander’s office.

“So he’s Norwegian,” Wallander said. “And we know that the man who set fire to the swans was the same as the one who set fire to the pet store, just as we suspected. It will probably turn out to be the same man who set fire to the calf. The question is whether he was the one who was hiding out in the hut in the forest.”

“The Bible,” Lindman said.

Wallander shook his head.

“Swedish. They’ve managed to decipher a lot of what’s been written in the margins, and it’s all in Swedish.”

They were quiet. Linda waited. Lindman shook his head.

“I have to sleep,” he said. “I can’t think clearly anymore.”

“Eight o’clock tomorrow,” Wallander said.

Lindman’s steps died away in the corridor. Wallander yawned.

“You should get some sleep too,” Linda said.

He nodded, then stood up.

“You’re right. We need to sleep. I need to sleep. It’s already midnight.”

There was a knock on the door. One of the officers on phone duty looked in.

“This just came,” he said, handing a fax to Wallander.

“It’s from Copenhagen,” the officer said. “Someone called Knud Pedersen.”

“I know him,” Wallander said.

The officer left. Wallander skimmed the fax, but then sat down at the desk and read it more carefully.

“Strange,” he said. “I know from way back that Knud Pedersen is a policeman who keeps his eyes open. They’ve had a murder there recently, a prostitute by the name of Sylvi Rasmussen. She was found with her neck broken. The unusual thing is that her hands were clasped in prayer — not severed this time, but Pedersen has read about our case and thought we should know about this.”

Wallander let the fax fall to the desk.

“Copenhagen again,” he said.

Linda was about to ask a question, but he lifted his hand.

“We should get some sleep,” he said. “Tired policemen always end up giving the perpetrator a chance to slip away.”

They left the station. Wallander suggested they go on foot.

“Let’s talk about something completely different,” he said. “Something to clear our thoughts.”

They walked back to Mariagatan without saying a single word.

40

Each time he saw his daughter it was as if the ground disappeared beneath his feet. It could take several minutes before he regained his equilibrium.

Images from his younger life flickered through his mind. Normally he bore his memories with calm; he checked his pulse and it was always steady no matter how upset he felt. “Like the feathered animal, you should shake hate, lies, and anger from your body,” God had said to him in a dream. It was only when he met his daughter that he was overcome with weakness. When he saw her face, he also saw the others: Maria and the baby left behind to rot in the steamy jungle that crazy Jim Jones had chosen for his paradise. Sometimes he longed passionately for those who had died, and he also felt guilty that he hadn’t been able to save them. God demanded this sacrifice of me in order to test me, he thought.

He always varied the times and places he met with his daughter. Now that he had stepped out of his former state of invisibility and shown himself to her, he made sure in turn that she did not disappear from him. He often tried to surprise her. Once, just after they had been reunited, he washed her car. He sent a letter to her Lund address when he had wanted her to come to their hideout behind the church in Lestarp. He had visited her apartment several times without her knowledge, using her phone to make important calls and even once spending the night there.

I left her behind once, he thought. Now I have to be stronger so that she doesn’t do the same to me. He had prepared himself for the possibility that she wouldn’t want to follow him. Then he would have disappeared again. But already after the first three days he decided he would be able to make her one of the chosen. The fact that convinced him was the unexpected coincidence that she knew the woman who Torgeir happened upon and killed in the forest. He had understood then that she had been waiting for him to return all these years.

This time he was going to see her in her apartment. She had placed a flowerpot in the window as a sign that the coast was clear. A few times he had gone in with the set of keys she had given him without waiting for the flowerpot because God told him when it was safe. He had explained to her that it was important to act natural in front of her friends. Nothing has happened on the surface, he told her. Your faith grows deep inside you for now, until the day I call it forth from your body.

Each time they met, he did something that Jim Jones had taught him — one of the few lessons that was not spoiled by betrayal and hatred. Jones had taught him how to listen to a person’s breath, especially those who were new and who perhaps had not yet found the proper humility to put their lives in their leader’s hands.

He walked into the apartment. She knelt on the floor of the hall and he laid his hand on her forehead and whispered the words that God demanded he say to her. He reached for a vein in her throat where he could feel her pulse. She trembled but was less afraid now. It was starting to become more familiar to her, all these elements of her new life. He knelt in front of her.

“I am here,” he whispered.

“I am here,” she replied.

“What does the Lord say?”

“He demands my presence.”

He stroked her cheek, then they stood up and walked out into the kitchen. She had put out the food he requested: salad, crisp-bread, two slices of meat. He ate slowly, in silence. When he was done, she came over with a bowl of water, washed his hands, and gave him a cup of tea. He looked at her and asked her if anything had happened since they had last met. He was interested in hearing about her friends, especially the one who had been looking for her.

He sipped the tea and listened to her first words, noticing that she was nervous. He looked at her and smiled.

“What is troubling you?”

“Nothing.”

He grabbed her hand and forced two of her fingers into the hot tea. She flinched but he held her hand there until he was sure she had scalded herself. She started to cry. He let go.

“God demands the truth,” he said. “You know I am right when I say that something is troubling you. You have to tell me what it is.”

Then she told him what Zeba had said when they were at the café and her little boy was playing under the table. He noticed that she wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing. Her friends were still important to her. That wasn’t unusual — in fact, he had been surprised at the speed with which he had been able to convert her.

“Telling me about this was the right thing to do,” he said when she was finished. “It is also only appropriate that you hesitated in this. Hesitation is a way to prepare to fight for the truth and not take it for granted. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her for a long time, scrutinizing her. She is my daughter, he thought. She gets her seriousness from me.

He stayed a while and told her about his life, wanting to bridge the years of his long absence. He would never be able to convince her to follow him if she did not fully understand that his absence had been ordered by God. It was my time in the desert, he had said repeatedly. I was sent out not for thirty days, but twenty-four years.

When he left her apartment, he was sure she was going to follow him. And even more significantly, she had given him yet another opportunity to punish a sinner.

Langaas was waiting for him at the post office, since they always tried to meet in public. They had a brief conversation, then Langaas leaned forward so his pulse could be checked. It was normal.

Later that same day they met at the parking lot. It was a mild, cloudy evening with rain likely at night. Langaas had replaced the truck with a bus that he had stolen from a company in Malmö, being careful to put on a new license plate. They drove east, passing Ystad and continuing on minor roads toward Klavestrand, where they stopped at the church. It lay on a hill, approximately four hundred meters from the nearest house. No one would be likely to notice the bus where it was parked. Langaas unlocked the church door with the key that he had copied. They used shielded flashlights as they erected the ladders and covered the windows looking out onto the road with black plastic. Afterward they lit the candles on the altar. Their footsteps made no sounds; all was silent.

Langaas came to see him in the vestry, where he was making his preparations.

“Everything is ready.”

“Tonight I will let them wait,” Westin said.

He gave the remaining hawser to Langaas.

“Put this on the altar. The hawser inspires fear, fear inspires faith.”

Langaas left. Westin sat down at the pastor’s table with a candle in front of him. When he closed his eyes, he was back in the jungle. Jim Jones came walking out of his hut, the only one that was supplied with electricity from a small generator. Jim was always so well groomed. His teeth were white, his smile carved into his face. Jim was beautiful, he thought, even if he was a fallen angel. I cannot deny that there were moments with him when I was completely happy. I also cannot deny that what Jim gave me, or what I believed he gave me, is what I am trying to give the people who now follow me. I have seen the fallen angel; I know what to do.

He folded his arms and let his head come to rest on them. He was going to let them wait for him. The hawser on the altar would be a stimulus of the fear they should feel for him. If the ways of God were inscrutable, so too would be the ways of his servant. He knew Torgeir would not disturb him again. He started to dream. It was like stepping down into the underworld, a world where the heat of the jungle penetrated the cold stone walls of the church. He thought about Maria and the child; he slept.

He woke up with a start at four o’clock in the morning. At first he wasn’t sure where he was. He stood up and shook life back into his stiff body. After a few minutes, he walked out into the church. They were all sitting in the first few pews, frozen, fearful, waiting. He stopped and looked at them before letting them see him. I could kill them all, he thought. I could get them to cut off their hands and eat themselves. Because I too have a weakness. I do not completely trust my followers. I am afraid of the thoughts they think, thoughts I cannot control. He walked out and stood in front of the altar. This night he was going to tell them about the great task that awaited them, the reason they had made the long journey to Sweden. Tonight he would pronounce the first words of the text that would become the fifth gospel.

He nodded to Langaas, who opened the old-fashioned brown trunk on the floor next to the altar. Langaas walked down the row of people, handing out the death masks. They were white, like masks in a pantomime, devoid of expression, of joy or sorrow.

God has made man in his image, Westin thought. But no one knows the face of God. Our lives are his breath, but no one knows his face. We have to wear the white masks in order to obliterate the ego and become one with our Creator.

He watched while they put on the death masks. It always filled him with a sense of power and strength to see them cover their faces.

Finally, Langaas put on a mask. The only one not wearing one was Westin.

He had learned this too from Jim. The disciples always have to know where to find their Master. He is the only one who should not be masked.

He pressed his right thumb against his left wrist. His pulse was normal. Everything was under control. In the future, this church may become a shrine, he thought. The first Christians who died in the catacombs of Rome have returned. The time of the fallen angels is finally over.

The day he had chosen was the eighth of September. This had come to him in a dream. He had found himself in a deserted factory with puddles of rainwater and dead leaves on the floor. There had been a calendar on the wall. When he woke up, he remembered that the date in the dream was the eighth of September. That is the day everything ends and everything begins again.

He stepped closer to them and started to speak.

“The time has come. I had not intended that we should meet before the day that you undertake your great task, but God has spoken to me tonight and told me that yet another sacrifice is necessary. When we meet again, another sinner will die.”

He picked up the hawser and held it above his head.

“We know what God demands of us,” he intoned. “The old scriptures teach us the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He who kills must himself be killed. We must remove all doubt from our minds. God’s breath is steel and he demands hardness from us in return. We are like the snake who wakes from his winter sleep, we are the lizards who live in the crevices of the rock and change color when threatened. Only through complete devotion and ruthlessness will we conquer the emptiness that exists inside men. The great darkness, the long days of degeneration and impotence are over.”

He paused and saw that they understood. He walked along the row and stroked their foreheads, then gave the sign that they were to stand. Together they said the holy words that he told them had come to him in a vision. They did not have to know the truth, that it was something he had read when he was a young man. Or had the words in fact come to him in a dream? He could not be sure, but it was of no importance.

Later they left the church, locked up, and drove away in the bus. A woman who came in to clean in the afternoon did not notice that anyone had been there at all.