The Blood Spilt

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 11

“It’s just as if he’s been swallowed up by the ground.”

Anna-Maria Mella looked at her colleagues. It was the morning meeting in the prosecutor’s office. They had just established that they had no trace whatsoever of Stefan Wikström, the missing priest.

You could have heard a pin drop for the next six seconds. Inspector Fred Olsson, Prosecutor Alf Björnfot, Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Inspector Tommy Rantakyrö looked distressed. That was the worst thing imaginable, that he actually had been swallowed up by the ground. Buried somewhere.

Sven-Erik looked particularly upset. He’d been the last to arrive at the prosecutor’s morning service. It wasn’t like him. There was a small plaster on his chin. It was stained brown with blood. The sign that a man is having a bad morning. The stubble on his throat below his Adam’s apple had escaped the razor in his haste, and was protruding from his skin like coarse gray tree trunks. Below one corner of his mouth were the remains of dried-up shaving foam, like white adhesive.

“Okay, so far it’s still just a missing person,” said the prosecutor. “He was a servant of the church, after all. And then he found out we were onto him about that trip he went on with his family with the wolf foundation’s money. That could well be enough to make him run. The fear of his reputation being ruined. He might pop up somewhere like a jack-in-the-box.”

There was silence around the table. Alf Björnfot looked at the people sitting there. Difficult to motivate this shower. They seemed to be just waiting for the priest’s body to turn up. With clues and proof to give the investigation a new lease on life.

“What do you know about the period just before he disappeared?” he asked.

“He rang his wife from his cell phone at five to seven on Friday evening,” said Fred Olsson. “Then he was busy with the youngsters in the church, opened up their club, held an evening service at half nine. He left there just after ten, and nobody’s seen him since.”

“The car?” asked the prosecutor.

“Parked behind the parish hall.”

It was such a short distance, thought Anna-Maria. It was perhaps a hundred meters from the youngsters’ club to the back of the parish hall.

She remembered a woman who’d disappeared some years before. A mother of two who’d gone out one evening to feed the dogs in their run. And then she was gone. The genuine despair of her husband, his assurances and everybody else’s that she would never leave her children of her own free will had led the police to prioritize her disappearance. They’d found her buried in the forest behind the house. Her husband had killed her.

But Anna-Maria had thought exactly the same then. Such a short distance. Such a short distance.

“What did you find out from checking phone calls, e-mails and his bank account?” asked the prosecutor.

“Nothing in particular,” said Tommy Rantakyrö. “The call to his wife was the last one. Otherwise there were a few work-related calls with various members of the church and the parish priest, a call to the leader of the hunting team about the elk hunt, his wife’s sister… I’ve got a list of the calls here, and I’ve made a little note of what the calls were about.”

“Good,” said Alf Björnfot encouragingly.

“What did the sister and the parish priest have to say?” wondered Anna-Maria.

“He called the sister to tell her he was worried about his wife. Worried she was going to be ill again.”

“She wrote those letters to Mildred Nilsson,” said Fred Olsson. “Things seem to have been pretty bad between the Wikströms and Mildred Nilsson.”

“So what did Stefan Wikström talk to the parish priest about?” asked Anna-Maria.

“Well, he got a bit worked up when I asked him,” said Tommy Rantakyrö. “But he told me Stefan was worried because we’d borrowed the accounts for the wolf foundation.”

An almost imperceptible frown appeared on the prosecutor’s brow, but he didn’t say anything about improper conduct and seizing items without permission. Instead he said:

“Which could indicate that he disappeared of his own free will. That he’s staying away because he’s afraid of the shame. Believe me, the most common reaction to this sort of thing is to bury your head in the sand. You say to yourself ‘can’t they see they’re just making things worse for themselves,’ but often they’ve gone beyond sensible logic.”

“Why didn’t he take the car?” asked Anna-Maria. “Did he just walk off into the wilderness? There weren’t any trains at that time. Nor any flights.”

“Taxi?” asked the prosecutor.

“No pickups,” answered Fred Olsson.

Anna-Maria looked at Fred appreciatively.

You stubborn little terrier, she thought.

“Right, then,” said the prosecutor. “Tommy, I’d like you to…”

“… start knocking on doors in the area around the parish hall asking if anybody’s seen anything,” said Tommy with resignation in his voice.

“Exactly,” said the prosecutor, “and…”

“… and talk to the kids from the church youth club again.”

“Good! Fred Olsson can go with you. Sven-Erik,” said the prosecutor. “Maybe you could ring the profiling group and see what they’ve got to say?”

Sven-Erik nodded.

“How did you get on with the drawing?” the prosecutor asked.

“The lab is still working on it,” said Anna-Maria. “They haven’t come up with anything yet.”

“Good! We’ll meet again first thing tomorrow morning, unless anything major happens in the meantime,” said the prosecutor, folding his glasses with a snap and pushing them into his breast pocket.

That brought the meeting to an end.

Before Sven-Erik went to his office he called by to speak to Sonja on the exchange.

“Listen,” he said. “If anybody rings and says they’ve found a gray tabby cat, let me know.”

“Is it Manne?”

Sven-Erik nodded.

“It’s a week now. He’s never been away that long.”

“We’ll keep our eyes open,” promised Sonja. “He’ll be back, you’ll see. It’s still warm. He’s probably out courting somewhere.”

“He’s been neutered,” said Sven-Erik gloomily.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell the girls.”

The woman from the national police profiling team answered her direct line straightaway. She sounded cheerful when Sven-Erik introduced himself. Far too young to be working with this kind of crap.

“I suppose you’ve read the papers?” said Sven-Erik.

“Yes, have you found him?”

“No, he’s still missing. What do you think, then?”

“What do you mean?”

Sven-Erik tried to marshal his thoughts.

“Well,” he began. “If we assume the papers have got it right.”

“That Stefan Wikström has been murdered and we’re dealing with a serial killer,” she supplied.

“Exactly. But in that case, this is peculiar, isn’t it?”

She didn’t speak. Waited for Sven-Erik to carry his thought through to its conclusion.

“What I mean,” he said, “is that it’s peculiar that he’s disappeared. If the murderer hung Mildred up from the organ, why doesn’t he do the same thing with Stefan Wikström?”

“Maybe he needs to scrub him clean. You found a dog hair on Mildred Nilsson, didn’t you? Or maybe he wants to hang on to him for a while.”

She broke off and seemed to be thinking.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “When the body turns up-if it turns up, he might have gone of his own accord-we can talk again. See if there’s a pattern.”

“Okay,” said Sven-Erik. “He could have gone of his own accord. He hadn’t been completely honest in his dealings with a foundation that belonged to the church. Then he found out that we were on the trail of his grubby little story.”

“His grubby little story?”

“Yes, it was a matter of about a hundred thousand kronor. And it’s doubtful there would have been enough to make a case. It was a study trip that was actually more of a private holiday.”

“So you don’t think that was any reason for him to run?”

“Not really.”

“So what if it was just the fact that the police were getting closer that frightened him?”

“What do you mean?”

She laughed.

“Nothing!” she said, stressing the word.

Then she suddenly sounded formal.

“I wish you luck. Let me know if anything happens.”

As soon as they’d hung up, Sven-Erik realized what she’d meant. If Stefan had murdered Mildred…

His brain immediately started to protest.

If we just assume that’s what happened, Sven-Erik persisted. Then he would have been scared enough to run if the police were getting closer. Whatever we wanted. Even if we just wanted to ask him the time.

Anna-Maria’s phone rang. It was the woman from the science fiction bookstore.

“I’ve found something out about that symbol,” she said, coming straight to the point.

“Yes?”

“One of my customers was familiar with it. It’s on the cover of a book called The Gate. It’s by Michelle Moan, that’s a pseudonym. There isn’t a Swedish version available. I haven’t got a copy, but I can order one for you. Shall I do that?”

“Yes please! What’s it about?”

“Death. It’s a book of death. Really expensive-fifty-two pounds. And then there’ll be the postage on top of that. I actually rang the publisher in England.”

“And?”

“I asked if they’d had any orders from Sweden. A few-and one in Kiruna.”

Anna-Maria held her breath. Long live amateur detectives.

“Did you get a name?”

“Yes, Benjamin Wikström. I got an address too.”

“Don’t need it,” said Anna-Maria. “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

Sven-Erik was standing by Sonja on the exchange. He hadn’t been able to stop himself going out to ask.

“What did the girls say? Had any of them heard anything about the cat?”

She shook her head.

Tommy Rantakyrö suddenly materialized behind Sven-Erik.

“Has your cat gone missing?” he asked.

Sven-Erik grunted in reply.

“He’ll have moved in with somebody else,” said Tommy breezily. “You know what cats are like, they don’t get attached to anybody, it’s just our own… projectifi… that you read your own feelings into the situation. They can’t feel affection, it’s been scientifically proven.”

“You’re talking crap,” growled Sven-Erik.

“No, it’s absolutely true,” said Tommy, not reading the warning in Sonja’s eyes. “When they start rubbing up against your legs and winding themselves round you, they’re only doing that to mark you with their scent, because you’re a sort of restaurant and resting place that belongs to them. They’re not pack animals.”

“No, maybe not,” said Sven-Erik. “But he still comes up and sleeps in my bed like a baby.”

“Because it’s warm. You don’t mean any more to the cat than an electric blanket.”

“But you’re a dog person,” Sonja cut him off short. “You can’t go making all these statements about cats.”

To Sven-Erik she said:

“I’m a cat person too.”

At that precise moment the glass door flew open. Anna-Maria came hurtling in. She grabbed hold of Sven-Erik and dragged him away from reception.

“We’re going to the priest’s house at Jukkasjärvi,” was all she said.

Kristin Wikström opened the door wearing her dressing gown and slippers. Her makeup was smudged beneath her eyes. Her blonde hair was tucked behind her ears and lay flat and uncombed at the back of her head.

“We’re looking for Benjamin,” said Anna-Maria. “We’d like a word with him. Is he at home?”

“What do you want?”

“To talk to him. Is he at home?”

Kristin Wikström’s voice went up a notch.

“What do you want him for? What do you want to talk to him about?”

“His father’s disappeared,” said Sven-Erik patiently. “We need to ask him one or two questions.”

“He’s not home.”

“Do you know where he is?” asked Anna-Maria.

“No, and you should be looking for Stefan. That’s what you two should be doing right now.”

“Can we have a look at his room?” asked Anna-Maria.

His mother blinked tiredly.

“No, you can’t.”

“In that case we’re very sorry to have disturbed you,” said Sven-Erik pleasantly, dragging Anna-Maria to the car.

They drove out of the yard.

“Fuck!” Anna-Maria burst out once they were through the gateposts. “How could I be so stupid as to come out here without a search warrant?”

“Pull up a bit further on and let me out,” said Sven-Erik. “You drive like hell and get the warrant sorted out and then come back. I want to keep an eye on her.”

Anna-Maria stopped the car, Sven-Erik slid out.

“Get a move on,” he said.

Sven-Erik trotted back to the priest’s house. He positioned himself behind one of the gateposts where he was hidden by a rowan bush. He could see both the outside door and the chimney.

If there’s any smoke, I’m going in, he thought.

After quarter of an hour Kristin Wikström came out. She’d changed from her dressing gown into jeans and a sweater. She was holding a garbage bag in her hand, tied at the top. She was heading for the garbage can. Just as she lifted the lid, she turned her head and caught sight of Sven-Erik.

Only one thing to do. Sven-Erik hurried over to her and held out his hand.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take that.”

She passed him the bag without a word. He noticed that she'd dragged a brush through her hair and put a little bit of color on her lips. Then the tears began to flow. No gestures, hardly even a change of expression, just the tears. She might just as well have been peeling onions.

Sven-Erik undid the bag. It contained cuttings about Mildred Nilsson.

“Now now,” he said, pulling her toward him. “There now. Tell me where he is.”

“In school, of course.”

She let him put his arms around her, let herself be held. Wept silently into his shoulder.

“But what is it you’re thinking?” asked Sven-Erik as he and Anna-Maria were parking the car outside the Högalid school. “Do you think he murdered Mildred Nilsson and his father?”

“I don’t think anything at all. But he’s got a book with the same symbol that was on that threatening drawing sent to Mildred. Presumably he drew it. And he had a load of cuttings about her murder.”

The headteacher of the school was a charming woman in her fifties. She was slightly plump, and was wearing a knee-length skirt with a dark blue jacket that didn’t match. She had a bright scarf around her neck, like a piece of jewelry. The very sight of her cheered Sven-Erik up. He liked women who seemed to crackle with energy.

Anna-Maria explained that she would like Benjamin Wikström to be sent for without any fuss. The head took out a timetable. Then she rang the teacher taking Benjamin’s class and had a brief conversation.

While they were waiting, she asked what it was all about.

“We think he might have been threatening Mildred Nilsson, the priest who was murdered last summer. So we just need to ask him a few questions.”

The teacher shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I find that very difficult to believe. Benjamin and his friends-they look appalling. Black hair, white faces. Their eyes sooty with makeup. And sometimes when you look at their tops! Last term one of Benjamin’s friends was wearing a top with a picture of a skeleton eating newborn babies.”

She laughed and pretended to shudder. Became serious when Anna-Maria failed to smile.

“But they’re really nice kids,” she went on. “Benjamin had a few problems last year, but I’d happily let him babysit my children. If I had small children, that is.”

“What do you mean, he had problems?” asked Sven-Erik.

“His schoolwork wasn’t going very well. And he became so very… They want to be different, mark themselves out by the way they dress and so on. Sometimes I think they actually wear their sense of being outsiders. Make it their own choice. But he didn’t feel good. He had lots of little sores on his arm, and he was always sitting there picking the scabs off. He ended up with a patch of sores that just wouldn’t heal. Then sometime after Christmas things straightened themselves out. He got a girlfriend and started a band.”

She smiled.

“That band. My God, they did a gig here at the school last spring. Somehow they’d got hold of a pig’s head, and they stood there on the stage hacking at it with axes. They were ecstatic.”

“Is he good at drawing?” asked Sven-Erik.

“Yes,” said the headteacher. “Yes, he is actually.”

There was a knock at the door and Benjamin Wikström walked in.

Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik introduced themselves.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” said Sven-Erik.

“I’m not talking to you,” said Benjamin Wikström.

Anna-Maria Mella sighed.

“In that case I shall have to arrest you on suspicion of making illegal threats. You’ll have to come down to the station.”

Eyes fixed on the ground. The lank hair hanging in front of the face.

“Whatever.”

“Okay,” said Anna-Maria to Sven-Erik. “Shall we talk to him, then?”

Benjamin Wikström was sitting in interview room one. He hadn’t uttered a single word since they picked him up. Sven-Erik and Anna-Maria had got themselves a coffee. And a Coca-Cola for Benjamin Wikström.

Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot came cantering along the corridor toward them.

“Who’ve you picked up?” he panted.

They told him.

“Fifteen,” said the prosecutor. “His guardian has to be present, is his mother here?”

Sven-Erik and Anna-Maria exchanged glances.

“Get her here,” said the prosecutor. “Give the kid something to eat if he wants it. And ring social services. They need to send a representative as well. Call me later.”

He disappeared.

“I don’t want to do all that!” groaned Anna-Maria.

“I’ll go and get her,” said Sven-Erik.

After an hour they were sitting in the interview room. Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Anna-Maria Mella were sitting on one side of the table. On the other side sat Benjamin Wikström, with a representative from social services on his left. On his right was Kristin Wikström, her eyes red-rimmed.

“Did you send this drawing to Mildred Nilsson?” asked Sven-Erik. “We’ll have prints from it very shortly. So if you did do it, we might as well talk about it.”

Benjamin Wikström maintained a stubborn silence.

“My God,” said Kristin. “What’s going on, Benjamin? How could you do something like this? It’s just sick!”

Benjamin’s cheeks stiffened. He looked down at the table. Arms pressed tightly against his body.

“Maybe we should take a little break,” said the woman from social services, putting her arm around Kristin.

Sven-Erik nodded and switched off the tape recorder. Kristin Wikström, the social services woman and Sven-Erik left the room.

“Why don’t you want to talk to us?” asked Anna-Maria.

“Because you don’t understand anything,” said Benjamin Wikström. “You don’t understand anything at all.”

“That’s what my son always says to me. He’s the same age as you. Did you know Mildred?”

“It’s not her on the drawing. Don’t you get it? It’s a self-portrait.”

Anna-Maria looked at the drawing. She’d assumed it was Mildred. But Benjamin had long dark hair too.

“You were friends!” exclaimed Anna-Maria. “That’s why you had those cuttings.”

“She understood,” he said. “She understood.”

Behind the veil of hair, slow tears dripped onto the surface of the desk.

Mildred and Benjamin are sitting in her room at the parish hall. She’s invited him for meadowsweet tea with honey. She’s been given the tea by one of the women in Magdalena who picked the leaves and dried them herself. They’re laughing because it tastes bloody awful.

One of Benjamin’s friends was confirmed by Mildred. And through his friend he and Mildred got to know one another.

The Gate is lying on Mildred’s desk. She’s finished reading it.

“So what did you think?”

It’s a thick book. Really thick. Lots of writing, in English. Lots of colored pictures too.

It’s about “the gate” to the unbuilt house, to the world you create. It’s encouraging you to create the world you want to live in for all eternity, through various rites and in your head. It’s about the way you get there. Suicide. Collectively or alone. The English publisher has been sued by a group of parents. Four young people took their lives together in the spring of 1998.

“I like the idea that you create your own heaven,” she says.

Then she listens. Passes him tissues when he weeps. He does that when he’s talking to Mildred. It’s the feeling that she cares that starts him off.

“He hates me,” he says. “And it doesn’t make any difference. If I cut my hair and went around in a shirt and smart trousers and worked hard at school and became chairman of the school council, he still wouldn’t be satisfied. I know that.”

There’s a knock on the door. Mildred frowns in annoyance. When the red light’s showing…

The door opens and Stefan Wikström walks in. It’s actually his day off.

“So this is where you are,” he says to Benjamin. “Get your jacket and go and sit in the car. Now.”

To Mildred he says:

“And you can stay out of my family’s business. He’s wasting his time at school. The way he dresses is enough to make you throw up. He does everything he can to embarrass the family. With every encouragement from you, I can see that. Giving him tea when he’s truanting from school. Did you hear what I said? Jacket, car.”

He taps his watch.

“You’ve got Swedish now, I’ll give you a lift.”

Benjamin stays where he is.

“Your mother’s sitting at home crying. Your form tutor rang and wondered where you were. You’re making your mother ill. Is that what you want?”

“Benjamin wanted to talk,” says Mildred. “Sometimes…”

“You should talk to your family!” says Stefan.

“Yeah, right!” shouts Benjamin. “But you just refuse to answer. Like yesterday, when I asked if I could go along with Kevin’s family up to the Riksgränsen ski center. ‘Get your hair cut and dress like a normal person, then I’ll talk to you like a normal person.’ ”

Benjamin stands up and picks up his jacket.

“I’ll cycle to school. You don’t need to give me a lift.”

He rushes out.

“This is your fault,” says Stefan, pointing at Mildred as she sits there, still holding her teacup.

“I feel sorry for you, Stefan,” she replies. “The landscape around you must be very desolate.”

“We’re letting him go,” said Anna-Maria to the prosecutor and her colleagues. She went out to the rest area and asked the woman from social services to take mother and son home.

Then she went into her office.

She felt tired and dispirited.

Sven-Erik called in to see if she wanted to go out for lunch.

“But it’s three o’clock,” she said.

“Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“Get your jacket. I’ll drive.”

She grinned.

“Why?”

Tommy Rantakyrö materialized behind Sven-Erik.

“You need to come,” he said.

Sven-Erik looked at him grimly.

“I’m not even speaking to you,” he said.

“Because of that business about the cat? I was only kidding. But you need to hear this.”

They followed Tommy to interview room two. A woman and a man were sitting there. They were both dressed for the forest. The man was quite tall; he was holding a khaki cap from the army surplus store in his fist, and he was wiping the sweat from his brow. The woman was unnaturally skinny. Had those deep furrows above her lips and in her face that you get from smoking for many years. Bandana on her head, berry stains on her jeans. Both of them stank of smoke and mosquito repellent.

“Please could I have a glass of water,” said the man as the three detectives entered the room.

“Just leave it!” said the woman, in a tone that indicated that nothing the man could say or do would be right.

“Could you just tell us again what you told me?” asked Tommy Rantakyrö.

“Oh, you tell them!” the woman snapped at her husband.

She was clearly stressed; her eyes flickered from one detective to the other.

“Well, we were north of Lower Vuolusjärvi picking berries,” said the man. “My brother-in-law’s got a cabin out there. Amazing cloudberries when the time’s right, but at the moment it’s lingon…”

He glanced up at Tommy Rantakyrö who was gesturing to indicate that the man really ought to get to the point.

“Anyway, we heard a noise during the night,” said the man.

“It was a scream,” his wife stated firmly.

“Yes, yes. Anyway, then we heard a shot.”

“And then another shot,” supplied his wife.

“Oh, you tell them, then!” snapped the husband.

“I said, didn’t I, I said you’re going to have to talk to the police! I said that.”

The woman pursed her lips.

“That’s about it, really,” concluded the husband.

Sven-Erik gazed at them in amazement.

“When was this?” he asked.

“Friday night,” said the man.

“And it’s Monday now,” said Sven-Erik slowly. “Why have you only just come in?”

“I told you, didn’t I…” the woman began.

“Just shut up, will you,” the man cut her off.

“I said we ought to come in straightaway,” the woman said to Sven-Erik. “And when I saw the headlines about that priest… do you think it’s him?”

“Did you see anything?” said Sven-Erik.

“No, we’d gone to bed,” said the man. “We just heard what I told you. Well, we heard a car as well. But that was much later. There’s a road that runs from Laxforsen out there.”

“Didn’t you realize this might be something serious?” asked Sven-Erik quietly.

“How should I know,” said the man sullenly. “It’s the elk hunting season, so it’s hardly surprising if people are shooting in the forest.”

Sven-Erik’s voice was unnaturally patient.

“It was the middle of the night. During the hunting season no shooting is permitted from one hour before sunset. And who screamed? The elk, was it?”

“I did say…” the woman began.

“Look, noises can sound very strange in the forest,” said the man, looking uncooperative. “It might have been a fox. Or a rutting stag, barking. Have you ever heard that? Anyway, we’ve told you all about it now. So perhaps we can go home.”

Sven-Erik was staring at the man as if he’d taken leave of his senses.

“Go home!” he yelled. “Go home? You’re staying right here! We’ll get a map and take a look at the area. You’re going to tell me where the shot came from. We’ll work out if it was a bullet or shot. You’re going to think about what sort of scream it was, whether you could make out any words. And we’re going to talk about the car you heard as well. Where it came from, how far away it was, the whole lot. I want exact times of when this all happened. And we’re going to go over this very carefully. Several times. Got it?”

The wife looked appealingly at Sven-Erik.

“I told him we ought to go straight to the police, but once he’s got started on the berry picking…”

“Yes, and now look what’s happened,” said her husband. “I’ve got three thousand kronors’ worth of lingonberries in the car. Whatever happens I’ll have to phone the lad to come and collect them. I’m not having the bloody berries ruined.”

Sven-Erik’s chest was heaving up and down.

“But the car was a diesel, anyway,” said the man.

“Are you taking the piss?” asked Sven-Erik.

“No, it’s not bloody difficult to recognize a diesel, is it. The cabin’s some distance from the road, but even so. But like I said, that was much later. Might not have had anything to do with the shot.”

At quarter past four in the afternoon Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik were flying north by helicopter. The river Torne meandered below them like a silver ribbon. A few isolated clouds were casting their shadows on the mountainsides, but otherwise the sun was shining down on the golden yellow terrain.

“You can see why they’d want to stay out here picking berries instead of coming in and ruining their trip,” said Anna-Maria.

Sven-Erik had to agree, and laughed.

“What is it with people?”

They looked down at the map.

“If the cabin’s here at the northern end of the lake, and the shot came from the south…” said Anna-Maria, pointing.

“He thought it sounded really close.”

“That’s right, and further down you’ve got some cottages right on the shoreline. And they heard a car. It can’t be more than one, at the most two kilometers, starting from the cabin.”

They’d circled an area on the map. The following day the police would start searching the area, along with the local military.

The helicopter began to drop. Followed the long oval shape of the lake, Lower Vuolusjärvi, northward. They located the cabin where the berry pickers had been staying.

“Go lower and we’ll check it out as best we can,” Anna-Maria yelled to the pilot.

Sven-Erik had the telescope. Anna-Maria thought it was easier without. Birch trees, lots of marshy ground. The forest road, following the edge of the lake almost to its northern point. The odd reindeer gazing stupidly at them, and a female elk with a calf, galloping off into the undergrowth.

But still, thought Anna-Maria as she squinted, trying to see something other than mountain birches and brushwood. You can’t bury somebody without leaving some kind of trace. Roots, shit like that.

“Wait,” she suddenly shouted. “Look over there.”

She pulled at Sven-Erik’s arm.

“See?” she said. “There’s a boat just there, down by the reindeer pen. We’ll check it out.”

The lake was over six kilometers long. A track led down to the lake from the road through the forest. There were planks over the last section. The white plastic skiff had been pulled ashore. Turned neatly upside down so it wouldn’t get filled with water.

They turned it over together.

“Nice and clean,” said Sven-Erik.

“Very nice and clean indeed,” said Anna-Maria.

She bent down and examined the bottom of the boat carefully. Looked up at Sven-Erik and nodded. He bent down too.

“That’s definitely blood,” he said.

They looked out across the lake. It was smooth and calm. A ripple on the surface. Somewhere a black-throated diver was calling.

Down there, thought Anna-Maria. He’s in the lake.

“We’ll go back,” said Sven-Erik. “No point trampling around and annoying the scene of crime team. We’ll get Krister Eriksson and Tintin here. If they find anything, we’ll send for a diver. We won’t use the track, there could be traces or something.”

Anna-Maria Mella checked the time.

“We can do it before it gets dark,” she said.

It was half past four in the afternoon by the time they gathered at the lake again, Anna-Maria Mella, Sven-Erik Stålnacke, Tommy Rantakyrö and Fred Olsson. They were waiting for Krister Eriksson and Tintin.

“If he’s anywhere round here, Tintin will find him,” said Fred Olsson.

“Although she’s not as good as Zack,” said Tommy.

Tintin was a black Alsatian bitch. She belonged to Inspector Krister Olsson. When he’d moved up to Kiruna five years ago, he’d brought Zack with him. A male Alsatian with a thick coat, black and tan. Broad head. Not exactly a show dog. A one man dog. It was only Krister who mattered to him. If anyone else tried to say hello or pat him, he turned his head away indifferently.

“It’s an honor to be allowed to work with him,” Krister himself had said about the dog.

The mountain rescue team had also sung his praises, loud and long. Zack was the best avalanche dog they’d ever seen. He’d been good at searching as well. The only time Krister Eriksson was to be seen in the staff room at the station was when Zack was treating everyone to cakes. Or to put it more accurately, when some grateful relative or somebody who’s life he’d saved was buying the cakes. Otherwise Krister Eriksson spent his coffee breaks walking the dog or training.

He just wasn’t the sociable type. Maybe it was because of the way he looked. According to what Anna-Maria had heard, his injuries had been caused by a house fire when he was a teenager. She’d never dared to ask, he just wasn’t the type. His face was like bright pink parchment. His ears were two holes that just went straight into his head. He had no hair at all, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, nothing.

There wasn’t much left of his nose either. Two oblong holes right through his skull. Anna-Maria knew his colleagues called him Michael Jackson.

When Zack was alive, people had joked about the dog and his master. Said they sat together in the evenings, sharing a beer and watching the sport. That it was Zack who picked most of the winners.

Since Krister had got Tintin, she’d heard nothing. Presumably the jokes were still going on, but as Tintin was a bitch they were probably too coarse to repeat when Anna-Maria was around. “She’ll be fine,” Krister always said about Tintin. “She’s a bit too overenthusiastic at the moment. Too young in the head, but it’ll sort itself out.”

Krister Eriksson arrived at the scene ten minutes after the others. Tintin was sitting in the front seat, fastened in with her own seat belt. He let her out.

“Has the boat arrived?” he asked.

The others nodded. A helicopter had dropped it at the northern end of the lake. It was orange, made for the shallows, equipped with spotlights and an echo sounder.

Krister Eriksson put on Tintin’s life jacket. She knew exactly what that meant. A job. An exciting job. She sniffed eagerly round his legs. Her mouth was open and expectant. Her nostrils were twitching in all directions.

They walked down to the boat. Krister Eriksson positioned Tintin on the small platform and pushed off. His colleagues stayed where they were, watching them glide away. They heard Krister start up the engine. They were searching in a headwind. At first Tintin was moving her feet up and down in excitement, whimpering and dancing. At last she settled. Sat in the prow, seemed to be thinking of something else.

Forty minutes passed. Tommy Rantakyrö scratched his head. Tintin was lying down. The boat moved to and fro across the lake. Working north to south. The detectives moved along the shoreline.

“Bloody mosquitoes,” said Tommy Rantakyrö.

“Men with dogs. That’s your sort of thing, isn’t it?” Sven-Erik said to Anna-Maria.

“Pack it in,” growled Anna-Maria warningly. “It wasn’t even his dog, anyway.”

“What’s this?” wondered Fred Olsson.

“Nothing!” said Anna-Maria.

“But if you’ve started…” said Tommy Rantakyrö.

“It was Sven-Erik who started,” said Anna-Maria. “Go on then, tell them. You carry on and humiliate me.”

“Well, it was when you were living in Stockholm, wasn’t it?” began Sven-Erik.

“When I was at the police training college.”

“Anna-Maria moved in with this guy. And it hadn’t been going on for very long.”

“We’d been living together for two months, and we hadn’t been going out for that much longer.”

“And one day when she got home, correct me if I’m wrong, there was a leather thong on the bedroom floor.”

“And it was just like the ones you see in porn movies. It even had a hole at the front. It wasn’t too difficult to work out what was meant to be sticking out of that.”

She paused and looked at Fred Olsson and Tommy Rantakyrö. She’d never seen them looking so happy and expectant in her life.

“And,” she said, “there was a sanitary towel on the floor as well.”

“Get away!” said Tommy Rantakyrö attentively.

“I was really shocked,” Anna-Maria went on. “I mean, what do we really know about another person? So when Max got home and called out in the hallway, I was just sitting there in the bedroom. He just said ‘How’s things?’ And I pointed at the leather underwear and said ‘We need to talk. About that.’

“And he didn’t even react. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it must have fallen off the wardrobe.’ And he put the thong and the sanitary towel back on top of the wardrobe. He was completely blasé about the whole thing.”

Then she grinned.

“It was a pair of dog’s underpants. His mother had a boxer bitch that he used to look after sometimes. And when they went out she used to wear the underpants with the towel in, and the hole was for her tail. It was that simple.”

The laughter of the three men echoed across the lake.

They went on giggling for a long time afterward.

“Bloody hell,” said Tommy Rantakyrö, wiping his eyes.

Then Tintin got to her feet in the boat.

“Look,” said Sven-Erik Stålnacke.

“As if any of us would even consider not looking at this particular moment,” said Tommy Rantakyrö, stretching his neck.

Tintin had positioned herself. Her body was completely rigid. Her nose was pointing in toward the lake like the needle of a compass. Krister Eriksson slowed the boat so that it was barely moving, and steered in the direction indicated by Tintin’s nose. The dog began to whimper and bark, walking round and round on the platform and scratching. Her barking became more and more agitated until the front part of her body was hanging down over the water. When Krister Eriksson picked up the lead-weighted buoy to mark the spot, Tintin couldn’t control herself. She jumped into the water and swam around the buoy, barking and sneezing from the water.

Krister Eriksson called her, grabbed the handle on the life jacket and pulled her out. For a while it looked as if he might end up in the water himself. In the boat Tintin carried on whining and whimpering with pleasure. They could hear Krister Eriksson’s voice above the noise of the engine and the dog’s yelping.

“Well done, girl. Good girl.”

When Tintin leapt ashore she was as wet as a sponge. She shook herself vigorously, making sure everybody had a good shower.

Krister Eriksson praised her and stroked her head. She was only still for a second. Then she shot off into the forest, shouting out loud how bloody wonderful she was. They could hear her bark coming from different directions.

“Was she supposed to jump in?” asked Tommy Rantakyrö.

Krister Eriksson shook his head.

“She just got so excited,” he said. “But when she’s successful and finds something she’s looking for, it has to be an entirely positive experience for her, so you can’t tell her off for jumping in, but…”

He gazed in the direction of the barking with a mixture of immeasurable pride and thoughtfulness.

“She’s bloody amazing,” said Tommy, impressed.

The others agreed. The last time they’d met Tintin they were looking for a seventy-six-year-old woman with senile dementia who’d gone missing; Tintin found her in the forest up beyond Kaalasjärvi. It had been a huge area to search, and Krister Eriksson had driven a jeep very slowly along old logging tracks. He’d fixed a bath mat on the bonnet for Tintin so she wouldn’t slip. She’d sat there like a sphinx, her nose in the air. An impressive performance.

You didn’t often get to have such long conversations with Krister Eriksson. Tintin came back from her victory lap, and even she was affected by the sudden feeling of group solidarity. She even went so far as to scamper among the detectives and have a quick sniff at Sven-Erik’s trousers.

Then the moment had passed.

“Right, well, that’s us done, then,” said Krister almost crossly, called the dog and took off her life jacket.

It was getting dark.

“All we can do now is ring the technicians and the divers,” said Sven-Erik. “They can get up here as soon as it’s light tomorrow morning.”

He felt both happy and sad. The worst had happened. Another priest had been murdered, they could be more or less certain of that now. But on the other hand, there was a body down there. There were traces of blood in the skiff, and there were bound to be some on the track as well. They knew it had been a diesel car. They had something to work with again.

He looked at his colleagues. He could see the same electricity in them all.

“They can get themselves up here tonight,” said Anna-Maria.

“They can at least make an attempt in the dark. I want him out of there now.”

Måns Wenngren was sitting in the Grodan club looking at his cell phone. All day he’d been telling himself not to call Rebecka Martinsson, but now he couldn’t actually remember why not.

He’d call her and just ask casually how her job on the side was going.

He was thinking the kind of thoughts he’d had when he was fifteen. What her face would look like at the exact moment he pushed inside her.

Embarrassing old fool! he said to himself as he keyed in the number.

She answered after three rings. Sounded tired. He asked casually about the job on the side, just as he’d planned.

“It didn’t work out very well,” she said.

Then the whole story came pouring out, how she’d been accused of snooping by Nalle’s father.

“It was really nice, not being ‘the woman who killed three men,’ ” she said. “I wasn’t keeping it a secret, but there was no reason to tell anybody either. The worst thing is I left without paying the bill.”

“You can probably pay it by account transfer or something,” said Måns.

Rebecka laughed.

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you want me to sort it out for you?”

“No.”

No, of course not, he thought. Can do it herself.

“Then you’ll just have to go back there and pay it,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t need to go crawling.”

“No.”

“Even if you have done something wrong, you shouldn’t crawl,” Måns went on.

Silence at the other end of the phone.

“This is turning into hard work, Martinsson,” said Måns.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Forget about it now,” said Måns. “I’ll ring you first thing tomorrow and give you a bit of a pep talk. Going to pay a bill in some godforsaken little place, you can do that. Remember the time you had to deal with Axling Import all by yourself?”

“Mmm.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He won’t call, she thought when they’d rung off. Why should he?

The divers found Stefan Wikström’s body in the lake at five past ten that evening. They managed to get him up with a stretcher made from a net, but he was heavy. An iron chain had been wound around his body. His skin was completely white and porous, as if it had been steeped in the water and faded. There were half centimeter wide entry holes in his forehead and chest.