The Darkest Room

39

Tilda blinked away the drops of melted ice flakes from her eyes and cautiously pressed a fistful of snow against her throbbing nose. Then she got up slowly on unsteady legs, her pistol in her right hand. Her head was aching just as much as her nose, but at least she was able to stand upright.

The manor was in complete darkness now, and the soft drifts between the buildings had turned into hills with blurred contours. Beyond them the barn rose up, like a cathedral in shadow. The electricity seemed to have gone out at Eel Point-perhaps throughout the whole of northern Öland. It had happened before, when a tree blew down onto one of the main power lines.

Martin was lying motionless a couple of yards away from Tilda. She couldn’t see his face, but his lifeless body was already well on the way to being covered by the snow.

She took out her cell phone and called the emergency

number. It was busy. She tried the police station in Borgholm, but couldn’t get through there either.

When she had put the cell phone away, she glanced around the inner courtyard, but couldn’t see the man who had shot at her. She had returned his fire-had she hit him?

She looked over toward the steps. There was no sign of Henrik Jansson either.

Keeping her pistol trained on the barn, Tilda moved backwards until she bumped into the bottom step.

Her eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness. She moved quickly up the steps to the house, bending low, and peered in through the open door.

The first thing she saw inside the veranda was a pair of boots. A dark figure dressed in outdoor clothes was half lying on the rag rug just inside the door. He was breathing heavily.

“Henrik Jansson?” said Tilda.

There was silence for a few seconds.

“Yes?” he said eventually.

“Don’t move, Henrik.”

Tilda crept through the doorway, keeping her pistol trained on him. Henrik stayed where he was, gazing wearily at the gun, and made no attempt to get away. He was clutching the edge of the rug with one hand; the other was pressed against his stomach.

“Are you hurt, Henrik?” she asked.

“I’ve been stabbed… in the stomach.”

Tilda nodded. More violence. She wanted to scream and swear at someone, but instead she picked up his knife, hurled it out into the snow, then checked his pants and jacket. No more weapons.

She took a sterilizing pack out of her pocket along with the second and last bandage and passed them over to Henrik.

“Martin’s lying out there,” she said quietly. “He’s been shot. He didn’t make it.”

“Was he a cop?” said Henrik.

Tilda sighed. “He used to be… he’s a tutor at the Police Training Academy.”

Henrik opened the sterilizing pack and shook his head. “They’re crazy.”

“Who, Henrik? Who shot Martin?”

“There are two of them,” he said. “Tommy and Freddy.”

Tilda looked at him suspiciously and he shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s what they call themselves…Tommy and Freddy.”

Tilda remembered the two men at the races in Kalmar.

“So you broke in here together? You’re partners?”

“We were.” He pulled up his sweater and began to wipe the wound in his stomach. “It was Tommy who did this.”

“What are they carrying, Henrik?”

“They’ve got a hunting rifle. An old Mauser…I don’t know if they’ve got anything else.”

Tilda bent down and held the compress while Henrik tied the pressure bandage.

“Now lie down on your stomach,” she said.

“Why?”

“I’m going to put the handcuffs on.”

He looked at her. “If they shoot you, they’ll come after me next,” he said. “Am I supposed to sit here in handcuffs, waiting for them?”

Tilda thought it over for a few seconds, then hung the cuffs back on her belt.

“I’ll be back.”

She turned and jumped down from the steps, crouching between the drifts as she took a last glance at Martin’s body.

With her knees and back bent, she began to move through the snow, over toward the barn.

She blinked to help her see through the snowflakes more easily and stayed on the alert as she moved forward, all the time expecting to be shot at.

A long, billowing snowdrift ran along a couple of yards from the barn, and behind it she found traces of the gunman.

A pair of boots had been trampling around, and there was the outline of someone who had been lying down in the snow. But both the man and his gun were gone, and she couldn’t see any sign of blood.

He must have gone back inside the barn.

Tilda thought about Martin’s blood-covered back and stayed where she was, out in the courtyard. The broad doorway gaped like the opening of a cave. She didn’t want to go in there.

A little further away to the right was another entrance-a narrow door made of wooden planks, painted black. She began to move slowly toward it, pressed against the stone wall, the fine snow whirling down and melting on the back of her neck.

When Tilda reached the door, she grabbed the handle and pulled the door open as far as she could before the snow stopped it.

She peered inside.

Pitch black. The electricity was still off.

With her pistol at the ready she moved inside onto the earth floor, straight into the darkness and silence.

She stayed by the wall for a while, listening for sounds; her nose was beginning to throb again. It was impossible to tell if anyone was lying in wait for her in the shadows.

The storm was more distant in here, but high above her the great roof squeaked and creaked. After a minute or so she started moving again, silently and cautiously. There was no snow to contend with, of course, but the floor was uneven-sometimes it was earth, sometimes stone.

When she saw a broad shadow looming up ahead of her, she almost aimed her pistol at it-until her boot hit an enormous rubber tire. Above the tire was a hood with the logo McCORMICK.

Tilda had bumped into an old tractor-a rusty monster on wheels that must have been parked there for years.

She crept silently past it. When she saw old cans of paint and piles of planks on the floor, she realized she was in a storeroom at the eastern end of the barn.

A faint thud came from somewhere in the barn. She turned her head quickly-but nothing moved behind her.

There were two of them in here, Henrik had said. Oddly enough Tilda had the feeling that there were in fact many more people here in the barn-figures keeping watch in the shadows around her. It was a vague but unpleasant feeling, and she was unable to shake it off.

Her eyes were beginning to grow accustomed to the darkness, and she could see the stone wall opposite.

Suddenly she heard a faint tinkling sound to her left. From inside the barn.

A second or so later it grew a little lighter around her, and she saw that there was a doorway in the wooden wall beside her. It ought to lead into the barn. The light was coming from the barn; a flickering, dancing glow.

Tilda caught the smell of smoke and suspected she knew what had happened. She hurried to the door and looked into the barn.

A fire was burning next to the steep wooden staircase a few yards away, leading up to the hayloft, and there was the acrid smell of paraffin mixed with smoke. Someone had gathered a big heap of old hay, then smashed a burning bottle of paraffin against the floor. The fire had taken hold by now, and the flames had already begun licking at the planks of the staircase.

A tall man was standing beneath the loft on the far side of the fire. He was about the same age as Henrik and was holding a black hood or cap in one hand; he didn’t appear to have noticed her. The man’s gaze was fixed on the growing flames and his face was shiny. He looked excited.

A framed oil painting was propped against a wooden pillar beside him, but there was no sign of any gun.

Tilda looked around one last time-no one was lurking behind her-then she took a deep breath and stepped out into the barn. She was holding the pistol with both hands.

“Police!” she shouted. “Stand still!”

The man looked up and gazed at her, more surprised than anything.

“Get down on the floor!”

The man remained standing, his mouth open.

“My brother’s looking for a way out,” he said. “Around the back.”

Tilda moved forward until she was only two paces from the man.

He moved backwards and to one side, toward the door, and Tilda followed him.

“Down on the floor!”

If he didn’t give up, would she shoot him? She didn’t know. But she was aiming straight at his head.

“Lie down!”

“Okay, okay…”

The man nodded and got down on his stomach, with some effort.

“Hands behind your back!”

Tilda was by his side and had unhooked the handcuffs from her belt.

She quickly grabbed his wrists, pulled them back, and slipped on the cuffs. He was secure now, lying on the stone floor, and she was able to search him. He had a mountain knife in the pocket of his pants, but that was the only weapon. And pills, lots of pills.

“What’s your name?”

He seemed to be considering the question.

“Freddy,” he said eventually.

“Your real name.”

He hesitated. “Sven.”

Tilda found that difficult to believe, but merely said, “Okay, Sven… just keep calm.”

When she got up, she could hear the crackling of the fire. The flames had nowhere to go along the stone floor, but had got a hold on the staircase and were climbing up toward the edge of the loft.

Tilda couldn’t see a fire blanket or extinguisher, nor any buckets she could use to carry water.

She pulled off her uniform jacket and beat at the steps, but the flames simply moved aside and grew. The fire seemed to want to reach up toward the storm-more than half the staircase was burning now.

Could she try to kick the whole staircase away from the edge of the loft?

She raised her foot and took aim-then she saw a shadow approaching out of the corner of her eye. She spun around.

It was a tall man wearing jeans and a sweater, hurrying toward the staircase out of the darkness of the barn. He stopped and looked at the fire, then at Freddy and finally at Tilda.

She almost didn’t recognize him-but it was Joakim Westin.

“I can’t put it out!” she yelled. “I’ve tried…”

Westin just nodded. He seemed calm, as if there were worse things in the world.

“Snow,” he said. “We have to smother it.”

“Okay.”

But where had Westin come from? He looked pale and tired, but didn’t seem particularly surprised to have visitors. Even the fire didn’t seem to bother him much.

“I’ll get a shovel.”

He turned toward the barn door.

“Can you manage without me?” asked Tilda.

Joakim simply nodded, without stopping.

Tilda left the burning staircase. She had to go back into the darkness.

“Stay where you are,” she said to Freddy. “I’m going to find your brother.”

But she stayed in the doorway of the inner room, waiting for Joakim to come back. It took perhaps half a minute, then he was back with a huge shovel full of snow.

They nodded to each other and Tilda went into the storeroom where the tractor was. Behind her she could hear the fire hissing as Joakim put it out.

She had raised her pistol again.

The shadows and the cold surrounded her once more. She thought she heard movements ahead of her, but could see nothing.

She kept close to the northern wall, where the small windows in the thick stone wall were completely covered in snow.

Then a door appeared, and Tilda went through it.

The room on the other side was large and even colder. Tilda stopped. The feeling that she wasn’t alone in the darkness came back. She lowered her pistol, listened, and took a step forward.

A shot rang out.

She ducked, without knowing if she’d been hit or not. Her ears were ringing from the report; she coughed quietly and breathed in the dry air. She waited.

Nothing else happened.

When Tilda finally looked up into the darkness, she saw another closed door four or five yards away. It was a way out-but there was someone standing in front of it. A man.

It was Freddy’s brother, Tommy. It couldn’t be anyone else. He had rolled the balaclava up to his forehead and his pale face bore a resemblance to Freddy’s.

Tommy had an old rifle over his shoulder.

Tilda steadied the hand holding the pistol, aiming at Tommy.

“Drop the gun.”

But Tommy just stood there like a sleepwalker, almost as if someone were holding on to him. His eyes were lowered and his right hand was resting on the door handle, as if he

were on his way out, but his legs seemed to be incapable of movement.

“Tommy?”

He didn’t reply.

A narcotic-induced psychosis? She walked slowly over to Martin’s murderer, afraid but resolute. Then she silently reached out to his shoulder and carefully unhooked the rifle. She saw that the safety catch was on, and dropped it on the floor behind her.

“Tommy?” she said again. “Can you move?”

When she nudged his arm, he suddenly gave a start and came to life.

He fell backward, the iron handle was pushed down, and the door opened. It flew open, torn back by the storm. He tumbled out into the snowdrifts, got up, and staggered away.

Tilda raced after him over the low stone step, out into the gale. She could see swaying tree trunks a dozen or so yards away.

“Tommy!” she shouted. “Stop!”

Her voice was ripped to shreds by the wind, and the man ahead of her didn’t stop. He had picked up speed through the snow; he shouted something over his shoulder and fled, heading straight for the forest.

Tilda fired a warning shot, up into the storm, then dropped on one knee. She raised her pistol and took aim, keeping her finger on the trigger.

She knew she could hit him in the legs. But she couldn’t bring herself to shoot someone who was running away.

Tommy had reached the low-growing trees on the edge of the forest. The covering of snow was thinner there, and he was able to move faster. After fifteen or twenty steps he was a gray shadow in the forest. Then he was gone.

Shit.

Tilda remained outside for several minutes, but saw no other movements in the darkness apart from the whirling snow. It was still blowing in across the coast, and when she

began to lose the feeling in her fingers she turned her back to the wind. She went back and picked up the Mauser in the doorway.

On her way back to Joakim she decided to go along the outside of the barn, despite the fact that the wind and the cold had almost finished her off by now. But she didn’t want to risk meeting anyone else in there, in those black rooms.