After another hundred meters she arrived at a shallow ravine, a crack in the earth covered by bushes and undergrowth. The path ran straight down into it. She removed her backpack, tucked a flashlight into her pocket, and carefully scooted down into the ravine. She started lifting up branches in order to get past them and saw to her surprise that several of them had been cut and placed here in order to conceal the entrance to the hollow. Boys, she thought. Håkan and I often made forts in the forest. She pressed on past the undergrowth and sure enough, there was a small hut. It was unusually large to be the work of children. She was reminded of a news item Håkan had shown her from a magazine, pictures of a shack in a forest that served as the hideout for a wanted criminal by the wonderful name of Beautiful Bengtsson. He had lived in his hideout for a long time and had only been found out by a person who stumbled upon it by accident.
She walked up for a closer look. The hut had been constructed out of planks of wood, with a sturdy aluminum roof. To the back it bordered a steep part of the ravine. She felt the handle of the door — it wasn’t locked. She knocked and felt like an idiot. If someone was there they would have heard her by now. She started feeling more and more confused. Could someone be hiding out in the Rommele forest?
Warning bells started going off inside her head. At first she dismissed these. She was never one to get scared easily. She had run across unpleasant men in remote areas before and although it had sometimes frightened her, she had always managed to control her fears and put up a tough front. Nothing had ever happened, and nothing was going to happen today. But she couldn’t help feeling she was ignoring common sense by investigating this hut on her own. Only someone who needed to hide from prying eyes would have chosen a place like this. On the other hand, she did not want to turn back without finding out what was in here. Her path had indeed had a destination. No one without her trained eyes would have spotted it. But the person who used the hut had not even followed the old path. That was strange. Was the old path she had found simply a backup, the way foxholes had more than one exit? Her curiosity got the better of her.
She opened the door to the hut and looked in. There were two small windows on either side, but they only let in a little light. She turned on the flashlight. There was a bed on one side and on the other side a small table with a chair, two gas lamps, and a camp stove. Who lived here? How long had it been empty? She leaned over and felt the blanket on the bed. It wasn’t damp. Someone has been here recently, she thought. In the last couple of days. Again she thought she had better leave. The person who had stayed here was not the kind to welcome visitors.
She was about to turn and leave when the beam of her flashlight fell on a book lying on the ground next to the bed. She bent down. It was a copy of the Bible. She opened it and saw a name that had been scratched out. The book was well-thumbed and torn in places. Various verses had been underlined and annotated. She carefully put the book down where she had found it. She turned off the flashlight and immediately realized that something had changed. There was more light now than before. Someone must have opened the door. She turned, but it was too late. The blow to her face came with the force of a charging predator. She was plunged into a deep and bottomless darkness.
11
After her visit to Henrietta, Linda sat up in the apartment waiting for her father to come home. But by the time he softly pushed the front door open at two o’clock in the morning, she had already fallen asleep on the sofa with a blanket pulled up to her ears. When she woke a few hours later it was from a nightmare. She couldn’t remember what she had dreamed, just that she felt as if she were being suffocated. Low snores rolled through the apartment, like breakers on the shore. Her father’s bedside light was still on. He lay flat on his back, wrapped in his sheet, not unlike a large walrus comfortably stretched out on a rock. She leaned over and checked his breath between snores. Definitely alcohol.
She wondered who he could have been drinking with. The pants that lay on the ground were dirty as if he had walked through patches of mud. He’s been out in the country, she thought. That means a night of drinking with Sten Widén. They’ve sat out in the stables and shared a bottle of vodka.
Widén was one of her dad’s oldest friends, and now he was seriously ill. Her dad had a habit of talking about himself in the third person when it came to expressing something emotional and he had taken to saying: When Sten dies Kurt Wallander will be a lonely man. Widén had lung cancer. Linda was familiar with the story of how he had raised fine racing horses on the ranch by the ruins of Stjärnsund Castle. A few years ago he had sold the ranch, but just as the buyer was about to close on the deal, Widén had changed his mind and used the clause in the contract that allowed this. He had bought a few more horses and received his diagnosis shortly afterward. It had already been a year since then, a grace period given the severity of his condition. Now he was again selling his horses and his ranch. He had arranged a bed for himself at a hospice in Malmö. This time there was no backing out of the deal.
Linda went to her room, put on her pajamas, and climbed into bed. She lay in bed staring at the ceiling and reproached herself for being so hard on her dad. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to enjoy a night of drinking with his best friend, especially since the friend happened to be dying? I’ve always thought of Dad as a good friend to the few he has. It’s only right that he stay up late drinking in the stables. She felt like waking him up so she could apologize for her disapproval. But he wouldn’t appreciate being woken up. It’s his day off tomorrow. Maybe we’ll do something fun.
Before she fell asleep she thought briefly about Henrietta and the fact that she hadn’t been telling the truth. What was she hiding? Did she know where Anna was, or was there another reason? Linda curled up on her side and thought sleepily that soon she was going to miss having a boyfriend to cuddle up with. But where am I going to find one in this town? She pushed her thoughts aside and fell asleep.
Wallander shook her awake at nine o’clock. Linda jumped out of bed. Her dad didn’t seem hung over. He was dressed and had even combed his hair.
“Breakfast,” he said. “Time is ticking, life is fleeting.”
Linda showered and dressed. Her dad was playing patience at the kitchen table when she came in and sat down.
“I suspect you were hanging out with Sten last night.”
“Right.”
“I also suspect you drank too much.”
“Wrong. We drank way too much.”
“How did you get home?”
“Taxi.”
“How was he doing?”
“I wish I could be sure I’ll face the end with the same equanimity. He simply says: you only have so many races in your life. You just have to try to win as many of them as you can.”
“Do you think he’s in pain?”
“I’m sure he is, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s like Rydberg.”