The rain had started again. Linda ran over to her father and showered his chest with blows.
“Now do you believe me? Don’t you realize something must have happened to Anna?”
Wallander grabbed her shoulders, trying to keep her at arm’s length.
“Calm down. That was Birgitta Medberg in there, not Anna.”
“But Anna wrote in her diary that she knew her. And now Anna is gone. Don’t you get it?”
“You have to calm down. That’s all.”
Linda slowly regained control of herself, or rather, felt a paralysis settle over her. Three, then four police cars came slipping and sliding into the muddy parking lot. The police officers got out and gathered around Wallander after quickly having thrown on the rain gear that they all seemed to keep stashed in the backs of their cars. Linda stood outside the circle, but no one tried to stop her when she eventually joined them. Martinsson was the only one who acknowledged her, with a nod, but even he never asked her what she was doing there. At that moment, in the rainy parking lot by Rannesholm Manor, Linda cut the cord to her life at the police academy. She fell in line behind the others and followed them in their long train into the forest. When a crime scene technician dropped a light stand, she picked it up and carried it for him.
She stayed there while day turned into dusk and finally evening. Rain clouds came and went, the ground was saturated with moisture, the lights erected around the site cast strong shadows. The crime scene technicians painstakingly marked out a working path to the hut. Linda took care not to get in their way, and she never put her foot down without placing it in someone else’s footprint. Sometimes her father met her gaze, but it was as if he could not really see her. Ann-Britt Höglund was always at his side. Linda had bumped into her from time to time since she came back to Ystad, but Linda had never liked her. In fact, she felt her father would do best to stay away from her. Höglund had barely greeted her today, and Linda sensed she would not be an easy person to work with, if that ever became the case. Of course, Höglund was a full-fledged detective inspector, while Linda was a rookie who hadn’t even started working yet and who would be busy breaking up street fights before she even had the opportunity to apply for a more specialized line of work.
She watched her future colleagues go about their business, noting the order and discipline that always seemed to be on the verge of giving way to sheer chaos. From time to time someone raised his voice, especially the irritable Nyberg, who often swore at his team for not watching where they put their feet. Three hours after they had arrived the human remains were removed from the scene, enclosed in thick plastic. Everyone stopped working as they were carried away. Linda could see the contours of Birgitta Medberg’s head and hands through the plastic casing.
Then they all resumed their work. Nyberg and his technicians crawled around on hands and knees, someone was sawing off branches and clearing away the underbrush, others were setting up lamps or repairing generators. People came and went, phones rang, and in the middle of all this her father stood rooted to one spot as if restrained by invisible cords. Linda felt sorry for him; he looked so lonely standing there, always available to answer a steady stream of questions, making snap decisions so that the investigation could proceed smoothly. He’s walking a tightrope, Linda thought. That’s how I see him. A nervous tightrope walker who should go on a diet and address the issue of his loneliness once and for all.
It was only much later that Wallander realized she was still there. He finished talking to someone on the phone, then turned to Nyberg, who was holding out an object for him to look at. He held it in the beam of one of the strong lights that attracted insects and burned them to death. Linda took a step closer to see what it was. Nyberg handed Wallander a pair of rubber gloves that he pulled onto his big hands with some difficulty.
“What’s this?”
“If you weren’t completely blind you would see it was a Bible.”
Wallander didn’t seem to take any notice of Nyberg’s tone.
“A Bible,” Nyberg repeated. “It was on the ground next to the hands. There are bloody fingerprints. But they could belong to someone else, of course.”
“The murderer?”
“Possibly. It’s a gory scene in there. The whole hut is spattered with blood. Whoever did this must have been completely drenched.”
“No weapons?”
“Nothing at this point. But this Bible is worth a closer look, even apart from the fingerprints.”
Linda took yet another step closer as her father put on his glasses.
“Open it to the Book of Revelation,” Nyberg said.
“I don’t know my way around this thing. Just tell me what’s in there.”
But Nyberg would not let himself be hurried.
“Who knows their Bible anymore? But the Book of Revelation is an important chapter, or whatever those parts are called.”
He threw a hasty glance at Linda.
“Do you know? In the Bible, is it called a chapter?”
Linda gave a start.
“No idea.”
“You see, the young are no better than we. Whatever. The thing is that someone has written comments between the lines. See?”
Nyberg pointed to a page. Wallander held it up closer to his eyes.
“I see some gray smudges. Is that what you mean?”
Nyberg called out to someone called Rosén. A man with mud up to his chest came clomping over with a magnifying glass. Wallander tried again.
“Yes, someone has been writing between the lines. What does it say?”
“I’ve made out two of the lines,” Nyberg said. “It seems as if whoever wrote in here wasn’t happy with the original. Someone has taken it upon themselves to improve on the word of God.”
Wallander removed his glasses.
“What does that mean, anyway, ‘the word of God’? Can you try to be more specific?”
“I thought the Bible was the word of God. How much more specific do I have to be? I just think it’s interesting that someone should rewrite passages in the Bible. Is that something a normal person does? A person in basic possession of his or her senses?”
“A lunatic, then. What is this hut, anyway? A place where someone was living, or a temporary hideout?”
Nyberg shook his head.
“Too early to say. But can’t they be the same thing for someone who wants to stay out of the public eye?”
Nyberg gestured out to the forest, which was impenetrably dark beyond the spotlights.
“We’ve had dogs search the area and I think they’re still out. The units claim the terrain is all but impassable. If you needed a hideout you couldn’t pick a better place.”
“Any idea who it might belong to?”
Nyberg shook his head.
“There are no personal effects, no clothes. We can’t even determine if it was a man or a woman living here.”
A dog started barking somewhere in the darkness as a light rain began to fall. Höglund, Martinsson, and Svartman emerged from various directions and gathered around Wallander. Linda hovered in the background, part participant, part spectator.