A cop. She had almost disappeared in a huge billowing drift at the bottom of the steps. A thin stream of dark blood was pouring out of her nose and down around her mouth.
For a few seconds everything stood still, except for the falling snow.
The pains in his belly came back.
“Hello?” he said again. “Are you okay?”
Neither one replied, but the man picked up the ax and came over to the steps.
“Drop it!” he yelled at Henrik.
Behind the man the woman suddenly coughed and started vomiting violently in the snow.
“What?” said Henrik.
“Drop it now!”
The man was talking about the kitchen knife, Henrik realized. He was still clutching it in his hand.
He didn’t want to drop it. The Serelius brothers were around somewhere; he needed to be able to defend himself.
The woman had stopped vomiting. She put her hand to her face, felt cautiously at her nose. The snowflakes were landing on her shoulders and her nose, and the blood had congealed into black patches on her face.
“What’s your name?” asked the man on the steps.
The woman raised her head and shouted something to Henrik through the howling wind, the same thing over and over again, and eventually he was able to make out what it was. His own name.
“Henrik!” she was shouting. “Henrik Jansson!”
“Drop the knife, Henrik,” said the man. “Then we can talk.”
“Talk?”
“You’re under arrest for robbery with violence, Henrik,” the woman went on from her snowdrift. “And breaking and entering… and criminal damage.”
Henrik heard what she said but didn’t reply; he was too tired. He took a step backwards, shaking his head.
“All that stuff… that was Tommy and Freddy,” he said quietly.
“What?” said the man.
“It was those fucking brothers,” said Henrik. “I just went along with them. But it was much better with Mogge, I never thought-”
There was a sudden tinkling noise, just a couple of inches from his right ear. A short, solid sound in the wind.
Henrik turned his head and saw that a black, uneven hole had appeared in one of the small panes of glass in the veranda windows.
Was it the storm? Perhaps the storm had smashed the glass. Henrik’s second confused thought was that the pistol had been fired at him, despite the fact that the cop was no longer holding it.
But when he looked out through the whirling snow, over toward the barn, he discovered that there was someone else there.
A dark figure had stepped out of the half-open door of the barn and was standing there in the snow, legs apart. In the glow from the outside light Henrik could see that the figure was holding a slender stick in its hands.
No, not a stick. It was a gun, of course. Henrik couldn’t make it out properly, but he thought it was an old Mauser.
A man in a black hood. Tommy. He shouted something across the courtyard, then the gun in his hands jerked. Once. Twice.
No panes of glass broke this time-but the face of the man in front of Henrik contorted suddenly, and he went down.
37
Tilda saw it all so clearly when Martin was shot.
It was after the ax had hit her. She almost wished she had lost consciousness then, but her brain remained awake, registering everything. The pain, the fall, and the pistol spinning out of her hand.
When she landed on her back, the snow received her like a soft bed.
She stayed where she was. Her nose was broken, warm blood was pouring down into her mouth, and she was completely exhausted after the trek through the storm.
I’ve done my bit tonight, she thought. Enough.
“Tilda!”
Martin was calling her name, bending over her. Behind him she saw a man step out from the veranda and look down at her. He was holding a big knife in his hand and shouting something, but she couldn’t make out a word.
Everything stopped for a little while. Tilda sank down into
a warm drowsiness before the nausea hit her, and the vomiting. She turned her head to the side and threw up into the snow.
Tilda coughed, raised her head, and tried to pull herself together. She saw Martin go over to the man and shout to him to drop the knife.
It was Henrik Jansson up there on the steps, the man responsible for the break-ins, the man she’d been looking for.
“Henrik?”
Tilda called his name several times, her voice thick, while at the same time trying to recall all the things he was suspected of.
She didn’t hear his reply-she did, however, hear the gunshot.
It came from the barn on the other side of the courtyard and sounded like a dull bang with no echo. The bullet hit the veranda; a pane of glass broke next to Henrik.
He turned his head and looked at the hole in confusion.
Martin continued on up the steps toward him. He was moving calmly and speaking firmly to the perpetrator, like the police instructor he was. Henrik backed away.
Neither of them had heard the shot, Tilda realized.
As she opened her mouth to warn them, there were several more bangs.
She saw Martin jerk up on the steps. His upper body contorted, his legs gave way. He collapsed and landed heavily in the snow just a few yards from Tilda.
“Martin!”
He was lying there with his back to her, and she began to crawl toward him, keeping her head down. She could hear a faint moaning sound through the wind.
“Martin?”
Breathing, bleeding, shock. That was the list she had learned to check in cases of stabbing or gunshot wounds.
Breathing? It was difficult to see in the storm, but Martin hardly seemed to be breathing.
She dragged his upper body into the recovery position, ripped open his jacket and bloodstained sweater, and finally found the small entry hole-high up and just to the left of the spine. The hole looked deep and the blood was still flowing. Had the bullet hit the main artery?
He shouldn’t be left out here, but there was no way Tilda could get him into the house. There was no time.
She unbuttoned her right jacket pocket and took out a pressure bandage pack.
“Martin?” she called again, at the same time pressing the bandage against the bullet hole as firmly as she could.
No reply. His eyes were open, unblinking in the snow-he had gone into shock.
Tilda couldn’t find a pulse.
She pushed his body onto its back again, leaned over him, and began pressing on his chest with both hands. One firm push, wait. Then a firm push again.
It didn’t help. He no longer seemed to be breathing, and when she shook him his body was completely lifeless. The snow was landing in his eyes.
“Martin…”
Tilda gave up. She sank down beside him in the snow, sniveling blood up her nose.
Everything had gone completely wrong. Martin wasn’t even supposed to be here; he shouldn’t have come with her to Eel Point.
Suddenly she heard two more bangs from the direction of the barn. Tilda kept her head down.
The pistol? She had dropped it when she fell in the snow.
The Sig Sauer was made of black steel-she ought to be able to see it in all this whiteness, and she began to feel around with her hands. At the same time she peeped cautiously over the drifts.
A figure was moving through the snow. He had a black hood over his head and a gun in his hands.
The man clambered over a snowdrift, and when he realized
that Tilda had seen him, he shouted something into the wind.
She didn’t answer. Her hand was still burrowing in the snow-and suddenly it felt something hard and heavy down there. At first the object just slid away, but then she managed to get hold of it.
She pulled the gun out of the snow.
She banged the barrel a couple of times to get the snow out of it, undid the safety catch, and aimed in the direction of the barn.
“Police!” she yelled.
The masked man said something in reply, but the wind ripped his words to shreds.