Irene started walking back to their car. When she reached the path that the witness with the dog had been on, she turned and looked around her. Their Saab could be seen at an angle from behind, since the forest road curved around the spruce grove. The small car that the witness had seen had been parked closer to the spruces. With a sigh, Irene had to agree with him: It was impossible to see the license plate and doubtless difficult to determine a particular make, since all compact cars seemed to look alike these days.
She walked back to Fredrik, who was standing near the waterfilled hole, deep in thought. “I think I would try to reach the clearing, rather than force my way through this mass of undergrowth. It must be easier to make one’s way along the edge of it,” he said.
“If it stretches far enough in the direction of the cottage, then I agree. Let’s take a look.”
They made a circuit around the mud hollow and trudged forward toward the clearing, stopping at the edge of the woods to look around. The clearing was narrow and relatively long.
“You could walk at least a hundred meters here. Then you’d have to get out your machete,” Fredrik concluded.
It was still quite difficult to make their way. The earth’s surface was damp and porous, and they sank into it at each step. Irene’s suede boots would need to be both washed and brushed before she could show herself in public in them again. Fredrik, who went around in boat shoes, was even worse off. The best footwear would have been rain boots.
They stopped at the edge of the clearing. The vegetation looked impassable.
“What do we do now? I wish we really had a machete,” Fredrik groaned.
“I suggest we do what my dog would do.”
“And what does your dog do?”
“Follow the game trail.”
A short distance away, she had noticed a narrow opening between some spruce trees, a game trail. A large pile of moose dung was lying in the middle of it.
“It probably leads down to the lake, because the animals want to drink after they’ve grazed. Let’s follow the path and see how close to the cottage we can get,” said Irene.
They had to bend down and push away hanging branches, at the same time as watching where they put their feet. Irene slipped several times on the slimy roots.
“Good thing it’s not tick season yet,” Fredrik puffed.
Irene was about to answer, when she felt a thread across her mouth. She spit and sputtered, thinking it was a sturdy spider-web. Disgusted, she wiped her mouth with her hand and got ahold of the filament. She instinctively glanced at it before she shook it from her fingers. She stopped and held it up to the sunlight that filtered down through the spruce trees.
A spider hadn’t produced this thread, but a sheep probably had. A thin forest-green-colored woolen thread, about three or four centimeters long, dangled from Irene’s fingers, pinched between her thumb and index finger.
“What is it? Why are you stopping?” Fredrik asked, irritated.
He was busy picking things out of his hair. The hair gel he always used in the morning to get his bangs to stand straight up turned out to be the ideal surface for twigs and pine needles to attach themselves to.
“A thread. Someone has been on this path before us. It hasn’t been here very long, because it isn’t faded or dirty.”
She showed Fredrik her find. He whistled softly. “We’ll have to keep an eye out for more fibers.”
Irene found a new thread only twenty meters farther up, but this one was bright red. It hung on the outer branch in a patch of thick shrubbery. Irene stopped and pointed. “It’s at shoulder height for me. This piece is about as long as the green one. Where could these threads have come from?”
“I think we’re looking for a short murderer, max one hundred and sixty centimeters tall, wearing a hat with a tassel or pompom made of green and red yarn.”
Irene laughed and took a doggie poop bag from her pocket. She carefully placed the two woolen threads inside. Maybe the technicians could get something out of them.
The path led down to the lake. They estimated that if they walked fifty meters along the edge of the lake and then turned their backs to it and walked into the vegetation, they should arrive at the cottage.
To their relief, the lake shore widened into a small sandy beach, and a narrow gravel path led into the woods from the beach. The path ended about ten meters from the Schyttelius cottage’s gate.
“It’s probably a community path to the beach for all of the cottage owners in the area,” Irene suggested.
“Maybe. But there’s nothing keeping someone from turning off the path earlier and climbing over the Schytteliuses’ fence at the back of the property. No one would see. Should we check?”
Fredrik had already turned on his heel and was on his way back in the same direction they had just come. Thirty meters away, he stopped and pointed.
Irene could also see a barely noticeable walkway between some raspberry bushes. It followed the rotten wooden fence along the lake side of the Schytteliuses’ property. The fence sagged to the ground in the middle from age and poor maintenance.
“We can step right onto the property,” Fredrik determined. They did so, taking a good look at where they put their feet.
“If the murderer went this way on Monday, the ground would still have been frozen. It has rained since then, and the frost has started rising out of the topsoil. The murderer didn’t have as much trouble getting here as we did,” said Irene.
“Think about the position of the car and the trails. He knew he was going to get here without risking being seen. Everything points to familiarity with the area.”
Fredrik was right. The murders had been planned, and the murderer had known how to make his way to and from the cottage without being seen.
They walked toward the back of the cottage. The Schyttelius family had built a large glassed-in veranda running the length of the wall. So this was where the superintendent had sat at the crayfish party seventeen years ago. Irene turned her back to the veranda and looked down at the lake. She could glimpse water through the thicket.
“Too bad they didn’t own the property all the way down to the lake. Then they could have cleared it for the sake of the view,” she remarked.
“Must have been irritating for them.”
“Probably.”
“Should we take the road back? It’s longer. .”
“. . but it will be faster,” Irene finished.
THEY STOPPED at a hot dog stand and ate before heading for Eva Möller’s house. It was easy to find Landvetter Church, but trickier to locate the right small road. They were on a gravel road that rose steadily. According to Eva Möller’s directions, they were supposed to go over the crest of the hill and then they would almost be there. The coniferous trees didn’t grow as thickly up here. Deciduous forest and fields could be seen.
“Turn to the right after the split oak,” Irene read from her notes.
“I see it,” Fredrik said, indicating the silhouette of a large mangled tree. Most of the crown was gone, and the branches that were left splayed out in all directions. No branches grew at all on one side, since only half of the tree remained. Right after they passed this oak tree, they turned onto an uneven dirt road.
“How can someone live in a place like this?” Irene asked, holding on to the dashboard as they slowly jounced down the rutted road.
After they had lurched forward a good distance, a Falu-red cottage appeared in the back of a glade bathed in sunlight. The forest came up to the eaves on three sides, but there were no woods at all on the western exposure. They parked next to a relatively new bright-red Honda and got out. Because the cottage was located on the crest of the hill, the view to the west was fantastic. Irene and Fredrik stood for a moment to admire it. Irene took the opportunity to look at Eva Möller’s car before they walked up to the house. What Louise Måårdh had said was correct: There was a black knob with a silver-colored pentagram on the gearshift lever.