It was not at all clear what had happened. Nobody could possibly have guessed the reason for the sudden heart attack suffered by the man behind the wheel of the dark blue Volvo. It wasn’t until Karsten Höglin’s body had been taken away and tow trucks were trying to extricate the badly damaged furniture van that a police officer bothered to listen to the Bosnian driver. The officer’s name was Erik Huddén, and he didn’t like talking to people who spoke bad Swedish unless he was forced to. It was as if their stories were less important if they were unable to articulate them properly. Naturally, the officer began with a breathalyser. But the driver was sober, and his driver’s licence seemed to be in order.
‘He tried saying something,’ said the truck driver.
‘What?’ Huddén asked dismissively.
‘Something about Herö. A place, perhaps?’
Huddén was a local, and shook his head impatiently.
‘There’s nowhere around here called Herö.’
‘Maybe I hear wrong? Maybe it was something with an s? Maybe Hersjö?’
‘Hesjövallen?’
The driver nodded. ‘Yes, he said that.’
‘And what did he mean?’
‘I don’t know. He died.’
Huddén put his notebook away. He hadn’t written down what the driver said. Half an hour later, when the tow trucks had driven off and another police car had taken the Bosnian driver to the station for more questioning, Huddén got into his car, ready to return to Hudiksvall. He was accompanied by his colleague, Leif Ytterström, who was driving.
‘Let’s go via Hesjövallen,’ said Huddén out of the blue.
‘Why? Has there been an emergency call?’
‘I just want to check up on something.’
Erik Huddén was the older of the two officers. He was known for being both uncommunicative and stubborn. Ytterström turned off onto the road to Sörforsa. When they came to Hesjövallen Huddén asked him to drive slowly through the village. He still hadn’t explained to his colleague why they had made this detour.
‘It looks deserted,’ said Ytterström as they slowly passed house after house.
‘Hang on. Go back,’ said Huddén. ‘Slowly.’
Then he told Ytterström to stop. Something lying in the snow by one of the houses had attracted his attention. He got out of the car and went to investigate. He suddenly stopped dead and drew his gun. Ytterström leaped out of the car and drew his own gun.
‘What’s going on?’
Huddén didn’t reply. He moved cautiously forward. Then he paused again and bent over as if he had suddenly been afflicted by chest pains. When he came back to the car Erik Huddén was white in the face.
‘There’s a dead man lying there,’ he said. ‘He’s been beaten to death. And there’s something missing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘One of his legs.’
They stood staring at each other without speaking. Then Huddén got into the car and picked up the radio and asked for Vivi Sundberg, who he knew was on duty that day. She responded immediately.
‘Erik here. I’m out at Hesjövallen.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘I don’t know. But there’s a man lying dead in the snow.’
‘Say that again.’
‘A dead man. In the snow. It looks as if he’s been beaten to death. One of his legs is missing.’
They knew each other well. Sundberg knew that Erik Huddén would never exaggerate, no matter how incredible what he said seemed to be.
‘We’ll be there,’ said Sundberg.
‘Get the forensic guys from Gävle.’
‘Who’s with you?’
‘Ytterström.’
She thought for a moment.
‘Is there any plausible explanation for what’s happened?’
‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’
He knew she would understand. He had been a police officer for so long that there was no real limit to the suffering and violence he was forced to face up to.
It was thirty-five minutes before they heard sirens approaching in the distance. Huddén had tried to persuade Ytterström to accompany him to the nearest house so that they could talk to the neighbours, but his colleague refused to move until reinforcements arrived. As Huddén was reluctant to enter the house alone, they stayed by the car. They said nothing while they waited.
Vivi Sundberg got out of the first car to pull up beside them. She was a powerfully built woman in her fifties. Those who knew her were well aware that, despite her cumbersome body, she was very mobile and possessed considerable stamina. Only a few months earlier she had chased and caught two burglars in their twenties. They had laughed at her as they started to run off. They were no longer laughing when she arrested the pair of them after a chase of a few hundred yards.
Vivi Sundberg had red hair. Four times a year she visited her daughter’s hairdressing salon and had the redness reinforced.
She was born on a farm just outside of Harmånger and had looked after her parents until they grew old and eventually died. Then she began educating herself, and after a few years applied to the police college. She was amazed to be accepted. Nobody could explain why she had got in, given the size of her body; but nobody asked any questions, and she said nothing.
Vivi Sundberg was a diligent, hard-working police officer. She was persistent, and outstanding when it came to analysing and following up on the slightest lead.
She ran a hand through her hair and looked hard at Erik Huddén.
‘Well, are you going to show me?’
They walked over to the dead body. Sundberg pulled a face and squatted down. ‘Has the doctor arrived?’
‘She’s on her way.’
‘She?’
‘Hugo has a sub. He’s going to be operated on. A tumour.’
Vivi Sundberg momentarily lost interest in the body lying in the snow. ‘Is he ill?’
‘He has cancer. Didn’t you know?’
‘No. Where?’
‘In his stomach. Apparently it hasn’t spread. Anyway, he has a sub from Uppsala. Valentina Miir’s her name. If I’ve pronounced it right.’
Huddén shouted to Ytterström, who was drinking coffee by one of the cars. He confirmed that the police doctor would be here at any moment.
Sundberg started examining the body closely. Every time she was confronted by a corpse, she was overcome by the same feeling of pointless-ness. She was unable to awaken the dead, the best she could do was to expose the reasons for the crime and send the killer to a prison cell or to an asylum for the mentally ill.
‘Somebody has gone berserk,’ she said. ‘With a long knife. Or a bayonet. Possibly a sword. I can see at least ten wounds, nearly all of them potentially fatal. But I don’t understand the missing leg. Do we know who the man is?’
‘Not yet. All the houses appear to be empty.’
Sundberg stood up and looked around the village. The houses seemed to return her attentive gaze.
‘Have you been knocking on doors?’
‘I thought I should wait. Whoever did this might still be around.’
‘You’re right.’
She beckoned to Ytterström, who threw his empty cardboard cup into the snow.
‘Let’s go in,’ she said. ‘There must be people around. This isn’t a ghost town.’
‘There’s been no sign of anybody.’
Sundberg looked again at the houses, the snowed-over gardens, the road. She drew her pistol and set off towards the nearest house; the two men followed. It was a few minutes past eleven.
What the three police officers discovered was unprecedented in the annals of Swedish crime and would become a part of Swedish legal history. There were bodies in every house. Dogs and cats had been stabbed to death, even a parrot had had its head cut off. They found a total of nineteen dead people, all of them elderly except for a boy who must have been about twelve. Some had been killed while asleep in bed; others were lying on the floor or sitting on chairs at the kitchen table. An old woman had died with a comb in her hand, a man by a stove with an overturned coffee pot by his side. In one house they found two people locked in an embrace and tied together. All had been subjected to frenzied violence. It was as if a blood-laden hurricane had stormed through the village just as the old people who lived there were getting up. As the elderly in the country tend to rise early, Sundberg assumed the murders had taken place close to sunrise.