‘But you’re onto something, aren’t you? You always are.’
‘Not this time. There could have been ten of them, we just don’t know at the moment. We have absolutely nothing to go on. You’ll have to be present at the press conference, by the way.’
‘I hate talking to journalists.’
‘Too bad.’
Robertsson left. She was about to go and sit down in her car when she noticed that Huddén was waving to her. He was approaching and had something in his hand. He must have found the murder weapon, she thought. That would be a stroke of luck.
But Huddén was not carrying a weapon. He handed over a plastic bag. Inside it was a thin red ribbon.
‘The dog found it. In the forest. About thirty yards from the leg.’
‘Any footprints?’
‘They’re looking — but when the dog found the ribbon, he showed no sign of wanting to follow a trail.’
She lifted the bag and peered closely at it.
‘It’s thin,’ she said. ‘It seems to be silk. Did you find anything else?’
‘No, that’s all. It seemed to sparkle in the snow.’
She handed back the bag.
‘Well, we have something at least,’ she said. ‘At the press conference we can announce that we have nineteen dead bodies and a clue in the form of a red silk ribbon.’
‘Maybe we’ll find something else.’
When Huddén had left she sat in her car to think. Through the windscreen she could see Julia being led away by a woman from the home-help service. Ignorance is bliss, thought Sundberg.
She closed her eyes and let the list of names scroll through her mind. She still couldn’t connect the various names to the faces she had now seen on four different occasions. Where did it start? she wondered. One house must have been the first, another one the last. The killer, whether or not he was alone, must have known what he was doing. He didn’t pick the houses haphazardly, he made no attempt to break into the day traders’ house, or that of the senile woman.
She opened her eyes and gazed out through the windscreen. It was planned, she thought. It must have been. But can a madman really prepare for that kind of deed? Surely it doesn’t add up.
She poured out the last few drops of coffee from her Thermos. The motive, she thought. Even a lunatic must have a motive. Perhaps inner voices urge him to kill everybody who crosses his path. But would those voices point him to Hesjövallen of all places? If so, why? How big a role was played by coincidence in this drama?
The boy may be the key, she thought. He doesn’t live in the village. But he dies even so. Two people who have lived here for twenty years are still alive. Then it dawned on her — something Erik Huddén had said. Did she remember correctly? What was Julia’s surname?
Julia’s house wasn’t locked. She went in and read the document that Huddén had found on the kitchen table. The answer she found to her question made her heart start beating faster. She sat down and tried to marshal her thoughts.
The conclusion she reached was improbable, but it might be correct anyway. She dialled Huddén’s number. He answered immediately.
‘I’m sitting in Julia’s kitchen. The woman standing on the road in her nightdress. Come here right away.’
‘Will do.’
Huddén sat opposite her at the table. Then stood up again and looked down at the chair seat. Sniffed at it, then changed to another chair. She stared at him in bafflement.
‘Urine,’ he said. ‘The old lady must have peed herself. What did you want to say?’
‘I want to try out a thought on you. It seems implausible, but is somehow rational nevertheless. I have the feeling that there’s a sort of underlying logic to what happened here last night. I want you to listen, and then tell me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
‘It’s to do with names,’ she began. ‘We still don’t know the boy’s name, but if I’m right he’s related to the Andersson family who lived and died in the house where we found them. A key to everything that happened here last night is the names. Families. People in this village seem to have been called Andersson, Andrén or Magnusson. Julia’s surname is Holmgren. Julia Holmgren. She’s still alive. And then we have Tom and Ninni Hansson. They’re also still alive, and have a different surname. It should be possible to draw a conclusion from that.’
‘That whoever did this, for some reason or other, was out to get people with those names,’ said Huddén.
‘Think another step ahead! This is a tiny little hamlet. People probably haven’t moved. Most likely there has been intermarriage between the families. I’m not talking about incest, just that there is good reason to believe that we’re not looking at three families, but perhaps two. Or maybe even only one. That may explain why Julia Holmgren and the Hanssons are still alive.’
Sundberg paused for Huddén’s reaction. She didn’t consider him particularly intelligent, but she respected his ability to use his intuition.
‘If that is true, it must mean that whoever did this knew these people very well. Who would do that?’
‘Possibly a relative?’
‘A mad relative? Why would he want to do anything like this?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘How do you explain the severed leg?’
‘I can’t. But I think we have a start. That and a red silk ribbon are all we have.
‘I want you to go back to Hudiksvall,’ she said. ‘Tobias is supposed to be delegating officers to search for next of kin. Make sure that happens. And look for links between these three families. But keep it between you and me for the time being.’
Shortly before half past five, some of the senior police officers gathered in Tobias Ludwig’s office to discuss the press conference. It was decided not to issue a list of names of the dead, but they would say how many people had been killed and admit that, so far, the police had no clues. Any information the general public could supply would be appreciated.
Ludwig would give preliminary details, and then Sundberg would take over.
Before entering the room crammed with reporters, she shut herself away in a toilet. She examined her face in a mirror. If only I could wake up, she thought. And find that this whole business had gone away.
She went out, slammed her fist hard into the corridor wall several times, then went into the room chock-full of people and far too hot. She walked up to the little podium and sat down next to Tobias Ludwig.
He looked at her. She nodded. He could begin.
The Judge
5
A moth detached itself from the darkness and fluttered restlessly around the desk lamp. Birgitta Roslin put down her pen, leaned back in her chair and watched the moth’s vain attempt to force its way through the porcelain shade. The noise of its fluttering wings reminded her of something from her childhood, but she couldn’t pin it down.
Her memory was always especially creative when she was tired, as she was now. Just as when she was asleep, inaccessible memories from long ago might crop up out of nowhere.
Like the moth.
She closed her eyes and massaged her temples with her fingertips. It was a few minutes past midnight. She had heard the night security officers passing through the echoing halls of the court building as they made their rounds twice. She liked working late at night, when the place was empty. Years ago, when she had been an articled clerk in Värnamo, she had often gone into the empty courtroom late in the evening, switched on a few lights, sat down and listened to the silence. She would imagine she was in an empty theatre. There were echoes in the walls, whispering voices still living on after all the drama of past trials. Murderers had been sentenced there, violent criminals, thieves. And men had sworn their innocence in a never-ending stream of depressing paternity cases. Others had been declared innocent and reinstated as honourable men.