"Aron Bjarke, who's a teacher at the college, was in Stockholm when Gunnar Ambjornsson was expected home from his trip abroad. We didn't know this before, but Aron Bjarke and Eskil Rondahl are brothers. Bjarke changed his name twenty years ago when he was studying in Stockholm. Before that his name was Aron Rondahl."
"Do the police think that Aron might be the murderer?"
"Yes. And now you've turned up a whole new aspect of the case-the thefts. We just may have the solution to the burglary at the Antiquities Room, too."
Pia gave Johan a poke in the side.
"Look," she said. "Something's happening."
Inside the house they could see people walking back and forth. Johan heard someone bolt the door from the inside. Strange, he thought. Out here in the country no one locks their doors.
Cautiously they crept forward and peeked through a window. They were looking at the kitchen, which was old-fashioned and seemed very poorly outfitted. A decrepit electric stove and a small refrigerator and freezer were the only appliances. A considerable number of dirty dishes were littered about, along with glasses and bottles. Johan crept along the wall of the house, crouching down so as not to be seen. He went around the corner, summoned his courage, and then straightened up enough so that he could peer inside.
It was a big room, almost like a hall, but sparsely furnished. About ten people were inside, men and women of various ages. Everyone was dressed in identical, long, cloaklike attire. Johan's first thought was that they were performing some sort of ceremony in connection with Medieval Week, but he quickly realized that something else was going on. A man came in, clad only in a pair of shorts. He was carrying a flat drum with an animal skin stretched across it. It looked like a tambourine. He was beating the drum with a wooden stick that had one end wrapped in leather. At the same time, he was droning a song that lacked any sort of melody. It consisted mostly of a monotone chanting. Johan couldn't understand a single word, but he had the feeling that the drummer was pronouncing incantations or invoking some higher powers.
Another man stood in the center of the group, his face hidden from view. As if at a signal, a circle formed around him. He turned in different directions as he spoke, and the others in the group seemed to answer him.
Knutas had come to stand beside Johan.
"Who's the guy with the drum?" whispered Johan. "He looks like a shaman."
"Yes, he does, though I don't know who he is. Take a look at the man in the middle, the one who seems to be the leader. That's Aron Bjarke."
At that instant Bjarke turned in their direction, and for a moment Johan thought they had been discovered. But Bjarke continued on, undisturbed.
Then Johan caught sight of Eskil Rondahl. He was standing off to one side with his eyes closed, murmuring just like everyone else. He looked totally different from when Johan had met him earlier in the day. Like a different person. He seemed to be in a trance, and Johan had the feeling that the drummer was transporting the others and even himself into some sort of ecstatic state.
Suddenly a scantily clad woman came dancing into the room. She had curly red hair that reached down to her waist. Like the shaman, she was almost naked. Around her hips she wore a short piece of cloth, and above, a simple top. She danced around the drummer, tossing her hair. In her hands she carried something that looked like a horn, and she offered it to the others, who drank from it.
After that, a bowl was brought in. The woman carried it carefully in her hands, and Johan and Knutas instinctively leaned closer to see better. She moved the bowl back and forth, and a look of ecstasy appeared in the eyes of the participants. Everyone was staring at the bowl. Then she held it out in front of her while the man with the drum pounded his club even harder and raised his voice. Now the sound bellowed out, but Johan and Knutas still couldn't distinguish any words. They'd never seen anything like this. Then the woman drank from whatever was in the bowl as the shaman shouted. A dark red liquid ran down the sides.
Knutas and Johan exchanged looks of disgust.
"What do you think they're drinking?" whispered Johan. "I bet you anything it's blood."
"That wouldn't surprise me," said Knutas, taking his cell phone out of the inside pocket of his jacket. These people looked capable of just about anything. He called the officer on duty in Visby without taking his eyes off the spectacle.
All of a sudden Johan noticed that Pia had disappeared. He took a step back and looked around. He didn't see her anywhere. He was both annoyed and worried. These people didn't look sane. What would they do if they found Pia sneaking around with a camera outside the window?
Knutas also called Karin Jacobsson, who happened to be visiting her parents in Tingstade, which wasn't far away. Martin Kihlgard was with her, and they said they would drive over immediately.
Johan wondered what Knutas was planning to do. Was he going to arrest Aron Bjarke? If so, on what grounds? The fact that he'd been in Stockholm at the same time as Ambjornsson was hardly a good enough reason.
Now the other people inside the house had started drinking from the bowl, too. After they drank, they began rhythmically stomping on the floor. They were all stomping to the same beat.
One of the members of the sect moved away from the group and dipped what looked like a small sculpture of a god in the bowl. Then the person held it up for the others to see. Johan thought the sculpture reminded him of an ancient Nordic god, maybe Thor or Odin. The idol was passed from hand to hand, and the participants became daubed with the red liquid, which they rubbed on their faces. It looked quite macabre.
Johan leaned toward Knutas.
"It looks like they'll be at it for a while. I'm going to find out where Pia has gone. Just whistle if anything happens."
He walked around the house. There were lights in all the windows on the ground floor, but the second floor was dark. He crossed the yard and opened the barn door. It was pitch-black and smelled damp and musty. The light switch was inside the door. It took a few minutes of fumbling around in the dark before he found it. After some hesitant flickering, the fluorescent tube in the ceiling went on, producing a faint light. A pile of boards and a couple of bundles of insulating material lay in a corner.
Along one wall stood a large freezer. Johan noticed that it was plugged in, and out of curiosity he went over and opened it. The lid was big and hard to lift, and the handle was slightly broken. Cold air rose up toward him as he peered down inside the freezer. All he could see was several rectangular plastic packages, completely frozen. He picked up one of the boxes and scraped the frost off the lid. A label was stuck to it. He had trouble making out what it said. Part of the text, which had been written with black ink, was smeared. All of a sudden the letters became clear enough to be legible. It was a name that he recognized. Mellgren. Instinctively he looked up to check that no one was around to see what he was holding. He twisted and turned the small package. It seemed to contain a brown liquid that had solidified. His stomach lurched when he realized that what he was probably holding in his hands was Mellgren's blood. He picked up another package and began scraping off the frost, but he was interrupted by a noise from outside.
He glanced toward the barn door and watched as the handle slowly moved downward.
Jacobsson and Kihlgard drove toward Hall in the August darkness. The road got narrower the farther they went, and they met only a few other cars. They passed the exits to Lickershamn and Ireviken, and they almost missed the turnoff for the farm. Jacobsson braked hard and then turned onto the small road. It was now pitch-dark all around them; there were no streetlights or houses. The scruffy woods got thicker, and here and there they caught a glimpse of dead trees with bare, gnarled branches.