B0031RSBSM EBOK

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 Kihlgård 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.
    “Are you sure this is the right road?” asked Kihlgård, sounding worried.
    “Absolutely. I checked the map. This has to be the right way. But I have to admit that even though I’ve lived my whole life on Gotland, I’ve never been out here before.”
    “It’s damned desolate. Like some kind of ghostly landscape.”
    “Yes, it is,” Jacobsson agreed. “It feels like this is as far away from civilization as we can get.”
    The car jolted along as the terrain became more and more rugged. Jacobsson wondered if they’d be able to keep going without getting stuck somewhere. Just as she was starting to look for a place to turn around, they saw a car parked up ahead in the woods. Farther along was another car. She recognized it as Knutas’s old Benz.
    Jacobsson parked next to it. Then they made their way up to the farm, moving as quietly as possible.

 
    The expression on Eskil Rondahl’s face hardly changed at all when he found Johan holding a package in his hands. Only his eyes revealed a flash of surprise. For the second time that day, they met.
    “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”
    Johan held out the packages toward him.
    Rondahl didn’t reply. His arms hung clumsily at his sides, as if he didn’t know what to do. They stood there for a moment, staring at each other.
    “Who are you?”
    “My name is Johan Berg, and I’m a journalist.”
    “For a newspaper?”
    “For TV. Swedish TV, Regional News.”
    “Did you follow me?”
    As Eskil talked, he slowly came closer. Johan took a step back and cast a surreptitious glance to either side. Where the hell was Knutas? And Pia?
    Rondahl was now circling around him like a wild animal about to attack its prey.
    Johan didn’t know what to do. The door was closed, and he hadn’t noticed any other exit. Outside everything was quiet. He suddenly found himself in a situation over which he had no control