Karin Fossum - He Who Fears The Wolf

Karsten's face wore a long-suffering expression.

"The bird dropped like a bag of sugar and landed at my feet. There was nobody to be seen in the woods, but I had a bad feeling that somebody was nearby. You know me, always going off to the woods. I sense when something's about to happen. Maybe it's because I spend so much time in the animal world."

He took a breath, pleased with his dramatic opening. Simon was hanging on his every word. No-one dared so much as to sigh, for fear of interrupting his account.

"I left the crow on the ground and headed for Halldis's farm."

He turned to look at Sivert now, a freckled eleven-year-old with a braid down his back.

"It was strangely quiet down there. Halldis always gets up early, so I went looking for her. Thought I could bum a glass of juice or something like that. Not a soul in sight. But her curtains were open, so I thought she might be having coffee and reading a magazine, the way she usually does."

Jan Farstad, known as Jaffa, looked into Kannick's eyes and waited tensely. "If so," Kannick went on, "I thought I could get a slice of home-made bread with goat cheese. Once Halldis let me have eight pieces of bread, but that was the last I ever got."

He blinked at the memory.

"Get to the point!" Karsten shouted, casting a glance at the Mocca beans on the bedspread, his payment for the story.

"I caught sight of her as soon as I came around the well. And let me tell you," he swallowed hard, "the sight is going to haunt me for the rest of my life."

"Yes, but what did you see ?"

Karsten's voice rose to a falsetto. He was the only one of the boys to have a hint of a moustache and the first trace of acne at the corners of his nose.

"I saw the body of Halldis Horn!" Kannick said, exhaling loudly because he had forgotten to breathe. "Lying on her back on the front steps. With a hoe in one eye. And grey matter pouring out of the socket. It looked like oatmeal." His gaze grew steadily more remote.

"What's grey matter?" Simon asked in a low voice.

"Her brains," said Karsten, sounding bored.

"Brains can't pour out, can they?"

"Jesus, yes. They pour out like crazy. I suppose you didn't know that the stuff between your ears is as thin as soup."

Simon picked at a thread in his shirt and didn't stop until he had pulled it out. "I once saw a brain in a jar. It wasn't runny at all." His voice had a sullen tone, but was also rather anxious because he was daring to disagree with this experienced group. There was no getting around the fact that he was the youngest.

"What an amateur! It wasn't runny because it was preserved. And then it has the consistency of a mushroom and they can cut it into thin slices. I saw that on TV."

"What does preserved mean?" Simon asked.

"Hardened," said Karsten. "They put it in something that makes it harden. But they won't have to do that with Kannick's brain – his was hardened long ago."

"Cut that out! Let Kannick finish."

This time it was Philip who interrupted. If those two started arguing they'd never stop. And Margunn could show up at any minute. Not that she really believed that her ban on talking about the murder would be upheld; she knew better than that. The question was how much time they now had. And how many details they could glean.

Kannick waited with the patience of a preacher, frowning at the bounty lying before him. He decided to start with the Mocca beans.

"Her body had already begun to rot," he went on, putting extra emphasis on the word rot.

"What did you say?" Karsten snorted. "Give me a break! It happens to take several days for a body to start rotting. If Errki hadn't even managed to leave the scene, you can't tell me that -"

"Do you know how hot it was up in the woods?" Kannick leaned forward and his voice quivered with indignation. "It rots in a matter of minutes in that heat."

"You haven't got a clue. I'm going to ask the police about that if they ever come here. But I guess you're not very important, Kannick, or they would have been here long ago."

"Officer Gurvin promised that they would come."

"We'll see about that, but cut out the stuff about rotting, because we don't believe you. I paid for the truth."

"Fine! I can skip over the worst parts. We've got children here, after all. But going back to the hoe -"

"What kind of hoe was it?" Philip again.

"The kind you use to work the soil. To dig up potatoes and weeds. It looked like an axe with a longer shaft. In point of fact it might as well have been an axe because her head was just about split in two. And her eye had come loose and was hanging down her cheek from a single thread, and -"

Karsten rolled his eyes. "You've been watching too many videos. Tell us about Errki," he said.

"Who's Errki?" Simon asked. He was from a different town and hadn't been there long.

"The terror of the woods," Karsten sneered, picking at one of his pimples. "He's bound to get off. He always gets off. Besides, he's a real nutcase, and crazy people are never convicted. They sit in the asylum swallowing pills, and then they get out and go right on killing. If they put him in a strait-jacket he'd go on killing with his bare teeth."

"Is he going to get out?" said Simon anxiously.

"He is out, you dope. They haven't found him yet."

"Where is he?"

"Up there in the woods."

Simon cast a frightened glance out of the window, up towards the trees.

"Errki may be insane, but insane is not the same as stupid," Kannick said thoughtfully. "He noticed that I saw him. Maybe he's going to come after me. I really should have police protection."

He scowled at them with a worried look on his face, to see whether this piece of information had sunk in properly, whether they grasped what it meant to have such a threat hanging over him. A vengeful madman on his heels. It couldn't get any worse.

"Ha. He's probably long gone. Like you said, he's not stupid. What did he look like?" Karsten wanted to know. "Did he have any blood on him?"

"He was standing behind a tree," Kannick said in a low voice. "He was standing in a funny way, with his arms hanging at his sides, staring straight ahead. He has such peculiar eyes. My uncle has Greenland dogs, and Errki has the same kind of eyes as those dogs. Sort of whitish, like a dead fish."

He thought back to that fateful moment when he stood in Halldis's yard with his heart pounding and stared in terror up at the woods, at the black trees, and suddenly caught sight of that strange figure among the trunks. Motionless at first, but then it moved, and something dark slowly leaned forward, and only then did he realise that it was a face. A face in shadow with staring eyes. The devil himself couldn't have scared Kannick more. He ran like a hare down the road, knowing he should let go of his suitcase containing the bow and arrows, but he couldn't. He kept on running and didn't look back.

"Has he killed anyone before?" Jaffa wanted to know.

Kannick shifted his body from its lotus position and stretched his stiff legs. "First his own mother. And then the old man up by the church," he said brightly. "And they still let him walk around freely. It's rotten to put a place like this," his eyes took in the room and the courtyard, "a building full of minors in an area where a mass murderer lives."

"You idiot," Karsten said. "This home was here first, long before Errki went nuts."

"But why isn't he kept locked up?" Simon said.

"He was. But he escaped. I expect he knocked out the night nurse and stole the keys."

Simon had been given far more to think about than he wanted. Very slowly he moved over to Karsten and leaned against him.

"Relax, Simon. There's a lock on the door," the older boy assured him. "Besides, Errki's the type that can never sit still. He wanders around. Hardly ever sleeps. Right now he'll be on his way to town to kill somebody else."