Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

Then a thought suddenly struck her, something she had overlooked entirely. She went outside and shouted for Erik Huddén, who was talking to one of the forensic officers.

‘Erik, who was it that discovered all this?’

‘Some guy called us — had a heart attack and crashed into a truck with a Bosnian driver.’

‘Could he be the one responsible for all this?’

‘Maybe. His car was full of cameras. Probably a photographer.’

‘Find out what you can about him. Then we need to set up some kind of HQ in that house over there. We have to go through the list of names and find their next of kin. What happened to the truck driver?’

‘He was breathalysed, but he was sober. He spoke such poor Swedish they took him to Hudiksvall instead of interrogating him in the middle of the road. But he didn’t seem to know anything.’

Huddén left. As she was going back indoors she noticed a police officer running along the road towards the village. She went to the gate and waited for him.

‘We’ve found the leg,’ he said, clearly shaken. ‘The dog uncovered it about fifteen yards in among the trees.’

He pointed towards the edge of the forest. There was more, judging from his expression.

‘Was that all?’

‘I think it’s best if you take a look yourself,’ he said.

Then he turned away and threw up. She left him to it and hurried towards the trees. She slipped and fell twice.

When she arrived she could see what had upset the officer. In places the flesh had been gnawed off the leg to the bone. The foot had been bitten off completely.

She looked at Ytterström and the dog handler who were standing next to the find.

‘A cannibal,’ said Ytterström. ‘Is that what we’re looking for? Did we arrive and spoil his meal?’

Something touched Sundberg’s hand. She gave a start. But it was only a snowflake, which soon melted.

‘A tent,’ she said. ‘We need a tent here. I don’t want the footprints obliterated.’

She closed her eyes and suddenly saw a blue sea and white houses climbing up a warm hillside. Then she went back to the day traders’ house and sat down in their kitchen with the list of names.

There must be something somewhere I haven’t noticed, she thought.

She started to work her way slowly through the list. It was like walking through a minefield.

Vivi Sundberg had the feeling that she was studying a memorial to the victims of a major catastrophe, a plane crash or a sunken ship. But who would raise a memorial for the people of Hesjövallen who had been murdered one night in January 2006?

She slid the list of names to one side and stared at her trembling hands. She was unable to keep them still.

She shuddered, and picked up the list once again.

Erik August Andersson

Vendela Andersson

Hans-Evert Andersson

Elsa Andersson

Gertrud Andersson

Viktoria Andersson

Hans Andrén

Lars Andrén

Klara Andrén

Sara Andrén

Elna Andrén

Brita Andrén

August Andrén

Herman Andrén

Hilda Andrén

Johannes Andrén

Tora Magnusson

Regina Magnusson

Eighteen names, three families. She stood up and went into the room where the Hanssons were sitting on the sofa, whispering to each other. They stopped when she entered.

‘You said there weren’t any children in this village? Is that right?’

They both nodded.

‘And you haven’t seen any children during the last few days?’

‘When sons or daughters of the old folk come to visit, they sometimes bring their own children with them. But that doesn’t happen often.’

Sundberg hesitated before continuing.

‘Unfortunately there is a young boy among the dead,’ she said.

She pointed at one of the houses. The woman stared at her, eyes wide open.

‘You mean he’s dead as well?’

‘Yes, he’s dead. If what you’ve written is accurate, he was in the house with Hans-Evert and Elsa Andersson. Are you sure you don’t know who he is?’

They turned to look at each other, then shook their heads. Sundberg went back to the kitchen. He’s the odd one out, she thought. Him and the couple living in this house, and Julia who suffers from dementia and has no conception of this catastrophe. But somehow or other, it’s the boy that doesn’t fit in.

She folded up the sheet of paper, put it in her pocket and went out. A few snowflakes were drifting down. All around her was silence. Disturbed only by an occasional voice, a door being closed, the clicking of a forensic tool. Erik Huddén came towards her. He was very pale. Everybody was pale.

‘Where’s the doctor?’ she asked.

‘Examining the leg.’

‘How’s she doing?’

‘She’s shocked. The first thing she did was to disappear into a toilet. Then she burst out crying. But there are more doctors on the way. What shall we do about the reporters?’

‘I’ll speak to them.’

She took the list of names from her pocket.

‘The boy doesn’t have a name. We must find out who he is. Make sure this list is copied, but don’t hand it out.’

‘This is beyond belief,’ said Huddén. ‘Eighteen people.’

‘Nineteen. The boy’s not on there.’

She produced a pen and added ‘unidentified boy’ to the bottom of the list.

Then she gathered the freezing cold and mystified reporters into a semicircle on the road.

‘I’ll give you a brief statement,’ she said. ‘You can ask questions, but we don’t have any answers at the moment. There’ll be a press conference later today in Hudiksvall. Provisionally at six o’clock. All I can say for now is that several very serious crimes were committed here during the night. I can’t give you any more details.’

A young girl, her face covered in freckles, held up her hand.

‘But surely you can tell us a bit more? It’s obvious that something terrible has happened when you cordon off the whole village.’

Sundberg didn’t recognise the girl, but the logo on her jacket was the name of a big national newspaper.

‘You can ask as many questions as you like, but I’m afraid that for technical reasons connected with the investigation, I can’t tell you any more for the moment.’

One of the television reporters thrust a microphone under her nose. She had met him many times before.

‘Can you repeat what you’ve just said?’

She did so, but when he tried to ask a follow-up question she turned her back on him and left. She didn’t stop walking until she came to the last of the tents that had been pitched. She suddenly felt very ill. She stepped to one side, took a few deep breaths, and only when she no longer felt the need to throw up did she approach the tent.

Once, during one of her first years as a police officer, she had fainted when she and a colleague had entered a house and found a man hanging there. She would prefer not to have that happen again.

The woman squatting down at the side of the leg looked up when Sundberg entered. A powerful spotlight made it very warm inside the tent. Sundberg introduced herself.

‘What can you tell me?’

Valentina Miir, probably in her forties, spoke with a pronounced foreign accent. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ she said. ‘You come across limbs that have been pulled off or severed, but this one...’

‘Has somebody been trying to eat it?’

‘The probability is that it’s an animal, of course. But there are aspects that worry me.’

‘Such as?’

‘Animals eat and gnaw at bones in a particular way. You can usually be more or less sure which particular animal has been involved. I suspect it was a wolf in this case. But there’s something else you ought to see.’