Page 141 of The Living and the Dead

He sees his friend dart by like a shadow on the roof.

On the other side of the windowpane, Killian’s face is alight with terror. He’s panting as though he’s being chased, and streaks of blood on his face look almost black in the dark.

The Advent candelabra in the window tips as Sander opens the window.

“What—”

“I need you. Help.”

“But—”

“You have to help me, Sander.”

He follows his friend through the woods. The cold makes his lungs ache. Branches and brambles, icy and sharp, scratch at his arms. They come to a clearing in the black night, and the forest opens.

They’re on a small hill. A narrow gravel road winds around the foot of it. On the other side is one of Skavböke’s many vast crop fields. They’re close to Östholm’s place.

“Down there.” Killian catches his breath. “See?”

Not far down the gravel road he can make out the shape of a car.

It’s an old Volvo 240 with rusty fenders. The front has run into something nasty and unyielding; the back hatch points to the sky. Smoke or steam hisses from the crumpled, busted hood.

“But…” Sander hears himself say. “That’s—”

“I know.”

Killian snuffles. His nose is bleeding badly as they start down to the car. The words trickle into silence, out into the night. He stands near the back of the Volvo and stares at Sander.

“It’s…Sander, I…”

He was on his way home, he says, tired and drunk, and he saw a car on the side of the road. It was unlocked and the key was in the ignition. He didn’t think about whose it was—cars all look the same in the dark. And, like he said, he was tired and drunk. So he got in and started for home, but then he lost control on the ice and drove straight into one of the big trees on the side of the road. He tried to keep going but couldn’t; he’d hit his face really hard and he thought his nose was broken. His eyes kept tearing up too much. And besides, the car would only cough when he tried to start the engine again.

“When I got out, I saw that the back gate had flown open, I think it must have been because of the crash, because it was closed when I first saw the car.” He blinks. “I think. I’m not sure, but…yeah, it had to have been. Anyway, I walked around and—”

“Where was the car when you found it?”

A sound nearby. A bird. It bursts into the night sky, like it just learned something important and needs to pass it along to the powers thatbe.

“I don’t remember. Not at their house. I didn’t get that far. It was on the side of the road somewhere.”

Sander walks around the car, comes to stand by Killian, and bends down to see what’s in the trunk. He smells something weird. Then he sees.

Something grows inside his chest. He doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t recognize it. A cloud of heat and smoke. It has to get out. Here it comes, a wave: Sander screams.

—

A single night, almost half a life.

He had trusted Killian, had even lived his life according to what Killian told him. Who killed Mikael? Sander didn’t know; he only knew that it wasn’t his best friend.

He’d been wrong all along.

As he stepped out of Felicia’s house, the rain that fell over him felt fresh somehow, as if it would wash him clean of deeper things than blood.

108

Adrian al-Hadid was in Halmstad when he heard the call, and he hurried down to the garage as fast as he could, the binder from Rasmusgården in one hand and the bag containing Jakob Lindell’s shirt in the other.