Page 20 of The Living and the Dead

“With a shotgun around, it’s perfectly fine in the mattress.”

Siri kept her mouth shut.

The forest gave way to a crop field, and Bill stepped out into the frozen clearing nose-first, but then he returned to the edge of the woods and sat down with an excited gleam in his big eyes. A cold wind blew in over the land.

“All right. End of the line. The trail probably keeps going a ways into the field, but Bill can’t follow it any farther. And if he can’t do it, it must be pretty hard.”

Bill waited for a signal. When none came, he stood up and looked pleadingly back and forth between Gerd and Kjell, his tail wagging gently.

“What were you doing between twelve thirty and two thirty last night?” Gerd asked.

“Me?” Kjell raised an eyebrow. “I was sleeping, obviously.”

“Gerd.” Siri was staring at the ground a few meters away. “Here. More prints. But they’re going in the other direction. From the car he goes down there, then comes up here. Then he goes back to the car. And he’s not alone. Look at that, the print next to it. It’s smaller. See?”

Gerd nodded. She squinted across the field again. “There.” She pointed. “That house, over there. On the other side of this field. That must be where he was headed. To the Erikssons’ house. And then he comes back.”

“What’s their son’s name again?” Siri asked.

“Sander,” Gerd said. “Sander Eriksson.” She paused. “Maybe you could talk to them.”

“We have company,” Kjell informed them, sounding almost amused.

Reporters. They parked alongside the cordons and climbed out, hungry, cameras and microphones in hand. One of them dropped his notebook. The wind caught it and it sailed across the field. The reporter ran after it and the man with the camera followed. It looked like he was laughing.

14

Sander’s mother, Eva, was sitting at the kitchen table and warming her hands on her cup of coffee as she listened to the radio. A couple of teenagers had tried to knock over the Christmas tree on Stora Torg in Halmstad overnight. They gave up when one of them hurt his hand badly enough to seek medical attention. A man had been caught breaking into an electronics store at the Eurostop shopping center in Stenalyckan. According to the police, he had been trying to unplug all the appliances so they wouldn’t explode on New Year’s Eve. The man had been carted off to the psychiatric ward under loud protestation. New budget cuts for the municipality. Preparations under way for Christmas celebrations at county nursing homes. And now, the weather.

That was all. Sander opened the fridge, poured a glass of milk, and sat down beside his mother, yawning. The night before throbbed in his temples.

“How are you?” She drank her coffee. “Late night?”

“Where’s Dad?”

“He’s off checking something on my car. It didn’t sound so good when I started it yesterday, so he said he’d take it into the shop. Since it’s the weekend and all. Would you have wanted to go too?”

“No.”

“You always used to want to go with him when he ran errands. I think he misses that a little bit.”

Sander drank his milk but didn’t comment.

“Speaking of which,” she said, “where did you two go last night?”

“Pierre’s. We had to walk home, so, yeah, it did end up being a little late.”

“A little late?” Eva stood up and went to the sink to pour out the dregs of her coffee. “I’d say the middle of the night is more than alittlelate.”

“Quit with the nitpicking already.”

“Nitpicking? I don’t care if you are eighteen now, as long as you’re living under my roof I get to ask where you spend your time.” She grinned and turned off the radio. “Guess I’ll head out now. There’s a crashed car over by Kjell Östholm’s farm, I don’t know what the hell is up but I thought I’d go by and see if I can help at all.”

Sander looked perplexed. “What, did someone get hurt?”

“I don’t know, but I saw emergency lights this morning. Listen, I folded your laundry downstairs. Bring it up and clean your room. It’s a pigsty in there.”

“Hey, Mom.”