Page 48 of The Living and the Dead

“Driving around.”

Siri had turned her head to nod toward the door. The shotgun stood there as testimony.

“Do you take that with you?”

“Yes.”

“Who are you looking for?”

The question, which must be perfectly reasonable in her mind, seemed foreign to him. He didn’t know who had killed Mikael, but he knew that the rumors of his nightly drives would spread and reach the culprit. Whoever it was, he would know Karl-Henrik was looking for him. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t explain this to the cop.

He slurped from his cup. Still small mouthfuls, although they were greedier. Something was creeping up behind Karl-Henrik, a shadow that threatened to grow if he didn’t hold it back.

“Are you planning to bring anyone in?”

“We’re working pretty intensely right now,” was all Siri said.

She stood up togo.

—

The simplest way people in Skavböke know to describe what it means to be human: to search for meaning in another person. And when that’s no longer possible, if someone disappears, or is taken away from you, it’s easy to become lost.

—

There it was again, the doorbell. No one was waiting outside, but Karl-Henrik heard the tones anyway, heard them clanging through the hall and into his heart. And there sat his older son, crouching beside a crate full of cords and pliers again, so patient as he installed the doorbell and tested it to see if it worked.

Karl-Henrik drained his cup. He went to the toolbox, got out a pair of pliers, and went to the front hall, where he clipped the wire to the doorbell.

35

A note about the dynamite. Lots of people knew about it, and this was originally thanks to Karl-Henrik, no matter what actually happened lateron.

Sometime in late fall, Sander and Killian were walking home from the bus stop when they spotted two figures approaching in the distance. It was Mikael and Filip. Together they were carrying something heavy, but Sander couldn’t tell what.

The first frosty nights had arrived. The brothers were wearing heavy fall coats and gloves, and their ears were red with cold. They walked under an overcast sky, hauling a wooden box the size of a milk crate, and they each held one handle while sticking the other arm out for balance.

“Hello,” Sander said when they met. “What are you two up to?”

Mikael and Filip’s faces were pale as a sheet. Then it began to dawn on Sander what they had.

“We’re going to blow up a boulder on the farm,” Mikael said. “We picked this up from Frans’s.”

“Can you manage that?”

“It’s not very far. It’s just heavy.”

Killian and Sander joined them and soon the group reached Killian’s house. There stood his mother’s old Saab.

“We can borrow the car,” Killian suggested. “It’ll be better. It’s still a ways to go.”

Mikael seemed relieved, but not Filip. He looked anxious. With Sander’s and Killian’s help, they gingerly loaded the crate into the cargo area of the old Saab.

“It must be a big boulder,” Killian said.

“We only need a couple of these guys,” Filip said, “and we’ll save the rest.”

Killian got behind the wheel while Sander sank into the passenger seat and the brothers hopped in back. They cautiously took off for the big farm.