And it wasn’t the only animal. Roald shuddered when he spotted a rat making a dash for a steel tube. Faint sounds could be heard everywhere whenever the breeze caused something to lift or bump into something else. A piece of transparent plastic flapped under a wooden pallet, the cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper unfurled itself in front of a tarnished copper pot. The wooden building to his right was actually rather beautiful, but blighted by its surroundings. There was a door and a window near him, and further down another couple of windows and a door. At the end of the farmyard, the main house rose in the morning sun. Painted white, but peeling so badly you could be forgiven for having doubts that it had ever been painted. The curtains on the ground floor were closed, but from the first floor two windows glared at Roald like a blind animal with pitch-black eyes covered by a milky membrane.
If he was to reach the front door, he would have to zigzag between the piles because there didn’t seem to be a direct route. Some noises made him turn his attention to the barn across the farmyard. It was a stone building in just as poor condition as the house. Despite a thick layer of moss, the corrugated-iron roof looked far from waterproof. Could they really be keeping animals in there?
Roald decided to walk around the piles and up to the half-door at the end of the barn. The top half was ajar, and in the darkness he saw a horse. Dappled grey. Its far too skinny neck and head hung over the edge of its stall, as if held in place, barely, by an invisible rope. A faint whinnying was coming from its nostrils. He could hear more animals inside the barn. Something shifted, something breathed, something squeaked. He had no wish to investigate. The acrid stench not only suggested that mucking out was long overdue but also that something inside there was dead.
From behind the barn he heard another pitiful sound, and he walked around to see what it was. In the chicken coop a solitary cockerel with miserable plumage was trying to communicate. Its eyes seemed dead, probably because it was looking at his dead fellows on the ground: five ruffled chickens whose eyes were just as empty. He could see that a fox had tried to tunnel its way under, but the chicken coop seemed to have been secured against that kind of attack. Perhaps it would have been more merciful if the chickens had ended their days with a sudden death.
There was a field beyond the chicken coop, but the only things moving out there were a couple of crows and three black plastic bin liners rolling languidly across the autumn grass whenever the wind caught them. Further away lay something which might be a dead, horned animal. Or maybe just the remains of one; whatever it was, it didn’t move.
Roald walked along the field, past the pump and the upended wheelbarrow, straddled some big stones and old tubs, and approached the back of the house. There was a washing line with a fluttering newspaper and a couple of yellowing, torn sheets on it. An impressive rosebush next to it stretched its branches up into the wind like tentacles, waiting for the next crumbling bedsheet. It was a little windy here, where the forest didn’t provide quite so much shelter.
At the end of the house was a door with a windowpane, only partly covered by a piece of fabric. It was dark inside, but he got the impression that it led to some kind of pantry.
He hesitated for a moment. Would he be better off walking around and knocking on the front door? Should he do that? Then again, the place seemed so deserted it surely didn’t matter what he did. With his hands up around his eyes, he pressed his nose to the windowpane. When his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he spotted his missing freezer gloves from the pub’s stock room. They were lying on top of some bubble wrap, which he also recognized, and nearby was that roll of oilcloth he had bought at the ironmonger’s in Sønderby. It gave him a strange feeling that he was entitled to enter.
He grabbed the door handle. The door was locked and he knocked a few times, without expecting an answer. Then he took a step back and looked about him. It was here, the key. Somewhere. There was always a key. On a nail behind something. Under a flower pot. A stone. Or placed on top of a beam.
It turned out to be under the flower pot.
The door didn’t open without a struggle. The hinges needed oiling and squealed hideously. Roald let out a startled gasp when some kind of furry animal passed him in the doorway, brushing his leg. He followed it with his eyes as it bounced out into the grass and breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that it wasn’t a giant rat but just a rabbit.
A tame rabbit? Should he try to catch it, in case it turned out to be someone’s pet? He didn’t have time to make up his mind before the rabbit vanished among the grass and the junk and he lost sight of it. That decided it.
The air inside was more oppressive than any air in any house he had ever set foot in.
And yet it was nothing compared to the smell. The stench. It materialized in his nose as an intolerable mixture of dust, mould, decay and solvents and… he feared… urine, excrement. He opened the door fully so that he could stand it. Now that a little daylight was entering the room, he was better able to see what it concealed. There was every imaginable kind of tinned food stacked randomly or in boxes. Some were still held together by shrink-wrapped plastic. And there were packets of cereal, crispbread, bags of bread, crackers. He didn’t need to check the best-before date to know that they were way past it. Pretty much all the bread he could see through the packaging was green from mould. He picked up his stockroom gloves, but dropped them immediately as mouse droppings rolled from them, scattering on to the bubble wrap like dry rain.
The light switch clicked impotently when he flicked it, and the naked lightbulb over the door remained unlit. When he discovered the chest freezer along one wall he knew where the worst of the smell was coming from. There was no light glowing in the small indicator lamp on the side of the freezer, but he had no doubts that it contained food, because there was a terrible stench of rotting meat.
Roald breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to check whether he was right because the chest freezer was buried under things, including an enormous old television that must weigh a ton. The dust on the television was thick, and he didn’t want to think about how long the freezer had been turned off.
Again, he wondered whether he should leave. He ought to hurry back to Korsted and get hold of the police officer and the vet. The vet could see not only to the animals in the barn but also to dead Ida. Roald no longer had the strength to deal with the dog in the trap himself. Someone else would have to take over. He discovered that he was no longer holding the arrow. He must have put it down outside, by the flower pot.
It beggared belief. No one could possibly live like this, and yet someone must come here. The boy, for instance, since his recent swag was locked inside this room.
But who had fired the arrow?
And where were Jens Horder and his wife? There was no one here to tend to the animals, and the house seemed completely dark and closed up, as if it had been abandoned long ago. But they couldn’t have moved, or the postman would know.
And that was when Roald remembered a call he had once had at the pub. It had been during the herring course of their New Year’s Day’s lunch, so he hadn’t paid much attention and he might not have been entirely sober. But someone had asked about Jens Horder, and possibly also about his mother. Roald could remember nothing more than that.