Gunnar Isaksson stepped menacingly toward Rebecka so that she was forced backwards.
“Don’t you come here trying to threaten the work of God and the people of God,” he roared. “In the name of Jesus and by the power of prayer I condemn thy evil plans. Do you hear what I say? Out!”
Rebecka turned on her heel and quickly left the bookshop. Her heart was in her mouth. Virku was right behind her.
The dark blue shades of evening were settling over Rebecka’s grandmother’s garden. Rebecka was sitting on a kick sledge watching Lova and Virku playing in the snow. Sara was reading on her bed upstairs. She hadn’t even bothered to say no when Rebecka asked if they wanted to go outside, she’d just shut the door behind her and thrown herself on the bed.
“Rebecka, look at me!” shouted Lova. She was standing on the ridge on top of the cold store roof. She turned around and let herself fall backwards into the snow. It wasn’t particularly high. She lay there in the snow, flapping her arms and legs to make the outline of an angel in the snow.
They’d been playing outside for almost an hour, building an obstacle course. It went along a tunnel through the bank of snow toward the barn, three times around the big birch tree, up on to the roof of the cold store, walk along the ridge without falling off, jump down into the snow, then back to the start. You had to run backwards in the snow for the last bit, Lova had decided. She was busy marking out the track with pine branches. She had a problem with Virku, who felt it was her job to steal all the branches and take them off to secret places where the outdoor lights didn’t reach.
“Stop it, I said!” Lova shouted breathlessly to Virku, who was just scampering off happily with another find in her mouth.
“Come on, what about some hot chocolate and a sandwich?” Rebecka tried for the third time.
She’d worn herself out tunneling through the snow. Now she’d stopped sweating and started to shiver. She wanted to go inside. It was still snowing.
But Lova protested furiously. Rebecka had to time her as she did the obstacle course.
“All right, but let’s do it now,” said Rebecka. “You can manage without the branches-you know the route.”
It was difficult to run in the snow. Lova only managed twice around the birch tree, and she didn’t run the last bit backwards. When she got to the end she collapsed in Rebecka’s arms, exhausted.
“A new world record!” shouted Rebecka.
“Now it’s your turn.”
“In your dreams. Maybe tomorrow. Inside!”
“Virku!” called Lova as they walked toward the house.
But there was no sign of the dog.
“You go in,” said Rebecka. “I’ll give her a shout.
“And put your pajamas and socks on,” she called after Lova as she disappeared up the stairs.
She closed the outside door and called again. Out into the darkness.
“Virku!”
It felt as if her voice reached only a few meters. The falling snow muffled every sound, and when she listened out into the darkness there was an eerie silence. She had to steel herself to shout again. It felt creepy, standing there exposed by the porch light, shouting into the silent, pitch-black forest all around her.
“Virku, here girl! Virku!”
Bloody dog. She took a step down from the porch to take a walk around the garden, but stopped herself.
Stop being so childish, she scolded herself, but still couldn’t bring herself to leave the porch or to call out again. She couldn’t get the image of the note on her car out of her head. The word “BLOOD” written in sprawling letters. She thought about Viktor. And about the children inside the house. She went backwards up the steps to the porch. Couldn’t make herself turn her back on the unknown things that might be lurking out there. When she got inside she locked the door and ran upstairs.
She stopped in the hallway and rang Sivving. He turned up after five minutes.
“She’s probably in heat,” he said. “She won’t come to any harm. Probably just the opposite.”
“But it’s so cold,” said Rebecka.
“If it’s too cold, she’ll come home.”
“You’re probably right,” sighed Rebecka. “It just feels a bit funny without her.”
She hesitated for a moment, then said, “I want to show you something. Wait here, I don’t want the girls to see it.”
She ran out to the car and fetched the note that had been on the windscreen.
Sivving read it, a deep frown creasing his forehead.
“Have you shown this to the police?” he asked.
“No, what can they do?”
“How should I know-give you protection or something.”
Rebecka laughed dryly.
“For this? No way, they don’t have the resources to do that. But there’s something else as well.”
She told him about the postcard in Viktor’s Bible.
“What if the person who wrote the postcard was somebody who loved him?”
“Well?”
“ ‘What we have done is not wrong in the eyes of God.’ I don’t know, but Viktor never had a girlfriend. I’m just thinking that maybe… well, it just occurred to me that there might be somebody who loved him, but who wasn’t allowed to. And maybe it’s that person who’s threatening me, because he feels threatened himself.”
“A man?”
“Exactly. That would never be accepted within the church. He’d be out on his ear. And if that’s the case, and Viktor wanted to keep it secret, I don’t want to go running to the police and broadcasting it unnecessarily. You can just imagine the headlines.”
Sivving grunted and ran his hand anxiously over his head.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “What if something happens to you?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me. But I’m worried about Virku.”
“Do you want me and Bella to come and stay the night?”
Rebecka shook her head.
“She’ll be back soon,” said Sivving reassuringly. “I’m going to take Bella fora walk. I’ll give her a shout.”
But Sivving is wrong. Virku isn’t coming back. She is lying on a rag rug in the trunk of a car. There is silver tape wound around her muzzle. And around her back and front paws. Her heart is pounding in her little chest and her eyes are staring out into the black darkness. She scrabbles around in the cramped trunk and pushes her face against the floor in a desperate attempt to get rid of the tape around her muzzle. One tooth has been partly knocked out, and bits of tooth and blood are in her throat. How can this dog be such an easy victim? A dog who was mistreated by her previous owner over and over again. Why doesn’t she recognize evil when she runs straight into its arms? Because she has the ability to forget. Just like her mistress. She forgets. Burrows down into the feathery snow and is pleased to see anyone who stretches out a hand to her. And now she is lying here.
And evening came and morning came, the fourth day
Måns Wenngren wakes with a start. His heart is pounding like a clenched fist. His lungs are gasping for air. He gropes for the bedside light and switches it on; it’s twenty past three. How the hell is he supposed to sleep when his brain is running a nonstop festival of horror films. First of all it was a car that went straight through the ice on the lake outside the summer cottage. He was standing on the shore watching, but couldn’t do anything. In the rear window he saw Rebecka’s pale, terrified face. And the last time he’d managed to go back to sleep, Rebecka had come to him in his dream and put her arms around him. When his hands moved over her back and up toward her hair, they had become wet and warm. The whole of the back of her head had been shot away.
He wriggles backwards in the bed and sits up, leaning against the headboard. It used to be different, once upon a time. The boys and the job took it out of him. You didn’t get enough sleep, but at least it was proper sleep. These days it’s hardly ever sleep that’s waiting for him when he goes to bed in the small hours. Instead he falls into a deep, dreamless state of unconsciousness. And look what happens when he goes to bed sober. Keeps waking up with panic racing through his body, sweating like a pig.