The Darkest Room (34 page)

“Hello?” Henrik shouted
to the figure down in the snow. “Are you okay?”

It was a stupid question, because the body below him was lying motionless with a bloody face. The snow had already begun to cover it.

Henrik blinked in confusion; it had all happened so quickly.

He thought he had spotted the Serelius brothers outside. When the first of them opened the veranda door, Henrik had thrown his grandfather’s ax as hard as he could, and it had hit the intruder on the head. With the blunt edge—not with the blade, he was sure of that.

He stayed in the doorway of the veranda. In the glow of the outside light he suddenly saw that it was a woman he had hit.

A few yards behind her stood a man, as if he were frozen solid in the whirling snow. Then he strode forward and knelt down.

“Tilda?” he shouted. “Wake up, Tilda!”

She moved her arms feebly and tried to raise her head.

Henrik walked out onto the steps, with his back to the warmth of the house and the cold and wind in his face, and discovered that the woman was wearing a dark-colored uniform.

A cop. She had almost disappeared in a huge billowing drift at the bottom of the steps. A thin stream of dark blood was pouring out of her nose and down around her mouth.

For a few seconds everything stood still, except for the falling snow.

The pains in his belly came back.

“Hello?” he said again. “Are you okay?”

Neither one replied, but the man picked up the ax and came over to the steps.

“Drop it!” he yelled at Henrik.

Behind the man the woman suddenly coughed and started vomiting violently in the snow.

“What?” said Henrik.

“Drop it now!”

The man was talking about the kitchen knife, Henrik realized. He was still clutching it in his hand.

He didn’t want to drop it. The Serelius brothers were around somewhere; he needed to be able to defend himself.

The woman had stopped vomiting. She put her hand to her face, felt cautiously at her nose. The snowflakes were landing on her shoulders and her nose, and the blood had congealed into black patches on her face.

“What’s your name?” asked the man on the steps.

The woman raised her head and shouted something to Henrik through the howling wind, the same thing over and over again, and eventually he was able to make out what it was. His own name.

“Henrik!” she was shouting. “Henrik Jansson!”

“Drop the knife, Henrik,” said the man. “Then we can talk.”

“Talk?”

“You’re under arrest for robbery with violence, Henrik,” the woman went on from her snowdrift. “And breaking and entering … and criminal damage.”

Henrik heard what she said but didn’t reply; he was too tired. He took a step backwards, shaking his head.

“All that stuff … that was Tommy and Freddy,” he said quietly.

“What?” said the man.

“It was those fucking brothers,” said Henrik. “I just went along with them. But it was much better with Mogge, I never thought—”

There was a sudden tinkling noise, just a couple of inches from his right ear. A short, solid sound in the wind.

Henrik turned his head and saw that a black, uneven hole had appeared in one of the small panes of glass in the veranda windows.

Was it the storm? Perhaps the storm had smashed the glass. Henrik’s second confused thought was that the pistol had been fired at him, despite the fact that the cop was no longer holding it.

But when he looked out through the whirling snow, over toward the barn, he discovered that there was someone else there.

A dark figure had stepped out of the half-open door of the barn and was standing there in the snow, legs apart. In the glow from the outside light Henrik could see that the figure was holding a slender stick in its hands.

No, not a stick. It was a gun, of course. Henrik couldn’t make it out properly, but he thought it was an old Mauser.

A man in a black hood. Tommy. He shouted something across the courtyard, then the gun in his hands jerked. Once. Twice.

No panes of glass broke this time—but the face of the man in front of Henrik contorted suddenly, and he went down.

Tilda saw it all
so clearly when Martin was shot.

It was after the ax had hit her. She almost wished she had lost consciousness then, but her brain remained awake, registering everything. The pain, the fall, and the pistol spinning out of her hand.

When she landed on her back, the snow received her like a soft bed.

She stayed where she was. Her nose was broken, warm blood was pouring down into her mouth, and she was completely exhausted after the trek through the storm.

I’ve done my bit tonight
, she thought.
Enough
.

“Tilda!”

Martin was calling her name, bending over her. Behind him she saw a man step out from the veranda and look down at her. He was holding a big knife in his hand and shouting something, but she couldn’t make out a word.

Everything stopped for a little while. Tilda sank down into
a warm drowsiness before the nausea hit her, and the vomiting. She turned her head to the side and threw up into the snow.

Tilda coughed, raised her head, and tried to pull herself together. She saw Martin go over to the man and shout to him to drop the knife.

It was Henrik Jansson up there on the steps, the man responsible for the break-ins, the man she’d been looking for.

“Henrik?”

Tilda called his name several times, her voice thick, while at the same time trying to recall all the things he was suspected of.

She didn’t hear his reply—she did, however, hear the gunshot.

It came from the barn on the other side of the courtyard and sounded like a dull bang with no echo. The bullet hit the veranda; a pane of glass broke next to Henrik.

He turned his head and looked at the hole in confusion.

Martin continued on up the steps toward him. He was moving calmly and speaking firmly to the perpetrator, like the police instructor he was. Henrik backed away.

Neither of them had heard the shot, Tilda realized.

As she opened her mouth to warn them, there were several more bangs.

She saw Martin jerk up on the steps. His upper body contorted, his legs gave way. He collapsed and landed heavily in the snow just a few yards from Tilda.

“Martin!”

He was lying there with his back to her, and she began to crawl toward him, keeping her head down. She could hear a faint moaning sound through the wind.

“Martin?”

Breathing, bleeding, shock. That was the list she had learned to check in cases of stabbing or gunshot wounds.

Breathing? It was difficult to see in the storm, but Martin hardly seemed to be breathing.

She dragged his upper body into the recovery position, ripped open his jacket and bloodstained sweater, and finally found the small entry hole—high up and just to the left of the spine. The hole looked deep and the blood was still flowing. Had the bullet hit the main artery?

He shouldn’t be left out here, but there was no way Tilda could get him into the house. There was no time.

She unbuttoned her right jacket pocket and took out a pressure bandage pack.

“Martin?” she called again, at the same time pressing the bandage against the bullet hole as firmly as she could.

No reply. His eyes were open, unblinking in the snow—he had gone into shock.

Tilda couldn’t find a pulse.

She pushed his body onto its back again, leaned over him, and began pressing on his chest with both hands. One firm push, wait. Then a firm push again.

It didn’t help. He no longer seemed to be breathing, and when she shook him his body was completely lifeless. The snow was landing in his eyes.

“Martin …”

Tilda gave up. She sank down beside him in the snow, sniveling blood up her nose.

Everything had gone completely wrong. Martin wasn’t even supposed to be here; he shouldn’t have come with her to Eel Point.

Suddenly she heard two more bangs from the direction of the barn. Tilda kept her head down.

The pistol? She had dropped it when she fell in the snow.

The Sig Sauer was made of black steel—she ought to be able to see it in all this whiteness, and she began to feel around with her hands. At the same time she peeped cautiously over the drifts.

A figure was moving through the snow. He had a black hood over his head and a gun in his hands.

The man clambered over a snowdrift, and when he realized
that Tilda had seen him, he shouted something into the wind.

She didn’t answer. Her hand was still burrowing in the snow—and suddenly it felt something hard and heavy down there. At first the object just slid away, but then she managed to get hold of it.

She pulled the gun out of the snow.

She banged the barrel a couple of times to get the snow out of it, undid the safety catch, and aimed in the direction of the barn.

“Police!” she yelled.

The masked man said something in reply, but the wind ripped his words to shreds.

“Ubba … ubba,” it sounded like.

He slowed down and stooped slightly, but kept on coming toward her through the snowdrifts.

“Stand still and drop the gun!” Tilda’s voice became shrill and small, she could hear how weak it sounded, but still she went on: “I’ll fire!”

And she did actually fire, a warning shot straight up into the night. The bang sounded almost as weak as her voice.

The man stopped, but didn’t drop the gun. He dropped to his knees between two snowdrifts, less than ten yards away. He raised the gun and aimed it at her again, and Tilda fired two shots at him in rapid succession.

Then she ducked back behind the drifts, and at almost the same moment the light went out. The lamps in the windows and the lantern in the inner courtyard went out at the same time. Everything went black.

The blizzard had caused a power outage at Eel Point.

Joakim was still sitting
slumped on the bench, motionless. There was no light in the prayer room, and yet it
wasn’t completely dark. He could make out the wooden walls, the window, and the drawing of Jesus’ empty tomb. There was a faint, pale glow around him, as if from a distant moon.

The storm continued to howl over the roof.

He was not alone.

His wife, Katrine, was sitting beside him. He could see her pale face out of the corner of his eye.

And the benches behind him had filled up with visitors. Joakim could hear the faint sound of creaking, just like when the congregation in a church is impatiently waiting to go up and take Communion.

They started to get up.

When Joakim heard this, he stood up too, with the unpleasant feeling of being in the wrong place on the wrong night. Soon he would be discovered—or unmasked.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Trust me.”

He pulled at Katrine’s cold hand and tried to get her to stand up, and in the end she obeyed him.

He heard creaking steps approaching. The figures behind him had begun to move out into the narrow aisle.

There were so many of them when they were gathered together. More and more shadows seemed to fill the room.

Joakim couldn’t get past them. All he could do was stay where he was in front of the bench—there was nowhere to go now. He stood completely still, not letting go of Katrine’s hand.

The air grew colder around them, and Joakim shivered. He could hear the rustling sound of old fabric, and the floor creaked faintly as the chapel’s visitors spread out around him.

They wanted so much warmth that he was unable to give them. They wanted to take Communion. Joakim was freezing now, but still they pressed forward to reach him. Their jerky movements were like a slow dance in the narrow room, and he was drawn along with them.

“Katrine!” he whispered.

But she was no longer with him. Her hand slipped from his grip and they were separated by all the movement in the room.

“Katrine?”

She was gone. Joakim turned around and tried to push his way through the crowd to find her again. But no one helped him, everyone was standing in his way.

Then suddenly he heard something more than the wind through the cracks in the barn: someone shouting, then several dull bangs. It sounded as if someone were shooting with a rifle or a pistol—like a volley of shots somewhere down below the hayloft.

Joakim stiffened and listened. He could no longer hear any other sounds, no voices or movements inside the room.

The pale light that had been seeping through the wall from the bulb in the loft suddenly went out.

The electricity had gone out, Joakim realized.

He stood still in the pitch darkness. It felt as if he were completely alone now, as if all the others in the room had gone away.

After several minutes a flickering light began to glow somewhere in the barn. A pale yellow glow that rapidly increased in strength.

Tilda blinked away
the drops of melted ice flakes from her eyes and cautiously pressed a fistful of snow against her throbbing nose. Then she got up slowly on unsteady legs, her pistol in her right hand. Her head was aching just as much as her nose, but at least she was able to stand upright.

The manor was in complete darkness now, and the soft drifts between the buildings had turned into hills with blurred contours. Beyond them the barn rose up, like a cathedral in shadow. The electricity seemed to have gone out at Eel Point—perhaps throughout the whole of northern Öland. It had happened before, when a tree blew down onto one of the main power lines.

Martin was lying motionless a couple of yards away from Tilda. She couldn’t see his face, but his lifeless body was already well on the way to being covered by the snow.

She took out her cell phone and called the emergency
number. It was busy. She tried the police station in Borgholm, but couldn’t get through there either.

When she had put the cell phone away, she glanced around the inner courtyard, but couldn’t see the man who had shot at her. She had returned his fire—had she hit him?

She looked over toward the steps. There was no sign of Henrik Jansson either.

Keeping her pistol trained on the barn, Tilda moved backwards until she bumped into the bottom step.

Her eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness. She moved quickly up the steps to the house, bending low, and peered in through the open door.

The first thing she saw inside the veranda was a pair of boots. A dark figure dressed in outdoor clothes was half lying on the rag rug just inside the door. He was breathing heavily.

“Henrik Jansson?” said Tilda.

There was silence for a few seconds.

“Yes?” he said eventually.

“Don’t move, Henrik.”

Tilda crept through the doorway, keeping her pistol trained on him. Henrik stayed where he was, gazing wearily at the gun, and made no attempt to get away. He was clutching the edge of the rug with one hand; the other was pressed against his stomach.

“Are you hurt, Henrik?” she asked.

“I’ve been stabbed … in the stomach.”

Tilda nodded. More violence. She wanted to scream and swear at someone, but instead she picked up his knife, hurled it out into the snow, then checked his pants and jacket. No more weapons.

She took a sterilizing pack out of her pocket along with the second and last bandage and passed them over to Henrik.

“Martin’s lying out there,” she said quietly. “He’s been shot. He didn’t make it.”

“Was he a cop?” said Henrik.

Tilda sighed. “He used to be … he’s a tutor at the Police Training Academy.”

Henrik opened the sterilizing pack and shook his head. “They’re crazy.”

“Who, Henrik? Who shot Martin?”

“There are two of them,” he said. “Tommy and Freddy.”

Tilda looked at him suspiciously and he shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s what they call themselves …Tommy and Freddy.”

Tilda remembered the two men at the races in Kalmar.

“So you broke in here together? You’re partners?”

“We were.” He pulled up his sweater and began to wipe the wound in his stomach. “It was Tommy who did this.”

“What are they carrying, Henrik?”

“They’ve got a hunting rifle. An old Mauser …I don’t know if they’ve got anything else.”

Tilda bent down and held the compress while Henrik tied the pressure bandage.

“Now lie down on your stomach,” she said.

“Why?”

“I’m going to put the handcuffs on.”

He looked at her. “If they shoot you, they’ll come after me next,” he said. “Am I supposed to sit here in handcuffs, waiting for them?”

Tilda thought it over for a few seconds, then hung the cuffs back on her belt.

“I’ll be back.”

She turned and jumped down from the steps, crouching between the drifts as she took a last glance at Martin’s body.

With her knees and back bent, she began to move through the snow, over toward the barn.

She blinked to help her see through the snowflakes more easily and stayed on the alert as she moved forward, all the time expecting to be shot at.

A long, billowing snowdrift ran along a couple of yards from the barn, and behind it she found traces of the gunman.
A pair of boots had been trampling around, and there was the outline of someone who had been lying down in the snow. But both the man and his gun were gone, and she couldn’t see any sign of blood.

He must have gone back inside the barn.

Tilda thought about Martin’s blood-covered back and stayed where she was, out in the courtyard. The broad doorway gaped like the opening of a cave. She didn’t want to go in there.

A little further away to the right was another entrance—a narrow door made of wooden planks, painted black. She began to move slowly toward it, pressed against the stone wall, the fine snow whirling down and melting on the back of her neck.

When Tilda reached the door, she grabbed the handle and pulled the door open as far as she could before the snow stopped it.

She peered inside.

Pitch black. The electricity was still off.

With her pistol at the ready she moved inside onto the earth floor, straight into the darkness and silence.

She stayed by the wall for a while, listening for sounds; her nose was beginning to throb again. It was impossible to tell if anyone was lying in wait for her in the shadows.

The storm was more distant in here, but high above her the great roof squeaked and creaked. After a minute or so she started moving again, silently and cautiously. There was no snow to contend with, of course, but the floor was uneven—sometimes it was earth, sometimes stone.

When she saw a broad shadow looming up ahead of her, she almost aimed her pistol at it—until her boot hit an enormous rubber tire. Above the tire was a hood with the logo McCORMICK.

Tilda had bumped into an old tractor—a rusty monster on wheels that must have been parked there for years.

She crept silently past it. When she saw old cans of paint and piles of planks on the floor, she realized she was in a storeroom at the eastern end of the barn.

A faint thud came from somewhere in the barn. She turned her head quickly—but nothing moved behind her.

There were two of them in here, Henrik had said. Oddly enough Tilda had the feeling that there were in fact many more people here in the barn—figures keeping watch in the shadows around her. It was a vague but unpleasant feeling, and she was unable to shake it off.

Her eyes were beginning to grow accustomed to the darkness, and she could see the stone wall opposite.

Suddenly she heard a faint tinkling sound to her left. From inside the barn.

A second or so later it grew a little lighter around her, and she saw that there was a doorway in the wooden wall beside her. It ought to lead into the barn. The light was coming from the barn; a flickering, dancing glow.

Tilda caught the smell of smoke and suspected she knew what had happened. She hurried to the door and looked into the barn.

A fire was burning next to the steep wooden staircase a few yards away, leading up to the hayloft, and there was the acrid smell of paraffin mixed with smoke. Someone had gathered a big heap of old hay, then smashed a burning bottle of paraffin against the floor. The fire had taken hold by now, and the flames had already begun licking at the planks of the staircase.

A tall man was standing beneath the loft on the far side of the fire. He was about the same age as Henrik and was holding a black hood or cap in one hand; he didn’t appear to have noticed her. The man’s gaze was fixed on the growing flames and his face was shiny. He looked excited.

A framed oil painting was propped against a wooden pillar beside him, but there was no sign of any gun.

Tilda looked around one last time—no one was lurking behind her—then she took a deep breath and stepped out into the barn. She was holding the pistol with both hands.

“Police!” she shouted. “Stand still!”

The man looked up and gazed at her, more surprised than anything.

“Get down on the floor!”

The man remained standing, his mouth open.

“My brother’s looking for a way out,” he said. “Around the back.”

Tilda moved forward until she was only two paces from the man.

He moved backwards and to one side, toward the door, and Tilda followed him.

“Down on the floor!”

If he didn’t give up, would she shoot him? She didn’t know. But she was aiming straight at his head.

“Lie down!”

“Okay, okay …”

The man nodded and got down on his stomach, with some effort.

“Hands behind your back!”

Tilda was by his side and had unhooked the handcuffs from her belt.

She quickly grabbed his wrists, pulled them back, and slipped on the cuffs. He was secure now, lying on the stone floor, and she was able to search him. He had a mountain knife in the pocket of his pants, but that was the only weapon. And pills, lots of pills.

“What’s your name?”

He seemed to be considering the question.

“Freddy,” he said eventually.

“Your real name.”

He hesitated. “Sven.”

Tilda found that difficult to believe, but merely said, “Okay, Sven … just keep calm.”

When she got up, she could hear the crackling of the fire. The flames had nowhere to go along the stone floor, but had got a hold on the staircase and were climbing up toward the edge of the loft.

Tilda couldn’t see a fire blanket or extinguisher, nor any buckets she could use to carry water.

She pulled off her uniform jacket and beat at the steps, but the flames simply moved aside and grew. The fire seemed to want to reach up toward the storm—more than half the staircase was burning now.

Could she try to kick the whole staircase away from the edge of the loft?

She raised her foot and took aim—then she saw a shadow approaching out of the corner of her eye. She spun around.

It was a tall man wearing jeans and a sweater, hurrying toward the staircase out of the darkness of the barn. He stopped and looked at the fire, then at Freddy and finally at Tilda.

She almost didn’t recognize him—but it was Joakim Westin.

“I can’t put it out!” she yelled. “I’ve tried …”

Westin just nodded. He seemed calm, as if there were worse things in the world.

“Snow,” he said. “We have to smother it.”

“Okay.”

But where had Westin come from? He looked pale and tired, but didn’t seem particularly surprised to have visitors. Even the fire didn’t seem to bother him much.

“I’ll get a shovel.”

He turned toward the barn door.

“Can you manage without me?” asked Tilda.

Joakim simply nodded, without stopping.

Tilda left the burning staircase. She had to go back into the darkness.

“Stay where you are,” she said to Freddy. “I’m going to find your brother.”

But she stayed in the doorway of the inner room, waiting for Joakim to come back. It took perhaps half a minute, then he was back with a huge shovel full of snow.

They nodded to each other and Tilda went into the storeroom where the tractor was. Behind her she could hear the fire hissing as Joakim put it out.

She had raised her pistol again.

The shadows and the cold surrounded her once more. She thought she heard movements ahead of her, but could see nothing.

She kept close to the northern wall, where the small windows in the thick stone wall were completely covered in snow.

Then a door appeared, and Tilda went through it.

The room on the other side was large and even colder. Tilda stopped. The feeling that she wasn’t alone in the darkness came back. She lowered her pistol, listened, and took a step forward.

A shot rang out.

She ducked, without knowing if she’d been hit or not. Her ears were ringing from the report; she coughed quietly and breathed in the dry air. She waited.

Nothing else happened.

When Tilda finally looked up into the darkness, she saw another closed door four or five yards away. It was a way out—but there was someone standing in front of it. A man.

It was Freddy’s brother, Tommy. It couldn’t be anyone else. He had rolled the balaclava up to his forehead and his pale face bore a resemblance to Freddy’s.

Tommy had an old rifle over his shoulder.

Tilda steadied the hand holding the pistol, aiming at Tommy.

“Drop the gun.”

But Tommy just stood there like a sleepwalker, almost as if someone were holding on to him. His eyes were lowered and his right hand was resting on the door handle, as if he
were on his way out, but his legs seemed to be incapable of movement.

“Tommy?”

He didn’t reply.

A narcotic-induced psychosis? She walked slowly over to Martin’s murderer, afraid but resolute. Then she silently reached out to his shoulder and carefully unhooked the rifle. She saw that the safety catch was on, and dropped it on the floor behind her.

“Tommy?” she said again. “Can you move?”

When she nudged his arm, he suddenly gave a start and came to life.

He fell backward, the iron handle was pushed down, and the door opened. It
flew
open, torn back by the storm. He tumbled out into the snowdrifts, got up, and staggered away.

Tilda raced after him over the low stone step, out into the gale. She could see swaying tree trunks a dozen or so yards away.

“Tommy!” she shouted. “Stop!”

Her voice was ripped to shreds by the wind, and the man ahead of her didn’t stop. He had picked up speed through the snow; he shouted something over his shoulder and fled, heading straight for the forest.

Tilda fired a warning shot, up into the storm, then dropped on one knee. She raised her pistol and took aim, keeping her finger on the trigger.

She knew she could hit him in the legs. But she couldn’t bring herself to shoot someone who was running away.

Tommy had reached the low-growing trees on the edge of the forest. The covering of snow was thinner there, and he was able to move faster. After fifteen or twenty steps he was a gray shadow in the forest. Then he was gone.