Anna-Maria Mella drives into Lars-Gunnar Vinsa’s yard at half past three in the afternoon. Sven-Erik is sitting beside her in the car. They haven’t spoken all the way down to Poikkijärvi. It isn’t a nice feeling, knowing that you’re going to have to tell a former colleague that you’re seizing his gun and taking it in for testing.

Anna-Maria is driving slightly too fast as usual, and she very nearly runs over the body lying on the gravel.

Sven-Erik curses. Anna-Maria slams the brakes on and they jump out of the car. Sven-Erik is already on his knees, feeling the side of the neck with his hand. A black swarm of heavy flies lifts from the bloody back of the head. He shakes his head in reply to Anna-Maria’s unspoken question.

“It’s Lars-Gunnar’s boy,” he says.

Anna-Maria looks toward the house. She hasn’t got her gun with her. Shit.

“Don’t you even think about doing anything stupid,” Sven-Erik warns her. “Get in the car and we’ll call for backup.”

* * *

It’ll take forever before the others get here, thinks Anna-Maria.

“Thirteen minutes,” says Sven-Erik, checking the time.

It’s Fred Olsson and Tommy Rantakyrö in an unmarked car. And four colleagues in bulletproof vests and black overalls.

Tommy Rantakyrö and Fred Olsson park up on the ridge and come running down to Lars-Gunnar’s yard, crouching as they run. Sven-Erik has reversed Anna-Maria’s car out of firing range of the house.

The second police car pulls up in the yard. They shelter behind it.

Sven-Erik Stålnacke picks up a megaphone.

“Hello!” he shouts. “Lars-Gunnar! If you’re in there, come on out so we can have a chat.”

No response.

Anna-Maria meets Sven-Erik’s eyes and shakes her head. Nothing to wait for.

The four men in bulletproof vests go in. Two through the outside door. One first, the other right behind him. Two get in through a window at the back.

There isn’t a sound, apart from the noise of breaking glass from the back of the house. The others wait. One minute. Two.

Then one of them comes out onto the porch and waves. Okay to come in.

Lars-Gunnar’s body is lying on the floor in front of the kitchen sofa. The wall behind the sofa is spattered with his blood.

Sven-Erik and Tommy Rantakyrö push aside the cupboard that’s standing in the middle of the floor on top of the trapdoor.

“There’s somebody down here!” shouts Tommy Rantakyrö.

“Come on,” he says, reaching down a hand.

But the person who’s down there doesn’t come. In the end Tommy climbs down. The others can hear him.

“Shit! Okay, take it easy. Can you stand up?”

She comes up through the trapdoor. It takes a long time. The others help her. Support her under the arms. That makes her whimper a little.

It takes a fraction of a second before Anna-Maria recognizes Rebecka Martinsson.

* * *

Half of Rebecka’s face is swollen and black and blue. She has a large wound on her forehead and her upper lip is hanging off, held only by a flap of skin. “Looked like a pizza with everything on it,” Tommy Rantakyrö will say much later.

Anna-Maria is thinking mainly of her teeth. They’re clenched so tightly, as if her jaws have locked together.

“Rebecka,” says Anna-Maria. “What…”

But Rebecka waves her away. Anna-Maria sees her glance at the body on the kitchen floor before she walks stiffly out through the door.

Anna-Maria Mella, Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Tommy Rantakyrö follow her out.

Outside the sky has turned gray. The clouds are hanging low, heavy with rain.

Fred Olsson is standing out in the yard.

Not a word passes his lips when he catches sight of Rebecka. But his mouth opens around the unspoken words, and his eyes are staring.

Anna-Maria is watching Rebecka Martinsson. She’s standing like a statue in front of Nalle’s dead body. There’s something in her eyes. They all sense instinctively that this is not the time to touch her. She’s in a place of her own.

“Where the hell are the paramedics?” asks Anna-Maria.

“On the way,” someone replies.

Anna-Maria glances upward. It’s starting to spit with rain. They need to get something over the body lying outside. A tarpaulin or something.

Rebecka takes a step backwards. She waves her hand in front of her face as if there were something there she was trying to shoo away.

Then she begins to walk. First of all she staggers toward the house. Then she sways and walks toward the river instead. It’s as if she were blindfolded, doesn’t seem to know where she is or where she’s going.

The rain comes. Anna-Maria feels the chill of autumn like a torrent of cold air. It sweeps across the yard. Heavy, cold rain. A thousand icy needles. Anna-Maria pulls up the zip of her blue jacket, her chin disappears into the neckline. She needs to sort out that tarpaulin for the body.

“Keep an eye on her,” she shouts to Tommy Rantakyrö, pointing at Rebecka Martinsson who is still tottering away. “Keep her away from the gun in there, and from yours too. And don’t let her go down to the river.”

* * *

Rebecka Martinsson makes her way across the yard. There’s a big dead dead dead boy lying on the gravel. Not long ago he was sitting in the cellar with a biscuit in his hand, feeding a mouse.

It’s windy. The wind is roaring down inside her ears.

The sky is filled with black scratch marks, deep gouges that in their turn are filled with black ink. Is it raining? Has it started raining? She raises her hands tentatively toward the sky to see if they get wet. Her sleeves fall back, exposing the thin, bare wrists, the hands like naked birch trees. She drops her scarf on the grass.

* * *

Tommy Rantakyrö catches up with Rebecka Martinsson.

“Listen,” he says. “Don’t go down to the river. There’ll be an ambulance here in a minute, and then…”

She isn’t listening. Staggers on toward the riverbank. Now he thinks this is unpleasant. She’s unpleasant. Horrible staring eyes in that raw meat face. He doesn’t want to be alone with her.

“Sorry,” he says, grabbing hold of her arm. “I can’t… You just can’t go down there.”

* * *

Now the world splits open like a rotten fruit. Somebody’s got hold of her arm. It’s Pastor Vesa Larsson. He no longer has a face. A brown dog’s head is sitting on his shoulders. The black doggy eyes are looking accusingly at her. He had children. And dogs, who can’t weep.

“What do you want from me?” she screams.

Pastor Thomas Söderberg is standing there too. He is lifting dead babies out of the well. Bending down and lifting them out, one after the other. Holding them upside down, by the heel or by their little feet. They are naked and white. Their skin is loose, they’ve been in the water for a long time. He throws them onto a great big pile. It grows and grows in front of him.

When she quickly turns away, she’s standing face to face with her mother. She’s so clean and smart.

“Don’t you touch me,” she says to Rebecka. “Do you understand? Do you understand what you’ve done?”

* * *

Anna-Maria Mella has got hold of a rug. She’s going to put it over Lars-Gunnar’s son. It’s not so easy to know what the scene of crime technicians will want her to do. She also needs to set up some kind of barricade before the whole village starts turning up. And the press. Why did it have to bloody rain? In the middle of everything, when she’s shouting about barricades and half-running with the rug, she longs for Robert. For this evening, when she’ll be able to sob in his arms. Because everything is so pointless and so unbearable.

Tommy Rantakyrö calls out to her and she turns.

“I can’t hold her,” he shouts.

He’s wrestling with Rebecka Martinsson in the grass. Her arms are flailing, hitting out wildly. She breaks free and begins to run down to the river.

Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Fred Olsson set off after her. Anna-Maria hardly has time to react before Sven-Erik has almost caught up with her. Fred Olsson is right behind him. They grab hold of Rebecka. She’s like a snake in Sven-Erik’s arms.

“It’s okay,” says Sven-Erik loudly. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Tommy Rantakyrö is holding his hand under his nose. A trickle of blood is seeping through his fingers. Anna-Maria always has paper tissues in her pockets. Gustav always needs something wiped off his face. Ice cream, banana, snot. She passes the tissue to Tommy.

“Get her down on the ground,” shouts Fred Olsson. “We need to cuff her.”

“Like hell we do,” answers Sven-Erik sharply. “Is the ambulance coming soon?”

The last remark is shouted to Anna-Maria. She makes a movement with her head to indicate that she doesn’t know. Sven-Erik and Fred Olsson are now each holding on to one of Rebecka Martinsson’s arms. She’s on her knees between them, lurching from side to side.

At that very moment the ambulance finally arrives. Closely followed by another radio car. Flashing lights and sirens slicing through the hard gray rain. There’s a hell of a noise.

And right through the middle of it all Anna-Maria can hear Rebecka Martinsson screaming.

* * *

Rebecka Martinsson is screaming. She’s screaming like someone who’s lost her mind. She can’t stop.