He offered his hand and Vidar shookit.
“Great. Where are we?”
Adrian looked puzzled. “In Skavböke?”
“I mean the landslide.” Vidar pointed at the field. “The foliage isdifferent here; it runs along the edge of this field almost like a ribbon. What was here before the landslide?”
Adrian scratched the back of his head. “I was three years old back then, in 1999. I don’t know. But I can find out.”
The young man hurried off toward one of the patrol cars. Taking care not to make a wrong step, Vidar ducked under the blue-and-white tape and picked his way to the body.
He was a slender man, Filip Söderström, skinny and sinewy, with pronounced shoulders. He hadn’t even made it to forty, but his face looked like the far side of fifty. A shadow of stubble covered his chin and cheeks. The blow to his head had cracked his skull, and his head rested in a sludge of blood and broken soil.
The hands of a tradesman, with black rinds under the nails, dirty fingers, veins standing out on his forearms. No marks in the bend of his elbow—not anymore, but they’d been there once; as Vidar knew, old tracks went deep into the skin. Jeans and a T-shirt; in his pockets they’d found a wallet, a lighter, keys to his house and a company van that was sitting silent and unlocked out on the road.
It was cool outside now. Lovely—you could breathe again. Vidar crouched down. No doubt this was the scene of the crime. Tracks in the grass and dirt; footprints. Vidar squinted and studied the ground at such close range that he could smellit.
Blood. Spatter on the little green blades.
“Hello,” someone said. “Hey.”
Vidar stood up and turned his head. The young officer was back. Adrian something. He was holding his phone. Then he realized where he was standing and looked at his shoes as if he’d destroyed a very important piece of evidence.
“Shit.”
“It’s fine. Just watch where you step on your way back. What is it?”
“Well, I found an old map; it was faster that way. There was a farm right here, as you can see. Several buildings.”
He held the screen toward Vidar.
“Find out who it belonged to,” he said, turning back to the body. “And,” he added, “find the names of the people who worked on the investigation back then.”
The response was immediate.
“The farm was theirs.”
“Whose?”
The officer nodded at Filip Söderström.
“The farm—it belonged to the Söderströms. I sent a picture to my dad and asked him. He drives a truck and used to have deliveries out here sometimes, so I took the chance. Their house was right here.”
Vidar raised an eyebrow. Only now did he realize his young colleague was shaken up by the sight of the body.
“Well done,” he said to Adrian. Curious onlookers were starting to gather around the police tape, in the warm night. “So he was killed on what used to be his own family farm.”
“Sure iskymig,” Adrian said tentatively. “Right? It is, isn’t it?”
Brothers,Vidar thought again.Two dead brothers.
“Yes,” he said. “Kymigindeed.”
61
Jakob Lindell climbed out of his car in front of the house on Backavägen. He was wearing worn jeans and an oil-stained T-shirt, and he took in his surroundings as though he’d stepped into a completely unfamiliar world.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before,” he said. “Damn, it’s lovely. Everything is so…neat, somehow.”
