Fear Of Broken Glass

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 1

THE ELEMENTS

FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 2

by Mark David

Something strange has been going on for a very, very long time...

Ten years in the making, the prologue to the epic Elements series involves a notorious wilderness with a macabre past; a reconstructed Viking church by the shore of a Swedish lake. And a painting, a lost masterpiece framed in runic inscriptions without an owner – all connected with crimes that were never meant to be solved.

When Hasse Almquist, a detective with a tarnished reputation is brought in to investigate a murder at an ancient site of pagan worship, Troll Church Hill, little can he know nothing is at it seems. The site of a macabre crime where Danish art gallery owner Thomas Denisen has been discovered dead, his eyes removed and nails hammered through his feet, the hallowed pagan ground in the middle of the Swedish Tiveden National Park draws troublesome connections to a remote and disturbing past.

The detective begins his investigation by linking the apparently ritual killing to four unsolved serial murders from the 1970’s. His enquiries take him to the remote Gotfrid’s Homestead, temporary home to the remaining members of the group visiting from Copenhagen the deceased victim had been a part of. Each of them guard a hidden secret involving the painting found in the back of the victim’s car – and the reasons for their involvement. This complicates his investigation and weakens his chances of solving the crime and how it is related to the unsolved murders of the past.

Attempting to piece together a complex and fragmented picture linking motives to murders involving pagan practices, Almquist takes the decision to isolate the suspects from the outside world. Thus is the stage set for a journey into the past, catalyzing a sequence of events with consequences for revealing the identity of the killer and the crimes of the past. The detective will accept too late, that he has himself been a contributing factor to the murder, opening Pandora’s Box and all that lies within. With deadly forces already in motion, the investigators and suspects alike will both become a part of each others fate, unwilling participants in a greater and much darker universe than the one they thought they inhabited.

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Copyright

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2017 Mark David – 5 chapter sample –

The right of Mark David to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Fear Of Broken Glass is a work of the imagination. Names, characters, places, and happenings are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

THIS IS A BOOK PREVIEW

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The Elements Prologue

Fear of Broken Glass

Everyone has a secret This is a sample. If you like the story, please support the years of dedicated work that has gone into crafting it by purchasing the eBook – go to the book homepage↾ with links to the seller of your choice.

More about the epic Elements project on elementamundi.com

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Prologue ***

I dream of a bird He hung suspended in the air. In that briefest of moments that lasted an eternity, he knew. He knew why they said people saw their life flash by, voices from the past already playing.

I dream of an eagle ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news first?’

Then, like a diver sinking down, he looked backwards and upwards, up at the surface of his former life with arms outstretched, unable to see the land of contrasts to which he could never return.

‘The good news first.’

The sensation lasted but a moment; a brief sense of confusion as the sky inverted, replaced by the stairs – each step so sharp and detailed it could have been a photograph taken by a large format camera. He could take in every tread of weathered pine wood, seeing the pine cones littering their surfaces, the telltale print of mud made moments before by his own boots.

I dream I fly So many steps followed by an inevitable look of physical incomprehension, his mind liberated from his body as it accelerated beyond the first momentary feeling of weightlessness. And yet, he still had time, time to take in rounded forms of smoothly formed rock, before his mind caught up to tell him, this is it, you’re falling. You are going to die.

‘The good news is it might be worth something.’

I am flying on wings, so high He accepted his fate the moment he sensed disconnection from the physical world, his forward motion drawing him onwards and downwards, towards the inevitable he already knew was coming.

‘At least five thousand US at auction...’

He saw Justin standing there, like one of the magi bearing gifts for an infant King and yet, it was his own voice he heard.

‘Maybe more if you can find a collector who is interested.’

The first impact happened at the twenty-third step. He hit it with the back of his head, severing part of his scalp and compressing the first four vertebrae of

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his neck.

Like a great bird of the sky Down, downwards, accelerating, eighty-two kilograms of adult male increasing in rotational momentum, arms and legs flayed by the pull of gravity.

‘So what’s the bad news?’

The fifteenth step shattered his back at the junction between the cervical and thoracic spine. The impact forced the seventh vertebrae to cut through the central nerve system, removing him of any future mobility.

I’m the eagle flying with ease ‘The bad news is, that if it was an original, it would be worth at least ten times that.’

The body succumbing to the simple laws of physics, legs spinning backwards and outwards in the course of the third revolution.

The body hit the seventh step left-leg first...

‘Which means it’s by an amateur, painting in the style of.’ ... followed by a sharp crack as if from a whip, shattering the lower fibula and tibia half way between the knee and ankle, the tibia slicing through the muscular tissue of his lower leg.

‘I need more time to make a more detailed search.’

I can ride on the breeze The left arm snapped at the ulna radius, the body commencing one final rotation.

‘For the time being consider it like a sparkling wine...’

The fourth and last impact landed on the cheek bone and lower jaw, mandible dislocating as he hit the ground. The broken edge of the tibia punctured the remaining muscle, piercing upwards through the softer subcutaneous tissue.

Over these mountains and forests ‘It looks and feels just like the real thing, but it isn’t Champagne... my advice is keep it and don’t bother selling it. But it does have merit. It’s a nice little piece.’

He was still alive. He felt sunshine, heard footsteps.

Like a ship on the seas The footsteps were getting louder. He opened his eyes feeling unfamiliar. His mouth and jaw felt strange, recognising the metallic taste of large quantities of blood coming from somewhere inside his cheek. He tried to raise his head.

Pressure, unbearable pressure forcing him to relax his head so it hit the hard, cold and wet ground.

He could see the stair.

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The footsteps stopped. Close. Very close. Stair upon stair, rising into the clouds. The touch of something... rounded. Pleasant. Cold. It rested on the soft skin of his cheek, then his eyelid. He wanted to raise his hand and brush it away. The touch became a pain. He wanted to fight but his body wouldn’t respond. Pressure building, words strangled by the hand clamped across his mouth, the same hand stifling the screams exploding somewhere inside his head, his body as still as silence itself.

A metal implement entered the corner of his eye, turning inwards, puncturing skin and tendon. He gasped as it went in deep, then deeper, the joy of light taken as it severed the optical nerve and retinal blood vessels. He choked on his screams as the rounded implement following the concave curvature of his socket, twisting to one side, ripping through remaining tissue before being levered outwards. Something hit the earth with a faint sound that was felt more than heard. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst was he still had one, good eye left.

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Part 1: DISCOVERY

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Chapter 1

A PAST UNITED

Sacrifice is offered to the spirits, everyone is sprinkled with the blood.

The best part is gifted to the spirits, what remains is to be consumed by men...

Trollkyrka Rites

13th October 1987 18:30 The air was heavy, sky darkening, the smell of rain pervasive despite the absence of raindrops. A black coupé was parked close to the edge of the forest, three hours walk from the rock called Troll’s Church, doors open. Mud-spattered alloy wheels greeted the visitors with the four-quadrant symbol of what had once been a utilitarian propeller, now synonymous with luxury, rain-studded windows illuminated from within by a light moving in the vicinity of the rear seat.

What had started as the execution of a routine duty had become a search for a killer. The victim’s car had been discovered in the west visitor’s car park. Two detectives worked rhythmically and routinely, searching with precision, despite being confined to cramped working conditions.

‘Whoever parked here was in a hurry,’ the first of the detectives said, the taller and bulkier of the two. He was leaning half-in, half-out of the car and paused for a moment, gazing past the driver’s door to the missing lining panel. It lay discarded on the passenger seat, dark cavities revealed and already forgotten.

His leaner, quicker companion with the flashlight turned to look at him. The second detective was the senior officer called Lindgren. He sat on the back seat,

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white rubber-gloved hands poised. He looked out at the dark edge of the tree line beyond the vehicle, to where a path marker provided entry to the unseen park and nodded.

The first detective retreated, sliding the driver’s seat into the down-forward position, so he could climb in to the back seat and sit down next to his companion who had his back to him. ‘I heard they passed the case to Almquist.’

Lindgren didn’t respond, concentrating on the task of inserting the flat edge of a knife blade underneath the fake leather lining of the side panel.

‘Some say he hasn’t got it in him,’ the first detective continued, turning his attention to the back lining behind the driver’s seat. ‘He’s getting a bit long in the tooth for this kind of thing if you ask me.’ He fumbled a hand into his pocket for his own knife, his breath vaporizing in the cold night air. ‘Should have quit when he was ahead.’

‘That’s the problem though isn’t it?’ Lindgren said quietly, turning around. He moved the light down to the seat, the light above his head lighting brown hair blonde. ‘He’s never been ahead, has he?’

‘Ah, that’s not true,’ the first detective moved his gloved hand along the edges of the lining, feeling with his fingers.

Occasional raindrops hit the metal roof above them as Lindgren returned to his task and pulled the liner, knife in hand. ‘Four times.’ He wrapped his white fingers around the edge and pulled. ‘Each one bad luck?’ he snorted as the panel came away with a series of popping sounds, the remaining plastic plugs pulled from their sockets. He directed a thin aluminum pen flashlight into the shadows of another cavity. ‘Some people are just born that way.’

‘Anyone can have bad luck.’

‘No. Mark my words,’ Lindgren said slowly, eyes scanning each crevice. ‘He won’t get anywhere.’ He sat there staring into the cavity for a moment before shaking his head.

The first detective grunted as he heaved, turning his back on Lindgren to look inside without seeing anything. ‘Then he could do with all the help he can get.’

Lindgren shook his head, turning around with the flash light in his hand.

‘Help? In most cases, cases like this... it’s like walking a path littered with rubble in the dark. It can be right there, in front of us.’ He waved the light on the seat, then moved it upward so it blinded his companion. ‘All we need is a little light.’ He moved the light away and smiled as he placed a hand in his pocket, taking out a piece of gum and popping it into his mouth, ‘All we have to do is follow it, picking up as we go along. But not Almquist...’

‘Cos he’s not up to it?’

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‘Nah. He hasn’t got a light,’ he said raising his head. ‘Does he?’

‘He’s got Vikland.’

Lindgren smirked, turning the flashlight so it shone inside the back seat cavity.

‘What was the last murder case you can remember she worked on?’

‘She had a few in Stockholm.’

The droplets became random, quickening in the silence.

Lindgren shook his head, leaning closer, moving the light downwards. He shone it to one side, then the other as he chewed. ‘But this –’ he sat upright with a smug look, ‘well, with what we have here, we can’t follow that path, light or no light.’

The first detective frowned. He turned and waited.

Lindgren read his look, eyes never leaving the cavity, breath filling the light.

‘This isn’t Stockholm,’ he said softly, reaching a hand inside. He closed his fingers around a package wrapped in black plastic sealed with silver duct tape.

He returned the pen light to the seat and using both hands removed it from it’s hiding place as he chewed.

‘What is it?’ The first detective leaned forwards, face intense.

‘You might not be around long enough to see the end of this.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Just take my word for it...’ Lindgren smirked, face lit from below. ‘It’s not something you want to know about.’

The first detective looked at his superior, eyes shining and stayed looking at him for a long time but refrained from asking the unasked questions.

‘I tell you what,’ Lindgren said quietly, the droplets intensifying to rain. He turned off the flashlight and sat upright looking thoughtful. ‘For now, we’re going to sit back. Let him do the driving.’ He looked down at the dark package in his hands for a moment. ‘Just follow at a healthy distance, see what he picks up on the gloomy path ahead. Because wherever this leads,’ he chewed and felt the package with one hand as if confirming something he already knew. He dropped his voice turning his light to shine in his companion’s face. ‘No amount of light is going to make the blindest bit of difference to anyone, least of all Almquist.’

It had started again. Somewhere within this bleached landscape blurred by the worsening weather was Æsahult church. Somewhere amongst the crowns of conifers, rising, stretching uniform for as far as the eye could see; somewhere amongst an even cloth of green turned gray in a blanket of regret. He searched

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for the tell-tale tiered roof, rotor blades beating in the pit of his stomach but looked in vain, finding nothing.

The forest thinned, revealing the first houses and homesteads of Lindhult, passing a drab patchwork of lifeless plantations and meagre agricultural pastures towards more forest. Then he saw it, to the side, the spire and clustered form of Æsahult church. It appeared out of the mist and was gone, soon passing across the dull, lifeless waters of the lake called Unden as dark and gray as the sky, approaching the eastern shore and the open strip that was the village of Tived and the East Lake Road. Watching over swathes of muted grassed meadow as the helicopter banked southeast towards denser forest, to where the land seemed like a deep-pile rug, worn in places to a threadbare carpet, exposed to the underlying bedrock. Here and there single boulders rose as large as houses, tall and proud. The rise and fall of hills of stone. Other lakes smaller, darker, black holes in dark minds, relieved by the dark-green of fir trees blending with the lighter green of pine, those smaller, more forlorn trees with trunks and branches almost as bent and twisted as his own thoughts.

There had been four murders.

He raised his hand and rubbed his beard, watching the pilot lean to his side as he looked down, scanning the park, the helicopter’s nose lifting as it slowed, descending, whipping the rain-laden air.

The last one had been in ’79.

But why now? He looked down to two officers looking up, searching for Elin and felt some sense of relief in having her here, grateful he had avoided the long walk. Where it had taken them minutes, his colleagues had used hours on foot; unable to bring with them more than they could carry, they had walked the breadth of the Tiveden National Park. Not Sweden’s largest, by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly it’s most rugged and inhospitable.

He looked over to the pilot, pointing downwards. The pilot moved the control, the helicopter whining, banking, turning towards open ground.

It wasn’t over.

Almquist placed a hand inside his jacket, finding his A5 notebook. He flipped a page, one name standing out from all the others and looked out of the cabin. It wasn’t the place that chilled him, or its history, having witnessed more blood than most would ever know. No, it was the name. With the sixth sense that tells any detective he was walking into a trap, he resolutely prepared himself for the worst.

Eklund.

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Light rain pattering his shoulders, Hasse Almquist removed the box of matches from the depths of a heavy gray coat, removing a match, glancing below him, his police cap sheltering it from the rain. He held it firmly yet delicately between thumb and forefinger and applied pressure, forcing his fingers backwards. The bulbous head of chlorate caught against the binder of powdered glass and red phosphorous striking, igniting, erupting into a small fireball. He cupped his hands around the flame and let it take until the splint burned evenly, drawing it towards the end of the cigarette hanging from pale, uneven lips. He sucked, igniting the tobacco bright orange and took two pulls, raising his bearded face to the darkening sky, letting out the smoke, relishing its familiar calming sensation. He lowered his head, the sound of a light rain upon peaked cap, experienced eyes below sagging eyelids scanning the scrub below. He turned towards a long steep flight of wooden steps; a crude affair made for the sole purpose of providing hikers access to the summit. One continuous flight of thirty-one steps, wet and slippery, lethal for those without the right footwear.

But that wasn’t why the man was dead, he knew that already.

Cigarette in mouth, Almquist removed his rain-dusted glasses, placing them in his top coat pocket and took hold of the pair of black rubber binoculars hanging around his neck, raising them to his eyes. He turned the ribbed dial so an image shifted into focus, taking form out of the blurred shades of sodden earth. The corpse had the look of the damned, he thought, laying in a heap in a puddle of muddy water. One leg was folded impossibly under the other, bent upwards at the knee, shards of jagged white bone showing pink where it emerged from sodden faded blue jeans.

‘His spine probably snapped before he hit the ground. Leg, back and skull are shattered.’

Almquist nodded at the woman’s voice as he panned slowly to the right, away from the twisted upper torso towards the rock and scrub. He stopped at a solitary boot. It was caked in mud.

‘He didn’t have a chance.’

He moved the binoculars back towards the body again, down to the head and could see why, stopping at the mess of the poor man’s face. The side of his jaw hung at a lopsided angle as if in a last, impossible scream. Then downwards, to once fine white feet without their shoes. Smooth; unused to walking, filthy and soiled in a way only Almquist really understood, despite the rain.

Elin Vikland was dressed in blue service clothes; red-brown shoulder length hair flicked out at the sides and a surprising amount of jewelry. A

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large silver-looking ring on her wet finger with a smooth stone in the centre and five or six bracelets of silver around her wrist; a small hunting knife in a polished black leather scabbard at her side. He reminded himself to have a word with her about that.

She sighed. ‘I’m sorry Hasse. They are making it our case, even though the body lies inside Skaraborg County. They insisted.’

Insisted? They had never insisted before. Insisting was enough to dampen the mood of anyone on his team. He was going to be busy before he could get home to the football and a TV dinner followed by a malt.

Cursing silently, Almquist watched his staff processing the scene, going about their jobs, words few and actions many. He lowered his binoculars and held his cigarette for a moment just taking it all in. He took another long pull, raising his head, blowing the blue-gray smoke into a miserable dark-gray October sky.

With a sigh, shoulders sagging, he flicked his rain-damp cigarette butt to the ground. He didn’t have a choice, he knew that. He had thought it was all over.

And now, he was cornered. If he said no, it could mean a premature redundancy without a pension. The murder was one thing, the reason why they had gone out of their way to make it his case something else. Reluctantly, he turned away, knowing he was being used like a doormat, something upon which could be wiped someone else’s shit. After all, they had gone out of their way to make it his case.

‘Has anyone touched the body?’

Six-inch carpenters nails penetrated bare feet congealed with blood.

The Forensics Officer had her back to him. She wore a loose rain poncho and rain hat. Looking at those feet, he felt a sense of relief when she shook her head.

‘I have a boot-print.’

‘Hiker?’

She shrugged, pointing to a patch of moist ground not far from the body.

‘One, maybe two good ones. Too many pine needles for more.’

‘Make a cast.’ As if she needed telling. ‘Keep looking.’

They were five. Five was good for a case like this; close knit, yet enough minds to cover the information and angles. Elin Vikland walked over. She held a clear plastic bag studded with rain drops.

‘Thomas Denisen. Danish. Thirty-eight; here, we found this.’ She passed him a wallet inside the forensics bag. ‘Died from loss of blood or a broken neck, take your pick; dead less than twenty-four hours.’

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Always effective, Elin was. Almquist nodded his appreciation as he placed it inside his top pocket, reaching behind him to remove a pair of white rubber surgical gloves from his back pocket, shaking them to life.

‘Anything worth asking about?’

She was slightly taller than average. Fit, dressed in the same police cap as his own, thick blue jacket and trousers of winter police issue. She replaced the bag inside her jacket pocket. ‘Apart from ID? Handwritten instructions, in Danish, some place called Gotfridsgaarden.’

Gotfridsgaarden? ‘Anything else?’

‘Only the wallet.’ She tried to smile. ‘We left the rest for you.’

With a false look of gratitude, Almquist pulled the surgical rubber gloves over well-padded freckled fingers, back and forth, one after the other, letting go with a short, sharp snap. Kneeling down, he ran his rubber-coated hands over the cold wet clothing, like a security check at the airport. He placed a hand carefully inside the first pocket of the victim’s windbreaker, then the other. He examined his trouser pockets, then turned to look at Vikland as Second Officer Lindgren shook his head in the background, talking animatedly with the Forensics Officer.

Elin Vikland was standing as patiently as she always stood, listening as only she could listen, neither agreeing or disagreeing. That was her way and that was why he liked working with her.

He turned his back to the body, walking to join the other members of his team stopping, listening briefly, then turning once again to look at it from the other side. Squatting down, breathing in deeply, he rested his forearms across bent thighs, his peaked cap keeping the worst of the rain off his glasses.

Sagging bags under weary eyes made him look like a bloodhound. It was with a sense of tracking the unseen, that he took in the formless remains. It made him feel so shamefully nauseous, fighting the urge to retch as he moved his focus upwards, to the drying congealed mess of hollow eye sockets. Then finally, he took the courage to study the details that had made it his case.

What kind of person could do this to another? he wondered, feeling now the familiar nauseous pull deep in the pit of his stomach. The eyes had been crudely removed, yet carefully. The remains discarded and formless, left on the ground at the side of his head, worthless. He raised a hand to his mouth, tasting bile. He hid his weakness in a gesture of concentration and made as if to study in detail the blood and other

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liquids, leaving a trail over the good side of a ruined face. In that moment he gathered himself and breathed in deeply. He took a moment, then another, his hand clamped to his chin. The timing of such a deed could never be a coincidence, he knew that. He knew it, and it sickened him.

Only when he felt able did he stand up.

He knew then, any thread of normality had been taken from him. And in some small way, he felt affinity with the victim. Anything he himself had left, anything he could cling to, cut in two, as if with a snip from surgical scissors. The before from the after, both clinically removed from each other, just as the eyes had been severed from their host. Here was the new dead brother to four older sisters – all residing within the archives of old cardboard boxes left to gather dust in dark places. Except.

He didn’t belong here.

Almquist looked past the body back towards the rising steps. He looked back again at the corpse and scratched his chin.

It didn’t belong now.

Rotor blades whipped the air to a frenzy. Ripples cascading down his trousers, Almquist nodded to Elin then thanked the pilot, before running out, hand on his blue police cap on head. He made for Oskar Lindgren waiting a dozen paces from the victim’s car and murmured a greeting, then looked over his shoulder to see the helicopter rise. Engines whining, it rose unsteadily. Elin Vikland waved a farewell before it banked away, heading out over the beach. Almquist waited, watching it fly over the still dark waters of Tiveden lake, then glancing up at the gloom of the afternoon sky made for the sleek black BMW. Lindgren reached inside, removing a small package wrapped in black plastic and offered it to him. ‘We thought you’d enjoy the honor of opening it. Found it in the left rear panel. Merry Christmas.’

Almquist took it, weighing it in his hands. It was light.

‘Prints?’

‘The driver’s. And others.’

‘Get what you can.’ Almquist removed himself and stood up, placing the package on the low roof of the coupé, the light rain making small impact sounds on the soft plastic.

It was rectangular, half an arm in height and half of that in width. He turned it over, pulling off the duct tape. He repeated the procedure for all the taped edges, stretching the plastic until it thinned, applying pressure until it tore. He looked

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for a moment, a frown creasing his forehead, raising a hand to rub his beard for a moment before offering it to Oskar Lindgren. Lindgren tore off the last of the plastic, letting it fall to ground as he held up a small canvas. He breathed out once, heavily from his nose and looked across at Almquist with a look of wonder.

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Chapter 2

SURPRISE

Wise shall he seem who well can question, And also answer well; Nought is concealed that men may say Among the sons of men Stanza 28, Hávamál

Rune, Justin knew, was a word that came from the Gothic word, Runa. It meant mystery, or secret. Surely that meant a runic secret was a secret’s secret then?

Whatever it was, it was a small word for big ideas, someone had once said. It was also the reason why they’d made the bloody trip in the first place.

He looked out of the passenger window at a rocky landscape that shifted from valley to hillock, from tall thin pines to exposed bedrock. Here and there little lakes, like watery pockets he thought, all of them hidden behind a thin veil of rain, drops turning the still waters into a pattern of a million circles. It was a fitting setting, these lost inner lands of the Norse. This was an older, more ancient people of old Scandza, Ash kept going on about, some of whom in time would come to be known as Vikingr, or Vikings. Some had to have believed in something runic.

Most of the time Justin just ignored him. But not this time.

Ash accelerated down the stretch of road leading north for Norra Vägen, his words falling into rhythm with the regular beat of windscreen wipers.

‘Knowledge of such secrets could only truly be attained by the act of death,’ he said from behind the wheel. ‘So they’d sacrifice people in the woods and all that, you know, to appease the Gods. That’s what they did in Tiveden. Place of sacrifice, been going on for donkey’s years.’

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‘So now we know why Hörgrlund was important.’

‘Old place of worship, old customs, fucked-up people who burned women just because they fancied a monk or two. Not that any of it was odd, mind. They’d pretty much been nabbin’ people from time immemorial, to slit their throats and pour blood over the rocks. All to do with life blood, wasn’t it? Putting all the life back into the land and all that. And did you notice the way the Pastor wrung his hands all the time?’

When Ash got the bit between his teeth there was no stopping him. The Pastor at the church had told them about a woman called Æsa. She had inherited the place called Æsahult after her father was killed. Some feud he’d said, not that it made a lot of sense. Æsahult was a what they called a stave church, because it was built of overlapping wood, the old-style church from Viking times. He’d been a dour old bastard, the Pastor, Ash said.

This time, Justin had to agree with him.

His thoughts evaporated with the miracle of an evening sun as it broke briefly through a shift in the clouds, light playing across the contours of rock; looking like a golden bow across a granite violin. He turned to look behind them, the clouds as black as coal, the sunlight from the west, lighting the rain like wires of moving gold.

‘What else did it say?’

Justin looked back down at the brochure still held in his hands. He scanned the rest of the text, looking down at the illustration of an old medieval map. ‘As a girl, Æsa had been taken to the forest and left to die – by her father. Except, she was found by a dog and she followed it back to her father’s house. Æsa survived. The elders of the community were called together to pass judgement, as was their custom. They took her survival to be an act of the gods.’ Justin looked across. ‘So they let her live. After that day, they honored the Elders, forming some foundation or something. Later, they turned against her.’

Ash kept his eyes on the road, taking it all in.

‘That was after she killed her father. She was convicted for being a witch.’ He looked up. ‘It says she was burned for her sins. Sins... I don’t get that. It sounds like...’

‘That she deserved burning?’

‘Exactly.’

Ash looked across. ‘Why did she kill her father then?’

Her father had been an old Viking chieftain, the Pastor had said.

Justin’s eyes scanned the text again. ‘He’d been on a raiding expedition.

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Came back one day with a monk. The monk and Æsa became friends, and he christened her, in secret. She must have hated her father, since she honored the monk instead of him, even dedicating the church to him.

Later, her father found out and hung the monk from a tree.’

‘The father hung the monk?’

Ash was looking across at Justin as the figure emerged out of the rain, standing in the middle of the road.

Ash slammed on the brakes and swerved to the far side of the wet road, narrowly avoiding the solitary hitchhiker. He had his thumb thrust out in the hope of a ride out of misery, turning his head as the car passed by. Ash cursed, shifting into a lower gear, speeding up.

Justin saw the face of a young woman, their eyes making contact, separated momentarily by a pane of glass studded with rain. ‘Pull over.’

Ash looked across.

‘Pull over!’

Ash applied the brakes again, pulling over to the side of the road. Justin wound down the window, a thousand raindrops between them. The moment lasted but the time it took for the droplets to kiss the polish of a clean road; the hitchhiker standing as still as a statue close to the middle of the road, legs parted, looking in his direction.

‘Where are you going?’ he shouted out.

She just stood there, hesitant, as if she wasn’t sure who they were, not used to someone speaking English in such a backward place, in the middle of the road on a miserable, wet day in the autumn.

‘Do you speak English?’

The hitchhiker paused, then nodded. Head down against the rain, she ran towards the passenger window. ‘Anywhere but here,’ she said in American English.

Justin held the look for a moment, then turned to look around.

‘My car’s a couple of kilometers away.’ She said as if reading his mind, looking up and down the road, returning her attention back to Justin. ‘Can I have a ride?’

Justin didn’t know what to say.

‘I could really do with a ride.’

There was something about her that didn’t quite seem right, he thought. Then seeing how attractive she was, he looked across at Ash. Ash nodded, once.

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 22

Justin raised a hand, motioning to the door behind him. ‘Be our guest.’

She released the straps holding her pack, letting it down and opening the door, climbed in. ‘Are you English?’ she asked, closing the door.

Justin nodded.

‘Sorry for getting your car wet.’ Water dripped off her backpack and drab waterproof anorak stained with mud. She peeled back her hood, revealing damp blonde hair. It gave her a tussled, sexy look; light white edges on a darker bed, wet and clinging, strands hanging forwards over one side of a fine, almost perfectly formed face.

If he’d had any breath she would have taken it then and there. Justin smiled instead.

Ash looked at her from the driver’s mirror as he indicated, pulling out and nodded in greeting. ‘Ash – I could have run you over.’

She looked at him, eyes meeting. ‘I’m Ulrika.’ She looked out of the back, then smiled before turning towards Justin. Then she looked up into the mirror again, rain dropping off her lashes, brown eyes that seemed fragile and yet reassuringly self-confident.

Justin smiled back from the front seat. ‘Hi, I’m Justin.’

Ulrika leaned forward raising her hand, taken by his, giving him her attention.

‘Thank you so much for stopping.’

‘What are you doing out here?’ Ash asked.

Ulrika looked back up into the driver’s mirror. ‘Just an assignment gone wrong; I got caught in the rain.’ She shook her head, looking away.

‘What kind of assignment?’ Justin asked.

‘I’m a photographer; magazines, mostly.’ She looked back out of the rear window for a moment, then turned back to Justin with a sense of gratitude. ‘I’m working on an article – Swedish lakes. It usually goes well. But today ...’ She looked up at the sky, then back again. ‘I guess I got unlucky... and lost.’

Justin relaxed, understanding now why she seemed so desperate to get in.

‘You research landscapes?’ Ash called out.

Justin watched her look towards the driver’s mirror again. ‘What kind of pictures?’

‘Anything... natural.’ She seemed to be weighing him, then shivered, rubbing her hands together as she turned to look back down the road.

Justin looked down at her clothes. ‘Christ, you’re soaked.’

It was Ash who asked the question. ‘So how did you end up in the middle of the road, miles from anywhere then?’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 23

‘She seemed reluctant.’

Justin looked across. ‘Reluctant?’

Ulrika was outside in front of them, looking around the car park. She walked to her car, opening the back and reaching inside.

The two men sat side by side in the stationary Citroën; two heads eyes front. It was the saddest car Justin had seen in a long time, the color of mustard that had gone off. A Fiat 127 looking like it had just been retrieved from the scrap heap, driven without respect by learners; dented, beaten and covered in a continuous line of flaky rust that extended around every door edge and wheel arch.

‘What do you think?’ Ash asked.

‘Pile of old junk.’

‘The girl I meant. Bet it’s seen a lot of action, if you know what I mean?’ Ash grinned, ‘I think she’s a bit of all right.’

‘A bit of all right.’ Justin watched her walk around to the open door, opening it and taking hold of a loose bag then placing it on the seat. ‘Is that all, a bit of all right?’

Ash watched her, then looked across at his companion speaking slowly.

‘Yeah, a bit of all right.’ He turned back again without waiting for a reply.

They watched the back of Ulrika’s head as she removed items of clothing.

First her jacket, sitting half in, half out of the rain. She reached down and unlaced her hiker’s boots, fast yet effective hands pulling off first one, then the other, before placing each foot inside the car. She stretched upwards, as she must when taking off wet trousers.

‘So you think she’s worth a visit then?’ Justin looked across at Ash. ‘Is that what you mean?’

Ash didn’t say anything. He watched her as she removed another item of clothing. A hand appeared holding a pair of jeans, disappearing again. And all the while the two men watched in silence. She took off her wet clothes, rubbing her hair with a jumper. When she was done she pulled a jumper over her tousled head and leaned out of the car, taking off her wet hiking socks, revealing the fine white skin of slender ankles.

‘That is what I mean.’ Ash was looking at her with intensity as she rubbed her feet, briefly, before pulling them back inside the car.

Ulrika was quick, getting out, transformed, dressed in black leather boots with heels and a short red leather jacket above tight-fitting dark blue denims: A

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 24

striking contrast to the drab, dark and wet olive green of her hiking gear. She looked around the car park, then back at the two waiting men and gave them a smile and the thumbs up.

Ash responded with his own thumb without smiling, then looked at Justin. ‘Not much room for a three point turn in there.’

Justin watched Ulrika get back into the car, stretch denims so tight they revealed each curve of her slender posterior. ‘Not much.’

‘I think we should invite her back. Being out here, exposed and all.’

Ash turned to his companion and gave him a knowing look.

Justin turned to his side, watching her tussled hair. Then he was getting out of the car, walking towards her. He looked across the car park at five other cars. All empty. And a police car, also empty. Ulrika looked up as Justin reached the open driver’s door, leaning forwards to look down at her, smiling.

‘Hungry? We live only a few minutes from here.’

Ulrika took her hands off the keys and looked up, hesitantly. ‘I really have to get back.’ She looked away, out into the park.

‘Something to eat, some coffee before hitting the road?’

Her hand reached for the keys again. ‘Really, I have to be going.’ She nodded, ‘Thanks so much for the lift.’

Then Ash was standing next to Justin. ‘Come on, come and meet the rest of the guys.’

‘There are more of you? Where from?’

Justin looked across, hating the way Ash nodded, smiling like that. He hated even more, the way he said it, as if it was an invitation to a party only the hosts knew the nature of. ‘Denmark,’ he said. ‘We all drove up from Copenhagen.’

Ground dark, clouds parting, the last light of a fading sky receding.

Almquist sat next to Elin Vikland, looking out at the illuminated white line rolling towards them as she drove. Ahead, one of the many small lakes reflecting a brooding wet sky, their orange Saab set against a backdrop austere and beautiful. To their left, the high ridge of a bowlshaped valley rising out of the darkness, bordered on each side by a rocky escarpment crowned in thickets of pine.

Hasse Almquist had left the others to finish off at the site, Lindgren overseeing the removal of the body to the morgue by helicopter, the

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 25

Forensics Officer to gather what could be gathered before dark.

‘He could have just gone for a walk, gotten lost.’

Almquist shook his head, face falling into the solemn expression he wore when troubled. ‘Perhaps. And then someone comes along to take his eyes for souvenirs?’ He thought about that.

‘We’ll catch whoever did it.’

He looked across.

She looked back. ‘You’re not on your own this time.’ Her eyes moved back to the road. ‘Something like this can’t remain hidden for long.’

‘You want to plan the investigation?’

She nodded, ‘If you want. Someone somewhere must have seen something... we could start compiling a list of all the people in the vicinity. Descriptions of people they had seen, compare descriptions, make a list of matches.’ She halfsmiled. ‘That could narrow it down, since it’s hardly door-to-door out here, but it’s hardly dead.’

Almquist kept his eyes on the road. Eventually he said, ‘We’re going to need some help.’

‘Then we get it.’

Always so sure of herself. Elin had that trait he envied the most; she devised a plan of action and followed it doggedly until the breakthrough. In the time he had worked with her he admired her for that, and for the results; she always came through. Perhaps his karma was about to change after all...

‘What do you know about the place where we found him?’

‘Troll’s Church?’ Trollkyrka.

‘I heard it’s seen a dead body or two over the years?’

He looked across. ‘Recently?’

‘No, you know, way back... quite a few Oskar was saying.’

‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’ Almquist smirked with weary eyes. ‘Troll country they say, best there is,’ he smirked. ‘All school kids were taught about Troll’s Church. When I was young the place used to be off-limits, a forbidden place if you like.’

‘Why forbidden?’

‘Back in the old days... there was a group, some kind of pagan religious sect. People spoke of them conducting rites of sacrifice.’ He looked across. ‘Human sacrifice.’

Elin smiled. ‘You’re joking, right?’

Elin had a nice smile. ‘Nope.’

‘They didn’t practice devil worship or anything?’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 26

‘Nope,’ Almquist repeated, looking serious. ‘Not devil worship. No, that came much later. The things they did...’ He shook his head and turned to Vikland with a forbidding expression.

Vikland stopped smiling and looked across.

Almquist held her look, keeping it. Then he winked.

‘You bully,’ Vikland said, smiling back with relief, turning back to the passing landscape.

‘It was said the mountains of Troll’s Church belonged to heathen trolls.

If a Christian ventured there, he would come to grief.’

‘Uh huh. I guess the Dane was Christian then.’

‘I guess. Are you a Christian?’

Elin Vikland kept her eyes on the road. ‘Not enough to walk all the way back there. Why did they make it your case?’

Almquist looked across towards her. ‘Why do you think?’ What could he tell her? That he was the obvious candidate begging for more? That he had the kind of track record that usually put an end to the careers of people like him; those that didn’t live in such god-forsaken places, places no one ever came to any more. That the nature of the crime meant it was going to his mess again. No, he couldn’t tell her that, so he just turned back to the road, looking grim. ‘I’m glad you’re with me on this one Elin.’

Vikland looked back at her mentor. ‘Thanks.’ She smiled. ‘Me too.’

‘I hope you won’t get tainted with the same brush. You know the talk...’

She nodded, looking back to the road. ‘Just talk. You know, in case you were thinking...’

Almquist massaged one lip over the other. ‘Yeah, I was thinking.’

More white lines.

‘Anyone can have bad luck.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Almquist nodded. ‘Still.’

Vikland looked across. ‘Still... what, still?’

Almquist shrugged.

‘Go on,’ she said.

He looked across. ‘You ever get that feeling you’re never going to get old?’

Vikland smirked, shaking her half-pretty head. ‘No, I don’t.’

Almquist didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t feel like he was going to get old.

She saw the look, reaching over to touch his forearm. ‘Hey, relax baby.’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 27

Relax. Four serial killings. Stretching over a period of more than a decade, none of them solved. That made him the butt-end of jokes in the Department even now; he thanked the small successes along the way that meant he still had a job at all.

The rain had stopped. Almquist remembered a time when he had turned up alone at Gotfridsgaarden. He had been younger then. The eyes that greeted him from the windows had been hostile. It had been his first murder investigation. It wasn’t going to be his last.

When he had crossed the yard, he felt it. Oppression. He was the investigating officer. He was supposed to have been in charge. Instead, they closed ranks around him, intimidating him with their silence and threat of... well, it wasn’t something that was ever spoken of. He’d been young, keen. A father and a son standing hidden in the shadows of the door, the father waiting with hands on hips. Behind him, a gang of helpers, all of them the sort of people one didn’t mess with. And he’d been on his own. He’d always been on his own.

He glanced across at Elin and something warmed him. For a moment as she indicated left, slowing. Headlights cutting through the dusk like a plough in a field, sweeping past the heavy forms of rock rising, the inky glitter of still waters, lighting the traditional homestead known as Gotfridsgaarden, Gotfrid’s Homestead.

He breathed in deeply, his words unexpected. ‘We’re losing two detectives.’

‘What?’ Vikland looked up as the boxy orange Saab rolled to a stop under the shadow of a giant silver birch.

Almquist sighed as she pulled the handbrake. He focused on the two cars, one covered in mud, sitting low on wheels that had all but disappeared into the wheel arches; the other something that should be condemned as a danger on the road. Then beyond, towards the homestead, turning back to her. When he he noticed she was still waiting for an explanation his grim expression changed to raising his brow in a gesture of obeisant resignation. ‘You, me and Oskar Lindgren. That’s it,’ he raised three fingers. ‘Three.’

She opened her mouth. ‘But, that’s not enough... what about the others?’

He half-smiled knowingly, shifting his attention back to the squad car behind them, watching it slow. It was a small comfort, not being alone.

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 28

They parked a little further down the road as he had instructed and turned his attention back to the homestead again. He felt the pull of anxiety down in the pit of his gut, feeling the burn of something unpleasant.

It was set a short distance back from the edge of the dirt road; it was still the little wooden cottage made of dark wood, the one he remembered, with white windows and an old thatched roof. Except time had left it’s indelible mark, visible in the glow of emerald moss, in the sag of the roof line and the flake of old dried paint.

What about the others? He thought he heard her say.

Between them and the cottage a parking yard of gravel, gloomy, brooding and depressing. Set farther away next to a lake was the outline of a smaller cottage, or an outhouse. All of it dark, the only light coming from the windows the glow of candlelight.

The engine stopped.

‘There are no others.’ He looked around, failing to spot any wooden mast. ‘Here we’re off the grid,’ he looked at Vikland. ‘No masts, no electricity.’

‘There’s a phone,’ she said, confused, pointing to a single pole on the far side of the house that was the telephone cable. Vikland refrained from saying anything more.

Almquist undid his seatbelt following her example. They opened their car doors at the same time, stood up in time, glanced briefly upwards towards the dark rocky escarpment behind the house at roughly the same time. Out of the blackness the sound of water, a small stream that wound its way down a sloping mound of stone, rising out of a small lake rising high into a steep cliff.

Two faces appeared at the gloomy windows.

That was it. Three detectives; himself, Elin and Oskar: To investigate a serial murder linked to a chain of dark events that went back over a lifetime, maybe more. He tried to breath calmly. But somehow he couldn’t calm his heart, only his mind. He shuddered inwardly and turned to Vikland. ‘For today, it’s you and me. We interview them, get everything we can while they’re in a state of chaos. Understand?’

She nodded. Of course she understood. She always understood.

Almquist walked around to the back of the Saab, opening the trunk. He removed a canvas holdall by two nylon handles, then turned to the police car and raised his hand, indicating for them to stay. The front door opened,

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 29

revealing two men; one of balding red hair and average height and build, the other taller, slimmer with dark hair wearing a guarded expression. One held a flashlight, the other a candle. The way the taller man held himself suggested somebody who was used to physical exercise. The other could have been ten years younger; middle thirties, looking surprised and curious in a gray cotton sweatshirt with hood, eyes shrouded in momentary confusion, sweeping past faces to the police car and back again in the blink of an eye.

Almquist placed his holdall on the wet ground and removed his police ID, holding it out at arms length, long enough to be sure they had registered it. The younger stood closest, making guarded eye contact with first Almquist, then Vikland.

‘Are you living here?’ Elin Vikland said in English.

‘Renting,’ he replied.

The older, fitter one was looking at her with a guarded, reticent expression.

Almquist studied them both, looking from one to the other, waiting, holding back. He turned to the pleasant looking younger man before him, the one holding the candle-holder with a handle. ‘Hasse Almquist. Swedish district police. And you are?’

‘Daniel, Daniel Hanson.’ He said, looking uncertainly at his companion.

‘Can I come in?’ Almquist said awkwardly, in passable English. He looked up and around at the cottage then at the girl.

She was above average in height; shoulder length, carefree blonde hair, wearing a red leather jacket and tight-fitting jeans that didn’t leave a lot to the imagination. Another male followed; older: blonde hair, relatively good looking and clean-shaven, smelling of aftershave.

‘What’s going on?’ he said.

Almquist turned to look towards the men, eyes asking unspoken questions. It was the girl who approached him first, lifting her head a little to one side, smooth skin still showing traces of a healthy summer tan. She walked forward extending her hand. ‘Hey do. Ulrika.’

‘Almquist, Örrebrospolicen.’ He looked past the Swedish girl to the taller Englishman, standing to one side without introducing himself. He wondered what the connection was as he entered a tidy interior, and aromas of hearty cooking, following the hollow tramp of footsteps on wooden floorboards.

‘Justin,’ the blonde-haired man, early to mid-thirties said.

Almquist nodded and entered. Within, musty old wood, floor-to-ceiling

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 30

boarded walls painted white. He stopped in front of dozens of photographs, all of them lost in shadow, all of them old and fading, torn in places even behind the protective layer of glass. He scanned faces, old faces, resting on one face he knew well. He leaned forwards, staring at that face. A face without expression with vague, dead eyes and blonde hair swept to the side, clinging to a sweaty forehead in greasy fingers.

Behind him his father, old and gray, stooping forwards. Gotfrid, it was.

He wore the same look of contempt as his son had done. He raised his head, his heart skipping a beat. In an instant, he turned to follow the taller man, holdall in hand, making eye contact. ‘And who are you?’

‘Conrad Baron,’ he replied without turning around.

He had a way of walking, erect, with long slow yet purposeful strides.

Dark blue denims and thick hiking socks, crowned with thick dark hair through which fine strands of gray wove itself like thin wires of silver.

They walked in single file to the end of the corridor, towards candlelight, dark as it was. Ahead, an old pine stair ascending to bedrooms above, a panel door open, such that the upstairs rooms could be closed off to conserve heat. To the left they passed a simple living room, noting the glowing embers of a wood fire. The room was barely furnished smelling of stale tobacco – and cannabis: a few pieces of stripped pine furniture on yellow floorboards; a seventies-style three person sofa; a coffee table littered with books and papers, two lounge chairs facing the sofa, another on the end opposite the fireplace.

Almquist retreated and continued to where the man called Conrad Baron stood waiting for him. Almquist placed his holdall on the floor, then followed them into the kitchen. Inside a fourth male, younger than the last, older than the girl: mid twenties, heavily built. Long dark hair tied in a ponytail, dark eyes, darker face heavy with stubble fortified by an air of youthful arrogance. Almquist nodded receiving a nod in return, the girl and her companions arriving next, Vikland last.

There were candles on the table, an old-style cast iron kitchen stove, the smell of wood smoke.

‘How many people are staying here?’ Vikland asked.

The lack of any electrical appliances confirmed his first assumption regarding electricity.

Conrad stopped and turned to face her. ‘Five, six.’

At the back of the room, a rocking chair placed next to a large pine table littered with an overflowing ashtray, empty beer bottles and dirty plates.

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Above, a candelabra suspended on small chains from a hook, the stumps of three candles and three new ones, all of them lit, sending a dancing halo of light across an old grease-stained pine ceiling.

‘Five or six?’ Almquist said.

Conrad Baron paused, thinking, then looked from Vikland to the older, gray-bearded detective in his long gray overcoat. ‘Five. Look, do you mind telling me what this is all about?’

Almquist removed a worn, curled notebook with a familiarity that could have been practiced, but wasn’t.

‘Is this where Thomas Denisen is staying?’

Daniel looked across in wonder at the older Conrad Baron. ‘Yes – why?

What’s going on?’

Too many stories, too many ghosts; the corpse of Thomas Denisen placed in the sordid line of now five, similar murders. Each murder displaying the same methods of mutilation. His ghosts. Except, Thomas Denisen was male, his body broken. Almquist glanced knowingly at Vikland, then turned to them, placing the tip of his pen against the faint blue-lined pad. ‘Names.’ He looked up.

Which one was it? And more importantly. Why? There had been too much failure and too many dead. Too much injustice... finally, he smiled, ‘And some coffee would be nice.’

And so it begins.

He looked at her. She was sitting at the table across from the young man with the long dark hair in a ponytail called Ashley. As for the rest, three names were already listed one above the other: Conrad Baron, English, 44 Daniel Hanson, American, 31.

Under his name the other one, blonde, relatively handsome and polite, writing, Justin Swift, English, 33.

Almquist added and ringed the name Ulrika. Ulrika Strömberg, Swedish, 24.

As for the surly one with the ponytail, he called himself Ash: Ash with an Indian surname. The two names Ashley Jayaraman didn’t seem to fit, somehow. On the other hand, England was more of a multi-cultural nation than Sweden was, or India for that matter. Neither did he look either English, or Indian for that matter, looking more Persian.

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 32

He wrote the name Ashley Jayaraman, English, 24 underneath Ulrika’s, underlining it.

Three British, one American and a Swede; minus one Dane, of course.

All foreigners, male and one Swedish female: Ulrika. Almquist glanced briefly at his holdall, all but forgotten by the kitchen door, the progression of the investigation laid out before him like a familiar old companion. He placed his notebook back in his heavy jacket pocket, sliding it back into its familiar resting place and looked around at the five faces waiting. He searched for signs of nervousness, false courage; deceit.

When he was sure he hadn’t missed anything he made the announcement: ‘Thomas Denisen is dead.’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 33

Chapter 3

CONFINEMENT

The knowing guest who goes to the feast, In silent attention sits; With his ears he hears, with his eyes he watches, Thus wary are wise men all.

Stanza 7, Hávamál

Astonishment, surprise, shock, even indifference: Almquist looked past the faces to the other side of the room, towards an old iron wood burner.

Next to it a copper bin stood filled with cleaved birch wood.

‘Thomas, dead?’ Justin Swift repeated.

Almquist spoke without expression or sympathy. ‘No one is to leave here until we have taken statements.

‘What happened?’

‘My assistant will take care of the formalities.’ Almquist looked across towards Elin Vikland, who stood leaning against the wall by the door, then turned to memorize each face before proceeding.

‘Where did you find him?’

‘Are you certain it is Thomas?’

Always the same pattern.

‘We found Mr. Denisen’s body at the bottom of a rock, in the National Park. It looks like he fell.’

The questions stopped, replaced by the regular squeak of the pine rocking chair, Conrad Baron having taken permanent possession of it, befitting the leader as he most obviously was. He had the type of face that had seen people, done things. The type of person you could spend hours

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 34

with and thought you knew, but who could still surprise you at the end of the day, challenging preconceptions.

Of the others sitting at the table, Ash the Anglo-Indian with the ponytail he had taken an instant dislike to. The handsome blonde Justin Swift seemed disturbed more than upset. Daniel Hanson, the American with the short receding hairline he would make his mind up about him later.

Then he looked over to Ulrika. She had the kind of eyes men couldn’t escape from. Didn’t want to escape from. When she looked at him she hung her head slightly to one side in a gesture that could have been unintentionally relaxed, but was also provocative in a delightful way, looking slightly upwards at him from underneath her fringe. She was returning his gaze. He realized he was staring and looked away. When he looked back again she was still looking at him. Almquist felt himself blush, snapping into focus. ‘What was Thomas Denisen doing in the park?’

Silence.

Two of them glanced in Justin Swift’s direction. Conrad Baron showed all the signs of being measured and in control.

‘Does anyone know why he was in park?’ Almquist asked again, more firmly this time.

All shook their heads.

‘He left early this morning,’ Justin Swift ventured. ‘At least, he was gone when I got up.’

‘But he was part of this group?’ Almquist said, looking around the table. He received one, two nods. Reluctant nods.

‘Did he have any reason to leave?’ Vikland asked from the wall by the door.

Justin Swift glanced in Conrad Baron’s direction. Neither said anything.

Justin was sitting on the side of the table closest to a painted, vertically boarded white wall containing more old photographs. Ash sat next to Justin, seeming bored. Would the guilty act bored? Reason enough to look bored.

‘Did he have anything with him?’

Almquist enjoyed moments like this, moments when someone knew if they put a foot wrong they would draw attention to themselves, forcing themselves into a dilemma – whether they should tell the truth, or risk a lie.

Almquist stood up and walked towards the door, bending down and lifting his holdall. ‘Denisen had this in his car.’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 35

He removed the canvas, holding it up with expectation, turning to look each one in the eye. The only person who genuinely seemed curious, as if she hadn’t seen it before was Ulrika. They knew this painting, all of them. What came next came as a complete surprise.

‘The Hangman of the Gallows.’ Ash said, looking bewildered as he looked towards the painting.

‘You know it?’

‘Where did you find it?’ Vikland added.

‘Inside Thomas Denisen’s car. A black BMW?’ Another nod. Daniel Hanson sat up and looked across at Ash, whose attention had attached itself firmly to the object displayed in Almquist’s hands. Justin looked at Conrad. Conrad raised his brow, taking a deep breath. The painting obviously meant something to them. He paused, wondering for a moment how it was best to handle this, then walked to the end of the table closest to the windows and placed the canvas on top of an old chest of drawers. He took a step backwards, then walked back to sit down in the dining chair at the top of the table. From here he could see both the painting and all the faces of the assembled.

The painting was abstract, but not abstract enough that it was unrecognizable.

A figure, an old man in a landscape with a long gray beard hanging from a tree, two birds perched on branches above him, one looking one way, one looking the other. The motif was obvious, at least it was to him. Odin. The tree grew out of a rock, upon which a symbol was inscribed. In the background was the shimmer of a lake, or the seashore.

‘So this was Thomas Denisen’s painting?’

Justin shook his head. ‘No, it is, was my painting. Thomas stole it.’

‘Can you prove that?’

Justin hesitated. ‘Yes, I can.’

‘How?’ Justin glanced across the table at Conrad. ‘I have a letter, a lawyer’s letter.’

Almquist placed a hand inside his jacket pocket, removing his reporter’s pad again. He licked his finger and turned the pages. His attention turned to the quiet Ulrika. Her eyes looked like light bulbs, so bright and shining, soaking up the figure as if it was a masterpiece by Matisse.

‘Where did you find it?’ Justin asked.

‘It was in his car. Name?’

‘I’ve told you my name.’

‘Of the lawyer.’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 36

‘Tobias Ivarsen.’

‘E-N?’ Justin nodded.

‘Do you have it, this letter?’

Justin looked away. ‘It’s upstairs.’

‘I need to see it, later.’

Justin nodded again.

Ulrika seemed to be waiting for something that never happened, it seemed. He made a mental note to talk with Elin about her. As for Daniel, he was the easiest to read. Or he was simply playing a masterful role. It wasn’t him. Or... Justin? He had a hard time placing him with a spoon in his hand, carving out someone’s living eyes. That left Conrad. He sat with his hands folded in front of him, rocking, seeming relaxed. He was definitely a contender, something under the surface speaking of tension.

‘Can anyone tell me about Thomas Denisen?’

Justin was staring at the painting. He switched his attention back to Almquist. ‘Thomas Denisen owns an art gallery in Copenhagen. I contacted him and asked him for help,’ he said, speaking in a quiet but controlled voice. ‘So we could find out more about it.’

‘You arrived here together?’

Justin nodded. ‘I met Thomas because I know his wife.’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

Justin raised his hand and ran it through his hair. He glanced not a little nervously towards Vikland. ‘It was last night.’ He looked across to Ash. ‘I don’t know why he would go off on his own like that.’

‘Twenty-four hours,’ Vikland said sharply from her space by the door, meeting a nervous look from Justin with a hard stare.

Almquist returned to the painting and studied the figure. Something didn’t fit.

Five murders and now a painting? He frowned, looking at it, the way it seemed as if it was melting into the branches of the tree – in a steep V-shape. The figure had his head bowed down, beard hanging to a rounded point, mustache long and curved, hanging downwards. What set it apart from anything he had seen before, were the flames. They swirled up his arms and into the tree, searing the boundaries of his memory, letting them free.

Justin had noticed Conrad’s displeasure as soon as they had entered the homestead. He hadn’t really known him that long, a few meetings at the British

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 37

Embassy. It was long enough to know Conrad Baron wasn’t someone you messed around with. He also knew he didn’t really like him very much and had his back to the wall, so Justin thought fast, resorting to desperate measures.

He lied: ‘Ash wanted to pick her up. She was there in the rain, we nearly drove into her.’

‘Why did he pick her up?’ Conrad said in a flash.

Justin moved his head back as he sent him a look of surprise. It was obvious.

‘He thought she was cute.’

Conrad looked down the corridor to the store door under the stairs. Then taking hold of Justin by the scruff of his neck, he turned and pulled him forcefully to the door, opening it, closing it again behind him, locking it. ‘Now, tell me. What the hell is going on?’ he demanded, leaning in towards him.

‘Nothing more than I already told you.’ Justin replied, his voice betraying his fear.

‘You invited her, Ash already told me.’ Conrad took a step forwards, his face, half-in half-out of shadow.

Justin felt as if the floor fell away beneath his feet. ‘She was soaking. She’d been taking photographs on some assignment and was lost, so, we picked her up. Then it was running late, so we offered her something to eat before she hit the road.’

Conrad raised a hand in a silent gesture for Justin to stop talking. ‘This is a closed party. The Dane I can understand. But this...’ he glanced out of a small square window to where Vikland came into view, talking with a duty officer by the side of the lake. She was pointing to the hill above them. He turned to scowl at Justin. ‘A bit of skirt? What the hell were you thinking of?’ Conrad shook his head, taking a deep breath. He raised a hand to the bridge of his nose, pinching it, breathing out, closing his eyes. ‘Why?’ He shouted behind clenched teeth. He tapped the side of his head violently with a stiff middle finger, making Justin recoil in surprise.

He had seen that look before, the taught line of his neck, the stiffness in his head.

‘Did you go into the park?’

‘What?’ Justin looked offended.

‘Into Tiveden?’

‘We went to see the Pastor at the church. Then we hit the road. We met her only a couple of clicks down the road.’

‘You didn’t see Thomas this morning?’

Justin scowled at Conrad. ‘No, I did not. Did you? Look, I had nothing to do

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 38

with it.’

‘Didn’t you? You and Ash...’ Conrad stood facing him, face set like winter.

‘It was you who wanted us to follow it.’

‘It didn’t exactly get us anywhere, did it?’

Justin looked away. He shook his head, looking up. ‘I hardly knew him. If it wasn’t for the money, I wouldn’t even be here.’

‘You have no idea who Anna Kron is?’

Justin was still trying to understand who she was. Old, that much he knew. His neighbor was old. That made her old too. She had to be. The old man had... he had never mentioned the name Anna. Anna wasn’t where Baron had told him she would be. The painting had to be returned to her, the will had said. His neighbor’s will. Now he thought about it, it all seemed so contrite, unreal, or... something just didn’t feel right. Baron had put pressure on him to come. He had wondered how they had known. Some questions you knew not to ask, he knew they had been interested in his neighbor.

What had the hell been so special about his neighbor?

Thomas was an Art Dealer, he’d needed the damned support. He had talked him into it, Thomas. Thomas thought it looked like a Blake, but it wasn’t. And now Thomas was dead.

Thomas had lied to him. Conrad had lied to him.

‘No,’ he replied. He wanted to go home.

Conrad cursed, looking out of the small window, to where Vikland was finishing saying something, turning to walk back around to the front of the cottage. He looked into Justin, eyes hard. ‘I want her out of here as soon as possible.’

Justin looked down. ‘Please remove your hand off my jumper.’

Almquist sat back down, crossing one leg over the other, raising his hand to rub his beard as he asked the question. ‘Where did you get the painting from?’

Justin answered the question in a heartbeat. ‘My neighbor died. It belonged to him.’

‘Your ... dead neighbor, was the original owner of the painting we found in Thomas Denisen’s car?’ He was the type any mother-in-law would dream of, not that he was too polished or too keen. ‘So he died, your neighbor.’ Almquist nodded slowly.

Justin sat in one of two dining chairs from the side of the table, the soft

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 39

yellow light from the candles rendering the place a cosy, homely atmosphere. He moved to the side, each facing the other the video camera on a tripod next to him.

‘Name. Address of your neighbor?’

‘Einar, Einar Pontoppidan, lived at Rosen Alle number nineteen. Farum, Denmark.’

‘You live in Denmark?’

Justin ran his hand through his blonde hair, glancing briefly towards the painting on the chest of drawers between two of the windows overlooking the car park. ‘We all do.’

‘How did he die?’

‘He was old.’

‘That’s convenient.’ Almquist said. ‘Being old.’

Justin hesitated, taking his time, picking his moment. ‘He was found dead in his basement. That’s all I know.’

Almquist studied Justin as a scientist does an experiment, something that gave results other than those that were expected, unusual results that needed explanation, but there was no explanation, only the observation of what was happening. Of what was being said. ‘So how did you know him?’

Justin licked his lips. He was either thinking up a fabrication, or remembering in recollection. One or the other.

‘He invited me over, a beer on a Sunday. Old neighbors and such.’

‘Did he know you well?’

‘Not well, no.’

‘But he invited you?’

‘As I said, I lived next door. He asked about my artwork, I paint. Look,’ Justin said, speaking with more confidence, ‘I don’t know why he chose me to have his painting. I guess he thought I might be the right person for the job, to return this painting. At ninety-six, he didn’t know that many people, not anymore. I guess I fit or something...’

‘You are an artist? For a living?’

Justin nodded. ‘Half living.’

Almquist turned a page and spoke as he scribbled. ‘He left you the painting... in his will?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Did you see a copy?’

Justin frowned, then shook his head. ‘No. The lawyer, Ivarsen. He sent

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 40

me a cheque for ten thousand Danish Crowns to cover expenses. He also sent me a letter, asked me if I would deliver it. I thought about it. You know, would have been nice to get away – so I called him and we agreed.

‘You met this person face to face?’

‘No. But he sounded just like the type you would expect.’

‘And the money cleared?’

‘Yes.’ Almquist stopped writing, placing his hand to his mouth. ‘All right.’ He waited. ‘And you were asked to do what, exactly?’

‘Take it to someone called Anna.’

‘Anna?’ Almquist waited. ‘All you had to do was, just take it to her?’

Justin nodded.

‘Her last name?’

‘Anna Kron.’

Kron. His reaction was instantaneous: Hasse Almquist felt a surge electrify every fiber in his being. ‘Anna Kron.’ He said the name slowly, calmly.

‘Anna Kron,’ Justin repeated slowly.

It didn’t make any sense; two, no, three English-speakers, a dead Dane and an American, all here in little old Tiveden because of... Anna Kron.

Anna Kron was dead. Anna Kron was buried; part of a past he would just rather forget. He threw a long, hard stare in Justin Swift’s direction, realizing this was going to be worse than he had expected. Much worse.

Was that why they had made it his case?

‘Go on.’

‘The will requested the painting had to be taken to Anna Kron, and I had been named in his will to take it to her.’

‘Do you know where she is?’ he tested.

Justin shook his head.

Almquist wanted to catch everything he could, every nuance, each little detail, every slip of the tongue... every trace of insecurity. None of it explained the group, and neither had Justin mentioned any of the others.

That in itself gave him cause to be suspicious. ‘So how did you know to come here?’ Almquist’s pen hovered above his notebook. Justin ran his fingers through his hair, again. He was nervous.

‘The lawyer had information she lived at Tived; we didn’t have an address.’ Justin looked at him and swallowed. ‘I had a location, that’s all.’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 41

‘Where?’

‘The Tived area.’

‘From?’

‘It says so in the letter. You can read the letter, see for yourself. The embassy had an interest.’

‘The British Embassy. Conrad’s employer.’

Almquist felt a surge of interest. Details, focus on the details.

‘What has this got to do... why is the British Embassy involved?’

‘Ask Conrad.’

Conrad Baron and the British Embassy. That meant something else.

Almquist paused, asking slowly, ‘Why Conrad?’

Either he knew Anna Kron, his lie about to be revealed, or... he didn’t.

Almquist wasn’t sure; it was hard to tell. Sometimes it was possible to know what would happen, sometimes not. He stood up. ‘I will be just a moment.’ He left Justin for the corridor and the photographs.

Conrad was the man who got me involved.

Justin looked at the two photographs Almquist had clasped in his hands.

He looked into that blind eye of a camera, feeling naked and exposed and shifted his weight on the seat, trying to find a more comfortable position.

Such a simple question.

‘I believe, Conrad Baron was given the job. He found this place through contacts with the Swedish embassy, in Copenhagen.’

It didn’t make any sense. He felt sick.

‘Can you prove that?’

‘Prove?’ Justin looked away for a moment.

How the hell could he prove anything? Thomas was dead. ‘Look, that’s all I know. He told me we had a place to stay. Ask Conrad,’ he repeated more loudly, eyes darting to the canvas wondering what the hell it was Thomas had been up to.

Almquist rested his notebook on top of the frames, removing his pen and scribbled a note before looking up, then flicked through his notes, taking his time. ‘I need to know why you brought the painting here, to Gotfridsgaarden.’ He waited.

Justin breathed deeply, looking down at his hands held together in his lap, moving his thumb around the end of the other. He looked up feeling unsure of himself as Almquist kept his look on target, pupils contracted, so pale blue...

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 42

‘He set up the rental agreement.’

‘It was Conrad who was responsible for setting this up?’

‘Ask Conrad.’

Almquist let some of his composure break. ‘So, how did that happen then?

Why are you here?’

Justin took a deep breath, composing himself. ‘Conrad was the organizer; he found the place, organized the trip, dates, everything. He even found Ash and Daniel to decipher the runes.’ He insisted they came along...

‘The runes on the painting?’

‘He wanted to know more about it.’

He was obsessed about the runes, as if they were some secret code. That was why they came here, to break the code the painting, see where it lead...

‘To find out more about the painting, what it was?’ Almquist continued.

He nodded. Exactly.

Almquist leaned forward, voice threatening. ‘You just said you came here to find Anna Kron.’

He froze.

‘Now you tell me it was the painting.’ The middle-aged detective got up and walked over to him, placing his mouth close to his ear. ‘Which one is it?’

Justin felt his heart beating feeling nervous. ‘Both.’

‘Both?’ He removed his hand, standing behind him out of sight. He waited.

It was cold in here. ‘Both. Conrad said, we... well, it belonged to Anna, he needed to know about it.’

‘Why do you think he did that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Ask Conrad dammit. He shivered.

You never thought to ask him?’

‘I don’t know!’ Justin looked around the room, eyes wandering distantly past dark windows, returning to find Almquist waiting for him ever watchful as he returned to take his chair.

It was a mistake getting involved.

‘Look, it was all a bit special, the request, the bequest. I needed the money.

Who is Anna Kron?’

Almquist inclined his head, as if about to admonish a child. ‘I ask the questions. Did Conrad mention anything about the rental?’

‘Only that he had found the place. We picked the keys up from the storekeeper.’

‘The storekeeper had the keys, to Gotfridsgaarden?’

He nodded.

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 43

Almquist picked up his pen and wrote on his pad again, slowly. ‘Let me get this right. Your old neighbor in Denmark, called Einar, he died last year and he left a will that this painting be returned to... Anna Kron?’ Almquist said the name slowly, articulating it.

Justin nodded again. ‘Yes. Look, I have no idea who she is, or why the hell he would want me to... to find her to be honest. He was an old man.’

Almquist stared at him, obviously noticing his discomfort, that in itself was cause for even more... discomfort. ‘So you didn’t know she was married to Gustav Kron?’

‘Gustav Kron, no.’ Justin added. ‘Who is he?’

‘Her husband. You never heard of him?’

He shook his head.

Almquist removed the framed photos and stood up, turning one of them over. He gave it to Justin. Justin looked at it. It showed two men, neither of them smiling. He pointed to the man on the left.

‘This, is Gustav.’ Almquist showed the younger man the photograph.

Justin looked at the picture. He had never seen the man before in his life. The man was dressed formally in tweed. He was young and handsome with fine, light hair treated with oil and combed in a straight parting on one side; a short back and sides, as was the other man in the photograph. ‘Who is this?’ He pointed to the other man.

Almquist’s face turned dark. ‘Sturla Gotfridsson. Gotfrid’s son.’

Justin frowned. ‘Gotfrid...’

‘Of Gotfridsgaarden. He used to live here, yes. He was not a very nice man.’

‘What did he do?’

Almquist looked beyond Justin and blinked, then gave him the second photograph. ‘This is Anna.’

This one showed a woman amongst four men, all of them young; it was an older photograph.

‘Not many knew her. This was taken at a time before I knew her. So it must be old.’ He pointed. ‘That, is Anna Kron.’

This was Anna Kron? So she existed... Justin looked up, eyes hungry for more. ‘You know about her then?’

Almquist’s voice was dry, devoid of expression. ‘Anna is dead.’ Then those pale eyes lost their light.

‘Who was she?’ They came all the way here to find Anna, Conrad said.

That was what he had been told.

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 44

So who the hell was Gustav?

‘Anna Kron died years ago, together with Gustav.’

‘Here?’ Justin looked at the young woman called Anna. She wasn’t smiling, but stood with her hands held in front of her, wearing a singlebreasted ladies jacket for the outdoors, a long skirt in plaids reaching to below her knees and a scarf tied around her neck. She also wore a straight-faced expression, looking like a schoolteacher, Justin thought.

Almquist shook his head ‘No, not here. Her house doesn’t exist anymore.’

Justin crumpled inwardly, though he tried his best to hide behind himself as Almquist stood up and walked forwards to take the photographs from him, walking back towards the window. He tapped the window sill with his fingers, the photographs hanging in the other.

‘Is this like, a statement, or something?’ He could hear the nervousness in his own voice.

‘That really depends on what you can tell me.’ The aging detective with the glasses and short gray beard turned and stared at the younger man before him. ‘Are you all friends?’

‘Hardly.’

‘Enemies?’

Justin shook his head as Almquist walked back to sit down behind the camera, crossing his legs, placing the photographs on top of his thighs, resting his hands on top of the them as if about to pray.

‘No...’

‘Are there problems amongst you?’

Justin hesitated.

Almquist waited.

Justin shook his head again. ‘No.’ Almquist stared at him, zeroing in. ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

‘No! Look, why...’

‘If I find out, later.’ He continued to look at Justin searchingly. ‘About any problems... I need to know about them, now.’

Justin nodded. ‘I know my rights and all that...’

‘What I’m trying to say is, you can also be prosecuted for what you didn’t say. If we find out about something, later.’ Almquist sent him one of those looks. ‘So... is there anything else you want to tell me? I want to know anything that happened. Anything that cannot be called normal.’

Justin massaged his brow with eyes closed. Should he tell him?

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 45

Almquist was waiting... prosecuted for withholding information. He thought of his son. He even thought of his wife. ‘Ash and Thomas. They didn’t get on,’ he blurted.

‘Something happened?’

Justin nodded again, eyes still closed. Christ...

‘Just tell it as it was. Please,’ Almquist said in a calm voice. Then, more gently this time, coaxingly almost, ‘Just take your time.’

Almquist headed for his car, casting an appraising eye around the homestead, cigarette smoking in hand. Anna Kron, Gustav Kron... Sturla Gotfridsson, the bastard who treated him with so much contempt, even before the murders.

He’d allowed them to take a break, having taken possession of Justin’s letter. The letter looked real enough. He showed it to Elin, turning his flash light on. He moved the light downwards. ‘Check it out with the Danish police,’ then he clicked off the light, handing it to her.

Elin shrugged as she took it, placing it inside her dark blue police jacket.

‘You think one of them did it?’

She stood by the open driver’s door of the Saab looking down. She turned a page over on her clipboard, comparing Hasse’s notes with hers, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know. Another mutilation, out of the blue, just like that, in the middle of nowhere. Why there? It doesn’t fit the pattern.

Does it?’

Almquist blew out the last of the smoke from his cigarette and threw the butt to the ground shaking his head, thinking of... fire.

The past has ways of catching up...

And now it was too late. Here he was – the same place, a new murder.

‘No, it most certainly does not.’ They were all women.

There were the same mutilations... and yet, something wasn’t quite the same, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. He stared into space, his eyes clouding over for a moment, then turned to look back across the gravel of the parking yard, illuminated by the two windows of the kitchen. He took a deep breath, caught somewhere just behind the present. Here, it all started... here. ‘Gotfridsgaarden.’ He turned to look at Vikland. ‘You never heard of this place?’

She shook her head. ‘Should I?’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 46

Almquist looked away in the direction of the lake, the sound of water from the stream filling the momentary silence. This was where Sturla Gotfridsson lived. Sturla, Gotfrid’s son hated Gustav Kron, hated him.

Gustav Kron had killed himself. Why did he do that? Had it been because of his bad relations with old Gotfrid? He’d never really looked into the relations. But now with Anna on the agenda... he shook his head.

‘What is it?’

‘I was thinking of old Gotfrid.’

‘What about him?’

‘He was an idealist. One of the last of his kind.’ She looked at him as if he was a relic of another age, so he kept the details to himself. Anna had been an idealist too, he recalled. When he had first investigated the murders. An austere woman she was.

‘Idealist?’

He still needed to smoke. The first cigarette had failed to quench his need.

Lighting another, he cupped his hand as the orange flame lit up his face in the dark. He turned back to the homestead, raising his head and exhaling smoke.

‘Scared the shit out of the local children with their old wives tales.’ Those who Gustav hated more than anyone else... it was a long time ago. ‘I had no idea anyone rented out the place.’

Vikland followed the direction of his gaze. ‘What about the dead neighbor?’

Almquist was surprised, for a moment. Then he made the connection, to Justin Swift. ‘A neighbor and a lawyer...’

‘What are you going to do?’ She was staring at him.

What was he going to do? Almquist rubbed his chin, cigarette between his fingers, looking up at Elin Vikland with a look that spoke of reticence. He leaned back against the bonnet of his car, raising his hand, something pulling at him from the pit of his stomach. Conscience? Or was it memory? ‘I don’t know.’ Except, he did know. He looked across at Vikland and raised his arm to look at his watch. ‘It’s getting late. We need to go through all the details as soon as we get back. We need an ops room, boards. We’ll use the conference room. Get whatever else it is Lindgren is working on and get him to do the background checks. You can help me run the investigation.’ He brought the cigarette to his lips, noticing her show of pride, the end glowing as he turned and looked towards the house, then across to the lake. His attention was drawn upwards, up the face of rock, towards the summit. ‘Swift didn’t mention anything about why they needed to be a whole group of people just for

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 47

one painting.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t buy any of it. And I think he’s lying about Conrad Baron.’

‘He’s covering for him.’

‘He’s covering for something.’ Almquist looked over to the front of the homestead, thinking so hard it hurt. He feared the worst but still clung to the hope it would blow over. The fifth killing; in a series that he thought was over, none of them solved.

Where was this heading?

‘Too many of them to take them to the station...’

Vikland could barely disguise her impatience.

‘We only have today.’ Almquist looked up, slowly, taking another pull.

‘Tomorrow it will be different. Tomorrow is always different.’ He stood up, throwing his butt to the ground, exhaling. ‘Swift told me a thing or two about Jayaraman. We need everything we can get. Make sense of it later.’ He looked at her, eyes awakening behind his glasses. ‘If you have any plans tonight, cancel them.’ Then Almquist turned and headed back to the house without waiting or receiving a reply.

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 48

Chapter 4

A FOLK TALE

Shaved off were the Runes that of old were written, And mixed with holy mead, And sent on ways so wide; So the Gods had them, so the elves got them, And some for the Wanes so wise, And some for mortal men Sigrdrifumol 18

by Henry Adams Bellows

Almquist sat down at the end of the dining table, face taut, concentrated, glasses reflecting the candles from the candelabra above. There was something about Conrad Baron that Hasse Almquist didn’t take to. Here was the player, here was the... leader, if that was the right word.

Conrad Baron had the look of an upper-class tramp, but there was something behind his eyes that spoke of a contempt for normal human affairs; and yet, there was also strength, he could see that and even had to begrudge him one small iota of respect.

‘Your function?’

‘Functionary if you like, for The British Embassy. In Copenhagen.’

Conrad Baron was sitting in the rocking chair, hands pressed together in front of him. He looked relaxed, yet seemed on guard, speaking in the manner of a man who was used to giving orders. And receiving them.

‘So... the painting had been left to Justin?’

He confirmed.

‘So why your interest in it?’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 49

‘Because of the previous owner of the painting.’

‘Being?’

Conrad Baron burst out laughing. ‘Nice try.’

Almquist remembered the man before him enjoyed the luxury of diplomatic immunity. Was this going to turn into a diplomatic incident as well as a murder enquiry? He hoped not, realizing he had to tread carefully, refraining from reacting. ‘You knew him, Justin’s old neighbor?’

Conrad looked at Almquist with uncompromising eyes, speaking in a dry voice that betrayed nothing that could be classified as emotion. ‘He worked for my employer.’

‘The Embassy?’

‘If you like. They wanted to know why Einar Pontoppidan had it, his neighbor that is. It didn’t belong to him you see. The lawyer had a duty to perform, executing the will. All he had was a bequest, to cover expenses. We decided to let it run, see where it took us.’

Almquist looked down at the tape recorder placed on the table, the video camera in the living room being used by Elin. ‘And a request, asking for him... to contact Justin his neighbor. Being an artist?’

Conrad nodded, pausing. ‘The lawyer... he knew he was British without knowing anything about him.’

‘Who contacted the lawyer?’

‘We did. Or rather, you could say the embassy put me in touch with him.’

The embassy... Baron was telling him to beware, a thinly veiled reminder he was facing forces greater than thee and I... Almquist thought about the previous owner. He thought of Anna Kron. So who had the new owner been? ‘And that was the way it happened, with this lawyer?’

Conrad nodded as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

‘May I ask,’ Almquist picked his way carefully through a potential minefield, ‘why the British Embassy wanted to help a lawyer about a painting that didn’t belong to a man who died?’

‘You can ask.’

‘But you’re not going to tell me?’

Conrad leaned forwards, keeping eye contact. ‘Nothing too exciting, so don’t get your hopes up, Detective. It’s not up to me, you see.’ He sat back again, the chair moving with him, ‘Anyway, I have diplomatic immunity.’

As if he needed telling; Conrad Baron had served his ace early. ‘I still need ID.’ How could he forget? Almquist was about to ask another question when

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 50

Conrad leaned to his side, removing his wallet from his back pocket. He opened it, taking out a small white card he handed to him. Almquist leaned forwards, taking it and brought it close to read. At the top of the card the words British Foreign Office were visible, then British Embassy Copenhagen. Conrad Baron, Communications Officer. Passport Office.

‘I have other credentials if you need to see them,’ Conrad added. ‘A number to call; take your pick.’ He smiled.

Almquist kept the card, placing it inside his jacket. ‘That won’t be necessary.

For now.’

‘So, in principal I can leave when I want, say what I want.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘Of course not.’ Conrad shifted his position, spreading his hands apart. ‘And I want to help.’ His gaze faltered, but for a moment. ‘I have no idea what happened to Thomas Denisen. He fell you say, and yet you’re still here. So something’s happened you’re not telling us.’

‘You had no contact with Denisen, before coming here?’

Conrad shook his head. ‘Never met him before. He was Justin’s partner. Well, not partner maybe. Friend.’

‘But you contacted Ash, for this consultancy work?’

He nodded.

‘Because of the painting?’

‘As I told you,’ Conrad waited. When Almquist didn’t say anything he continued, ‘It’s our policy to research background. To be honest, the request was intriguing. The nature of the situation – aroused curiosity, amongst the staff.’

‘So you’re here because you were curious?’

‘I’m here because the Department was curious.’

‘Where did it come from, the painting?’

‘I have no idea. By all means, contact the embassy.’

‘And that’s why it needs so many of you?’ Almquist added, raising his voice.

Conrad settled his eyes on the detective. ‘It is my job to verify people when requested to do so. We have reason to believe the man the painting belonged to –’ ‘Justin’s neighbor?’

‘– reason to believe he, how should I say, wasn’t quite what he appeared to be.’

The old neighbor... how old is old he wondered? What was the significance of living next door to an old man? Was it significant at all? Almquist raised a hand and ran it through his beard, realizing this was going to even bigger than he had

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 51

feared. Nothing fit the pattern; the pattern of the previous killings, the only common denominator being the nature of the mutilations. ‘You said the painting didn’t belong to him.’ He looked down at his block, ‘So... it belonged to the embassy?’

‘A figure of speech. No. Look, let’s make this easy. I’m not permitted to tell you my job or why I am here...’ Conrad sat back. ‘I am permitted to tell you that the man Justin lived next door to, Einar Pontoppidan is someone Her Majesty’s Government has an interest in. So when this old man dies, and leaves a painting.

It becomes, shall we say...’ he inclined his head slightly, ‘interesting.’

‘To Her Majesty’s Government?’ Almquist said with a touch of irony.

‘Yes. Especially when it happens to be a British subject who is to take the painting back to its owner. It arouses curiosity.’ Conrad looked at the older man with calm determination. It was the look of the hardened professional. ‘I’m here to assuage that curiosity Mr. Almquist.’

Because his employer was interested in Justin’s neighbor. Almquist sat, regarding this gaunt, dry-humored Englishman for a moment. ‘Thank you for clearing things up for me. Us regional detectives may not be quick, what is it you say, off the mark?’

Baron pulled one side of his mouth into something that was supposed to be a smile.

‘What about Ashley Jayaraman and Daniel Hanson?’

He waved his hand. ‘They have their own interests. Ask them. I hired them as consultants.’

‘Because of?’

‘Motif. As far as Thomas is concerned, it’s very inconvenient. Look,’ Conrad stared at Almquist, speaking in a forthright manner. ‘I don’t think you understand. A lot of our work concerns background checks. In the protection of British interests. There’s a lot going on, out there in the world, at the moment.’

‘Out there?’

‘Who do you think it is that keeps all the bad men away so people like you can sleep well at night?’ Conrad lowered his head and his voice, looking up at Almquist with intensity. ‘Now do you understand?’

Almquist’s pen hovered above the paper. He looked up and smiled, calling his bluff. ‘I don’t understand why you came here, to Gotfridsgaarden, to this homestead Mr. Baron. I don’t understand why you have a key from the storekeeper. I don’t understand who you are, or why you are here.’ He paused, a silence building between them. ‘So, why don’t you just tell me about it?’

‘You don’t honestly expect me to do that. Do you?’ He waved his hand, ‘I

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 52

didn’t know him. The embassy found the property, not me. As far as Thomas is concerned, since you were wondering, he was a friend of Justin’s. An art dealer.

To be honest, I was bloody annoyed when I found out Justin had brought him along; I have nothing left to say.’ Conrad stopped, looking up taking a deep breath. ‘And we seemed to have skipped dinner...’

Dinner. A man had been brutally mutilated and all he could think about was dinner? Almquist looked at his watch. ‘I understand. Except, Thomas Denisen is no longer a member of your dinner club.’ He clenched his jaw, staring at this untouchable. ‘He is dead, and your friends have picked up a hitchhiker at the about the same time as his death. You can eat when we are finished.’

‘I don’t want her here. I have no idea why they brought her. Take her with you if you want.’ He leaned forwards, the chair leaning forwards with him. ‘Be my bloody guest.’

Almquist frowned. ‘It is a little too late for that. She stays here. For tonight.’

Conrad sat upright, arms holding the armrests at the sides of the rocking chair.

‘What?’

Almquist reached out and pressed stop, moving the recorder towards him.

‘You are obviously a very important person,’ he said sarcastically, standing to face him. ‘But you are going nowhere, at least for tonight. Mr. Baron.’

Diplomatic immunity or no diplomatic immunity.

That was when he thought about the phone... he would have called the embassy. If he had more men, maybe he could do something about it. But with only two of them, they had no choice. They had to stay.

By 19:30 Almquist and Vikland had completed the interviews and taken possession of Ulrika’s cameras. Ulrika sat around the table, Conrad still sat in the rocking chair staring at the wood burner, doors open, sending shifting patterns of light across the floorboards.

Justin entered, followed by Ash and Daniel, each taking a seat at the table, followed by Vikland who remained standing in the doorway, blue bomber jacket on, ready to leave.

Almquist scanned the people around him, names and faces becoming familiar. ‘We will soon be leaving you for the evening.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘If you need to, you can call me.’ He shot a look in Elin’s direction, pushing himself to a standing position. Stepping forth he reached out and placed his card on the dining table, then returned to help himself to coffee from the pan.

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 53

‘Are we under arrest then?’ Ulrika asked in a surly voice.

‘No,’ he replied, pouring into an empty mug. She was annoyed her cameras had been taken from her. And who could blame her? Little darling...

‘So why do I have to stay here then?’

‘Because this is a murder inquiry,’ Vikland said curtly.

Almquist leaned back and waited for their reactions. He looked at Ulrika ignoring the murmurs, the steaming mug of coffee in his hand and took a sip. Placing it on the kitchen worktop, he reached a hand into his coat, removing his packet of cigarettes, lighting one. He smoked without saying anything, thumbnail on tooth, cigarette clenched between fingers, looking. Thinking... looking across at the canvas and the Odin figure, wondering why on earth anyone would want to paint such a thing. And why Conrad Baron of the British Embassy had an interest in it. He was hiding something.

‘A murder inquiry? You said Thomas fell?’

Murder inquiry. Almquist looked away and removed his hand, looking for his coffee cup, bringing it to his lips, taking another sip as he nodded at Justin. ‘He did.’

‘So you think one of us pushed him, is that it?’ Daniel asked.

‘Perhaps,’ he shrugged, covering his slip.

‘So what really happened to Thomas?’ Ash asked.

He stood up, annoyed with himself. ‘The question I want answering is,’ he looked at the painting on the chest of drawers and spun to face Justin, ‘Who sent this painting to your neighbor?’

He was met with silence.

‘And why did Thomas Denisen have it with him?’

Ash sat up, looking around, settling on Conrad who was rocking in the chair.

‘Did you know he had a mobile telephone?’

‘He bragged about it; he loved gadgets,’ Justin said.

‘Did you see him call anyone with it?’

Justin shook his head.

Face passive, his head hanging slightly as if pulled downwards by an invisible weight, looking towards the painting; the Hangman hanging, arms stretched above and behind him, face shrouded in ambiguity looking down, beard hanging almost to the ground, as if it was a part of the tree that was alight, caught in a conflagration that seemed to be coming from the figure. Or was it

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the other way around?

He walked to the table, pulling out a chair sitting down, looking down the length of pine boards into expectant faces and played his first card. ‘Thomas died as a result of falling down a long and steep stair in the park.’

‘You just said he was murdered,’ Ash accused.

Almquist shrugged and raised his smoking cigarette and took a pull. ‘Thomas Denisen might have fallen.’ He looked Ash in the eye. ‘Or, he might not.’ He thought about that as he took another pull and look down at dusty floorboards, images sensed in the pattern of grain and dirt, beckoning him. He saw Denisen’s body, a flash of memory, deja vú, broken eyes and lost souls.

Four women and now a Dane; old superstitions... Kron.

He looked over at Elin; she seemed easy, waiting for his cue. Dear Elin. He envied her; he envied her uncluttered world, her easy life. He sensed a moment approaching, one where he ought to resist, like leaning forwards to dive into the lake beyond. ‘Which,’ he was aware of a sense of expectancy, realizing they were all waiting for him.

But waiting, for what?

He snapped out of it. ‘Which brings me to a story.’ He took the plunge, turning to his side to extinguish his cigarette. ‘One I think you might all be interested in.’ He looked at Daniel. ‘One I learned as a boy.’ He took his time, speaking in a quiet, gentle voice. ‘It is the tale, of one called Rómund. He was the father of Æsa.’ He looked at Ash. ‘You have heard of Æsa.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Æsa is very well known. But nothing was known of her father, Rómund, who was called Rómund the bad.’ He paused for effect, ignoring the look coming from Vikland. ‘Rómund served a King, the King of Gothia. Before we became Sweden, our country was divided into two Kingdoms.’ He tapped the table with his finger. ‘Battles were fought, people were forced from their homes. Now the King of Gothia, he lost many battles because he was being haunted by this evil spirit. People used to call him the Witch King.’ He stood up and walked across the room, looking down at his ordered paces in long, slow strides smoking his cigarette.

‘The old legends say the Witch King lived in a big mound, underground. He came out at night, killing hundreds of men.’ He stopped briefly, and turned.

‘Many soldiers fought for the King. So Rómund, he comes to the King, and tells him that he will kill this evil spirit.’ Almquist paused and looked up at his audience, noticing Justin lighting up, offering a cigarette to Ulrika. ‘He had this magic sword, one that could kill any man or beast, so he could kill this... Witch King.’ Almquist paused to draw breath, removing a hand to rub his brow, the

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thickening tobacco smoke making the light from the candles glow in a halo.

‘Rómund was honored, like a great Viking he was. But,’ he looked around as he raised a finger, ‘before he died the Witch King cursed him. He told him he would lose all his sons and daughters.’ He shrugged, ‘Then Rómund’s sons were killed in battle, leaving only his daughter.’

Ash nodded. ‘Æsa.’

Almquist licked his lips. ‘Æsa became a Christian, turning away from Rómund.’

‘So the curse came true?’ Ulrika asked, eyes shining.

Almquist sat back down at the table, stubbing his smoldering butt out in the ashtray until it was extinguished. ‘Rómund never wanted to see his daughter again and killed her only friend, a monk. So when he was old and crippled, Æsa returned and built a Christian church; the one on the other side of the lake,’ Almquist said, looking at Ash. ‘Æsahult, they called it and still do today.

Rómund died soon afterwards.’ He smiled wearily. ‘Some say he was sacrificed...’

Conrad stopped rocking. ‘What does this have to do with Thomas?’

Almquist half-raised his finger. ‘Legends say Æsa hated her father so much she opened Rómund’s tomb and smashed his body, waking his angry spirit. Like the Witch King, he returned to haunt the people who went to Æsahult, becoming what the old people call... a draugr.’ Almquist was looking at Daniel now. ‘You have not heard of the draugr?’

Daniel raised his brow, then shook his head.

Almquist’s face became serious, losing its lighthearted frivolity. He looked to Conrad, then Ash and Justin. ‘None of you have heard of the draugr?’

Justin shook his head too.

Almquist looked across at Vikland. ‘The draugen are the spirits of the night; the bad spirits of people who die in torment. Rómund died, tormented by Æsa and his spirit became a draugr. His draugr haunted those who went to church.

So, people locked themselves away and offered sacrifice to make him go away.’

Almquist stood up and walked to the side, leaning with his back against the top, folding his arms. ‘Rómund is still remembered to this day.’

Ash blew out his cheeks. ‘That’s a good story.’ He looked up, meeting Almquist’s eyes. ‘But what’s it got to do with us?’

Almquist glanced over to Vikland again standing, waiting by the door; she looked bored.

‘You know Rómund lived near here.’ Almquist looked at Ash. ‘They never found his tomb.’ He glanced at the painting. ‘I tell you this because...’

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Somewhere he could hear the faint sound of a ticking wristwatch.

Thomas Denisen was mutilated according to draugr ritual.

He placed his hand in his pocket and removed a small round tin. He opened it, removing what looked like a miniature tea bag. He placed it between his fingers, placing it behind his bottom lip. ‘En lila prilla tuggtobak – a little pinch of chewing tobacco. Quite illegal in some parts of the world.’ He smiled. ‘Much preferable to cigarettes... if you are health conscious that is.’

Was it one of them? He dropped his head, looking up from the bottom of the bags under his eyes. ‘Which I’m not. Your friend –’ he looked across at Vikland again. ‘He might have met a bad spirit.’ He searched their faces, looking for a sign, any sign. He saw none.

Ash frowned. ‘Why a bad spirit?’

Almquist looked around. ‘Does anyone know why?’ He waited. No one answered.

Vikland was looking at him and shook her head, so slightly.

Okay. ‘Well, never mind.’ Almquist rubbed his eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger, massaging them. ‘That’s a lot of stories for one night.’

‘What do you mean?’ Conrad asked, looking confused. ‘You tell stories when Thomas is dead?’

He knew the why. Almquist breathed out and removed his hand, looking up.

‘Two police officers will be stationed in Tived ten minutes down the road. You can shop in Tived for your supplies, but that’s as far as you can go. For now.’ He looked around at each of them. ‘I must insist you all stay here until tomorrow.’

He had just chosen to ignore it.

Ignore it? He had buried it... had buried it so deep he had buried himself with it. And that was the hardest part, the knowing he couldn’t dig himself out of it again. He had been young back then. Too young to see ahead. And now he was old. His eyes reached Ulrika and stayed there.

Too old to start over. That left him only one choice...

He turned to look at Ash. ‘Stay inside, lock the doors at night. We will come back tomorrow morning. The painting is evidence.’ He looked towards the Hangman and walked over to retrieve it, drawing a look of condemnation from Conrad he ignored.

‘No one is to leave,’ he said.

Everyone nodded, some hesitantly. Even Conrad.

Conrad watched Ash stand up and listened to him walking across the

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floorboards, muttering, ‘The fucker must have forged it, he fucking forged it...’

Conrad knew it to be true. Thomas had to have forged it. That was the only explanation. He cursed his lousy rotten luck, carefully laid plans unfolding and dissolving around him, feeling powerless.

The painting was the key to the whole operation...

‘Thomas is dead.’ He sat down in the rocking chair, face dark. ‘Did anybody speak with Thomas before he left?’ He looked around.

The painting was the key to finding Anna.

Daniel said nothing, head back. Ash stopped muttering and returned to sit at the table, as restless as flies on pig shit, eventually slouching forwards and looking at nothing in particular. Justin was standing. He leaned against the kitchen worktop, looking at Ash as if waiting for a reaction that never came.

No one answered.

‘Did anyone see him?’ Conrad pressed.

Fuck, he thought. He had two things he had to take care of, both pushed beyond his reach, one of them permanently. Bring in Anna, who was dead. And discovery why the hell Justin’s neighbor had the piece. So far, he still had no idea what it was, or why it was of such interest to his superiors. That was the nature of his work, he knew that. But all this? He felt the game slipping from his grasp, realizing he was losing the ability to plan any way out of this mess.

Why didn’t they know she was dead? Or who the hell this Gustav was? It was fucked up, all of it.

Justin looked up from the floor. ‘I went looking for him; he wasn’t there this morning. I never saw him.’

‘Where were you?’ Conrad hadn’t seen Justin all day.

‘Oh – and now you’re going to say that I killed him, right?’ Justin raised his voice. He shook his head and walked over to sit at the far end of the dining table in the place previously occupied by Almquist, sitting down with his arms resting on the surface of the table, clenching his hands.

‘Thomas was a fucking prick.’ Ash said, looking directly across at Justin. ‘But I had nothing to do with it.’

Conrad swore at Justin’s liaison with Thomas, averting his eyes. He swore at himself for letting the wanker come along at all. He could have stopped it. Told Thomas to fuck off. He kept a check on his own anger as Justin’s face hardened.

‘That’s fine coming from someone who was about to kill him last night...’

Justin fired back at Ash. ‘Hey!’ All stopped and looked at Ulrika, her face aghast, voice soft. ‘You’ve just lost someone and all you can do is argue?’

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And where the hell did she come into the picture?

Conrad kept quiet, watching her, carefully. If she was part of it, she was playing the role with alacrity. ‘Thomas should not have been allowed to come... that was my call.’

‘No, it’s my fault.’ Justin bowed his head. ‘I should never have invited him.

He didn’t even want to come.’ He looked at Ulrika. ‘I’m so sorry we brought you back here...’

‘What were you doing out in the park?’ Conrad asked Ulrika.

Ulrika spun to face him, raising her voice. ‘I already told the police; I’m not starting that all over again!’ She leaned back, looking across at Justin. ‘And yes, if I had known...’ she bit her lip, choking the rest of whatever words she had to say.

I bet you are, you vixen ‘Stop blaming yourselves.’

‘Spare me the clichés, please.’ Ash said quietly.

‘Oh fuck you Ash!’ Justin erupted.

‘Fuck yourself Justin.’ Ash got up heading for the door. ‘You’re right, you should never have brought him.’

‘Stay here Ash!’ Conrad said sharply.

Ash turned to look down at him.

‘Forget the stupid painting.’ Daniel had a worried look about him. ‘I suggest we try to figure out what the hell happened to Thomas.’

‘That’s police business now.’ Conrad added, looking unsettled. He thought of what Almquist’s move would be. He had to keep the police out of this, no matter what... or he was fucked; they were all... fucked.

Almquist would be wading through the recordings, trying to list suspects in order of priority. He wondered briefly how far down the list his name would be, how much time they had, how much time he had. He could wind down the whole thing, here and now. He knew it. But they would be expecting that. And if he did, he would only find himself deeper in the shit than he already was.

Staying low was the best thing he could do right now.

Did he have the time?

Conrad rocked, eyes moving back and forth into and out of the candlelight, all the time fixed on Ulrika.

The police were already involved. He had to make the call.

Conrad stood up and left the room thinking about what he had to tell the embassy. If the word was out...

Get out.

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He pushed the thought from his mind, opening the door to the store under the stairs where the old phone was located.

Get out now.

The clock was ticking and he had to make a decision. He stopped, face grim.

Get out before it is too late.

The phone had been disconnected.

Ash was cold. And it was dark, so dark all he could see was the white of the toilet roll hanging on a string pinned to the back of the privy door, so it hung at an angle, the paper damp from the moisture-laden air. He finished what he had to do, scattering the obligatory spoonful of lime down into the black pits of the privy-hole; the smallest of gestures sparing them from the worst of the stench.

He opened the door, closing it behind him and descended three step. The open air shed was built into the side of the hut topped with an old thatched roof heavy with moss. In front of him, the lake splendid and silent in the fading light of dusk, as still as stone polished to dark steel, passing the remains of a cold black and wet camp fire, scattered beer cans black and burned.

Ash watched Conrad for a moment, collecting cleaved sections of fire wood, stacking the pieces before returning to pick up a cleaving axe. He looked at Ash, eyes glittering with the light from three oil lamps suspended from the eaves of the outhouse, long shadows playing across the open space. He looked away again, ordering the wood, selecting the next log, placing it with care. There was something in that look.

That was when Ash saw Conrad for the first time; the real Conrad. Not the Conrad he met at the embassy. This Conrad seemed different, less formal and yet more ill at ease, tense and guarded and watchful.

‘There are three kinds of people in the world. Makers, breakers and everyone else in-between,’ he grunted.

There was anger in those eyes.

‘Where were you?’

Ash frowned. ‘You mean, this afternoon?’

Conrad raised the cleaving axe, then swung it down with force, cracking the log into two, resting on the end of the shaft, breathing deeply. ‘That’s exactly what I mean...’

‘I was here.’

He threw the axe into the stump, then turned to look at Ash with a hard stare.

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‘No one saw him leave.’

Ash shrugged.

‘You don’t seem particularly upset.’

‘What can I say? He was a twat... a dead twat now, but still a twat.’ Conrad didn’t look like he was in the mood. ‘Look, I hardly knew him.’

‘You didn’t like him.’

‘Like I said...’

Conrad looked around, up at a dark tree-line crowning the edge of a rocky escarpment high above them. Then back across the cold black space of the dead open fire. ‘Bringing the girl here was a mistake.’ He looked back down and leaned forwards, placing the half-stump, then aimed and swung, another crack, cleaving the half-log neatly into two quarters. He lifted the axe off the block.

‘What you did was stupid. Those who make the rules. Those who break them...’

‘And those in-between,’ Ash nodded. ‘Yeah, heard you the first time.’

He looked out across the lake; it was still, the air turning colder. He looked across at the house, then back to Conrad as he lined up the next half-stump of wood. ‘Where were you then?’

Conrad stopped as he raised the axe. ‘Don’t fuck with me Ash.’ He pointed it at him, ‘I’m the one who makes the rules.’ Then he turned and in one fluid motion raised and brought the axe down with another crack.

‘That mean getting rid of Thomas?’ Ash said, an edge to his voice.

Conrad looked up. ‘Me?’ Then he laughed. He looked at the logs then he laughed again, louder this time. ‘Nice try sunshine.’

‘Justin’s hardly the type, is he? Dan I can vouch for, as for myself... well, I’m just slugs’n’snails.’

‘You forgot the girl.’ Conrad looked at Ash suspiciously. ‘Why did you bring her here?’

‘I didn’t.’ Ash shrugged, turning towards the house. ‘Justin asked me to stop.

If it was up to me, I would have left her there. Since I obviously break the rules.’

Conrad shook his head. ‘Not on my watch. It was stupid...’ he spat, frustration showing, ‘and now we have a mess to get out of while we still can.’ He shook his head, eyes hard.

Ash watched Conrad throw the block of birch in a pile with the others and placed the second half stump upright, taking a pace backwards. ‘He was a prick, and fuck your watch, Conrad. I’m leaving after this.’ He turned to leave.

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Conrad raised the axe again then swung, the blade glancing off the side.

‘Careful with that axe.’ Ash turned his back on Conrad and continued to walk in the direction of the thatched cottage.

‘You do only what I tell you to do...’ Conrad raised his voice. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

Ash stopped and turned around. ‘What I do is none of your business.’

Conrad glared back at Ash. ‘It’s all of my business. What we do and what we see may not turn out to be the truth son. A man is dead; you’d do well to remember that. Rock the boat one more time and you’re finished. And that includes the girl. She isn’t to know. Anything.’

Ash turned towards the cottage and walked away. ‘Piss off Conrad.’

Conrad reached Ash in five paces, taller than Ash by half a head, grabbing him by the collar of his sweatshirt, pinning him up against the nearest tree.

Ash tried to resist, eyes blazing.

Conrad moved quickly, changing position. He moved in a calm, poised manner, placing all of his weight behind the forearm slammed up against Ash’s throat, speaking through gritted teeth so he could feel and smell the heat in his words. ‘Did you kill him?’

Ash shook his head, unable to speak.

‘Then take this any way you want,’ he hissed, intent lying behind every word as leaned forwards. ‘Any more stunts or mention anything to the girl and I’ll take care of you myself.’ Conrad leaned even closer still, dropping his voice.

‘And I’m not in the habit of asking anyone twice.’

Ash shook his head and took Conrad’s wrists, trying to pull them back, struggling with the effort, surprised at the strength behind them. He looked at him defiantly, provocatively, challenging him. Then Conrad relaxed and released him, standing up.

The fire left Ash’s eyes.

Conrad turned to walk back towards the axe.

‘Who are you Baron?’ Ash shouted in defiance.

Conrad ignored him.

Ash shouted out after him again. ‘Who the fuck are you, eh?’

Conrad stopped and turned around. ‘Someone who used to hunt down and take out Irish boys like you son.’

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Chapter 5

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

The password is given in a low voice The prelate blows three times on the horn The fire is kindled with nine kinds of wood That is old custom A sacrifice is offered to the spirits Everyone is sprinkled with blood The best is gifted to spirits What remains is to be consumed by men The Trollkyrka Rites part 2

By Carlson (1941)

Rumors flew, newspapers rolled and yet the story never seemed to ever roll with it. Ulrika dismissed the thought as she got up and headed for the kitchen door, pausing long enough to make sure Justin was going to follow her outside, closing the door.

The look on his face...

Something told her to run, to get away from this place, from this fucked-up nightmare she’d become a part of. And each time she resolved that was what she was going to do, something else pulled her back. It was curiosity, wanting to know more. More about why Thomas had the painting in the first place.

The only person who could tell her that was Justin.

Outside it was intermittently cloudy, early evening stars hidden behind the fleeting blanket of evening cloud, revealed moments later as jewels in a black velvet sky, a half-moon lighting the ground a pale frosted silver.

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She thought of Ash, comparing him to Justin. She turned to face him, a dark shape lost in the lesser darkness beyond, waiting as he approached her. She stepped forwards to meet him, eyes searching his. ‘It’s terrible what has happened to your friend. Your boss doesn’t seem very happy.’

She breathed in, deeply. ‘I hope he doesn’t think bad of me, turning up like this.’ Everything had happened so fast. It was supposed to have been a regular interview, and now she was in the middle of something and just wanted to get the fuck out. She watched Justin as he laughed, looking up at the darkness.

‘Conrad’s not my boss.’

He turned towards the shadow of the monolith rearing above them, like a deep pit in the sky and stepped towards the bottom of the slope.

She followed after him. ‘What do you think happened to your friend?’

‘I don’t know.’

She noticed how the night froze his breath. ‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ she said, gaining his confidence.

He looked up the incline of rock again. ‘Come on, the view is stunning from the top.’

Ulrika smiled to herself as Justin turned and walked past the outhouse, edging closer to the base of the slope. He picked the easiest route that was possible in the near-dark. The hillside rose gradually, then more steeply until they had risen high enough to look down upon the lake, looking like a sheet of oil. She climbed after him, mindful of where she placed her boots. Before long she was out of breath and lagging behind.

She redoubled her efforts, losing sight, looking around. It was a still night, no wind, moonlight illuminating the smoke from the stove coming out of the ridge of the homestead roof rising. A lazy, vertical line in the cold night air. Above, the heavens littered by the dust of a million diamonds.

A movement caught her eye. She looked, the darkness clouding her sight and saw nothing, her breath pulsing in clouds of cold vapor.

It was still.

Then, the sound of feet on rock. She tried to calm herself, listening. Not a sound; it was as if someone had turned down the volume. She became aware of the sound of her pulse and looked down. Something... something behind her.

The voice startled her, making her jump, he was so close.

‘Here.’

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Justin. ‘Where are you? I can’t see you.’

‘To the side, just follow the sound of my voice.’

She felt vulnerable, out in the open. ‘I thought I saw something.’

‘It was only me.’ Justin said, sitting down.

No, it hadn’t been him. She felt uneasy, trying to calm her breathing.

She had heard the sound of footsteps, softly, but here. Turning, she scrambled out of the cover of the last trees and saw Justin sitting on the edge of a large boulder, just beyond the tree line. She made her way carefully up the rocky incline, finding a line that lead to the top and sat down next to him.

He leaned to one side, removing a packet of cigarettes. ‘Want one?’

She took one from the packet. He took another one for himself and reached into his pants, removing a tall, elegant lighter. Flicking it into fire, he cupped it with his hand and leaned towards her. Her head moved close, hand resting on his as she cupped the small flame, staying like that until it was lit, then removing it, leaning back.

‘This is,’ he indicated with a sweeping gesture, the cigarette between his fingers, exhaling smoke, ‘this is true nature. It makes you feel so alive.’

She took a long pull, trying to calm herself. Eventually, her breathing settled, the material of her clothing caressing the surface of the stone she sat upon. She nodded, ‘See here. The rock is smooth.’ She looked up towards Justin in the dark. ‘All the big boulders were carried along in the ice and left stranded; when it melted.’

‘Thomas was your friend, wasn’t he?’

Why did Thomas have the painting?

Justin looked towards the top of the rock and stood up, ‘Come, let’s walk to the top.’

She looked up nervously, eyes searching the precipice above them. ‘In the dark?’

Justin peered at her, face hidden.

A cloud passed over the moon so all she could see was the glow from the tip of his cigarette, his voice soothing, ‘Come on.’

He walked out to the angled stone face, walking up the incline towards the top. It wasn’t far. He reached out, helping Ulrika take the last step up onto a flat plateau taking her free hand as she climbed up to the top, turning to look down at the house, so small below them, nestled between the lake, a forest and the road. Moon shadows played intermittently

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across the contours of the landscape, filling pools of frosted air with luminescence where the smooth surface of the lake was shrouded in mist.

She turned and looked up at him as he took another pull, looking down at her then looking away towards the darkness of the trees, blowing the smoke out above her. He sat down on the edge. She was compelled to follow his lead, sitting down close to him.

She had to know about the painting.

‘I guess it’s my fault you’re here. I told Ash to stop.’

Ulrika nodded as she brought the cigarette to her lips, the faint moonlight catching the edge of her haphazard hair, making it glow silver.

She inhaled deeply. ‘I was thinking,’ she said, exhaling, ‘how we invent faces that we use to deceive people, when really, we are only deceiving ourselves. Or does that sound stupid?’

Justin looked across. ‘Why do you say that?’

Ulrika shook her head, drawing closer, so she could make eye contact.

‘I don’t know. Do you mind?’

‘Not at all.’ He hesitated, but just for a moment. ‘Why did you want to be a photographer?’

Ulrika raised her head slightly as she threw her cigarette away, watching it as it disappeared below in sparks. A slight breeze drifted up the face of the rock, banishing dark thoughts and darker fears, serving the easiest of the many lies coming to mind, strands of light golden hair lifted off her forehead. ‘It seemed the right thing to do at the time.’ She felt vulnerable, too vulnerable and made to get up.

‘No, stay!’ Justin had his eyes on hers. He threw his cigarette away and turned to her, leaning closer.

Ulrika stopped, looking at him. She wanted to go. And yet... he knew something. A silence descended in the space between them. Then Justin leaned forwards, closing the distance so his lips were on hers. She raised a hand, feeling his reticence, then forcing her fears to the side, let him press his advantage, probing, tentatively. She felt him ease away and gave something in return. Finally, she responded, arms at her sides, taking her weight as she leaned backwards and offered him her mouth; now taking. Then giving, pushing back, oblivious to the cold or the acrid taste of smoke. She broke off. He looked at her in a way she didn’t really understand, his face white in the weak moonlight.

Justin retreated, slightly, looking into her, waiting for more. And she let him come close, teasing him with her presence. He moved closer again

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and she let him have more, little by little until she raised a hand to the side of his cheek and gave him what she knew he longed for, so he was satisfied, just for the moment. Then she pulled back.

‘Where did you get the painting from?’ She said quietly.

‘It’s a long story.’ He whispered.

‘The painting,’ she whispered. ‘You know something...’ she looked across. ‘Don’t you?’

A single large eye regarded them, dark, and perfectly round. She could see them, even in the dark. She thought she had a really nice smile, missy. She liked jobs like this one, this job. If she was into girls, rightly she’d go for this one.

So who was the guy?

She lay shrouded in swathes of camouflage, a loose cloth that reached to the ground, the figure behind the eye laying down. And she was thinking, this one was different: There was going to be no more pay-offs from him, the voice.

This one going bad.

No more jobs, too many jobs from him the regular customer with all them big ideas. She knew the type: been there, done that, seen things, done things. Bad ass things by bad ass people she was paid not to care for or die for. There was always a limit, the point of no return.

She tried not to think too hard about all that, tried to just do her job and that job meant watching and waiting, being so much a part of the landscape that the eye was the only sign that there was anyone here at all.

It was quiet.

She not be tired no more, wondering why Little Missy be here at all.

14 th October 1987 ‘Ash, I’m scared.’

‘So am I Ulrika,’ Ash said slowly, voice as smooth as silk.

Ulrika was standing in front of the window with her back to him, facing straight ahead, legs together, arms by her side. She spoke so quietly Ash could hardly hear what she was saying. ‘What do you think is going on?’

Ash looked up at her from his bed. He was laying on his side, head resting in

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the palm of his hand supported by an elbow buried into his bedding. He looked and admired her, she being naked standing upright, soft, taking in the outline of her hips, her navel, the curve of perfect breasts bordered by the tips of wavy blonde hair falling from her shoulders. Ash could see a small gap at the top of her legs, within which shone the light of the silver moon. He tried to see and reached out, but what lay above was carpeted in darkness. She turned around and took a step towards him, looking at him all the while with eyes lost in the shadows. She wet her lips, the tip of a small delicate tongue running slowly across the fine line of warm, moist contact. Ash experienced the perfection of her womanhood, arousal; her femininity. As if reading his thoughts, she placed a hand between her legs, massaging herself, slowly. She raised her head. ‘Doesn’t it bother you he is dead?’

Ash watched her close her eyes, enjoying the sight of her giving pleasure to herself. ‘No,’ he whispered.

‘Doesn’t it?’ she breathed, moving her head slightly to the side, hands moving in slow, regular movements.

His eyes lingered on her pale, smooth eyelids, down to her cupped breasts, nipples pink and aroused. Down past the soft, rounded contours of her womb, towards her fingers as she penetrated herself, sliding them in and out with joy.

She stopped, opening her eyes, looking at him. ‘Do you think Conrad has anything to do with it, this murder?’

Something wasn’t right. ‘Leave Conrad out of this. Please, just continue...’ He wanted her to lick her fingers.

She took two more paces, until she was standing in front of him.

He found himself kneeling on the floor, head level with her navel. He leaned forwards, raising his head, nose searching.

Ulrika took another step forwards, removing her fingers from inside herself, reaching out towards him, leaning forwards. ‘Has he said anything, done anything you can think of?’ she whispered, raising her fingers, slowly, until they were level with his eyes.

‘I don’t know.’ Ash whispered back, staring at them, sniffing the air.

‘Close your eyes.’

Ash closed his eyes.

He breathed in her scent. Close, but not touching. He felt like he was alone, looking for someone who had left the party, a boy on his own with the school teacher he had only ever dreamt of before. And now she was here. Right here.

With him, waiting.

‘I like to learn,’ he said. ‘So please, teach me. Teacher.’ He could feel her

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breath on his face, as she leaned closer to within a finger’s breadth away.

‘Well then tell me, learner,’ she whispered. ‘Where have you been? What have you been up to?’

Ash opened his eyes.

‘Close them!’

Ash closed his eyes. ‘Rowenda, you wicked witch.’ He heard the slight, soft touch of her fingertips, massaging each other. Then they touched him, a light flick, just under the nose. His head recoiled. He could smell her, so close he felt he would explode; a foul, pungent corruption that petrified his senses. He felt like he was inside a warm, confined space, making him think of a hall built of wood. A place of sordid deeds. Like a hunter’s lodge from the past. For a moment he saw himself like a little boy, walking across a crowded playground.

He was a hunter and wanted to shout out: ‘Hunter.’ Hunt her? Hunt her, he cried out inwardly. Hunt her. He thought he heard a distant cry back. Le Breton, a name from the lodge in that past; none of it made any sense, not even his old name. Hunt her.

‘My name isn’t Rowenda,’ she whispered coarsely.

Of course her name wasn’t Rowenda. Neither was it Eleonora, Petra or Angelica, all of them, witches. Hubble bubble boil and trouble...

‘And my name isn’t Ash,’ Ash replied, whispering his name.

‘Open them.’

He opened them. He recoiled, her fingertips coated in thick, dark blood. Ash looked up in surprise as she leaned still closer, disappearing from view, her hand moving out of sight behind his head. He felt a finger entwine itself slowly, around a long lock of his hair. Then another, and another, as she smiled at him like Medusa, drying her fingers on his locks.

Something felt wrong.

She pulled his hair with a sudden violent tug, pulling his head back until his neck was pulled taught, exposing his vulnerable fine skin.

‘Get up!’ she shouted, her voice high-pitched cruel, as harsh as broken ice.

‘Get up, get up get up!’

Ash looked up in confusion, up at her long black hair falling in curls around her shoulders. He couldn’t see her eyes, lost in shadow. He realized what was wrong.

Ulrika didn’t have long black curly hair.

Ash opened his eyes and looked towards the window. The curtains beckoned

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him. He sat up. He got out of his sleeping bag with a sense of deja vú. He looked around the familiar bare-boarded walls, the smell of them dry but not unpleasant.

He was alone.

The sound of sleeping, a light snoring from the rooms to either side of his own... he looked across to Daniel’s bed; it was empty, Daniel having taken to sleeping in the same room as Justin. Ash snored when he was drunk. Tonight, he was sober.

He reached forward, drawing the curtains to the side.

All was quiet, all was still. The night frost rimmed the glass window. What he didn’t expect to see was the dark shape of someone moving along the still edge of the lake moving towards the back of the house.

Ulrika waved down to him. He waved back, hesitantly, placing one foot forwards and began his ascent. He climbed, one foot after the other, the thirtyone steps until he reached the top. Arriving out of breath, he just stood there, hand on railing, panting. He nodded a greeting.

‘Hi.’ He held out his hand, doubled over fighting to get his breath back.

Ulrika nodded back, stepping forwards to offer her hand in return. ‘I’m Ulrika.’

He shook her hand. ‘I’m Thomas.’

Her head moved from one side and then to the other, thinking she could hear, something, except she was thinking about Thomas Denisen, a black-marketeer selling stolen works of art. This particular marketeer had something he hadn’t the faintest idea about. Other than being a painting, painted by a shadow from the past. Why did he want to meet her in the middle of the national park? Had it been fear? But fear of what? There had been plenty of places to meet. He had chosen the site at Trollkyrka.

Ulrika was laying under a blanket on the sofa, feeling cold dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of white cotton knickers. She opened her eyes, rising from the depths of a disturbed sleep. Except, she didn’t know why she had wakened.

And so she had found his trail and she had followed that trail and now she was here, sleeping on a sofa in the middle of a murder enquiry.

She tried to relax.

The sound came from the kitchen.

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Ulrika opened her eyes.

Raising herself, Ulrika pulled her jeans on, silently, tiptoeing into the corridor, breathing hard. She stood with her back to the wall, the glass, photographs on walls reflecting the pale moonlight. She peered around the door into the kitchen.

As she did so, a shadow passed beyond the living room window.

Behind her.

Waiting, every sense tuned in to the sound. Again. It came from the window, the window overlooking the cold black water of the lake. It was the kitchen. She willed herself to move except, her body refused.

Someone was outside.

She breathed in, deeply, forcing herself to calm down.

One–two–three Gathering courage, she made the move and walked boldly into the kitchen.

She stood still, heart racing, looking around in the dark. She thought she saw a shadow; black on black that seemed to stop, move backwards imperceptibly outside, before her.

She froze, chest constricted, feeling the adrenalin alter her sense of reality.

‘It’s only me!’

Ulrika stared at him, unrecognizing. Then she registered Ash’s face. She closed her eyes, placing a hand on the wall. She opened them, whispering. ‘I think someone’s outside,’ she said, her voice betraying her fear.

‘I know. I saw someone outside by the lake.’

‘I heard something at the window.’

Before she could finish Ash walked back into the corridor. When he returned he had the cleaving axe in his hand. ‘Go back into the corridor and stay there.’

‘Where are you going?’ Ulrika was breathless, her heart pounding so hard it almost hurt, staring deeply. He stared back, mouth set, eyes hard and determined. He turned towards the sound. This time, it came from the living room. Her eyes darted towards his. His held hers.

Ash peered around the living room door, Ulrika close behind him. ‘Stay here!’

He pressed himself to the door, drawing her back, peering through the crack into the room, towards the windows facing the lake. The sound returned, clearer and louder than the previous times. For a moment he hung his head, peering down at the ground, tensing. Listening.

Ulrika heard the sound of something giving way, breaking. Ash peered through the crack again. Ulrika strained to look. Ash placed his hand firmly on her shoulder, restraining her. They stood, frozen together, listening to the faint sound of something moving, the door laying between then and whatever it was

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that was trying to get in. Then silence, an ear-deafening silence. All she could hear was the thumping inside her chest. She looked across. Ash stood as rigid as a door post. Just when she though she would turn and run, Ash nodded. He moved past, entering. She raised a hand to her mouth, looking at him, wildly.

Stepping out, he raising the axe up and past his chest with the look of a beast.

Ash hoped he would be lost in the darkness. He placed one foot forwards then the other, entering the space of the living room, keeping close to the wall. He faced the window, keeping out of the light what little there was.

He stopped, listening, eyes straining in the dark. He took one tentative step, then another. A pale light shone through the window, fading to darkness as a cloud passed in front of the weak moonlight. He paused, not knowing what to do, feeling the weight of the shaft in his hands. He took another step, eyes fixed on the sill. Something, indistinct, moving. Or was it a trick of his imagination?

No, he had seen it. Something. Someone. They were here. Thomas was dead.

They were here. Almquist was gone. Someone was here, for... to get inside.

Where were the police?

They were here. They were on their own. He heard his pulse in his ears, straining to see more, taking another pace towards the window. Then he heard it. It was faint, like the sound of a mouse. Movement, soft, faint movement. He took another pace, feeling his hands tremble with pent-up adrenalin, feeling a brief surge of something overpowering his fear. He took another step, barely believing his eyes. So indistinct, that he wondered if there had to be some explanation, something explaining why he could...

The shadows lifted and what he saw made him lurch. A hand.

It was like a movie extracted from a Munch nightmare seeing a hand. Lit by the weak silver light of a half moon, indistinct in the dark, it had entered through a missing pane of glass. It groped along the edge of the sill. It moved to one side, then the other, probing. He watched in disbelief, the hand appearing to exist without an owner. For a moment, he almost believed Almquist’s tale, imagined beasts laying in the darkness. The hand moved back again, the owner kneeling low outside. They were searching for the latch, the latch that opened the window, the hand moving back and forth, as if possessing a life of its own.

Ash stood for a moment, the first heavy thumps in his chest pumping him awake. His survival mechanisms kicked into motion, followed by a clarity of thinking without any thought, leaving only focus. Three paces, four, then he was in motion, running forward. He grasped the axe with both hands, fingers

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tightening around its shaft, tensing, gauging weight as the hand found the catch holding the window closed. The hand paused, then moved towards the edge of the open pane, ready to...

Ash rushed forwards, raising the axe and swung it. It fell once, fast and heavy, embedding itself deeply into the fragile antique window sill, followed instantly by the howl of anguish from the outside, the shadow backing away then disappearing, receding into the blackness from whence it came.

Ash stood there, transfixed, breathing heavily. There was nothing to see, nothing more to do. It had happened. If he ran outside, whoever it was would no longer be there. He stayed like that as Ulrika entered the room, one foot passing slowly after the next.

Ulrika entered behind him, eyes wide in conviction. Ash was standing to the side of the window, staring down at the place where the axe was still embedded in wood. Taking the axe by the end of the handle, he pulled the shaft rapidly upwards, removing the blade out of the woodwork. He turned to look at her.

There was something about his face, a look that told her he was prepared for more. She followed the direction of his attention and stopped, eyes transfixed upon two dismembered fingers. Most of a thumb and half a forefinger lying beside splintered wood in a growing pool of black ink.

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The Elements

Labyrinth Trilogy Everything has an origin

7 elements 7 deceptions 7 revelations The Elements is a high-concept mystery thriller series set in the timeframe of the 20th century with the depth and breadth of vision of epic fantasy.

In the quest for truth, to discover that truth will mean struggling to understand the lives and actions of the past. To reveal that truth means to remove it from the shadows of those who would not be found, those who would not enlighten, caught up in the tide of fate and time. To survive that truth will mean challenging the game masters who want to keep the mysteries just the way they are.

The Labyrinth Trilogy The Elements books starts at the beginning.

Angelica Lux is a young attractive analyst working for MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. When a preserved bog body is discovered in a bog in the grounds of a nobleman’s residence, Angelica is sent to Copenhagen to investigate.

Their world was ending. Hers was just beginning. The first book in the elements pantheon Labyrinth 1 concerns fate and time, following Angelica’s experiences in London and Copenhagen. Her mission: Investigate the circumstances uniting the discovery of a preserved SS officer from the second world war in a forest bog and the murder of the survivors of the resistance cell called The Nightingales.

The Labyrinth Trilogy The Labyrinth trilogy is a three-part examination of the Ancient Egyptian element darkness, Tenebris. Learn about what’s in store on elementamundi.com (for release summer 2017).

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Summer 1986: Lethragard, Denmark: A body is found in a Danish bog in the grounds of a residence of aristocracy wearing the uniform of the SS, mutilated with the Viking blood-eagle. Soon afterwards, a member of the Danish resistance cell called the Nightingales is murdered by the same method used during wartime liquidation operations. With possible connections with ongoing operations, British MI6 send analyst Angelica Lux to Copenhagen to investigate.

What at first seems like an investigation into a past psychopathic killer, becomes a journey into liquidation actions of those who fought on both sides during the war. Questioning the true motives of her superiors, she becomes irrevocably involved in a labyrinthine network of past deeds and hidden agendas – where her quest for the hidden truth leads her into dark places and darker deeds.

As her investigation takes her deeper into the past, Angelica begins the task of discovering the truth, meeting survivors of the resistance group and compiling tapes on their past deeds while the last remaining Nightingales are still left around to tell their tale. When the nature of the truth becomes more and more illusive, Angelica is left isolated, struggling to understand the true nature of her involvement, forced to overcome fear while navigating the delicate balance between morality, reason and a Count with a taste for fast drugs and faster women.

Suspecting the Lethragard Estate’s past involvement is being covered up, Angelica turns to her only allies – the archaeological staff left to maintain the increasingly empty shell of a bogus excavation. When she realizes the only common denominator is a name, the one name that has not been mentioned in her brief – the Swedish archaeologist Karl Oskar Eklund, murdered four years previously, Angelica begins her journey into the underworld that is the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth trilogy is one evocative book, rich in detail, taking the reader into a journey of discovery, with repercussions no one can predict, least for all those caught in the tide of events they have become an inextricable part of.

Next: Bonus Material Read the first chapter of Labyrinth Part 1...

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Labyrinth 1: Prologue et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

The Gospel Of John Verse 5, Chapter I

Something really strange is going on at Lethragard...

The Lethragard Estate. Seeland, Denmark.

August 1986 The driver of the excavator rattled the gear lever into neutral, frowning at the solitary bee. It was lit by a bright August sun, hovering. Then it moved to the side. First one way, then back again. It made another attempt, hitting the glass of the cabin, rebounding. It tried again, hitting the glass a third time. Then another; two bees, three and five, from where they came he knew not.

A bee flew through the open window and into his face, another flying in circles, trying to get out. Then came the noise; deep, amplified by the dozens, then the hundreds, a dozen bees inside his cabin, then two dozen. He felt them stir the air around his hair and shot out his hand out for the door lever, opening the door to hundreds, jumping the three metal steps to the soft ground that was neither water nor earth but somewhere in-between. He ran forwards, looking over his shoulder as they consumed the vehicle, the trees and the air around them, the sound of the swarm growing into a storm: Bees in their thousands hitting the body panels, hitting the windshield; blotting out the trees around him, blotting out the land and the sky. Blotting out the light. Blotting out his thoughts, growing, multiplying; passing over, under, around. Nowhere to run.

Nowhere to hide.

He looked down at the excavation ditch and jumped blindly landing in soft, stinking mud and black water that coated his skin and soaked his clothes.

Frightened. Fascinated. Fading. And then, it was as if they had never been there at all, the swarm obscuring other places, other trees, leaving the air once again

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clear and calm.

Another worker dressed in a pair of blue overalls emerged white-faced from the woods, making for the man sitting up in his excavation pit.

‘Did you see that?’ The worker said, picking his way across the ground shouting excitedly. ‘Did you see that?’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that...’ He looked down at the driver, eyes shining like king-carat diamonds.

The driver became aware again of the rumble of his engine. How could he not have seen it? He had never seen a swarm before. He would never see a swarm again.

‘Why do they do that? Why?’ The worker shook his head again. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that...’ he repeated.

He was standing erect, looking out across the open ground then back to the trench where the driver was staring at the ground into the mud. The same mud where he knew people were working up to their neck in it, wet and rank despite anything the heat of the sun could offer. All thoughts of bees faded, staring at one of those many holes made by himself in the course of the morning’s work.

There, lying half-submerged in water. Something.

He leaned forwards and reached out with his left gloved-hand to remove it, dark and leathery. He pulled it free and stood up in frantic haste, stumbling backwards, staring at the dead forearm of an even more dead person as dark, wet and odorless as the earth from where it came.

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Labyrinth 1: Chapter 1 The sun shone, the insects buzzed, the swallows screeched, twisting and diving.

Days had come, days had gone and all she had to show for all the work was a word – junk.

They worked in a clearing next to primitive forms of shelter, temporary working and cleaning facilities for the people working out in the trenches. A site divided between clean and dirty, dirty places predominating. Canvas and plastic tarpaulins spread between trees, places accessed by paths of boards and sheets of ply. A lot of dirty places. Other than those oversized boxes on wheels they called site huts, placed higher uphill on each side of a hastily cleared access road sheltered by the trees: Offices, toilets, changing facilities and a canteen that could only be entered once the working clothes had been hosed clean and removed for drying.

She spoke from inside the hut that was her office. ‘Historically speaking this could be very, very important.’ She balanced the telephone between her chin and shoulder as she flicked impatiently from page to page in her journal, the lack of finds a constant source of irritation. She found what she was looking for, stopping at a sketch of a plan of the lake and the trees surrounding it. ‘The conditions here make it impossible to dig. There is no firm ground...’ She tapped the middle of the lake with her fingertip and delivered the punchline she had meant to build up to, but didn’t have the inclination to deliver in any other way than getting to the point. ‘We need to drain all of it.’

Even taking the limited numbers at her disposal into consideration, she’d be at this the rest of the year. Six laborers and an archaeological staff of five including the assistants wasn’t going to cut it. She bit her lip and waited, eyeing her mud-stained waders hanging from a clothes hanger drip-drying onto an open newspaper. To the left, a large simple square window in front of her desk. To the right, an office chair on wheels next to her litter of files, journals and the daily newspaper.

‘I can’t do that,’ came the reply.

Sara was dressed in an oversized shirt hanging open, outside of a pair of cotton shorts reaching to her knees, her shoulder-length hair damp from exertion, blonde and unkempt. She frowned as she spoke, giving her a determined look, ‘The excavation boundary is simply not large enough. I have applied for permission for extension...’

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‘... And I’ve informed you, we’d be going beyond the limits set by the agreements. We just can’t drain the whole lake.’

‘We have to,’ she insisted, raising her voice. ‘Otherwise all of this is just a waste of bloody time. Or,’ she inhaled deeply, unsure what to say, feeling like she was getting out of her depth.

‘Or what?’ Ringberg had an unemotional voice, guarded by the coolest and bluest eyes she had ever seen in a man or any person.

Or what? Her team was composed of assistants, students mostly, of universities from remote corners of the world. What would happen to them? It was the policy of the Institute to make any major excavation an international study whenever they could. But that was the exception, not the rule. She exhaled deeply, ‘we have to drain the whole lake. I don’t know, we just don’t have the equipment or personnel to continue like this. If we can make a dam around old Viking ships and drain the sea around to excavate them, it shouldn’t be so difficult to drain a whole bog and see what else lays down there.’

‘Security is still an issue.’

Home personnel meant local talk – and Lethragard had to be kept tight, very tight she had been informed, followed by stiff handshakes with stiffer men. Lots of hands, all of them civil servants, some in uniform, some not. Everyone interested in that name Lethragard, a name as old as the country it was a part of, from a time when people killed each other for no other reason than allegiance to the family. A time of horses, shields, swords and spears. A time of sacrifice.

‘Yes I know - but we’re digging in the dark.’ She paused, noticing the staccato of static on the line and turned to look out of her hut window at the edge of trees and a glimpse of yellow that was the excavator. Where had the information come from she wondered? ‘Or – I’m wasting my time.’ Normally an archaeologist had a context to work within. Here, there was nothing. Nothing to go on. Dig and see. That was what he had said.

She had regarded his desk, littered with old photographs of old trenches, of old finds littering the ground: Twisted ancient swords and an occasional pommel, a cup from shields long since turned to rot. And here there would be more she had been told, the statement framed by the temptation of finds no archaeologist could resist. And so she had agreed, her need to know outweighing her reticence concerning context, or lack of it. Despite the fact the person who had made the discoveries had been the infamous Swedish archaeologist Karl Oskar Eklund. It was his name in the end that had made her mind up. Her arrival here had been followed by a week of rain and excavation, draining water and stinking mud. Five days was what it took for spirits to sag.

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There had to be something, somewhere. ‘Can’t you pull a few strings?’ She stood up, pacing around the table interrupted by a knock at the door.

The door opened. She raised a finger as a young bald-heading man entered the site hut with short, receding red hair, seeing she was occupied he stood a little to one side.

‘If you find anything, let me know. I’ll see what I can do.’

Her heart leapt. ‘Is that a yes?’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

The line went dead.

Goodbye Chrilles.

She replaced the phone back in its cradle, eyes lingering for a moment on the excavation permit. It had been a surprise, the offer of a new project coming out of the blue. She was used to new finds. What she wasn’t used to was the air of secrecy. All because section Chief Chrilles Ringberg expected her to follow in Eklund’s footprints.

‘You found something?’ she said to the waiting American.

‘Not me,’ he replied. ‘One of the workers did. You won’t believe this...’

She looked up at the tone in his voice. Only then did she see the shine in his eyes. ‘What is it?’

‘Come and see...’ he said with excitement as he turned and opened the door.

She stared at him for a moment. ‘What?’

‘Something old,’ he teased, tossing her a glance over his shoulder with a boyish smile as he exited the hut.

She leapt from her chair, strode to the door and slid dirt-stained socks into a pair of black leather clogs. She barely registered the tramp of impatient feet on the boardwalk of wooden planks, knowing someone had found something. All thoughts concerning Chrilles Ringberg faded to dust, the letter of appointment bearing the logo of Danish Defense Intelligence already forgotten as she hurried after Daniel.

The sound of a solitary swallow. It was the sound of summer. It wasn’t the warble or song of other birds; the swallow had something special, the exclamation of excitement. Of joy. Sara looked up to watch the swallow dive, turning on a wing-edge accompanied by a brother or sister displaying the same effortless aerobatics. And neither were they on their own, finding others smaller, fainter, flying above them and others above those higher still.

‘They went up to the house and told him. He told them to stop digging.’

David / FEAR OF BROKEN GLASS / 80

‘What is it Daniel?’

He didn’t answer her question, playing out the suspense as they left the shade of the trees for the bake in the mire, Daniel’s purposeful strides on wooden boards tramping, feet marching in syncopation with the regular beat of pumps keeping waters at bay. The boardwalk split into two halves, one followed the edge of the wood, the other continued out into the trenches, sections filling with water though the workers had yet to return. They followed hastily laid planks and loose pieces of warped plywood, terminating at a large yellow excavation machine laying out in the open.

Daniel stopped and looked down into the pit. It wasn’t the fresh earth of the garden but heavier, saturated. Sara joined him, blonde hair falling in strings around her shoulders. She followed the direction of his gaze to where the excavator had laid the earth bare, the yellow machine covered in drying mud, laying dormant next to the ditch.

Why Danish Defense Intelligence was interested in an old excavation field had been bothering her. She had been informed they had a lead, that was all she had to go on.

‘This was the place?’ Sara looked down at the marks at the bottom of the trench filling with water.

‘That’s it.’ Daniel replied, in a friendly tone.

Daniel stood with his arms crossed, freckles covering his bare skin turning red in the sun. Slim, above average in height, Daniel has unofficially risen through the ranks of the assembled assistants to become her RHM, the Right Hand Man, as he called himself; all working for a pittance, all willing to work for less.

Sara stood for a while, scanning the ground, the lay of the land, keeping her thoughts to herself. Eventually she said, ‘Okay. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got.’ She looked across at Daniel who nodded, a smile of expectation curling his lip as he turned to march off back down the boardwalk. They took a right, until she arrived at a canvas-covered work tent. She passed two curious workers as she entered, following Daniel who walked across until he was standing at the side of a large black plastic container. He looked down and she joined him. Her eyes penetrated the darkness, finding the vague form of the arm. It was laying at the bottom hidden in shadow, twisted grotesquely by the optical distortion of the water.

She quelled the anger at not being consulted, annoyed he’d taken it upon himself to put it to soak, freeing the body part from the caked-in mud. What could be seen was a hand, fingernails; the remnants of half-rotted cloth with mud-cloaked details enshrouded in a deeper suspension of dirty water, all of it

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diffuse and opaque so it was hard to make out any details.

She had to ask. ‘Who dug it out?’

‘I did.’

She turned on him, eyes blazing.

Daniel raised a hand, ‘I had to get it out fast. Before he turned up.’

‘Did he, turn up?’

Daniel nodded. ‘When there was nothing to see he left again. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ she replied with bated breath. Then closing her mind to thought and reason, she placed her hand within, submerging it under the water and mud, cool to the touch, taking hold of the arm, lifting it, gently.

She let it drip before placing it delicately upon a stainless steel work top, eyes drawn to the jagged line that was severed bone, the end black and ancient. If there had been any clothing, it had been left behind in the mud, if there was anything left at all. She looked up as two assistants entered. She regarded them as if they were her children; admiringly. ‘So. What have we got?’

One of the assistants shook his head. ‘Nothing. Nothing more than just wishful thinking.’

Sara tried to contain her disappointment as she walked around to the other side taking a small red plastic tray within which were metallic objects, the relics of their excavation could be seen under a thin layer of water. Daniel and the two others gathered around her, all four of them looking down at the remnants of a tin can, a pair of rotten clogs and a half-broken bottle of coca-cola. Junk of the mid-twentieth century; a far cry from the iron-age battlefield she had been lead to believe she would find here; the reason for them being here at all, at this place, within the grounds of past nobility – all turned to mud and yet more junk.

2 days later ‘There I was.’ The voice said.

Daniel ignored the voice, leaning forwards. He wore a wide-brimmed cotton hat that had once been white, a stained t-shirt clinging to his back and filthy waterproof nylon pants coated in stinking mud. Layer by layer, working in fast, practiced movements, surrounded by a wall of muddy ground as high as he was tall, hoping and waiting for the day when he could work in dry conditions.

‘Where?’ Daniel nodded, pearls of sweat beading across a filthy forehead. He was unable to see his companion who was working inside his pit in similar

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fashion, two men each in their own pit in the ground working for as long as possible, cramped conditions and heat allowing. ‘Care to explain?’

‘The other night. Having it off with this right minger...’

Daniel turned his head to look up at the sun. It beat down upon them, mercilessly, hour after hour so his t-shirt was glued to his back. ‘What’s a minger?’

Ash stood up, his head emerging out of a field of mud. He wiped his forehead, leaving a trail of dirt and sweat across his forehead. Daniel regarded him for a moment then turned and regarded the site devoid of anything resembling vegetation; a no-mans land of some forgotten war, before kneeling on his hands and knees as his Ash kept on talking.

‘You don’t know what a minger is?’

‘Nope,’ came the reply from the pit.

‘Well, it’s female. Of the variety you wouldn’t exactly want to invite home,’ Ash continued in a broad London accent. ‘You know, the sort of girl who looks like the rear-end of a boxer. Not the punching kind mind, but those ones with those little squiggly tails in air. So you can see all those funny-looking fleshy arse-bits.’

Daniel chuckled.

‘Well, she was one big fat constipated boxer-arse this one...’

Daniel’s hat bobbed as it emerged from the ground, his head rising above the level of the earth. ‘And you invited her home?’

Ash laughed. ‘Yeah, something like that. But that’s not the point though, is it?’

He didn’t have any hat on, or anything else. Ash chose to work barebacked, long black hair hanging in sweaty folds around broad shoulders almost as deep a shade as the earth they worked within. He held a hand out, in front of him, as if shielding his eyes. ‘I just couldn’t remember how the hell she’d got there in the first place.’

‘In your bed?’

Ash grinned. Reciprocated by Daniel who grinned back, so his face split into a grin, revealing a mouth of perfect white teeth.

‘Shag anyone that one, talk about desperate. Do anything...’

Daniel lifted his head back, erupting into loud, heartfelt laughter. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead. He replaced it and continued laughing, his laughs erupting from his hole in the ground as he vanished within, getting back down on his knees to continue with his routined scraping movements.

Ash talked and Daniel scraped, getting down on his hands, moving in an increasing radius; working outwards. He stopped when he felt the edge of his

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trowel find something, discarding it. He slid his fingers forward, letting them penetrate the moist clammy ooze. He stopped when he felt something. It was hard and unyielding and slid back for a moment.

‘Hate people like that...’

He removed his hands, pushing more mud to the side revealing a blackened stump of... something. Not fleshy, like the arm. This was different. He used his hands to remove more mud then sat back to look at what he had found, frowning. Whatever they were, there was more than one of them, blunt-ended and black.

‘And I mean do anything.’

Daniel leaned forwards, hands submerging, pushing through slime until he met resistance again. Then moving them back, moving his head to the side, avoiding the worst of the mud-stench, pushing it aside into a viscous, stinking pool away from him. He enjoyed the pleasant cooling sensation around his fingers as they slid, hidden but feeling everything and ignored Ash, repeating the actions until he had revealed a line of stump-ended objects.

‘Had this copious minge’n’all, if I remember right...’

Daniel pushed his hands deeper still, finding a space between the two rows of objects. Something larger it was. He stopped, sitting up, breathing heavily now from his exertions and stared at the ground before him.

‘But that ain’t the story, honestly, you’ll love this one...’

He probed with his fingertips, finding the edge of the softness. Forms revealed, yet unrecognizable. Objects, organic objects, all in a row like the remnants of... restless fingers, furtive fingers moving left, probing right, finding some prehistoric creature of an apocalyptic underworld.

‘The next morning, after the shag...’

He stopped and felt a flutter, a feeling within he didn’t know was excitement, fear or something in-between. The sound of Ash’s voice was all but forgotten as he leaned in closer. A bead of perspiration dropped off the end of his brow absorbed by the mud now only inches from his face.

‘And then, I just...’

He stopped. Slowly, he sat upright. Somewhere he felt sweat running down his lower recesses to places hot and uncomfortable. The sound of a petrolpowered pump from the direction of the woods.

‘And then...’ Ash started laughing.

He removed his hands to hang loosely at his sides.

‘You getting this or what?’

But Daniel only heard the sound of his own breath, felt the pulse of his heart,

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suddenly feeling dizzy, feeling faint. Then nauseous, a cold feeling cascading over his head, from the crown of his head, light, white, draining, seeking to find a place unseen where his thoughts could find clarity, refusing to accept what the thinking part of him was screaming at him, a buzz building in his ears.

‘Hey Dan. Still in there?’

That these rows of objects belonged not to something but someone. That his hands had been immersed, embedded within the deformed cavity of a human body, a body in a lot worse shape than he could ever have imagined.

The stench of the mud overbearing, the impulse proving greater than his will, Daniel turned his head to the side to vomit.

You could smell the rain, even before it started – the before-rain that pervaded the air, heavy and oppressive, like a hammer waiting to fall. Sara followed Daniel and his camera in its pouch around his neck, Ash next to him both dressed alike in green rubber waders held up by straps over the shoulders, making for the boardwalk. They followed it, walking in beat to each other’s tramping feet, then wading across the mud until they came to the pit. Ash wore a stained white t-shirt and had his hair tied in his customary ponytail, glistening dark in the sun, his heavy-set not unattractive face framed in a look of studied concentration.

‘Oh my god.’ She couldn’t understand what she was looking at. Something regular, dark. ‘...is this it?’

Daniel raised the camera and snapped a picture then nodded to Sara who was already down on her knees peering closely.

‘What do you think?’ Ash said, breathless.

‘Tollund Man was in a much worse state of preservation than this one.’ She looked back at the body. ‘Perfectly anorexic compared to this fellow.’

Daniel got down on the ground kneeling next to Sara. ‘I can’t believe I actually had my hands inside it...’

Sara nodded, her thoughts drifting away from Daniel’s response to the macabre body towards the reasons for the nature of the injury. To the person or people who could have been responsible for such an act; to the reasons for their actions; to their beliefs. And to the nature of the person whose remains lay exposed before them tortured and torn. Tollund man was over two thousand years old. Northern Europe had so many bodies of old in remarkable states of bog-made preservation even the ancient Egyptians would have been impressed.

‘Aren’t you going to examine it?’

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Sara’s eyes shifted from Ash back to the pit in the mud and slid into the trench, kneeling down. She touched the blackened cloth, gently, then moved it over the blackened skin. It was tough but still supple. She moved her hand downwards reaching out and touching the edge of ribs torn and butchered, cut through at the sides along the length of the spine, the hack marks almost as clear and fresh as the day they had been delivered.

‘They called it the blood eagle.’

Daniel stood as if in a trance, eyes still bathing in the glory that was death. ‘I always thought that was a legend.’

The cadaver was in a better state of preservation than she could have hoped for. It was dressed in a woolen cloth, split down the middle; a back that was still caked in mud masking much of the mutilation. The body had been lucky to survive with only one arm severed, the stump still buried somewhere where the giant bucket had removed the forearm soaking in her tank from its host. She noted the pit opened by the excavator, curved edges marked with grooves where the edge of steel teeth had gauged, the mud perfectly smooth between, as if made of a fine black clay. If it hadn’t been for the swarm, Mr. Bogman here would have been severed in two, she was in no doubt about that.

‘Not legend.’ Sara looked up at Daniel mouth set in the firm line of conviction. ‘No one writes about Vikings hacking open someone’s ribs because of the ritual of a blood eagle. Why the hell did you start without me?’

‘You weren’t...’

‘Straps.’ Sara’s hand shot into the air, lingering until a pair of canvas straps appeared. Then sinking her knees forwards, trying to feed the straps under the body, pushing mud, working her hands forwards, feeling contact with the body, breathing hard, working the straps deeper, before finally breaking through to the other side, passing them upwards towards two pairs of waiting hands. ‘All right, let’s get a better look at him.’ She nodded to them.

Ash slid down into the pit, helping Sara remove mud so they could extract it from the ground. She thought about the next steps. After revealing the body they had to work quickly, measuring and taking pictures, keeping it wet to prevent it drying out. She remembered a time when the talk of bog bodies was believed to be invention, fabricated by the seekers of fame and fortune. Few believed the ground could preserve the flesh for thousands of years. It was the predominant view of a male-dominated profession still run by dusty, aging professors jealously guarding grossly inflated reputations. They being the same antiquated artifacts of a past they purported to represent, part of a snobbish, elitist world that had nothing to do with revealing the most spectacularly preserved remains

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of man.

‘Slowly,’ Sara breathed. ‘Gently, we pull together, towards me.’

Ash scrambled to his feet, pulling himself out of the pit, taking the ends of the straps in his hands, following her lead as Daniel raised the camera to his face taking a series of pictures. He moved to the side, taking a sequence from different angles.

Sara leaned forwards and raised her arm, indicating for them to take the strain.

Pressure was applied, gentle pressure, the weight of the body relieved by the straps lifted from above. Then she was laying down, hands pulling mud. She reached for a small trowel, using the edge to scrape a space around the contours of the body, first one side, then the next. It was a slow process. She sat back panting. She looked up at Daniel and nodded as she stood up. Then Daniel was next to her, getting down with the camera glued to his eye. Clicking, winding the film forward and clicking again, then hauling himself out to make space for Sara, working as a team.

‘Male or female?’ Daniel asked.

‘How the hell should I know?’ Sara shot a look over at Ash who was taking the strain, as Daniel replaced the camera in its pouch, helping her apply more weight. Together, they lifted the body bit by bit pushing, then pulling. Covered in filth, muddy sweaty faces; expressions of pain and grunts of exertion rocking the body and the mud entombing it, until that waited-for sucking-sound, the body released. ‘Gently, turn it on its side. Easy – not too quickly!’ Sara said, panting from her efforts.

‘Sara.’

It wasn’t the ragged stump that made her open her mouth in surprise. She looked up, seeing the same reaction mirrored in Daniel while Ash just stood back and... gawped, that was the word she had heard him say. He was gawping.

She followed the direction of his gaze, to where the mouth was wide open, caught as if in a silent scream. Then to the cut running across the top of the victims neck severing flesh, muscle and artery. To the victim’s eyes, one of them half-open so the preserved remains of an eye could be seen as black as oil. She shuddered, taking in the edge of the rib cage where it sank slightly into the mud.

Surprisingly, she found herself breathing a sigh of relief. It was intact, a little more compressed on the downside but otherwise perfectly intact. Sara hoped beyond hope, thinking of the growing list of scientifically rich finds, human remains that all had one thing in common – products of the anaerobic acidic environment that preserved everything from a hair to a weave of cloth, providing the details they so desperately needed to bring the past alive in

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glorious and rich detail. Finally, she looked around at the site, towards the trench lines with the occasional bobbing head of people in action excavating the site of the finds.

Daniel stretched his back, looking down at the twisted head and tortured rib cage. ‘This is incredible,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘This has to be older than Viking...’

Two more assistants approached as Sara squatted down on her haunches, running fingers across the preserved fabric, clearing more and more of the mud away, her eyes constantly drawn to those preserved lines around the eyes; to the strands of hair. To the open mouth. There was something that just wasn’t right about that terrible mouth that was no mouth at all, more like a gaping hole...

‘Incredible. Apart from the arm, he’s completely intact.’ Daniel said. ‘Looks like he was in some pain as he died.’

Daniel and the art of the understatement, Sara thought, as she bent close to the ground, working her way slowly from the arms to the shoulders. She stopped, running a bare stained hand around and over the back of the head.

Frowning, she worked back around to the front, running her fingertips underneath the surface where the forehead stopped and the hairline began.

She removed her hands.

‘How old do you think he is?’

Sara ignored the question. ‘Water.’

A bottle-plunger appearing before her. She applied a jet of water at the body, rinsing away more of the mud then continued her exploration, carefully prizing apart cloth and flesh, eyes intense, concentrating like a doctor at an operation, working in measured purposeful actions. She sprayed more water, more mud falling away; cleaning, scraping, pushing, holding the victim’s slightly deformed head with the other, revealing more of the clothing until she too stopped, staring as if hypnotized. Finally, she removed her hands and sat back on her heels, staring at a fixed point.

‘No way...’ Daniel crouched down on his haunches and looked across at Sara who was still staring, breathing heavily.

She was shocked and disappointed, the joy of discovery fading as a dream caught momentarily on film only to be exposed to daylight, the details of the past disappearing to grey recollection. She nodded in recognition, face set in stone. ‘Fuck,’ she whispered once, turning to meet Daniel’s gaze.

‘Sara, unless I’m mistaken, that there is not Viking.’

Without looking around at those whose attention were focused upon her, as if she was some prophet of fortune Sara cursed to herself and then cursed again,

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seeing the unmistakeable collar that belonged to a jacket of the nineteenth or twentieth century.

Harewood forest, Denmark August 17th 1986 ‘We never killed him...’ the man kneeling said.

They used to be twelve. Now, they were five.

The pleading tone changed everything. He was lying, with just that sort of voice he detested the most, the type of voice laden with guilt but tamed in an effort to mollify. If there was something he hated the most, it was liars who mollified, as if a bad lie could make any different to anything.

The man standing sighed, a weariness entering his voice. ‘This is going to be a problem.’ Problem didn’t even come close to it. ‘Who placed the body there?’

The kneeling man said, in some futile effort to make conversation.

‘Whose idea was it?’

‘Whose idea was what?’

‘No, not what.’

The second man kneeling spoke with confusion apparent in his failure to comprehend. ‘What?’

‘Whose idea was it!’ He shouted. He was used to lies, but not lies like this.

The kneeling man wavered, seeming weaker. ‘I don’t... I don’t know... know what you mean.’

So far they had no idea who the body was. It would only be a matter of time before they discovered it was his commander. His mentor. ‘Did you do that to him? Open his ribs like that?’ He had to give it to them. They had outdone even Valentian himself. ‘You have no idea how distressed this makes me,’ the voice added as he shook his head. ‘I thought it was bad enough in the beginning, when we went to war.’

The kneeling man whimpered.

‘But it really, it was what happened afterwards,’ he said with frustration, his voice muffled as if filtered by a piece of cloth.

Afterwards, they had been lied to. Perhaps that was why he hated lies, because he had been the victim of them.

‘What happened?’ The man kneeling replied, in a voice laced with confusion.

‘Afterwards, you said?’ he continued, with hope in his voice.

No, he wasn’t going to tell this miserable sack of shit they had been part of some secret army in a forgotten war no one gave a damn about any more. Or

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that they had joined together to fight the red threat. The man standing breathed in, deeply. ‘Depression.’ He spoke with a whimsical voice, as if he was acting on stage.

‘Depression?’

The poor bastard was still confused, rightly so. Of course. Who could blame him? Only later, did he truly realize the limitations of those who said they were in, when they were not. So he put it down to depression. He had probably forgotten who had done what, and why. All like little sheep following a list of who to kill and when. Baaaa. And they called it liquidation back then, not murder. Valentian had been liquidated, they would say, not murdered. The man who used to be Valentian’s Sergeant moved his head upwards, wearily. ‘Not depression. No, that’s too mundane.’ He shook his head, slowly. He swallowed, recalling. ‘I guess it was when I started feeling, well, just empty.’ He still did.

He had lived with it for too long; he wanted to say it started with the remnants from the slaughter house, clogging the drains. Before someone washed them all away. They hadn’t killed him. The man kneeling had been speaking the truth.

And little good it would do him.

He almost felt sorry for him.

‘Is it depression when you know you have lost something, when you feel like someone has taken your life away from you?’ And who could blame him?

His voice wavered, a little weaker than it had been a moment before. He was hoping to make an impression, obviously. ‘Empty is a sign of depression.’

‘No one to go to. No one to talk to.’ The man standing shook his head. ‘No. Depression is ... when all is nothing. That’s how it is.’ He raised a hand to his mouth, absently and thought of what they had done to him.

‘You’re talking to me.’

He laughed out loud at that, the man standing waving his free arm at the trees, as silent and dark as the night around them, the other holding the shotgun so it hung pointing at the sack before him. ‘This is different.’ The gag had cut into the soft flesh at the sides of his mouth, he remembered that now. It had hurt him. Terribly so. He sighed. ‘If you really want to know, it’s the keeping it inside that hurts the most.’ He tapped his heart. ‘A pain, right here. That never goes away.’ It never did go away.

‘I know how that feels. We all did. We all... do,’ the whimpering fool replied.

He had no idea how it felt. How it feels. No one did. The man standing moved his hand from his mouth upwards, touching his face. ‘Nothing here, always dead. No joy, all gone.’ He remembered laying on a raised steel operating table on thin round legs. ‘Sometimes it gets better. But yes, it still feels like that,’ he

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said softly, if soft could be used for a voice tortured into gravel and crushed glass, so little there was left resembling his old self. They had tied his arms and legs to his side. The gag had been tied on top of padding that had been inserted into his mouth, soaking the blood from the incisions at the corners of his mouth.

Then there was the look in their eyes. He remembered that look and felt the sting of tears in his eyes. Except, he didn’t have any eyes. So he couldn’t see the man kneeling before him, he couldn’t see his hands tied behind his back, or the sack on his head. So he imagined it, though it was real before he had ordered it so. He didn’t need to see the man. He knew where he was. He could picture where he was, as clear as if drawn for him. There, right in front of him. Him. There. Useless, like so much refuse that was the waste of people, incestuous refuse to be discarded and treated with the contempt of a diseased mongrel dog.

‘And it hurts!’ He shouted. ‘It still hurts... here,’ the first man pointed to the place that used to contain his eyes. ‘And here.’ He pointed to the side of his head. ‘Here.’ The other side of his head. ‘Here.’ He punched his chest. ‘This is what you did to me. Doctor.’

‘Doctor? What are you talking about? I’m not a doctor...’

He didn’t feel like talking any more; he felt stupid for having talked at all. He turned and nodded, recalling white tiles, the mortar coming loose in dirty joints, except his memory wasn’t what it used to be. If it had been anything at all, it had been a long time ago.

When they were done, he had ordered the prisoner placed in the middle of the junction of roads at the centre point of intersection. Around him, five figures waited silently, all standing. He raised his head and nodded.

Without a word, one of them walked briskly up to the prisoner and kicked him. He grunted. He placed the sound as he was kicked again, harder, so he heard his head hitting the damp ground. He heard the figure who kicked him walk back to the line; he would be dressed in black, like the others. He had the space he needed.

When they were done, they would form a circle. One of them would bend down, pulling one of the prisoners legs. Another figure would pull the other leg, out and to the side. Two others would arrange his arms in similar fashion, wasting no time. All figures would stand upright, forming the circle, more hands reaching for firearms well cared for but rarely used.

He raised the shotgun and moved his hand upwards. ‘Who killed Valentian?’

‘No one did!’

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He pointed the shotgun at that pathetic voice and slid a finger inside the trigger guard. ‘Liar.’ He moved his thumb and pulled down the first trigger.

Finally, the old man gave in. ‘We did,’ he whispered.

‘Who did? I couldn’t hear you?’

‘We did!’

‘Who told you to?’

He shook his head.

‘Who!’ He commanded.

‘Eddie,’ he whispered.

So it was Eddie. ‘Eddie used the Nightingales?’

He nodded.

‘How?’ ‘There was a list, a list of names.’ Eddie liked secrets. ‘Where is it?’

The man on the ground said nothing.

‘Where is it?’ The blind man said standing. ‘When someone was to be targeted...’ he took a step forward. ‘Where?’

And still he said nothing.

A man moved out of background and hit the man kneeling, causing him to grunt in pain.

‘It,’ he coughed, ‘it was an accounts ledger.’

‘Where?’

‘No.’ Then there was change in his voice, finding strength. ‘Do you know what we did to him, Valentian? You were on the list too.’

He moved his finger to the trigger.

‘You should have died a long time ago. We killed him yes, we made him suffer for his crimes. You won’t get anything more out of me. I won’t tell you anything. You’re going to kill me. You’ll be next. You’re name is still on the...’

The sound was explosive and deafening followed by a flap of wings. Liar. He stood, smelling the shroud of gun smoke around him.

The man was still alive, his breath rasping.

He cocked and pulled the second trigger.

The rasping sound stopped.

He passed the shotgun to the man standing behind him, the stench of cordite filling the air. Then he pulled on brace lying dormant in his other hand and followed the dog back into the darkness, the doctor no more.

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* PREVIEW END *

This is not the end...