The Viper (26 page)

The pigs had grubbed up a big hole in the ground, tossed up little piles of black dirt. The sow took a few steps to the side with her hindquarters when she suddenly became aware of his presence, gave him an indifferent glance. She had something in her mouth, covered in dirt and muck, limp, looked like a dead crow or some other little animal, maybe a squirrel.

He stopped. Stared at the sow and the thing it was holding in its tusks. That was no animal. What he had taken for a dead bird was something else altogether.

40.

The smell of tobacco was strong. Göran Eide could almost see the light-gray wisps of smoke above his desk. How could something that only existed inside your head tickle the senses so realistically? He felt tempted to wave his hand to see if he could affect the imaginary tobacco haze that defied the smoking ban.

Unfortunately, fantasizing about smoking didn’t stay his craving for tobacco. If anything it increased it.

It had been twelve days since Kristina and Anders Traneus had been found murdered, two weeks since they had been killed. And still no trace of Arvid Traneus’s whereabouts. Göran was sure of three things: that Arvid Traneus had killed his wife and her lover, that he was no longer in the country, but probably in Japan or possibly in some island nation with very lax banking and taxation laws, and that they would catch him. Not within the next few days, or weeks, most likely not even this year, but sooner or later, in a year or two, he would expose himself and could be arrested by the local police in whatever country he was currently in.

Arvid Traneus had had twelve days to get in touch, which he ought to have done if he wasn’t guilty of the murders. The information couldn’t possibly have escaped him. Every imaginable media had reported extensively on the double murder. And Arvid Traneus had last been seen on Gotland two days before his wife and cousin had been killed.

The phone rang. Göran picked up the receiver. It was the duty officer.

“We’ve got someone here who claims to have found human body parts.”

“Where?” asked Göran.

“Somewhere between Etelhem and Hejde, out in the forest, or in some field,” said the duty officer.

“So what is it, some old bones?”

The duty officer cleared his throat.

“According to the person filing the report, it looked like it was a man’s penis,” he said.

Göran’s spirits sank a little. He wasn’t in the mood for any pranks. He glanced at the calendar on the desk to make sure that he wasn’t supposed to be celebrating some anniversary as chief inspector or as a police officer, or that there was some other reason he ought to be prepared to be the butt of his colleagues’ jokes. He couldn’t think of anything.

“I see,” he said, “is there anyone other than the person filing the report who’s seen this body part?”

“No,” said the duty officer, “but I sent out a patrol. They ought to be there any minute.”

“And the person who called it in, who is it?”

“It’s a young kid, but he seemed credible, and very upset. He was out looking for a couple of runaway pigs when he found it. The pigs had dug up the ground and one of them apparently had this appendage in its mouth.”

Göran was now in an even worse mood and feeling even more desperate for a smoke.

“Call back when it’s been confirmed,” he said and hung up.

*   *   *

OFFICER MATS LARSSON
looked at Johannes Klarberg with a steady gaze as he listened to the boy’s account. His considerably older partner, Leif Knutsson, stood next to him with his arms crossed and listened, too.

The boy claimed that he’d found a human penis in among the trees at the side of the winding forest road. The problem was that there was no longer any penis—appendage, male sex organ, or whatever you chose to call it—left to see, because when he saw it, it had been dangling between the tusks of a pig. If the boy’s story was correct, then it must have been dug out of the ground. When the boy had tried to get the pig to let go of the alleged organ, the pig had instead gobbled it up.

“Are you absolutely sure of what you saw?”

Johannes Klarberg nodded eagerly.

“As sure as can be. I can swear to it. I was this close,” he said and illustrated by stretching out his arm to its full length and angling up his hand.

He looked like he was sixteen or seventeen years old, tall and thin and had dark, almost black hair that hung down in front of one eye.

“This isn’t something you’re making up is it? You do realize that submitting false information to the police can have serious consequences?” said Knutsson and managed to sound reassuring and a little threatening at the same time.

Johannes Klarberg didn’t seem to understand what Knutsson meant.

“No, what would I do that for?” he gasped.

As for the two pigs, the boy had managed to get them across to the part of the pasture that currently wasn’t being used. Knutsson and the boy could see them from the spot where they were standing. It didn’t seem likely that Johannes Klarberg was lying, Mats Larsson thought. It was one thing to call 911 with a made-up story, but for him to stand there and lie to the faces of two police officers, that was hard to imagine. The boy didn’t seem stupid, which of course didn’t rule out the possibility that he may have been mistaken.

Knutsson sighed and took out his mobile. He called up the station and explained the situation to the duty officer, who in turn said that he would call back in a few minutes.

They stood there silently watching the pigs while they waited. They were a light grayish-pink against the green pasture and they weren’t moving.

“If you think the kid’s telling the truth, then those pigs will have to be put down,” said the duty officer when he called back.

“Both of them?” said Knutsson.

“Yes, we can’t rule out that there are or have been more body parts buried in the ground and that the pigs have found them and eaten them.”

“So, what do we do?” said Knutsson, a furrow appearing between his eyebrows.

“I’ll send over a vet.”

“Okay.”

“Do you know who owns the animals? You’ll have to speak to the owner.”

“It’s the kid’s father. He’s tried calling him, but apparently he’s at some meeting in town. He left a message.”

“At least we know who it is anyway,” said the duty officer. “Well, a vet will be along in a while.”

“Okay.”

“And for the time being we’ll treat it as a body dump site, so you’ll have to cordon it off.”

Knutsson hung up.

“I’m afraid the pigs have to be put down,” Knutsson told the boy.

Johannes Klarberg just nodded, as if he’d already worked that out himself.

*   *   *

LEIF KNUTSSON ACCOMPANIED
the boy along the tractor path over toward the enclosure with the two pigs, while Mats Larsson opened the trunk of the patrol car and took out a roll of police ribbon.

He tied one end around a telephone pole and cordoned off over a hundred yards down the road. He continued up along the edge of the trees where it abutted the recently harvested sugar beet field. The beets were still lying in great piles in one corner of the field, awaiting transport to the mainland.

Better cordon off a large area, thought Mats Larsson. If there really were body parts buried in there, forensics would want to turn over every single leaf within a few thousand square yards. And if there really was a human body, or parts of one, buried in there, the place would be crawling with journalists and curious members of the general public as soon as news got out.

Twenty-five minutes later, a cherry-red Volkswagen Passat station wagon approached from the north. The site lay a few miles south of the road between Hejde and Buttle. Just a few farms beside an area of cultivated land, otherwise just forest, silence, and no witnesses.

The Passat slowed down as it approached the cordon and came to a complete stop when Mats Larsson stepped out from the tractor path and held out his hand to let the driver understand that this was the right place.

A middle-aged woman with short, dark hair with gray streaks and dressed in a green cotton overall, stepped out of the car carrying a big, black bag. Before she walked up to Mats Larsson, she opened the trunk and pulled out a folded-up blue plastic tarp that she wedged under her arm.

“I’m the vet, Ann-Charlotte Jansson,” she said and shook his hand.

Mats Larsson introduced himself.

“Do you need help with that?” he asked and nodded at the tarp.

“Sure, if you could grab it that would be great,” she said with a smile and moved closer so that he could take if from her without her having to put down her bag.

Having relieved her of her rustling light-blue burden, Mats Larsson led the way over toward the enclosure. He opened the electric fence and let Ann-Charlotte Jansson go in first.

The vet continued toward Knutsson, who was waiting together with the boy.

“Which of the pigs is the one that may have ingested a penis?” she said after greeting them.

“It’s that one,” said Johannes Klarberg quickly and pointed at the pig closest to them.

“If it’s true then I’m sure I’m going to remember this day,” she said.

With the help of Mats Larsson, Knutsson, and the boy, she grabbed hold of the pig that had been pointed out and euthanized it with a bolt gun. It was over quickly and, as far as anyone could tell, painlessly. The procedure was then repeated on pig number two.

The sun was shining down over the landscape and the dead animals from between what remained of the dispersed rain clouds from last night. Many of the trees beyond the fields were still a lush green, but the birches had turned completely yellow.

Ann-Charlotte Jansson laid out the tarp and they heaved the first pig up as far as they could onto it.

The vet quickly tied on a disposable apron of thin plastic, took out a knife from her bag and started to slice open the pig from the neck on down. She sliced open the peritoneum and then, with a few well-placed incisions, freed the stomach and intestinal package, which she then pulled from the pig’s body, out onto the tarp. Blood ran out of the disemboweled pig. It didn’t bother the veterinarian, who was wearing boots, but the other three stepped out of the way. Johannes Klarberg followed the vet’s work with great curiosity, eyes wide open, while Mats Larsson and his partner Knutsson regarded the entrails with not quite the same degree of enthusiasm.

Ann-Charlotte Jansson opened the large stomach and let the contents spill out onto the blue plastic. Among the indefinable, partially digested stomach contents lay a larger object that she carefully scraped over to the side using the knife she had used to open up the pig’s belly. She took out a bottle with something that Mats Larsson guessed was salt solution and rinsed the object clean from the half-digested, greenish-yellow slurry.

All four of them stared in silence at the object for a few seconds.

“Well,” said Ann-Charlotte Jansson after a moment, “guess you’d better call in a medical examiner. I’m just a veterinarian, but that looks to me like a human penis.”

41.

In addition to the wooded area, the private tractor path and the stretch of public road that ran past the trees were also cordoned off.

There were five cars parked along the road: Eva Karlén’s forensics van, two patrol cars, and two unmarked police cars, and two civilian fleet vehicles. Claes Klarberg, Johannes’s father and the pigs’ owner, had arrived on the scene after checking his voice mail.

“Is this your land?” asked Fredrik pointing at the cordoned-off area.

Claes Klarberg shook his head. He was tall and dark haired, just like his son, not a gray hair on his head. He had come driving up on a big Japanese motorbike.

“Everything on this side of the road belongs to Bjersander,” said Klarberg and unzipped his red-and-white leather jacket.

“Bjersander?”

“Lars Bjersander. The next farm up on the right-hand side,” he said and pointed north.

Fredrik made a note of that before continuing:

“You didn’t notice a car or other type of vehicle parked here lately?”

“No, but of course we live a mile over that way,” said Claes Klarberg and nodded at the tractor path.

“You can’t see over here, you mean?”

“Well, I can
see
over here I guess, but it’s far away and then there’s trees and things in the way.”

“So nothing caught your eye as far as you can remember?”

Claes Klarberg thinks for a moment.

“It could have been anything. A light, a sound?”

“No. Of course you see cars driving along the road, but that’s not something you think twice about.”

You only had to turn your head around once to see that there was no one who lived close enough to get a good view of the wood. If they were going to find a witness, it would have to be a real stroke of luck.

“Listen, it would be good if I could go take care of my pigs now. Can’t leave them lying out here.”

Mats Larsson was still standing by the pig carcasses to keep the birds and other animals away. It hadn’t taken long before a couple of gulls showed up with a cry and started circling above the enclosure. One of them had landed on the telephone pole just a few yards from Fredrik and Claes Klarberg, patiently waiting for an opportunity to dive down to feast on the viscera.

“Sure,” said Fredrik, “that’ll be fine. We’ll be in touch if there’s anything else.”

“Just call me anytime,” said Claes Klarberg.

*   *   *

THERE WAS A
scratching along the bark as a squirrel skittered up the trunk and disappeared somewhere up in the crown of the oak tree. Both Eva Karlén and Johannes Klarberg looked up instinctively and followed the little animal with their eyes.

How could I have been so stupid?
thought Eva and looked at the squirrel that suddenly popped its head out from a branch way up there. It shouldn’t be that difficult for her to keep her hands off of Fredrik Broman? Sure she was attracted to him, she couldn’t deny that, but he wasn’t all that special. Besides which, he was married.

She hadn’t lost any sleep over what happened in the basement, but it didn’t take much for her to find herself reliving the memory of their kiss. It was exciting as well as frightening. What did it mean? What was the point? The best thing she could do was just forget the whole thing happened. Work and forget. Not think.