The Cruel Stars of the Night Read Online Free Page B

not strike anyone as a particularly sensational or original observation and Haver was the only one who took the trouble to grunt in response. The rest were looking around. Beatrice looked back at Dorotea’s house. She was probably bustling around the kitchen or sitting at the kitchen table. Beatrice wished she had been able to spend a little more time with the old woman.
    “Yes,” Sammy Nilsson said with unexpected engagement, “now it is the scene of a murder. People will talk about this house as the one where Blomgren was murdered for a long time. They’ll walk past, slow down, maybe stop and point.”
    “Not a lot of people walk past,” Beatrice said.
    Allan Fredriksson joined the group.
    “What a wonderful place,” he said. “Have you noticed what a complex biological habitat the place is? It has everything: spruce forest, deciduous groves, open meadows and fields, dry hills, and even a little wetlands.”
    Lindell smiled to herself.
    Fredriksson pointed to the other side of the road where a large ditch ran down to a marsh. The green moss glowed in the morning sun. Tufts of sedge grass looked like small rounded buns and a clump of reedy marsh grass swayed in the wind.
    “I wonder if Petrus was interested in birds?”
    “Petrus didn’t have many friends,” Beatrice said, “and he does not appear to have been a rich man who hoarded cash or valuables.”
    “The only thing I found was a letter from the Föreningsspar Bank,” Fredriksson said. “There was not a single account book or any withdrawal slips, but perhaps he kept the papers hidden. We’ll have to go over the place with a fine-toothed comb.”
    Neither the forensics team nor the criminal investigators had found the least trace of burglary or disturbance. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the house in Vilsne except for the fact that its owner lay murdered in the barn.
    “Will you check the bank, Allan?” Lindell asked.
    Lindell looked at their new forensics team member, how he carefully packed away his equipment. Anita’s comment came to mind.
    “Nice buns,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Morgansson’s,” Lindell said and nodded in the direction of the barn.
    Haver turned his head. It looked like he was about to say something, but he held back. Everyone was watching the technician.
    A door opened and a light reflection from the glass in Dorotea Svahn’s front door swept over the hill where the police officers were assembled, then disappeared into the thicket of alder and willow. The old woman looked out at her neighbor’s house, took a slow step onto her porch, and gently closed the door behind her.
    She stood there with a cane in one hand and the other on the wrought-iron railing. She walked down the stairs with an effort and moved toward the police. One of her legs didn’t seem to want to come along.
    She was wearing a gray coat and a dark hat. Beatrice had the impression that it was not Dorotea’s everyday outfit.
    “Is she on her way over here? Maybe she needs help,” Haver said and took a step toward the gate.
    She was not fast but she did seem to have developed a technique to compensate for her bad leg. A car approached. At first there was only a faint rumble behind the forest that surrounded Blomgren’s property. Dorotea must not have noticed the engine sound that increased in volume and when she was halfway across the road the van from the Medical Examiner’s Office rounded the corner. Fridh was driving. Dorotea stopped and lifted the cane over her head as a signal.
    Ola Haver took yet another step forward but stopped himself. In his mind he saw the Greek shepherd he and Rebecka had once encountered, on a curvy mountain road in the north. The shepherd was moving his flock across the road. Like a wooly string of pearls they slowly streamed from one side to the other. Still, they brayed nervously, the lambs following the ewes and the flock keeping tightly together.
    The shepherd had raised his staff like a weapon, or more