'It was definitely eight o'clock?' Johansson said.

'On the dot,' Lindman replied.

They had spoken on the phone just after their visits from Petersson. They had agreed that it could have been much worse, he might have wanted to introduce large-scale farming to the castle estate. Petersson hadn't answered when Johansson asked him straight out about his plans for the farm, and just said he was there to talk about hunting.

'Make sure you arrive on time.'

Petersson had been firm on the phone.

And here they both were.

But there was no sign of Jerry Petersson.

The steps are steep and dangerously slippery for wet boots. So they proceed carefully to the second floor, calling Petersson's name, but their voices just rebound off the bare stone. Above them, in the twenty-metre high space above the stairs, hangs a crystal chandelier that must be several centuries old, adorned with over a hundred half-burned candles arranged in several ornate circles. On one wall hangs a mostly blue painting of a man squeezing suncream onto a woman's back.

Panting, they reach the second floor.

'He ought to get a lift put in,' Johansson says.

'Expensive,' Lindman replies.

'He can afford it.'

'Shouldn't we start in the cellar?'

'Sod that. He's probably got a torture chamber down there. You know, iron maidens and a single chair in the middle of the room.'

'Bloody hell. I had no idea you had that sort of imagination,' Lindman says.

They move through the rooms.

'So he lives on this floor,' Johansson says.

'Bloody weird pictures,' Lindman whispers as they emerge into a room containing several large photographs of a Christ-like figure immersed in a yellow liquid.

'Do you think that's piss?' Johansson asks.

'How the hell would I know?'

A large sculpture of a pink and purple plastic bear with sabre-teeth decorated with jewels and eyes that look like diamonds shines at them from one corner.

A painting of a Cambodian prisoner seems to want to chase them from the room.

The furniture looks as if it was designed for a spaceship: straight lines, black mixed with white, shapes that Lindman recognises from the interior design magazines he usually looks at when he's waiting to have his hair cut.

'Bloody hell, the things people choose to spend their hard-earned money on,' Johansson says.

'Petersson? Petersson! We're here!'

'Ready for the hunt. Time to shoot some deer!'

They stop, grinning at each other, then there's a cold silence.

'Where do you reckon he could be?' Lindman asks, unbuttoning his green overcoat and wiping the sweat from his brow.

'No idea. Maybe out on the estate? Doesn't look like he's in the castle. He'd have heard us by now.'

'But his car's down there. And the doors were unlocked.'

'Showy damn car, that.'

'Maybe, but you'd still like one.'

They're both looking at a free-standing clothes rack holding ironed cotton shirts in all manner of colours.

'What do you make of him?' Johansson asks.

'Petersson?'

'No, God. Of course I mean Petersson.'

Johansson looks at Lindman. At the bitter wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, at the deep furrows on his brow.

Johansson knows that Lindman lived alone on his farm for many years after his wife left him fifteen years earlier. She'd been to a conference in Stockholm and came home crazy, saying she couldn't bear living on the farm any more.

Someone must have fucked the sense out of her up in Stockholm.

But now he'd found a new one, a mail-order Russian.

'What do I think of him?' Lindman says, stretching the words. 'Well, he doesn't seem to want to mess with our arrangements. Then there's this bullshit about us coming running whenever he calls. What can I say?'

Johansson nods.

'Did you know him before?' Lindman goes on.

Johansson shakes his head.

'They say he grew up in Berga. But I never read anything about his work. I don't really care about crap like that.'

Ingmar Johansson sees how the giant bear's eyes sparkle. Could they actually be real diamonds?

'He was pretty quick to get hold of this damn castle.'

'Must have been a bitter blow for the count.'

'Yeah, but it serves him right.'

They stop in another of the rooms.

Looking at each other.

'Do you hear what I hear?' Johansson asks.

Lindman nods.

Outside they can hear a dog barking furiously.

Anxiously.

'He's upset about something,' Lindman says. 'No doubt about that.'

They stand still for a moment before heading for one of the windows.

A low cloud is dissolving into fog as it drifts slowly past the window, leaving small drops of moisture on the glass.

They stand beside each other, waiting for the cloud or the fog to move. Listening to the dog, its anxious bark.

Then they look out over the estate.

The pine forest, the fir trees, the fields. Banks of fog are blocking their view down to the moat.

'Beautiful,' Johansson says. 'Can you see the dog?'

'No.'

'Well, you can see why the count loved this land.'

'I bet he's not happy in the city.'

Johansson grins and looks away from the view. Down on the raked gravel in the courtyard stand the Range Rover and the car they arrived in.

Then the fog drifts away from the moat. And there's the dog, its dark shape jerking each time it lifts its head to the sky and barks.

'That's a warning bark,' Lindman says. 'A deer that's fallen in the water?'

The water in the moat is black, still. The green lamps along its edge are glowing faintly.

But there's something that's not right. There's something in the water that shouldn't be there. Not a deer, Lindman thinks.

The dog looks down, then barks desperately again.

There's something yellow floating in the blackness, a vague, almost pulsating yellow circle in his gradually deteriorating vision.

'Johansson, what's that floating down there in the moat? That light-coloured thing? That the dog's barking at.'

Johansson looks down at the water.

Like a black snake held captive by ancient stone banks. Is that old story about the Russian soldiers true? he wonders.

Some fifty metres away, on the surface of the moat, something pale, yellow, is moving slowly to and fro, a dark outline in the water, the shape, he recognises it instinctively, and wants to look away.

A head.

A body concealed yet still visible in the water.

Blond hair.

A face turned to one side.

A mouth.

He imagines he can see luminous fish, tiny sprats, swimming into the open mouth, a mouth that must long since have stopped gasping for air.

'Fucking hell.'

'Oh shit.'

'Fucking hell,' Johansson repeats, unclear about what to feel or do next, only knowing that he wants the dog to stop barking. That dog will be barking in his dreams until the end of time.

8.

There's something that's no longer moving.

Something that's stopped for ever. Instead whatever it is that's surrounding me is moving. I don't have to breathe to live here, just like it was long ago, where everything began and I floated and tumbled inside you, Mum, and everything was warm and dark and happy apart from the loud noises and rough jolts that shook my senses, the little senses I had then.

No warmth here.

But no cold either.

I can hear the dog. Howie. It must be you, I recognise your bark, even if it sounds like you're so far away.

You sound anxious, almost scared, but what would a dog like you know about fear?

Mum, you taught me all about the fear to be found in pain. Am I closer to you now? It feels like it.

The water ought to be so cold, as cold as the heavy hail that's been firing from the skies all autumn.

I try to turn around, so my face is looking up, but my body no longer exists, and I try to remember what brought me here, but all I can remember is you, Mum, how I rocked in time with you, just like in the water of this moat.

How long am I going to be here?