The event ten, twenty savage knifings came out of nothing. Out of the darkness that follows us. Perhaps he doesn't even remember it.

And when he's alone? He tried to imagine Bjorne alone in the cottage. The way he lit the oil lamp as he was doing now, still with only one hand. The way reflections began to appear in the windowpanes. There was a milking stool in the bedroom, a book lying on it. The thought of Bjorne lying in those dirty sheets reading at night was unbelievable. Johan got up and went to look at the book.

"Tis Nostradamus,' said Bjorne. 'Sent for it from Finland. There was an advertis.e.m.e.nt. Nostradamus is the only one to have predicted correctly.'

He was hiding himself. He wanted them to think he was an oddball. A harmless, kindly old man of the forest. As folk were in the olden days. Perhaps he believed it himself. But that was no use. He was the son of one the few in the village who had done well for himself. There was work for him. There was money and machines. He had no need to be here.

Birger took the oil lamp off the table and shone it down Bjorne's leg. There was a dark patch on the denim above the clenched hand in his pocket. As they were looking, the patch spread.

'Have you cut yourself?'

He nodded.

He had been frightened and cut himself when he heard us. Had he been frightened for eighteen years? And Annie Raft with her gun. How have people been living here? I got out, Johan thought. I slipped out.

Birger rummaged in the woodbox for a newspaper.

'Put your hand on this,' he said.

Bjorne took out his left hand, the thumb clasped by the fingers. The blood seeping out was very dark. Birger got him to loosen the rigid fingers and straighten out his thumb. The wound gaped when he touched it and the blood started oozing faster.

'The rucksack, please, Johan.'

He was still holding Bjorne's hand.

'Find the bandages I put in. There's some tablets, too.'

'Don't want any,' said Bjorne.

'They're calming. I don't think it'd be a bad idea. We must talk about what happened. And we must go down to the village to get that st.i.tched. I've got my bag there.'

When Johan had given him the packages of bandages, compresses and cotton wool, he said: 'Go on out now, Johan. We'll have a talk while I do this.'

'No, I don't want to,' said Johan. 'That's stupid.'

'Do it, anyhow.'

He looked around. A shotgun hung on the wall by the kitchen cupboard. Bjorne had a knife in his belt.

'Don't want to.'

'Go on.'

Johan pulled on his jacket, trying to delay matters. They were sitting as before. Bjorne's head was hanging. Around the oil lamp was a pool of warm yellow light, in which Bjorne's and Birger's hands lay entwined. Birger nodded towards Johan. He had to go.

Outside, the darkness was not as compact as it had seemed through the window. It had begun to drizzle. He walked down towards the privy, stopping halfway to look back. The window was filled with the yellow light. He could see their heads and the lamp. It looked cosy, as always when you look into a room from outside in the dark and the rain. And Bjorne really did look like a kindly old man. An oddball.

'Did you know Lill-Ola Lennartsson had died?' said Birger.

'No.'

'Had a heart attack. Maybe I missed something there.'

He said the latter largely to himself, a thought with little energy behind it.

'He'd been living in ostersund since that business down by the Lobber. I suppose he didn't dare stay. Did you know he fainted when he saw it was his tent?'

'That b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' said Bjorne.

Birger pressed the edges of the wound together and put a compress over it.

'Yes, he was a real s.h.i.t. He fiddled all sorts of things. When they a.n.a.lysed the feathers of the birds he burnt, they were buzzards. Two of them. I saw the parcels in his freezer. Unplucked capercaillie, he'd written on them. He must have been scared the police would look into everything at his place because he had been up there. I'm going to bandage this quite tightly now. I'll have to st.i.tch it when we get down to the village.'

He thought about Johan out there in the semidarkness. It was raining now, gusts of wind spattering the window with rain.

'You thought it was him, didn't you?'

'He drove up there himself. On the evening afore Midsummer. What business had he got up there? I knew the buzzard had chicks. And a Dutch car had come earlier on in the day. Now they're fetching them. I thought. He were taking the opportunity while they're all Midsummer partying. Goin' to sell the live chicks. As hunting hawks for some b.l.o.o.d.y Arab.'

'Did you go up to Alda's to see about Johan?'

'He was all right where he was. Anyroad, he'd got out of the well by the time I got there.'

'You took the moped.'

'I'd planned that all along. Take the car up an' I'd frighten the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Thought of catchin' him on the path. The buzzard's nest's up on the cliff above the river.'

'You recognised the tent?'

''Course.'

'Why did you set about it so ferociously?'

He said nothing, just sat there with his head bowed, breathing heavily.

'Didn't mean to,' he said. 'I were just going to give him a thrashin'. But I saw his back. He was lyin' against the canvas. I could see his back. It bulged out. Then everything went black.'

'It wasn't him.'

'No.'

He sat in silence again. Birger wondered if he remembered the rest. Perhaps it was just as he had said. Black. A hole. A hole he had circled round for what would soon be twenty years.

'Annie was on her way up to ask you about the moped.'

'I weren't here. I were at Froson. Admitted at t'end of April.'

'Who was waiting for her?'

'I dunno.'

'We must go down now. We must get that st.i.tched. Then I'll take you back to Froson. You must tell the doctor. It'll be best for you if you go to the police yourself.'

Was he listening at all?

'Things won't be very different for you than they've been in recent years. You'll be given leaves and you'll be able to come here. It'll soon be twenty years ago. Nothing else on your record, is there? No a.s.saults or fights?'

'No. Been mostly here on me own. Used to go and see Annie.'

'Annie would have said what I've said,' said Birger. 'Go to the police yourself. That'd be best.'

'They'll be here soon, I suppose.'

'No, I haven't phoned them. And I'm not going to. I want you to come down with me and have that st.i.tched. Then we'll go to Froson.'

He got up and opened the window.

'Johan!'

He had to call a couple of times. Johan wasn't all that wet when he came in.

'Has it stopped raining?'

'It's drizzling.'

'We must go now before it gets too dark.'

Johan's watchful eyes moved from Birger to Bjorne, still sitting at the table.

'We've talked about it all now. Annie probably came here to ask Bjorne about the moped. But he was in Froson.'

'Yes, I know he wasn't home,' said Johan. 'Mia and I were here early that morning. But Annie must have gone up to Gudrun to ask after you. Didn't she know you were in Froson?'

'Let's go now,' said Birger. His voice had turned thin. 'Don't let's talk about it any longer.'

Bjorne went over to the door and took his cap off the nail. He put it on, but didn't take a jacket. He was wearing a sweatshirt that had once been dark blue, but was now so faded it was greyish over the shoulders and back. They heard him putting on his boots in the porch. Birger collected up his things and put them back in the rucksack.

'Turn the lamp out.'

Johan blew it out and the room turned dark. He had acted too soon: they had forgotten where they had put their jackets and started groping for them on the sofa.

'Hurry up, for Christ's sake,' said Birger. 'To h.e.l.l with the jackets.'

They stumbled over their boots and started pulling them on in the dark. They were in too much of a hurry and it all went wrong. Out in the porch, the door was open and swinging in the wind.

They shouted out his name, then consulted together in whispers. They ran to the cookhouse, then the privy, rushed back inside and lit the oil lamp, as if trying to attract a moth.

But he didn't come. They shouted and shouted, but there was no reply from the darkness. He was out there. Birger didn't dare guess what was in his mind, whether his thoughts were straight and cunning. Or whether there was nothing but darkness there. A hole.

But they had to get him in.

Johan and Birger sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, the lamp between them; the flame was burning too high and sooting up the gla.s.s. They didn't stay long.

'He'll take the car and drive down,' said Birger. Yet how could he say that with any certainty? He had to decide on something he could believe in.

'We must go down.'

'You don't think he'll come back here?'

'No.'

But before they blew out the lamp and set off for the second time, Birger took the shotgun off the wall. He didn't know, after all. Bjorne might well come back and finish the whole thing off with the gun.

They started walking along the path. The rain came in little squalls on the gusts of wind. Their eyes got used to the dark. It could have been worse. They were no longer calling out. Birger noticed that Johan was also trying to walk as quietly as possible.

Walking was more difficult when they got out into the Area, but it was also a little lighter there. The sky seemed to give off some kind of light. They could see the swift-moving clouds as if they were lit up from inside. They tried to walk so that they had the river within earshot. Birger noticed he was relieved once they were out in the Area. He had been scared inside the forest. Only an hour ago he had sat at the kitchen table with Bjorne and put everything right. He thought then that he knew what was going on in the man's mind. He had even told him. As people had probably always told Bjorne what he was thinking and what he had done. They had ordered him to fell the Area. Twenty years later, it was wrong to clear-fell like that. They let him do the wrong thing and then they told him so.

Now he was out there, not giving a d.a.m.n for the oil lamp or Nostradamus. He was himself in the darkness.

They reached the car and Johan started it and drove away before Birger had had time to close the door on his side. Johan drove fast, the cha.s.sis striking hard in the potholes, the headlights flickering on the spruces. When they got down to the Stromgren homestead, there was no sign of Bjorne's car.

'Wasn't it parked a bit further in? Towards the house.'

They stared along the houses on the slope, but at first could distinguish nothing.

'I'll go out and have a look,' said Johan.

He had taken a torch out of the glove compartment. Birger watched him go with some reluctance. His figure blurred, the torchlight a small yellow spot jumping and slowly growing fainter. Birger stared until the buildings down in the Stromgren homestead started flickering. Grey in grey, everything moving in the rain and gusts of wind.

'Wait! I'm coming too,' he shouted.

He caught up with Johan and they walked into the gra.s.s, now gone to seed and wetting their trousers right up to their thighs. The torchlight flickered over the uncut yellow gra.s.s. There were no car tracks. When they finally found them, they were far up by the road. The Saab had gone. He had gone.

'We'll have to drive on,' said Birger. 'Wish we'd b.l.o.o.d.y taken my car. I've got a mobile phone.'

Johan drove fast, the car bouncing in the potholes. It's the only thing we can do now, Birger thought. Drive fast. We've done wrong. Me and my officiousness. Johan and his thoughtless question. Though he wanted to know. He had been asking himself, and now he knows. Bjorne knows, too.

The dogs were barking in the Brandberg dog run. They stopped and saw them hurtling against the wire netting. Torsten had a bright light on at the end of the barn and it shone on them. The dog eyes caught the light from the headlights and looked like leaping pairs of dots. A more yellowish light was on in the porchway, illuminating the dark hop leaves.

'Drive on up,' said Birger.

Lights were on almost all over the house and the dogs went on barking as the car drove up. They saw Torsten come out on the steps and heard him quietening the dogs as they drove up. There was no car in the yard.

Johan did not get out. He wondered if Torsten could see who he was. He was standing up there in the light on the steps, trying to make out whose car it was.

'Has Bjorne been down?' Birger called out and got out of the car.

Torsten didn't reply until he had seen who was asking.