LITMIR.BIZ

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you going to do?’ she said, with a frightened little giggle.

      ‘You'll find out.’

      ‘Where?’

      ‘Here,’ he said and braked to a stop.

      Ahead of him he could see his own wheeltracks in the moss. They were not many hours old.

      ‘Over there,’ he said with a nod. ‘Behind the woodpile. That's a good place.’

      ‘Are you kidding?’

      ‘I never kid about things like that.’

      He seemed hurt or upset by the question.

      ‘But my coat,’ she said.

      ‘Leave it here.’

      ‘But …’

      ‘There's a blanket.’

      He climbed out, walked around, and held the door for her.

      She accepted his help and took off the coat. Folded it neatly and placed it on the seat beside her handbag.

      ‘There.’

      He seemed calm and collected, but he didn't take her hand as he walked slowly towards the woodpile. She followed along behind.

      It was warm and sunny behind the woodpile and sheltered from the wind. The air was filled with the buzzing of flies and the fresh smell of greenery. It was still almost summer, and this summer had been the warmest in the meteorological institute's history.

      It wasn't actually an ordinary woodpile but rather a stack of beech logs, cut in sections and piled about six feet high.

      ‘Take off your blouse.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said shyly.

      He waited patiently while she undid the buttons.

      Then he helped her off with the blouse, gingerly, without touching her body.

      She was left standing with the garment in one hand, not knowing what to do with it.

      He took it from her and placed it carefully over the edge of the pile of logs. An earwig zigzagged across the fabric.

      She stood before him in her skirt, her breasts heavy in the skincoloured bra, her eyes on the ground, her back against the even surface of sawed timber.

      The moment had come to act, and he did so with such speed and suddenness that she never had time to grasp what was happening. Her reactions had never been especially quick.

      He grabbed the waistband at her navel with both hands and ripped open her skirt and her tights in a single violent motion. He was strong, and the fabric gave instantly, with a rasping snarl like the sound of old canvas being torn. The skirt fell to her calves, and he jerked her tights and panties down to her knees, then pulled up the left cup of her bra so that her breast flopped down, loose and heavy.

      Only then did she raise her head and look into his eyes. Eyes that were filled with disgust, loathing, and savage delight.

      The idea of screaming never had time to take shape in her mind. For that matter, it would have been pointless. The place had been chosen with care.

      He raised his arms straight out and up, closed his powerful suntanned fingers around her throat, and strangled her.

      The back of her head was pressed against the pile of logs, and she thought: My hair.

      That was her last thought.

      He held his grip on her throat a little longer than necessary.

      Then he let go with his right hand and, holding her body upright with his left, he struck her as hard as he could in the groin with his right fist.

      She fell to the ground and lay among the musk-madder and last year's leaves. She was essentially naked.

      A rattling sound came from her throat. He knew this was normal and that she was already dead.

      Death is never very pretty. In addition, she had never been pretty during her lifetime, not even when she was young.

      Lying there in the forest undergrowth, she was, at best, pathetic.

      He waited a minute or so until his breathing had returned to normal and his heart had stopped racing.

      And then he was himself again, calm and rational.

      Beyond the pile of logs was a tangle of fallen branches from the big autumn storm of 1968, and beyond that, a dense planting of spruce trees about the height of a man.

      He lifted her under the arms and was disgusted by the feel of the sticky, damp stubble in her armpits against the palms of his hands.

      It took some time to drag her through the almost impassable terrain of sprawling tree trunks and uptorn roots, but he saw no need to hurry. Several yards into the spruce thicket there was a marshy depression filled with muddy yellow water. He shoved her into it and tramped her limp body down into the ooze. But first he looked at her for a moment. She was still tanned from the sunny summer, but the skin on her left breast was pale and flecked with light-brown spots. As pale as death, one might say.

      He walked back to get the green coat and wondered for a moment what he should do with her handbag. Then he took the blouse from the timber pile, wrapped it around the handbag, and carried everything back to the muddy pool. The colour of the coat was rather striking, so he picked a suitable stick and pushed the coat, the blouse, and the handbag as deep as he could down into the mud.

      He spent the next quarter of an hour collecting spruce branches and chunks of moss. He covered the pool so thoroughly that no casual passerby would ever notice the mudhole existed.

      He studied the result for a few minutes and made several corrections before he was satisfied.

      Then he shrugged his shoulders and went back to where he was parked. He took a clean cotton rag from the floor and cleaned off his rubber boots. When he was done, he threw the rag on the ground. It lay there wet and muddy and clearly visible, but it didn't matter. A cotton rag can be anywhere. It proves nothing and can't be linked to anything in particular.

      Then he turned the car around and drove away.

      As he drove, it occurred to him that everything had gone well, and that she had got precisely what she deserved.

       2

      A car stood parked outside a block of flats on Råsundavägen in Solna. It was a black Chrysler with white wings and the word POLICE in big, white, block letters on the doors, bonnet, and boot. Someone who had wanted to describe the vehicle's occupants even more exactly had used tape on the black-on-white licence plate to cover the lower loop of the B in the first three letters, BIG.

      The headlights and interior lights were turned off, but the glow from the streetlights glistened dully on shiny uniform buttons and white shoulder belts in the front seat.

      Even though it was only 8.30 on a pretty, starlit, not especially chilly October evening, the long street was from time to time utterly deserted. There were lights in the windows of the blocks of flats on either side, and from some of them came the cold blue glow of a TV screen.

      An occasional passerby glanced curiously at the police car but lost interest quickly when its presence did not seem to be connected with any noticeable activity. The only thing to be seen was two ordinary policemen sitting lazily in their vehicle.

      The men inside the car would not have objected to a little activity either. They had been sitting there over an hour, and all that time their attention had been fixed on a doorway across the street and on a lit window on the first floor to the right of the doorway. But they knew how to wait. They had had lots of experience.

      It might have occurred to anyone taking a closer look that these two men didn't really look like ordinary police constables. There was nothing wrong with

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