The Second Deadly Sin Read online

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  SUNDAY, 23 OCTOBER

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  MONDAY, 24 OCTOBER

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  TUESDAY, 25 OCTOBER

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  WEDNESDAY, 26 OCTOBER

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  THURSDAY, 27 OCTOBER

  CHAPTER 78

  THE AUTHOR’S THANKS

  Åsa Larsson

  THE SECOND DEADLY SIN

  Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson

  First published in Swedish as Till offer åt Molok by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm, 2012

  First published in Australia in 2013 by

  MacLehose Press

  An imprint of Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © Åsa Larsson 2012 English translation copyright © Laurie Thompson, 2013 Map © Emily Faccini

  The moral right of Åsa Larsson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Laurie Thompson asserts his moral right to be identified as the translator of the work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (TPB) 978 0 85705 173 8

  ISBN (Ebook) 978 0 85738 997 8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  www.maclehosepress.com

  ALSO BY ÅSA LARSSON

  IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

  The Savage Altar (2006)

  The Blood Spilt (2007)

  The Black Path (2008)

  Until Thy Wrath Be Past (2011)

  AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

  I am reading Leviticus. God is furious, and is reeling off all His laws and the punishment in store for those who fail to obey them. He is spewing forth menace and anger. In Chapter 20 the Lord says that anyone who sacrifices a child to Moloch “shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones”. God will direct His wrath at him and isolate him from his people. How can that happen when the culprit has already been stoned to death, I ask myself. But if people turn a blind eye to a man who has sacrificed a child to Moloch, all his family will be subjected to the wrath of God.

  I read a little about Moloch. It seems that he is a god who can provide riches, bountiful harvests and victory in battle. Was there ever any god who failed to promise such rewards? Children were sacrificed. Hollow statues of Moloch were made of copper. His embrace was voluminous. Fires were made inside the statue, making it red-hot. Then a living child would be placed in Moloch’s lap.

  I thought about that as I wrote this book. Sacrificing a child in order to prosper, in order to achieve earthly glory.

  The Second Deadly Sin

  How can a dog possibly scream like that? Samuel Johansson has never heard a dog make such a noise before.

  He is in his kitchen, making a sandwich. His Norwegian elk-hound is on a running leash in the back yard. The calm before the storm.

  Then the dog starts barking. Loud and angry at first.

  What is it barking at? Certainly not a squirrel. Johansson recognises the way his dog barks at a squirrel. Surely not an elk? No, elk barks are less strident, more substantial.

  Then something happens. The dog screams. Shrieks as if the gates of hell have just opened up before it. It is a sound that fills Johansson with cold terror.

  And then silence.

  *

  Johansson races outside. No jacket. No shoes. No clear thoughts.

  He stumbles his way through the autumnal darkness, towards the garage and the dog kennel.

  And there, in the light from the lamp over the garage door, stands the bear. It is tugging at the dog’s body, trying to drag it away, but the dead dog is still attached to the leash. The bear turns its bloodstained jaws towards Johansson and roars at him.

  Samuel steps back somewhat unsteadily. Then he summons up superhuman strength and runs faster than he has ever run before, back to the house to fetch his gun. The bear stands its ground. Nevertheless, Johansson seems to feel the beast’s hot breath on the back of his neck.

  He loads the rifle with his wet hands before cautiously opening the door. He must keep calm and shoot accurately. Otherwise it could be all over in a flash. A wounded bear would take less than a second to pounce.

  He creeps through the darkness. One step at a time. The hairs on the back of his head are sticking out like nails.

  The bear is still there. Gobbling down what is left of the dog. When Johansson cocks the gun, it looks up.

  Johansson has never trembled so much. There’s no time to lose now. He tries to stand still, but it is impossible.

  The bear shakes its head threateningly. Snarls. Huffs and puffs like a pair of bellows. Then it takes a deliberate step forward. That is when Samuel shoots. There is an explosive blast. The bear falls. But quickly it stands up again. And disappears into the darkness.

  *

  It has vanished now into the pitch-black forest. The light over the garage door is no help at all.

  Johansson walks backwards to
the house, aiming the gun left and right as he does so. Ears pricked, listening for sounds from the forest. That bloody bear might come bounding towards him at any moment. He can only see for a few metres.

  Twenty paces back to the door. His heart is pounding. Five. Three. He’s inside.

  He’s shuddering now. His whole body is shaking. He has to put his mobile down on the table and hold onto his right hand with his left in order to push the right numbers. The leader of the local hunters responds after only one ring. They agree to meet at first light. There’s nothing they can do in the dark.

  *

  As dawn breaks all the men from the village gather outside Johansson’s house. It is -2°C. Tree branches white with frost. Leaves have fallen. Rowan berries gleam rustred among the grey. Something feathery is floating through the air – the kind of snow that never settles.

  They stare at the devastation in and around the dog kennel. More or less all that is left, attached to the running leash, is the dog’s skull. The rest is blood-soaked slush.

  It is a hard-boiled collection of men. They are all wearing checked shirts, trousers with lots of pockets, belts carrying knives, and green jackets. The young ones have beards and a peaked cap on their heads. The older ones are clean-shaven and wear fur hats with ear flaps. These are men who make their own motorised carts for dragging back home the elks they have shot. Men who prefer cars with carburettors, so that they can mess around with the engines themselves and are not dependent on service garages where they nowadays just attach computer cables to the cars.

  “This is what happened,” the hunt leader says, as the more gnarled members of his team stuff new wads of chewing tobacco into their mouths and glance furtively at Johansson, who is having difficulty in controlling the tics in various parts of his face. “Samuel heard the dog howling. He grabbed his gun and went out. We’ve had bears prowling around here for quite some time now, so he realised that might be the problem.”

  Johansson nods.

  “Anyway. You go out with your rifle. The bear is gobbling away at the dog, and turns to attack you. You shoot it in self-defence. It was coming towards you. You didn’t go in and fetch your gun, you had it with you from the start. No messing about in this case. Nobody’s going to be prosecuted for breaking hunting laws, right? I rang the police last night and put them in the picture. They had no hesitation in classifying it as self-defence.”

  “Who’s going to hunt it down?” somebody wonders aloud.

  “Patrik Mäkitalo.”

  That piece of information is followed by total silence while all present consider the implications. Mäkitalo comes from Luleå. It would have been good if somebody from their own local hunting team had been commissioned to track down the bear. But none of them has a dog as proficient as Mäkitalo’s. And deep down they wonder if they are proficient enough themselves as well.

  The bear is wounded. And so highly dangerous. It is essential to have a dog that dares to hold the bear at bay, rather than panicking and running back to its master with the ferocious beast hard on its heels.

  And the hunter must not get cold feet either; when Teddy comes crashing through the undergrowth he might have no more than a second in which to react. The lethal target area on a bear is no wider than the base of a saucepan. And the hunter is aiming without a rifle support. It’s like shooting a flying tennis ball. If he misses it is by no means sure that he will get a second chance. Hunting bears is not something for anybody with shaky hands.

  “Speak of the devil,” the hunt leader says, looking along the road.

  *

  Patrik Mäkitalo gets out of his car and greets the assembled group with a nod. He is about thirty-five. He tends to screw up his eyes; his beard is long and narrow, like a goat’s. A Norrbotten Mongol warrior.

  Mäkitalo doesn’t say much, but listens intently to the hunt leader and asks Johansson about the shot. Where exactly was he standing? Where was the bear? What ammunition did he use?

  “Oryx.”

  “Good,” Mäkitalo says. “A high residual weight. With a bit of luck it might have gone right through the beast. That would make it bleed more, and make it easier to track.”

  “What do you use?”

  It is one of the older hunters who plucks up the courage to ask.

  “Vulkan. It usually stops just inside the skin.”

  Of course, the old-timers think. He doesn’t shoot to wound a bear. Killing it outright means he doesn’t need to track it down. And he’s keen to preserve the bearskin in good condition.

  Mäkitalo cocks his rifle and disappears into the trees. He returns after only a minute or so, with blood on his fingers.

  He opens the tailgate. His hunting dogs are in a cage, their tongues dangling out of broad doggy smiles. They have eyes for nobody but their master.

  Mäkitalo asks to see a map. The hunt leader fetches one from his car. They spread it out on the bonnet.

  “This no doubt shows the route it took,” Mäkitalo says. “But it’s heading into the wind, through newly planted woodland, so there’s a risk it might have veered off over here somewhere.”

  He points to the beck that flows down into the River Lainio.

  “Especially if it’s a mature varmint that’s learnt how to outwit dogs. You’d better make arrangements for a boat that could come to meet us, if necessary. My dogs aren’t afraid of getting their feet wet, but their master isn’t as hardy as they are.”

  Everybody summons up a smile, signalling their empathy for the task ahead.

  The hunt leader gets down to practicalities and asks, “Do you want to take somebody with you?”

  “No. We’ll follow the trail and see where it leads us. If it takes us over here and towards the marshes, it would help if you could go and stand guard here and there.” He gestures at the map. “But let’s get some idea first of where it’s gone.”

  “He ought to be easy enough to find, if he’s bleeding,” one of the men says.

  Mäkitalo doesn’t even condescend to look at him when he replies: “I dunno about that; they often stop bleeding after a while and then they hide away in the thick undergrowth and tend to double back and creep up on whoever is following them. So if I’m unlucky it could be him who finds me.”

  “Too bloody right,” the hunt leader says, giving the colleague who spoke out of turn a withering look.

  *

  Mäkitalo sets his dogs loose. They disappear up the hill like two brown streaks, sniffing at the ground. He follows them, G.P.S. device in hand.

  Full steam ahead. He looks up at the sky and hopes it will not start snowing in earnest.

  He is making rapid progress. He thinks briefly about the hunters he has just met. The type that sit around boozing and snoozing when they’re supposed to be on the lookout. They would never be able to move as quickly as he does. Never mind track down the prey.

  He crosses the dirt track. On the other side is a sandy slope. The bear seems to have run straight up it, legs wide apart, making heavy weather of it. He puts his hand in the obvious footprints.

  The people in Lainio are already on edge. They know the bear has been around now and again. Dung next to an overturned rubbish bin, steaming in the cold morning air, as red as a mushy porridge of blueberries and lingon. There’s been a lot of bear talk. Old stories have been dusted down.

  Mäkitalo examines the clawmarks in the ground where it has dug its paws deep in order to thrust itself up the hill. It must have a claw the size of a knife in each toe. The villagers have measured the prints, placed matchboxes beside them and taken pictures with their mobiles.

  Women and children have been kept indoors. Nobody has dared to venture out into the wood to gather berries. Parents collect their children by car from the school bus stop.

  It must be a pretty big varmint, Mäkitalo thinks as he examines the tracks. An old carnivore. That’s no doubt why it took the dog.

  Now he comes to a pine forest. It’s flat and the going is easy. The pines are tall, widely
spaced, a colonnade, straight trunks, no branches, the wind sighing in the crowns high above. The moss that usually crackles underfoot in the summer is damp, soft and silent.

  Good, he thinks. Nice and quiet.

  He crosses an old boggy meadow. In the middle is an ancient barn that has collapsed. The rotten remains of the roof are scattered around the skeleton. It has not been cold enough for the ground to freeze. His feet sink deep into the swampy turf; he is becoming very sweaty. There is a smell of mud and iron-rich water.

  Soon the trail veers away towards the coppices and brushwood in the direction of Vaikkojoki.

  A few ravens croak and caw in the distance through the grey morning air. The vegetation is growing more dense. The trees are shrinking, fighting for space. Spindly pines. Messy grey spruce twigs. Stunted birches: most leaves have blown off, those remaining range from yellow to dull green and grey. He can see no further than five metres in any direction. Barely that.

  He is down by the beck now. Has to keep brushing away twigs with his arm. He can only see a couple of metres ahead.

  Then he hears the dogs. Three loud barks. Then silence.

  He knows what that means. They have tracked down the bear. Disturbed it, forced it to move away from where it was lying wounded. When they detect the pungent smell coming from such a hideaway, they usually bark.

  After another twenty minutes he hears the dogs barking again. More persistently this time. They have caught up with the bear. He checks his G.P.S. One and a half kilometres away. They are barking while on the move. Barking and chasing the bear. Best to keep plodding on. No point in getting too excited yet. He hopes the young bitch doesn’t get too close. She is rather excitable. The other bitch works more calmly. Good at standing still a safe distance away, holding the hunted animal at bay, barking. She seldom goes any closer than three metres. A wounded bear is not a patient bear.

  After half an hour they start barking from a stationary position. Now both the bear and the dogs are standing still.

  Typical! Just where the vegetation is at its thickest. Nothing but undergrowth and no view at all. He keeps going, and is now only two hundred metres away.

  The wind is coming from the side. Not a problem. The bear should not be able to smell him. He cocks his rifle. Presses on. His heart is pounding.