The Second Deadly Sin (2 page)

“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.

It’s O.K., he thinks. He wipes his hand on his trouser leg. A bit of adrenalin goes with the territory.

Fifty metres to go. He peers into the undergrowth where the barking is coming from. Both dogs are wearing jackets that are luminescent green on one side and orange on the other. To distinguish them from the bear in circumstances where that is necessary. And also to see what direction the dog is facing.

Now he sees a glimpse of something orange up ahead. Which of the dogs is it? Impossible to tell. The bear usually stands between the dogs. Mäkitalo screws up his eyes, peers into the undergrowth again, moves as quietly as he can to one side. Ready to shoot, reload, shoot again.

The wind veers again. At the same time he catches sight of the other dog. There are about ten metres between the two of them. The bear must be in there somewhere, but he can’t see it. He must get
closer. But now the wind is coming from diagonally behind him. That is not good. He raises his rifle.

Then he sees the bear. Ten metres away. No clear view for taking a shot. Too many tree trunks and too much undergrowth in the way. It suddenly stands up. It must have got wind of him.

It charges at him. It all happens so quickly. He hardly has time to draw breath before it is almost upon him. There is a creaking and crashing and snapping of branches.

He shoots. The first shot makes the bear swerve to one side, but it keeps on coming. The second shot is perfect. The bear collapses three metres short of him.

The dogs pounce on it immediately. Bite at its ears. Chew its fur. He lets them do whatever they want. That is their reward.

His heart is slamming like an open door in a storm. He tries to get his breath back in between praising his dogs. Well done! There’s a good girl!

He takes out his mobile. Rings the local huntsmen.

That was a close shave. A bit too close for comfort. He thinks briefly about his little boy and his partner. Then he banishes any such thoughts from his mind. Looks at the bear. It is big. Really big. And almost black.

*

The local huntsmen arrive. The air is heavy with autumn chill, pungent bear and admiring respect. They truss up the body of the bear with ropes and attach straps running over their shoulders and under their arms so that they can drag it to a clearing not far from a track that can be accessed by their four-wheel drive pick-up. They work like slaves, and agree that it is a hell of a big beast.

The inspector from the county council arrives. He inspects the place where the bear was shot to make sure that no laws have been broken. Then he takes no end of samples while the hunters are
recovering from their efforts. He clips off a clump of fur, cuts out a skin sample, cuts off the testicles, prises out a tooth with his sheath knife so that the age of the bear can be established.

Then he cuts open its stomach.

“Shall we check what Teddy’s been eating?” he says.

Mäkitalo has tied his dogs to a tree trunk. They whimper and strain at their leashes. It’s their bear, after all.

Steam rises from the contents of the bear’s stomach. And the stench is awful.

Some of the men take an involuntary step back. They know what’s inside there. The remains of Johansson’s Norwegian elk-hound. The inspector knows that as well.

“Ah well,” he says. “Berries and meat. Fur and skin.”

He pokes around in the slushy mess. His face suddenly assumes a suspicious expression.

“But for Christ’s sake, this isn’t …”

He falls silent. Picks up a few pieces of bone with his right hand, which is protected by a plastic glove.

“What the hell is this it’s been eating?” he mumbles as he pokes around in the slush.

The huntsmen come closer. Scratch at the back of their heads so that the peaks of their caps slide down their foreheads. One of them takes out a pair of glasses.

The inspector straightens up. Quickly. Takes a step backwards. He’s holding a piece of bone with his fingers.

“Do you know what this is?” he asks.

His face has turned grey. The look in his eyes sends shivers down the spines of all the others. The forest has fallen silent. There is no wind. No birdsong. It seems that it is refusing to reveal a secret.

“It’s not a dog in any case. I can assure you of that.”

The autumnal river was still talking to her about death. But in a different way. Before, it was funereal in tone. It used to say: You can put an end to it all. You can run out onto the thin ice, as far as you can before it breaks. But now the river said: You, my girl, are no more than the blinking of an eye. It felt consoling.

District Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson was sleeping calmly as dawn began to break. She was no longer woken up by angst poking away at her from the inside, digging into her, scratching around. No more night sweats, no more palpitations.

She no longer stood in the bathroom, staring into the mirror at black pupils and wanting to cut off all her hair, or to set fire to something – preferably herself.

It’s good now, she said instead. To herself or to the river. Sometimes to another person, if anybody dared to ask.

And it
was
good. Good to be able to do her job again. To tidy up her home. Not to feel her mouth constantly parched, not to break into a rash after taking all her medicine. To sleep soundly at night.

And occasionally she even laughed. While the river flowed past as it had done for generation after generation before her, and would continue to flow long after she was no more.

But just now, for the blinking of an eye she would be alive, she could laugh and keep her house tidy, do her job properly and occasionally smoke a cigarette in the sunshine on her balcony. Then she would be nothing, for a very long time.

That’s the way it is, the river said.

She liked to have the house clean and tidy. To keep it as it was in Grandma’s time. She slept in the alcove in the varnished sofa bed. The floor was covered by rag mats made by her grandmother. Wooden trays hung from wall hooks in embroidered slings.

The drop-leaf table and chairs were painted blue, and worn and shiny wherever hands and feet had rested. Crammed onto the metal ladder shelves were volumes of low-church pastor Laestadius’s sermons, hymn books and thirty-year-old copies of magazines from another time –
Hemmets Journal
,
Allers
and
Land
. The linen cupboard was full of threadbare mangled sheets.

Lying at Martinsson’s feet was the puppy Jasko, sniffling away. The police dog handler Krister Eriksson had given it to her eighteen months ago. A handsome sheepdog. He would soon be lord of all he surveyed – at least, that’s what he himself thought. Raised his leg high when he peed, and almost fell over. In his dreams he was the King of Kurravaara.

His paws twitched and trod in his sleep as he chased after all those annoying mice and rats that filled his days with their tempting scents but never allowed themselves to be captured. He yelped and his lips twitched when he dreamed about clamping his teeth into their backs with a satisfying crunching noise. Perhaps he was also dreaming about all the local bitches responding to all the bewitching love-letters he peed onto every available blade of grass during the day.

But when the King of Kurravaara woke up, nobody called him anything but the Brat. And no bitches queued up outside his door.