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had ordered the fire set. We never got our hands on him. The kids didn’t know his real name or what he looked like.”
    “They must have seen what he looked like,” Jonny objected.
    “No. He always had a silver mask over his face when they met him. They had a ‘church,’ as they called it, an old storage facility out on Ringön. A perfect remote location. The congregation consisted of about ten youths, and these four were given the honor of an assignment to burn down the church in question. Neither we nor his ‘congregation’ saw any trace of the leader after the fire. It was as if he vanished from the face of the earth. The kids were taken care of by Social Services, and this specific congregation dissolved. But a new one may have been founded; maybe the leader came back and started over again. What do we know?”
    “Was the pentagram written in blood?” Tommy Persson wondered.
    “Yes. The kids had killed a cat and drawn the symbol before they started the fire. They had used hamster blood at the other church fire.”
    “Which was the other church where you saw the pentagram?”
    “Norssjön’s summer church.”
    “Norssjön! That’s where Schyttelius’s summer cottage is located!” Irene exclaimed.
    Svante Malm nodded. “Exactly. But the church was on the other side of the lake and burned down almost two years ago. It was a small wooden church that was only used during the summer since there wasn’t any heating or electricity in it.”
    “So it couldn’t have been an electrical fire,” the superintendent concluded.
    “No. A witness who was out that summer night rowing on the lake heard voices from the church around midnight. He thought it sounded like chanting. A little while later, he saw flames shooting up from the building and supposedly he saw shapes moving around the fire. According to him, they were dancing. The witness was in his seventies and had heart problems, so he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about the fire. Instead, he hurried home and called the fire department. But by the time they got there, the building had practically burned to the ground. Strangely enough, the door had survived, and I saw an upside-down pentagram for the second time.”
    “Drawn on it with hamster blood,” the superintendent added.
    “Yes. Animal sacrifices are common during their rituals. There’s one additional item at the crime scene in the rectory that has Satanic connections: A crucifix is hanging upside-down in the Schytteliuses’ bedroom. Satanists often use upside-down crosses during their black masses. The crucifix may well have hung in the bedroom before the murders, but the killer took the opportunity to turn it around.”
    Irene tried to pull together the items of information they had just received. It wasn’t yet possible to combine them into a pattern. She raised her hand and posed her question when Svante nodded at her: “Do you think it’s plausible that someone would shoot his victims as part of a Satanic rite?”
    Svante shook his head. “No. Rituals using knives are important elements in such murders. Swords are not uncommon. Nor is poison. There are usually different symbols painted or carved on the victims. They’re marked to show that they belong to the devil. Satanists have a strong belief in the power of blood. They drink blood and sacrifice blood. Of course it was bloody at the crime scene yesterday, but nothing points to these deaths being the result of the performance of a Satanic ritual.”
    “Except for the pentagrams and the cross,” said Tommy.
    “Exactly.”
    Svante hid a yawn with his hand. A tap at the door was followed by its opening. Svante’s colleague, Bosse Åhlén, stuck his bald head into the room. He lumbered over to where Svante sat. Irene knew that Åhlén was a few years younger than herself but his early hair loss and chubbiness made him look much older. Otherwise, the most notable thing about Bosse Åhlén was that he had seven