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wound. And it killed him instantly.”
    “Can you explain further?”
    “It would have been quick. His spine has been cut in two.”
    “Have you had time to examine the other bodies?”
    “As I’ve said, I’m waiting for backup.”
    “But can you say off the top of your head how many of the other victims died from a single blow?”
    At first Valentina didn’t seem to understand the question. Then she tried to recall what she had seen.
    “None of them, I think,” she said slowly. “Unless I’m much mistaken, all the others were stabbed repeatedly.”
    “And no single wound would have been fatal?”
    “It’s too soon to say for sure, but probably not.”
    “Many thanks.”
    The doctor left. Sundberg searched through the room and the boy’s clothes in the hope of finding something to indicate who he was. But found nothing, not even a bus pass. She went downstairs and out into the yard to the rear of the house overlooking the frozen lake. She tried to work out the significance of what she had discovered. The boy had died from a single blow, but all the rest had been subjected to more systematic violence. What could that mean? She could think of only one plausible explanation: whoever killed the boy hadn’t wanted him to suffer. Everyone else had been subjected to violence that was a sort of extended torture.
    She gazed at the distant mountains, which were veiled in mist beyondthe lake. He wanted to torture them, she thought. Whoever wielded that sword or knife wanted them to know that they were going to die.
    Why? She had no idea. She was distracted by the sound of rotor blades approaching and went to the front of the house. A helicopter was descending over the wooded hillsides and soon landed in a field, whipping up a cloud of snow. Tobias Ludwig jumped out, and the helicopter set off again immediately, heading south.
    Sundberg went to meet him. Ludwig was wearing city shoes, and as he trudged through the snow it came well over his ankles. He looked to Vivi like a confused insect stuck in the snow and flapping violently with its wings.
    They met on the road as Ludwig was brushing himself down. “I’m trying to get my head around it,” he said. “What you told me, that is.”
    “You have to see them. Sten Robertsson is here. I’ve done as much as I can in the way of resources. But now it’s up to you to make sure we get all the help we need.”
    “I still can’t get my head around it. Lots of dead old people?”
    “There’s a boy who’s the odd one out. He’s young.”
    She went through the houses for the fourth time that day. Ludwig kept groaning as he accompanied her from crime scene to crime scene and came to the tent where the leg was. The doctor was nowhere to be seen. Ludwig shook his head helplessly.
    “What on earth has happened? Surely only a madman could have done anything like this.”
    “We don’t know if it was just one. There could have been several of them.”
    “Madmen?”
    “Nobody knows.”
    He looked hard at her.
    “Do we know anything at all?”
    “Not really.”
    “This is too big for us. We need help.”
    Robertsson came walking along the road toward them.
    “This is horrendous, horrific,” said Ludwig. “I doubt anything like this has ever happened before in Sweden.”
    Robertsson shook his head. Sundberg eyed the two men. The feelingthat this was urgent, that something even worse might happen if they didn’t act quickly enough, became even stronger.
    “Get going on those names,” she said to Tobias Ludwig. “I really need your help.”
    Then she took Robertsson by the arm and led him off along the road.
    “What do you think?”
    “I’m scared. Aren’t you?”
    “I don’t have time to think about it.”
    Sten Robertsson screwed up his eyes.
    “But you’re onto something, aren’t you? You always are.”
    “Not this time. There could have been ten of them, we just don’t know at the moment. We have absolutely nothing to go on. You’ll have to be present