Rites of Spring

by Anders de la Motte

  He had to get out of here, right now. Get as far away as possible from this terrible place. Cover his tracks.

  The fact that the ghetto blaster had his name on it was unfortunate, but he didn’t think it would ever be found. The canal was several metres deep, and by now it must be buried in the mud, along with his police-issue torch.

  The car started immediately. His right hand had turned into a swollen blob, but he managed to push the gear stick with his knuckles. He put his foot down.

  But where the hell could he go? In six hours this car had to be at the station in Ljungslöv, spotlessly clean. It was also his job to make the coffee ready for morning briefing at eight o’clock, then sit at the back of the room, smartly dressed and with some kind of reasonable explanation for his injuries.

  Elita’s body would be found, there would be a murder inquiry. A team from Helsingborg would move in. He had to think, had to work out what the fuck . . .

  The animal appeared in the headlights right in front of the car; Arne’s heart almost stopped. For a second it felt as if time had done the same. He could see the animal hanging in the air. Slender legs, a powerful, dark body, like something from his nightmares.

  Somehow he managed to swerve to the side. The right-hand wheels chewed up a considerable part of the ditch before he was able to get the Saab back on the track. He stared in the mirror, but the animal had disappeared into the forest.

  It must have been ten seconds before Arne realised what he’d almost hit. Not an imaginary creature, but a black horse with no saddle, reins dangling. A black horse with a white sock on one hind leg. The same horse he’d seen just a few hours earlier in the paddock at Svartgården.

  Suddenly a thought began to take shape in his head. It grew bigger and stronger the further he got from the marsh. Things he’d seen and heard during the day came together, and a crystal clear picture emerged of what he’d actually seen at the stone circle.

  And he knew what had to be done. What he had to do.

  44

  T

  hea can’t find the phone at first, she fumbles around on the bedside table for a while before she manages to silence the alarm. She’s had a dream she only partly recalls: a rider in a dark forest, and stagnant, muddy water. Hardly surprising, but she’s also dreamed about her father, which as always makes her uneasy.

  Suddenly she realises she’s in David’s bed, not her own. He must have brought her phone in before he left. She stiffens, jumps out of bed and runs into her room. The file with the transcripts is under the bed. Is that where she left it last night before she went to join David? She’s not sure, but eventually manages to convince herself that she must have done.

  She pushes the file into her work bag so that David won’t find it. After reading the transcript she understands why he doesn’t want to talk about Elita Svart, yet at the same time she’s keen to know more. Get even closer. She takes Emee to work with her; she daren’t leave her at home and risk her running away again. The wind seems to be blowing from several directions at the same time, lashing the side windows with rain as she drives along the narrow track between the fields.

  When they arrive Emee wanders around the surgery looking miserable, but after a while she flops down on the blanket by the radiator with a loud sigh.

  There are no patients waiting, which means that Thea can go back to the file. After the interviews with the four children, Elita’s mother Lola was questioned. Her responses are disjointed; presumably she was still in shock. As before the interview was recorded, then transcribed.

  INTERVIEWER: What was Elita doing in the stone circle in the middle of the night?

  LOLA SVART: She was the spring sacrifice.

  INTERVIEWER: What does that involve?

  LOLA SVART: Something old must die so that something new can rise again.

  INTERVIEWER: I don’t really understand.

  LOLA SVART: (INAUDIBLE MUTTERING)

  INTERVIEWER: Who do you think killed her?

  LOLA SVART: Him.

  INTERVIEWER: Who?

  LOLA SVART: The Green Man. He was the one who took her.

  INTERVIEWER: Who is the Green Man?

  LOLA SVART: (CRIES)

  INTERVIEWER: Who is the Green Man, Lola?

  LOLA SVART: (CRIES)

  INTERVIEWER: Interview suspended 14.08.

  The Green Man took her. What does Lola mean by that? It could, of course, be a way of dealing with the incomprehensible, because she can’t bring herself to utter Leo’s name. Or perhaps Lola has simply lost her grip on reality.

  The next interview is with Eva-Britt Rasmussen, Leo’s mother.

  She is more matter-of-fact, but doesn’t say much either. She and Lola both went to bed at about eleven o’clock. Lasse was out working, and Eva-Britt assumed that Elita was in her room. She didn’t see Leo, because he lived in a small cabin behind the main house.

  Lasse Svart is even more taciturn in his interview, and yet Thea thinks she can read both suppressed grief and anger in the short lines. Lasse is quite hostile towards the police, but when pressed he confirms that he was in the Reftinge area, dowsing for water. He reluctantly gives the name of the farmer who asked for his help, then adds that he got home around midnight, went straight to bed and didn’t see either Elita or Leo. That’s all he has to say.

  Thea recognises his attitude. The distrust of the police and the authorities – everyone outside the family, in fact. Her father was exactly the same.

  There is a short interview with Kerstin Miller, who says that she went to bed just after ten on Walpurgis Night, as always. Erik Nyberg turned up at six thirty in the morning, told her the terrible news and asked to use the telephone.

  Then comes the first interview with Leo. It was conducted at the police station on the evening of 1 May. Leo claims that he spent the evening alone in his little cabin, drinking. He got drunk and fell asleep, and has no memories of that night. When the interviewer asks about the scratches and bruises on his face and hands, he replies that he doesn’t remember how he got them. He insists that the last time he saw Elita was just before ten o’clock. The interviewer then states that Leo is suspected of murdering Elita Svart, which Leo denies. The interview ends.

  Thea finds a total of nine interviews with Leo, but she decides not to read the rest of them until she is more familiar with the details surrounding the murder. She finds a report from the scene of the crime, and several pages of photographs. These are copies of copies, but the quality is surprisingly good.

  Elita is lying on her back on the sacrificial stone. Her hands are folded across her chest. In the first picture her face is covered by a handkerchief that is sodden with dark blood. In the subsequent pictures the handkerchief has been removed, and just as Thea has already read in the doctor’s report, the upper part of Elita’s face is a bloody pulp.

  She takes out the Polaroid and places it on the desk.

  Elita is dressed in exactly the same way in both images. The dress, the ribbons around her wrists, the antlers, all identical. Which means that the Polaroid must have been taken on Walpurgis Night.

  Thea flicks through the remaining interviews. The same names recur: Lasse, Eva-Britt, Lola and Leo. No one else. No outsiders.

  A family tragedy.

  She goes back to the crime scene report and reads through the summary of the forensic evidence.

  The ground inside the stone circle consisted mainly of flattened grass with clearly visible hoof prints. Dogs were brought in, and a search of the terrain revealed a track with freshly broken branches and trodden-down undergrowth, heading directly east towards a ford where the canal was shallower. Again, hoof prints were found. The track continued on the other side of the canal, coming to an end when it reached the road. The technicians stated that as far as it was possible to tell, this coincided with the time of the murder, and that it involved a large horse. The animal must have been both wet and muddy after crossing the canal. As if to back up their conclusions, the technicians atta
ched close-ups of the hoof prints in the mud.

  Thea leafs through the pages, finds pictures of Svartgården – a collection of gloomy, low buildings surrounded by dense greenery. Then Leo’s little cottage, and the stable. Even Bill in his stall.

  Elita’s room seems familiar in many ways. Sloping ceiling, a single bed, an IKEA desk, an armchair and a lamp. If you swap the wooden floor for a fitted carpet and the Duran Duran poster for Wham!, this could have been Thea’s room when she was a teenager.

  The letter Elita left behind is on her desk. It has been photographed from several angles, and there is a copy on the next page. Her heart begins to beat a little faster.

  Dear readers!

  Every narrative must have a beginning, a middle and an end. This is my beginning.

  My name is Elita Svart. I am sixteen years old. I live deep in the forest outside Tornaby.

  By the time you read this, I will already be dead.

  Thea reads on. Elita’s handwriting is rounded, still a little childish. She sometimes uses words and phrases that are too overblown for a sixteen-year-old girl, and her tone becomes rather melodramatic, not least when she writes about herself in the third person.

  Sometimes she can seem ironic and manipulative, sometimes more vulnerable, which suggests that she didn’t write the letter all in one go. In certain sentences she is cocky and confident, in others so cryptic that she doesn’t make sense. At times she sounds afraid, especially when she writes about her family and the relationship between her father and Leo.

  Leo, who is prepared to do anything for her.

  As Thea reads on, she can almost hear Elita’s voice. The voice of a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in the middle of a marsh, trapped in a keg of gunpowder, near a village where the inhabitants simultaneously desire and despise her.

  Or is it her own voice Thea can hear? Her own sixteen-year-old self who wants to tell the whole world to go to hell?

  She carries on reading, gobbling up the words. Elita’s tone becomes darker, her voice clearer and clearer.

  Soon I will leave it all behind me, spread my wings and fly away from here. Because no secret is greater than mine.

  Thea stops, looks up. What secret? Is Elita referring to the death pact between her and Leo? That seems likely.

  Another section captures her interest.

  I have chosen them with care, my little tadpoles. Chosen the children whose parents snigger at me behind my back and pull faces when they talk about me, as if my name has a nasty taste.

  She leans back on her chair. Repeats the words out loud.

  ‘The children whose parents snigger at me behind my back.’

  She can imagine Ingrid turning up her nose at Elita Svart. A dirty little gyppo, not good enough to associate with her darling David and his friends.

  That explains why Elita chose to surround herself with four twelve-year-olds. These weren’t just any children. David’s father was a bank manager, Nettan’s a headmaster, Sebastian’s an engineer. The children, with the possible exception of Jan-Olof, represented the society that rejected her.

  Thea reads the rest of the letter, all the way to the highly charged ending.

  Who was it, you ask? Who killed Elita Svart?

  Why should I tell you?

  A tap on the door makes her look up. She quickly closes the file and slips it into a drawer.

  ‘Come in!’

  The door opens to reveal Hubert Gordon. He is wearing his oilskin coat as usual, shaking the rain off his flat cap.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you.’

  ‘You’re not disturbing me at all – come on in and sit down.’

  Emee leaps to her feet, walks around Hubert a couple of times, then settles with her head on his knee.

  ‘Thanks for yesterday, by the way,’ Thea says.

  ‘No, thank you. I’m sorry I didn’t have anything to offer you; I rarely have visitors,’ he says with a small smile.

  ‘Is there something I can help you with?’

  ‘Yes; I wonder if you can renew my prescription?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She opens the laptop and asks him for his ID number. His list of medications comes up.

  ‘Stesolid, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’ He clears his throat. ‘I’ve had problems with muscle spasms ever since I was a child. Father had them too, so it’s probably hereditary.’

  ‘Mm,’ she says, for want of a better response. Stesolid is actually Valium in new, more modern packaging. Good for spasms, but also anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia and so on.

  ‘The Gordon gene pool really is a mess,’ he says, smiling again in a way that immediately makes her do the same. Hubert has a dark, subtle sense of humour that appeals to her.

  ‘I’ve had a look at the book you gave me,’ she says, tapping away at the keys.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it. Did you approve of Stanley Kunitz?’

  ‘Absolutely. I liked the one about the summer.’

  ‘“End of Summer”? Good choice. But I have a different favourite.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘You have to guess.’

  ‘But I haven’t read all the poems yet.’

  ‘Well, you do that then maybe we can have another coffee.’

  ‘Is that a challenge?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Another smile.

  She closes the laptop. ‘I’ve put your prescription through. You can collect it from the nearest chemist.’

  ‘Thank you, Thea. Goodbye – I hope to see you again soon.’

  He gets to his feet, pats Emee for one last time, then tips his cap in farewell before he leaves.

  Thea locks the door behind him and takes the file out again. She decides to go back to Leo. The children have blamed him, but in the first two interviews he flatly denies everything and insists that he never left his cabin. The change comes in the third interview.

  INTERVIEWER: Have you anything to add since the last time we spoke?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: No.

  INTERVIEWER: So you still claim that you fell asleep in your cabin, and spent the whole night there?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: Yes.

  INTERVIEWER: At this point I must inform you that your father has changed his statement.

  LEO RASMUSSEN: Lasse is not my father.

  INTERVIEWER: OK, your stepfather. He now says he arrived home at about midnight and found the stable door open and Bill gone. Bill is a horse that was stabled at the farm because Lasse was breaking him in.

  Thea assumes that this remark is aimed at Leo’s defence lawyer. She reads on.

  INTERVIEWER: Lasse thought that Bill must have somehow broken out of his stall and escaped. He went to wake you so that you could help him search, but you weren’t there.

  LEO RASMUSSEN: Lasse’s talking crap, as usual.

  INTERVIEWER: Lasse says that he began to suspect that something was wrong. He returned to the stable and realised that Bill’s bridle wasn’t on its hook. He took his truck out to search. At about one o’clock he found Bill on one of the dirt tracks in the marsh, less than two kilometres from the stone circle. The horse was muddy, wet, and dripping with sweat. He was wearing his bridle, but the reins had been torn off. Lasse led him back to his stall and washed him down. It was gone two o’clock by the time he finished. He checked your cabin again, but you still weren’t there. He went up to bed and says that he saw you from his bedroom window, limping across the yard.

  LEO RASMUSSEN: That’s crap.

  INTERVIEWER: In what way?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: He’s lying. Lasse can’t have seen me from his bedroom window; – it doesn’t even face that way.

  INTERVIEWER: But you did come home and cross the yard?

  (SILENCE)

  INTERVIEWER: Do you want to change your statement, Leo?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: Er . . . C-can we take a break? Is that possible?

  INTERVIEWER: No problem. Interview suspended 14.16.

  Thea eagerly turns to the next page. The interview resume
s less than twenty minutes later.

  INTERVIEWER: OK, Leo, so you’ve had the opportunity to speak to your lawyer. Do you want to change your statement?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: Mm . . . I did go out for a while on Walpurgis Night. I’d had an argument with Elita. I needed to speak to her.

  INTERVIEWER: What was the argument about?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: I . . . I wanted her to . . . to run away with me. Get away from Svartgården and Lasse. I’d arranged for us to borrow a cottage near Ystad – it was all sorted. But she didn’t want to come.

  INTERVIEWER: Why not?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: She said she had other plans.

  INTERVIEWER: What other plans?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: She wouldn’t tell me. Elita could be very secretive.

  INTERVIEWER: Did that bother you? The fact that she was keeping secrets from you?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: A bit, maybe.

  INTERVIEWER: Were you in love with her?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: (INAUDIBLE)

  INTERVIEWER: Could you please repeat that, Leo? Were you in love with her?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: Yes. Yes, I was.

  INTERVIEWER: So you got angry when she refused to run away with you?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: Mm. I said a whole lot of stuff. Stupid stuff. Then I locked myself away in the cabin and drank. I was hurt. Then I started to regret what I’d said. I wanted to talk to her, maybe apologise. I don’t really remember what I was thinking.

  INTERVIEWER: So what did you do?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: I knew she was going to be at the stone circle, that she’d planned to act out the spring sacrifice ritual. But it was too far to walk, so I took Bill.

  INTERVIEWER: What time was that?

  LEO RASMUSSEN: I’m not sure – eleven thirty? I’d drunk quite a lot. I rode off towards the castle forest. There was a full moon, so it was easy to see the way, but Bill was skittish.