The cow started sizzling. Another sizzling cow.
Once the burn heals, nobody will be able to claim that she's not ours. The old man had held up the iron again. Shall we brand you as well while we're at it, milad? To make sure you don't wander off and can't remember where you live. That's the way they used to do things. Right? Shall we change things now? He'd backed off and felt a scratch under his right foot. Come here, I said! Out there the sea was breaking on the shore. He rushed out into the water.
Winter drove. Ringmar kept an eye on the road signs. The plain was black and enveloped by a damp breeze. A tractor in a rectangular field was doing God only knows what.
'Maybe they're sowing,' said Ringmar, pointing. 'Spring seems to have arrived before winter this highly peculiar season.'
It was a different world. That was why Winter had wanted to pay a brief visit. He could see the horizon the way you could normally only see it from a ship.
I should get out of town more often. You walk up and down the city streets and the years go by. It's not far, and it's something completely out of the ordinary.
'It's not easy to hide out here,' said Ringmar.
'There are houses,' said Winter.
'Everybody knows everything about everybody else,' said Ringmar.
'If only we did.'
'You should turn off here,' said Ringmar.
The side road wasn't visible until they came to it. There was a signpost, but it was as insubstantial as the breeze that was blowing from all directions. They couldn't see an avenue that might lead to a dwelling.
'Where is this farm, then?' said Ringmar.
They kept going. The landscape took an unexpected turn, and they saw the house.
A dog barked as they drove into the farmyard.
A man was clambering out of some kind of vehicle.
They got out of their car.
'Good afternoon,' said Ringmar, and introduced himself and Winter. The man was over sixty and dressed in waterproofs and solid-looking boots. Winter could feel the rain now, like soft gravel. The man said, 'Smedsberg' and dried his hands on a rag that had been draped over the bonnet of what could have been a petrol-driven lawnmower, but was presumably something different. Winter looked up at the farmhouse, which had two storeys plus attic rooms. He couldn't see any sign of a Swedish Kenyan peering out of a window.
'We're looking for somebody,' said Ringmar.
Among other things, Winter thought.
'Is it summat to do with Gustav?' said the man, with a strong local accent.
'Hasn't he told you?' asked Ringmar.
'Told me what?'
Two cats were sitting beside the iron stove. The farmer opened a hatch and inserted two logs. A modern electric cooker stood next to it. There was an unmistakable smell of old-fashioned heating that Winter had no personal experience of, but recognised immediately. He could see from Bertil's expression that he remembered this kind of thing.
There were rag carpets on the floor. Winter and Ringmar had not been asked to take off their shoes. The farmer, Georg Smedsberg, had exchanged his boots for some kind of slippers that appeared to be homemade.
There were samplers on two of the walls: East, west, home's best. God is the truth and the light. This earth is the creation of our Lord God. Honour thy father and thy mother.
Is there a Mrs Smedsberg? Winter wondered.
They told the old man about what had happened to his son.
'You'd've thought he'd've said summat,' said Smedsberg, putting a coffee pot that seemed to be a war-time model on to the stove. 'But nowt happened to 'im, eh? He's all right, is 'e?'
'He wasn't injured,' said Winter, taking a mouthful of the asphalt-black coffee that also seemed to be from another world. It would banish every bacterium in his body, good and bad.
'Good coffee,' said Ringmar.
'It's how I like it,' said Smedsberg.
To ask for milk would have been a mistake. Winter sipped at the hot liquid, but no more. Anybody wanting to create a surrealist scene could have introduced an espresso machine into this kitchen.
'I don't suppose you've had a visit recently from a friend of Gustav's?' he asked.
'When might that've bin?'
'In the last couple of days.'
'No.'
'Before that, then?'
'Nobody's bin here since Gustav was home last.'
Smedsberg scratched at his chin, which was shaven and shiny and didn't fit in with his clothes and general appearance. They hadn't announced their visit in advance. Perhaps he knew about it even so. Out here everybody knows about everything, as Bertil had said. An unfamiliar car from Gothenburg. A Mercedes. A conversation with his son. Or smoke signals. Maybe the lad had phoned and told him what was going on. Even tillers of God's good earth could tell lies.
'When was that?' Ringmar asked.
'Let's see, it's nearly Christmas . . . It would've been potato time.'
'Potato time?' Ringmar wondered.
'When we took in the taters. Late. Beginning of October.'
More than two months ago, Winter thought. Ah well. How often did Winter meet his mother? There were direct flights from Gothenburg to Malaga almost every hour for all the pensioners and golfers and those who were a combination of the two, which was most of them.
There was a framed photograph on an escritoire on the other side of the kitchen table. A middle-aged lady with permed hair smiled timidly in black and white. Smedsberg saw that Winter was looking at it.
'That's my wife,' he said. 'Gustav's mum. She left us.'
'Left you?'
'I'm a widower,' said the man, standing up. He walked to the iron stove and put in some more birchwood. There was a sizzling sound as the dry wood reached the flames. Winter noticed that smell again.
'Has Gustav brought a friend home with him from Gothenburg?' asked Ringmar.
'When would that be?'
'Whenever. Since he started studying at Chalmers.'
'Yes,' said Smedsberg, remaining by the stove and warming his misshapen and discoloured hands on the hotplates. 'When he was here to give us a hand with the potatoes he brought a mate with him.' Smedsberg seemed to be smiling, or he might have been reacting to the heat that he must be feeling in the palms of his hands now. 'He was a black man.' He removed his hands and blew into them. 'As black as the soil out there.'
'So his friend was a black person, is that right?' asked Ringmar.
'Aye, a real blackie,' said Smedsberg, and now he was smiling. 'It were the first time for me.'
My first black man, Winter thought. There's a first time for everything.
'We could've used him to scare our cows in,' said Smedsberg.
'Was his name Aryan Kaite?' Winter asked.
'I don't recall a name,' said Smedsberg. 'I don't even know if I ever heard his name.'
'Is this him?' Winter asked, showing him a copy of a photograph of Kaite they had taken from his room. Smedsberg looked at the photograph and then at Winter.
'Hell's bells! They're all alike, aren't they?'
'You don't recognise him?'
'No,' he said, handing the photograph back.
'Has he been here again since then?'
'No. I ain't seen him again since then, you can bet yer life I'd remember if I had.' He looked from Winter to Ringmar. 'Why are you asking all this? Has he disappeared or summat?'
'Yes,' said Winter.
'Is he one of them others that've been attacked?'
'Why do you ask?'
'Well, why else would you come here?'
'Yes, he's one of them.'
'Why would anybody want to have a go at Gustav and this blackie, then?' asked Smedsberg.
'That's what we're trying to find out,' said Winter.
'They mebbe deserved it,' said Smedsberg.
'I beg your pardon?'
'They mebbe got what they deserved,' said Smedsberg.
'What do you mean?' asked Ringmar, looking at Winter.
'What'd they be
en up to?' said Smedsberg.
'What do you mean by that?' asked Ringmar.
'They must have been up to summat. It can't just be a coincidence that somebody bashed both of them, can it?'
'The attacks didn't happen at the same time,' said Winter.
'Even so,' said Smedsberg.
'And Gustav hasn't said anything to you about this?'
'He's not been here since October, like I said.'
'There's such a thing as the telephone,' said Winter. There was even one in this house. Winter had seen it in the hall. An old-fashioned dial, of course.
'It's a month or so since we spoke,' Smedsberg said, and Winter noticed how his face changed, clouded over.
Ringmar leaned forward.
'Do you have any other children, Mr Smedsberg?'
'No.'
'You live here all alone?'
'Since my Gerd left us, yes.'
'Was Gustav still living at home then?'
'Yes.' Smedsberg seemed to be looking into space. 'He were little, and then he grew big. Did his National Service as well. Then . . . then he moved to Gothenburg and started studying.'
'So he doesn't want to take over the farm?' said Ringmar.
'There's nowt to take over,' said Smedsberg. 'I can barely scrape together a living, and when I've gone, the crows are welcome to it.'
They made no comment.
'Shall I meck some more coffee?' asked Smedsberg.
'Yes please,' said Ringmar, and Winter looked at him. Bertil must be possessed by a desire to leave us, to shrug off this mortal coil. It will be a painful farewell. 'If we have time.'
'I'll just stir up the dregs,' said Smedsberg and went over to the stove. Winter gave Ringmar the thumbs-up.
'Gustav told us something else,' said Winter. 'The injuries those boys suffered might have been caused by an iron of some kind. That's what Gustav thought. Some sort of marking iron used on cattle.'
'A branding iron, you mean? Are we supposed to keep a branding iron here?'
'I don't think he said that. But the boys might have been beaten with one.'
'I've never heard of owt like that,' said Smedsberg.
'Like what?'
'Anybody clubbing folk down with a branding iron. Never heard of it.'
'That's what Gustav suggested.'
'Where'd that idea come from? We've never had a branding iron here.'
'But he could have been familiar with one even so, could he?' asked Ringmar.
'I suppose so,' said Smedsberg. 'I wond . . .' but he didn't finish. The coffee pot was starting to rattle on the stove. He fetched the coffee and came back to the table.
'No thank you,' said Winter. Smedsberg sat down.
'I've allus used ear tags on our cows,' he said. 'If I ever needed to mark them. But in the old days we had the number from the Co-operative that we used to mark cattle with.'
'What exactly do you mean?' Winter asked.
'Like I said. We marked them with a number for this district.'
'For the district? Not the farm?' Winter asked.
'No. For this district.'
'But we've been told that there are special numbers that indicate the precise location the animals come from.'
'That came later, '95, with the EU.'
'And there's one of those for every farm?'
'Yes.'
'So there's one for your farm, then?'
'Yes. But I don't have any cows nowadays. No animals at all, apart from dogs and cats and a few chickens. I might buy a couple of pigs.'
'But you still have the number?'
'It's allus there. It goes with my farm.'
Winter saw Ringmar take a drink of coffee, and his face suddenly split down the middle and a black stream of coffee gushed forth from his eyes . . . Well, not quite; but he pulled a face.
'So you've never had one of these marking irons, branding irons, at this farm?'
'No. It's more or less unheard of. It's in America where they have such enormous ranches and they brand their cattle so that it's easier to identify them from a distance.' He smiled. 'I bet they steal cattle over there too.' He took a swig of asphalt. 'I reckon they brand horses in Germany as well.'
'But not here?'
'Horses? There ain't no horses round these parts.'
'Do you know anybody who might have used that method of marking cattle?' Winter asked.
Smedsberg didn't reply immediately; he seemed to be searching for the answer in the depths of his mug of coffee. Eventually he looked up again. He looked across the room and out of the window where the view was curtailed by the rain.
'Somewhere where Gustav might have seen it?' said Winter.
'Haven't you asked him?'
'Not directly,' said Winter, although that wasn't really true. Gustav Smedsberg had said that he couldn't remember. 'But it's sort of become more relevant now.'
'Become hotter?' A smile twinkled in Smedsberg's left eye. A farmer with a sense of humour as black as his coffee and as the night outside, in another hour or two.
'So you've never seen an iron like that?' Winter asked.
'There is a farm in the upper parish, as we call it.' Smedsberg looked Winter in the eye. 'I don't come from round these parts, but my Gerd did. When her parents were still alive we sometimes used to go visiting.'
He scratched his right cheek again, and his forehead, as if to massage the memory.
'There was a farm – I don't know if it's still there – the old man that ran it was a bit odd. Did things his way, you might say.' Smedsberg did some more massaging. 'It were in the next village. We needed to go there once for summat or other, and I think he . . . that he used to mark some of his animals like that. Come to think of it . . .' He peered out from inside his memories, turned to look at them. 'I remember the smell, in fact,' he said. 'Odd, ain't it? A sound as well. Yes. When we got back home I asked Gerd and she said . . . she said he used to brand his mark into his animals.'
'You mean that number he was given by the Cooperative?' Ringmar asked.
'No. He had his own. I remember asking and Gerd said so.'
'You remember a lot, Mr Smedsberg,' said Winter.
'It's the smell,' he said. 'Odd, ain't it? You remember this smell and then you remember loads of other things. All you have to do is think of a smell, and memories start to come back.'
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