Part 75 (2/2)

The operator could barely hear anything, but a.n.a.lysis of the recording of the short conversation suggested that the man needed help, and described a location involving a ruined factory somewhere in the vicinity of Rimbo.

They had been able to identify the place as the house that had been built after the big fire at Solbacken Gla.s.sworks.

'We're on our way back to the station,' Olle mutters.

'You haven't got time to take this first?' the operator asks.

'OK, we'll take it,' he replies.

Large drops of rain are falling on the roof of the car. Olle s.h.i.+vers and closes his window, managing to squash a brimstone b.u.t.terfly.

'Suspected domestic down in Gemlinge,' he tells his son.

George turns the car round and heads south, past large farms that open up the landscape in the middle of the black forests.

'Mum reckons you don't eat enough vegetables, she was going to make carrot lasagne,' Olle says. 'But I forgot to buy the carrots, so we're having beef patties instead.'

'Sounds good,' George grins.

The fields are completely dark now. One wing of the b.u.t.terfly falls down the inside of the window and drifts on the warm air from the vent.

They stop talking when they turn off and start heading along the narrow track. The deep potholes make the suspension creak, and branches sc.r.a.pe the roof and sides of the car.

'For G.o.d's sake, this place is derelict,' George says.

The car's headlights open up a tunnel through the darkness and make the swirling moths and the tall gra.s.s at the side of the track s.h.i.+ne like bra.s.s.

'What's the difference between a cheese?' Olle asks, absurdly.

'I don't know, Dad,' George says, without taking his eyes off the track.

'There are holes in the cheese, but no cheese in the holes.'

'Brilliant,' his son sighs, and drums his hands on the wheel.

They turn into a large yard and see a huge chimney etched against the night sky. The tyres roll slowly over crunching gravel. Olle leans closer to the windscreen, breathing through his nose.

'Dark,' George mutters, turning the wheel.

The headlights sweep across bushes and rusting machine parts when they are suddenly reflected back at them.

'A number plate,' Olle says.

They drive closer and see a car with its boot open parked in the yard among the ruins of the gla.s.sworks.

The two men look towards the yellow house. It's surrounded by tall stinging nettles, and the windows are black.

'Do you want to wait and see if they carry out a television?' Olle asks quietly.

George turns the wheel to the left and lines the car up so that the headlights are pointing straight at the veranda before putting the handbrake on.

'But the call was about a suspected domestic,' he says, and opens his door. 'I'll go and take a look.'

'Not on your own,' his dad says.

The two police officers are wearing light protective vests under the jackets of their uniforms, and on their belts they're carrying their service pistols, extra magazines, batons, handcuffs, torches and radios.

Their thin shadows stretch out over the ground, reaching all the way to the house across the nettles.

George has pulled out his torch, and suddenly imagines he's seen something move behind the broken gla.s.s of the ruins.

'What is it?' Olle asks.

'Nothing,' George replies with a dry mouth.

The leaves rustle in the darkness, and then they hear a strange noise, like someone crying out in anguish from within the forest.

'b.l.o.o.d.y deer, scaring people like that!' Olle says.

George s.h.i.+nes his torch at a deep shaft between some collapsed brick walls. There are fragments of gla.s.s scattered among the weeds.

'What is this place?' George whispers.

'Just stick to the path.'

The flat disc of the torch moves over the dirty windows of the house. The gla.s.s is so filthy that it reflects no more than a grey s.h.i.+mmer.

They wade through the tall nettles and George makes a joke about the garden being greener than his dad's.

One pane in the veranda has been nailed over with plywood, and there's a rusty scythe leaning against the wall.

'The row was probably about whose turn it was to do the cleaning,' Olle says quietly.

131.

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