Fredrik nodded. Svante looked at him and said, “You are too young: It was more than twenty years ago.
“We found the victim in an apartment. The neighbors called the police when they began smelling him in the summer heat. When we got there, it appeared to be a completely ordinary apartment. The hall, kitchen, and living room looked normal. But the bedroom was a house of horrors. The floor, walls, and ceiling were painted black. The window was covered with a thick black curtain. He had covered the walls with a lot of symbols. Different whips and masks were hanging in there too. There were candleholders everywhere, but all the candles were black and made of wax. A large ceramic basin, which he had filled with strange objects, had been placed in the middle of the room. There were pieces of bone, tufts of hair from humans and animals, a snakeskin, and I can’t remember what all. He was lying on top of the bed with his throat cut. The murder weapon was never found, but it must have been a hunting knife with a large blade. Extremely sharp. The murderer had drawn a pentagram on his stomach.”
“Why was it called the Purple Murder?” Fredrik wondered.
“The man was only wearing a purple cloak. Underneath, he was naked.”
“Why was it purple? Did the color mean something in particular?” Irene asked.
“Black, white, and red are the colors used during black masses. Sometimes they may have a little silver as well. When they use red, it’s a purplish red. Also, the ring around the pentagram symbolizes a snake which is biting its own tail. Exactly what the significance of that is, I don’t know.”
“Hadn’t the neighbors heard anything?” Irene asked.
When the Purple Murder happened, she had been an alternate in the field and had been driving a police car in Angered. All she’d known about that murder was what she had read in the papers.
“Nothing. But the murder occurred during vacation time, when most people were out of town. And this fellow was pretty odd and kept to himself. He rarely said anything to his neighbors, but he didn’t bother anyone either. Not until he started smelling.”
“So you mean we’re going to be chasing Satanists? . . . who murder pastors? But why did they murder the son? He was a teacher, not a pastor. And why Mrs. Schyttelius?” Jonny asked.
Svante gestured tiredly. “I’m not saying that the murderer is a Satanist. I’m saying that the symbol on the computer screens is supposed to be magical and is common in occult and Satanic contexts.” He pointed his finger at the blue star with the three red-colored points that was projected on the screen and continued. “I’ve also seen it painted on church doors, churches burned down by Satanists. In one case, we caught the perpetrators. When Kålltorp’s old church burned down, two guys and two girls had set the fire. They said they were confirmed Satanists and had done it in the Devil’s honor. The existence of an older leader surfaced during the investigation; he was the one who 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