spruce trees growing in a clump, creating an impassable wall.
Irene and Fredrik walked toward the spruces with their gazes fixed on the ground, tracing several old tire tracks from heavy vehicles but also a few barely noticeable ones from regular cars.
“Now we know why he parked here. It’s not possible to go any farther.” Fredrik pointed at the continuation of the road behind the spruce grove. There it descended into a deep hollow filled with water at the bottom. It was obvious that any car that drove down there would get stuck in the mud.
Irene started walking back to their car. When she reached the path that the witness with the dog had been on, she turned and looked around her. Their Saab could be seen at an angle from behind, since the forest road curved around the spruce grove. The small car that the witness had seen had been parked closer to the spruces. With a sigh, Irene had to agree with him: It was impossible to see the license plate and doubtless difficult to determine a particular make, since all compact cars seemed to look alike these days.
She walked back to Fredrik, who was standing near the waterfilled hole, deep in thought. “I think I would try to reach the clearing, rather than force my way through this mass of undergrowth. It must be easier to make one’s way along the edge of it,” he said.
“If it stretches far enough in the direction of the cottage, then I agree. Let’s take a look.”
They made a circuit around the mud hollow and trudged forward toward the clearing, stopping at the edge of the woods to look around. The clearing was narrow and relatively long.
“You could walk at least a hundred meters here. Then you’d have to get out your machete,” Fredrik concluded.
It was still quite difficult to make their way. The earth’s surface was damp and porous, and they sank into it at each step. Irene’s suede boots would need to be both washed and brushed before she could show herself in public in them again. Fredrik, who went around in boat shoes, was even worse off. The best footwear would have been rain boots.
They stopped at the edge of the clearing. The vegetation looked impassable.
“What do we do now? I wish we really had a machete,” Fredrik groaned.
“I suggest we do what my dog would do.”
“And what does your dog do?”
“Follow the game trail.”
A short distance away, she had noticed a narrow opening between some spruce trees, a game trail. A large pile of moose dung was lying in the middle of it.
“It probably leads down to the lake, because the animals want to drink after they’ve grazed. Let’s follow the path and see how close to the cottage we can get,” said Irene.
They had to bend down and push away hanging branches, at the same time as watching where they put their feet. Irene slipped several times on the slimy roots.
“Good thing it’s not tick season yet,” Fredrik puffed.
Irene was about to answer, when she felt a thread across her mouth. She spit and sputtered, thinking it was a sturdy spider-web. Disgusted, she wiped her mouth with her hand and got ahold of the filament. She instinctively glanced at it before she shook it from her fingers. She stopped and held it up to the sunlight that filtered down through the spruce trees.
A spider hadn’t produced this thread, but a sheep probably had. A thin forest-green-colored woolen thread, about three or four centimeters long, dangled from Irene’s fingers, pinched between her thumb and index finger.
“What is it? Why are you stopping?” Fredrik asked, irritated.
He was busy picking things out of his hair. The hair gel he always used in the morning to get his bangs to stand straight up turned out to be the ideal surface for twigs and pine needles to attach themselves to.
“A thread. Someone has been on this path before us. It hasn’t been here very long, because it isn’t faded or dirty.”
She showed Fredrik her find. He whistled softly. “We’ll have to keep an eye out for more fibers.”
Irene found a new thread only twenty meters farther up, but this one was bright red. It hung on the outer branch in a patch of thick shrubbery. Irene stopped and pointed. “It’s at shoulder height for me. This piece is about as long as the green one. Where could these threads have come from?”
“I think we’re looking for a short murderer, max one hundred