Sidetracked - By Henning Mankell & Steven T. Murray Page 0,39

had flopped the monster over on his back and cut off his scalp, without hesitation. Now it lay where it belonged, buried in the earth, with one tuft of hair sticking up from the ground.

Soon another scalp would join it. He looked at his face and considered whether he ought to make the second cut next to the first one. Or should the knife consecrate the other cheek? Really it made no difference. When he was finished, his face would be covered with cuts.

Carefully he began to prepare himself. From his backpack he pulled out his weapons, paints and brushes. Last of all he took out the red book in which the Revelations and the Mission were written. He set it down on the table between himself and the mirrors.

Last night he had buried the first scalp. There was a guard by the hospital grounds. But he knew where the fence had come down. The secure wing, where there were bars on the windows and doors, stood apart on the outskirts of the large grounds. When he had visited his sister he had established which window was hers. No light shone from it. A faint gleam from the hall light was all that escaped from the menacing building. He had buried the scalp and whispered to his sister that he had taken the first step. He would destroy the monsters, one by one. Then she would come out into the world again.

He pulled off his shirt. It was summer, but he shivered in the cool of the basement. He opened the red book and turned past what was written about the man named Wetterstedt, who had ceased to exist. On page 7 the second scalp was described. He read what his sister had written and decided that this time he would use the smallest axe.

He closed the book and looked at his face in the mirror. It was the same shape as his mother’s, but he had his father’s eyes. They were set deep, like two retracted cannon muzzles. Because of these eyes, he might have regretted that his father would have to be sacrificed too. But it was only a small doubt, one that he could easily conquer. Those eyes were his first childhood memory. They had stared at him, they had threatened him, and ever since then he could see his father only as a pair of enormous eyes with arms and legs and a bellowing voice.

He wiped his face with a towel. Then he dipped one of the wide brushes into the black paint and drew the first line across his brow, precisely where the knife had cut open the skin on Wetterstedt’s forehead.

He had spent many hours outside the police cordon. It was exciting to see all these policemen expending their energy trying to find out what happened and who had killed the man lying under the boat. On several occasions he had felt a compulsion to call out that he was the one.

It was a weakness that he had still not completely mastered. What he was doing, the mission he had undertaken from his sister’s book of revelations, was for her sake alone, not his. He must conquer this urge.

He drew the second line across his face. The transformation had barely begun, but he could feel his external identity starting to leave him.

He didn’t know why he had been named Stefan. On one occasion, when his mother had been more or less sober, he had asked her. Why Stefan? Why that name and not something else? Her reply had been very vague. It’s a fine name, she said. He remembered that. A fine name. A name that was popular. He would be spared from having a name that was different. He still remembered how upset he had been. He left her lying there on the sofa in their living-room, stormed from the house and rode his bike down to the sea. Walking along the beach, he chose himself a different name. He chose Hoover. After the head of the F.B.I. He had read a book about him. It was rumoured that Hoover had a drop of American Indian blood in his veins. He wondered whether there was some in his own blood. His grandfather had told him that many of their relatives had emigrated to America a long time ago. Maybe one of them had taken up with an American Indian. Even if the blood didn’t run through his own veins, it might be in