Under Suspicion Page 2

  But it didn’t last long because the next moment the bailiff lifted the head of one of the women and said. “Good God! Could this be ...?”

  Then he calmed down again. “No, of course it can’t be!”

  But they had all heard him. Kaleb’s calm, confident figure appeared, and many instinctively went over to him.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Brand bluntly.

  “No, it can’t be.”

  “Speak up!”

  “In the wilderness up here, in the small valleys... people have been speaking in recent years about a wolf-like human being. We call it a werewolf. About a year ago, a woman was flayed, and a three-legged wolf has been seen in the forest ... “

  A young girl put her hand to her mouth and screamed: “Oh, Mummy!”

  “A werewolf,” said Are with an angry glance. “Now you must be careful that you don’t scare people.”

  “What I’m telling you is just gossip.”

  “Nevertheless there seem to be four graves here that haven’t been consecrated,” one of the men said slowly. “Maybe all the deceased are women? Maybe this is where the werewolf lives and catches lonely women? During the full moon ...”

  A few of the girls let out loud screams. Some looked up to find out in which phase the moon was in, but the moon couldn’t be seen. Others looked over their shoulder towards the forest.

  “A three-legged wolf?” another man said. “Why does it have three legs?”

  “Don’t you know that?” barked the bailiff. “The werewolf is a human being that changes into a wolf at full moon - and other times. Since he’s a human being, he has no tail. That’s shameful for a wolf. And that’s why he stretches out his one leg backwards like a tail – and then there are only three legs left to run on.”

  “Ugh,” shivered someone in the crowd.

  The bailiff looked sternly at the crowd. “So keep an eye on your husbands, women! If they’re out at night, you must summon me! Look carefully at his teeth. Maybe there’s a thread from a piece of garment – or maybe he has traces of blood on his face ...”

  Are moaned quietly.

  “And pregnant women should stay indoors in the evening,” the bailiff continued. “The werewolf finds them particularly attractive.”

  “Oh, stop with all this nonsense!” Andreas blurted out thoughtlessly. “It’s something you’ve brought with you from Germany. We don’t have werewolves in Norway.”

  “You’re absolutely wrong,” said the bailiff, who had turned quite red in the face. “You even have bears who can flay women and children to death, which we don’t have.”

  “Yes, Andreas,” said Are calmly. “Even the old Vikings told of wolf-like humans. Only I don’t think there’s any reason to make a lot of fuss about it before we know more about these women. And I’d like to know – if it is a werewolf that is rife – why he’s dragged unknown women here?”

  “But are the women unknown?” asked another man.

  “What about Gustav’s Lisen? She left home to look for work last year at harvest-time and she promised to write home. No letter was ever received and she didn’t return home for Christmas as she’d promised.”

  “Did she leave home at nightfall?” asked the bailiff.

  “I don’t know. You must ask Gustav about that.”

  “Yes, I will,” snapped the bailiff.

  The forest stood dark and silent behind them. Nobody wanted to stand alone. They clustered in pairs and groups. The grey-black clouds lay heavily over the fir trees. It was easy to imagine that something was hiding between the trees.

  Are ordered torches to be lit as the day was waning. Men with spades came from Linden Avenue and Graastensholm and then they began to carefully dig. The spectators excitedly followed everything that was going on in the field, but more and more were glancing towards the lonely house at the edge of the forest.

  However, the bailiff was interested in a larger area.

  “Who lives near here? Which farms are there?” he shouted into the calm meadow.

  “Linden Avenue and Graastensholm,” answered Mattias. “And the hut of the bailiff’s assistant. And Klaus’ small farm up in the forest.”

  “Klaus passed away a long time ago,” said the vicar. “And so did his Rosa.”

  “After his sister married, Jesper lives on his own up there,” said Mattias.

  “More farms?”

  “No, not in the neighbourhood.”

  “Hmm.” The bailiff let his sharp-eyed gaze wander over Are, Brand and Andreas from Linden Avenue, to Mattias and Tarald from Graastensholm. He fixed his look on Andreas.

  “You’re clearly familiar with this meadow,” he said inquisitorially.

  “Yes, but if you believe I’m stupid enough to dig up my own, carefully hidden corpses, then I don’t know which one of us is more stupid,” answered Andreas sharply.

  It seemed that the bailiff could see the logic to that answer.

  “You also have another farm within the family now, don’t you? Elistrand? This Kaleb – where does he actually come from?”

  “I don’t think we should get him involved in all this,” said Andreas coolly. “He’s a very fine person, and we all respect him. Why don’t you ask him himself? He’s standing right behind you.”

  The bailiff turned around. He didn’t know everybody in the parish personally and he had never met Kaleb before. Now he stepped back a bit from the blond giant.

  Andreas continued with a malicious undertone: “Kaleb’s a great expert on law. He can be of assistance to you in this case.”

  The bailiff mumbled something about amateurs.

  “You’d hardly call Kaleb an amateur,” said Andreas. “Kaleb was the apprentice of Judge Dag Meiden and he’s been an MP for many years.”

  That silenced the bailiff. After that he didn’t say much during the digging. He was not used to cases like this one and put his trust in Mattias and Kaleb and the people at Linden Avenue. His authoritative voice sounded like an echo of theirs, repeating what had already been said as if the words were his own. Nobody cared much for the bailiff because they found him conceited and only interested in wringing money from people.

  From the farthest spot of the meadow by the cliff projection, a low cry could be heard:

  “It looks like there’s something here too!”

  They removed the squares of turf carefully. Here it was much more difficult to see what had happened. Time had passed by and the bodies had rotted away.

  “It’s too dark,” complained Mattias.

  “Yes, now it’s too dark,” repeated the bailiff. “We must continue our investigation of the corpses tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” agreed Kaleb. “But we can dig up the rest of this patch this evening. Just to be on the safe side.”

  After an hour, the whole patch of meadow had been dug up. There were four female corpses. Despite a series of test digs here and there, no more bodies were found.

  Four deceased. One recently, one earlier this spring. The two others must have been interred over the winter. One of them probably from last autumn, the other perhaps dating back to last summer. Who were they? Where did they come from? Who was their slayer and how were they killed?

  Mattias and Kaleb were standing with Are, Brand and Andreas, discussing the two most recent finds, when the bailiff called them over in a low voice. They walked over to him. He stood bent over the woman who had been killed most recently.

  “Look here!” he said. “What do you say to this?”

  He had removed some earth from one hand of the woman and pulled out a dirty piece of string.

  “This was tied to her hand,” he said. The string was long and trailed on the ground.

  Are took hold of it. “Knots,” he said.

  “Tying together nine different pieces of string,” added the bailiff sternly.
"Well, that shows us the types that we’re dealing with!”

  The others were feeling extremely ill at ease.

  “You must keep this to yourself,” said Are in a cautionary tone of voice. “If this gets out, the whole village will turn hysterical. We’ve had enough witch trials here. Your werewolf story is better!”

  “But this is irrefutable proof,” protested the bailiff. “And yesterday we caught a witch in the neighbouring village. Witchcraft is rife.”

  “We’ll investigate the case carefully tomorrow. This evening we should avoid stirring up more fear, or people will take the case into their own hands. Put a guard here tonight and send all the others home.”

  The bailiff gritted his teeth and acquiesced.

  Night had long since fallen by the time the large crowd went back towards the village. Jesper was not in the throng. His small farm was situated deep in the forest so he hadn’t noticed the fuss. The Night Man hadn’t appeared either.

  Everyone went home to sleep. Well, so they thought. Not everybody went to bed. A few shadowy figures lay in wait by the crossroads until they caught sight of their victim: the Night Man.

  Finally, they had good reason to attack the executioner’s hated assistant. Who else could the werewolf be? And he was, after all, the one who lived right next to the meadow.

  They placed their hands over the Night Man’s mouth to muffle his screams.

  Early the next morning when Andreas was on his way to the smith with a horse, which had lost its shoe, he found a miserable figure lying in the ditch. Although the man was in a terrible state, he recognised immediately that it was the executioner’s assistant. Andreas bent down and tried to lift him up.

  “Run home and fetch the cart and another horse,” he said to the stable lad who was with him. “There’s still life in him. Afterwards go over to the smith with this horse and then to Mattias. Ask him to come to the hut by the edge of the forest. I’ll drive Joel Night Man home.”

  While Andreas waited for the stable lad, he sat by the roadside, gazing at the wounded man. His thoughts were grim. The find yesterday evening in the dead woman’s hand had shocked his entire family. He knew how vulnerable they were in this. For the moment, the bailiff was the only one who knew about it, but if the rumour spread to the village ...

  He looked at Joel Night Man. It was quite obvious that this crime had taken place last night. It was equally obvious that it had to do with the events in the meadow. People had found a scapegoat, somebody to take their revenge out on. But the popular mood swung very easily. If they found somebody else to strike, they could do all sorts of terrible things. ‘This is just the beginning,’ he thought. ‘Just the beginning...’

  Chapter 2

  When Hilde Joelsdatter had fed the animals - just one cow, three chickens and a cat - she returned to the small, dark hut.

  She took off her dress and stood in her slip while rinsing her face and hands in a wooden bowl. Her movements were slow and absentminded. Then she tidied up in the room that served as a living room, kitchen corner and her bedroom. Her father had the only chamber there was in the house to himself.

  She could see that he hadn’t come home yet. The neighbouring village had called for him the day before. Some cow carcasses were to be buried, which was also one of the Night Man’s many duties. He had reckoned on being back by evening, but he hadn’t managed that by the look of it.

  Hilde replaced the violets on the table with some bird’s-foot trefoil.

  ‘I believe it’s my birthday today,’ she thought. ‘Maybe I should bake a cake to celebrate it? No, I’d better not.’

  She used to do this when she was younger, and her father had said it was a waste. So she had stopped that. Anyway, twenty-seven was nothing to celebrate, was it? She had better forget all about it. Her fingers gently caressed the delicate petals of the flowers and she gazed into the distance.

  The years had passed and she didn’t know what had become of them. They had disappeared without a trace. Once she had had dreams and yearnings and wept during the lonely nights. Now she no longer wept, and the dreams were forgotten.

  She reminded herself of her mother’s words on her deathbed: “Stay with Dad, Hilde! You’re all he’s got now. Be a good daughter to him.”

  And Hilde had promised and she had really tried. Only it was difficult sometimes because her father was never satisfied. He would never notice when she had done something nice in the house, the little that was possible, and he never appreciated her daily care. If there was no beer or schnapps left, he would take out his frustration on her, saying that he couldn’t understand how she could be so absent-minded.

  He railed against all the injustice he had to endure: what so-and-so had said, how they looked down on him. But someday he would show them. He really would! He remembered old insults that went back many years and he would chew on them like old meat bones. Always the same old complaints mixed with new offences. And Hilde was damn well going to listen to it all. If she said yes or no at the wrong point, he would fly into a rage and be grumpy for several days, finding fault with everything she did.

  Hilde was lost in her own thoughts. Her promise to her mother had been sacrosanct. She would never dream of breaking it but... Her thoughts went back to the years that had passed by. Dismal, each and every one of them. Her mouth twisted into an unconscious, bitter smile.

  Once her father had had a colleague from Christiania visit him. He was an executioner’s assistant like him. Filthy, getting on in years, and horrible to look at. In those days, lonely as she was, had she not thought of him at night? Just because he was a living human being, the only man she had seen for many years. How poor and lonely could a person become?

  Hilde had no mirror, not even a window pane to see her own reflection in. All she had was the pond down in the valley, so she didn’t really know how she looked. Not all that bad was how she felt at the age of eighteen. Now she had stopped even looking in the pond.

  Her hair was nice. She could see that, of course. It was golden and had never been cut, so it reached to the hollow of her knees when it was loose. It was thick and slightly wavy by the forehead and temples and more wavy further down.

  Her thoughts came in a steady stream. Once – oh so many years ago now – she had looked at all the young people dance in the glade of the forest, and she had felt a pain in her chest. On the way home, a young lad had gripped her and asked her to sit down in the dewy grass and talk. Hilde couldn’t believe her own ears. A man wanted to speak to her! He didn’t look all that charming and his face was covered in spots, with patches of ugly stubble here and there.

  She had done as he had asked her to do and sat down to chat. But she couldn’t think of any words, so her vocabulary quickly dried up. Then he had put his arm around her waist and put his face close to hers. “Don’t say anything about this to anybody, OK?” he had whispered, “because otherwise the whole village will tease me.”

  Hilde had closed her eyes, breathing deeply. ‘I’m not that lonely after all,’ she had thought. And then she had got up and dashed away with tears of humiliation and misery streaming down her face.

  She woke up from her daydreams. She remembered that something had happened in the meadow above Linden Avenue yesterday evening. What a lot of people had gone running along! It seemed as if they had found something or other. And there had been a bonfire all through the night. But it was not for her to go down there. She was an outsider.

  When her mother was still alive, she was able to socialise with others, but now it was impossible. She never doubted her duty to take care of her father, but then she never discussed anything with him either. If he was angry or in a bad mood – which he usually was – she just kept quiet.

  She knew very well that she was becoming an almost silent recluse, but what could she do to prevent it? It was only the cat and the other animals that got to hear her voice. They could hear th
at it was full of love, although it was rusty because of a lack of practice.

  Andreas had no idea how badly wounded the executioner’s assistant was, but at least he was still alive. Now and then a miserable groan could be heard from the cart.

  When Andreas pulled up in front of the small hut by the edge of the forest, he was surprised to see how clean and neat everything seemed. Poor, yes, but everything was in good shape. Not a broken beam or plank to be seen. Flowers had been planted in a remarkably small, hedged garden, and a cat was cozying up on the threshold.

  He knocked on the door. Nobody answered. Not a sound could be heard.

  Andreas waited for a moment. Then he shouted:

  “I’m Andreas Lind of the Ice People. From Linden Avenue. I’ve brought you Joel Night Man. He’s been hurt.”

  After a brief moment, shuffling steps could be heard moving across the floor and the door was opened with a jerk. Then the steps vanished once more.

  He carefully seized the wounded man, who moaned loudly, and lifted him off the cart. Then he carried him into the small, dark room and put him on the bed.

  He could hear somebody in the small bedroom. Andreas cast a glance about the place. Everything was spick and span. Women’s garments hung on a few beams, and he thought that it was probably her bed that he’d put Joel on.

  “Hilde Joelsdatter,” he then said. “Shall I put your father in his bedroom?”

  The door opened slowly. Hilde stood in the doorway with a small scarf pressed against her face so that all you could see was her shy glance.

  He had never seen Hilde, the daughter of the executioner’s assistant, before and he was actually quite surprised. She was taller than he had expected – almost as tall as Mattias, he thought. Her face, the little he could see, was well taken care of, and so were her clothes. She smelled clean.

  And what a hair she had! It curled beautifully about her face and was plaited in a long braid. Never before had he seen such long, thick hair.