What he wanted most of all right now was for anyone who had read even just one instalment of that serial to be hit by anthrax. For the Gotlands Allehanda offices to be blown to kingdom come, for the printers to burn down to the ground. But above all, he wanted the person who was responsible for all these dreadful attacks, the one behind the slanderous campaign and its unpredictable consequences, to die. She needed to die a slow, painful death.

In short, he wanted Sandra dead, Jan thought to himself, rain running down his face as he pulled back the bolt on the cellar door.

63. Jeanette

63

Jeanette

JEANETTE HARDLY DARED breathe as she sat there squashed behind the rainwater barrel with her arms tightly wrapped around her legs. She listened intently for any sound, but all she could hear was the incessant thud of the rain on the ground and the trees, water forming into trickles running into the soil, gushing down the drainpipe, and making the barrel overflow. Beyond that, what she was expecting to hear were other sounds from over by the privy: voices and the door slamming.

But she didn’t. Since the car door had been slammed shut, there had been silence from that direction. The driver didn’t seem to have spotted Nanna, who in turn must have spotted the car in time to shut the door and her mouth. The driver’s business wasn’t in the outhouse, but somewhere else on the plot—probably inside the cabin itself.

But if that was true then wouldn’t she have heard that door slam? Had they locked up behind themselves? she thought to herself. Had they hidden their belongings and the leftovers from the packed lunches they had eaten on the veranda? No, of course they hadn’t. They weren’t finished here and they had been planning to tidy up and shut everything up as the last step before leaving.

At least the front door was shut, and that was some small comfort if all the driver was doing was quickly inspecting the exterior. Perhaps the hunting cabin was going to be sold, now that Peter was out of the picture? Perhaps it was a stranger who had come to visit, an outsider who wanted to check out the plot and the buildings ahead of a viewing of the interior, and didn’t care a jot about unwelcome visitors or the two bags filled with cash.

Now she could make out the sound of someone moving across the sodden grass with squelching but determined footsteps. It was clear that they were heading away from Nanna and towards Jeanette. She hardly dared to look, let alone lean out to catch a glimpse of the mysterious visitor.