Allanberg was a hoarder. He could not part from his possessions however worthless. Wrecked cars skeletal campervans pallets with sacks of fodder rusty bars paintcans bikes galvanisedbuckets insulationmaterials barbedwire muckcarts cookers rotten boards gardenflags carengine innards and every other kind of clobber formed drifts of trash all over the yard.

Somewhere near the middle of this midden a display mannequin was propped upright between stacks of frostcracked 245bricks. Odd that I hadn’t noticed it when I was here before. It was the kind of creature with pointy breasts and arms at stiff angles who used to be in the window of friman’s now defunct clothing shop.

I went closer slipping on nameless stuff underfoot. She had been jammed into place. One arm was dangling from a torn joint. The other was raised in a cheery hello. Her entire body was perforated with bullet holes.

What a bastard I thought and checked the position of the house. No living woman at hand to torment so he had sat at the kitchen window shooting at a mannequin.

The yard was silent as was the house itself. Not even the birds made a noise even though they were flitting about at the empty birdtable. The pane in the front door had a star of spreading cracks. I tried the key in the lock but it was already open. The stench of urine was more offensive than last time.

Hello there it’s jana from the homecare I called. There was no answer.

A dead allanberg was seated on a chair by the kitchen window. Still with the gun between his knees.

The table in front of him had stopped the body from falling. One might have thought he was resting his head on the tabletop if it hadn’t been for the missing chunk at the back of his head. He had even left the nasal tubes of the oxygen pump in place.

I pulled the plug on the pump. Began to dial the nurse’s number but changed my mind. Thought I should check the place first. So far I had only seen the kitchen and the bathroom. There was a bedroom too and an upstairs. And perhaps a cellar full of bulletholed mannequins and remains of women murdered for pleasure. 246

The stairs were straight and steep. The upper floor was one large attic space. The pileup was a match for the yard. He had just dumped things here until there was no more room.

But despite the dull light and the heaps of trash I could make out old furniture ragrugs and other objects from the past telling me that once this house had had a decent life.

I retreated down the stairs and opened the bedroom door. It stuck. I had to push and press down the handle at the same time.