The Dead of Summer Read Free

officers who were setting up the police tape and shouted, ‘We need to cordon off a much bigger area!’
    Jacobsson and Sohlman then went over to look at the body, which was covered with a cotton cloth inside the improvised tent.
    ‘Are you ready?’
    Sohlman cast a glance at his colleague’s pale face. Jacobsson always had difficulty looking at dead bodies. For her to throw up at a murder scene was more the rule than the exception. As the crime-scene tech lifted off the cloth, she pressed a handkerchief to her mouth.
    The dead man was about her age. He had a very striking appearance, with deep-set eyes that were an unusually bright blue. Almost nonexistent eyebrows. He had high cheekbones and a slightly protruding jaw. If not for the bullet hole in his forehead, his face would have seemed quite peaceful.
    ‘The shot was fired from a distance of a few inches, maximum. It’s obvious from the entry wound that the murderer was very close. The guy never had a chance.’
    ‘How can you be so sure he didn’t do it himself?’ muttered Jacobsson from behind the handkerchief as she struggled to fend off the nausea.
    ‘There’s more. Prepare yourself.’
    Cautiously Sohlman lifted off the rest of the covering. Jacobsson groaned when she saw what was underneath. The man’s stomach was riddled with bullet holes.
    ‘Shot to hell. I’ve counted seven shots to the abdomen. It’s completely insane.’
    Jacobsson turned away and threw up.

JOHAN BERG WAS standing in a cow pasture interviewing a farmer who was complaining about the cutbacks in EU subsidies when the call came through. He had forgotten to switch off his mobile during the interview; it was just the type of stupid mistake that TV reporters were not supposed to make. But the damage was done. His camera person, Pia Lilja, rolled her eyes and threw out her hands, then left the camera on its tripod as she went over to pat a cow while Johan took the call. It was Max Grenfors, the head of Regional News.
    ‘Have you heard?’
    ‘No, what is it? I’m in the middle of an interview.’
    ‘Yeah, OK,’ said Grenfors impatiently, ‘but a man was found shot to death over on Fårö. Right next to the campsite. Sudersand. You know it, right?’
    ‘Of course. What happened?’
    While he talked Johan fixed his eyes on the farmer, who was looking unhappy about the interruption. No doubt he wanted nothing more than to continue his complaints about the bureaucrats down in Brussels.
    ‘He was found this morning, in the sea near Sudersand beach.’
    ‘How do you know he didn’t drown?’
    ‘I’m just reading what it says on the TT wire service. According to their report, the body was in the water, but he’d been shot several times.’
    ‘Bloody hell.’
    ‘So stop what you’re doing and get over there as fast as you can. Ring me when you’re in the car. I’ll give you the latest news update while you’re on the road.’
    Johan quickly said goodbye to the disappointed farmer, explaining that they would have to finish the interview some other time.
    Luckily they were in Lärbro in the north of Gotland, not far from Fårösund. Pia Lilja’s face shone with excitement as she stomped on the accelerator, making the car tyres squeal as they took the curves at high speed. Her black hair was sticking out in all directions, as usual. Her eyes, with their heavy coating of mascara, were firmly fixed on the road ahead.
    ‘Fabulous,’ she exclaimed. ‘Finally something is happening.’
    ‘Fabulous?’ Johan looked at her in surprise. ‘The fact that a human being has been shot to death?’
    ‘Come on, you know what I mean. Of course not. But it’s much more exciting to report on a homicide than to film a story about unhappy farmers.’
    Pia loved it when things got cracking and stuff was happening. Gotland was really too small a place for someone as news-hungry as Pia Lilja. She was twenty-five and wanted to get out into the world, to accompany one of the TV foreign