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were clucking loudly in the yard when he arrived. Of course, they needed food, too; he’d forgotten to feed them in the morning.
    In the refrigerator he found several old tomatoes that looked anything but fresh. They were good enough for the chickens. On a shelf Susanna had set a plastic ice cream container filled with eggshells, scraps of food, and stale bread.
    He picked up the container and went out to the old barn that was used only as a junkyard and as a garage in the wintertime. At the far end of the barn was the chicken coop. When he opened the door, he was careful where he set his feet so as not to trample to death any of the tiny golden chicks that were peeping around his legs. What a life. He put down the ice cream container with the food scraps and filled a bowl with chicken feed.
    Suddenly he heard the door to the barn slam shut. Cautiously he stood up from his squatting position and set down the feed sack. The hens kept up their clucking, making it impossible for him to hear anything. He slipped over to the doorway and peered into the barn.
    He let his eyes scan the bare walls, covered with flyspecks and cobwebs. The windows were so filthy that the twilight hardly came through at all. The old stalls, which were lined up with walls separating them, hadn’t been used in a long time.
The door must have slammed shut by itself
, he thought. He was just about to go back when he noticed that something was different. The old bathtub, which for years had been upside down among the other rubbish, had been moved and was now right side up.
    Puzzled, he moved closer and saw to his surprise that it was filled to the brim with water, but he never managed to wonder who had been there or what the tub was going to be used for.

 
    The college was locked, and they had to phone the security guard to come over and let them in. The place was completely deserted; not a soul around on this hot evening in July. They took the stairs up to the floor where Mellgren had his office. The door was locked. The security guard searched through his big bunch of keys to find the right one.
    Mellgren’s office was just as deserted as the rest of the rooms they had walked through. The faint scent of aftershave still hovered in his office.
    “It’s the kind Mellgren usually wears,” said Jacobsson. “I recognize the fragrance.”
    Knutas quickly searched the desk but found nothing of interest. A wet towel was draped over the chair.
    “He must have been here recently,” said Knutas, “and he took a shower. Why didn’t he go home to do that?”
    “Because he was going out on the town, of course,” said Kihlgård with a grin. “He was going to make a night of it, now that his wife is out in the country.”
    “Unless he had some other purpose in mind,” said Knutas. He tried Mellgren’s home phone number. Still no answer. He phoned Susanna Mellgren as well, but she hadn’t yet heard from her husband.
    “We might as well go and get something to eat,” suggested Kihlgård. “I’m starving.”
    “Can’t you ever think about anything but food?” snapped Knutas. “I’m driving out to Lärbro. Are you coming with me, or should I call Wittberg?”
    By the time they arrived at the farm, dusk had set in. Lights were on in all the windows, and a car was parked in the yard. The front door of the house wasn’t locked, so they went in. The house was well lit but silent. They peeked into all the rooms, and it didn’t take them long to realize that no one was there.
    They went back out to the yard and saw that the barn door stood open. The only sound was the sporadic clucking of the chickens.
    It looked as if the barn hadn’t been used in a long time. At the far end a small door was ajar. Light was coming from inside. The three detectives exchanged glances. Surreptitiously they crept closer to the door. The rank smell of urine and ammonia came from what had to be the chicken coop. When they stepped across the threshold, they came face-to-face with a sight that was both unexpected and ghastly.
    From a hook in the ceiling above the hens asleep on their perches hung Staffan Mellgren. He was naked, and someone had made a long cut in his abdomen to make the blood run out, but only a small pool had collected on the floor below. Knutas gasped for breath. In his mind he saw a sudden flash of a similar scene. Martina hanging amid the summer greenery. Youth and evil, a sudden death. Here it was red blood against white feathers.
    It all had