Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist Page A

dragged it out as far as he could, then untied it.
    He stayed there on the tree trunk for a while, his feet dangling slightly above the water, staring down into the black mirror, now less and less fre-quently disturbed by bubbles.
    He had done it.
    Despite the cold, drops of sweat ran down his forehead and stung his eyes. His whole body ached from the strain but he had done it. The corpse lay right under his feet, hidden from the world. Did not exist. The bubbles had stopped rising to the surface and there was nothing ... nothing to show that there was a dead body down there. A few stars twinkled in the water.

PART TWO
    THE HUMILIATION

    ... and they steered their course toward parts where Martin had never been, far past Tyska Botten and Blackeberg — and there ran the border for the known world.
    —Hjalmar Soderberg, MartinBircks Ungdom
    But he, whose heart a skogsra steals it never will recover Hissoul'willlong formoonlightdreams and no mere mortal lover...
    —Viktor Rydberg, "Skogsraet"
    'TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: a beautiful but sinister forest spirit.

    OnSunday the papers published a more detailed account of the Vallingby murder. The headline read:
    "Victim of Ritual Murder?"
    Pictures of the boy, the hollow in the forest. The tree.
    The Vallingby murderer was at this point no longer the topic on everyone's lips. The flowers brought to the hollow had wilted, the candles burned down. The candy cane striped police tape had been removed, all evidence to be found there had long since been secured. The Sunday paper article revived people's interest. The epithet "ritual murder" suggested it was going to happen a second time, didn't it? A ritual is something that is repeated. Everyone who had ever taken that path, or been anywhere near it, had something to tell. How creepy that part of the forest was. Or how beautiful and calm it was around there, and how you could never have guessed.
    Everyone who had known the boy, no matter how superficially, said what a fine young man he was and what an evil person the murderer must be. People liked to use the murder as an example of a crime where the death penalty would be justified, even if you were against that sort of thing in principle.
    Only one thing was missing. A photograph of the killer. People stared at the insignificant hollow, at the boy's smiling face. In the absence of a likeness of the perpetrator this had all simply... happened.
    It was not satisfying, satisfactory.
    Monday the twenty-sixth of October police announced through radio and morning papers that they had made the largest drug seizure ever recorded in Sweden. They had arrested five Lebanese men.
    Lebanese.
    Now that was something you could get your head around. Five kilos of heroin. And five men. One kilo per Lebanese.
    The Lebanese men had also—on top of everything else—taken advantage of the extensive Swedish social welfare system during the time they were smuggling heroin. There were no photos of the Lebanese men, but none were needed. You knew what they looked like. Arabs. Say no more.
    There were speculations that the ritual murderer was also a foreigner. It seemed plausible enough; weren't blood rituals common in those Arab countries? Muslims. Sent their kids off with plastic crosses or whatever it was they wore around their necks. Small children working as mine removers. You heard about that. Brutal people. Iran, Iraq. The Lebanese. But on Monday the police released a composite sketch of the suspect, and it was published in the evening papers. A young girl had seen him. The police had taken their time, taken every precaution in constructing the image.
    A normal Swede. With a ghost-like appearance, a vacant gaze. Everyone was in agreement about that: yes, this is what a murderer looked like. No problems imagining this mask-like face creeping up on you in the hollow and ...
    Every man in the western suburbs who resembled the phantom picture was subjected to long, scrutinizing looks. These men went home and