The Killing Forest by Sara Blædel

them into the living room, where a big flat-screen TV took up most of one wall.
    “I’m not listening to more gossip,” he said. “The whole town’s talking. They even talk about it while they’re fucking standing in line in my shop. And they stare. Like it’s my goddamn fault, all of it. That my wife’s sick, that my boy couldn’t handle it. I’m not going to fucking take it anymore. And now you show up…”
    He sank down into his soft leather easy chair, his back to the windows with a view of the fields behind the house.
    “Your son is handling it better than a lot of people would,” Eik said, sitting on the sofa across from him. “We have reason to believe that he’s doing fine. But we need to ask you and your wife a few questions.”
    “Have you talked to him?” the butcher asked. He sat up; suddenly he looked very pale.
    “Would you please see if your wife is awake and able to speak with us?” Eik said. Louise kept her mouth shut and walked over to the window behind the dining room table. The lawn looked more like a meadow, separated from the field behind by an uneven stone fence.
    The butcher walked over to a door across the room, knocked lightly, and went inside. Louise glanced into the room, but it was dark. He closed the door, and she turned back to the view outside, disquieted by the atmosphere in this house.
    She knew Hvalsø all too well. Knew how it felt when the town talked about you, whispered behind your back. Even though she had an instinctive aversion to the butcher, she couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him, too. And anyway, Klaus must have had a reason to be friends with him.
    “You can come in,” he said from the doorway.
    The first thing Louise noticed was the metal pole with the IV bag and the clear plastic tubing that disappeared underneath the thick comforter. A tiny, frail woman lay buried in pillows.
    Eik stood beside the bed and introduced himself. Louise joined him and was about to offer her hand when she froze.
    “Jane,” she said, her voice hoarse. She crouched down, her eyes now level with her old schoolmate. “Is it you?”
    The woman was a shadow of the schoolmate Louise had played handball with, but after Louise hooked up with Klaus they’d gone their separate ways.
    She stopped before her voice broke. Why in hell had she not read up on the case properly? She should have checked to see if the boy’s mother was someone she knew.
    “Yes, it’s me.” The voice seemed to come from deep down in the pillow. “I’d recognize your voice even if I couldn’t see you.”
    Jane’s eyes were sunken, her face so thin that her cheekbones stood out like two sharp corners. Not much remained of the grocery manager’s beautiful daughter, but she lifted her hand up a few centimeters from the comforter and smiled at Louise.
    “Lars says you have news about Sune.” Her eyes blurred, and a moment later a tear ran down her cheek.
    Louise took her hand and stroked it with her thumb. “We think we’ve found him.” She pulled her phone out with her other hand and showed Jane the photo of the pocketknife from inside the hollow tree. “Or at least we found where he’s been staying some of the time,” she said. She asked if the knife belonged to their son.
    It was overwhelming to see the relief flooding into the mother’s face when she saw the knife. The father’s reaction wasn’t as clear. Relief. Fear. Confusion, maybe.
    “It’s his old knife,” Jane said to her husband. The tears came freely now; she turned her head to the side and let them fall on the pillow. Then she closed her eyes, and it seemed as though she withdrew into herself.
    Louise let her rest. A somber silence fell over the room.
    “I just don’t understand what he’s doing out there,” Jane said a few moments later, her eyes still closed. “Is he hiding from someone?”
    Her husband broke in. “None of us understands this. We’ve been preparing ourselves for anything after he disappeared. Someone