The Last Pilgrim Read Online Free PDF Page B

match for the setting sun shining through the spruce trees.
    “This is the shits ,” said Monsen, and “shit” was about the strongest swearword Monsen ever used. Although he smoked like a chimney and was an almost pathological racist, he was a God-fearing man who seldom saw a need to pepper his comments with curses. Bergmann had once thought Monsen smoked so much because he wanted to meet his maker sooner than he would have done otherwise.
    “So, no pool winnings for any of us,” he said to Bergmann with a nod toward Abrahamsen.
    Bergmann didn’t reply, but instead studied Abrahamsen as he and his colleague gave up on their attempt to set up the tent. Abrahamsen squatted down and began carefully removing the top layer of peat from a patch of ground in front of him. Bergmann thought he could see the outline of a brownish skull under Abrahamsen’s latex gloves. He took two steps forward, and Monsen followed suit.
    “Look like some pretty old bones, don’t they?” said Monsen as he pulled out his pouch of tobacco.
    “Yep,” said Bergmann.
    “You know,” said Monsen, reaching for the lighter that Bergmann handed him, “this miserable excuse for a criminal division investigates an average of one point three dead bodies every blessed day . . .” He looked at Abrahamsen, who was now down on his knees, digging deeper into the heath with his bare hands. “And I’ll be darned if we don’t end up having to deal with a bunch of old soup bones too.”
    “You’ve got your students over there,” Bergmann said, nodding in greeting toward Abrahamsen. One of the girls was gesticulating as she talked to the uniforms. It would probably be a long time before those four students went camping again.
    “No, we ought to leave this sort of insanity to the rich folks on Brynsallé.” Monsen hawked and shot a clot of phlegm onto the heath before taking a deep drag on his hand-rolled smoke.
    It didn’t take much for Monsen’s bitterness to surface. Bergmann had thought many a time that he had a point. People had a habit of getting killed outside office hours, and then it always turned out the way Monsen said it did. The Kripo officers were the ones who had to work all through the night for no extra pay, wading through blood and tending to abused women and half-dead children, until the station opened for business again at eight the next morning.
    “Well,” said Abrahamsen. “No matter what you think of the rich folks who live on Brynsallé, I’m not going to dig anymore until I get some support from them.”
    “Oh?” Monsen seemed surprised for once.
    “Well,” replied Abrahamsen. “I’m not going to risk having that skull fall apart in my hands.” He took his cell phone out of his pocket.
    “Well,” said Monsen in an attempt to imitate Abrahamsen. “If these bones and that skull have been lying there for over twenty-five years, all we have to do is transfer this case ASAP, and then they ’ll have to figure out what to do about them.”
    Five minutes later Monsen was gone.
    An hour and a half later, the students had left and another couple of uniforms had arrived. Getting a statement from them hadn’t taken much time. They’d just been hammering in the last tent peg when they struck something in the dirt and pulled up a bone. A human bone, probably a leg bone. Since they were probably more familiar with human leg bones than anyone else at the scene, there was little cause to doubt that they were right.
    Bergmann had put on a pair of gloves and was following Abrahamsen’s instructions. He shivered as he ran his hand over the forearm bones, which now lay exposed. An apparently complete skeleton lay buried here among the earth and stones. The chest cavity had collapsed, but apart from that the remains were fairly intact. With the exception of the hole in the forehead, that is.
    “The permafrost pressed the skeleton up to the surface,” said Abrahamsen. “The bones have been here for years.”
    Bergmann shook