The whine of the bandsaw finally ceased. In the back room of ‘Happy Tails & Aquatics’, the cheerful sound of crickets from the reptile section was a cruel soundtrack. Kurt Bengtsson wiped his hands on a towel already stained with more than just fish water. He looked at the metal table, his expression one of grim satisfaction. It was ready.
The new weight pull harness was reinforced with Kevlar stitching, designed for maximum power and minimum give. In the shadows of a reinforced steel cage, a muscular American Bully watched him, its eyes like chips of obsidian. It didn’t growl. It just stared. That was worse. Kurt smiled. Business, he reflected, was about to pick up.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Inspector Mats Lundström found the first body in a copse of birch trees just off the shores of Helgasjön. It wasn’t so much a body as a suggestion of one, wrapped in a torn, blood-soaked tarpaulin. The forensics team moved with a quiet, choreographed dread. Lundström stood back, hands deep in the pockets of his worn waxed jacket, his breath fogging in the damp, cold morning air.
“Dog,” said Petrus, the young, earnest constable, stating the obvious.
“A Staffordshire Bull Terrier,” Lundström corrected, his voice a low rumble. He didn’t move closer. He didn’t need to. The savage, systematic injuries were clear from ten feet away. “Or what’s left of one. Fought hard, by the look of it.”
“Some sort of animal attack? A wolf, maybe?” Petrus ventured, hopeful for a non-human monster.
Lundström gave him a sidelong glance, the kind that had wilted many a hasty theory over thirty years. “Wolves are neater eaters. And they don’t wrap the leftovers.” He nodded towards the tarpaulin. “This was disposal. Sloppy, panicked disposal.”
The second call came as he was driving back into Växjö, the quaint, red-painted houses and café-lined squares belying the morning’s grisly discovery. This body was human. Found in the alley behind the recycling centre, his throat torn out.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The victim was identified as Stefan Forsberg, a known small-time criminal with a record for burglary and aggravated assault. The alley was not a scene; it was a charnel house. Blood painted the brick walls in great, arcing swathes.
Lundström sipped bitter police station coffee from a chipped mug. On his desk, photos of the two victims, canine and human, lay side by side. The connection was a gut feeling, a cold stone in his stomach.
“Coincidence, Mats?” asked Hanna, his sharp-eyed sergeant, peering at the photos.
“I don’t believe in coincidences after the Midsummer Murders of ‘09,” he grumbled. “The dog was killed in a fight. Forsberg… looks like he lost a fight with a locomotive with teeth. Get me everything on him. Who he owed, who he scared, what he loved.”
The investigation into Forsberg led to dead ends and silent, fearful glances. But the dog’s microchip was more productive. Registered to a nervous woman in Ljungby who, through tears, confessed she’d sold the dog months ago to a man who “promised a good working home.” She described him: burly, friendly, with a tattoo of a serpent on his forearm. He owned a pet shop, she remembered. In Växjö.
Lundström’s mind flickered to ‘Happy Tails & Aquatics’. He’d been there once, years ago, buying a fish tank for his son, Emil, before he left for university in England. He remembered the owner: Kurt Bengtsson. A large, jovial man with a firm handshake and eyes that didn’t quite join in the smile.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The visit to the pet shop was a study in contrasts. The front was a symphony of innocent life: puppies and kittens tumbling in pens, the gentle bubble of aquariums, the chirp of budgies. The smell was of sawdust, hay, and disinfectant.
Bengtsson was polishing the glass of a terrarium containing a lethargic bearded dragon. The serpent tattoo coiled around his forearm.
“Inspector! Looking for a new friend? A German Shepherd, perhaps? Good, loyal breed.” His smile was wide, practiced.
“I’m looking for information, Herr Bengtsson.” Lundström showed him a photo of the dead dog. “This animal was registered to one of your customers. It was found… mutilated.”
A flicker in the eyes, gone in a nanosecond. “Terrible. Some people shouldn’t own animals. But I see hundreds of pets, Inspector. I can’t remember them all.”
The conversation was polite, unproductive. But as Lundström turned to leave, his gaze swept the back of the shop. A heavy door, reinforced with steel, marked ‘PRIVATE – SUPPLIES’. And from behind it, just for a second, he heard a sound that didn’t belong in this cheerful menagerie: a deep, guttural, scraping bark, followed by a low, answering snarl. It was a sound of pure, focused aggression.
Suspicion crystallised into certainty. But this wasn’t a world that welcomed police questioning. Lundström needed an in.
* * * * * * * * * * *
He found it in Elsa, a retired schoolteacher and stalwart of the local animal rescue. Over kanelbullar in her cluttered kitchen, she spoke in a hushed, furious tone.
“There are rumours, Inspector. For years. Dogs going missing, strong breeds, bull types, Mastiffs. Money changes hands in the car park of the old sawmill on Friday nights. Kurt Bengtsson… he’s at the centre of it. They say he breeds them for heart, for grit. They call the ring ‘The Kennel Club’.”
Lundström set up surveillance. From an unmarked van, he watched the sawmill one freezing Friday night. Cars arrived, men and a few women with hard faces and expensive jackets, exchanging thick wads of cash with a bulky figure he recognised as Bengtsson. Later, the sounds erupted: a roaring crowd, and underneath it, the horrific, primal cacophony of fighting dogs.
He called for backup. It was time.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The raid was swift and violent. Uniformed officers stormed the front of the sawmill as Lundström and Hanna took a side entrance. What they found in the cleared central space was a vision from hell. A blood-stained pit, circled by two dozen shouting spectators. In it, two scarred, panting dogs were locked in a silent, deadly grapple.
Chaos erupted. Lundström’s eyes locked on Bengtsson, who was shoving a wad of cash into a bag and bolting for a rear fire exit.
The chase led through the dark, skeletal woods behind the mill, Lundström’s heart pounding against his ribs, his breath ragged. Bengtsson was surprisingly fast for a big man. They burst out onto a narrow service road where Bengtsson’s van was parked. He wrenched the door open.
“Stop! Police!” Lundström yelled, weapon drawn.
Bengtsson turned, not with a gun, but with a heavy metal catch-pole. And he wasn’t alone. From the back of the van, with a sound that froze the blood, a massive, brindle-coated dog launched itself. It was a creature of muscle and scar tissue, its ears cropped to ugly points, its eyes utterly vacant of anything but menace. It hit Lundström like a freight train, knocking him to the ground. The catch-pole clattered away.
The world narrowed to the heat of the dog’s breath, the crushing weight on his chest, the gleam of saliva on bared teeth inches from his face. He got an arm up, forearm jammed against the beast’s throat, holding the killing bite at bay. His other hand scrambled in the leaf litter, finding only dirt and stones.
Bengtsson stood over him, panting. “He’s called Garm, Inspector. Like the hound of Hel. He only lets go when I tell him to.”
Lundström’s strength was failing. The dog’s head pushed inexorably closer. Then his grasping fingers found it: the metal catch-pole. With a final, grunting heave, he slid the loop over the dog’s head and yanked the lever with all his remaining strength. The noose tightened around the powerful neck. Garm choked, his focus breaking for a critical second. Lundström rolled, using the pole for leverage, pinning the thrashing animal to the ground.
A shadow fell over him. Bengtsson, a wrench now in his hand. But before he could strike, a voice cut through the night.
“DROP IT! NOW!”
Hanna stood ten yards away, her service pistol held in a perfect two-handed stance, aimed directly at Bengtsson’s chest. The fight went out of him. The wrench thudded to the frosty earth.
* * * * * * * * * * *
A week later, the early winter dusk was settling over Växjö. In his tidy, quiet apartment, Mats Lundström poured a modest measure of whisky. The case was closed. Bengtsson was in custody, singing like a canary to try and mitigate his sentence, exposing a network that stretched across three counties. The surviving dogs, including Garm, were in a specialist sanctuary, their fate uncertain.
On his laptop, a Skype window was open. His son Emil’s face, pixelated but smiling, looked out at him from Cambridge.
“A dog fighting ring? In Växjö? It sounds like something from one of your dreadful crime novels, Pappa.”
“Truth is often more dreadful, Emil,” Lundström said, taking a sip. “And less clever.”
“Are you alright?”
Lundström touched the bandage on his forearm, a souvenir from Garm’s teeth. He thought of the dead dog in the birches, of Stefan Forsberg who they’d discovered was a referee who tried to skim profits and of the hollow eyes of the creatures in the sawmill.
“The world contains more darkness than we like to admit,” he said finally. “But it’s the job to put a few candles in it.” He forced a smile. “Now, tell me about your exams. And for God’s sake, are you eating properly?”
As his son talked of essays and bad cafeteria food, Lundström looked past him, out of his own window at the peaceful, twinkling lights of his small city. Beneath the postcard prettiness, he knew, other darknesses simmered. Other monsters traded in other kinds of pain. He took another sip of whisky. The glass was almost empty. Tomorrow, the desk would be piled with new files. He would open the top one, and begin again.
The end
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