The Girl in the Woods
No. 1 international bestseller and Swedish crime sensation Camilla Lackberg’s new psychological thriller featuring Detective Patrik Hedström and Erica Falck – irresistible for fans of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo.A missing childWhen a four-year-old girl disappears in the woods outside Fjällbacka, people are horror-struck. Thirty years ago, a child went missing from the same spot, and was later discovered, murdered.A murderBack then, two teenage girls were found guilty of the killing. Could one of them be the culprit this time? Detective Patrik Hedström starts investigating, with his wife, bestselling crime writer Erica Falck, by his side.A community torn apartBut as Patrik and Erica dig deeper, it seems that everyone in the tight-knit community is hiding something. And soon, the residents must confront the fact that there could be a murderer in their midst…
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Camilla Lackberg 2017
Published by agreement with Nordin Agency, Sweden
Translation copyright © Tiina Nunnally 2017
Originally published in 2017 by Bokförlaget Forum, Sweden, as Häxan
Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Kristina Dominianni/Arcangel Images (girl), © Shutterstock.com (woods)
Camilla Lackberg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007518401
Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780007518395
Version: 2018-10-01
For Polly
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
The Stella Case
Chapter Three
Bohuslän 1671
Chapter Four
The Stella Case
Chapter Five
Bohuslän 1671
Chapter Six
The Stella Case
Chapter Seven
Bohuslän 1671
Chapter Eight
Bohuslän 1671
Chapter Nine
The Stella Case
Chapter Ten
Bohuslän 1671
Chapter Eleven
The Stella Case
Chapter Twelve
The Stella Case
Chapter Thirteen
The Stella Case
Chapter Fourteen
Bohuslän 1671â72
Chapter Fifteen
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Sixteen
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Seventeen
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Eighteen
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Nineteen
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Twenty
The Stella Case
Chapter Twenty-One
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Stella Case
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Stella Case
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Thirty
The Stella Case
Chapter Thirty-One
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Thirty-Two
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Thirty-Three
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Stella Case
Chapter Thirty-Five
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Thirty-Six
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Bohuslän 1672
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Bohusläningen
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading â¦
More in Camilla Lackbergâs Fjällbacka series
About the Author
Also by Camilla Lackberg
About the Publisher
It was impossible to know what sort of life the girl would have had. Who she would have become. What kind of work she might have done, who she would have loved, mourned, lost and won. Or whether she would have had children and if so who they might have become. It was not even possible to imagine how she might have looked as a grown woman. At the age of four nothing about her was finished. Her eyes had changed from blue to green, her dark hair sheâd had at birth was now light, though with a touch of red in the blond, and no doubt the colour would have changed again. That was especially difficult to determine at the moment. She was lying face down at the bottom of the lake. The back of her head was covered with thick, congealed blood. Only the strands floating outward from her skull revealed the subtle hues in her fair hair.
There was nothing particularly gruesome about this scene with the girl. It was no more gruesome than if she had not been lying there in the water. The sounds from the woods were the same as always. The light filtered through the tree branches the same way it always did at this time of day. The water rippled gently around her, the surface disturbed only when a dragonfly occasionally landed, spreading tiny rings in its wake. The transformation had begun, and gradually she would become one with the woods and the water. If no one found her, nature would run its usual course until she became part of it.
