It was not because of the deer. Well, partly. But mainly it was because of the woman. Even dressed the way she was, her face flushed from running (or perhaps it was precisely because of her flushed face), Alex was unable to resist. She was his type. Petite, well proportioned, with big blue eyes.
But when he saw her disappear with the strange old man (who the hell was Lissy?) he told himself he had to go after them because of the deer. They had forgotten all about it. It was a waste just leaving it there.
Of course, the idea of heaving it over his shoulder and getting away did cross his mind, but he was no thief. If Alex ever stole anything (he had done it a couple of times), he would always choose people who would not feel the loss very much. He had his moral code. The man and the woman were poor wretches like him. So it was out of the question.
Calling them but getting no response, Alex collected the deer and followed the tracks of the princess and the strange old man. It was not hard to catch up with them.
Alex had seen some dumps in his time, but this one beat them all by a long stretch.
For a moment, he even considered dropping the old man’s prey and legging it. The maso, surrounded by snow, its timber planks darkened by time and glistening with ice, sent a chill through him such as he had seldom felt before. Honestly. Still, those blue eyes . . .
He did not leave. All because of the girl. He wanted to know her name. Perhaps she was looking for a boyfriend. Never put limitations on Providence. What a laugh that would be. He had come out to catch something to get his teeth into and instead ended up with a girlfriend. Funny how things work out.
Alex dropped the deer at the bottom of the steps leading to the main door of the maso and followed the footprints of the old man and the girl round to the back of the house. A small door stood wide open and through it came agitated voices and a nauseating smell.
A pigsty.
“Lissy! Lissy!” the old man was shouting.
Alex looked inside. “Hello there!”
No answer.
Alex went down the steps. The stench was dreadful. Really disgusting, he thought. “Hey, there!”
There was a dim light coming from an oil lamp that hung from a beam. The old man was kneeling in the muck and hugging the head of a big black sow. Alex had never seen such a big sow before. It must weigh at least four hundred kilos. And look at those fangs! And the stripes under its eyes! What kind of creature was this?
Alois, at the sawmill, had told him how, back in the good old days, he had gone boar hunting. Once had been more than enough. Nasty business, he had said. Boars were capable of ripping your guts apart in a second. Alex had thought Alois was exaggerating. He would never think that again.
The strange old man did not seem at all scared. He was shaking the sow and stroking its head, talking to it as if it were a little girl, not a four-hundred-kilo sow.
Crazy, Alex thought. Mad as a hatter.
The girl was in a corner, wringing her hands, white as a ghost. Alex walked up to her. “What’s going on?” he said, assuming a knight-in-shining-armour voice.
She did not reply.
The old man turned to her and practically tore a large metal key from his greatcoat. “The cellar. Go. Run. It’s a fit, she needs medicine. Directly on your right, next to the stairs. It’s a red-and-white box. It says ‘sodium pentothal’ on it! Run!”
The girl did not need to be asked twice. She all but knocked Alex over.