“Why the devil don’t you pick up when I ring you?”
Måns Wenngren sounded annoyed.
Rebecka Martinsson rolled her desk chair over to the door and kicked it shut.
“But I do,” she said.
“You know what I mean. I’ve been trying to get you on your mobile, and I don’t like my calls being rejected.”
“I’m working, remember,” Martinsson said patiently. “So are you, Måns. Sometimes when I ring you…”
“But then I ring you back as soon as I can.”
Martinsson said nothing. She had intended to ring him back, but had forgotten. Or perhaps could not summon up the strength. She had worked late following the trip to Hjörleifur Arnarson’s with Anna-Maria Mella. Then Sivving Fjällborg had invited her to dinner, and she had fallen asleep the moment she had got home. She ought to have phoned Wenngren and told him about Hjörleifur. How he ran around naked in the forest and wanted to give her some ecological eggs that would boost her fertility. That would have made Wenngren laugh.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Are you playing games with me? Now you see me, now you don’t? Just say the word. I’m shit-hot at game-playing.”
“I don’t do that sort of thing,” Martinsson said. “You know that.”
“I know nothing. I think you’re playing a little power game. Make no mistake, Rebecka, you’re wasting your time. It’ll just cool me off, that’s what it’ll do.”
“Sorry, that’s simply not the case. I really am no good at… You’re O.K.”
Silence.
“Move back here, then,” he said eventually. “If you think I’m O.K.”
“I can’t,” she said. “You know that.”
“Why not? You’re partnership material, Rebecka. And you’re wasted messing around as a prosecutor up there. I can’t possibly move north.”
“I know,” Martinsson said.
“I want to be with you,” he said.
“And I want to be with you,” Martinsson said. “Can’t we just carry on as we are? We get together fairly often, in fact.”
“It will never work in the long run.”
“Why not? It works for lots of people.”
“Not for me. I want to be with you all the time. I want to wake up with you every morning.”
“If I worked for Meijer & Ditzinger we’d never see each other.”
“Oh, come on…!”
“It’s true. Name me one woman working for the firm who’s in a successful relationship.”
“Work as a prosecutor here in Stockholm, then. No, you don’t want to do that either. It seems to suit you down to the ground to keep me at a distance, to answer the phone only when you feel like it. When you’ve nothing better to do. I have no idea what you were doing yesterday evening.”
“Oh stop it. I was having dinner with Sivving.”
“So you say.”
Wenngren continued talking. The door to Martinsson’s office opened, and Mella popped her head round it. Martinsson shook her head and pointed at the telephone, indicating that she was busy. But Mella took a piece of paper from her desk and scribbled on it in large letters Hjörleifur Arnarson is DEAD!!!
“I’ve got to go,” Martinsson said to Wenngren. “Something’s happened. I’ll call you.”
Wenngren broke off his musing.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “I’m not the type to hang around where I’m not wanted.”
He waited for Martinsson to respond.
She said nothing.
He hung up.
“Man trouble?” Mella said.
Martinsson pulled a face, but before she could reply Mella said, “I tell you what – let’s forget about men for the moment. I heard a couple of minutes ago from Sonja on the switchboard that Göran Sillfors found Hjörleifur dead. Sven-Erik and Tommy are already there. You might well ask why they didn’t ring me, but never mind that.”
Sven-Erik will be furious, she thought. Pissed off because I didn’t tell him I was going to visit Hjörleifur Arnarson yesterday.
Wilma Persson was buried on April 28 at 10.00 in the morning. The mourners stood in the churchyard, clustered round the grave. Hjalmar Krekula looked around. He had not bothered to take his dark suit out of the wardrobe that morning. It was God knows how many years since he had grown out of it.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, he had shaved and thought, I can’t cope with this. I can’t take any more.
Then he had sliced up a whole loaf of rye bread for breakfast. Spread each slice thickly with butter. Eaten it while standing by the draining board. Eventally he had calmed down. His heart had stopped pounding against his ribcage.
Now he was standing beside the grave containing the coffin, feeling uncomfortable in his camouflage trousers and jacket – although at least he had had the sense not to wear his duffel coat. Lots of young people had turned up, each carrying a red rose to drop onto the coffin. All of them were dressed in black with jewellery in their eyebrows and noses and lips; all had black make-up around their eyes. But none of that could conceal their smooth skin, their rounded cheeks.
They’re so young, he thought. All of them are so young. Wilma as well.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
Wilma’s mother had travelled up from Stockholm. She was sobbing loudly. Shouting “Oh my God!” over and over again. A sister was holding one arm, a cousin the other.
Anni Autio stood there like a shrivelled autumn leaf, teeth clenched. There seemed to be no room for her sorrow. Wilma’s mother took up all the available space with her shrill shrieks and loud sobbing. Hjalmar Krekula was angry on Anni’s behalf. Wished he could get rid of those shrieks, so that Anni had room to cry.
There Wilma lay in her coffin.
There was a lot for him to think about now. He needed to get away from there soon. Before he also started shouting and shrieking.
Not long ago her cheeks had been just as rounded as those of the girls standing nearby, holding one another’s hands. He did not dare to look at them. He knew what their faces would express if they caught his eye: disgust with the fat paedo.
It was not long ago that Wilma had been sitting at his kitchen table. Her hair, the same red colour as that of all the women in her family – her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, Anni and his own mother, Kerttu. Wilma’s red hair, tumbling down on both sides of her face as she struggled with her maths homework. She spoke to him like, well, just like she spoke to everyone else.
But then.
Her hands hammering away at the ice beneath his feet.
Now she was hammering away at her coffin lid. On the inside of his skull.
It’ll soon be over, he thought. Nothing shows.
Afterwards, at the wake, he forced down several slices of cake. He was aware that people were looking at him. Thinking that he ought to resist the temptation, that it was no wonder he was so fat.
Let them look, he thought, stuffing a few sugar lumps into his mouth, chewing and then letting them dissolve. It eased the pain, made it easier to take. Eating helped him to calm down.
Inspector Tommy Rantakyrö was squatting down outside Hjörleifur Arnarson’s house, stroking Hjörleifur’s dog, when Mella and Martinsson parked their snow scooter not far away.
He stood up and went over to meet them.
“She’s refusing to move,” he said, nodding towards the dog.
Mella was annoyed to see that the other inspectors had parked their scooter immediately in front of the porch.
“Can you move the scooter,” she said curtly to Rantakyrö. “We need to tape this area off so the forensic team can search for clues. How many people have touched the front door handle?”
Rantakyrö shrugged.
Mella stamped off to the house.
Martinsson went over to the dog.
“Now then, my girl,” she said softly, scratching the dog’s chest gently. “You can’t stay here, I’m afraid.”
“We’ll have to have her put down,” Rantakyrö said.
Yes, I suppose so, Martinsson thought.
She stroked the dog’s triangular ears: they were very soft, one of them sticking straight up and the top of the other one folded down. The animal was black with white markings, with a white patch round one eye.
“What sort of a mutt are you, then?” she said.
The dog made licking movements in the air. A signal that she was well-disposed towards Martinsson, who stuck out her own tongue and licked her lips in response. She was friend, not foe.
“Do you recognize me?” she said. “Yes, of course you do.”
Then she heard herself saying to Rantakyrö: “She has intelligent eyes, like a border collie – see how she looks right at you? She doesn’t feel threatened when you look back at her. Isn’t that so, my love? And you’re friendly like a Labrador, aren’t you? Don’t take her away. I’ll look after her. If he has a relative who’s prepared to take her on, O.K. – but if he hasn’t, well then…
Måns will have a fit, she thought.
“O.K.,” Rantakyrö said, looking pleased and relieved. “I wonder what her name is.”
“Vera,” Martinsson said. “He said it yesterday.”
“I see,” Rantakyrö said. “Was it you who was here with Mella yesterday, then? Sven-Erik is pretty pissed off about that. I can see his point.”
Stålnacke was in the kitchen, talking to Göran Sillfors.
Hjörleifur was lying on his back on the kitchen floor in front of the larder. Next to him was a collapsed pair of steps. The door to the cupboard above the larder was open. There were two rucksacks on the floor.
“What the hell’s going on?” Mella said when she entered the kitchen. “You can’t just go wandering around in here. The forensic boys will have a fit. We must tape the whole place off.”
“Who are you bursting in here and telling me what to do?” Stålnacke said.
“No doubt you’d have preferred me not to come at all,” Mella said. “When I got to work, Sonja told me about Hjörleifur.”
“And I heard from Göran Sillfors that you’d already been here and questioned Hjörleifur. Great. It didn’t occur to you to mention that to your colleagues at yesterday’s meeting, did it?”
Sillfors looked first at one and then at the other of them.
“Hjörleifur rang me yesterday, after you’d been here,” he said. “I’d given him a mobile phone with a prepaid card. He thinks that using them will make you die young…”
Cutting himself short, he looked down at Hjörleifur lying dead on the floor.
“Sorry,” Sillfors said. “Sometimes words just come tumbling out. Anyway, he was most reluctant to use the mobile. But I told him that one of these days he might break a leg and need help, and that it didn’t matter if he kept it in a drawer somewhere, switched off. The card was on special offer, so it didn’t cost much. Sometimes you get a new bike or goodness knows what else when you buy a new mobile, although then you need to agree to a rental contract, of course. Anyway, I reckoned it was worth spending a bit on a fellow human being. And we used to get honey and mosquito repellant off him – not that I think much of his mosquito repellant, but still… Anyway, he used it yesterday – the mobile, I mean… rang me to say that you’d been here. He wondered what the hell we’d told the police, and I had to calm him down. What did you say to him? This morning I thought I’d better drive out and see how he was. And of course make sure he didn’t think we’d been telling tales out of school about him, or anything like that. The dog was outside, and the door was wide open. I realized right away that something had happened.”
“There’s nothing for the forensic team to investigate,” Stålnacke said. “It’s obvious what’s happened here.”
Lifting up one of the rucksacks, he showed Mella a name tag sewn inside it: Wilma Persson.
“One was standing on the floor here, the other was up there.”
He pointed to the open door of the cupboard above the larder.
“He killed them and took their rucksacks,” he said. “You frightened him yesterday with your questions. He clambers up the stepladder to fetch the rucksacks from the cupboard, intending to get rid of them, falls, hits his head and dies.”
“That’s an odd place to keep them,” Mella said, looking up at the cupboard. “Cramped, and awkward to get at. He didn’t do it. This doesn’t add up.”
Stålnacke stared at her as if he felt tempted to pick her up and shake her. His moustache was standing on end.
Mella pulled herself up to her full height.
“Get out!” she said. “I’m in charge here. This is a suspected crime scene. The forensic team will have a look, and then Pohjanen can take over.”
That afternoon Mella appeared in the doorway of the autopsy room. She noted the look of annoyance on the face of the technician, Anna Granlund. Granlund didn’t take kindly to anybody who came nagging her boss.
The way Granlund looked after her pathologist boss Lars Pohjanen always put Mella in mind of the way minders looked after sumo wrestlers – not that Pohjanen bore the least resemblance to a sumo wrestler, skinny as he was, and the colour of putty: but nevertheless… Granlund made sure he always had a sensible lunch, telephoned his wife when Pohjanen was summoned to some crime scene or other, and put a blanket over him when he fell asleep on the sofa in the coffee room, having first removed the glowing cigarette from his hand. She took on as much of his work as she could. And did her best to make sure that nobody quarrelled with or pressurized him.
“He should be left alone to do what he’s best at, and be free of any other responsibilities,” Granlund would say.
She never commented on Pohjanen’s smoking habit. Listened patiently to his wheezing and his lengthy coughing fits, and always had a handkerchief handy when he needed to spit out the phlegm he had coughed up.
But Mella took no account of all that. If you wanted results, you needed to keep on at them. Nudge them, nag them, stir up trouble. If a corpse turned up at the weekend in suspicious circumstances, Anna Granlund always wanted to wait until Monday before carrying out the post-mortem. And she never wanted Pohjanen to have to work in the evenings. All of these things sometimes led to arguments.
“We have to make them understand that passing the buck to the police in Luleå has its price,” Mella would say to her colleagues. “If they do that, then they deserve to be put under pressure.”
“What do you want?” Lars Pohjanen said in his usual complaining tone.
He was leaning over Hjörleifur Arnarson’s sinewy body. He had sawn open the skull and removed the brain, which was lying on a metal tray on a trolley next to the table.
“I just want to know how things are going,” Mella said.
Taking off her woolly hat and mittens, she entered the room. Granlund folded her arms and swallowed thousands of words. It was cold in there, as always. A smell of damp concrete, steel and dead bodies.
“I don’t think it was an accident,” Mella said, nodding in the direction of Hjörleifur’s body.
“I’m told he fell off a stepladder in his kitchen,” Pohjanen said, without looking up.
“Who told you that?” Mella said, annoyed. “Sven-Erik?”
Pohjanen looked at her.
“I don’t think it was an accident either,” he said. “The injuries to the brain suggest a powerful trauma to the head, not a fall.”
Mella pricked up her ears.
“A blow?” she said.
“Very likely. With a fall there is always a contrecoup injury…”
“Do you mind if I phone for an interpreter? It’s several years since I studied Latin, and…”
“If you just let me finish, Mella, you might learn something. Imagine the brain hanging inside a box. If you fall on your face, the brain swings forward and you get a contusion in the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex on the contralateral side. And a corresponding injury on the occipital lobe. This is not what we have here. In addition, there were tiny fragments of bark in the wound.”
“A blow from a piece of wood?”
“Most likely. What do forensics say?”
“They say that the door frame in the kitchen has been wiped. You can see it quite clearly: it was pretty filthy, but at one point it is very clean, at a height where you would place a hand if you were leaning on it…”
Mella paused. The image of Hjalmar Krekula standing in the doorway of Kerttu Krekula’s kitchen came into her mind.
“Anything else?” Pohjanen said.
“The body seems to have been moved. He was wearing blue overalls, and they were crumpled up at the back of his neck in a way suggesting that he’d been dragged along by the feet. But that kind of thing can be misleading. You know that yourself. You might not die immediately. You might try to stand up, and there are death throes to take into account.”
“Any blood on the floor?”
“One place that had been wiped.”
Mella looked at Hjörleifur’s body. It was sad that he was dead, but now this was a murder case, no question about it. Now it was justified to drop all other lines of enquiry and concentrate on this one. Stålnacke would not like it. She had been right. He had been tramping around the crime scene. The forensic team were annoyed.
But that’s not my problem, she thought. He can go off and work on something else if he likes.
She zipped up her jacket.
“I have to go,” she said.
“O.K.,” Pohjanen said. “Where…”
“Rebecka Martinsson. I need to get permission to search a house.”
“By the way, this Rebecka Martinsson,” Pohjanen said, sounding curious. “Who exactly is she?”
But Mella had already left.
At Kiruna police station Mella gave a brief summary of the preliminary post-mortem report on Hjörleifur Arnarson to District Prosecutor Martinsson. Mella’s colleagues Stålnacke, Olsson and Rantakyrö were also present.
Vera was lying at Martinsson’s feet. Rantakyrö had taken the dog from Hjörleifur’s house, left her in Martinsson’s office and then galloped off to the supermarket to buy some dogfood. Rejecting the food, Vera had drunk a little water and lain down.
Speaking of dogs, Martinsson thought, contemplating the police officers crowded into her office… What a pack they are.
Mella was a different person from when Martinsson had seen her last, exuding energy now. The alpha bitch once more, enthusiasm for the hunt obvious in her every movement. She had not even taken her hat off, nor had she sat down. Olsson and Rantakyrö were wagging their tails eagerly; their tongues were hanging out expectantly, and they were straining at their leads. Only Stålnacke sat listlessly on Martinsson’s extra chair, staring out of the window at nothing.
“We’ve had a response from the National Forensic Laboratory regarding the flakes of paint under Wilma Persson’s fingernails. They match the paint on the door at the Sillfors’ summer cottage. And Göran Sillfors used the same paint on the shed door that was stolen. So we can now be sure that someone placed that door over the hole in the ice when Wilma and Simon Kyrö were diving. They were murdered.”
“Kyrö hasn’t been found yet,” Martinsson said.
“That’s correct. And now Hjörleifur Arnarson. I’d like permission to conduct searches at Hjalmar and Tore Krekula’s places.”
Martinsson sighed.
“There needs to be reasonable suspicion,” she said.
“So what?” Mella said. “That’s the least thing required by law. Come on, Martinsson. It’s not as if I want to go and arrest them – but ‘reasonable suspicion’… Let’s face it, that could apply to someone who, say, shopped at the same supermarket as the victim. Come on. This would never have been a problem for Alf Björnfot.”
Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot was Martinsson’s boss. These days he worked mostly in Luleå and let Martinsson take care of Kiruna district.
“That may be, but you’re dealing with me now, not him,” Martinsson said slowly.
Olsson’s and Rantakyrö’s tails stopped wagging. The hunt had been called off.
“They’ve threatened me and tried to scare me off the case,” Mella said.
“There’s no proof of that,” Martinsson said.
“I rang Göran Sillfors. He told me that he’d mentioned to someone who lives in Piilijärvi that we’d paid a visit to Hjörleifur. Piilijärvi’s a village! If one person knows something, everyone knows it! Tore and Hjalmar must have heard that we had been talking to Hjörleifur. They no doubt went straight to his place after they’d spoken to us in the car park.”
“But we don’t know that for sure,” Martinsson said. “If you can prove it – if someone has seen them near or even in Kurravaara, you’ll get your permission.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake…” Mella groaned.
The whole pack, apart from Stålnacke, looked imploringly at Martinsson.
“We’d be reported to the Parliamentary Ombudsman,” she said. “The Krekula brothers would just love that.”
“We’ll never catch them,” Mella said dejectedly. “It will be another Peter Snell case.”
Fifteen years earlier, a thirteen-year-old girl, Ronja Larsson, had gone missing one Saturday evening after visiting some friends. Peter Snell was an acquaintance of the family. One of the girl’s friends had said that he had made advances, and that Ronja had thought he was “creepy”. The morning after her disappearance, Snell had poured petrol into the boot of his car and set fire to it in the forest. When interrogated, he had denied committing a crime, but could not give a satisfactory explanation for burning his car.
“He doesn’t need to,” Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot had said to Mella. “There’s no law to stop you burning your own car if that’s what you want to do. It proves nothing.”
There had been vain attempts to find D.N.A. traces in the burnt-out wreck. The girl’s body was never found. The case was written off, closed as far as the police were concerned. They knew who the murderer was, but couldn’t produce enough evidence to charge him. Snell owned a break-down firm. Before the Ronja Larsson case, the police had frequently used his break-down lorries in connection with traffic accidents and similar situations. Following the case, they cut him off. He threatened to sue.
Martinsson said nothing for a few seconds. Then she smiled mischievously at the Kiruna police officers.
“It’ll be O.K.,” she said. “We’ll establish a link between them and the crime scene. Then we’ll be able to turn their houses inside out.”
“And how will we do that?” Mella said doubtfully.
“They’ll tell me of their own accord,” Martinsson said. “SvenErik?”
Stålnacke looked up in surprise.
“Have you got my direct line on your mobile?”
Stålnacke and Martinsson pulled up outside Tore Krekula’s house at 5.15 on April 28. His wife answered the door.
“Tore’s not at home,” she said. “I think he’s at the garage. I can phone him.”
“No, we’ll go over there,” Stålnacke said with a good-natured smile. “You can come with us and show us the way.”
“You can’t miss it. You just need to drive back through the village and…”
“You can come with us,” Stålnacke said in a friendly voice that clearly expected to be obeyed.
“I’ll just go and get my jacket.”
“No need for that,” Stålnacke said, ushering her gently along. “It’s nice and warm in the car.”
They drove in silence.
“I apologize for the smell,” Martinsson said. “It’s the dog. I’ll give her a good wash this evening.”
Laura Krekula glanced casually at Vera, who was lying in the luggage space.
Martinsson keyed a text message into her mobile. It was to Mella. It said: Laura Krekula out of the house.
The garage was built out of breeze blocks. Standing outside it were several buses, snowploughs and a brand-new Mercedes combi E270.
“In there – the office is on your right as you go in,” Laura Krekula said, pointing to a door remarkably high up in the wall. “Can I walk back? It’s not all that cold.”
Martinsson checked her mobile. A text from Mella. We’re outside now, it said. Martinsson nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Yes, that’ll be O.K.,” Stålnacke said.
Laura Krekula set off. Stålnacke and Martinsson stepped over the high threshold of the staff entrance. There was a faint smell of diesel, rubber and oil.
The office was on the right. The door was open. It was barely more than a cupboard. Just enough room for a desk and chair. Tore Krekula was sitting at the computer. When Martinsson and Stålnacke came in, he swung round to face them.
“Tore Krekula?” Martinsson said.
He nodded. Stålnacke seemed to be embarrassed and was staring at the floor. He had his hands in his jacket pockets. Martinsson was doing the talking.
“I’m District Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson, and this is Inspector Sven-Erik Stålnacke.”
Stålnacke nodded a greeting, his hands still in his pockets.
“We met yesterday,” Krekula said to Martinsson. “You’re a bit of a celeb here in Kiruna, not someone we’d forget easily.”
“I’m investigating the death of Hjörleifur Arnarson,” Martinsson said. “We have reason to believe that it wasn’t accidental. I’d like to ask you if…”
She was interrupted by her mobile ringing, and looked at it.
“Excuse me,” she said to Krekula. “I have to take this call.”
He shrugged to indicate that it did not matter to him.
“Hello,” Martinsson said into the phone as she walked out through the door. “Yes, I sent you the material yesterday…”
The door closed with a click, and they could no longer hear her.
Stålnacke smiled apologetically at Krekula. Neither spoke for a moment.
“So Hjörleifur Arnarson is dead, is he?” Krekula said. “What did she mean, it wasn’t an accident?”
“Huh, it was a nasty business,” Stålnacke said. “It seems that someone killed him. I don’t really know what we’re doing here, but my boss is in league with the prosecutor…”
He nodded in the direction of the door through which Martinsson had disappeared.
“And you seem to have annoyed my boss,” Stålnacke continued. “I don’t know how much of what she’s told me is true, but she has a talent for rubbing people up the wrong way.”
Krekula said nothing.
“Anyway,” Stålnacke said with a sigh, “I assume you know about that bloody shooting at Regla.”
“Of course,” Krekula said. “There was a lot about it in the papers.”
“It was all her fault,” Stålnacke said vehemently. “She exposes her staff to danger without a moment’s thought. I had to take sick leave afterwards…”
He broke off and seemed to be lost in thought.
“And now she can’t wait for the forensic boys to complete their job. If in fact someone has been out at Hjörleifur’s place, we’ll soon know all about it. My God, it’s amazing what the tech wizards can do nowadays. If someone has left a strand of hair behind, you can bet your life they’ll find it. They’re going through Hjörleifur’s house with a fine-tooth comb.”
Tore Krekula ran his hand over his head. His hair had not thinned with age.
“Not that it proves anything even if someone has been there,” Stålnacke said, looking up at the ceiling and speaking as if he had forgotten that Krekula was there. “I mean, you can have paid someone a visit, but that doesn’t mean you killed them.”
At that moment the door opened and Martinsson came back into the office.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “As I was saying, Hjörleifur Arnarson has been found dead in his home. Have you been out there? You and your brother?”
Tore Krekula looked at her slyly.
“I won’t deny that we were there,” he said after a while. “But we didn’t kill him. We simply wanted to know what he’d seen. I mean, the police don’t tell any of us in the village a damned thing. But that was where they lived, after all. My aunt Anni was Wilma’s great-grandmother. You’d have thought they would have given her a bit of information.”
“So you were there,” Martinsson said. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. He probably thought you’d be furious with him if he said anything to us. We left none the wiser.”
Martinsson looked at her mobile.
“It’s 5.56. I confirm herewith that the police will search the houses of Tore and Hjalmar Krekula, both of whom we have good reason to suspect of the murder of Hjörleifur Arnarson.”
She turned to Tore Krekula.
“Take your clothes off. We’ll be taking them with us. You can keep your underpants on. We have some things in the car that we can lend you.”
The police are searching the houses of Tore and Hjalmar Krekula. I’m sitting on the roof of Tore’s porch. There’s a raven perched next to me. It knows I’m there, I’m convinced of it. It leans its head to one side and studies me, even though there’s nothing for it to see. It moves a step closer, then steps away again. Tore’s wife Laura is standing outside the front door, shivering. When she arrived home from the garage the police were already here – the blonde policewoman with the long plait, and three uniformed colleagues. They wouldn’t allow Laura into the house. Then the policewoman’s mobile rang. It was a short call. She simply said “O.K.”, and they went inside.
Now they’re taking Tore’s clothes away. I assume they’re hoping to find blood-stains from Hjörleifur.
Tore arrives and stands watching them. He says nothing at first, tries to catch the policewoman’s eye, but fails. He smiles scornfully at her colleagues instead and asks if they’d like to search his dustbin. Which they do. Tore’s wife says nothing. She doesn’t dare ask what they’re looking for. She has learnt not to wind Tore up.
The raven caws and clicks and clucks – it seems to be trying out different sounds to see if I’ll react to any of them. I can’t respond. Giving up, it flies off to Hjalmar’s house 150 metres away. Perches in the big birch tree and calls to me. In a flash I’m sitting beside it on a branch.
Hjalmar opens the door when the police ring the bell. He seems half asleep. His mop of hair resembles a spiky tuft of winter grass. His stubble is like a sooty shadow on his cheeks and neck. His belly sticks out like an overfed pig under his tent-like T-shirt. When the police officers ask him politely to wait outside until they’ve finished, he doesn’t put any trousers on, just steps outside in his underpants. The older officer, the one with the shaggy moustache, takes pity on him, and allows him to sit and wait in the police car.
I land in the prosecutor’s hair. I’m like a raven on the top of her head. I dig my claws into her dark locks. I turn her head to look at Hjalmar. She sees him sitting there in the police car, blinking. She opens the door and talks to him. I peck at her head. She must wake up now.
Olsson, Rantakyrö and Stålnacke carried clothing out of Hjalmar Krekula’s house and searched through the garage looking for a murder weapon. An hour and a half later they announced that they had finished.
Martinsson contemplated Hjalmar Krekula. She saw how he was leaning against the car window. It looked almost as if he were about to fall asleep. His eyelids were half-closed.
Suddenly he felt her watching him. He turned his head slowly and looked at her through the car window.
She felt as if she were being stabbed inside. His gaze dug into her just like a pike clamping its jaws round the bait. And her gaze dug into him. Like when the hook pierces the pike’s cheek.
Fleeting images flitting through her consciousness.
Nobody has touched him since he was a very little boy. Torture and pain are embedded in all that fat. This is something he can’t eat himself out of. He is at the end of the line.
But I’ve touched him, she thought – although it wasn’t so much a thought as an insight. He was young. I was not that old either. Fifteen, perhaps. I held him under his arms and lifted him up towards the heavens. The sun at its zenith. Dry soil under my bare feet. He slept in my arms. Was he my little brother? My child? My little sister?
Her heart felt as if it might burst with compassion. She wanted to place her hand on the car window. So he would place his hand against hers on the other side of the glass.
“Hello,” Olsson said beside her. “I said we’re finished.”
Following her gaze, he saw Hjalmar Krekula.
“That bloody swine!” he said between gritted teeth. “Let him suffer. Did they think they could mess about with Mella and get away with it? Let him sit there and stew in his underwear.”
Martinsson nodded absent-mindedly. Then she went over to Stålnacke’s car and opened the back door.
“We’ve finished,” she said to Hjalmar.
He was sitting there like a lump of lard, looking at her. Stålnacke had draped a red-and-black synthetic blanket over his bare legs.
They had slashed Mella’s tyres, Martinsson reminded herself. Nicked her mobile and lured Jenny to Järnvägsparken to scare the shit out of her. I must get a grip.
“We’re taking you to the station for questioning,” she said. “You’re not under arrest, so I’ll give you a lift home when we’ve finished.”
She controlled any feelings of sympathy. Made sure they were not noticeable. She caught sight of a raven perched on the porch roof.
“We’ll fetch you a pair of trousers.”
Transcript of the Interrogation of Tore Krekula.
Place: Kiruna police station.
Date and time: April 28, 19.35.
Present: Inspectors Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke, and
District Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson.
A.-M.M.: Interrogation begun at 19.35. Can you tell us your name, please?
T.K.: Tore Krekula.
A.-M.M.: You have told the police that you and your brother Hjalmar Krekula paid a visit to Hjörleifur Arnarson yesterday.
Why did you do that?
T.K.: We heard that the police had been there and asked questions about Wilma Persson and Simon Kyrö. We were relatives of Wilma’s. She lived with her great-grandmother Anni Autio. And Anni and our mother are sisters. But the police never tell us a bloody thing. So we wanted to know what the hell was going on.
A.-M.M.: Can you tell us about your visit to Hjörleifur Arnarson?
T.K.: What do you want to know?
A.-M.M.: Just tell us what happened.
T.K.: We asked what he’d spoken to the police about. He said, nothing in particular. He said you’d asked about Wilma and Simon, but he knew nothing.
A.-M.M.: Who did the asking? You or your brother?
T.K.: Me. I asked the questions. Hjalmar isn’t much of a one for talking.
A.-M.M.: And what happened then?
T.K.: What do you mean, what happened then? Nothing happened then. We went home. He didn’t know anything.
A.-M.M.: Did you touch anything while you were in his house?
T.K.: It’s possible. I don’t remember.
A.-M.M.: Think hard.
T.K.: As I said, I don’t remember. Is that all? Some of us need to earn enough money to pay your wages, you know.
A.-M.M.: Interrogation concluded at 19.42.
Transcript of the Interrogation of Hjalmar Krekula.
Place: Kiruna police station.
Date and time: April 28, 19.45.
Present: Inspectors Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke, and
District Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson.
A.-M.M.: Interrogation begun at 19.45. Can you tell us your name, please?
H.K.: -
A.-M.M.: Your name, please.
H.K.: Hjalmar Krekula.
A.-M.M.: You and your brother visited Hjörleifur Arnarson yesterday. Can you tell us about the visit?
H.K.: -
A.-M.M.: Can you tell us about that visit?
H.K.: -
A.-M.M.: Should I interpret your silence as meaning that you…
H.K.: He didn’t say anything. Can I go now?
A.-M.M.: No, you can’t go now, we have only just… Sit down!
R.M.: Can I have a word, please?
A.-M.M.: It’s 19.47. We are taking a short break.
“We have to let him go,” Martinsson said to Mella and Stålnacke. “We’ve got their clothes. We have to hope that the forensic examination gives us some results.”
They were standing in the corridor outside the interrogation room.
“But they haven’t said anything!” Mella said. “We can’t just let them go!”
“They are not under arrest. They’ve said what they’re going to say.”
“Nevertheless we have the right to keep them here and interrogate them for six hours. Those bastards can sit in there for six hours.”
“Do you want to be charged with professional misconduct?” Martinsson said calmly. “We have no justification for holding them.”
Olsson and Rantakyrö came out into the corridor, attracted by the sound of raised voices.
“Rebecka says we have to let them go,” Mella said.
“We’ll nail them regardless,” Olsson said by way of consolation.
Mella nodded.
We simply have to, she thought. I won’t be able to cope otherwise. Please God, let them find something on their clothes.
“We managed to search the houses after all,” Rantakyrö said. “Well done, Svempa.”
Stålnacke looked at the floor. Cleared his throat to show that he had noted the compliment.
“By God, we did!” Rantakyrö said, making a manful effort to transform the gloomy atmosphere. “I’d have given anything to have been there.”
“Yes, it was perfect timing with the telephone,” Martinsson said, giving Stålnacke a congratulatory look. “Anyway, let’s say goodbye to the Krekula brothers for now. Anna-Maria, do you have the documentation for Wilma, Simon and Hjörleifur?”
“Of course,” Mella said.
“O.K. Since I’m taking over the investigation, I’ll need to read all the material. I thought I’d do that this evening.”
No-one spoke. Everyone was looking at Martinsson.
“Having made the decision to search the Krekulas’ houses, I’ll be taking over the preliminary investigation,” Martinsson said.
The three male officers turned to look at Mella.
“Of course,” she said in an unnaturally offhand tone of voice. “But we’re not used to being so formal. With Alf Björnfot it was business as usual. We simply kept reporting to him as work progressed.”
“As I mentioned earlier today,” Martinsson said, and now the words came flowing smoothly out of her mouth, “you’re no longer working with Alf Björnfot, but with me. I want to read all the material. And I naturally expect you to report to me as soon as anything happens.”
“‘Expect’,” said Mella before she could stop herself. Then she darted into her office and fetched the documents lying on her desk to hand them over to Martinsson.
Having followed on her heels, Martinsson collected them in Mella’s doorway, the other officers trailing after her like a tail.
“They’re probably not in the right order,” Mella said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Martinsson said.
She glanced at the noticeboard in Mella’s office. Pinned up were photographs of Wilma Persson, Simon Kyrö and Hjörleifur Arnarson, with the dates when the first two had disappeared and when Hjörleifur had been murdered. There were maps of the area where Wilma had been found dead, and of Vittangijärvi. The names of the Krekula brothers were also posted.
“All that stuff,” Martinsson said, pointing, “we’ll move into the conference room tomorrow. So we have everything in one place. When shall we meet tomorrow? Eight o’clock?”
I don’t care what they think, Martinsson said to herself as she walked off with the documentation under her arm. I’m responsible now, and everything will be done by the book. It’s not my style to watch from the sidelines. If I’m in charge of the investigation, I’m the one who makes the decisions.
“Wow,” Mella said when Martinsson had left. “Do you think we’ll have to line up before the meeting tomorrow? In alphabetical order? Like at school?”
“But she did a bloody brilliant job today with Tore Krekula,” Stålnacke said. “Without her…”
“Yes, yes,” Mella said impatiently. “I just think a little humility wouldn’t go amiss.”
The silence between them seemed to last for eternity. Stålnacke looked hard at Mella. Mella stared back at him, ready to fight her corner.
“Looks like it’s time to go home,” Olsson said, and was seconded by Rantakyrö, who explained that his girlfriend was getting annoyed – she’d phoned him about supper an hour ago now, and he had promised to call in and rent a film on the way home.
Word soon gets around in a little town like Kiruna. Pathologist Lars Pohjanen tells his technical assistant Anna Granlund that Rebecka Martinsson saw Wilma Persson in a dream after she died and told him that Wilma did not die in the river. That was why he took samples of the water in her lungs.
Granlund says she believes in that kind of thing – her sister’s grandfather’s cousin was able to staunch blood by the laying on of hands.
Granlund’s work is covered by hospital confidentiality rules, but she cannot resist telling her sister about this phenomenon over a pizza lunch at Laguna.
Her sister promises not to say anything about it, but close family does not count, of course, so she tells her husband that evening.
The husband does not believe in that kind of thing, however. That is precisely why he tells one of his mates about it while they are sitting in the sauna after a body-building session. Perhaps he feels the need to test the credibility of Martinsson’s claim. Could it really be possible? He wants to see how his friend reacts.
His mate does not say much at all. Just pours more water onto the hot stones.
His mate often goes hunting with an old Piilijärvi resident, Stig Rautio. They bump into each other outside the Co-op. He repeats the story to Rautio. Asks if he knew Wilma Persson. She was murdered, it seems. It was that District Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson – the one who killed those pastors a few years ago – she was the one who…
Stig Rautio. He hunts on land owned by Tore and Hjalmar Krekula. He calls on Isak and Kerttu Krekula with the rent he owes Tore Krekula – Tore’s wife has told him her husband is visiting his parents. There is no urgency regarding the rent payment, but Rautio is curious. Everyone in the village, indeed in the whole of Kiruna, knows that the police have searched the Krekula brothers’ houses in connection with the murders of Wilma Persson and Hjörleifur Arnarson. Isak Krekula is in bed in the little room off the kitchen, as he always is nowadays. Kerttu Krekula is frying sausages and has made some mashed turnips for her boys. Hjalmar is eating, but Tore is only drinking coffee: he’s already eaten at home – after all, he has a wife who cooks for him.
Kerttu Krekula does not ask if Rautio would like a mug of coffee. They realize that he is only nosing around, but they cannot tell him anything. He hands over the envelope with the rent. He had used the first envelope he could lay hands on, and it happened to be one of his wife’s special ones, bought at Kiruna market. It looked as if dried flowers had been pressed into the hand-made paper. Taking the envelope, Tore gives it a quizzical look. Aha, says the look, someone is trying to give the impression of being posh and remarkable.
Rautio regrets not having looked for a different envelope: a used one with a window would have been better, but so what! He says he has heard that the police have been round – what a gang of idiots, halfwits! What the hell do they think they’re doing? Next thing we know they will be knocking on his door as well. Then he tells them about that business concerning District Prosecutor Martinsson and Pathologist Pohjanen. That she had dreamt about Wilma Persson, and gone to the pathologist as a result.
“Before long they’ll be buying crystal balls instead of chasing after thieves,” he jokes.
Nobody reacts, of course. The joke hangs in the air, awkward and heavy-handed. The Krekulas carry on as if nothing had happened. Hjalmar eats his mashed turnip and pork sausages, Tore taps on his coffee cup with his fingernail and gets a refill from his mother.
It is as if nothing unusual has happened. They make no comment on what Rautio says about the police. The kitchen is as silent as the grave for what seems like an eternity. Then Tore checks the notes in the envelope and asks if there is anything else Rautio wants to discuss. No, there is nothing else. He leaves without any gossip to pass on.
When Rautio is gone, Tore Krekula says, “What a bloody load of rubbish! Claiming that the prosecutor dreamt about her.”
Kerttu Krekula says, “This will be the last straw for your father. It’ll be the death of him.”
“People talk,” Tore says. “They always have done. Let ’em.”
Kerttu slams her palm down on the table. Shouts, “That’s easy for you to say!”
She starts clearing the table. Despite the fact that Hjalmar has not finished eating yet. A clear signal that there is nothing more to be said.
There never is anything more to be said, Hjalmar thinks. It was the same then. Last autumn, when Father had his heart attack. When Johannes Svarvare got drunk and started blabbing. There was nothing more to be said almost before they started speaking.
It is late September. The sun is setting on the other side of the lake. Hjalmar Krekula has carried the outboard motor indoors for his father. It is lying on the kitchen table, on a layer of newspapers. Johannes Svarvare usually dismantles it and gives it a service for Isak Krekula. The carburettor is blocked as usual.
Svarvare messes about with the motor. Isak serves him some vodka, by way of thanks. Tore Krekula’s wife is at a Tupperware party, so he is having dinner with his parents. Hjalmar is there as well. There is no room to swing a cat round in the kitchen. The table is piled high with plates of hamburgers and macaroni in white sauce alongside engine casing, screwdrivers, keys, a sheath knife, a plastic bottle with a long tube containing oil for the gearbox, new spark plugs and a tin of petrol in which the filter will be soaked.
Svarvare is gabbling away nineteen to the dozen. He is going on about old marine engines and various boats they have had or helped to build, and he even babbles on about the time he and his cousin loaded five sheep into his uncle’s rowing boat to take them to their summer grazing on one of the islands in the River Rautas, and how they hit a rock in Kutukoski and sank, all the sheep drowned, and he and his cousin only just escaped with their lives.
They have heard the story about the drowned sheep in Kutukoski before, but Hjalmar and Tore Krekula continue eating and listen just like they used to do when they were children.
“Speaking of drowning,” Svarvare says as he unscrews the carburettor, “do you remember that time in the autumn of 1943 when we were waiting and waiting for that transport plane that never arrived?”
“No,” Isak says, sounding a warning note.
But Svarvare has been drinking, and does not hear any warning notes.
“It disappeared, didn’t it? I’ve always wondered where it can have come down. It was coming from Narvik. It always seemed to me that the plane was bound to have followed the River Torne past Jiekajärvi and Alajärvi. But if you asked folk who lived up there, none of them had seen or heard such a plane. So I reckon it must have gone off course and turned south after Taalojärvi, then somehow turned off again and tried to make an emergency landing on the lakes at Övre Vuolusjärvi or Harrijärvi or Vittangijärvi. Don’t you agree? The whole crew must have drowned like rats.”
Tore and Hjalmar concentrate on their food. Kerttu is standing at the counter with her back to them and seems to be busy with something. Isak says nothing, merely hands Svarvare the key so that he can detach the float. Svarvare continues his outpouring:
“Anyway, I told Wilma – she and Simon go diving, you know – that this would be something for them to explore if they could find it. Try Vittangijärvi, was my advice. Because if it had gone down in Övre Vuolusjärvi we’d no doubt have heard about it by now. And Harrijärvi is so small. So Vittangijärvi would be as good a place to start looking as anywhere, don’t you think?”
He unscrews the mouthpiece, puts it to his mouth and blows out the flakes of metal. Then he holds it up in the light from the window. Squints through the little hole to see if it is clean. He turns to Tore and Hjalmar.
“I was only thirteen then, but your dad took me with him. We needed to work in those days.”
“What did Wilma say?” Isak asks casually, as if he was not really interested.
“Oh, she was as keen as anything. Asked me if she could borrow some maps.”
Svarvare sounds satisfied now. It is evidently a pleasant memory. A keen young woman interested in something he had to tell her. Their fingers on the map.
He drops the filter into the can of petrol. Dries his hands as best he can on his trousers, and knocks back the few drops left in the Duralex glass.
But instead of refilling it, Isak screws down the cork of the vodka bottle.
“Thanks for your help today, that’s all for now,” he says.
Svarvare looks a bit surprised. He had expected several more glasses of vodka while he fitted the engine back together. That was the usual pattern.
But he has spent his entire life in the village and had dealings with Isak Krekula since childhood. He knows it is prudent to pay attention when Isak says, “Time to go.”
He says thank you, staggers unsteadily out of the house and heads for home.
Kerttu remains standing absolutely still, her back to her family and her hands resting on the countertop. Nobody says a word.
“Is Father alright?” Tore says.
Isak has tried to stand up from his chair by the kitchen table. His face is white as a sheet. Then he falls. Makes no attempt to break his fall with his hands. Hits his head on the table as he collapses onto the floor.
Tore puts the fancy envelope with the rental payment into his pocket. As always, Hjalmar thinks that there is a lot of money around of which he never sees a trace. He does not know what the firm’s turnover is. He does not know how much of the forest they own, and what income it brings in. But then, Tore is the one with a family to look after.
There is a clattering of crockery as Kerttu nonchalantly drops plates, cutlery and mugs into the sink.
“Two sons he’s got,” she says without looking at them. “And what good do they do him?”
Hjalmar notices how Tore reacts badly to what she says. The words stab him like knives. Hjalmar has been used to such rebukes ever since he was a little boy. All the abuse. Useless, thick as three planks, fat, idiot. Actually, most of it has come from Tore and Isak. Kerttu has not said much. But she never looks him in the eye.
Things are going downhill, Hjalmar thinks.
There is something almost comforting about that thought. He thinks about the prosecutor, Rebecka Martinsson. Who saw Wilma after she had died.
Tore looks at Hjalmar. Thinks that he is keeping silent as usual. There is something the matter with him.
“Are you ill?” he says brusquely.
Oh yes, Hjalmar thinks. I’m ill.
He stands up, walks out of the kitchen, leaves the house, crosses the road. Trudges home to his sad little house full of furniture, curtains, cloths, you name it, none of which he has bought himself.
And then we spoke to Johannes Svarvare, he thinks. Father was in intensive care.
In his mind, Tore flings open Svarvare’s front door. Marches into the kitchen.
“You bastard,” Tore says, taking his knife from its sheath on his belt.
Hjalmar remains in the doorway. Svarvare is scared stiff, nearly shitting himself. He is lying on the kitchen sofa, still suffering from yesterday’s hangover, from when he sat in the Krekulas’ house, taking their outboard motor to pieces. He sits up now.
Tore stabs his knife into Svarvare’s kitchen table. He had better realize that this is serious.
“What the hell…?” Svarvare splutters.
“That aeroplane that disappeared,” Tore says. “And all that was going on in those days. You’ve blabbed on about it like a silly old woman. Stuff that everyone’s forgotten about, that ought to be forgotten. And now Father’s in hospital thanks to you. If he doesn’t make it or I hear that you’ve squeaked one more bloody word…”
He wrenches the knife loose and points it at Svarvare’s eye.
“Have you been gossiping to anybody else?” he says.
Svarvare shakes his head. Stares squint-eyed at the knife point.
Then they leave.
“At least he’ll keep his trap shut now,” Tore says.
“Wilma and Simon?” Hjalmar says.
Tore shakes his head.
“They’ll never find anything anyway. Let them think of it as an old man’s ravings. We’ll keep our eye on ’em. Make sure they don’t go diving there.”
Hjalmar Krekula stands outside his house. Suppresses all thoughts of Svarvare, Wilma, Simon Kyrö and all the rest of it. He has no desire at all to go into his own house. But what alternative does he have? Sleep in the woodshed?
Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Airi Bylund drive to Airi’s cottage in Puoltsa. They are only going to check on things – besides, it is such a lovely evening.
In the course of the journey, Stålnacke tells Airi how he and Martinsson lured Tore Krekula into a trap.
Airi listens, albeit absent-mindedly, and says, “Good for you.”
Stålnacke lapses into a bad mood. For no obvious reason. He says, “It’s a good job I can do something right, I suppose.”
He tries not to think about how he trampled all over the evidence in Hjörleifur Arnarson’s house and pontificated about the cause of death without knowing what he was talking about.
He wants Airi to say something along the lines of “You always do the right thing, bless you”, but she does not say a word.
Stålnacke is overcome by the feeling that he is not good enough for anybody. He becomes downhearted and surly and silent.
Airi does not say anything either.
And it certainly is not the sort of silence to make the most of. Usually it is uplifting for the two of them to share silence. Silence full of glances and smiles and sheer joy at having found one another. Silence occasionally broken by Airi chatting to the cats or the flowers, to herself or to Stålnacke.
But this particular silence is filled with the echo of Stålnacke’s thought: She’s going to leave me. There’s no point any more.
He can sense how fed up she has become with his dissatisfaction with his job. She thinks he goes on and on about Mella, about the shooting at Regla, about goodness only knows what else. But Airi was not there. She cannot possibly understand.
They arrive at their destination. Getting out of the car, she says, “I’ll make some coffee. Would you like some?”
All Stålnacke can manage to say is: “Yes, alright, if you’re making some anyway…”
She goes inside and he stands outside, at a loss, not knowing what to do next.
He trudges round the house. At the back Airi has made a cat cemetery. All the cats she has ever owned are buried there, and also some that belonged to her friends. Hidden under the snow are small wooden crosses and beautiful stones. Last summer when he was off sick, he helped her to plant a Siberian rose. He wonders if it has survived the winter. He likes to sit on the veranda with Airi and listen to her stories about all the cats lying there in her garden.
As he stands there thinking, Airi turns up at his side. She hands him a mug of coffee.
He does not want her to go back inside, so he says, “Tell me about Tigge-Tiger again.”
Like a little child, he wants to hear his favourite fairy story.
“What can I say?” Airi begins. “He was my very first cat. I wasn’t a cat person in those days. Mattias was fifteen, and he kept going on about how we ought to get ourselves a cat. Or at the very least a canary. Anything at all. But I said, Certainly not! But then that grey-striped cat started visiting us. We lived in Bangatan at the time. I didn’t let him in, obviously; but every day when I came home from work he was sitting on the gatepost. Miaowing. Enough to break your heart. It was late autumn, and he was as thin as a year of famine.”
“Some people are awful,” Stålnacke growled. “They acquire a cat, then abandon it.”
“I went round the neighbours, knocking on doors, but nobody admitted to knowing anything about it. And it kept on following me wherever I went. If I was in the laundry room, it would sit on the window ledge outside, staring at me. If I was in the kitchen, it would sit on a decorative pedestal we had in the garden, glaring at me. It would jump up onto the front door, clinging on to the ledge over the window, miaowing. It was driving me mad. The house was under siege. Every day when I came home from work I would think to myself: I hope to God it’s not there again.
“Mattias came home late one evening. The cat was sitting outside,miaowing, really crying its eyes out. ‘Can’t we let him in, Mother?’ Mattias said. I gave in. ‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘But he’ll have to live downstairs with you. He’ll be your cat.’ Some hopes! That cat followed me wherever I went. He always sat on my knee. Only very rarely on Mattias’s. But then Mattias moved out, and I sometimes went away on holiday. Then the cat would sit the whole evening, staring at Örjan. After three or four days he would eventually sit on Örjan’s knee. But then when I came back home, like that time I’d been in Morocco – I’ll never forget it – he slapped me with his paw, gave me a really solid smack, to show how angry he was.”
“You had abandoned him, after all,” Stålnacke says.
“Yes. Then all was forgiven. But before we got to that stage, he kept on smacking me. I remember when Örjan was depressed and in no fit state to do anything. Between us Tigge-Tiger and I built the May Day bonfire. He spent all day with me in the garden, working away. Then we sat together, gazing into the flames. And he was a terrific acrobat. When he wanted to come indoors in the evening he would cling on to the gutter with his front paws and swing towards the window, sort of knocking on it. So we’d open the window, and he would jump down onto the top of the frame and then into the house. I had lots of potted plants and cut flowers in vases on the window ledges, but he never knocked over a single one. Never ever.”
They sit in silence for a while, looking at the birch tree under which Tigge-Tiger is buried.
“And then he grew old and died,” Airi says. “He turned me into a cat person.”
“You grow attached to them,” Stålnacke says.
Then Airi takes hold of his hand. As if to demonstrate that she is attached to him.
“Life is too short for arguing and falling out,” she says.
Stålnacke squeezes her hand. He knows she is right. But what is he going to do about that lump of anger lodged permanently in his chest?
20.32: “You have reached Måns Wenngren at Meijer & Ditzinger. I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”
Martinsson: “Hi, it’s me. Just wanted to say I’m thinking about you and love you to bits. Ring me when you can.”
She looks at Vera, who is having a pee outside the front door. It is still light, a bright spring evening. She can hear the chuckling call of a curlew. She is not the only one pining for love.
“Why does life have to be so complicated?” she asks the dog.
21.05: Text from Rebecka Martinsson to Måns Wenngren: Hi sweetheart. Sitting here, reading up on murder investigation. Would rather be creeping into bed with you. Be nice to me, my love.
She puts her mobile on the lavatory lid and turns on the shower. Gives Vera a thorough rinse to follow up her shampoo.
“So, stop all this rolling around in muck,” she scolds her. “Is that clear?”
Vera licks her hands. It is clear enough.
23.16: “You have reached Måns Wenngren at Meijer & Ditzinger. I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”
Martinsson hangs up without leaving a message. She gives Vera some food.
“I don’t deserve to be punished,” she says.
Vera comes over to her and dries her mouth on Martinsson’s trouser leg.
04.36: Martinsson wakes up and reaches for her mobile. No message from Måns. No missed call. Documents concerning the murder investigation are scattered all around her on the bed. Vera is lying at the foot, snoring.
It’s O.K., she says to herself and makes a hushing noise into the darkness. You can go to sleep now.