The meeting about involvement in a legal and economic umbrella organization was held in the home of Bertil Stensson, the parish priest. Present were Torsten Karlsson, partner in the legal firm of Meijer & Ditzinger, Stockholm; Rebecka Martinsson, a lawyer with the same firm; the parish priests from Jukkasjärvi, Vittangi and Karesuando; the leaders of the church councils; the chairman of the joint church council and the dean, Stefan Wikström. Rebecka Martinsson was the only woman present. The meeting had begun at eight o’clock. It was now quarter to ten. At ten o’clock coffee was to be served to finish off the meeting.
The priest’s dining room served as a temporary conference room. The September sun was shining in through the hand-blown, uneven panes of the big barred windows. Wooden shelves full of books reached right up to the ceiling. There were no ornaments or flowers anywhere to be seen. Instead the windowsills were full of stones, some softly rounded and smooth, others rough and black with sparkling red garnet eyes. Strangely contorted branches lay on top of the stones. On the lawns and the gravel path outside lay drifts of rustling yellow leaves and fallen rowanberries.
Rebecka was sitting next to Bertil Stensson. She glanced at him. He was a youthful man in his sixties. Like a kindly uncle with a bad boy’s haircut, pale silver. Sunburn and a warm smile.
A professional smile, she thought. It had been almost comical, watching him and Torsten standing and smiling at each other. You could easily have believed they were brothers, or old childhood friends. The priest had shaken Torsten by the hand and at the same time grabbed hold of Torsten’s upper arm with his left hand. Torsten had seemed charmed. Smiled and run his hand through his hair.
She wondered if it was the priest who had brought home the stones and branches. It was usually women who did that sort of thing. Who went for walks by the sea and picked up smooth pebbles until their cardigans were dragging on the ground.
Torsten had made good use of his two hours. He’d quickly shrugged off his jacket and made sure his conversation was just personal enough. Entertaining without becoming flippant or slapdash. He’d served up the whole thing like a three-course meal. As an aperitif he’d poured a little flattery into them, things they already knew. That they had one of the wealthiest associations in the country. And one of the most beautiful. The starter consisted of small examples of areas where the church was in need of legal expertise, which was more or less every area, civil law, the law governing societies and associations, employment law, tax law… For the main course he had served hard facts, figures and calculations. Shown that it would be cheaper and more advantageous to sign an agreement with Meijer & Ditzinger, giving them access to the company’s combined expertise in legal and economic matters. At the same time he had been quite open about the disadvantages, which were not significant, but even so…, and thus gave an impression of honesty and trustworthiness. They weren’t dealing with a vacuum cleaner salesman here. Now he was busy spooning the dessert down their throats. He was giving a final example of how they had helped another community.
The church administration in this community had cost an enormous amount. A considerable number of churches and other buildings that had to be maintained, many lawns to be mown, graves dug, gravel paths raked, moss scraped off gravestones and goodness knows what, but all of that cost money. A lot of money. This community had employed a number of people on work placements, or whatever it was called, workers who were sponsored by the state through the department of employment. Anyway, this meant that the community didn’t have high wage costs for these people, so it didn’t really matter if the employees didn’t exactly break into a sweat. But then they’d been taken on as temporary employees by the church, and the church was now responsible for paying the whole of their wages. There were a lot of them, and the majority weren’t exactly working themselves into the ground, if he could put it like that. So they took on more people, but the work ethos had now become such that it no longer allowed people to come in and roll up their sleeves. Anyone who tried soon got frozen out. So it was difficult to get things done. Some of the employees even managed to hold down another full-time job alongside their full-time job with the church. And now the church was suddenly completely separate from the state, the community was an autonomous organization, and had to take responsibility for its own finances in a completely different way. The solution had been to help the community to put the church administration out to contract. Just as many others had done over the past fifteen years.
Torsten went through the exact figures showing how much money had been saved per year. The others exchanged glances.
Right on target, thought Rebecka.
“And,” Torsten went on, “I still haven’t included the saving the church makes by having responsibility for fewer employees. Besides more cash in the coffers, you have more time available for the real work of the church, meeting the spiritual needs of its members in different ways. Parish priests shouldn’t have to be administrators, but they’re often bogged down with that sort of work.”
Bertil Stensson pushed a piece of paper sideways in front of Rebecka.
“You’ve certainly given us plenty to think about,” it said.
Oh yes? thought Rebecka.
What was he up to? Did he want them to sit there scribbling notes to one another like two school kids keeping secrets from the teacher? She smiled and gave a slight nod.
Torsten finished off, answered a few questions.
Bertil Stensson stood up and announced that coffee would be served outside in the sun.
“Those of us who live up here have to seize the opportunity,” he said. “We don’t often get the chance to use our garden furniture.”
He waved them out into the garden and as people made their way out he took Torsten and Rebecka into the living room. Torsten had to look at his Lars Levi Sunna painting. Rebecka Martinsson noticed that the priest gave Stefan Wikström a look that meant: wait outside with the others.
“I think this is just what the community needs,” the priest said to Torsten. “Although I could really do with you now, not in twelve months’ time when all this can actually become a reality.”
Torsten considered the picture. It showed a gentle-eyed reindeer cow suckling her calf. Through the open door to the hall Rebecka could see a woman who had appeared from nowhere carrying out a tray of thermos pots and clinking coffee cups.
“We’ve had a very difficult time within the community,” the priest went on, “I assume you’ve heard about the murder of Mildred Nilsson.
Torsten and Rebecka nodded.
“I need to fill her post,” said the priest. “And it’s no secret that she and Stefan didn’t exactly get on. Stefan is against women priests. I don’t share his opinion, but I have to respect it. And Mildred was our foremost local feminist, if I can put it that way. It was no easy job being in charge of them both. I know there’s a well-qualified woman who’s going to apply for the post when I advertise. I’ve nothing against her, quite the opposite. But for the sake of peace and quiet at work and at home, I want to fill the post with a man.”
“Less well-qualified?” asked Torsten.
“Yes. Can I do that?”
Torsten rubbed his chin without taking his eyes off the picture.
“Of course,” he said calmly. “But if the female applicant you’ve rejected decides to sue, you’ll be liable for compensation.”
“And I’d have to give her the job?”
“No, no. If the job’s gone to the other person, you can’t take it off him. I can find out how much compensation’s been awarded in similar cases. I’ll do it for free.”
“He probably means you’ll be doing it for free,” the priest said to Rebecka with a laugh.
Rebecka smiled politely. The priest turned back to Torsten.
“I’d appreciate that,” he said seriously. “Then there’s another matter. Or two.”
“Shoot,” said Torsten.
“Mildred set up a foundation. We have a she-wolf in the forests around Kiruna, and Mildred felt very strongly about her. The foundation was to support the work of keeping her alive. Paying compensation to the Sami people, helicopter surveillance in conjunction with the Nature Conservancy Council…”
“Yes?”
“The foundation might not be quite so embedded in the community as she might have wished. Not that we’re against having wolves, but we want to maintain an apolitical profile. Everybody, whether they hate wolves or love them, must be able to feel at home within the church.”
Rebecka looked out through the window. The leader of the association of churches was peering in at them curiously. He was holding his saucer under his chin to catch the drips as he drank his coffee. The shirt he was wearing was appalling. Once upon a time it had presumably been beige, but it must have been in the wash with a blue sock.
Good job, he’d been able to find a tie to match it, thought Rebecka.
“We want to dissolve the foundation and use the resources for other projects which fit into the church better,” said the priest.
Torsten promised to pass the question on to someone who was an expert in the law relating to societies and associations.
“And then there’s quite a sensitive issue. Mildred Nilsson’s husband is still living in the priest’s house in Poikkijärvi. It feels terrible to turn him out of house and home, but… well, the house is needed for other things.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s no problem,” said Torsten. “Rebecka, you’re staying for a while, could you take a look at the lease and have a word with… what’s the husband’s name?”
“Erik. Erik Nilsson.”
“If that’s okay?” said Torsten to Rebecka. “Otherwise I can look at it. The house is tied to the job, so if the worst comes to the worst we can get the police involved.”
The priest grimaced.
“And if it gets that far,” said Torsten calmly, “it’s a good idea to have a bloody lawyer to blame.”
“I’ll sort it,” said Rebecka.
“Erik’s got Mildred’s keys,” the priest said to Rebecka. “The church keys. I want those back.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Including the key to her locker in the church office. It looks like this.”
He took his keys out of his pocket and showed one of them to Rebecka.
“A locker,” said Torsten.
“For money, notes from counseling sessions, and things you just don’t want to lose,” said the priest. “A priest isn’t in the office much, and lots of other people are in and out all the time.”
Torsten couldn’t resist asking.
“The police haven’t got it?”
“No,” said the priest casually, “they haven’t asked for it. Look, Bengt Grape’s on his fourth helping. Come on, otherwise we’re not going to get anything.”
Rebecka drove Torsten to the airport. Indian summer sunshine over the dappled yellow birch trees.
Torsten looked at her from the side. He wondered if there’d been anything going on between her and Måns. At any rate, she was cross now. Shoulders up by her ears, mouth like a thin straight line.
“How long are you staying up here?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” she replied. “Over the weekend.”
“Just so I know what to say to Måns, since I’ve mislaid his colleague.”
“I shouldn’t think he’ll ask,” she said.
Silence fell between them. In the end Rebecka couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“It’s obvious the police don’t even know that bloody locker exists,” she exclaimed.
Torsten’s voice became exaggeratedly patient.
“They must have missed it,” he said. “But we’re not here to do their job. We’re here to do our job.”
“She was murdered,” said Rebecka quietly.
“Our job is to solve the client’s problems, as long as it isn’t illegal. It isn’t illegal to get the church’s keys back.”
“No. And we’ll help them work out how much sexual discrimination might cost, so they can build up their old boys’ club.”
Torsten looked out through the side window.
“And I’ve got to kick her husband out,” Rebecka went on.
“I said you didn’t have to.”
Oh, pack it in, thought Rebecka. You didn’t give me any choice.
Otherwise you’d have got the police to chuck him out of the house.
She put her foot down.
The money comes first, she thought. That’s the most important thing.
“Sometimes it just makes me want to throw up,” she said tiredly.
“Goes with the job sometimes,” said Torsten. “All you can do is wipe your shoes and carry on.”
Inspector Anna-Maria Mella was driving to Lisa Stöckel’s house. Lisa Stöckel was the chair of Magdalena, the women’s group. Her house was in an isolated spot up on a ridge beyond Poikkijärvi chapel. Behind the house the ridge plunged down into huge gravel pits, and the river was on the other side of the ridge.
In the beginning the house had been a simple brown chalet built in the sixties. Later on it had been extended and adorned with ornate white window shutters and an excess of white ornamental carving on the porch. Nowadays it looked like a brown shoebox disguised as a gingerbread house. Next to the house was a tumbledown rectangular wooden building, painted Falun red, with a corrugated roof. One barred window, not double glazed.Woodshed, storeroom and former barn, guessed Anna-Maria. There must have been another house here at one time. And they pulled it down and built the chalet. Left the barn standing.
She drove very slowly into the yard. Three dogs were running to and fro in front of the car, barking. Some chickens flapped their wings and sought shelter under a currant bush. By the gatepost stood a cat in front of a shrew hole, rigid with concentration, ready to pounce. Only an irritated swishing of its tail gave away the fact that it had noticed the noisy Ford Escort.
Anna-Maria parked in front of the house. Through the side window she looked down into the jaws of the dogs who were leaping at the car door. True, their tails were wagging, but even so. One of them was unbelievably big. And it was black. She turned off the engine.
A woman came out of the house and stood on the porch. She was wearing an incredibly ugly Barbie-pink padded coat. She called to the dogs.
“Heel!”
The dogs immediately left the car and raced up onto the porch. The woman in the padded coat told them to lie down, and came over to the car. Anna-Maria got out and introduced herself.
Lisa Stöckel was in her fifties. She wore no makeup. Her face was sunburned after the summer. She had white lines around her eyes from squinting into the sun. Her hair was cut very short, a millimeter shorter and it would have stuck out from her head like a scrubbing brush.
Nice, thought Anna-Maria. Like a cowgirl. If you could imagine a cowgirl in that pink coat.
The coat really was hideous. It was covered in dog hair, and bits of the stuffing were sticking out from little holes and tears.
Girl? Anna-Maria did know women in their fifties who had girly lunches and would carry on being girls until the day they died, but Lisa Stöckel was no girl. There was something in her eyes that gave Anna-Maria the feeling that maybe she’d never been a girl, even when she was a child.
And then there was an almost imperceptible line that ran from the corner of her eye, under the eye and down toward the cheekbone. A dark shadow at the corner of the eyes.
Pain, thought Anna-Maria. In the body or in the soul.
They walked up to the house together. The dogs were lying on the porch, whimpering feverishly, desperate to be allowed to get up and greet the visitor.
“Stay,” ordered Lisa Stöckel.
It was directed at the dogs, but Anna-Maria Mella obeyed as well.
“Are you frightened of dogs?”
“No, not as long as I know they’re friendly,” replied Anna-Maria, looking at the large black one.
The long pink tongue lolling out of its mouth like a tie. Paws like a lion.
“Okay, well, there’s another one in the kitchen, but she’s like a lamb. These are too, they’re just a gang of village louts with no manners. Go on in.”
She opened the door for Anna-Maria, who slid into the hall.
“Bloody hooligans,” said Lisa Stöckel affectionately to the dogs. “Out!”
The dogs leapt up, their claws gouging long marks in the wood as they picked up speed; they took the steps down from the porch in one joyous bound and shot off across the yard.
Anna-Maria stood in the narrow hallway and looked around her. Half the floor was occupied by two dog beds. There was also a big stainless steel water bowl, Wellingtons, boots, tennis shoes and practical Gore-Tex shoes. There was hardly room for both her and Lisa Stöckel at the same time. The walls were covered in hooks and shelves, with several dog leads, work gloves, thick hats and gloves, overalls and all sorts of other things hanging from them. Anna-Maria wondered where she should hang her jacket; every hook was occupied, as was every coat hanger.
“Put your jacket over the back of the chair in the kitchen,” said Lisa Stöckel. “Otherwise it’ll get covered in hairs. Oh, no, don’t take your shoes off whatever you do.”
From the hallway one door led into the living room and one into the kitchen. In the living room stood several banana boxes full of books. There were piles of books on the floor. On one of the shorter walls stood the bookcase, empty and dusty, made of some kind of dark wood with a built-in display cabinet with colored glass.
“Are you moving?” said Anna-Maria.
“No, I’m just… You collect so much rubbish. And the books just gather dust.”
The kitchen furniture was heavy, made of varnished yellow pine. A black Labrador retriever was asleep on a rustic kitchen sofa. She woke up when the two women came into the kitchen, thumping her tail against the sofa in greeting. Then she put her head down and went back to sleep.
Lisa introduced the dog as Majken.
“Tell me what she was like,” said Anna-Maria when they’d sat down. “I know you worked together in this women’s group, Magdalena.”
“But I’ve already told him… a big guy with a moustache like this.”
Lisa measured a couple of decimeters from her top lip with her hand. Anna-Maria smiled.
“Sven-Erik Stålnacke.”
“Yes.”
“Can you go over it again?”
“Where shall I start?”
“How did you get to know one another?”
Anna-Maria watched Lisa Stöckel’s face. When people searched through their memories for a particular event they often dropped their guard. As long as it wasn’t an event they were intending to lie about, of course. Sometimes they forgot the person sitting in front of them for a while. A wry, fleeting smile crossed Lisa Stöckel’s face. Something softened for a moment. She’d liked the priest.
“Six years ago. She’d just moved into the priest’s house. And in the autumn she was to be responsible for confirmation classes for the young people both here and in Jukkasjärvi. And she set about it like a gun dog. Contacted all the parents of the children who hadn’t registered. Introduced herself and talked about why she thought confirmation classes were so important.”
“Why were they important?” asked Anna-Maria, who hadn’t thought they were the slightest use when she’d taken them a hundred years ago.
“Mildred thought the church should be a meeting place. She wasn’t that bothered about whether people believed or not, that was between them and God. But if she could get them to church for a christening, confirmation, weddings and major festivals, so that people could meet one another and feel sufficiently at home in the church so they’d turn to it if life became too difficult, then… And when people said ‘but he doesn’t believe, it seems wrong if he’s studying just to get presents,’ she said it was good to get presents, no young people studied because they liked it, neither at school nor at church, but it was part of their general education to know why we celebrate Christmas, Easter, Whitsun and Ascension Day, and to be able to name the apostles.”
“So you had a son or daughter who…”
“Oh, no. Well, yes, I have got a daughter, but she’d been confirmed several years ago. She works in the pub down in the village. No, it was my cousin’s boy, Nalle. He’s got special needs and Lars-Gunnar didn’t want him confirmed. So she came to talk about him. Would you like a coffee?”
Anna-Maria said yes.
“She seems to have upset people,” she said.
Lisa Stöckel shrugged her shoulders.
“That’s just the way she was… always straight in. As if she only had forward gear.”
“What do you mean?” asked Anna-Maria.
“I mean she never went round the houses about things. There was no room for diplomacy or fancy words. She thought something was wrong, and she just went for it.”
Like when she got all the churchwardens against her, thought Lisa.
She blinked. But the picture in her head wasn’t so easily gotten rid of. First of all it was two brimstone butterflies dancing around one another above the sweet scented arabis. Then the branches of the weeping birch swaying gently to and fro in the breeze from the calm summer river. And then Mildred’s back. Her military march between the gravestones. Tramp, tramp, tramp over the gravel.
Lisa scuttles after Mildred along the path in Poikkijärvi churchyard. At the far end the team of churchwardens are having their coffee break. They have a lot of breaks, more or less all the time really. Work when the priest is watching. But nobody actually dares to make any demands of them. If you turn this lot against you, you’ll end up holding a funeral in the middle of a pile of earth. Or trying to shout over the top of a lawn mower working two meters away. Preaching in a freezing cold church in the middle of winter. The parish priest is totally bloody useless, he does nothing. He doesn’t need to, they know better than to mess with him.
“Don’t start an argument about this,” Lisa tries to divert her.
“I’m not going to start an argument.”
And she really means it.
Mankan Kyrö catches sight of them first. He’s the informal leader of the group. The boss of property services doesn’t give a damn. Mankan decides. He’s the one Mildred isn’t going to start an argument with.
She dives straight in. The others listen with interest.
“The child’s grave,” she says, “have you dug it yet?”
“What do you mean?” says Mankan apathetically.
“I’ve just been talking to the parents. They said they’d chosen a spot with a view over the river, up there in the northern section, but that you’d advised them against it.”
Mankan Kyrö doesn’t answer. Instead he spits a huge lump of chewed snuff onto the grass and rummages in his back pocket for the snuff tin.
“You told them the roots of the weeping birch would grow through the coffin and go right through the baby’s body,” Mildred goes on.
“Well, wouldn’t they?”
“That happens wherever you bury a coffin, and you know that perfectly well. You just didn’t want to dig up there under the birch, because it’s stony and there are so many roots. It was just too much like hard work. I just can’t get my head round the fact that you valued your own comfort so highly that you thought it was okay to plant pictures like that in their heads.”
She hasn’t raised her voice the whole time. The gang around Mankan are staring at the ground. They’re ashamed. And they hate the priest who’s making them feel ashamed.
“So, what do you want me to do, then?” asks Mankan Kyrö. “We’ve already dug a grave-in a better spot if you ask me-but maybe we ought to force them to bury their child where you want.”
“No way. It’s too late now, you’ve terrified them. I just want you to know that if anything like this happens again…”
He’s almost smiling now. Is she going to threaten him?
“… then you’ll be testing my love for you beyond the limit,” she concludes, and walks away.
Lisa runs after her. Quickly so that she doesn’t have to hear the comments behind her back. She can imagine. If the priest’s husband gave her what she needed in bed, maybe she’d calm down.
“So who did she annoy?” asked Anna-Maria.
Lisa shrugged her shoulders and switched on the coffee machine.
“Where do I start? The headmaster of the school in Jukkasjärvi because she insisted he had to do something about bullying, the old biddies from social services because she got involved in their territory.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there were always women with kids at her house, women who’d left their husbands…”
“She’d set up some sort of foundation for the wolf,” said Anna-Maria. “There was a big debate about that.”
“Mmm, I haven’t got any cake or milk, you’ll have to have it black.”
Lisa Stöckel placed a chipped mug with some kind of advert on it in front of Anna-Maria.
“The parish priest and some of the other clergy couldn’t stand her either.”
“Why was that?”
“Well, because of us, the women in Magdalena, among other things. There are almost two hundred of us in the group. And there were plenty of people who liked her but weren’t actually members, quite a lot of men, although no doubt people have told you the opposite. We used to study the Bible with her. Went to services where she was preaching. And did practical work as well.”
“Like what?”
“Loads of things. Cooking, for example. We tried to think of something concrete we could do for single mothers. They thought it was hard, always being stuck on their own with the kids and having to spend all their time on practical things. Working, shopping, cleaning, cooking and then just the TV for company. So we have lunch together at the parish hall in town Monday to Wednesday, and out here at the priest’s house Thursday and Friday. Sometimes you’re on the duty roster, you pay twenty kronor for an adult and fifteen per child. It means for a few days in the week the mothers don’t have to shop and cook. Sometimes they look after each other’s kids so they can go off and do some exercise or just go into town in peace. Mildred was all for practical solutions.”
Lisa laughed and went on:
“It was fatal, telling her something was wrong in the community or whatever. She struck like a pike, ‘what can we do?’ Before you knew what had hit you, you had a job. Magdalena was a really close group, what priest wouldn’t want something like that around them?”
“So the other priests were jealous?”
Lisa shrugged her shoulders.
“You said Magdalena was a close group. Don’t you exist anymore?”
Lisa looked down at the table.
“We do.”
Anna-Maria waited for her to add something more, but Lisa Stöckel maintained a stubborn silence.
“Who was close to her?” asked Anna-Maria.
“Those of us who were on the committee of Magdalena, I suppose.”
“Her husband?”
A movement of the iris in the eye, Anna-Maria spotted it. There was something there.
Lisa Stöckel, there’s something you’re not telling me, she thought.
“Of course,” replied Lisa Stöckel.
“Did she feel threatened or afraid?”
“She must have had some sort of tumor or something that suppressed the part of her brain that feels fear… No, she wasn’t afraid. And threatened, no more recently than at any other time, there was always somebody who felt the need to slash her tires or smash her car windows…”
Lisa Stöckel glared furiously at Anna-Maria.
“She stopped reporting things to the police a long time ago. It was just a load of trouble for nothing, you can never prove anything even if you know exactly who it is.”
“But perhaps you could give me some names,” said Anna-Maria.
Quarter of an hour later Anna-Maria Mella got into her Ford Escort and drove away.
Why get rid of all your books? she wondered.
Lisa Stöckel stood at the kitchen window watching Anna-Maria’s car disappear down the hill in a cloud of oily smoke. Then she sat down on the kitchen sofa next to the sleeping Labrador. She stroked the dog’s throat and chest just as a bitch licks her puppies to calm them. The dog woke up and thumped her tail affectionately a few times.
“What’s the matter, Majken?” asked Lisa. “You don’t even get up to say hello to people anymore.”
Her throat constricted in a painful knot. Her eyelids prickled. There were tears in there. She wasn’t going to shed them.
She must be in terrible pain, she thought.
She got up quickly.
Oh God, Mildred, she thought. Forgive me. Please forgive me. I’m… trying to do the right thing, but I’m afraid.
She had to get some air, suddenly felt ill. She made it out onto the porch and threw up a little pile of vomit.
The dogs were there at once. If she didn’t want it, they could take care of it for her. She pushed them away with her foot.
That bloody policewoman. She’d got right inside her head and opened it up like a picture book. Mildred on every single page. She just couldn’t look at those pictures anymore. Like that first time, six years ago. She remembered how she’d been standing by the rabbit hutches. It was feeding time. Rabbits, white, gray, black, spotted, got up on their hind legs and pushed their little noses through the chicken wire. She doled out pellets and shriveled bits of carrot and other root vegetables in little terra-cotta dishes. Felt a little bit of sorrow in her heart, because the rabbits would soon be in a stew down at the pub.
Then she’s standing behind her, the priest who’s just moved in. They haven’t met before. Lisa hadn’t heard her coming. Mildred Nilsson is a small woman, about the same age as her. Somewhere around fifty. She has a small, pale face. Her hair is long and dark brown. Lisa often hears people call her insignificant. They say “She’s not pretty, but…” Lisa will never understand it.
Something happens inside her when she takes the slender hand that’s being held out to her. She has to tell her own hand to let go. The priest is talking. Even her mouth is small. Narrow lips. Like a little red lingonberry. And while the lingonberry mouth talks and talks, the eyes sing a beautiful song. About something else altogether.
For the first time since-well, she can’t remember when-Lisa is afraid the truth will show on her face. She could do with a mirror just to check. She, who has kept secrets all her life. Who knows the truth about being the prettiest girl in the village. She might have told people what it felt like to hear “look at the tits on that” all the time, how it made her stoop and gave her a bad back. But there are other things, a thousand secrets.
Daddy’s cousin Bengt when she was thirteen. He’s grabbed her by the hair and twisted it around his hand. It feels as if it’s going to come out by the roots. “Keep your mouth shut,” he says in her ear. He’s forced her into the bathroom. Slams her head against the tiled wall so she’ll understand he means it. With his other hand he unbuttons her jeans. The family is sitting downstairs in the living room.
She kept her mouth shut. Never said a word. Cut her hair off.
Or the last time she ever drank spirits, midsummer’s eve 1965. She was well gone. They were three boys from town. Two of them still live in Kiruna, it wasn’t long ago she bumped into one of them in the supermarket. But she’s dropped the memory like a stone down a well, it’s as if she dreamed it long ago.
And then there are the years with Tommy. That time he’d sat drinking with his cousins from Lannavaara. Late September. Mimmi can’t have been more than three or four. The ice hadn’t taken hold. And they’d given him an old fishing spear. Completely worthless, he’d never realized they were only playing a joke on him. Toward morning he’d rung her for a lift. She’d picked him up in the car, tried to get him to leave the spear there, but he’d managed to get it into the coupe somehow. Sat there with the window down and the spear sticking out. Laughing and stabbing out into the darkness.
When they got home he decided they had to go out fishing. It was two hours until daylight. She had to come with him, he said. To row and hold the torch. The girl’s asleep, she said. Exactly, he said. She’d sleep for more than two hours. She tried to get him to put a life jacket on, the water was freezing cold. But he refused.
“You’ve turned into a real fucking Goody Two Shoes,” he said. “I’m married to Goody fucking Two Shoes.”
He thought that was very funny. Out on the water he kept repeating it to himself quietly. “Goody Two Shoes.” “Steer her a bit nearer the point, Goody Two Shoes.”
Then he fell in the water. Plop, and a second later he was clawing at the rail trying to find something to hang on to. Ice-cold water, dark night. He didn’t scream or anything. Puffed and panted with exertion.
Oh, that split second. When she seriously wondered what she should do. Just one little push with the oar away from him. Just let the boat drift out of reach. With all that booze inside him. How long would it take? Five minutes maybe.
Then she pulled him up. It wasn’t easy, she nearly fell in the water herself. They didn’t find the spear. Maybe it sank. Maybe it floated away in the darkness. He was cross about it anyway. Furious with her too, although it was thanks to her he was alive. She could feel how much he wanted to hit her.
She never told anybody about that cold desire to watch him die. Drown like a kitten in a sack.
And now she’s standing here with the new priest. She feels quite peculiar inside. The priest’s eyes have climbed inside her.
Another secret to drop in the well. It falls down. Lies there sparkling like a jewel among all the rubbish.
It was almost three months since his wife had been found murdered. Erik Nilsson got out of his Skoda in front of the priest’s house. Still warm, although it was September. The sky bright blue, not a cloud in sight. The light piercing the air like sharpened knives.
He’d been to call in at work. It had felt good to see his colleagues. They were like another family. He’d go back soon. Give him something else to think about.
He looked at the pots and containers lining the steps and the veranda. Wilted flowers drooped over the edges. He thought vaguely that he must take the pots in. Before you knew it the grass would be crisp with frost, and the cold would crack them.
He’d been shopping on the way home. Unlocked the door, grabbed the carrier bags and pushed down the door handle with his elbow.
“Mildred,” he called out once he was inside.
He stopped dead. You could have heard a pin drop. The house consisted of two hundred and eighty square meters of silence. The whole world was keeping quiet. The house was drifting through a silent dazzling universe like an empty spaceship. The only sound was the earth, creaking around on its axis. Why on earth was he calling out to her?
When she was alive he’d always known whether she was at home or not. As soon as he got through the door. Nothing odd about that, he always used to say. A newborn baby could recognize the smell of its mother, even if she was in another room. You didn’t lose that ability when you grew up. It just wasn’t part of the conscious mind. So people talked about intuition or a sixth sense.
Sometimes it still felt like that when he got home. As if she was somewhere in the house. In the room next door all the time.
He dropped the bags on the floor. Walked into the silence.
Mildred, the voice in his head called out.
At the same moment the doorbell rang.
It was a woman. She was wearing a long fitted coat and high-heeled boots. She didn’t fit in, couldn’t have stood out more if she’d been dressed in just her underwear. She took off her right glove and held out her hand. Said her name was Rebecka Martinsson.
“Come in,” he said, unconsciously running his hand over his beard and hair.
“Thank you, but there’s no need, I just want to…”
“Come in,” he said again, leading the way.
He told her to keep her boots on and asked her to sit down in the kitchen. It was clean and tidy. He’d done the cleaning and cooking when Mildred was alive, why stop now she was dead? He didn’t touch her things, though. Her red sweater was still lying in a heap on the kitchen sofa. Her papers and her post were on the worktop.
“So,” he said pleasantly.
He was good at that. Being pleasant to women. Over the years many had sat at this very kitchen table. Some had had a little one on their knee and another standing beside them clutching mummy’s sweater in a small fist. Others hadn’t been trying to get away from a man, but rather from themselves. Couldn’t stand the loneliness in an apartment in Lombolo. The sort who stood out on the veranda smoking, cigarette after cigarette out in the cold.
“I’m here on behalf of your wife’s employer,” said Rebecka Martinsson.
Erik Nilsson had been on the point of sitting down, or perhaps asking if she’d like a cup of coffee. But he remained standing. When he didn’t say anything, she went on:
“There are two things. First of all I would like her work keys. And then there’s the matter of your moving out.”
He looked out through the window. She kept talking, now she was the calm and pleasant one. She informed him that the house went with the job, that the church could help him find an apartment and a removal firm.
His breathing became heavy. His mouth a thin line. Every breath sounded like a snort down his nose.
He was gazing at her with contempt. She looked down at the table.
“Bloody hell,” he said. “Bloody hell, it’s enough to make you feel sick. Is it Stefan Wikström’s wife who can’t wait any longer? She never could stand the fact that Mildred had the biggest house.”
“Look, I don’t know anything about that. I…”
He slammed his hand down on the table.
“I’ve lost everything!”
He made a movement in the air with his fist, pulling himself together so as not to lose his self-control.
“Wait,” he said.
He disappeared through the kitchen door. Rebecka could hear his footsteps going up the stairs and across the floor above. After a while he came back, flung the bunch of keys onto the table as if it had been a bag of dog shit.
“Was there anything else?” he asked.
“Your moving out,” she said firmly.
And now she was looking him in the eye.
“How does it feel?” he asked. “How does it feel inside those fine clothes, when you’ve got a job like yours?”
She got up. Something changed in her face, it was a fleeting moment, but he’d seen it in this house many times. Silent anguish. He could see the answer in her eyes. Could hear it as clearly as if she’d spoken the words out loud. Like a whore.
She picked her gloves up from the table with stiff movements, slowly, as if she had to count them to make sure she had them all. One two. She picked up the big bunch of keys.
Erik Nilsson sighed heavily and rubbed his hand over his face.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Mildred would have given me a kick up the backside. What day is it today?”
When she didn’t reply he went on:
“A week, I’ll be out of here in a week.”
She nodded. He followed her to the door. Tried to think of something to say, it wasn’t exactly the time to ask if she’d like a coffee.
“A week,” he said to her departing back.
As if it could have made her feel happy.
Rebecka tottered away from the priest’s house. Although that was just the way it felt. She wasn’t actually tottering at all. Her legs and feet carried her away from the house with steady steps.
I’m nothing, she thought. There’s nothing left inside me. No human being, no judgment, nothing. I do whatever they ask me to do. Of course. The people at the office are all I’ve got. I tell myself I can’t cope with the idea of going back. But in fact I can’t cope with the idea of ending up on the outside. I’ll do anything, absolutely anything, to be allowed to belong.
She focused on the mailbox and didn’t notice the red Ford Escort driving up the track until it slowed down and turned in between the gateposts.
The car stopped.
Rebecka felt as if she’d had an electric shock.
Inspector Anna-Maria Mella climbed out of the car. They’d met before, when Rebecka was defending Sanna Strandgård. And it had been Anna-Maria Mella and her colleague Sven-Erik Stålnacke who’d saved her life that night.
Anna-Maria had been pregnant then, shaped like a cube; now she was slim. But broad-shouldered. She looked strong although she was so small. Her hair in the same thick plait down her back as before. White, even teeth in her brown, sunburned horse face. A pony policewoman.
“Hi there!” exclaimed Anna-Maria.
Then she fell silent. Her whole body was a question mark.
“I…” said Rebecka, lost her way and tried again. “My firm has some business with the different communities within the Swedish church, we’ve had a sales meeting and… and there were one or two things they needed some help with regarding the priest’s house and as we were up here anyway I’ve been to have a word with…”
She ended the sentence with a nod toward the house.
“But it’s got nothing to do with…” asked Anna-Maria.
“No, when I came up here I didn’t even know… no. What did you have?” asked Rebecka, trying to force a smile onto her face.
“A boy. I’ve just come back to work after my maternity leave, so I’m helping out with the investigation into Mildred Nilsson’s murder.”
Rebecka nodded. She looked up at the sky. It was completely empty. The bunch of keys weighed a ton in her pocket.
What am I? she thought. I’m not ill. I haven’t got an illness. Just lazy. Lazy and crazy. I have no words of my own to speak. The silence is eating its way inward.
“Funny old world, isn’t it?” said Anna-Maria. “First Viktor Strandgård and now Mildred Nilsson.”
Rebecka nodded again. Anna-Maria smiled. She seemed completely unconcerned about the other woman’s silence, but she was waiting patiently for Rebecka to say something.
“What do you think?” Rebecka managed to force out. “Is it somebody who’d been keeping a scrapbook about Viktor’s murder, and decided to make a sequel of their own?”
“Maybe.”
Anna-Maria gazed up into a pine tree. Heard a squirrel scampering up the trunk, but couldn’t see it. It stayed on the other side, reached the top and rustled about among the branches.
Maybe it was some lunatic who was inspired by Viktor Strandgård’s death. Or it might have been somebody who knew her. Who knew she’d conducted a service in the church, knew what time it finished and that she’d go down to where she kept the boat. She didn’t defend herself. And why did somebody hang her up? It’s like in the Middle Ages, when they used to impale people’s heads on a spike. As a warning to others.
“How are you?” asked Anna-Maria.
Rebecka replied that she was fine. Just fine. Things had been difficult immediately afterward, of course, but she’d had help and support. Anna-Maria said that was good, really good.
Anna-Maria looked at Rebecka. She thought about that night when the police went to the cottage in Jiekajärvi and found her. She hadn’t been able to go with them because her contractions had started. But she’d often dreamed about it afterward. In the dream she was riding a snowmobile through the darkness and the blizzard. Rebecka lay bleeding on the sledge. The snow spraying up into her face. All the time she was afraid of running into something. Then she got stuck. Standing there in the cold. The snowmobile roaring in vain. She usually woke up with a start. Lay there gazing at Gustav, sleeping and snuffling between her and Robert. On his back. Completely secure. Arms by his sides, pointing upward at a ninety degree angle, typical of new babies. Everything worked out fine, she usually thought. Everything worked out fine.
Everything didn’t work out fine at all, she thought now.
“So are you off back to Stockholm now?” she asked.
“No, I’ve taken a bit of time off.”
“Your grandmother had a house in Kurravaara, is that where you’re staying?”
“No, I… no. Here in the village. The pub’s got a couple of chalets.”
“So you haven’t been to Kurravaara?”
“No.”
Anna-Maria looked searchingly at Rebecka.
“If you want some company we could go up there together,” she said.
Rebecka thanked her, but said no. It was just that she hadn’t had time yet, she explained. They said good-bye. Before they parted Anna-Maria said:
“You saved those children.”
Rebecka nodded.
That’s no consolation, she thought.
“What happened to them?” she asked. “I reported suspected abuse to social services.”
“I don’t think anything came of that investigation,” said Anna-Maria. “Then the whole family moved away.”
Rebecka thought about the girls. Sara and Lova. She cleared her throat and tried to think about something else.
“That sort of thing’s so expensive for the community, you see,” said Anna-Maria. “The investigations cost money. Having the children looked after costs a whole heap of money. Putting the case through the county court costs money. From the child’s point of view it would be better if the whole apparatus was run by the state. But at the moment the best solution for the community is if the problem just goes away. Bloody hell, I’ve taken kids out of a fifty-two-square-meter war zone. Then you hear that the community’s bought the family a tenancy in Örkelljunga.”
She stopped. Noticed that she’d started babbling just because Rebecka Martinsson seemed to be so close to the edge.
As Rebecka walked on down toward the village bar, Anna-Maria gazed after her. She was seized by a sudden longing for her children. Robert was at home with Gustav. She wanted to press her nose against Gustav’s soft skin, feel his strong little arms around her neck.
Then she took a deep breath and straightened her back. The sun on the yellow-white autumn grass. The squirrel, still busy up in the trees on the other side of the track. The smile poured back into her. It was never very far away. Time to talk to Erik Nilsson, the priest’s husband. Then she’d go home to her family.
Rebecka Martinsson was walking down toward the bar. Behind her, the forest was talking. Come over here, it said. Come and walk deep inside. I am endless.
She could imagine that walk.
Slender pines of beaten copper. The wind high up in the crown of the trees sounds like rushing water. Firs that look charred and blackened, covered in beard lichen. The sound of her steps: the rustle of dry reindeer lichen and organ-pipe lichen, the crunch of the pinecones eaten by the woodpecker. Sometimes you walk on a soft carpet of needles along an animal track. All you hear then is the sound of thin twigs cracking beneath your feet.
You walk and walk. At first the thoughts in your head are like a tangled skein of wool. The branches scrape against your face or catch in your hair. One by one the threads are drawn from the skein. Get caught in the trees. Fly away with the wind. In the end your head is empty. And you are transported. Through the forest. Over steaming bogs, heavy with scent, where your feet sink between the still frozen tussocks and your body feels sticky. Up a hill. Fresh breeze. The dwarf birch creeping, glowing on the ground. You lie down. And then the snow begins to fall.
She suddenly remembered what it was like when she was a child. That longing to be transported into the endlessness of it all, like a Red Indian. The mountain buzzards soaring above her head. In her dreams she had a rucksack on her back and slept under the open sky. Her grandmother’s dog Jussi was always there. Sometimes she traveled by canoe.
She remembered standing in the forest, pointing. Asking her father: “If I go that way, where will I end up?” And her father’s reply. New poetry, depending on which direction the finger was pointing in, and where they were. “Tjålme.” “Latteluokta.” “Across the river Rauta.” “Through Vistasvagge and over the Dragon’s Back.”
She had to stop. Almost thought she could see them. Hard to remember what her father’s face had actually looked like. It’s because she has seen too many photographs of him. They’ve pushed out her own memories. But she recognizes the shirt. Cotton, but soft as silk from all the washing. White background, black and red lines making a checked pattern. The knife in his belt. The leather dark and shiny. The beautifully patterned bone handle. Herself, no more than seven, she knows that for certain. Blue machine-knitted hat with a pattern of white snowflakes. Sturdy boots. She has a knife in her belt too, a small one. It’s mostly for appearance’s sake. Although she has tried to use it. Wanted to carve something with it. Figures. Like Astrid Lindgren’s Emil in Lönneberga. But it’s too feeble. If she’s going to use the knife she has to borrow Daddy’s. It’s better when she wants to split wood or sharpen kebab sticks, sometimes for carving, although it never quite turns out to be anything.
Rebecka looked down at her high-heeled boots from Lagerson’s. Sorry, she said to the forest. I’m not dressed appropriately these days.
Micke Kiviniemi wiped over the bar counter with a cloth. It was just after four on Tuesday afternoon. Their overnight guest, Rebecka Martinsson, was sitting alone at one of the window tables gazing out toward the river. She was the only female customer, had eaten elk steak with mashed potato and Mimmi’s wild mushrooms, drinking from her glass of red wine from time to time, oblivious to the glances of the village lads.
They were usually the first in. On a Saturday they came in as early as three o’clock to have an early dinner, sink a few beers and kill the empty hours until there was something good on TV. Malte Alajärvi was chatting to Mimmi as usual. He enjoyed that. Later the evening gang would turn up to have a few beers and watch the sport. It was mostly single men who came to Micke’s to eat. But a few couples would turn up as well. And one or two from the women’s group. And the staff from Jukkasjärvi tourist village often took the boat across the river and came in to eat.
“What the hell is this supposed to be?” Malte complained, pointing at the menu. “Gno…”
“Gnocchi,” said Mimmi. “It’s like little pieces of pasta. Gnocchi with tomato and mozzarella. And you can have a piece of grilled meat or chicken with it.”
She positioned herself next to Malte and demonstratively took her notepad out of her apron pocket.
As if she needed it, thought Micke. She could take an order from a party of twelve and keep it in her head. Unbelievable.
He looked at Mimmi. If he had to choose between her and Rebecka Martinsson, Mimmi would win by a mile. Mimmi’s mother Lisa had been a looker when she was young too, the old men in the village had plenty to say about her. And Lisa was still attractive. It was hard to hide, despite the fact that she always went around with no makeup, wore terrible clothes and cut her own hair. In the middle of the night with the sheep shears, as Mimmi said. But while Lisa shut off her beauty as much as she could, Mimmi showed hers off. Apron tight around her hips. The tendrils of stripy hair curling out from underneath the little handkerchief she’d knotted around her head. Low-cut, tight black sweaters. And when she leaned forward to wipe the table, anyone who wanted could get a very pleasant eyeful of her cleavage, her breasts swinging gently, held in place by a lacy bra. Always red, black or lilac. From behind you could get a glimpse of the tattoo of a lizard high up on her right buttock when her low-cut jeans slipped down as she bent forward.
He remembered when they’d first met. She’d been visiting her mother, and offered to work one evening. There were people wanting a meal, and as usual his brother hadn’t turned up, although this whole bar thing had been his idea from the start, and so Micke was left on his own. She’d offered to throw together some bar food and do the serving. The word spread that same evening. The lads hadn’t wasted any time ringing their mates on their cell phones. Everybody came in to have a look at her.
And so she stayed. For a while, she always said evasively when he tried to sort things out. When he tried to say it would be good for the business if he knew, so they could plan for the future, she sounded uncomfortable.
“Best not count on me, then.”
Later, when they ended up in bed, he dared to ask her again. How long she’d be staying.
“Till something better turns up,” she answered that time, and grinned.
And they weren’t a couple, she’d made that very clear to him. He’d had quite a few girlfriends. Even lived with one of them for a while. So he knew what the words meant. You’re a wonderful person, but… I’m not ready… If I were going to fall in love with anybody at the moment, it would be you… Can’t tie myself down. They all meant one thing: I don’t love you. You’ll do for the moment.
She’d changed the whole place. Started by helping him get rid of his brother. Who neither worked nor did anything toward paying off the debts. Just came in and drank with his mates without paying. A bunch of losers who were quite happy to let his brother be king for the evening as long as he was getting the drinks in.
“It’s a very simple choice,” Mimmi had said to his brother. “Either we dissolve the whole thing, and you’re left with a pile of debts. Or you pass it over to Micke.”
And his brother signed. Red-rimmed eyes. The slightly stale body odor seeping through the T-shirt that hadn’t been changed for days. And that new tone of anger in his voice. The alcoholic’s temper.
“But the sign belongs to me,” he’d informed them, shoving the contract away from him.
“I’ve got loads of ideas,” he went on, tapping his head.
“Take it whenever you want,” Micke had said.
Thought: that’ll be the day.
He remembered how his brother had found the sign on the Internet. An old bar sign from the USA. “LAST STOP DINER,” white neon letters on a red background. They’d been ridiculously pleased with it at the time. But why should Micke care about it now? He’d had other plans even then. “Mimmi’s” was a good name for a bar. But she didn’t want any of that. It ended up as “Micke’s Bar and Diner.”
“Why do you have to do such weird stuff?”
Malte looked down at the menu, his expression troubled.
“There’s nothing weird about it,” said Mimmi. “In fact it’s just like dumplings, but smaller.”
“Dumplings and tomatoes, how much weirder can it get? No, give me something out of the freezer. I’ll have lasagne.”
Mimmi disappeared into the kitchen.
“And forget the rabbit food,” Malte shouted after her. “Did you hear me? No salad!”
Micke turned to Rebecka Martinsson.
“Will you be staying tonight as well?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Where would I go? she thought. Where would I drive to? What would I do? At least there’s nobody who knows me here.
“That priest,” she said. “The one who died.”
“Mildred Nilsson.”
“What was she like?”
“Bloody good, I thought. She and Mimmi are the best things that have happened to this village. And this place too. When I started it was full of nothing but unmarried old men from eighteen to eighty-three. But when Mildred moved here the women started to come in. She sort of gave the village a new lease on life.”
“Was it the priest who told them to come to the bar?”
Micke laughed.
“To eat! She was like that. Thought the women should get out a bit. Take a break from the kitchen. And then they brought their husbands with them and had a meal sometimes when they didn’t feel like cooking. The atmosphere in here changed completely when the women started coming in. Before the old men used to just sit around moaning.”
“No we didn’t,” interrupted Malte Alajärvi, who’d been eavesdropping.
“You moaned then and you’re still moaning now. Sitting here staring out across the river and complaining about Yngve Bergqvist and Jukkasjärvi…”
“Yes, but that Yngve…”
“And you whinge about the food and the government and the fact that there’s never anything good on TV…”
“A load of bloody game shows!”
“… and about everything else!”
“All I said about Yngve Bergqvist was that he’s a bloody con artist who’ll sell any damned thing as long as it says “Arctic” before it. It’s Arctic sled dogs and Arctic safari and I swear the bloody Japanese will pay an extra two hundred to go to a genuine Arctic shit-house.”
Micke turned to Rebecka.
“You see what I mean.”
Then he became serious.
“Why are you asking? You’re not a journalist, are you?”
“Oh no, I was just wondering. I mean, she lived here, and… No, that lawyer I was in here with yesterday evening, I work for him.”
“Carry his bag and book his flights?”
“Something like that.”
Rebecka Martinsson looked at the clock. She’d been afraid that a furious Anna-Maria Mella would turn up demanding the keys to the safe, but she’d wanted it to happen as well. But presumably the priest’s husband hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe he didn’t know what the keys were for. It was a complete bloody mess. She looked out of the window. It was starting to get dark. She heard a car drive onto the gravel yard outside.
Her cell phone buzzed in her bag. She rooted it out and looked at the display. The law firm’s number.
Måns, she thought, and hurried out onto the steps.
It was Maria Taube.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” answered Rebecka.
“I was talking to Torsten. He said you’d hooked them anyway.”
“Mmm…”
“And he said you’d stayed behind to take care of a few things.” Rebecka didn’t reply.
“Have you been to the village where your grandmother’s house is, what was it called again?”
“Kurravaara. No.”
“Problem?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
“Why don’t you go up there, then?”
“I just haven’t got around to it,” said Rebecka. “I’ve been a bit too busy helping our future clients sort out a load of crap.”
“Don’t snap at me, honey,” said Maria gently. “Spill. What kind of crap?”
Rebecka told her. She suddenly felt so tired she wanted to sit down on the steps.
Maria sighed at the other end of the phone.
“Bloody Torsten,” she said. “I’ll…”
“No, you won’t,” said Rebecka. “The worst thing is the locker, though. It must have the priest’s personal stuff in it. There could be letters and… anything. If anybody should have what’s in there, it’s her husband. And the police. There could be some sort of evidence, we don’t know.”
“I’m sure her boss will pass on anything that might be of interest to the police,” Maria Taube ventured.
“Maybe,” said Rebecka in subdued voice.
There was a silence between them for a moment. Rebecka kicked at the gravel with her shoe.
“But I thought you went up there to go into the lion’s den,” said Maria Taube. “That’s why you went with Torsten, after all.”
“Yeah yeah.”
“For God’s sake, Rebecka, don’t give me the yeah-yeah! I’m your friend and I’ve got to say this. You just keep on backing off. If you daren’t go into town and you daren’t go up to Kurrkavaara…”
“Kurravaara.”
“… and you’re just sitting there hiding in some village bar up the river, where are you going to end up?”
“I don’t know.”
Maria Taube didn’t speak.
“It’s not that easy,” said Rebecka in the end.
“Do you think I think it is? I can come up and keep you company, if you want.”
“No,” Rebecka cut her off.
“Okay, I’ve said my piece. And I’ve made the offer.”
“And I appreciate it, but…”
“You don’t need to appreciate it. Now I’ve got to do some work if I’m going to get home before midnight. I’ll call you. Måns asked how you were, by the way. I think he’s worried. Rebecka, do you remember what it was like when you went to the swimming pool when you were at school? And you jumped from the top board straight away, so you wouldn’t be scared of the other heights. Go up to the Crystal Church and go to one of their hallelujah services. Then you’ll have got the worst over. Didn’t you tell me last Christmas that Sanna and her family and Thomas Söderberg’s family had moved away from Kiruna?”
“You won’t tell him, will you?”
“Who?”
“Måns. That I… oh, I don’t know.”
“Of course not. I’ll call, okay.”
Erik Nilsson is sitting stock-still at the kitchen table in the priest’s house. His dead wife is sitting opposite him. He daren’t say anything for a long time. He hardly dares breathe. The least word or movement and reality cracks and splinters into a thousand pieces.
And if he blinks she’s bound to be gone when he opens his eyes.
Mildred grins.
You’re funny, you are, she says. You can believe that the universe is endless, that time is relative, that it can turn and go backwards.
The clock on the wall has stopped. The windows are mirrors. How many times has he invoked his dead wife these last three months? Wished that she would come gliding up to his bed in the darkness at night. Or that he might hear her voice as the wind whispers through the trees.
You can’t stay here, Erik, she says.
He nods. It’s just that there’s so much. What shall he do with all the things, the books, the furniture? He doesn’t know where to start. It’s an insurmountable obstacle. As soon as he thinks about it, he’s overwhelmed by such exhaustion that he has to go and lie down, even though it’s the middle of the day.
Sod it, then, she says. Sod the lot of it. I don’t care about all this stuff.
He knows it’s true. All the furniture comes from her parents’ home. She was the only daughter of a parish priest, and both her parents died while she was at university.
She refuses to feel sorry for him. She always has. It still makes him secretly angry with her. That was the bad Mildred. Not bad in the sense of nasty or malicious. But the Mildred who hurt him. Who wounded him. If you want to stay with me, then I’m pleased, she said when she was alive. But you’re an adult, you choose your own life.
Was that right? he thinks as so many times before. Is it all right to be so uncompromising? I lived her life, all the way. True, I made my own choice. But shouldn’t you meet halfway in love?
She looks down at the table. He can’t start thinking about children again, because then she’s bound to disappear like a shadow through the wall. He’s got to pull himself together. He’s always had to pull himself together. It’s almost black in the kitchen.
She was the one who didn’t want to. The first few years they did have sex. In the evenings. Or in the middle of the night, if he woke her up. Always with the light off. And still he could feel her stiff, ill-concealed reluctance if he wanted to do anything other than just stick it in. In the end it stopped of its own accord. He stopped making the approach, she didn’t bother. Sometimes the wound opened and they’d quarrel. He might snivel that she didn’t love him, that her job took everything. That he wanted children. And she, palms upward: What do you want from me? If you’re unhappy, it’s up to you to get up and go. His turn: Go where? Who to? The storms always passed. Everyday life stumbled on. And it was always, or almost always, good enough for him.
Her bony elbow on the table. The nail of her index finger tapping thoughtfully on the varnished surface. She looks deep in thought, with that stubborn expression she always gets when she’s come up with some idea.
He’s used to preparing food for her. Takes the plate covered with clingfilm out of the fridge when she gets home late, pops it in the microwave. Makes sure she eats. Or runs a bath. Tells her not to keep winding her hair round her finger, because she’ll finish up bald. But now he doesn’t know what to do. Or say. He wants to ask her what it’s like. On the other side.
I don’t know, she says. But it’s drawing me toward it. It’s powerful.
He might have bloody known it. She’s here because she wants something. He’s suddenly terrified that she’ll disappear. Gone.
“Help me,” he says to her. “Help me get out of here.”
She can see that he won’t manage it on his own. And she sees his rage. The secret hatred of the dependent, who can’t cope on their own. But it doesn’t matter anymore. She gets up. Places her hand on the back of his neck. Draws his face toward her breast.
Let’s go, she says after a while.
It’s quarter past seven when he closes the door of the house behind him for the very last time in his life. Everything he’s taking with him fits into a supermarket carrier bag. One of the neighbors pulls the curtain aside, leans against the windowpane and watches him with curiosity as he chucks the bag into the backseat of the car.
Mildred gets into the passenger seat. When the car drives out through the gate he feels almost elated. Like the summer before they got married. When they drove around Ireland. And Mildred is definitely sitting there with a little smile on her face.
They stop on the track outside Micke’s. He just wants to drop the key off with that Rebecka Martinsson.
To his surprise she’s standing outside the bar. Her cell phone is in her hand, but she’s not talking. Her arm is hanging straight down by her side. When she catches sight of him she almost looks as if she’d like to run away. He approaches her slowly, almost pleading. As if he were approaching a frightened dog.
“I thought I’d give you the key to the house,” he says. “Then you can pass it on to the priest along with Mildred’s work keys, and tell him I’ve moved out.”
She doesn’t say anything. Takes the key. Doesn’t ask about his furniture or property. Stands there. Cell phone in one hand, the key in the other. He’d like to say something. Ask for forgiveness, perhaps. Take her in his arms and stroke her hair.
But Mildred has got out of the car and is standing by the side of the road calling to him.
Come away now! she shouts. There’s nothing you can do for her. Somebody else will help her.
So he turns around and shambles back to the car.
As soon as he’s sitting down the unhappiness Rebecka Martinsson has infected him with begins to ease. The road up to town is dark and exciting. Mildred is sitting beside him. He parks outside the Ferrum hotel.
“I’ve forgiven you,” he says.
She looks down at her lap. Shakes her head slightly.
I didn’t ask for forgiveness, she says.
It’s two o’clock in the morning. Rebecka Martinsson is sleeping. Curiosity works its way in through the window like the tendrils of a climbing plant. Winds itself around her heart. Sends out roots and shoots, spreading through her body. Twining around her rib cage. Spinning a cocoon around her chest.
When she wakes up in the middle of the night it has grown into an irresistible compulsion. The sounds from the bar have died away in the autumn night. A branch is whipping and banging angrily on the metal roof of the chalet. The moon is almost full. The deathly pale light pours in through the window. Catches the bunch of keys, lying there on the pine table.
She gets up and dresses. Doesn’t need to put the light on. The moonlight is enough. She looks at her watch. Thinks of Anna-Maria Mella. She likes the policewoman. She’s a woman who’s chosen to try to do the right thing.
She goes outside. There’s a strong wind blowing. The rowans and the birch trees are whipping wildly to and fro. The trunks of the pine trees creak and groan.
She gets into the car and drives off.
She drives to the churchyard. It isn’t far. Nor is it very big. She doesn’t have to search for long before she finds the priest’s grave. Lots of flowers. Roses. Heather. Mildred Nilsson. And an empty space for her husband.
She was born in the same year as Mum, thinks Rebecka. Mum would have been fifty-five in November.
Everything is silent. But Rebecka can’t hear the silence. The wind is blowing so hard it’s roaring in her ears.
She stands there for a while looking at the stone. Then she goes back to the car, parked on the other side of the wall. When she gets into the car, it’s suddenly quiet.
What did you expect? she says to herself. Did you think the priest would be standing there, an apparition on her grave, pointing the way?
That would have made things easier, of course. But it’s her own decision.
So the parish priest wants the key to Mildred Nilsson’s locker. What’s in there? Why hasn’t anybody told the police about the locker? They want the key handed over discreetly. They’re expecting Rebecka to do just that.
It doesn’t matter, she thinks. I can do whatever I like.
Inspector Anna-Maria Mella woke up in the middle of the night. It was the coffee. Whenever she drank coffee late in the evening, she always woke up in the middle of the night and lay there tossing and turning for an hour before she could get back to sleep. Sometimes she’d get up. It was quite a nice time, really. The whole family was asleep, and she could listen to the radio with a cup of camomile tea in the kitchen, or fold laundry, or whatever, and lose herself in her thoughts.
She went down to the cellar and switched on the iron. Let the conversation with the husband of the murdered woman replay in her head.
ERIK NILSSON: We’ll sit here in the kitchen so we can keep an eye on your car.
ANNA-MARIA: Oh yes?
ERIK NILSSON: Our friends usually park down by the bar or a little distance away. Otherwise there’s the risk that you might get your tires slashed or the paint scratched or something.
ANNA-MARIA: I see.
ERIK NILSSON: Oh, it’s not too bad. But a year ago there was a lot of that sort of thing going on.
ANNA-MARIA: Did you report it to the police?
ERIK NILSSON: They can’t do anything. Even if you know who it is, there’s never any proof. Nobody’s ever seen anything. And people are scared. It might be their shed on fire next time.
ANNA-MARIA: Did somebody set fire to your shed?
ERIK NILSSON: Yes, it was a man in the village… At least we think it was him. His wife left him and stayed here with us for a while.
That was nice, thought Anna-Maria. Erik Nilsson had his chance to have a go at her then, but he let it go. He could have let bitterness creep into his voice, talked about how the police didn’t do anything and ended up blaming them for his wife’s death.
She was ironing one of Robert’s shirts, God, the cuffs were really worn. The shirt steamed beneath the iron. There was a good smell of freshly ironed cotton.
And he was well used to talking to women, that was obvious. Sometimes she forgot herself and answered his questions, not to gain his trust, but because he’d managed to gain hers. Like when he asked about her children. He knew just what was typical at their ages. Asked if Gustav had learned the word no yet.
ANNA-MARIA: It depends. If it’s me saying no, he doesn’t understand. But if it’s him…
Erik Nilsson laughs, but all at once becomes serious.
ANNA-MARIA: Big house.
ERIK NILSSON: (sighs) It’s never really been a home. It’s half priest’s house and half hotel.
ANNA-MARIA: But now it’s empty.
ERIK NILSSON: Yes, the women’s group, Magdalena, thought there’d be too much talk. You know, the priest’s widower consoling himself with assorted vulnerable women. They’re probably right, I suppose.
ANNA-MARIA: I have to ask, how were things between you and your wife?
ERIK NILSSON: Must you?
ANNA-MARIA:-
ERIK NILSSON: Fine. I had an enormous amount of respect for Mildred.
ANNA-MARIA:
ERIK NILSSON: She wasn’t the sort of woman who’s a dime a dozen. Not that sort of priest either. She was so incredibly… passionate about everything she did. She really felt she had a calling here in Kiruna and in the village.
ANNA-MARIA: Where did she come from originally?
ERIK NILSSON: She was born and bred in Uppsala. Daughter of a parish priest. We met when I was studying physics. She used to say she was fighting against moderation. “As soon as you feel too strongly about something, the church sets up a crisis group.” She talked too much, too quickly and too loudly. And she was almost manic once she got an idea in her head. It could drive you mad. I wished a thousand times that she was a bit more moderate. But… [gestures with his hand]… when a person like that is snatched away… it isn’t only my loss.
She’d looked around the house. There was nothing next to Mildred’s side of the double bed. No books. No alarm clock. No Bible.
Suddenly Erik Nilsson was standing behind her.
“She had her own room,” he said.
It was a little room under the eaves. There were no flowers in the window, just a lamp and some ceramic birds. The narrow bed was still unmade, just as she must have left it. A red fleecy dressing gown lay carelessly tossed across it. On the floor beside the bed, a tower of books. Anna-Maria had looked at the titles: Beyond the Bible, Language for an Adult Belief, a biblical reference book, some children’s books and books for teenagers. Anna-Maria recognized Winnie-the-Pooh, Anne of Green Gables, and underneath the whole lot an untidy pile of torn out newspaper articles.
“There’s nothing to see here,” said Erik Nilsson tiredly. “There’s nothing more for you to see.”
It was odd, thought Anna-Maria, folding the children’s clothes. It was as if he was hanging on to his dead wife. Her mail lay unopened in a big pile on the table. Her glass of water was still on the bedside table, and beside it her reading glasses. The rest of the house was so clean and tidy, he just couldn’t bring himself to tidy her away. And it was a lovely home. Just like something out of one of those interior design magazines. And yet he’d said it wasn’t a home, but “half priest’s house, half hotel.” And then he also said he “respected her.” Strange.
Rebecka drove slowly into town. The gray white moonlight was absorbed by the asphalt and the rotting leaf canopy. The trees were pulled back and forth in the wind, seemed as if they were almost reaching out hungrily for the poor light, but getting nothing. They remained naked and black. Wrung out and tortured just before their winter sleep.
She drove past the parish hall. It was a low building made of white bricks and dark-stained wood. She turned up on to Gruvvägen and parked behind the old dry cleaner’s.
She could still change her mind. No, actually, she couldn’t.
What’s the worst that can happen? she thought. I can get arrested and fined. Lose a job I’ve already lost.
Having got this far, it felt as if the worst she could do would be to go back to the chalet and back to bed. Get on the plane to Stockholm tomorrow morning and keep on hoping that she’d be sufficiently sorted out on the inside to go back to work again.
She thought about her mother. The memory rose to the surface, vivid and tangible. She could almost see her through the side window of the car. Nice hair. The pea green coat she’d made herself, with a wide belt around the waist and a fur collar. The one that made the neighbors roll their eyes to heaven when she swished past. Who exactly did she think she was? And the high-heeled boots that she hadn’t even bought in Kiruna, but in Luleå.
It felt like a stab of love in her breast. She’s seven years old, reaching out her hand for her mummy. Her coat is so beautiful. And her face too. Sometime when she was even younger she’d said, “You’re like a Barbie doll, Mummy.” And Mummy laughed and hugged her. Rebecka took the opportunity to breathe in all those wonderful aromas at close quarters. Mummy’s hair smelled nice. The powder on her face too, but it smelled different. And the perfume in the hollow of her throat. Rebecka said the same thing on several occasions afterward too: “You look like a Barbie doll,” just because Mummy had been so pleased. But she was never as pleased as that again. It was as if it had only worked the first time. “That’s enough, now” her mother had said in the end.
Now Rebecka remembered. There was more. If you looked a little more closely. What the neighbors didn’t see. That the shoes were cheap. The nails split and bitten right down. The hand that carried the cigarette to the lips shaking slightly, as it does when people are of a nervous disposition.
On the rare occasions when Rebecka thought about her, she always remembered her as being frozen. Wearing two thick sweaters and woolly socks at home by the kitchen table.
Or like now, shoulders slightly raised, there’s no room for a thick sweater under the elegant coat. The hand that isn’t holding the cigarette is hidden in the coat pocket. She peers into the car and finds Rebecka. Narrow, searching eyes. Corners of her mouth turned down. Who’s crazy now?
I’m not crazy, thought Rebecka. I’m not like you.
She got out of the car and walked quickly toward the parish hall. Almost running away from the memory of the woman in the pea green coat.
Someone had kindly smashed the light above the back door of the hall. Rebecka tried the keys. There might be an alarm. Either the cheap version that only sounds inside the building, to frighten away thieves. Or a proper one that goes through to a security firm.
It’s okay, she told herself. The national guard aren’t likely to turn up; it’ll be some tired security guy in a car who’ll pull up outside the front door. Plenty of time to get away.
Suddenly one of the keys fitted. Rebecka turned it and slipped inside into the darkness. Silence. No alarm. No beeping noise to indicate that she had sixty seconds to punch in a code. The parish hall was in the basement, so the back door was upstairs and the main entrance was on the ground floor. She knew the office was upstairs. She didn’t bother creeping about.
There’s nobody here, she said to herself.
It felt as if her footsteps were echoing as she walked quickly across the stone floor to the office.
The room containing the lockers was inside. It was narrow and windowless; she had to put the light on.
Her pulse rate increased and she fumbled with the keys as she tried them in the locks of the unmarked gray lockers. If anybody came along now, she had no way of escape. She tried to listen out on to the stairs and the street. The keys were making more noise than church bells.
When she tried the third locker the key turned smoothly in the lock. It must be Mildred Nilsson’s. Rebecka opened it and looked inside.
It was a small locker. There wasn’t much, but it was almost full. A number of small boxes and fabric bags containing jewelry. A pearl necklace, some heavy gold rings with stones inset, earrings. Two wedding rings, worn smooth with age, left to her no doubt. A blue folder, containing a pile of papers. There were also several letters in the locker. The addresses on the envelopes were in different handwriting.
Now what do I do? thought Rebecka.
She wondered what the parish priest might know about the contents of the locker? Would he miss anything?
She took a deep breath, then went through the whole lot. Sat on the floor and sorted it all into piles around her. Her brain was working as it usually did now, quickly, taking in information, processing, sorting. Half an hour later Rebecka switched on the office’s photocopier.
She took the letters as they were. There might be prints or traces on them. She put them in a plastic bag she found in a drawer.
She copied the papers from the blue folder. She put the copies along with the letters in the plastic bag. She put the folder back in the locker and locked it, turned off the light and left. It was half past three in the morning.
Anna-Maria Mella was woken by her daughter Jenny tugging at her arm.
“Mummy, there’s somebody ringing the doorbell.”
The children knew they weren’t allowed to open the door at unusual times. As a police officer in a small town, you could get strange visitors at odd times. Tearful thugs looking for the only mother confessor they had, or colleagues with serious faces and the car engine running. And sometimes, very rarely, but it did happen, somebody who was angry or high on something, often both.
Anna-Maria got up, told Jenny to creep in beside Robert, and went down into the hall. She had her cell phone in the pocket of her dressing gown, the number to the main police switchboard already keyed in, checked through the spy hole first and then opened the door.
Rebecka Martinsson was standing outside.
Anna-Maria asked her in. Rebecka stood just inside the door. Didn’t take her coat off. Didn’t want a cup of tea or anything.
“You’re investigating the murder of Mildred Nilsson,” she said. “These are letters and copies of personal papers that belonged to her.”
She handed over a plastic bag of papers and letters, and explained briefly how she’d got hold of the material.
“I’m sure you understand that it wouldn’t look good for me if it came out that I’d passed this on to you. If you can come up with some other explanation, I’d be grateful. If you can’t, well…”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“… well, then I’ll just have to roll with it,” she said with a wry smile.
Anna-Maria peered into the bag.
“A locker in the priests’ office?” she asked.
Rebecka nodded.
“Why didn’t anybody tell the police that…”
She broke off and looked at Rebecka.
“Thank you!” she said. “I won’t tell anybody how we got hold of them.”
Rebecka made a move to go.
“You did the right thing,” said Anna-Maria. “You do know that?”
It was difficult to know whether she was talking about what had happened two years ago in Jiekajärvi, or if she meant the photocopies and letters in the plastic bag.
Rebecka made a movement with her head. She might have been nodding. But she might have been shaking her head.
When she’d gone Anna-Maria stood there in the hall. She had an irresistible urge to scream out loud. What the hell, she wanted to yell. How the hell could they not hand this over to us?
Rebecka Martinsson is sitting on the bed in her chalet. She can see the contours of the back of the chair outlined against the gray rectangle of moonlight in the window.
Now, she thought. Now the panic ought to kick in. If anybody finds out about this, I’m toast. I’ll be convicted of illegal entry and unauthorized interference, I’ll never work again.
But the panic wouldn’t come. No regrets either. Instead she felt quite light hearted.
I can always get a job as a ticket collector, she thought.
She lay down and looked up at the ceiling. Felt slightly elated in a crazy way.
A mouse was rustling about in the wall. Nibbling and scampering up and down. Rebecka knocked on the wall and it went quiet for a while. Then it started again.
Rebecka smiled. And fell asleep. With her clothes on and without having brushed her teeth.
She had a dream.
She is sitting up on Daddy’s shoulders. It’s blueberry time. Daddy’s got the basket on his back. It’s heavy, with the basket and Rebecka.
“Don’t lean,” he says when she stretches over to catch the beard lichen hanging from the trees.
Grandmother is walking behind them. Blue cardigan and gray head scarf. She has an economical way of moving in the forest. Doesn’t lift her foot any higher than necessary. A kind of rapid trot with short steps. They have two dogs with them; Jussi, the gray dog, sticks with Grandmother. He’s getting old, saving his strength. And Jacki, the youngster, some kind of pointer cross, rushes here and there, he can never get enough of the different smells, disappears from sight, sometimes you hear him barking several kilometers away.
Late in the afternoon she is lying by the fire and sleeping while the adults have gone a little further away to pick berries. She’s using Daddy’s Helly Hansen as a pillow. The afternoon sun warms her, but the shadows are long. The fire keeps the mosquitoes away. The dogs come and look at her from time to time. Nudge her face gently with their noses then scamper away before she has time to pat them or put her arms around their necks.