At 6.05 in the morning Rebecka Martinsson rang Anna-Maria Mella. Mella answered in a low voice, so as not to wake Robert. Robert snuggled up behind her and fell asleep again, his warm breath fanning the back of her neck.
“I read the notes you made after talking to Johannes Svarvare,” Martinsson said.
“Mmm.”
“You recorded that he gave the impression of wanting to say something, but that he cut the interview short by lying down on the sofa and closing his eyes.”
“Yes, although he first took out his false teeth and tossed them into a glass.”
Martinsson laughed.
“Is it O.K. with you if I ask him to put his teeth back in and have a word with me?”
Mella vacillated between two reactions. Of course they would need to interview Svarvare again. She felt annoyed at not having reached that conclusion herself, and even more annoyed because Martinsson wanted to repeat the interrogation Mella had already done. But at the same time she realized that Martinsson was phoning her as a peace-making gesture. That was decent of her. Martinsson was good. Mella decided not to sulk.
“That’ll be fine,” she said. “When I spoke to him we were still investigating what looked like an accidental death with a few details that needed clarifying.”
“You wrote that he had been talking to Wilma, and had told her more than he ought to have done.”
“Yes.”
Mella began to feel uneasy. She really had handled that interrogation badly.
“But he didn’t say anything about what they actually discussed?”
“No. I suppose I ought to have pressed him, though I’m not sure how; but like I said, it wasn’t a murder investigation then.”
She fell silent.
Don’t start making excuses, she told herself.
“Hey,” Martinsson said, “you handled the situation extremely well. You made all these notes. Observed that there seemed to be something else he wanted to say. O.K., so we know what we need to concentrate on in round two, now that we’ve established what this case is really about.”
“Thank you,” Mella said.
“It’s me who should be thanking you.”
“For what?”
“For trusting me to go and talk to him.”
“I can always conduct round three, if necessary. When are you going to see him?”
“Now.”
“Now? But it’s only…”
“Yes, but you know what old people are like. When they finally get the chance to get the night’s sleep they’ve always longed for, they wake up at 4.00 in the morning.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am. I’m sitting in my car outside his house. He just looked out at me from behind his kitchen curtain for the third time.”
“She’s mad,” Mella said when she had hung up.
“Who?” Robert said as he caressed her breasts.
“Rebecka Martinsson. She’s taken over the investigation. I like the woman, for Christ’s sake – I mean, I saved her life back there in Jiekajärvi: that does things to you. And she’s fun to talk to when she relaxes. Even if we are very different. She’s a bloody good prosecutor.”
Robert kissed the back of her neck, and pressed his lower body against her backside.
Mella sighed.
“I suppose I’m put out because she seems to be taking everything over. I’d really prefer to run this case myself.”
“She needs to realize that you’re an alpha female,” Robert said, squeezing her nipples.
“Yes,” she said.
“Didn’t you read a book recently? What was it called – There’s a Special Place in Hell for Women Who Don’t Help Each Other?”
“No, you’re thinking of There’s a Special Place in Hell for Men Who Don’t Have the Sense to Agree When Their Wives Act Like a Bitch. Hey, what do you think you’re going to do with this?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly into her ear. “What does the alpha bitch want me to do with it?”
Svarvare offered Martinsson a cup of coffee to start the day. Declining his best china, she asked for a mug instead. And accepted his offer of a sandwich. He smelled dirty the way old men do; hygiene was evidently not his strong point. He was wearing a vest under a knitted cardigan. A pair of black trousers, very shiny at the rear, held up by braces. She could not suppress the feeling that she did not want to put anything in her mouth that he had touched. When had he last washed his hands? She shuddered at the thought that the fingers he had used to hold his false teeth had also been in contact with the bread and whatever he had put into the sandwich.
But then again I can allow a dog I have never seen before to lick my mouth, she thought.
She smiled and looked down at Vera, who was sniffing around under the kitchen table, gulping down scraps of food and crumbs, and licking the legs of the bench where something had trickled down and dried up.
Including you, you filthy little swine! she thought. I must be out of my mind.
“You knew Wilma, is that right?” she said.
“Yes, of course,” Svarvare said, downing half his mug of coffee.
There are questions he is dreading that I might ask, Martinsson thought. I’ll start with the easy ones.
“Can you tell me a bit about her?”
He seemed surprised. Relieved at the same time.
“She was so young,” Svarvare said, shaking his head. “Much too young. But you know, it’s a good thing if youngsters come to a village like this one. And when she moved in with Anni, Simon Kyrö also started to come and visit his uncle. The whole place seemed to come to life. Those of us who live here are all old-timers. But her and her friends – well, they looked like…”
He held up both hands and bent his fingers to look like claws, and pulled a face intended to be frightening.
“Black all round their eyes, and black clothes. But they were fun. And there was no harm in them. Once they borrowed kick-sledges from us old-timers and went racing around the village. There must have been ten of them. Careering around and shouting and laughing. Taking it in turns to give the others rides. Like a flock of crows. They say that young people nowadays just sit around indoors and gape at computers. Not her.”
“Did she visit you sometimes?”
“Oh yes, often. She liked to hear me going on about the old days. It’s not the old days for me, of course: everything seems to have happened quite recently. You’ll understand what I mean one of these days. It’s only your body that grows old. Inside here I feel…”
He tapped the side of his forehead and grinned.
“… like a seventeen-year-old.”
“Did you tell her anything you regret having told her?”
He fell silent. Stared at a deep scratch in the middle of the kitchen table.
“You liked her, I think?”
He nodded.
“She was murdered, as you know. She and Simon went diving, and someone made sure they never came back up again. At any rate, she never came back up again. Strictly speaking the boy’s still missing, but presumably he’s somewhere in Vittangijärvi.”
“I thought they found her in the Torne, downstream from Tervaskoski?”
“Yes, they did. But she’d been moved there. Don’t you think you owe it to her to tell me what’s nagging at you?”
He stared at the scratch on the table.
“You should let sleeping dogs lie,” he said.
Martinsson’s hand shot out of its own accord and covered the scratch in the table.
“But sometimes those sleeping dogs wake up,” she said. “And now Wilma’s dead. I think you’re an honourable man. Think of Wilma. And Anni Autio.”
Her last remark was a gamble. She had no idea what sort of a relationship he had with Anni Autio.
He poured himself some more coffee. She noticed that he placed his left hand over his right one in order to keep it steady.
“Well,” he said. “But don’t tell anybody I said anything, mind. I told Wilma about an aeroplane that had been missing since 1943. It came down somewhere. I’ve spent ages thinking about that aeroplane. Wondering where it might have crashed. I told Wilma I thought it must have come down either in Vittangijärvi, Harrijärvi or Övre Vuolusjärvi.”
“What kind of a plane was it?”
“I don’t know, I never saw it. But it was German. The Germans had big storage depots in Luleå. One of them was right next to the cathedral. Oberleutnant Walther Zindel was in charge of them. The German troops in the north of Norway and Finnish Lapland needed weapons and food supplies, of course, and so the Germans used the port of Luleå in the north of Sweden. Their fleet was inferior to the British one, so they didn’t dare rely on supplies reaching them via the Norwegian coast.”
“I know, of course, that they were allowed to use our railway network,” Martinsson said slowly. “For transporting troops going on leave and coming back again.”
Sucking hard at his dentures, Svarvare eyed her up and down as if she were mentally deficient.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Anyway, Isak Krekula was a haulier. I left school at the age of twelve and started working for him. I was strong, and I could carry things and load lorries. I also did a bit of driving now and then – they weren’t so strict about it in them days. Anyway, that evening in the autumn of 1943, Isak drove one of his lorries to Kurravaara, and I went with him. Swedish Railways had stopped transporting German troops that summer, so we were never short of work – not that we had been before, come to that. The troops had to be provided for. So we sat there, waiting and waiting. There was me, Isak, and some of the lads from the village he’d hired to help with the unloading and reloading. But we gave up when morning came and nothing had happened. Isak paid one of the village lads to stay on and look out for the aeroplane, and to telephone if it turned up. But it seemed to have been gobbled up somewhere. Isak heard eventually that nobody knew what had happened to it. But you know, people didn’t talk about that sort of thing. Not then, and certainly not now. It was sensitive, you see.”
How sensitive? Martinsson wondered. Sufficiently sensitive for two young people to be killed to prevent gossip starting up again? Surely that could not be possible?
“It’s so long ago,” Svarvare said. “It happened, and now it’s in the past. Nobody wants to remember what went on. And before long all those who can will be dead and buried. The girls who used to stand by the railway lines and wave to the German soldiers in the trains on their way up to Narvik, all those who celebrated the arson attack on the Norrskensflamman in 1940 – you know, the attack on the Communist, anti-German newspaper based in Luleå – and all those who fraternized with the Germans stationed in the north. And my God, you should have seen the fuss in support of the German consul Weiler – all the miners who were excused military service because we were selling steel to Germany, they were all in favour of that. It was only afterwards that they started going on about how we had to do it because we’d have had our throats slit if we didn’t. Let’s face it, even the king was a sympathizer.”
Svarvare wiped away a drop of coffee that had trickled down the side of his mouth.
“I just thought it might be exciting for the kids to go looking for a wrecked aeroplane.”
Martinsson thought for a moment.
“You asked me not to tell anybody that you’d been speaking to me,” she said. “To whom shouldn’t I say anything? Are you frightened of anybody in particular?”
Svarvare took his time, then sat up straight and looked her in the eye.
“The Krekulas,” he said. “Isak has always been keen to jump in with both feet no matter what. He’d be quite capable of setting fire to a house while the occupants were asleep. And the boys follow in his footsteps. They were so put out when I said I’d told Wilma about that plane. All that was done and finished with, they reckoned. I’ve been working for them for God only knows how many years, helped them with anything that cropped up. I was always on call. Always. And then they come here and…”
His hand dropped down on the table like a full stop at the end of a sentence. Vera, who had been lying under the table, woke up with a bark.
“Why? Was there something special about that plane?”
“I don’t know. You’ve got to believe me. I’ve told you everything I know. Do you think that the Krekulas had something to do with Wilma’s death?”
“Do you think so?”
His eyes filled with tears.
“I should never have said anything to her. I just wanted to make myself interesting. I wanted her to think it was fun to talk to me. It’s no fun, dammit all, being on my own all the time. It’s all my fault.”
Once outside again, Martinsson took a deep breath.
As Strindberg said, she thought, you have to feel sorry for people. I don’t want to die alone.
She looked at Vera, who was standing expectantly by the car.
Dogs are not enough, she thought.
She switched on her mobile. Ten past seven. No messages. No missed calls.
Bollocks to you then, was her unsent message to Måns Wenngren. Screw some other woman if you want to.
I’m sitting on Hjalmar’s window ledge. Watching him as he wakes up with a start. Worry is pounding away inside him. That worry is sinewy and has fists as hard as Isak’s, his father’s. That worry has pulled his leather belt out of its loops.
He’s sleeping a lot now. He’s tired. Doesn’t feel up to doing anything at all. But sleep is spasmodic and unreliable. Worry drags him to his feet. Usually at about 3.00 or 4.00 in the morning. It’s light during the night now. Hjalmar curses the light, and tells himself that’s why. But he knows the truth. His heart is racing. Sometimes he’s afraid it will be the death of him. But he’s started to get used to it. Knows his heart will calm down after a while.
Just think: I shall never, ever sleep again.
Hjalmar dreams about me sometimes. How I hacked a hole in the ice from underneath. He dreams about the water squirting out through the hole when I stuck my hand through it. In his dream more and more water comes spurting out, and he drowns in it. He wakes up, gasping for breath.
Sometimes he dreams that my hand clamps itself like a vice round his, and that I drag him down into the water.
He dreams about thin ice. Ice that gives way beneath him. Black water.
He doesn’t have the strength to look after himself properly. He looked a right mess at my funeral. He hadn’t had a shower for ages, and his hair was greasy.
Hjalmar Krekula checked the time on his mobile: 7.10. He ought to have been at work ages ago. But Tore had not phoned to ask where the devil he was.
But maybe it was only fair to have a day off when you had helped to… No, he dismissed all thoughts and images involving Hjörleifur Arnarson. Pointless. The whole business was so bloody pointless.
I’m used to doing whatever Tore wants me to do, Hjalmar thought. I was forced to do it at first. But then it became a habit. No doubt it all goes back to when we got lost in the forest. I stopped thinking for myself. Making my own mind up. I just did as I was told.
It is October 1957. A Saturday. The older boys from the village are playing bandy on the ice covering the lake.
Tore Krekula asks his dad if he can go and watch. Yes, of course he can. He takes his bandy stick and sets off. Hjalmar is also going to watch, but first he has to carry firewood and water to the sauna down by the lake. Isak makes the sauna so hot that there is a danger of burning the whole place down. Tonight they are going to have a bath. He has sawn through the ice down by the jetty and made a hole so that Hjalmar can carry water up to the big tub that is heated by a wood fire.
Hjalmar does all the heavy stuff. Tore is excused, even though he has started school this autumn. On the first day of term Isak took Hjalmar by the ear and told him: “It’s your job to look after your brother, is that clear?”
It is just over a year since the incident in the forest. Tore is still receiving letters and parcels – but less often, of course. His new satchel is a present from the Friends of the Forest Club in Stockholm.
Hjalmar looks after Tore. That means that Tore rules the roost over his classmates, even the older pupils. Tore steals their money, threatens them, fights and decides which of his classmates is going to be beaten up after school every day. He concludes that it is going to be a skinny little lad with glasses by the name of Alvar. If anybody objects, or even hits back, Tore calls Hjalmar. Alvar has an elder brother, but nobody wants to get involved in a fight with Hjalmar Krekula, so he doesn’t intervene. Besides, their dad drowned a couple of years back. Tore and his mates have a lot of fun with Alvar. During the last lesson of the day, one of them might put up his hand and ask permission to go to the toilet. When the bell goes, Alvar finds that his shoes are full of water. Or perhaps the sleeves of his jacket are crammed full of wet paper. After P.E., they sometimes steal his trousers so that he has to go home in his underpants. Alvar is frightened all the time. He runs home from school. He begs his teacher to let him go before the bell rings. Tells her he has stomach-ache. That is no doubt true. He comes home to his mother with his clothes and school books in a mess, but he does not dare tell her who is responsible. His elder brother says nothing either.
That is what Tore Krekula is really like, the little hero of the forest from Piilijärvi. But needless to say, the Friends of the Forest Club in Stockholm know nothing at all about it.
Hjalmar has carried all the necessary water and firewood to the sauna, ready for the evening’s ablutions, so he can run to the other end of the village and watch the bandy match. They are using birch branches as goal posts. Not all of them have skates, some just have to run about in their ordinary shoes. Most of the bandy sticks are home-made.
Tore cheers up when he sees Hjalmar approaching, although he pretends he has not seen him. Hjalmar has the feeling that something stupid is about to happen. Something tells him he ought to go back home right away. But he does not.
Hans Aho shoots at the goal, but Yngve Talo makes a save. Someone tries to intercept the pass out, and there is a scrum inside the penalty area.
Tore takes the opportunity to jump down onto the ice with his stick and bandy ball. He hits the ball into the empty goal at the other end.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” shouts the goalie, who has been upfield in support of his team’s attack.
“Pack it in, Tore,” one of the girls in the crowd of spectators shouts.
But Tore does not pack it in. The goalie skates back and tells him again to clear off.
Tore grins and leaves the pitch, but he soon returns, dribbling the ball.
The game comes to a halt. The lads tell Tore to go home and stop messing about. Tore asks if they own the lake. Nobody has told him that they do.
“Hjalmar,” he shouts. “Does this crowd own the lake? Have you heard anything about it?”
When the big boys are playing, the little lads keep out of the way. That is an unwritten law.
The bandy players look over at Hjalmar. A few are about the same age as him; most are older. They want to see if he is going to join in the sabotage. Everyone knows that the Krekula brothers stick together. Not that Hjalmar would stand a chance against the combined bandy teams, but the fact that he is outnumbered does not usually put him off. Everyone is wondering how serious the fighting is going to be.
Hjalmar is furious. That bloody Tore! Why does he always have to stir up trouble unnecessarily? But this time he can sort things out for himself. Hjalmar turns away and gazes out over the lake.
The bandy players register the signal. Hjalmar is not going to get involved.
One of them, Torgny Ylipää, who has been sick to death of Tore Krekula’s antics for a long time, gives him a dig in the chest.
“Go home to Mummy,” he says.
Tore hits him back. Hard. Ylipää falls over backwards.
“Go home yourself,” Tore says.
Ylipää is soon back on his feet. Tore raises his bandy stick, but one of the other lads grabs hold of it and prevents the blow. Ylipää seizes his chance and punches Tore on the nose.
“Clear off home, I said.”
Tore starts crying. Maybe his nose is bleeding. Nobody is able to see. He runs away, clutching his face. He leaves his stick on the ice. One of the players picks it up and moves it to one side.
“Shall we get going, then?”
They resume playing.
It only takes a quarter of an hour. Isak Krekula appears. He walks straight across the bandy pitch to Hjalmar. White with fury. The game stops again, and now all the players and spectators watch as Isak grabs hold of his eldest son and drags him away without a word. He holds him firmly by the collar.
Isak utters not a word as he drags his son along the road through the village. But his heavy breathing reflects his fury as they reach the house. Hjalmar is scared stiff as his father frogmarches him down to the sauna. What on earth is he going to do?
“Father,” he says. “Wait a minute. Father.”
But Isak tells him to hold his tongue. He is not interested in explanations.
They are down at the jetty now. By the hole in the ice from which Hjalmar extracted a few buckets of water less than an hour ago.
Isak pulls off his son’s woolly hat and throws it onto the shore. Hjalmar struggles, but the grip on his coat collar has grown tighter. His father forces him down onto his knees at the edge of the hole, and the next thing he knows, his head is underwater.
He struggles with his arms. The cold threatens to explode his head. He is strong, and manages to raise himself up and gasp for air, but his father soon subdues him again.
I’m going to die now, he thinks.
And he does. Sunshine flows into his head. It is a warm summer’s day. He is walking barefoot through the forest; cones and needles stick into his feet, but his soles are hardened. His task is to bring home the horses from their summer pasture. There they are, in among the pine trees, rubbing their necks against each other. Flicking away troublesome flies with their tails. There is a smell of wild rosemary and soil warmed by the sun. Bark, moss, resin. Ants are marching across the path in front of him. The horses whinny a greeting when they see him.
When he comes to his senses, he is lying on the floor of the dressing room in the sauna. The fire is burning in the grate. He raises himself on all fours and sicks up the lake water. Then he lies down on his back.
Isak Krekula is standing over him, smoking a cigarette.
“In our family we stick together,” he says. “Remember that next time.”
Rebecka Martinsson opened the heavy doors of the town hall. She enjoyed the feel of the attractive handles, carved in the shape of shamans’ drums.
Once inside she admired the spacious hall with its high ceiling, its beautiful brick walls and the Sun Drum tapestry, resplendent in the colours of summer and autumn.
She reported to the reception desk.
“I need to consult the town archives,” she said to the young duty officer.
She was asked to wait a moment. After a while a man appeared, dressed in black jeans and a black jacket. His shoes were highly polished brown leather. His hair dark and combed back from his face.
“Jan Viinikainen. I’m in charge of the archives,” he said, shaking hands Swedish-style. “What can I do to be of assistance to the police?”
Martinsson raised an eyebrow.
“Oh,” Viinikainen said, “you’re a celebrity here in Kiruna. There was a lot written about you when you killed those pastors. Self-defence, I know.”
Martinsson overcame her instinct to turn on her heel and leave.
He doesn’t understand, she thought. People don’t understand; they think they can say whatever they like without hurting my feelings.
“I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” she said hesitantly. “I want to know everything about an old firm in Piilijärvi, Krekula’s Haulage Contractors.”
Viinikainen shrugged, stretching out his hands in a gesture suggesting helplessness.
“How old?” he said.
“They started in the ’40s or thereabouts. I need everything you’ve got.”
Viinikainen stood there and thought for a while. Then he beckoned to Martinsson to follow him. Descending a spiral staircase to the basement, they passed what must have been Viinikainen’s office just outside the white-painted wrought-iron gate into the archives. Unlocking the entrance to the holy of holies and making a sweeping gesture, he invited Martinsson to precede him through the gate.
They passed by row after row of archive shelves made of grey steel. Wherever Martinsson looked there were files of different shapes and sizes with cloth, plastic or metal binding. Paperback books, hard-bound books, old manuscripts neatly and prettily packaged using string and wax seals which hung down over the edges of the shelves. On top of heavy oak document cupboards were old-fashioned typewriters made by Triumph and Facit. Card-index files were crammed alongside archival boxes made of brown cardboard. Here and there were paper scrolls in every imaginable size. In one of the interior rooms there were sliding archive shelves made of steel. Viinikainen switched on the mechanism that controlled their movements.
“You can slide the shelves apart like this,” he said, pulling at a long black lever with a knob on the end and making the shelf he was standing by slide slowly to one side. “If I were you I’d start with the trade register, or possibly the Swedish Commercial Directory. You’ll find material from the Kiruna Technical Office over there.”
Martinsson took off her coat and hung it up. Viinikainen withdrew to his desk.
Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack, she thought. I’ve no idea what I’m after. She wandered around, examining the shelves, glancing at the articles on phrenology from the ’30s and ’40s, payment records from Jukkasjärvi’s Poor Relief Board, handicraft diaries from the Kiruna School Archives.
Stop whingeing, she told herself. Roll up your sleeves.
Seventy minutes later she found Krekula’s Haulage Contractors in a register of hauliers in Kiruna municipality, listing how many and what kind of vehicles they had, persons authorized to sign on the firm’s behalf, addresses and so on.
She searched assiduously, untied bundles that hadn’t been opened for sixty years, opened archival boxes that had been closed for just as long, turned up her nose when little clouds of dust wafted up from the documents. In the end she had a splitting headache from all the dust and cellulose she’d been breathing in.
Viinikainen appeared and asked how she was getting on.
“Quite well,” she said. “I’ve found a few things, at least.”
Vera was waiting in the car. She stood up in her cage, wagging her tail affectionately when Martinsson got in.
“Thank you for being patient,” Martinsson said. “Let’s go for a spin.”
She drove up Mt Luossavaara and let Vera out. The dog sat down immediately.
“I’m sorry, old girl,” Martinsson said guiltily.
“Bad conscience, eh?” a voice said behind her.
It was Krister Eriksson. He was in his jogging clothes. An orange windcheater clashed with the pink parchment-like texture of his face.
When he smiled at Martinsson, she noticed his teeth. They were white and even. The only aspect of his face that was not damaged by fire.
“Well, well, who’s this then?” he said, looking at Vera. “Tintin’s going to be jealous.”
“It’s Hjörleifur Arnarson’s dog. I had to take her on, otherwise she’d have been given a one-way ticket to canine heaven.”
Eriksson nodded solemnly.
“And you’ve taken over the investigation, I gather. Wilma Persson will be pleased.”
“I don’t believe in all that stuff,” Martinsson said embarrassed.
He shook his head and winked.
“Have you been out jogging?” she said, changing the subject.
“Yep. I generally exercise my back by running up the hill to the old pithead. I’ve just finished.”
Martinsson looked up at the abandoned structure at the top of the mountain, grey and hollow-eyed.
If buildings can be ghosts, then that one certainly is, she thought. No doubt it says boo to whoever dares to walk past it at night.
“Pretty impressive, isn’t it?” Eriksson said, as if he had read her thoughts. “Would you like to take a closer look? I could do with a bit more exercise to ease my muscles. Hang on a minute. I’ll get my track suit from the car.”
He came back wearing a cheap mint-green track suit that looked at least twenty years old and a veteran of goodness knows how many sessions in the washing machine.
My God, Martinsson thought. But perhaps he feels he looks so hideous anyway that he couldn’t care less about the clothes he wears. It’s a pity, she thought as he walked up the mountain a few paces in front of her, teasing Vera.
He was thin and in pretty good shape: he would look good in practically any clothes he chose to wear. Though not a track suit that looked as if it had been discarded by an aerobics instructor circa 1989.
“What are you smiling at?” he said cheerfully.
“The view,” she lied impulsively. “I love this mountain. What a magnificent panorama!”
They stopped and looked down at Kiruna, spread out below them. The iron mine with its grey terraces forming the background to the town. The Ädnamvaara massif to the north-west, with its typical pyramid-shaped peaks. The wind generators on the site of the abandoned Viscaria copper mine. The church faced with spruce cladding painted Falun red, designed to evoke a Lappish hut. The town hall with its iconic black clock tower – an iron shell with protruding decorations. It always reminded Martinsson of mountain birches in winter, or a flock of reindeer horns. The horseshoe-shaped railway depot with its little red-painted workers’ cottages. The tower blocks in Gruvvägen and Högalidsgatan.
“Look at that! You can see the Kebnekaise massif today.”
He pointed to the light blue mountain range in the north-west.
“I can never work out which one is Keb,” he said. “I’m told it’s not the one that looks the highest.”
She pointed. He leaned towards her in order to see what she was pointing at.
“That’s Tuolpagorni,” she said. “The peak with the little crater. And the one next to it, to the right, is Kebne.”
He moved away from her.
“Please forgive me,” he said. “I’m leaning all over you, stinking of sweat.”
“No problem,” she said, and felt a wave of emotion surge through her body.
“The highest mountain in Sweden,” he said enthusiastically, screwing up his eyes and gazing at the massif.
“The most beautiful building in Sweden, dating from 2001,” Martinsson said, pointing at the church.
“The most beautiful building in Sweden, dating from 1964,” Eriksson said, pointing at the town hall.
“The most beautiful town in Sweden,” she said with a laugh. “The municipal architect really tried his best to make the town a work of art. In those days they still designed towns so that a network of streets all led to the square and the town hall. But the streets of Kiruna were allowed to wander along the hillside as they pleased.”
“I can’t get my head round the fact that they’re talking about moving the whole town.”
“Nor can I. Haukivaara was such a perfect mountainside to build a town on.”
“But if the seam of iron ore turns out to run under the town…”
“… then the town has to move.”
“That’s what the authorities say,” Eriksson said. “I don’t come from Kiruna myself. But I have the impression that the locals aren’t too worried. When I ask them what they think about the town having to move, they just shrug their shoulders. My next-door neighbour is eighty, and she thinks that of course the town ought to move to the west because that way she’d be closer to the shops. I think it’s all very odd. The only person who seems to have a view is someone who’ll be dead and buried when the move actually takes place.”
“I think people are concerned,” Martinsson said hesitatingly. “But the people of Kiruna have always been aware that the only reason we’re here is that this is where the iron ore is. And if the mine isn’t profitable any more, then we’ve no income to live off. So if the company needs to move the mine, well, there’s nothing to argue about. So we accept the inevitable. But if we accept it, don’t be misled into thinking that we don’t care.”
“But one thing doesn’t exclude the other.”
“No, I know. But I think we need time before we understand what it’s really all about. Before we realize that although we have no choice, we can still regret that our town will never be the same again.”
“There ought to be farewell concerts in the buildings that will be demolished,” Eriksson said. “Weeping ceremonies. Music. Lectures. Story-telling.”
“I’ll be there,” Martinsson said with a smile.
She remembered what it had been like when she’d walked up Mt Luossavaara with Måns Wenngren. He had felt cold and uncomfortable. She would have liked to point out the sites to him and talk about them. As she was doing now.
Martinsson was sitting on the kitchen sofa in Sivving Fjällborg’s boiler room. She was wearing thick woollen socks and a knitted jumper that had once belonged to her father.
Fjällborg was standing over the cooker wearing one of Maj-Lis’s aprons Martinsson had not seen before. It had blue and white stripes with frills round the bottom and the armholes.
He was heating up some smoked pike in a cast-iron pan. One of Maj-Lis’s embroidered pot-holders was hanging from the handle. Almond potatoes were boiling in an aluminium saucepan.
“I need to make a phone call,” Martinsson said. “Is that O.K.?”
“Ten minutes,” Fjällborg said. “Then we’ll eat.”
Martinsson dialled Anna-Maria Mella’s number. Mella answered immediately. A child could be heard crying in the background.
“Sorry,” Martinsson said. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all,” Mella said with a sigh. “It’s Gustav. I locked myself into the loo, hoping to read the latest issue of Luxury Living in peace and quiet. Now he’s rattling the door handle and yelling hysterically. Hang on a minute.”
“Robert!” she bellowed. “Can you see to your son!”
Martinsson could hear a high-pitched male voice urging: “Gustav, Gustav, come to Daddy!”
“Come on, it’s obvious he’s not going to… Pick him up and get him away from the door!” Mella yelled. “Before I cut my throat!”
After a while Martinsson could hear that the screaming brat was being carried away from the bathroom door.
“That’s better,” Mella said. “Now we can talk.”
Martinsson summed up what she had heard from Johannes Svarvare about the aeroplane, and how he felt threatened by the Krekula brothers.
“I think you were right from the start,” Martinsson said. “It’s the brothers.”
Mella hummed in agreement to show that she was listening.
“I was at the archives this afternoon,” Martinsson said. “To dig out a bit of information about the haulage business.”
“And?”
“I found a register of haulage contractors in Kiruna municipality. You know the kind of thing – how many vehicles were owned by the firm and how many drivers they employed. In 1940 the Krekula Haulage Contractors had two lorries, by 1942 they had four, by 1943 eight and by 1944 eleven.”
“Really? Wow!”
“Yes, their business expanded impressively during those years. By nearly 500 per cent. And they acquired five refrigerated vans during the same period. When I compared them with other haulage companies, none of them expanded anywhere near as much.”
“Really?”
“Isak Krekula was on very good terms with the German army. There’s nothing odd about that – lots of firms were. In Luleå, for instance, the Germans had enormous depots for weapons and provisions. Transport was needed to move all the stuff to the Eastern front. I found a copy of a contract between the German army and Swedish Road Freight Centre Ltd. German soldiers were freezing to death in Finnish Lapland during the winter of 1941-2, and the German military attaché in Sweden ordered wooden huts from Swedish manufacturers. And so of course they also needed contracts with transport companies to carry those huts to the Eastern front. That’s what the S.R.F.C. contract was all about. So that winter there was nonstop shuttle traffic between the north of Sweden and the Eastern front. Isak Krekula’s haulage firm was one of the signatories to the contract between the S.R.F.C. and the German army. The contract was approved by the Foreign Ministry and the Swedish government.”
“I see,” Mella said, trying to resist the temptation to read an article about storage in her magazine.
“Once all the huts had been transported, deliveries continued to be made to the German front line. Including weapons, although there was nothing about that in the S.R.F.C. contract. And what’s more,” Martinsson continued, “I found a letter from Oberleutnant Walther Zindel, an army officer stationed in Luleå and in charge of the German depots in the region, to Martin Waldenström, the managing director of L.K.A.B. In it Zindel asks for Isak Krekula to be released from his contract with the Kiruna mine concerning four lorries for transporting iron ore, so that they could be used by the German army in Finnish Lapland.”
“Excuse me for being a bit slow on the uptake…” Mella began.
“You’re not slow on the uptake. All this doesn’t necessarily mean a thing. But it’s set me thinking. How come that Isak Krekula’s firm could grow so much more quickly than any of his competitors? A haulage firm was a lucrative business during the war. Obviously, everyone involved wanted to invest and expand. Where did Isak Krekula get all the money that enabled him to invest so much more than the others? It’s just not possible for him to have earned so much from his haulage business alone – I mean, if that were the case, at least one or two of his competitors would have been able to expand at a similar rate. And my neighbour Sivving says that the Krekulas were crofters as far back as anybody can remember, so there’s no money in the family.”
“Are you suggesting he might have been doing something illegal?”
“Perhaps. He must have got the money from somewhere. And you have to ask where. And I wonder why Oberleutnant Zindel asked the managing director of the mine to release Krekula from his three-year contract. Why Krekula? There were other hauliers who had contracts with L.K.A.B.”
“So?”
“I don’t know,” Martinsson said. “I don’t even know how to go about discovering what kind of a customer Isak Krekula was, or finding out about his dealings with Walther Zindel. In any case, it wouldn’t be of any help to us. Even if we discovered that he was involved in dirty business with the Germans, that would have no bearing at all on whether Tore and Hjalmar Krekula had anything to do with the deaths of Wilma Persson and Simon Kyrö.”
“Always assuming that Simon Kyrö is dead in fact,” Mella said mechanically.
“Of course he’s dead,” Martinsson said impatiently. “We’ll find him as soon as the ice on Vittangijärvi thaws.”
“Hmm, I’ve been trying to keep an open mind. Might he have killed Wilma himself, for instance?”
“And then killed Hjörleifur Arnarson? Hardly, don’t you think? Anyway, I reckon we should follow up on this line of investigation now – we don’t have unlimited resources.”
“We should probably just wait to see what develops,” Mella said. “Hope that the forensic examination of Hjörleifur’s body and his house, and the clothes Hjalmar and Tore Krekula were wearing, produce interesting results. And hope that we find the door and Simon Kyrö’s body when the thaw comes, and that there are finger-prints on it, or something of the sort.”
Clearing his throat, Fjällborg gave Martinsson a withering look.
“I’ve got to go,” Martinsson said. “I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow.”
“Johannes Svarvare told me that Isak Krekula had a heart attack just over a week before Wilma and Simon went missing,” Mella said. “And when he said that, I had the impression that he wanted to say more, but was holding back for some reason.”
“He’s scared of them,” Martinsson said.
“I can’t help wondering if he had a heart attack because he’d heard that they were going to go diving to look for the aeroplane. There’s something about that bloody plane. It’s a bugger that the ice is melting, and that it’s not possible to go diving there right now. We’ll have to wait. I hate waiting.”
“I hate waiting too.”
“So do I!” Fjällborg said, slamming the potato stew down on the table. “I hate waiting for food to get cold.”
Mella laughed.
“What are you having to eat this evening?”
“Smoked pike.”
“Smoked pike? I’ve never tried that.”
“It’s good! What are you having?”
“We’ve eaten already,” Mella said. “Gustav was allowed to choose, so we had ‘porky sausages’.”
“Hmm,” Fjällborg said when Martinsson had hung up. “How’s it going?”
“Not very well,” Martinsson said. “I think the Krekula brothers are guilty, but…”
She shrugged.
“We’ll have to hope the forensic examination turns up trumps.”
Fjällborg ate in silence. He had heard her talking about the Krekulas’ haulage business and the Germans during the war. He knew exactly who Martinsson ought to talk to in order to get information about all that. But the question was: would that person be willing to talk?
Måns Wenngren is sitting in his flat in Floragatan. All the lights are out. The television is on, its flickering screen relieving the darkness. Some Seinfeld episode that he has seen before.
Martinsson has not rung today. No text messages, nothing. The previous evening she had both texted and rung him. He had not answered. She had left a message.
Now he regrets not having answered. But everything is arranged the way she wants it to be. She wants to live in Kiruna. She is busy with work and has no time to talk.
Yesterday. He had thought he would try and make it clear to her that he had no intention of playing the love-lorn loon, allowing her to trample all over him.
“Yes, I’m angry,” he says to his empty flat. “With good reason.”
He puts down his mobile. If there is no message from her tomorrow, he will phone her.
“But I’m not going to say I’m sorry,” he says out loud.
He longs to be with her. He imagines them back on good terms, imagines travelling up north to spend the weekend with her. He can take Friday off. He does not have any important meetings planned.