by Larsson, Åsa
He marched off.
“I don’t know about you,” Mella said to her colleagues, “but I’m intending to go to Landström’s for a beer.”
*
They sat right at the back in Landström’s, and drank their first beer in silence. They could sense that people were looking at them. The news was out already. A talented troubadour was singing Cornelis Vreeswijk songs in another part of the premises.
After a while the alcohol had smoothed down the sharp edges of the awful day. They ordered well-hung beef and Baltic herring with mashed potatoes and crispbread.
Mella relaxed a little. It was good to unwind, and even better to receive compliments from Rantakyrö and Olsson, which increased in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed.
“I swear to God you’re the best boss I’ve ever had,” Rantakyrö said.
“The only one he’s ever had, but all the same,” Olsson said, proposing a toast.
“The best you could ever ask for,” Rantakyrö said, looking at her like a faithful dog.
“That’s enough now, she’ll get ever so big-headed”’ Olsson said.
Then he became serious.
“Dammit all, I’m so sorry for today, Mella. I got so bloody het up.”
“No problem,” she said. ‘I think it’s the worst day I’ve ever experienced. Those poor kids …”
“Those poor police officers,” Rantakyrö said. “When Silbersky sees her black eye he’ll report me. I’ll be charged with assault. And then I’ll lose my job.”
“If only Martinsson was still in charge of the case,” Olsson said. “She’s not impressed by upstart solicitors, and isn’t scared by them either. That bloody idiot von Post will throw you to the wolves as long as he gets away unscathed.”
“You won’t lose your job,” Mella said. “I promise you that.”
Rantakyrö waltzed off to the bar.
Mella and Olsson listened to the troubadour, who was singing the Swedish version of “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh”.
“It’s beyond belief,” Olsson said.
“You can say that again,” Mella said.
“She beat him up. He confesses to the murder and then commits suicide.”
Rantakyrö came back with an Arvo special for Mella, and tequila with lemon and salt for himself.
“My favourite,” Mella said. “Like a baby’s dummy, but tastier.”
Rantakyrö licked some salt, knocked back the tequila and took a bite of lemon.
“Sho what do you shay,” he said, with the lemon still in his mouth, like a monkey. “Do you think she’sh capable of killing shomebody?”
Mella couldn’t help giggling.
Olsson sprayed beer through his nose.
And then they all burst out laughing uncontrollably. Tears were running down their cheeks. People sitting close to them fell silent and stared. Olsson sounded as if he were crying. Rantakyrö clutched his stomach. Then they all managed to calm down for a few moments – before bursting out laughing again.
They laughed and laughed until their jaws ached.
People round about were giving them strange looks. But they could not stop.
*
Mella walked home on her own. She felt uplifted by the newly fallen snow that lit up the darkness. But it would take more than snow to make her feel happy. She was longing for her husband and her children. And she was thinking about Jenny and Jocke Häggroth’s poor children. About Jenny holding out her bleeding hands so that the police officers could handcuff her.
She could have done it, Mella thought. But I wonder …
Winter arrives like a raging demon. Stormy winds pile up snow against the walls of buildings, thrash any poor souls who have to be out in the streets, batter them in the face, fling them down onto the ground.
There is no point in clearing away snow – the pavements are knee-deep again within minutes. Pedestrians have to plough their way through it as best they can, and can’t see where they are going.
Householders build up their fires until the whole building creaks and crackles. Some people burn their furniture when they run out of firewood. Water trickles out of the walls of poorly built houses with inadequately dried wooden cladding. Opening outside doors is asking for trouble – snow forces its way in and the winds threaten to wrench doors from their hinges. All windows are caked with snow and ice.
Frans Olof is two weeks old, and Elina hasn’t set foot outside the house since he was born.
But on the evening of November 18, it suddenly becomes calm. The roaring and rumbling from outside fades away. The wind lies down and goes to sleep. Kiruna is completely white and silent. The moon heaves itself up, fat and yellow.
Elina makes a bed for her little boy in the sledge used for transporting firewood. She really must go out and get some exercise.
Narrow paths of troddendown snow have already been made by people who had been aching to get out of doors at last. They are like the tracks of field mice in the deep snow. Some children are playing with a dog. Frans Olof is asleep in the firewood sledge.
Elina is lost in thought, then finds herself standing outside the school.
Her heart aches as she thinks about the children, and the career that she will never again be able to pursue. She wonders if the children miss her, if the new teacher has replaced her in their hearts without any problems. She wonders if the classroom looks the same as it did before, or if the new teacher has changed everything.
Nobody locks doors in Kiruna. Perhaps she should be so bold as to go in and take a look. It wouldn’t hurt anybody.
She lifts Frans Olof out of the firewood sledge, still wrapped up in all his blankets, and goes into the school. The lower halves of the windows are all iced up, but enough moonlight penetrates the top halves for her to be able to see.
No, not much has changed. She concludes that the new teacher is lacking in imagination. She herself had changed at least a thousand things during her first week …
Feeling warm, she places the sleeping Frans Olof on the floor behind the organ, and unbuttons her winter coat. As she puts it down on the teacher’s desk, she hears the outside door open and then close again. Then her blood runs cold as she hears the unmistakable voice.
“Frööken. Frööööken Pettersson.”
When he appears in the doorway, his face is swathed in darkness.
“So this is where you are. Running around the town like a bitch on heat as soon as the baby is born. Obviously.”
She is incapable of movement as he carefully locks the classroom door from the inside and puts the key in his pocket.
All she can think about is the baby. Please don’t let the little boy wake up …
If he discovers the baby he will kill me and leave the boy out in the cold to die, she thinks.
She knows for certain that is what will happen.
She puffs and pants like an animal under stress as he grabs her wrists with his powerful hands.
She turns her face away, but he takes hold of her chin and forces his mouth over hers.
“If you bite me, I’ll kill you,” he growls.
He rips open her blouse and forces her down on her back over the desk. She whimpers as he squeezes her breasts, so tender after feeding her baby.
He seems to be provoked because she doesn’t scream and cry, doesn’t try to defend herself.
He punches her in the face.
It does not even hurt. She just feels warmth spreading over her face, and she can taste blood in her mouth.
She realises that he intends to kill her. That is what he is going to do. He hates her. He is incensed by her youth, her beauty, her affair with Hjalmar.
He pulls down her knickers and takes out his cock. She is still in a bit of a mess down there after having given birth. He forces himself inside her.
“There you are!” he shouts. “You like that, don’t you, you bloody whore? Don’t you? Don’t you?’”
He punches her. Bashes her head onto the desk. Rips out h
andfuls of her hair.
Blood is running from her shattered nose and down into her throat.
He thrusts and thrusts, and shouts out louder than ever.
Then his iron fingers clamp themselves around her neck. She tries to defend herself, but her arms are so weak.
The moon and the stars force their way in through the ceiling. The whole classroom is filled with light.
The little boy sleeps like an angel. When he wakes up and starts crying an hour later, there is nobody there – apart from his mother lying dead on the desk.
WEDNESDAY, 26 OCTOBER
The weather turned, and it became warmer. The snow turned into slush. The grey sky glowered at the miserable spectacle down below.
Jenny Häggroth lay on the bunk in her cell, staring up at the ceiling. When she was interrogated, she had suggested that the police should go to hell. Besides, she maintained, if she had known that Jocke had been unfaithful to her, she wouldn’t have murdered Sol-Britt – she would have murdered Jocke.
Leif Silbersky didn’t interrupt her. He said very little during the interrogation. He waited until later.
And then the lawyer who considered himself a class above everybody else really went to town. He held a press conference at the Ferrum hotel.
Björnfot kept to the sidelines. He did what he felt was necessary as a standin for Martinsson, and listened in silence as von Post complained about colleagues and solicitors and suspects and journalists. The papers were full of comments about “the horrific mistakes made by the police”: “Now the children are orphans!”, “An innocent man accused – Took his own life!”
The weather and the murder investigation, Björnfot thought as he put on his jacket. What a joke, the whole business.
*
At eight o’clock in the morning Eriksson dropped Marcus off at his school.
“I’ll be here waiting for you at hometime,” he said.
He sat in his car and watched Marcus running across the playground. Three older boys saw him, and made to follow him – but Marcus managed to disappear into the school building before the they caught up with him.
Trouble, Eriksson thought.
Two girls passed by the car, and he wound down the driver’s window.
“Hi there! Excuse me!” he shouted. “Don’t be afraid – I was burnt in a fire when I was a little boy. Do you know Marcus Uusitalo? He’s in class 1B.”
The girls kept their distance – but yes, they knew who Marcus was. Why did he want to know?
“His grandmother has been murdered,” one of the girls said.
“I know,” Eriksson said. “I’m a policeman. Those are my police dogs sitting in the cage at the back there. This lady in the passenger seat, Vera, is an ordinary civilian dog. But please tell me, is anybody being nasty to Marcus at school?”
The girls hesitated for a moment.
“Yes. Hampus and Willy and a few of the lads in 3A. But don’t say that we told you anything.”
“What do they do?”
“They hit him and kick him. Say things. They take people’s money as well, if anybody has any. Once they forced Marcus to eat gravel.”
“Who’s the leader?”
“Willy.”
“What’s his surname?”
“Niemi. Are you going to put him in prison?”
“No.”
But I’d like to, Eriksson thought, as he drove off.
There is a family grave not far from Katrineholm. Elina’s parents and a younger brother are already buried there.
Lizzie says goodbye to the coffin at the railway station. It is one of the coldest days of the winter. The snow creaks and squeaks underfoot. Hoar frost forms wherever body heat seeps out through clothes – on eyelashes, on scarves close to mouths, at the bottom of coat sleeves.
When the coffin is lifted into the goods wagon, Lizzie sobs uncontrollably, and the cold air makes it painful for her to breathe in so violently. The tears turn into ice on her cheeks. Johan-Albin has to hold her tightly to prevent her from falling in a heap.
There are not many people present – a memorial service was held at the Salvation Army hall earlier in the week. There was not enough room for all those who wanted to attend. The murder of the town’s former schoolteacher has aroused sorrow and gloom throughout Kiruna. There were articles about it in the national newspapers.
They close the doors of the goods wagon, but all Lizzie wants to do is to cry and sob. The cold is causing her agony in her feet.
“Come on, my lovely, it’s time to go home now,” Johan-Albin says in the end.
And he insists on her going back home with him. But when they get there they see Elina’s trunk, and all her books, and her clothes that have been washed and ironed and mended and starched so that they look absolutely new. Lizzie starts sobbing again.
But when Johan-Albin has made coffee for her, given her some biscuits, and a little twelve-year-old girl comes from the wet nurse carrying Frans, she stops crying.
She holds the baby in her arms and he looks her in the eye, and wraps his little hand round her finger.
“I’m going to look after him,” she tells Johan-Albin. “Elina has a sister, but she couldn’t possibly take him on.”
Johan-Albin listens intently and dunks his biscuit in the hot coffee.
“He has only me in the world,” she says. “If you want to cancel our engagement, I won’t hold it against you. You have never promised to become responsible for a little baby. And I shall cope. You know that.”
She smiles bravely at him.
Johan-Albin puts down his tin mug, and stands up. Lizzie forgets to breathe. Is he about to leave her?
No, he sits down beside her on the kitchen sofa and puts his arms around her and the baby.
“I shall never leave you,” he says. “Even if you have a score of babies with you in the nest. It’s obvious that you will cope no matter what – but I can’t live without my Lizzie.”
Now she has to cry once more. And laugh as well. Johan-Albin has to rub his eyes – after all, he was sold at a pauper’s auction as a young boy. Life has a lot to answer for.
They don’t hear the footsteps on the stairs, and both of them jump when there is a knock on the door.
In marches Blenda Mänpää, one of Fasth’s maids. She looks serious. And she declines the offer of coffee.
“I have to speak to you,” she says to Lizzie. “About Elina. And Fasth.”
Grey and gloomy outside. Martinsson took her third mug of morning coffee and stared grimly out of the window at what ought to have been winter. The Brat barked. Immediately afterwards she heard footsteps on the stairs.
Björnfot was standing outside.
Martinsson could feel the anger mounting inside her.
“Can we have a chat?” he said.
She invited him in with a shrug. They sat down at the kitchen table. The Brat jumped up and sat on Björnfot’s lap.
“Do you think you’re a lapdog?” Björnfot said. “Rebecka, my wife tells me I’m very bad at saying sorry. But I’d like to say sorry to you. It was wrong of me to take you off that investigation. But you know how it is, he goes around for years with a chip on his shoulder, and he badly wanted this case. So I just let him have it without thinking about it. I suppose I thought – or hoped, at least – that you wouldn’t mind.”
Martinsson realised to her surprise that all her anger and associated emotions were loosening up and fading away.
“Go to hell,” she said in a tone of voice that suggested he was forgiven. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Let’s hope to God that we can find some trace of Jenny Häggroth on that hayfork,” Björnfot said when he had been served with coffee and kangos biscuits. “But it’s far from certain that we can nail her.”
“No,” Martinsson said. “That hayfork has been easily accessible to anybody at all, lying there under their barn. It would be perfectly natural if there were some traces of her prints on the fork. She might well have use
d it, after all. We’d have to find traces of her in Sol-Britt Uusitalo’s house. Incidentally, von Post seems to think I’m trying to sabotage his investigation.”
“Yes, I know that,” Björnfot said. “But I had a word with Pohjanen, so I know what you two have been up to. And somebody shot Sol-Britt Uusitalo’s father. The National Forensic Lab have let it be known that it was a bullet that damaged the bone you dug up. From the freezer in the forensic medicine depot in Umeå!”
“Pure chance. But there were traces on his shirt as well. Did Pohjanen tell you about that?”
“Yes. The poor bastard wasn’t mauled by a bear. He was shot, then left out in the forest and was eaten up. What should we conclude from that?”
Martinsson shook her head.
“It all seems so improbable. But if somebody is trying to eradicate the whole family – who is there that could hate them that much? To be sure, Sol-Britt Uusitalo wasn’t universally liked: but she wasn’t hated, just despised. I shall pretend not to notice that you have my dog on your knee and are feeding him biscuits. Well, little Brat, are you going to go home to herr Björnfot’s place and sit in his best armchair and gobble no end of biscuits?”
“Just one biscuit is nothing.”
“But as far as he’s concerned, ten biscuits are nothing.”
“Perhaps there is somebody who hates Hjalmar Lundbohm’s family,” Björnfot said, trying to drink his coffee despite the efforts of the Brat who had changed position on his lap and started scratching at him with his enormous paw in order to suggest that Björnfot ought to be stroking him instead. “Frans Uusitalo was Hjalmar Lundbohm’s son – but I expect you knew that.”
“Yes. Sivving knows all about that sort of thing. But who could possibly hate Lundbohm to that extent? It all seems so improbable.”
“I don’t know. But there are always loonies around. And Lundbohm wasn’t the saint that a lot of people seem to think he was. I know for instance that there was a rock-blaster in the mine, Venetpalo, who discovered some iron ore deposits in Tuolluvaara. He reported the find to Lundbohm who promptly filled in a prospecting licence application in his own name. Then Lundbohm handed over the prospecting rights to a private company of which he was the managing director. Venetpalo got nothing. You can get angry for less than that …”