The Black Path

by Asa Larsson

  It wasn’t until he burst into tears that they understood something serious had happened. They had listened, then treated him somewhat warily while they contacted the police.

  He’d found a dead woman, he said. He’d repeated several times that it wasn’t his ark. They’d still thought it was probably a matter of a guy who’d killed his wife. Nobody had wanted to look him in the eye. He’d been sitting there all alone and weeping, disturbing no one, when the police arrived.

  It had proved impossible to seal off the area around the ark; the wind had simply snatched the police tape away. Instead they had tied the black and yellow tape around the ark, wrapping it up like a parcel. The tape was flapping angrily in the wind. The technicians had arrived, and were working on the small surface area in the beam of the spotlights and the muted Calor gas light afforded by the ark itself.

  There just wasn’t room for more than two people inside the ark. While the technicians were working, Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke stood outside and tried to keep moving.

  It was more or less impossible to hear each other through the storm and their thick hats. Even Sven-Erik was wearing a hat with ear flaps; he didn’t normally wear anything on his head, even in the middle of winter. They yelled at each other and moved about like fat Michelin men in their snowmobile overalls.

  “Look,” shouted Anna-Maria. “This is ridiculous.”

  She spread out her arms, standing like a sail against the wind. She was a small woman and didn’t weigh a great deal. Besides which, the snow had melted during the day, then frozen again in the evening and turned shiny and icy, so when she positioned herself like that the wind got hold of her and she began to glide slowly away.

  Sven-Erik laughed and pretended to hurry over to catch her before she slid off to the opposite side of the lake.

  The technicians emerged from the ark.

  “She wasn’t murdered here, at any rate,” one of them bawled at Anna-Maria. “Looks like she was stabbed. But like I said, not here. You can take the body. We’ll carry on here in the morning when we can see what we’re doing.”

  “And when we’re not freezing our asses off,” yelled his colleague, who wasn’t dressed nearly warmly enough.

  The technicians climbed onto the sledge and were driven off to the tourist station.

  Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke went into the ark.

  It was cold and cramped.

  “But at least we’re out of that bloody wind,” said Sven-Erik as he closed the door. “That’s better, we can talk normally.”

  The small folding table attached to the wall was covered in a wood-patterned material. Four white plastic chairs were stacked on top of one another. There was a small hotplate and a place to wash the dishes. A red and white checked café curtain and a vase of artificial flowers were lying on the floor beneath the Plexiglas window. A big cushion fixed in front of the window provided a reasonable amount of protection against the wind, which was desperate to get in.

  Sven-Erik opened the wardrobe. The equipment necessary for distilling alcohol was inside. He closed the door.

  “We didn’t see that” was all he said.

  Anna-Maria looked at the woman on the bed.

  “One seventy-five?” she asked.

  Sven-Erik nodded, snapping small icicles from his moustache.

  Anna-Maria took the tape recorder out of her pocket. She fought with it for a while, because the batteries had got cold and it didn’t want to work.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, holding it close to the stove, which was doing its best to warm up the inside of the ark despite the broken window and the many gaps in the door.

  When she got it going, she put the description in first.

  “Female, blonde bob, in her forties…She’s attractive, isn’t she?”

  Sven-Erik mumbled something.

  “Well, I think she’s attractive anyway. About one meter seventy-five, slim, large breasts. No rings on her fingers. Eye color difficult to establish in the present circumstances, maybe the pathologist…Light-colored track suit top, looks windproof, stains on it which are probably blood, but we’ll find that out soon enough, matching track suit bottoms, running shoes.”

  Anna-Maria leaned over the woman.

  “And she’s wearing makeup—lipstick, eye shadow and mascara,” she continued into the tape recorder. “Isn’t that a bit odd, when you’re going out to exercise? And why hasn’t she got a hat?”

  “It’s been a lovely day, really warm, and yesterday was the same,” said Sven-Erik. “Just as long as you don’t get that wind…”

  “It’s winter! You’re the only person who never wears a hat. At any rate, her clothes don’t look cheap, and neither does she. She’s kind of elegant, somehow.”

  Anna-Maria switched off the tape recorder.

  “We’ll start knocking on doors tonight. The tourist station and the eastern side of Abisko. And we’ll ask the shop owners if it’s anybody they know. You’d think somebody would have reported her missing.”

  “I’ve got the feeling there’s something familiar about her,” said Sven-Erik thoughtfully.

  Anna-Maria nodded.

  “Maybe she lives in Kiruna, then. Think about it. Maybe you’ve seen her somewhere? Dentist? Behind the counter in a shop? In the bank?”

  Sven-Erik shook his head.

  “Leave it,” he said. “It’ll come to me if it wants to.”

  “We need to go round the other arks as well,” said Anna-Maria.

  “I know. And in this bloody storm.”

  “All the same.”

  “Right.”

  They looked at each other for a while.

  Sven-Erik looked tired, Anna-Maria thought. Tired and depressed. Dead women often had that effect on him. And the murders were usually so tragic. They lay there dead in the kitchen, the husband in floods of tears in the bedroom, and you just had to be grateful if there were no small children who’d seen it all happen.

  It never really affected her that much, unless it involved children of course. Children and animals, you never got used to that. But a murder like this one. Not that it made her happy. Or that she thought it was a good thing somebody had been murdered, nothing like that. But a murder like this…it gave you something to get your teeth into, somehow. She needed that.

  She smiled inwardly at Sven-Erik’s big wet moustache. It looked like road kill. Recently it had been more or less growing wild. She wondered how lonely he really was. His daughter lived in Luleå with her family. They probably didn’t get together very often.

  And then about eighteen months ago that cat of his had disappeared. Anna-Maria had tried to persuade him to get another one, but Sven-Erik refused. “They’re nothing but trouble,” he said. “They’re such a tie.” She knew exactly what that meant. He wanted to protect himself from the anguish. God knows he’d worried about Manne and pondered over what might have happened to him, until in the end he’d given up hope and stopped talking about him.

  It was such a shame, thought Anna-Maria. Sven-Erik was a good man. He’d make a fine husband for someone. And a good master for any animal. He and Anna-Maria got on well, but it would never occur to them to spend their leisure time together. It wasn’t just that he was much older than her. They simply didn’t have that much in common. If they met by chance in town or in a shop when they weren’t working, it was always so difficult to make conversation. But at work they’d chat away and get on really well.

  Sven-Erik looked at Anna-Maria. She really was a little woman, no more than one meter fifty, she almost disappeared inside the big snowmobile overalls. Her long blonde hair flattened by the hat. Not that she cared. She wasn’t one for makeup and that sort of thing. Probably didn’t have the time either. Four kids and a husband who didn’t seem to do all that much at home. Apart from that, there was nothing wrong with Robert, things seemed to be good between him and Anna-Maria, he was just so lazy.

  Although how much had he actually done at home when he and
Hjördis had been married? He didn’t really remember, but he did remember not being used to cooking when he was first living on his own.

  “Okay,” said Anna-Maria. “What if you and I fight our way through the snowstorm and go round the arks, while the others take the village and the tourist station?”

  Sven-Erik grinned.

  “Might as well, Saturday night’s ruined anyway.”

  It wasn’t really ruined. What would he have been doing otherwise? Watching TV and maybe taking a sauna with his neighbor. Always the same old routine.

  “True,” replied Anna-Maria, zipping up her overalls.

  Although she didn’t really feel like that. This wasn’t a ruined Saturday night. A knight can’t just stay at home nestling in the bosom of his family, he’ll go mad. He needs to get out there and draw his sword. To come home, tired and sated with adventures, to the family who have no doubt left their empty pizza boxes and fizzy drinks bottles in a heap on the living room table, but it didn’t matter. This was life at its best. Knocking on doors out on the ice in the darkness.

  “Hope she didn’t have kids,” said Anna-Maria before they went out into the storm.

  Sven-Erik didn’t reply. He was a little ashamed. He hadn’t even thought about children. The only thing he’d thought was that he hoped there wasn’t a cat shut in an apartment somewhere, waiting for his mistress.

  NOVEMBER 2003

  Rebecka Martinsson is discharged from the psychiatric clinic at St. Göran’s hospital. She takes the train up to Kiruna. Now she’s sitting in a taxi outside her grandmother’s house in Kurravaara.

  Since her grandmother died, the house has belonged to Rebecka and Uncle Affe. It’s a gray stone house down by the river. Worn linoleum on the floors, damp patches on the walls.

  The house used to smell old, but lived in. A permanent background aroma of wet Wellington boots, the barn, cooking and baking. Grandmother’s own, safe smell. And Daddy’s, of course, at that time. Now the house smells abandoned, closed up. The cellar is stuffed full of glass wool to keep away the chill that strikes up through the ground.

  The taxi driver carries her suitcase inside. Asks if it’s to go upstairs or downstairs.

  “Upstairs,” she replies.

  She used to live upstairs with her grandmother.

  Daddy lived in the flat downstairs. The furniture is standing in there in a strangely silent, timeless sleep beneath big white sheets. Uncle Affe’s wife, Inga-Britt, uses the ground floor as a storeroom. More and more banana boxes full of books and clothes are being gathered here, along with old chairs Inga-Britt has picked up cheaply and is intending to restore one day. Daddy’s furniture beneath the sheets has to shuffle closer and closer to the walls.

  The fact that it doesn’t look the way it used to is no help. For Rebecka, nothing changes the flat on the ground floor.

  Daddy has been dead for many years, but as soon as she walks through the door she can see him sitting there on the kitchen sofa. It’s time for breakfast, upstairs with Grandmother. He’s heard her coming down the stairs and has sat up quickly. He’s wearing a red and black checked flannel shirt and a blue Helly Hansen sweater. His blue work trousers are tucked into the long thick socks that Grandmother knitted. His eyes are slightly swollen. When he catches sight of her, he runs his hand over his stubbly chin and smiles.

  She can see a great deal now that she didn’t see then. Or did she? Running his hand over his stubble—she can see now that it was a sign of embarrassment. What does it matter to her? The fact that he doesn’t shave? That he’s slept in his clothes? Not in the slightest. He’s handsome, handsome.

  And the beer can standing on the draining board. It’s so battered and scruffy. It’s a long time since it held beer. He drinks something else out of it, but he wants the neighbors to think it’s ordinary beer.

  I never cared about that, she wants to say to him. It was Mummy who went on about it. I really, really loved you.

  The taxi has gone. She’s lit the open fire and switched on the radiators.

  She’s lying on her back in the kitchen on one of Grandmother’s rag rugs. Following a fly with her eyes. It’s buzzing loudly, in distress. Thumping heavily against the ceiling, as if it’s blind. They get like that, the ones that wake up because the house is suddenly warm. A tortured, tense noise, its flight slow and erratic. It lands on the wall now, wandering around listlessly and aimlessly. It has no ability to react at all. She could probably kill it with her bare hand. Then she wouldn’t have to listen to the noise anymore. But she can’t summon up the strength. Lies there watching it instead. It’ll die soon anyway. She can sweep it up then.

  DECEMBER 2003

  It’s Tuesday. Every Tuesday, Rebecka goes into town. Has a session with her therapist and collects her weekly dose of Cipramil. The therapist is a woman in her forties. Rebecka tries not to despise her. Can’t help looking at her shoes and thinking “cheap,” and at her jacket and thinking it doesn’t fit properly.

  But despising another person is a treacherous thing to do. It suddenly turns around: What about you, then? You haven’t even got a job.

  The therapist asks Rebecka to tell her about her childhood.

  “What for?” asks Rebecka. “That’s not why I’m here, is it?”

  “Why are you here, do you think?”

  She’s so tired of these professional questions being fired back at her. She looks down at the carpet in order to hide her expression.

  What could she say? The least thing is like a red button. If you press it, you don’t know what might happen. You remember drinking a glass of milk, and then everything else comes flooding in.

  I’ve no intention of wallowing in all that, she thinks, glaring at the box of tissues that’s always there at the ready on the desk between them.

  She looks at herself from the outside. Can’t work. Sits there on the cold toilet seat in the morning popping the tablets out of the box, afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t.

  There are many words. Embarrassing, pathetic, feeble, disgusting, revolting, a burden, crazy, sick. Murderer.

  She has to be a little bit nice to the therapist. Accommodating. On the road to recovery. Not such hard work all the time.

  I’ll tell her about something, she thinks. Next time.

  She could lie. She’s done that before.

  She could say: My mother. I don’t think she loved me. And perhaps that isn’t really a lie. More of a small truth. But this truth is hiding the big truth.

  I didn’t cry when she died, thinks Rebecka. I was eleven years old, and cold as ice. There’s something wrong with me, something basic.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE 2003

  Rebecka is celebrating New Year’s Eve with Sivving Fjällborg’s dog, Bella. Sivving is her neighbor. He was a friend of her grandmother’s when Rebecka was little.

  He asked if Rebecka would like to go with him to his daughter Lena and her family. Rebecka wriggled out of it, and he didn’t say any more. Instead he left the dog behind. It isn’t usually a problem to take Bella along. He said he needed a guard dog, but in fact it’s Rebecka who needs guarding. It doesn’t matter. Rebecka is glad of the company.

  Bella is a lively pointer. She loves her food like all pointers, and would be as fat as a sausage if she weren’t always on the move. Sivving lets her run off the worst of her restlessness down on the river, and he usually manages to persuade some of the villagers to take her hunting from time to time. She paces around in the house, winding herself around your legs—it’s enough to drive you mad. Jumps up and barks at the least sound. But the constant activity keeps her as thin as a rake. Her ribs can be seen quite clearly beneath her skin.

  Most of the time, lying down is a punishment. But at the moment Bella is lying on Rebecka’s bed, snoring. Rebecka has been skiing along the river for several hours. At the beginning she had to drag Bella along with her. Then she let her off the lead, and Bella scampered here and there kicking the snow up all around her. For the last few kilometers sh
e trotted along happily in Rebecka’s tracks.

  At around ten o’clock Måns rings; he used to be Rebecka’s boss at the office.

  When she hears his voice, her hand moves to her hair. As if he could see her.

  She’s thought about him. Often. And she thinks he rang and asked about her when she was in the hospital. But she isn’t sure. She remembers things so badly. She has the idea she told the nurse in charge of the ward that she didn’t want to speak to him. The electric shock treatment made her so confused. And her short-term memory disappeared. She became like an old person, saying the same thing several times in the course of a few minutes. She didn’t want anything to do with anyone at the time. And certainly not Måns. She didn’t want him to see her like that.

  “How’s it going?” he asks.

  “Fine,” she says; she feels like one of those bloody automatic pianos inside when she hears his voice. “How about you?”

  “Bloody great, fantastic.”

  Now it’s her turn to say something. She tries to come up with something sensible, preferably something funny, but her brain isn’t working at all.

  “I’m sitting in a hotel room in Barcelona,” he says at last.

  “I’m watching television with my neighbor’s dog. He’s gone to celebrate New Year’s with his daughter.”

  Måns doesn’t answer straightaway. It takes a second. Rebecka listens. Afterwards she’ll sit and analyze that silent second like a teenager. Did it mean anything? What? A stab of jealousy directed at the unknown male neighbor with the dog?