The Black Path

by Asa Larsson

  “Mmm,” replied Anna-Maria.

  Örjan Bylund had been a journalist on the newspaper Norrländska Socialdemokraten. Two days before Christmas Eve, which was also his sixty-second birthday, he’d died.

  “Heart attack, wasn’t it?” said Anna-Maria.

  “That’s the official line,” said Per-Erik Seppälä. “But the fact is, he took his own life. Hanged himself in his study.”

  “I see,” said Anna-Maria.

  She was surprised she hadn’t heard anything about it. Her colleagues always knew about that sort of stuff.

  “That’s what actually happened, anyway. In November he told me he had something big on the go to do with Kallis Mining. They’ve got concessions around here, as you know. Outside Vittangi, and on the marshes outside Svappavaara.”

  “Do you know what it was about?”

  “No, but I just thought…I don’t know, I just thought I ought to tell you. Maybe it’s not just a coincidence, you know. First him and then Inna Wattrang.”

  “It’s strange that I didn’t know he’d killed himself. I mean, the police have to be called in if it’s suicide…”

  “I know. His wife will be completely devastated. She was the one who found him. And she cut him down and rang the doctor. You know how it is. He was well known in town, and there’s always a lot of talk. So she rang a doctor she knew and the doctor signed the death certificate and didn’t call the police.”

  “Bloody hell!” exclaimed Anna-Maria. “That means there was no autopsy either.”

  “I didn’t know whether I ought to…but I had to tell you. I mean, you start thinking that maybe it wasn’t suicide. If he was digging into Kallis Mining and so on. But the last thing I want is for Airi to get into any kind of trouble.”

  “Airi?”

  “His wife.”

  “No, no,” promised Anna-Maria. “But I need to talk to her.”

  She shook her head. How were they going to manage to follow everything up? Put it all together and get an overview? It was beginning to feel overwhelming.

  “If you find out anything else…” she said.

  “Yes, of course. I saw Inna Wattrang at a press conference Kallis Mining held here in town before they floated one of the companies up here on the stock exchange. There was something magnetic about her; I hope you catch whoever did it. You will take it easy with Airi, won’t you?”

  Rebecka Martinsson walked into her office. She felt quite upbeat. It had done her good not to have lunch alone, as usual.

  She switched on the computer. Her heart gave a little leap.

  A message from Måns Wenngren.

  “You are coming, aren’t you?” it said. Nothing else.

  First of all she felt a little spurt of joy. Then she thought that if he’d really cared, he’d have written more than that. Then she thought that if he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have written to her at all.

  He wasn’t a particularly cheerful person. I know that. He was on antidepressants…and tranquilizers too, sometimes. But still. I never thought…Would you like filter coffee or percolated? I can easily do either.”

  Örjan Bylund’s widow, Airi, turned away from Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke and put some Danish pastries in the microwave.

  Sven-Erik felt uncomfortable, he didn’t like this, poking and prodding at wounds that had only just begun to heal.

  “Was it you who persuaded the doctor not to call the police?” asked Anna-Maria.

  Airi Bylund nodded, still with her back to them.

  “You know how people talk. But you mustn’t blame Dr. Erlander. It was entirely my responsibility.”

  “It doesn’t really work like that,” said Anna-Maria. “But we’re not out to put the blame on anybody.”

  Sven-Erik saw Airi Bylund’s hand move quickly up to her cheek to wipe away a tear that she wouldn’t allow them to see. He was seized by a desire to take her in his arms and comfort her. Then he discovered that his hand had been seized by a desire to get hold of that lovely broad bottom. Then he felt ashamed of himself, and pushed the thought away; for God’s sake, that poor woman was standing there crying over her husband, who’d hanged himself.

  It was a pleasant kitchen, Sven-Erik thought. There were several homemade rag rugs on the floor, which was imitation terracotta tiles. Along the wall was a sofa bed that was a little bit too wide and soft to sit on, but which would be very tempting if you fancied a little doze after dinner. It was covered with lots of lovely cushions, not those little hard ones that are just for decoration.

  A few too many ornaments all over the place, but that’s what women were like, not one empty surface. At least it wasn’t some weird collection—elves, or hippos, or little glass bottles. He’d once spoken to a witness whose entire house was cluttered with matchboxes from all over the world.

  In Airi Bylund’s kitchen, houseplants and baskets were crowded along the windowsill. On the worktop stood the microwave and a stand made of bamboo that was used for drying mushrooms and herbs. On a hook hung tiny pot holders that looked as though they might have been made by a grandchild. Nearest the stove stood a row of old porcelain jars with lids and ornate writing: “Flour,” “Sugar,” “Dried Fruit” and so on. One of them didn’t have a lid, and Airi Bylund kept her whisks and wooden spoons in there.

  There was something about porcelain jars like that. Hjördis had been crazy about them too, and had taken them with her when she left him. His sister had some too.

  “Did he have a study?” asked Anna-Maria. “Do you mind if we take a look?”

  If Airi Bylund’s kitchen was cluttered, then at least it was clean and attractive. In her dead husband’s study, teetering heaps of torn-out newspaper articles and reference books lay all over the floor. A thousand-piece jigsaw lay on a folding table, the pieces all the right way up and sorted according to color. On the walls were a number of finished puzzles, glued onto sheets of masonite. Clothes and a blanket in a pile on an old sofa.

  “I haven’t exactly got around to…and I haven’t had the strength,” said Airi, waving a hand at the mess.

  Lucky for us, thought Anna-Maria.

  “We’ll send somebody over to collect his papers and articles and that sort of thing,” she said. “You’ll get everything back. Didn’t he have a computer?”

  “Yes, but I gave it to one of the grandchildren.”

  She looked guiltily at them.

  “His employer didn’t say anything about wanting it back, so…”

  “This grandchild who’s got the computer…”

  “Axel. He’s thirteen.”

  Anna-Maria fished out her cell phone.

  “What’s his number?”

  Axel was at home. He said the computer was fine, it was in his room.

  “Have you cleaned the hard drive?” asked Anna-Maria.

  “No, it had already been wiped. But it was only 20 gigabytes and I want to be able to download stuff from Pirate Bay. So if you want Granddad’s computer I want a new one with a 2.1 gigahertz processor.”

  Anna-Maria had to laugh. What a negotiator.

  “Forget it,” she said. “But because I’m such a nice person, you can have it back when we’ve finished with it.”

  When she’d finished talking to Axel, she asked Airi, “Did you wipe the hard drive?”

  “No,” said Airi Bylund. “I can’t even program the video.”

  She fixed Anna-Maria with her eyes.

  “Make sure you learn how things like that work. All of a sudden you’re on your own.”

  “Did anybody from the paper come here and do anything with the computer, then?”

  “No.”

  Anna-Maria called Fred Olsson. He answered almost straightaway.

  “If somebody’s wiped a hard drive, you can get the documents and cookies back, can’t you?”

  “Sure,” said Fred Olsson. “As long as you haven’t EM Ped it.”

  “What?”

  “Fired an electromagnetic pulse through it—there ar
e specialist companies who do that. Bring it here, I’ve got some software that’ll restore data from the hard drive.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Anna-Maria. “Don’t go home. It’ll take a while.”

  When she’d finished speaking, Airi Bylund was looking thoughtful. She opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “What is it?” asked Anna-Maria.

  “No, it’s probably nothing…. But it was when I found him. It was here in the study, that’s why the ceiling light is on the bed.”

  Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik looked at the hook for the light fitting.

  “The door to his study was closed,” Airi Bylund went on. “But the cat was in here.”

  “And?”

  “It wasn’t allowed in here. We had another cat ten years ago, and it used to sneak in here and pee on his piles of paper. And in his sheepskin slippers. Since then all cats have been banned from his room.”

  “Perhaps he wasn’t bothered about that when…” Sven-Erik broke off in mid-sentence.

  “No, that’s what I thought too,” said Airi Bylund.

  “Do you think he was murdered?” Anna-Maria asked her straight-out.

  Airi Bylund was silent for a little while before replying.

  “Perhaps I’m hoping he was. In some strange way. It’s so difficult to understand.”

  Her hand flew up and covered her mouth.

  “Although he wasn’t a cheerful person. Never had been.”

  “So you’ve got a cat, then?” asked Sven-Erik, who had serious problems with Anna-Maria’s direct approach.

  “I have.” Airi Bylund’s face was lit up by a little smile. “She’s in the bedroom; come and have a look at something really cute.”

  On the crocheted coverlet on the double bed, a female cat lay sleeping with four kittens in an untidy heap beside her.

  Sven-Erik fell to his knees as if he were at the altar.

  The cat woke up immediately, but stayed where she was. One of the kittens woke up too, and came marching over to Sven-Erik. She was a gray tabby, with an almost black ring around one eye.

  “Doesn’t she look funny,” said Airi. “She looks as if she’s been in a fight.”

  “Hi there, boxer,” said Sven-Erik to the cat.

  She strolled confidently up his arm, using her needle-sharp claws to keep her balance, then ambled from one shoulder across the back of his neck to the other shoulder.

  “Hello, precious,” said Sven-Erik reverently.

  “Would you like her?” asked Airi Bylund. “It’s difficult to find homes for them all.”

  “No, no,” insisted Sven-Erik, just as he felt the soft fur against his cheek.

  The kitten jumped down onto the bed and woke up one of her siblings by biting the end of his tail.

  “Take the cat and we’ll go,” said Anna-Maria.

  Sven-Erik shook his head firmly.

  “No,” he said. “They’re such a tie.”

  They said their goodbyes. Airi Bylund accompanied them to the door. Before they left, Anna-Maria asked:

  “Your husband. Was he cremated, or…?”

  “No, he was buried in a coffin. But I’ve always said they can scatter me over Taalojärvi.”

  “Taalojärvi,” said Sven-Erik. “What was your maiden name?”

  “Tieva.”

  “Aha,” said Sven-Erik. “Twenty years or so ago I went by snowmobile up to Salmi. I was on the way to Kattuvuoma. And just opposite the village, on the eastern side of the sound by Taalojärvi, there was a little cottage. And I knocked on the door and asked the way to Kattuvuoma, and the woman who lived there said, ‘They usually drive straight across the lake and over the marshes and then go to the left, and there’s Kattuvuoma.’ And we talked a little bit more and I thought she seemed a bit reserved, but I pulled myself together and started to speak Finnish instead, and then she thawed out.”

  Airi Bylund laughed.

  “Oh yes, she probably thought you were a rousku, one of those bastards who can only speak Swedish.”

  “Exactly. So when I’d got back on the snowmobile and was just about to leave, she asked me, ‘But where do you come from and whose boy are you, since you can speak Finnish?’ So I told her I was Valfrid Stålnacke’s boy from Laukkuluspa. ‘Voi hyvänen aika!’ she said, clapping her hands. ‘Good heavens. We’re related, my boy. You mustn’t go across the lake. There are lots of hollows and it’s really dangerous. Go along the shore of the lake.’”

  Sven-Erik laughed.

  “Her name was Tieva. Was she your grandmother?”

  “No, she wasn’t,” said Airi Bylund, blushing. “She was my mother.”

  When they got out onto the street, Anna-Maria set off like a soldier on a route march. Sven-Erik scuttled after her.

  “Shall we go and pick up the computer?” he asked.

  “I want him up,” she said.

  “But it’s the middle of winter. The ground’s frozen solid.”

  “I don’t care. I want Örjan Bylund’s body up now! Pohjanen has to do an autopsy! Where are you going?”

  Sven-Erik had turned on his heel and was on his way back to Airi Bylund’s house.

  “I’m going to tell Airi Bylund, of course. You go! See you at the station.”

  Rebecka Martinsson got home around six in the evening. The clouds had gathered, and it was beginning to get dark. Just as she got out of the car in front of her gray house, it began to snow. Featherlight stars glittering as they floated down through the glow of the lamp on the barn wall, and the light above the porch.

  She stopped and stuck out her tongue, her arms at right angles to her body, her face turned upward, eyes closed, feeling the soft flakes land on her eyelashes and her tongue. Although it didn’t feel the way it used to when she was little. Just like making angels in the snow, it was one of those things that was fantastic when you were a child. If you tried it when you were grown up, you just got snow down inside your collar.

  He’s not for me, she thought, opening her eyes and looking down toward the river, enveloped in darkness, with a few lights showing from houses on the far side of the creek.

  He doesn’t think about me, the fact that he sends e-mails doesn’t mean a thing.

  During the afternoon she must have written twenty messages to Måns Wenngren, then deleted the lot. She didn’t want to seem too keen.

  Forget it, she tried to tell herself. He’s not interested.

  But her heart was stubbornly contradicting her.

  Look here, it said, calling up some pictures for her to look at. Måns and Rebecka in the skiff. She’s rowing. He’s trailing a hand in the water. He’s rolled up the sleeves of his white office shirt. His face soft and relaxed. Then: Rebecka on the floor in the living room in front of the open fire. Måns between her legs.

  When she got undressed to change from her work clothes into jeans and a sweater, she looked at herself in the mirror. Pale and slender. Her breasts were far too small. And weren’t they a really odd shape? Not two little mounds, more like two upside-down ice-cream cones. She suddenly felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar with this body that nobody wanted and inside which no child had grown to full term. She pulled her clothes on quickly.

  She poured herself a whisky and sat down at her grandmother’s old drop-leaf table in the kitchen, taking bigger gulps than usual. Its warmth spread through her stomach, and her thoughts stopped tumbling over one another in her head.

  The last time she’d really been in love…it had been Thomas Söderberg, which ought to tell her something about her ability to choose men. She wouldn’t think about it.

  She’d had the odd boyfriend after that, all law students at the university. She hadn’t actually chosen any of them herself. She’d allowed herself to be invited out to dinner, allowed herself to be kissed and somehow ended up in bed. Depressing and predictable from the start. Contempt had always been close by. She’d despised them all because they were such babies, upper-class boys, all convinced they’d get higher grades than her if they
could only be bothered to study. She despised their pathetic rebellion against their parents, which consisted of a moderate intake of drugs and a somewhat larger intake of alcohol. She despised their illusions of being different. She even despised their contempt for philistines, until they started work and got married and turned into philistines.

  And now there was Måns. Take a little bit of boarding school, fine art, arrogance, alcohol and a sharp legal mind in a male body and shake.

  Her father probably couldn’t believe his luck when her mother chose him. That was how she imagined it had happened. Her mother chose her father, just as you pluck a piece of ripe fruit from a tree.

  Rebecka was seized by a sudden desire to look at pictures of her mother. After her grandmother’s death, she ripped all the photos of her mother out of Grandmother’s album herself.

  She pulled on her boots and ran across to Sivving.

  There was still a faint aroma of fried sausage in the air down in Sivving’s boiler room. A newly washed plate lay on the string shelf, along with a glass, a pan and a frying pan, turned upside down on a red and white checked tea towel. Sivving was lying on top of the bed dozing, with the local paper over his face. There was a great big hole in one of his socks. Rebecka was strangely moved when she saw him.

  Bella leapt up, almost knocking the chair over in her joy at Rebecka’s visit. Rebecka scratched her, and the rhythmic thumping of Bella’s tail against the kitchen table and her ecstatic whimpering woke Sivving.

  “Rebecka,” he said happily. “Would you like some coffee?”

  She said yes, and while he was measuring it out she explained her errand.

  Sivving went upstairs, and after a while he came back with two albums under his arm.

  “I’m sure there must be some pictures of your mother in here,” he said. “Although it’s mostly Maj-Lis and the kids, of course.”

  Rebecka flicked through the pictures of her mother. In one her mother and Maj-Lis were sitting on a reindeer skin on the snow in early spring, squinting and laughing at the camera.

  “We’re like each other,” said Rebecka.

  “True,” agreed Sivving.

  “How did she and my father meet?”