The Black Path

by Asa Larsson

  The woman is leaning over the drawings.

  “Are these your drawings?”

  Ester nods. She ought to say something, of course, but her mouth is stiff, she can’t produce a single thought or a single word.

  The woman doesn’t seem bothered by her silence. She’s picked the drawings up now, and is examining them carefully. Then she examines Ester, narrowing her eyes.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.” Ester manages to get the word out, staring at the floor.

  The woman waves her hand in the air and a man of the same age appears at her side. He fishes out his wallet and the woman buys three pictures.

  “Do you paint anything else, apart from flowers?” she asks.

  Ester nods, and somehow it’s arranged that they will come to Mother’s studio to have a look.

  They turn up that evening in a rented Audi. The woman has changed into jeans and a woolen sweater that looks expensively simple. The man is still wearing spotless Fjällräven trousers, a shirt, and some kind of leather cowboy hat. He walks a few paces behind the woman. She is the first to extend her hand. She introduces herself as Gunilla Petrini, telling Mother that she’s the curator at the Color Factory, and is on the board of the national art council.

  Mother gives Ester a long look.

  “What’s the matter?” Ester whispers to her mother while Gunilla Petrini is going through the boxes containing Ester’s pictures.

  “You said it was a tourist who wanted to come and look.”

  Ester nods. They are tourists.

  Mother hunts around in the larder and finds half a packet of plain biscuits to offer them, and Ester looks on in surprise as she arranges them in a neat circle on a plate.

  Gunilla Petrini and her husband also look at Mother’s pictures with polite interest, but she scrabbles in the boxes containing Ester’s work like a hare in a plowed field.

  Her husband likes the pictures Ester drew when she and her mother went to the swimming baths in Kiruna. There’s Siiri Aidanpää drying her hair with her eyes closed. She has her curlers in, and is wearing silver earrings representing Sami symbols, although she herself isn’t Sami. Her ample bosom has been stuffed into a plain, sturdy bra of generous proportions; her stomach and bottom are also substantial.

  “She’s so beautiful,” he says, looking at the seventy-year-old.

  Ester has painted the enormous knickers salmon pink. It’s the only color in the picture. She’s seen old, hand-colored photographs, and was trying to achieve that same gentle tone.

  Other pictures from the baths show middle-aged men swimming in a row in the exercise pool, the old changing rooms from the beginning of the sixties, built of dark wood, with a daybed and a little wardrobe, and the sign to the room before the showers with the words ultraviolet lamp written in silver letters. All the rest of the pictures are from Rensjön and Abisko.

  What a small world, Gunilla Petrini and her husband are thinking.

  “As I said, I’m the curator at the Color Factory,” Gunilla Petrini says to Ester’s mother.

  They’re alone. Ester and Gunilla’s husband have gone outside to look at the reindeer in the enclosure on the far side of the railway line.

  “I’m on the board of the national art council, and I’m a buyer for a number of large companies. I have a considerable amount of influence in the art world in Sweden.”

  Mother nods. She’s probably seen what’s coming.

  “I’m impressed by Ester. And I’m not often impressed. She’s finished school; what’s she intending to do now?”

  “Ester’s not much of a one for studying. But she’s got a place to train as a care worker.”

  Gunilla Petrini has to control herself. She feels like a knight in shining armor, riding in at the very last minute to save the girl. A care worker!

  “You haven’t considered allowing her to study art?” she asks in her gentlest voice. “She might be too young for art college, but there are preliminary training courses she could do. At the Idun Lovén Art School, for example. The principal and I are old friends.”

  “Stockholm,” says Ester’s mother.

  “It’s a big city, but I would look after her, of course.”

  Gunilla Petrini has misheard. It isn’t anxiety because Ester is so young to be going to the big city that she can hear in her mother’s voice. It’s restlessness. It’s the fact that she’s stuck here, stuck in her life with a family and children. It’s all the unpainted pictures she carries deep down in her soul.

  Later that evening they sit at the kitchen table with Father, telling him all about it.

  “Of course they think you’re exotic,” says Mother, crashing dishes around. “An Indian girl in a Sami dress painting mountains and reindeer.”

  “I don’t want to go,” says Ester in an attempt to pacify her mother, although she has no idea what’s wrong.

  “Of course you do,” says her mother firmly.

  Father says nothing. When it comes to the crunch, Mother is the one who makes the decisions.

  Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke drove away from Regla. In the rearview mirror Anna-Maria could see Mikael Wiik opening the gate for the Chevrolet with the tinted windows.

  “So who was that?” she asked.

  Just as she spoke, she realized. The practical boots, the friendly nod between Mikael Wiik and the driver of the Chevy.

  “Security,” she said to Sven-Erik. “I wonder what’s going on.”

  “I suppose they have these summit meetings,” said Sven-Erik. “But unlike Swedish politicians, they have bodyguards.”

  Anna-Maria’s telephone rang and Sven-Erik grabbed the wheel while she rummaged in her pocket. It was Tommy Rantakyrö.

  “Telephone exchange here,” he said, pretending to sound upset.

  Anna-Maria laughed.

  “That payment into Inna Wattrang’s account,” he went on. “It was made from the bank’s branch office on Hantverkargatan. There’s a guy who’s phoned Inna Wattrang’s private cell phone lots of times from an address near there.”

  “Could you possibly text me the address? Sven-Erik gets so stressed if I’m chatting on the phone and writing down addresses and driving at the same time.”

  She beamed at Sven-Erik.

  “No problem,” said Tommy Rantakyrö. “Keep your hands on that wheel.”

  Anna-Maria passed the phone to Sven-Erik. Thirty seconds later the name and address appeared on the display.

  “Malte Gabrielsson, Norr Mälarstrand 34.”

  “We might as well drive over there,” said Anna-Maria. “I mean, we haven’t got anything else to do.”

  An hour and ten minutes later they were standing outside the main door at Norr Mälarstrand 34, waiting. They managed to get in when a lady with a dog came out.

  Sven-Erik looked for Malte Gabrielsson’s name on the board showing who lived in the building. Anna-Maria took a look around. In one direction was the outside door, in the other an inner courtyard.

  “Look,” she said, nodding toward the courtyard.

  Sven-Erik looked, but couldn’t see what she meant.

  “They’ve been getting all their paper ready for collection out there. Come on.”

  Anna-Maria went outside and started to rummage through the paper sacks.

  “Bingo,” she said after a while, holding up a golfing magazine with Malte Gabrielsson’s name on the address label. “This bag belongs to Mr. Gabrielsson.”

  She carried on digging through the sack, and after a while she passed an envelope to Sven-Erik. On the back of the envelope somebody had written a shopping list in ink.

  “Milk, mustard, crème fraîche, mint…” read Sven-Erik.

  “No, look at the handwriting. It’s the same as on that paying-in slip. ‘Not for your silence.’”

  Malte Gabrielsson lived on the third floor. They rang the bell. After a while the door was opened a fraction. A man in his sixties peered at them over the security chain. He was wearing a dress
ing gown.

  “Malte Gabrielsson?” asked Anna-Maria.

  “Yes?”

  “Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke, Kiruna police. We’d like to ask you a few questions about Inna Wattrang.”

  “Excuse me, but how did you even get in here? You need a security code to get through the outside door.”

  “May we come in?”

  “Am I suspected of something?”

  “Not at all, we’d just like to—”

  “The thing is, I’ve got a terrible cold and I’m…well, I’m feeling pretty rough. If you’ve got any questions they’ll have to wait.”

  “It won’t take long,” Anna-Maria began, but before she’d finished speaking Malte Gabrielsson had closed the door.

  Anna-Maria leaned her forehead against the door frame.

  “Give me strength,” she said. “That’s it, I’ve just about had enough of these bloody people treating me like their Polish cleaner.”

  She hammered on the door.

  “Open this bloody door!” she roared.

  She pushed open the letterbox and shouted into the apartment.

  “We’re carrying out a murder investigation here. If I were you, I’d talk to us now. Otherwise I’ll be sending my uniformed colleagues to where you work to bring you in for interrogation. I’ll be knocking on your neighbors’ doors and asking questions about you. I know you paid Inna Wattrang two hundred thousand kronor before she died. I can prove that. It’s your handwriting on the paying-in slip. I’m not going anywhere.”

  The door opened again, and Malte Gabrielsson undid the security chain.

  “Come in,” he said, looking around the stairwell.

  All of a sudden he was amiability personified. Standing there in his dressing gown, hanging up their coats in the hallway. It was as if he’d never tried to fob them off at all.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked once they were settled in the living room. “I haven’t managed to do any shopping, what with having such a cold, but perhaps a cup of tea or coffee?”

  The sofas were white, the carpet was white, the walls were white. Large abstract oil paintings and objets d’art contributed color to the room. It was a fantastically light apartment. High ceiling, huge windows. Not a thing was out of place. The nameplate on the door carried only his name, so he must live alone in this pristine space.

  “We’re fine, thanks,” said Anna-Maria Mella.

  Then she got straight to the point:

  “‘Not for your silence,’ what was that all about?”

  Malte Gabrielsson fished a handkerchief out of his dressing gown pocket; he had folded it into a small pad, and wiped his sore nose with small, careful dabbing movements. Anna-Maria shuddered at the thought of picking up the snot-soaked hankie to put it in the washing machine.

  “It was just a gift,” he said.

  “Do me a favor,” said Anna-Maria pleasantly. “I did say I wasn’t going anywhere until we sort this out.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I suppose it’ll all come out anyway in the end. We were seeing each other for a while, Inna and I. And then we had a quarrel, and I gave her a couple of slaps.”

  “And?”

  All at once Malte Gabrielsson looked sad, sorrowful and slightly vulnerable, sitting there in his dressing gown.

  “I think it’s because I knew she’d grown tired of me. She would have left me anyway. I couldn’t bear that. So I allowed myself to…lose control, or however you want to put it. Then I could fool myself that was why she’d left me. But she would have gone anyway. Somewhere inside, I knew that. I’ve thought about it a lot since then.”

  “Why did you give her the money?”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I left a message on her answering machine: ‘This is not for your silence. I’m a pig. If you want to go to the police, then do it. Buy yourself something nice. A picture or a piece of jewelry. Thanks for the good times, Inna.’ I really wanted it to be like that. That it was me who was a pig. And that I was the one who’d ended our relationship by raising my hand to her.”

  “Two hundred thousand is rather a lot for a couple of slaps,” said Anna-Maria.

  “The crime sheet would still say physical abuse. I’m a lawyer. If she’d reported me to the police, I’d have been out on my ear.”

  He suddenly looked at Anna-Maria and said sharply, “I didn’t kill her.”

  “You did know her, though. Is there anyone who really would have wanted her dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was her relationship with her brother like?”

  “She didn’t talk about him much. I got the impression that she was pretty fed up with him. I think she’d got tired of covering up his mistakes. Why don’t you ask him about his relationship with her?”

  “I’d love to, but he’s in Canada on a business trip.”

  “Oh, so Mauri and Diddi are in Canada.” Malte Gabrielsson dabbed at his nose again. “They didn’t spend much time grieving, then.”

  “Mauri Kallis isn’t in Canada, just Diddi Wattrang,” said Anna-Maria.

  Malte Gabrielsson broke off his nose dabbing.

  “Just Diddi? I hardly think so!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “According to Inna, it’s a long time since Mauri allowed Diddi to travel and take care of things on his own. He has no judgment. Made some really crazy decisions, quick and dirty. No, if he travels at all it’s with Inna—well, not anymore of course, but before—or with Mauri. Never on his own. He messes things up. Besides which, I don’t think Mauri trusts him.”

  Back on the street, Sven-Erik sighed.

  “I feel sorry for some people.”

  “Sorry? For him?” exclaimed Anna-Maria. “Do me a favor!”

  “He’s a really lonely person. He might be a lawyer earning a ton of money, but he’s ill and there’s nobody to shop for him. And that apartment, was that a home? He ought to get a cat.”

  “So he can put it in the washing machine or something? A guy who beats up women, sitting there feeling sorry for himself because she would have left him anyway. And a couple of slaps—no chance. Oh, no! Anyway, what about something to eat?”

  Inna Wattrang drives through the iron gates on the way up to Regla. It’s the second of December. She parks outside the old laundry where she lives and prepares to get out of the car. It’s not easy.

  She’s driven from Stockholm, and now she’s here her arms feel weak all of a sudden. She can hardly manage to put the car into reverse and get the ignition key out.

  She doesn’t really know how she got home. Jesus, she drove in the darkness following the red rear lights of other drivers. One eye is completely closed, and she had to keep her head tipped back the whole time in case her nose started bleeding again.

  She fumbles for the seat belt in order to undo it, but discovers that she hadn’t put it on. She didn’t even hear the pinging noise that usually reminds you.

  She’s stiffened up; when she opens the car door to get out, she feels a sharp stabbing pain in her chest. And when she takes a sudden deep breath because it hurts, it’s even more painful. He’s broken her ribs.

  She almost has to laugh, because she’s in such a mess. She clambers laboriously out of the car. Hangs on to the car door with one hand, can’t manage to straighten up, stands there stooping, taking short jagged breaths because of her cracked ribs. She rummages for her door key, hoping her nose won’t start again; she’s very fond of her Vuitton purse.

  Where’s the fucking key? She can’t see a thing. She heads for the black wrought-iron lamppost over by the side of the house. And just when she’s in full view under the light, she hears voices. It’s Ebba and Ulrika. Mauri’s and Diddi’s wives. Sometimes they take the boat over to Hedlandet and meet up with some other “little wives” for wine tastings and girly dinners and quality time without the kids. When they get back they usually cut across Inna’s yard, it’s the quickest way. She can hear them giggling and chatting.

 
; They’ve had a nice evening too, thinks Inna with a wry smile.

  For a moment she considers trying to make her escape, but what a sight that would be. Limping away like Quasimodo and disappearing into the shadows.

  It’s Ulrika who notices her first.

  “Inna,” she calls out, a slight question in her voice; what’s going on with Inna, is she drunk or something, why is she standing there in that odd, stooped position?

  Ebba pipes up next.

  “Inna? Inna!”

  Their footsteps, hurrying across the gravel.

  Masses of questions. It’s like being trapped in a closet with a swarm of bees.

  She lies, of course. She’s usually very good at it, but right now she’s a bit too tired and battered.

  She whips up a quick story about being attacked by a gang of lads in Humlegården…. Yes, they took her wallet…. No, Ulrika and Ebba are definitely not to ring the police…. Why not? Because she bloody says so!

  “I just need to go and lie down,” she says. “Can one of you get my bloody key out of this bloody purse, please?”

  She’s swearing instead of bursting into tears.

  “Lying down can be dangerous,” says Ulrika as Ebba scrabbles in the purse for Inna’s key. “Did they kick you? You might have internal bleeding. We ought to ring a doctor at least.”

  Inna groans inside. If she had a gun she’d shoot them, just to get a bit of peace and quiet.

  “There’s no internal bleeding!” she snaps.

  Ebba has found the key. She unlocks the door and puts the light on in the hallway.

  “But here’s your wallet,” she says, taking it out of the purse with a strange expression on her face. Now they’re in the light, they can see clearly what a mess Inna is in. They don’t know what to think.

  Inna forces a smile.

  “Thanks. You’re both…really sweet…”

  Shit, she sounds as if they’re a couple of teddy bears, she can’t find the right tone, just wants them to go.