by Asa Larsson
I’ll borrow Anni’s telephone, she thought.
Then she remembered that she’d promised to go back and help Anni down the stairs.
Good Lord, she thought. I’d forgotten all about that.
Anni was fast asleep upstairs in Wilma’s room. She had pulled the bedspread over her. When Mella sat down on the edge of the bed, she opened her eyes.
“Back already?” she said. “How about a cup of coffee?”
“If I drink another cup of coffee, I’ll drop down and die,” Mella said with a wry smile. “Can I borrow your phone?”
Anni did not sit up, but her eyes were suddenly wide open and searching.
“What’s happened?” she said.
“Nothing,” Mella said. “I just can’t start my car.”
Robert didn’t answer the phone. He was probably out playing in the snow with the kids. Ringing Stålnacke was a non-starter. She couldn’t phone any of her other colleagues either.
It’s Saturday, she thought. They’re off duty. I’ve got myself into this situation. The last thing I need is another story about how inconsiderate I am.
In the end she dialled Rebecka Martinsson’s number. Martinsson picked up after two rings.
“I’ll fill you in later,” Mella said, glancing at Anni, who was in the kitchen getting some yoghourt and bread. “Can you come and fetch me, please? I hate having to ask you.”
“I’ll be there right away,” Martinsson said, without asking any questions.
Forty minutes later, Rebecka Martinsson pulled up at Anni Autio’s house.
Mella was standing outside, waiting for her. Slammed the passenger door as she got into the car.
“Let’s go,” was all she said.
Once they had left the village, the story came tumbling out.
“The bastards,” she said, bursting into tears. “What a bunch of fucking cunts.”
Martinsson said nothing, concentrated on her driving.
“And they knew the score exactly,” Mella snuffled. “I can’t prove a bloody thing. Not that Hjalmar slashed my tyres, not that they nicked my mobile, nothing.”
Shame raged inside her. She had allowed herself to be terrified. Tore Krekula must have felt like a bloated rat on top of a rubbish tip when he offered to drive her into Kiruna and she said no.
“He enjoyed every minute of it,” she said to Martinsson.
I ought to have made a scene, she thought. I ought to have raised hell and screamed and accused them. I should have insisted that they drove me into town. Instead I let them see that I was shit-scared.
“I’ll give them hell!” she roared, slamming her fist down on the glovebox. “I’ll reopen every suspended investigation, check out every retracted accusation involving those damned brothers. You can charge them. They’ll regret the day they started fucking with me.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Martinsson said calmly. “You’ll keep a cool head and act in a professional manner.”
“You saunter in all serene and innocent,” Mella said, “and they launch an all-out attack. Crash, bang, wallop!”
“Some people . . .” Martinsson said, without finishing her sentence. “Do you think this has anything to do with Simon and Wilma?”
“Simon and Wilma. I’m going to find Simon. And I’m going to discover exactly how they died.”
“Yes, you do that,” Martinsson said. “That’s your job.”
“I’ll call in the media and appeal to the public for information. And I’ll ring the Krekula brothers and suggest that they switch on their televisions.”
She slapped her forehead.
“Oh, shit!” she said. “I was supposed to collect Jenny from the stables. What time is it?”
“Quarter past two.”
“I can just make it . . . that is, if you . . . Is it O.K. if we pick her up?”
There was no sign of Jenny at the stables. Mella ran into the coffee room, checked all the seats around the riding track, every box, every stall. She asked all the stable girls she could find, becoming desperate when they shrugged and said they had no idea where Jenny might be. Martinsson was hard on her heels. They finally discovered one of Jenny’s friends behind the main building. She was busy splitting bales of hay open for the horses in the paddock.
“Hi Ebba,” Mella said in an uncharacteristically cheerful voice, trying to subdue the suspicions that were beginning to creep up on her. “Where’s Jenny?”
Ebba looked at Mella in confusion.
“But you sent her a text,” she said. “Jenny was so upset. She texted you back, then rang you, but you didn’t pick up.”
Mella went ice-cold with horror.
“But I haven’t sent any texts,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. “I have . . . My mobile . . .”
Martinsson’s mobile rang. It was Måns Wenngren. She ignored the call.
“What did the text say?”
“Surely you must know what you wrote?” Ebba said.
Mella groaned, covering her mouth with her hand to prevent herself from screaming.
“Oh my God!” Ebba said, looking scared. “You texted Jenny that she should meet you. Immediately. She was pretty put out, having to go back to town.”
“Where to?” Mella screeched. “Where was she supposed to go?”
“To that old open-air stage in the park by the railway station. We thought it seemed odd. A funny place to meet. She tried to ring and text you, but you didn’t answer. Neither did Robert. Your text said to come immediately – Jenny was afraid something might have happened to you.”
The stage in Järnvägsparken, Martinsson thought. There won’t be a soul anywhere in the vicinity.
“Are you saying it wasn’t you who sent that text?” Ebba said, sounding worried.
But Mella was already racing for the car. Martinsson ran after her.
Mella’s heart was thumping. She could envisage Tore and Hjalmar Krekula telling Jenny that her mother had had an accident. She could see them driving off with Jenny in their car.
How many times had Mella found herself observing her only daughter surreptitiously since she had become a teenager? Mella had contemplated Jenny’s budding breasts, her perfect pink skin. Prayed for divine protection. Please God, don’t let anything awful happen to her. And now . . . Please, please God . . .
Martinsson set off with Mella on her mobile, trying to ring Jenny. No answer. Please, please God . . . Don’t let anything happen to her. Please don’t let anything happen to her. We’ll be there very soon.
Martinsson drove through the park along the pedestrian walkway to the stage. There was Jenny. She looked frozen to death in her stable girl’s light jacket. Mella leapt out of the car, yelling out her daughter’s name. Jenny! Jenny!
“I’m here, can’t you see?” Jenny said, breaking free from her mother’s embrace.
She was furious. Scared as well, you could see that in her eyes.
Mella flew into a rage.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” she thundered.
“I tried to ring you. My battery ran out. God knows how long I’ve been standing here waiting. Nobody answered! You didn’t. Dad didn’t. What’s going on? Why are you crying?”
The late news on North Swedish Television carried pictures of Wilma Persson and Simon Kyrö. The presenter said that although the young people had disappeared in October, Wilma’s body had only just been found. Mella stood in front of the camera asking the public for any leads. Anything and everything was of interest, she said. Did anyone know where the kids were planning to go diving? Had anybody spoken to them before they disappeared?
“Don’t be afraid to ring us,” she said. “Rather a call too many than one too few.”
Anna-Maria Mella was sitting on the living-room sofa, watching the late news. Robert was beside her. Each of them had a pizza in a box on their knees. Jenny and Petter had already finished eating. There were empty boxes and drinks cans on the table. Marcus was staying over at his girlfriend’s plac
e. Gustav had been asleep for ages.
All around Mella and Robert, behind them and on the floor in front of the sofa, was clean, crumpled laundry waiting to be sorted and folded. Robert had been out with Gustav all day. They had had lunch at his sister’s.
It would never occur to him to volunteer to fold newly washed laundry, Mella thought disapprovingly. Everything was such a mess. She would need to devote an entire holiday to catching up with the housework. And she would have much preferred a real dinner instead of this nasty, greasy pizza. She made a play of dropping the slice in her hand into the box, and pushing it away.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Robert folding pieces of pizza and stuffing them into his mouth while caressing her back absent-mindedly.
She was irritated by this monotonous, aimless stroking. As if she were a cat. Just now what she needed were some real, sensuous caresses. Fingertips alternating with the whole of his hand. A trace of desire. A kiss on the back of her neck. A consoling hand stroking her hair.
She had told him what had happened, and he had listened without saying much. “Well, everything turned out alright in the end,” he had said at last. She had felt like screaming, “But what if it hadn’t turned out alright? It could have been very nasty indeed!”
Do I always need to cry in order to be consoled? she said to herself. Do I always have to fly into a rage before he does anything to help in the house?
She had the feeling that Robert thought he was being very generous in not complaining. She was the police officer after all. If she had a different job, none of this would have happened. The unspoken accusation made her angry. That he seemed to think he had the right to be furious, but that he was sufficiently kind and generous to forgive her. She did not want to be forgiven.
She wriggled her shoulders, a leave-me-alone gesture.
Robert took his hand away. Washing down the last piece of pizza with the dregs from a Coca-Cola can, he stood up, collected all the boxes and empty cans and went out to the kitchen.
Mella stayed where she was. She felt abandoned and unloved. Part of her wanted to go after Robert and ask him for a hug. But she didn’t. Turned her attention listlessly back to the television, feeling that, deep inside, she had become hardened.
I’m paying a visit to Hjalmar Krekula. His place is a real bachelor pad. His mother Kerttu still changes the curtains for him. Every spring and autumn. He told her to stop a few years ago, so she no longer puts up Christmas curtains. She’s filled the window ledges with plastic geraniums. He hasn’t bought a single item of furniture for his house. He’s got most of his things from Tore. When his younger brother changed his woman, the new woman replaced all the old furniture. Whatever was left from Tore’s previous marriage was either too dark, too light, too worn or just plain wrong. Tore let her do whatever she wanted, as they do in the beginning. All the old furniture ended up in Hjalmar’s house.
But he bought the television himself. A big, expensive one. He’s just switched off the late-night news bulletin from North Swedish Television. They showed pictures of me and Simon. He senses that I’m there when I sit down next to him on the living-room sofa. I notice him glancing quickly to the side. Then he moves away, tries to stop feeling my presence, closes all the doors to the house that is his self.
He hurries to switch on the television again.
He’s surprised by that little policewoman.
He remembers how Tore leaned over, in a way that showed he was used to doing it, and searched her pockets while she was in the toilet.
Kerttu didn’t say a word. Isak was in bed in the little room off the kitchen, gasping for breath.
Tore took out her mobile, put it in his pocket and told Hjalmar to go out and fix her car.
“That’ll stop the bitch rootling around in my business,” Tore said as they drove off to town, passing the policewoman on her way to Anni’s.
Then they sent the text message to the policewoman’s daughter. It was dead easy to figure out the girl’s name and send her a text.
They’ve found my body. Things should start happening now. Tore’s on a high, although he’s trying to disguise it. He wants to convince Hjalmar that all this was just a job that had to be done, merely another aspect of the firm’s business.
I can sense how Hjalmar’s mind is working. Knowing that Tore thrives in such situations. Not so much on the violence itself as on the threat of violence. Tore feeds off other people’s fear and impotence. It fills him with strength and a lust for work. Spurs him on to tidy up the cabs of the lorries, polishing everything with Cockpit-Shine or changing the papers in the tachographs. Hjalmar is pretty much the opposite. Or used to be. He’s never understood the point of making threats; it’s always been Tore who’s looked after that side of things. But Hjalmar knows all about violence. Always assuming his opponent is someone to be reckoned with, preferably superior to himself.
That feeling of getting involved in a fight, perhaps against three opponents. The initial fear. Before the first punch has been delivered. Then the blood-red rag of fury. Unrestrained by thoughts or feelings other than the determination to survive, the desire to win. I was also a fighter until I moved to Piilijärvi and met Simon. I know the pleasure there is to be derived from fighting.
But Hjalmar only fought like that when he was young. It’s been a different matter since he became an adult.
Now he’s sighing deeply, as he only does when he’s alone. He’s standing up.
These days he indulges in violence with a sort of mechanical listnessness. Beating up some poor soul who owes money, or has to be made to close down his business to reduce the competition; or making sure someone grants the necessary permission to set up a greasing pit, that sort of stuff.
Generally speaking, violence isn’t necessary. The brothers are known far and wide. People usually do as they’re told. But Inspector Mella hasn’t allowed herself to be intimidated.
Now Hjalmar goes out onto his porch. It’s a Saturday evening. Still light outside. He checks Tore’s house: Tore and his wife are watching television. Hjalmar wonders if Tore has seen the news bulletin. No doubt Kerttu has helped Isaak to sit up, pulled the tea trolley over and is feeding him spoonfuls of rose-hip soup and rusks that have been dipped into it.
Hjalmar would love to go off into the forest. I can tell by looking at him. He’s gazing at the spruce trees along the edge of their plot like a chained-up dog. He has a little cottage at Saarisuanto on the banks of the River Kalix. I know about it. I bet that’s what he’s thinking about.
He likes the remoteness there. He loves to get away from people. I wonder if he’s always been like that. Or if it began after the incident.
There was “an incident” in the village. A story that’s told behind the brothers’ backs.
It is early in the morning of 17 June, 1956. Hjalmar Krekula is preparing to drive the cows out to their summer pasture. That is one of the tasks he has to perform during the summer holidays. The farms within the village are fenced in, and the cows are sent into the forest during the day to graze. In the evening they nearly always come home of their own accord, udders bulging, to be milked. But sometimes Hjalmar has to go to fetch them. They are especially difficult to bring home towards the end of summer. When they have been eating mushrooms among the trees. It can take hours to find them. Mushrooms tend to make them behave oddly.
The boys’ mother is in the kitchen, making packed lunches to put in their rucksacks.
“Does Tore have to come as well?” Hjalmar says, fastening the only three buttons left on his flannel shirt. “Can’t he stay at home with you?”
Hjalmar Krekula is eight years old, will be nine in July. Tore is six. Hjalmar would prefer to be in the forest on his own. Tore is a nuisance, following him around all the time.
“Don’t argue,” his mother says in a voice that will not tolerate contradiction.
She is spreading butter on bread for her boys. Hjalmar notices that she is spreading the butter more thickly o
n one of the slices. She wraps the sandwiches in newspaper, and the one with the most butter goes into Tore’s rucksack. Hjalmar makes no comment. Tore is sitting on the kitchen stool, sliding his new knife up and down in its sheath.
“Don’t play with knives,” Hjalmar says, just as he has been told not to do many times.
Tore does not seem to hear him. Their mother says nothing. She pours a little yoghourt into a small wooden flask and puts a piece of salted fish into an old flour bag. These Hjalmar will carry in his rucksack.
The family keeps only three cows, to supply their own needs. Isak Krekula, their father, runs the haulage firm, while Kerttu looks after the house and the cattle.
The boys have their rucksacks. They are wearing caps, and trousers that just cover their knees. Hjalmar’s boots are too big for him and flop around. Tore’s boots are a bit too small.
Before they have even crossed the main road, Tore cuts off a birch switch with which he pokes the cows.
“You don’t need to hit them,” Hjalmar says with annoyance. “Star is bright. She follows you if you lead the way.”
Star, the lead cow, follows Hjalmar. She has a bell attached to a leather strap round her neck. Her ears are black, and she has a black star on her forehead. Rosa and Mustikka traipse along behind. Their tails are twitching, aiming at flies. They occasionally run a few paces in order to get away from Tore and his confounded birch switch.
Hjalmar presses on. He is leading the cows to the edge of a bog a kilometre or so away. It is a good grazing spot. The sun is warm. The forest is fragrant with wild rosemary which has just come into bloom. Star trots happily after Hjalmar. She has learnt that he takes her to good grazing grounds.
Tore keeps on holding them up. He stops to poke a big branch through an anthill, back and forth, back and forth. And he feels the need to cut notches in tree trunks with his new knife. Hjalmar looks the other way. His own knife is nowhere near as sharp. One of his father’s employees has used it to scrape rust off one of the lorries. There is a big hack in the cutting edge, too big to be ground away. Tore’s knife is brand new.