by Unknown
It was a uniformed policeman, who reached Sanna in a few rapid steps. Rebecka couldn’t hear what he said.
She looked at her watch. It was pointless even to try to catch the plane. She couldn’t go now. With a deep sigh, she got out of the car. Her body moved slowly toward Sanna and the policeman. The girls were still standing on the steps and leaning over the snow-covered railings. Sara’s gaze was firmly fixed on Sanna and the policeman. Lova was eating lumps of. snow that had stuck to her gloves.
“What do you mean, house search?”
Sanna’s tone of voice made Virku stop, and approach her mistress uneasily.
“You can’t just go into my home without permission? Can they?”
The last question was directed at Rebecka.
At that very moment Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post came out, followed by two plainclothes detectives. Rebecka recognized them. It was that little woman with a face like a horse—what was her name, now? Mella. And the guy with a walrus moustache. Good God, she thought moustaches like that had gone out in the seventies. It looked as if somebody had glued a dead squirrel under his nose.
The prosecutor went up to Sanna. He was holding a bag in one hand, and he fished out a smaller transparent plastic bag. Inside it was a knife. It was about twenty centimeters long. The shaft was black and shiny, and the point curved upward slightly.
“Sanna Strandgård,” he said, holding the bag with the knife just a little too close to Sanna’s face. “We’ve just found this in your residence. Do you recognize it?”
“No,” replied Sanna. “It looks like a hunting knife. I don’t hunt.”
Sara and Lova came over to Sanna. Lova tugged at the sleeve of Sanna’s sheepskin coat to get her mother’s attention.
“Mummy,” she whined.
“Just a minute, chicken,” said Sanna absently.
Sara nestled into her mother and pressed against her so that Sanna was forced to step backward with one foot so as not to lose her balance. The eleven-year-old followed the prosecutor’s movements with her eyes and tried to understand what was going on between these serious adults standing in a circle around her mother.
“Are you absolutely certain?” von Post asked again. “Take a good look,” he said, turning the knife over.
The cold made the plastic bag crackle as he showed both sides of the weapon, holding up first the blade and then the shaft.
“Yes, I’m certain,” answered Sanna, backing away from the knife. She avoided looking at it again.
“Perhaps the questions could wait,” said Anna-Maria Mella to von Post, nodding toward the two children clinging to Sanna.
“Mummy,” repeated Lova over and over again, tugging at Sanna’s sleeve. “Mummy, I need a pee.”
“I’m freezing,” squeaked Sara. “I want to go in.”
Virku moved anxiously and tried to press herself between Sanna’s legs.
Picture number two in the book of fairy stories, thought Rebecka. The wood nymph has been captured by the villagers. They have surrounded her and some are holding her fast by her arms and tail.
“You keep hand towels and sheets in the drawer under the sofa bed in the kitchen, isn’t that right?” von Post continued. “Are you also in the habit of keeping knives among the towels?”
"Just a minute, honey," said Sanna to Sara, who was pulling and tugging at her coat.
“I need a pee,” whimpered Lova. “I’m going to wet myself.”
"Do you intend to answer the question?" pressed von Post.
Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke exchanged glances behind von Post’s back.
“No,” said Sanna, her voice tense. “I do not keep knives in the drawer.”
“What about this, then,” continued von Post relentlessly, taking another transparent plastic bag out of the larger bag. “Do you recognize this?”
The bag contained a Bible. It was covered in brown leather, shiny with use. The edges of the pages had once been gilded, but now there was very little of the gold color left, and the pages of the book were dark from much thumbing and leafing. A variety of bookmarks protruded from everywhere: postcards, plaited laces, newspaper clippings.
With a whimper Sanna sank down helplessly and sat there in the snow.
“It says Viktor Strandgård inside the cover,” von Post continued mercilessly. “Could you tell us whether it’s his Bible, and what it was doing in your kitchen? Isn’t it true that he had it with him everywhere he went, and that he had it in the church on the last night of his life?”
“No,” whispered Sanna. “No.”
She pressed her hands against the sides of her face.
Lova tried to push Sanna’s hands away so that she could look into her mother’s eyes. When she couldn’t do it, she burst into tears, inconsolable.
“Mummy, I want to go,” she sobbed.
“Get up,” said von Post harshly. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Viktor Strandgård.”
Sara turned on the prosecutor. “Leave her alone,” she screamed.
“Get these children away from here,” von Post said impatiently to Tommy Rantakyrö.
Tommy Rantakyrö took a hesitant step toward Sanna. Then Virku rushed forward and placed herself in front of her mistress. She lowered her head, flattened her ears and bared her sharp teeth with a low growl. Tommy Rantakyrö backed off.
“Right, I’ve had just about enough of this,” said Rebecka to Carl von Post. “I want to make a complaint.”
Her last remark was directed to Anna-Maria Mella, who was standing beside her and gazing up at the surrounding buildings. At every window the curtains were twitching inquisitively.
“You want to make a—” said von Post, interrupting himself with a shake of the head. “As far as I’m concerned, you can come along to the station for questioning with regard to a complaint of assault made against you by a television reporter from Channel 4’s Norrbotten news.”
Anna-Maria Mella touched von Post lightly on the arm.
“We’re starting to get an audience,” she said. “It wouldn’t look very good if one of the neighbors rang the press and starting talking about police brutality and all the rest of it. I might be mistaken, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the old guy in the flat up there to the left was filming us with a video camera.”
She pointed up at one of the windows.
“It might be best if Sven-Erik and I leave, so it doesn’t look as if there’s a whole army of us here,” she went on. “We can go and ring forensics. I assume you want them to go over the flat?”
Von Post’s upper lip was twitching with displeasure. He tried to look in through the window Anna-Maria Mella had pointed at, but the flat was completely dark. Then he realized he might be staring straight into the lens of a camera, and hastily looked away. The last thing he wanted was to be linked to police brutality, or to be censured in the press.
“No, I want to talk to the forensics guys myself,” he replied. “You and Sven-Erik can take Sanna Strandgård in. Make sure the flat’s sealed.
“We’ll speak again,” he said to Sanna before jumping into his Volvo Cross Country.
Rebecka noticed the look on Anna-Maria Mella’s face as the prosecutor’s car disappeared.
Well, I’ll be damned, she thought. Horse face tricked him. She wanted him out of here, and… Hell, she’s smart.
As soon as Carl von Post had left, silence reigned. Tommy Rantakyrö stood there uncertainly waiting for a sign from Anna-Maria or Sven-Erik. Sara and Lova were on their knees in the snow with their arms around their mother, who was still sitting on the ground. Virku lay down by their side and chomped on lumps of snow. When Rebecka bent down to stroke her, she thumped her tail just to show that everything was all right. Sven-Erik gave Anna-Maria a questioning look.
“Tommy,” said Anna-Maria, breaking the silence, “can you and Olsson seal the flat? Mark the kitchen tap so nobody uses it until the forensics team has been in.”
“Hi,” Sven-Erik sa
id gently to Sanna. “We’re really sorry about all this. But we’re stuck with the situation now. You have to come with us to the station.”
“Can we drop the children off somewhere?” asked Anna-Maria.
“No,” said Sanna, raising her head. “I want to speak to my lawyer, Rebecka Martinsson.”
Rebecka sighed.
“Sanna, I’m not your lawyer.”
“I want to talk to you anyway.”
Sven-Erik Stålnacke glanced uncertainly at his colleague.
“I don’t know—” he began.
“Oh, please!” snapped Rebecka. “She’s being detained for questioning. Not arrested with limited access. She has every right to speak to me. Stand here and listen, we’re not going to be talking about any secrets.”
Lova whimpered in Sanna’s ear.
"What did you say, honey?"
“I’ve wet my knickers,” howled Lova.
Every gaze was turned on the little girl. It was quite true, a dark stain had appeared on her old jeans.
“Lova needs dry trousers,” said Rebecka to Anna-Maria Mella.
“Listen to me, girls,” said Anna-Maria to Sara and Lova. “Why don’t you come upstairs with me and we’ll find some dry trousers for Lova, then we’ll come back down to your mum. She won’t go anywhere till we come back. I promise.”
“Go on, do what she says,” said Sanna. “My precious little girls. Fetch some clothes for me too. And Virku’s food.”
“I’m sorry,” said Anna-Maria to Sanna. “Not your clothes. And the prosecutor will want to send everything you’re wearing to Linköping.”
“That’s okay,” said Rebecka quickly. “I’ll sort some new clothes out for you, Sanna. All right?”
The girls disappeared inside with Anna-Maria. Sven-Erik Stålnacke squatted down a little way from Sanna and Rebecka and talked to Virku. They seemed to have a lot in common.
“I can’t help you, Sanna,” said Rebecka. “I’m a tax specialist. I don’t deal with criminal cases. If you need a public defender, I can help you get hold of someone good.”
“Don’t you understand?” mumbled Sanna. “It has to be you. If you won’t help me, I don’t want anybody. God can look after me.”
“Just stop it, please,” begged Rebecka.
“No, you stop it,” said Sanna angrily. “I need you, Rebecka. And my children need you. I don’t care what you think of me, but now I’m begging you. What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees? Say you’ve got to do it for old times’ sake? It has to be you.”
“What do you mean, the children need me?”
Sanna grabbed hold of Rebecka’s jacket with both hands.
“Mum and Dad will take them away from me,” she said, pain in her voice. “That mustn’t happen. Do you understand? I don’t want Sara and Lova to spend even five minutes with my parents. And now I can’t stop it. But you can. For Sara’s sake.”
Her parents. Images and thoughts fought their way to the surface of Rebecka’s mind. Sanna’s father. Well dressed. Perfect manners. With his soft, sympathetic manner. He’d gained considerable popularity as a local politician. Rebecka had even seen him on national television from time to time. In the next election he would probably be on the list of parliamentary candidates for the Christian Democrats. But underneath the warm façade was a pack leader, hard as nails. Even Pastor Thomas Söderberg had deferred to him and shown him respect over many issues within the church. And Rebecka remembered with distaste how Sanna had told her—with a lightness of tone, as if the whole thing had happened to someone else—how he had always killed her animals. Always without warning. Dogs, cats, birds. She hadn’t even been allowed to keep an aquarium her primary-school teacher had given her. Sometimes her mother, who was completely under his thumb, had explained that it was because Sanna was allergic. Another time it might be because she hadn’t been working hard enough at school. Most of the time she got no explanation at all. The silence was such that it was not possible even to form the question. And Rebecka remembered Sanna sitting with Sara on her knee when she was small and didn’t want to go to sleep. “I’m not going to be like them,” she’d said. “They used to lock my bedroom door from the outside.”
“I need to speak to my boss,” said Rebecka.
“Are you staying?” asked Sanna.
“For a while,” replied Rebecka in a strangled voice.
Sanna’s expression softened.
“That’s all I’m asking,” she said. “And how long can it take—after all, I’m innocent. You don’t believe I did it, do you?”
An image of Sanna walking along in the middle of the night, the bloodstained knife in her hand illuminated by the street lamps, formed in Rebecka’s head.
But then, why did she go back? she thought. Why would she have taken Lova and Sara to the church to “find” him?
“Of course not,” she said.
Case number, total hours. Case number, total hours. Case number, total hours.
Maria Taube sat in her office at the law firm Meijer & Ditzinger filling in her weekly time sheet. It looked good, she decided, when she added up the number of debited hours in the box at the bottom. Forty-two. It was impossible to make Måns happy, but at least he wouldn’t be unhappy. She’d worked more than seventy hours this week in order to be able to debit forty-two. She closed her eyes and flipped down the back of her chair. The waistband of her skirt was cutting into her stomach.
I must start doing some exercise, she thought. Not just sit on my backside in front of the computer, comfort eating. It’s Tuesday morning. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Four days left until Saturday. Then I’ll do some exercise. And sleep. Unplug the phone and go to bed early.
The rain pattered against the window, sending her to sleep. Just as her body had decided to give in and rest for a little while, just as her muscles relaxed, the telephone rang. It was like being woken up by a kick in the head. She sat bolt upright and grabbed the receiver. It was Rebecka Martinsson.
“Hi, kid!” exclaimed Maria cheerfully. “Hang on a minute.”
She rolled her chair away from the table and kicked the office door shut.
“At last!” she said when she picked up the phone again. “I’ve been trying to ring you like mad.”
“I know,” replied Rebecka. “I’ve got hundreds of messages on my phone, but I haven’t even started listening to them. It’s been locked in the car, and… no, I haven’t got the energy to tell you the whole miserable story. I assume one or two might be from Måns Wenngren, who’s presumably absolutely furious?”
“Mmm, well, I’m not going to lie to you. The partners have had a breakfast meeting about what was on the news. They’re not very happy about Channel 4 showing pictures of the office and talking about angry lawyers. They’re buzzing about like bees today.”
Rebecka leaned against the steering wheel and took a deep breath. There was a painful lump in her throat that made it difficult to say anything. Outside, Virku, Sara and Lova were playing with a rug that was hanging on the line. She hoped it belonged to Sanna and not one of the neighbors.
“Okay,” she said after a while. “Is there any point in speaking to Måns, or does he just want my resignation on his desk?”
“God, no. You’ve got to talk to him. As I understand it, most of the other partners wanted to talk about how to get rid of you, but that wasn’t on Måns’ agenda at all. So you’ve still got a job.”
“Cleaning the toilets and serving coffee?”
“Wearing nothing but a thong. No, seriously, Måns seems to have really stuck up for you. But it was just a misunderstanding, wasn’t it, you acting as lawyer for the Paradise Boy’s sister? You were just with her as a friend, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but something’s just happened and…”
The car window had misted up, and Rebecka rubbed at it with her hand. Sara and Lova were standing on top of a pile of snow talking to each other. There was no sign of Virku. Where had she got to?
“I nee
d to discuss this with Måns,” she said, “because I can’t talk for much longer. Can you put me through?”
"Okay, but don’t let on you know anything about the meeting."
“No, no—how did you find all this out anyway?”
“Sonia told me. She was sitting in.”
Sonia Berg was one of the secretaries who had been at Meijer & Ditzinger the longest. Her finest attribute was the ability to remain as silent as the grave about the firm’s affairs. Plenty of people had tried to pump her for information, and had been met with her particular cocktail of unwillingness, irritation and well-simulated incomprehension as to what the person wanted. At secret meetings—for example, to do with mergers—it was always Sonia who took the minutes.
“You’re unbelievable,” said Rebecka, impressed. “Can you get water out of stones as well?”
“Getting water out of stones was the foundation course. Getting Sonia to talk is advanced plus. But don’t talk to me about impossible tricks. What have you done to Måns? Given a voodoo doll a lobotomy or something? If I’d been on TV flattening journalists, I’d be staked out in his torture chamber experiencing my last agonizing twenty-four hours in this life.”
Rebecka laughed mirthlessly.
“Working for him in the near future is going to be a bit like that. Can you put me through?”
“Sure, but I’m warning you, he might have stuck up for you, but he’s not happy.”
Rebecka wound up the window and shouted to Sara and Lova, “Where’s Virku? Sara, go and find her and stay where I can see you. We’re going soon.
“Is he ever happy?” she said into the phone.
“Is who ever happy?”
Måns Wenngren’s chilly voice could be heard at the other end.
“Oh, hi,” said Rebecka, trying to pull herself together. “Er, it’s Rebecka.”
“I see” was all he said.
She could hear him breathing hard through his nose. He had no intention of making it easy for her, that much was clear.
“I just wanted to explain that it was a misunderstanding, this idea that I was acting for Sanna Strandgård.”
Silence.
“I see,” drawled Måns after a while. “Is that all?”