The Savage Altar

by Unknown

  Rebecka steals a glance at the girls; they are still tied to the bed with rags in their mouths. She’s afraid she’ll faint if she crawls over to them. And if she tells Vesa to untie them, he can kick the gun out of her hand in a second. She must wait a little while.

  They’re breathing. They’re alive. She’ll soon work out what to do.

  “What do you mean, ‘interfered with’?”

  “I don’t know, it was something Sara had said that made her realize. I didn’t really get a clear idea of what had happened. But I promised to speak to Viktor. I…”

  He breaks off in confusion.

  She does confuse people, thinks Rebecka. Lures them into the forest and steals their compass.

  “Yes?”

  “I was such a fool,” he whines. “I asked her not to go to the police or the authorities. She’d spoken to Patrik Mattsson. I rang him and said Sanna had made a mistake. Threatened to throw him out of the church if he spread the rumor around.”

  “Get on with it,” said Rebecka impatiently. “Did you speak to Viktor?”

  The gun resting on her legs is getting heavier and heavier.

  “He wouldn’t listen to me. It wasn’t even a conversation. He leaned across my desk and threatened me—said my days as a pastor in this church were numbered. Said he had no intention of putting up with the fact that the pastors were lining their own pockets through the business.”

  "The trading company?"

  “Yes. When we started Victory Print, I thought it was all aboveboard. Or maybe it was just that I didn’t think too hard about it. A member of the church who owned his own company gave us the idea. He said it was all perfectly legal. We put the costs down to the company, and reclaimed the VAT from the state. Of course, the church gave us money to make the investments on the quiet, but in our eyes everything in the company belonged to our church anyway. As I saw it, we weren’t deceiving anybody. It wasn’t until I broke the vow of confidentiality and told Thomas about Sanna’s suspicions, and that Viktor had threatened me, that I realized we were in trouble. Thomas got scared. Do you understand? Within the space of three hours, the whole world began to shake. Viktor was aggressive and a danger to children. Viktor, who had always loved children. Used to help out in Sunday school and so on… It made me feel sick. And Thomas was afraid. Thomas, who’d always been as solid as a rock. And I was a criminal. Can I take my hands down from my neck? My head and shoulders are aching.”

  She nods.

  “We decided to speak to him together,” he goes on. “Thomas said Viktor needed help, and he would get that help within the church. So that evening…”

  He stops speaking and they both look at Curt, lying on the floor between them. The rug has turned red beneath him. His breathing changes from a whistling rattle to a quiet wheezing. And then he stops breathing. Silence.

  Vesa Larsson stares at him, his pupils dilated with fear. Then he looks at Rebecka and at the shotgun on her knee.

  Rebecka blinks. She is beginning to feel listless and uninterested. It is as if Vesa’s story no longer has anything to do with her. But now he needs no encouragement to keep talking. Suddenly he is babbling at top speed.

  “Viktor wouldn’t listen to us. He said he had fasted and prayed, and that it was time for the church to be cleansed. All of a sudden we were the ones standing there being accused. He said we were hawkers who should be driven from the temple. That this was God’s work, yet we were prepared to hand it over to Mammon. And then… oh, God… then all at once Curt was there. I don’t know if he’d been standing there listening all the time, or if he’d just come into the church.”

  Vesa screws up his eyes and his mouth contorts into a grimace.

  “Viktor pointed at Thomas and screamed, I don’t remember what. Curt had an unopened wine bottle in his hand. We had celebrated communion during the service. He hit Viktor on the back of the head. Viktor fell to his knees. Curt was wearing a big padded jacket. He slipped the bottle into his inside pocket. Then he took the knife out of his belt and stabbed him. Two or three blows. Viktor fell backwards and stayed still, lying on his back.”

  “And you stood there watching,” whispers Rebecka.

  “I tried to intervene, but Thomas stopped me.”

  He pushes his fists against his eyes.

  “No, that isn’t true,” he goes on. “I think I took a step forward. But Thomas just made a small movement with his hand. And I stopped. Just like a well-trained dog. Then Curt turned and came over to us. Suddenly I was terrified that he was going to kill me too. Thomas stood completely still with no expression on his face. I remember looking at him and thinking I’d read that’s what you’re meant to do if you’re attacked by a rabid dog. Don’t run, don’t scream, just stay calm and stand still. We stood there. Curt didn’t say anything either, just looked at us with the knife in his hand. Then he turned on his heel and went back to Viktor. He…”

  Vesa makes a keening noise through his teeth.

  “…stabbed him again, over and over. Dug into his eyes with the knife. Then he stuck his fingers into the sockets and smeared the blood over his own eyes. ‘All that he has seen, I have now seen,’ he cried out. He licked the knife like… an animal! I think he cut his tongue, because there was blood trickling down the side of his mouth. And then he cut off the hands. Hacking and twisting. He pushed one in his jacket pocket, but there wasn’t room for the other one, and he dropped it on the floor, and… I don’t really remember after that. Thomas drove me along Norgevägen in his car. I stood out in the cold in the middle of the night throwing up. And all the time Thomas was going on and on. About our families. About the church. Saying the best thing we could do now was to keep quiet. Afterward, I wondered whether he knew Curt was there. Or whether he’d actually seen him standing there.”

  “And Gunnar Isaksson?”

  “He didn’t know anything. He’s a waste of space.”

  “You cowardly bastard,” said Rebecka, exhausted.

  “I’ve got children,” he whines. “Everything will be different now. You’ll see.”

  “Don’t even bother,” she says. “When Sanna came to you. That’s when you should have gone to the police and Social Services. But no—you didn’t want the scandal. You didn’t want to lose your nice house and your well-paying job.”

  Soon she won’t be able to keep her right leg drawn up any longer. If she puts the gun down on the floor he’ll have time to get up and kick her in the head before she’s even had time to raise it into the firing position. She can’t see properly. Black spots are clouding her vision. As if somebody had fired paintballs at a shop window.

  She’s going to faint. There’s no time.

  She points the gun at him.

  "Don’t do it, Rebecka," he says. "You won’t be able to live with yourself. I never wanted this, Rebecka. It’s over now"

  She wishes he would do something. Make a move to get up. Reach for the axe.

  Maybe she can trust him. Maybe he’ll put her and the children in the sledge and take them back. Give himself up to the police.

  Or maybe not. And then—roaring fire. The terrified eyes of the girls as they tug at the ropes binding their hands and feet to the bed. The flames melting the flesh on their bones. If Vesa sets the place on fire, there’s nobody to tell. Thomas and Curt will get the blame, and he’ll walk free.

  He came here to kill us, she says to herself. Just remember that.

  He is weeping now, Vesa Larsson. Just a moment ago Rebecka was sixteen, sitting in the cellar of the Pentecostal church in the middle of all his painting gear, talking about God, life, love and art.

  “Think of my children, Rebecka.”

  It’s him or the girls.

  She closes her eyes as her finger squeezes the trigger. The report is deafening. When she opens her eyes he is still sitting there in the same position. But he no longer has a face. A second passes, then the body falls to one side.

  Don’t look at it. Don’t think. Sara and Lova.

&nb
sp; She drops the gun and hauls herself up onto all fours. Her whole body shakes from the exertion as she crawls toward the bed, inch by inch. A ringing, howling noise fills her ears.

  Sara’s hand. One hand is enough. If she can free one hand…

  She crawls over Curt’s lifeless body. Fumbles with his belt. Gropes under his body with her hand. There’s the knife. She undoes the sheath, draws it out. It looks as if she has dipped her hand in blood. She’s reached the bed.

  Steady hand, now. Don’t cut Sara.

  She cuts through the hemp rope and pulls it off Sara’s wrist. Places the knife in Sara’s free hand and sees her fingers close around the handle.

  Now rest.

  She slumps down on the floor.

  After a little while Lova and Sara’s faces appear above her. She grabs Sara’s sleeve.

  “Remember,” she croaks. “Stay inside the cabin. Keep the door shut and put on your snowsuits and all the blankets. Sivving and Bella are coming in the morning. Wait for them. Are you listening, Sara? I’m just going to have a little rest.”

  Nothing hurts anymore. But her hands are ice cold. She loses her grip on Sara’s sleeve. Their faces drift away. She is sinking down into a well; they are standing at the top in the sun, looking down at her. And all the time it’s getting darker and colder.

  Sara and Lova crouch down on either side of Rebecka. Lova turns to her older sister.

  “What did she say?” she asks.

  “I thought it sounded like ‘Will you receive me?’ ” replies Sara.

  The winter wind was tearing frantically at the spindly birch trees outside the hospital in Kiruna. Pulling at their gnarled arms, reaching up into the blue black sky. Snapping their spindly, frozen fingers.

  Måns Wenngren hurtled straight past the intensive care reception desk. The cold glare of the fluorescent lights bounced off the polished surface of the floor and the pallid cream walls of the corridor, with their indescribably ugly pattern in wine red. His whole being was revolted by the impression. The smell of disinfectant and cleaning fluid mixed with the stale, creeping stench of crumbling bodies. The constant clatter of metal trollies delivering food, samples or Lord knows what.

  At least it isn’t Christmas, he thought.

  His father had had his final heart attack on Christmas day. It was many years ago now, but Måns could still see the hospital staff’s unfortunate and unsuccessful attempts to create a festive atmosphere on the ward. Cheap, mass-produced ginger biscuits served with afternoon tea on paper serviettes with a Christmas motif. A plastic tree at the far end of the corridor, its needles pointing the wrong way and squashed flat after a long year in its box up on a shelf in the storeroom. Odd baubles dangling from the branches on a piece of thread. And beneath the lower branches, gaudy packages that you knew had nothing in them.

  He shook off the memories before they got as far as his parents. Swung around without pausing, his wool coat streaming out behind him like a cloak.

  “I’m looking for Rebecka Martinsson,” he roared. “Is anybody working here, or what?”

  That morning he had been woken by the telephone. It was the police in Kiruna, wondering if it was true that he was Rebecka Martinsson’s boss. Yes, it was true. They hadn’t managed to find any records of close relatives. Perhaps the firm knew if she had a partner or boyfriend? No, the firm didn’t know that. He had asked what had happened. The police had finally told him Rebecka was undergoing an operation, but they refused to part with any more information.

  He had phoned the hospital in Kiruna. They hadn’t even been prepared to confirm that she’d been admitted. “Classified” was the only word he could get out of them.

  Then he’d phoned one of the two female partners in the firm.

  “Måns, darling,” she’d said, “Rebecka is your assistant.”

  In the end he’d taken a taxi to the airport at Arlanda.

  Halfway down the corridor a nurse caught up with him. She followed him, a torrent of words spilling out as he opened various doors and looked in. He registered only fragments of her babble. Classified. Unauthorized. Security.

  “I’m her partner,” he bluffed as he carried on opening doors and looking in.

  He found Rebecka alone in a four-bed room. Next to the bed was a drip with a plastic bag half full of clear fluid. Eyes closed. Face deathly white, even her lips.

  He pulled a stool up to the bed, but didn’t sit down. Instead he turned and growled at the little woman who was pursuing him. She disappeared at once, her Birkenstocks clattering frantically down the corridor.

  After a moment another woman wearing a white coat and white trousers came in. In two strides he was right in front of her, reading the small name badge pinned to her breast pocket.

  “Right, Sister Frida,” he said aggressively, before she’d even managed to open her mouth, “would you be so kind as to explain this to me?”

  He pointed at Rebecka’s hands. Both were securely tied to the sides of the bed with gauze bandage.

  Sister Frida blinked in surprise before she answered.

  “Come out here with me,” she said softly. “Then we can calm down and have a little chat.”

  Måns waved his hand in front of him as if she’d been a fly.

  “Fetch the doctor who’s responsible for her,” he said angrily.

  Sister Frida was attractive. She was a natural blonde. She had high cheekbones, and her mouth was subtly painted with pink lip gloss. She was used to people obeying her soft voice. She was known for it. She’d never been a fly before. She wondered whether to call security. Or maybe the police, in view of these particular circumstances. But then she looked at Måns Wenngren. Her gaze swept over him, from the improbably well-ironed shirt collar, over the gray-and-black-striped tie, to the discreet black suit and the beautifully polished shoes.

  “All right, come with me and you can speak to the doctor,” she said brusquely, turned on her heel and stalked out with Måns trailing in her wake.

  The doctor was a short man with thick, gray-blond hair. His face was sunburned and his nose had begun to peel slightly. Presumably he’d recently had a little holiday abroad. His white coat was left casually unbuttoned over jeans and a turquoise T-shirt. The pocket of his coat was stuffed with several pens, a notebook and a pair of glasses.

  Middle-aged angst with traces of hippie syndrome, thought Måns, standing just a little too close when they shook hands so that the doctor was forced to look upward like a stargazer.

  They went into the consulting room together.

  “It’s for her own good,” the doctor explained to Måns. “When she woke up she pulled the cannula out of her arm. We’ve given her a mild sedative, but—”

  “Is she being held for questioning?” asked Måns. “Or has she been arrested?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Has any decision been taken about compulsory care? Is there a care order?”

  “No.”

  “Shit, it’s like the Wild West up here,” said Mans contemptuously. “You’ve got her lying here, tied up, with no order from the police, the prosecutor or the chief medical officer. That’s illegal curtailment of liberty. Prosecution, fines and a slap on the wrist from the authorities for you. But I’m not here to cause trouble. Tell me what’s happened, the police must have told you, untie her and get me a cup of coffee. In return I’ll sit quietly in her room and make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid when she wakes up. And I won’t make trouble for the hospital either.”

  “But the information the police passed on to me is classified,” said the doctor halfheartedly.

  “Give some, get some,” Måns replied laconically.

  A little while later Måns was leaning back on the uncomfortable chair next to Rebecka’s bed. His left hand was gently clasping her fingers, and in the other hand he had a cup of scalding coffee in a plastic cup in a brown holder.

  “Bloody girl,” he muttered. “Wake up so I can tell you off.”

  Darkness. Then dark
ness and pain. Rebecka opens her eyes carefully. On the wall above the door is a large clock. The minute hand quivers each time it jumps to the next mark. She screws up her eyes, but can’t make out what it says, or if it’s day or night. The light stabs at her eyes like knives. Burns a hole of pain into her head. It explodes in a thousand pieces. Every breath is pain and agony. Her tongue is stuck fast to the top of her mouth. She closes her eyes again and sees Vesa Larsson’s terrified face before her. “Don’t do it, Rebecka. You won’t be able to live with yourself.”

  Back into the darkness. Down. Deeper. Downward. Away. The pain recedes. And she is dreaming. It’s summer. The sun is blazing down from a blue sky. The bumblebees weave about drunkenly between the midsummer flowers and the yarrow. Her grandmother is kneeling on the jetty down by the river, scrubbing rag rugs. She has made the soap herself from lye and fat. The scrubbing brush moves back and forth over the stripes on the rug. The faint breeze from the river keeps the mosquitoes away. On the edge of the jetty sits a child with her feet in the water. She has caught a water boatman in a jam jar with a hole in the lid. She is fascinated, watching the large beetle swimming around inside the jar. Rebecka begins to walk down to the water. She is strangely aware that she is dreaming, and mumbles quietly to herself: “Let me see her face. Let me see what she looks like.” Then Johanna turns and catches sight of her. She holds the jam jar triumphantly up to show Rebecka as her lips form the word “Mummy.”

  It was almost a Christmas card. But not really. Three wise men looking down at the sleeping child. But the child was Rebecka Martinsson and the men Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post, the lawyer Måns Wenngren and Inspector Sven-Erik Stålnacke.

  “She’s killed three people,” said von Post. “I can’t just let her go.”

  “It’s a textbook example of self-defense,” said Måns Wenngren. “Surely you can see that? Besides which, she’s the hero of the hour. Believe me, the newspapers are already busy cooking up a real Modesty Blaise story. Saved two children, killed all the bad guys… You need to ask yourself what role you want to play. The heap of shit who goes after her and tries to put her behind bars? Or the nice guy who gets to join in and share the glory?”