by Asa Larsson
“What book was it?” asked Måns.
Torsten Karlsson gave him an odd look.
“I didn’t think to look,” he said. “Talk to her.”
Måns knocked back his glass of red wine.
“I’ll go and say hello,” he said. “But you know me. I’m crap at talking to people. And even worse at talking to women.”
He tried to laugh, but Torsten wasn’t smiling.
“You have to ask her how she is.”
Måns blew air down his nose.
“I know, I know.”
I’m better at short-term relationships, he thought. Clients. Cab drivers. The checkout girl in the local shop. No old conflicts and disappointments lurking just under the surface like tangled seaweed.
* * *
Late summer’s afternoon on Lidö. The red evening sun settling over the gentle contours of the rocks like a golden bowl. One of the archipelago cruise boats slips by out in the channel. The reeds down by the water put their heads together and rustle and whisper to each other. The sound of the guests chatting and laughing is carried out over the water.
Dinner has progressed to the stage where cigarette packets have appeared on the tables. It was okay to stretch your legs before dessert, so it wasn’t quite so crowded around the tables. Sweaters and cardigans that had been tied around waists or slung over shoulders were now slipped over arms chilled by the evening air. Some people were paying a third or fourth visit to the buffet, standing and chatting to the cooks who were turning the spitting kebabs over the glowing charcoal. Some were well on the way to being drunk. Had to hold on to the railings when they went up the steps to the toilets. Waving their arms about and spilling cigarette ash all over their clothes. Talking just a bit too loudly. One of the partners insisted on helping a waitress carry out the desserts. With great authority and a gentlemanly flourish he relieved her of a big tray of vanilla cream tartlets with glazed red currants. The tartlets slid alarmingly toward the edges of the tray. The waitress gave a somewhat strained smile and exchanged a look with the cooks who were busy at the barbecue. One of them dropped what he was doing and hurried to the kitchen with her to fetch the rest of the trays.
Rebecka and Maria were sitting down on the rocks. The stones were releasing the heat they’d stored up during the course of the day. Maria scratched a mosquito bite on the inside of her wrist.
“Torsten’s going up to Kiruna next week,” she said. “Did he tell you?”
“No.”
“It’s this project with the Jansson Group Auditors. Now that the Swedish church has separated from the state, it’s an interesting client group to link up with. The idea is to sell a legal package, including accounting and auditing of the Swedish church assets all over the country. Offer help with just about everything, ‘how do we get rid of Berit and her fibromyalgia,’ ‘how do we reach an economically sound deal with entrepreneurs,’ the whole package. I don’t really know, but I think there’s a long-term plan to work together with a broker and grab the capital administration. Anyway, Torsten’s going up to give the sales pitch to the church council in Kiruna.”
“And?”
“You could go with him. You know what he’s like. He’d think it was really nice to have some company.”
“I can’t go to Kiruna,” exclaimed Rebecka.
“No, I know that’s what you think. But I’m wondering why.”
“I don’t know, I…”
“What’s the worst that could happen? I mean if you bumped into somebody who knows who you are? And what about your grandmother’s house, you miss that, don’t you?”
Rebecka clenched her teeth.
I can’t go there, that’s just the way it is, she thought.
Maria replied as if she’d read her mind.
“I’m going to ask Torsten to ask you anyway. If there are monsters under the bed it’s just as well to put the light on and turn over onto your stomach and have a look at them.”
* * *
Dancing on the hotel’s stone terrace. Abba and Niklas Strömstedt pouring out of the loudspeakers. Through the open windows of the hotel kitchen comes the sound of porcelain crashing and the rush of water as the plates are rinsed before they go into the dishwasher. The sun has taken her red veils down into the water with her. Lanterns hang from the trees. A crush around the outdoor bar.
Rebecka walked down to the stone quay. She’d danced with her table companion then crept away. The darkness placed its arm around her and drew her close.
It went well, she thought. It went as well as anybody could expect.
She sat down on a wooden bench by the water. The sound of the waves lapping against the jetty. The smell of rotting seaweed, brine and diesel. A lamp was reflected in the shiny black water.
Måns had come over to say hello just as she was about to sit down at the table.
“How’s things, Martinsson?” he’d asked.
What the hell am I supposed to say to that? she thought.
His wolfish grin and the way he called her by her surname was like a great big stop sign: No confidences, tears or honesty.
So it was head up, feet down and an account of how she’d painted the window frames out at Torsten’s place with linseed oil. After Kiruna it had seemed as if he cared about her. But when she couldn’t work any longer he’d completely disappeared.
You’re just nothing then, she thought. When you can’t work.
The sound of footsteps on the gravel path made her look up. At first she couldn’t make out a face, but she recognized that high-pitched voice. It was that new girl, the blonde one. What was her name again? Petra.
“Hi Rebecka,” said Petra, as if they knew each other.
She came and stood far too close. Rebecka suppressed the urge to get up, shove her out of the way and scurry off. You couldn’t really do that sort of thing. So she stayed put. The foot on the end of the leg that was crossed over the other leg gave her away. Jiggled up and down in annoyance. Wanted to run away.
Petra sank down beside her with a sigh.
“God, I’ve just had three dances one after the other with Åke. You know what they’re like. Just because you work with them they think they own you. I just had to get away for a bit.”
Rebecka grunted some kind of acknowledgment. In a little while she’d say she needed the bathroom.
Petra twisted her upper body toward Rebecka and tilted her head to one side.
“I heard about what happened to you last year. It must have been terrible.”
Rebecka didn’t reply.
Wait for it, thought Rebecka nastily. When the quarry won’t come out of its hole, you have to lure it out with something. It ought to be some little confidence of your own. You hold out your own little confession and swap it for the other person’s secret like a bookmark.
“My sister had a terrible experience like that five years ago,” Petra went on when Rebecka didn’t speak. “She found their neighbor’s son drowned in a ditch. He was only four. After that she went a bit…”
She finished the sentence with a vague hand movement.
“So this is where you are.”
It was Popeye. He came over to them with a gin and tonic in each hand. He held one out to Petra, and after a microsecond’s hesitation offered the other one to Rebecka. It was actually for himself.
A gentleman, thought Rebecka tiredly, putting the glass down beside her.
She looked at Popeye. Popeye was looking greedily at Petra. Petra was looking greedily at Rebecka. Popeye and Petra were going to feast on her. Then they’d go off and have sex.
Petra must have sensed that Rebecka was about to run away. That the opportunity would soon have passed her by. Under normal circumstances she would have let Rebecka go, and thought to herself that there’d be other times. But right now too many drinks from the bar and too many glasses of wine with the food had clouded her judgment.
She leaned over toward Rebecka. Her cheeks were shiny and rosy when she asked:
“
So, how does it feel to kill a person?”
* * *
Rebecka marched straight through the middle of the crowd of drunken people. No, she didn’t want to dance. No, thank you, she didn’t want anything from the bar. She had her overnight bag over her shoulder and was on her way down to the jetty.
She’d managed to deal with Petra and Popeye. Assumed a thoughtful expression, gazed out over the dark water, and replied: “It feels terrible, of course.”
What else? The truth? “I have no idea. I can’t remember.”
Maybe she should have told them about those totally pathetic conversations with the therapist. Rebecka sitting and smiling at every meeting and in the end nearly bursting out laughing. What can she do? She just doesn’t remember. The therapist very definitely not smiling back, this is no laughing matter. And finally they decide to take a break. Rebecka is welcome to come back at some point in the future.
When she can’t work anymore she doesn’t get in touch with him. Can’t bring herself to do it. Pictures the scene, sitting and weeping because she can’t cope with life, and his face, just enough sympathy to cover the what-did-I-tell-you expression.
No, Rebecka had answered Petra like a normal person, it felt terrible but that life must go on, however banal that might sound. Then she’d made her excuses and left them. It had been fine, but five minutes later the rage hit her, and now…Now she was so angry she could have ripped a tree up by the roots. Or maybe she should lean against the wall of the hotel and push it over like a cardboard box. Just as well for blondie and her little friend they weren’t still down on the quay, because she’d have kicked them into the water.
Suddenly Måns was right behind her. Beside her.
“What’s going on? Has something happened?”
Rebecka didn’t slow down.
“I’m leaving. One of the boys in the kitchen said I could borrow the skiff. I’ll row across.”
Måns uttered a snort of disbelief.
“Are you crazy? You can’t row across in the dark. And what are you going to do when you get to the other side? Come on, stop. What’s the matter with you?”
She stopped just before the jetty. Spun around and growled.
“What the fuck do you think’s the matter?” she asked. “People asking me what it feels like to kill a person. How the hell should I know? I didn’t sit there writing a poem while it was going on, analyzing how I felt. I…it just happened!”
“Why are you angry with me? I didn’t ask you, did I?”
Suddenly Rebecka was speaking very slowly.
“No, Måns, you don’t ask me anything. Nobody could accuse you of that.”
“What the hell,” he replied, but Rebecka had already turned on her heel and stomped off onto the jetty.
He dashed after her. She’d thrown her bag into the skiff and was untying the mooring rope. Måns searched around for something to say.
“I was talking to Torsten,” he said. “He told me he was thinking of asking you to go up to Kiruna with him. But I told him he shouldn’t ask.”
“Why?”
“Why? I thought it was the last thing you needed.”
Rebecka didn’t look at him as she answered.
“Perhaps you’d allow me to decide what I need and don’t need.”
She was beginning to become vaguely aware of the fact that people nearby were tuning in to her and Måns. They were pretending to be busy dancing and chatting, but hadn’t the general murmur of conversation dropped a little? Maybe now they’d all have something to talk about next week at work.
Måns seemed to have noticed as well, and lowered his voice.
“I was only thinking of you, I do apologize.”
Rebecka jumped down into the boat.
“Oh, you were thinking of me, were you? Is that why you’ve had me sitting in on all those criminal trials like some kind of tart?”
“Right, that’s enough,” snapped Måns. “You said yourself that you didn’t mind. I thought it was a good way of keeping in touch with the job. Get out of that boat!”
“As if I had a choice! You could see that if you bothered to think about it!”
“Stop doing the bloody criminal cases, then. Get out of the boat and go upstairs and get some sleep, then we’ll talk in the morning when you’ve sobered up.”
Rebecka took a step forward in the boat. It rocked back and forth. For a moment the thought went through Måns’ mind that she was going to clamber out onto the jetty and slap him. That would be just perfect.
“When I’ve sobered up? You…you’re just unbelievable!”
She placed her foot against the jetty and pushed off. Måns considered grabbing hold of the boat, but that would cause a scene as well. Hanging on to the prow till he fell in the water. The office’s very own comedy turn. The boat slipped away.
“Go to bloody Kiruna then!” he shouted, without paying any attention to who might hear him. “You can do what you bloody well like as far as I’m concerned.”
The boat disappeared into the darkness. He heard the oars rattling in the rowlocks and the splash as the blades slid into the water.
But Rebecka’s voice was still close by, and had gone up a pitch.
“Tell me what could possibly be worse than this.”
He recognized the voice from those endless rows with Madelene. First of all Madelene’s suppressed rage. Him without the faintest idea of what the hell he’d done wrong this time. Then the row, every time the storm of the century. And afterward that voice, a little bit higher pitched and about to splinter into tears. Then it might be time for the reconciliation. If you were prepared to pay the price: being the scapegoat. With Madelene he’d always trotted out the old story: said he was just a heap of shit. Madelene in his arms, sobbing like a little girl with her head leaning on his chest.
And Rebecka…His thoughts lumbered drunkenly through his head searching for the right words, but it was already too late. The sound of the oars was moving further and further away.
He wasn’t bloody well going to shout after her. She could forget that.
Suddenly Ulla Carle, one of the firm’s two female partners, was standing behind him wondering what was going on.
“So shoot me,” he said, and walked off up toward the hotel. He headed for the outdoor bar under the garlands of colored lanterns.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 5
Inspector Sven-Erik Stålnacke was driving from Fjällnäs to Kiruna. The gravel clattered against the underside of the car and behind him the dust from the road swirled up in a great cloud. When he swung up toward Nikkavägen the massive ice blue bulk of Kebnekaise rose up against the sky on his left-hand side.
It’s amazing how you never get tired of it, he thought.
Although he was over fifty he still loved the changing seasons. The thin cold mountain air of autumn, flowing down through the valleys from the highest mountains. The sun’s return in the early spring. The first drips from the roof as the thaw began. And the ice breaking. He was almost getting worse with every passing year. He’d need to take a week’s holiday just to sit and stare at the countryside.
Just like Dad, he thought.
During the last years of his life, must have been at least fifteen, his father had constantly repeated the same refrain: “This summer will be my last. This autumn was the last one I’ll ever see.”
It was as if that was the thing that had frightened him most about dying. Not being able to experience one more spring, a bright summer, a glowing autumn. That the seasons would continue to come and go without him.
Sven-Erik glanced at the time. Half one. Half an hour until the meeting with the prosecutor. He had time to call in at Annie’s Grill for a burger.
He knew exactly what the prosecutor wanted. It was almost three months since the murder of Mildred Nilsson, the priest, and they’d got nowhere. The prosecutor had had enough. And who could blame him?
Unconsciously he stepped on the gas. He should have asked Anna-Maria for her advice, he real
ized that now. Anna-Maria Mella was his team leader. She was on maternity leave, and Sven-Erik was standing in for her. It just didn’t seem right to disturb her at home. It was strange. When they were working together she felt so close. But outside work he couldn’t think of anything to say. He missed her, but yet he’d only been to visit her once, just after the little boy had been born. She’d called in at the station to say hi once or twice, but then all the girls from the office were all over her, cackling like a flock of chickens, and it was best to keep out of the way. She was due back properly in the middle of January.
They’d knocked on enough doors. Somebody ought to have seen something. In Jukkasjärvi, where they’d found the priest hanging from the organ loft, and in Poikkijärvi, where she lived. Nothing. They’d gone round knocking a second time. Not a damned thing.
It was so odd. Somebody had killed her, on the folk museum land down by the river, quite openly. The murderer had carried her body to the church, quite openly. True, it had been the middle of the night, but it had been as light as day.
They’d found out that she was a controversial priest. When Sven-Erik had asked if she had any enemies, several of the more active women in the church had answered “Pick any man you like.” One woman in the church office, with deep lines etched on either side of her pursed mouth, had practically come out with it and said that the priest had only herself to blame. She’d made the headlines in the local paper when she was alive as well. Trouble with the church council when she arranged self-defense courses for women on church property. Trouble with the community when her women’s Bible study group, Magdalena, went out and demanded that a third of the time available at the local ice rinks should be set aside for girls’ ice hockey teams and figure skating. And just lately she’d fallen out with some of the hunters and reindeer farmers. It was all because of the she-wolf who’d settled on church ground. Mildred Nilsson had said that it was the responsibility of the church to protect the wolf. The local paper had run a picture of her and one of her opponents on its center page spread, under the headings “The Wolf Lover” and “The Wolf Hater.”