by Asa Larsson
And in Poikkijärvi vicarage on the other side of the river from Jukkasjärvi sat her husband. On sick leave and in no condition to make any sense of what she’d left behind. Sven-Erik felt once again the pain that had filled him when he’d talked to the guy. “You again. It’s never enough for you lot, is it?” Every conversation had been like smashing the ice that had formed overnight over a hole in the ice. The grief welling up. The eyes wrecked by weeping. No children to share the grief.
Sven-Erik did have a child, a daughter who lived in Luleå, but he recognized that terrible bloody loneliness. He was divorced and lived alone. Although of course he had the cat, and nobody had murdered his wife and hung her from a chain.
Every conversation and every letter from the assorted lunatics confessing to the crime had been checked out. But of course nothing had come of it. Just pathetic scraps of humanity who’d been temporarily fired up by the newspaper headlines.
Because there had certainly been headlines. The television and the papers had gone completely mad. Mildred Nilsson had been murdered right in the middle of the summer when the news more or less dries up, besides which it was less than two years since another religious leader had been murdered in Kiruna—Viktor Strandgård, a leading figure in the church of The Source of All Our Strength. There had been a good deal of speculation about similarities in the two cases, despite the fact that the person who had murdered Viktor Strandgård was dead. But that was the angle they took all the same: a man of the church, a woman of the church. Both found brutally murdered in their respective churches. Priests and pastors were interviewed in the national press. Did they feel threatened? Were they thinking of moving? Was fiery red Kiruna a dangerous place to live if you were a priest? The reporters standing in for the summer traveled up and examined the police’s work. They were young and hungry and wouldn’t be fobbed off with “for reasons connected with the investigation…no comment at this stage.” The press had kept up a stubborn interest for two weeks.
“It’s getting so you have to turn your damned shoes over and shake them before you put them on,” Sven-Erik had said to the chief of police. “Just in case some bloody journalist comes tumbling out with his sting at the ready.”
But as the police weren’t getting anywhere, the news teams had eventually left the town. Two people who had been crushed to death at a festival took over the headlines.
The police had worked on the copycat theory all summer. Someone had been inspired by the murder of Viktor Strandgård. At first the national police had been very reluctant to do a profile of the perpetrator. There was no question of dealing with a serial killer, as far as anyone knew. And it wasn’t at all certain that this was a copycat murder. But the similarities with the murder of Viktor Strandgård and the demands in the media had finally brought a psychiatrist from the national police profiling team up to Kiruna, interrupting her holiday to do so.
She’d had a meeting with the Kiruna police one morning at the beginning of July. There had been a dozen or so sitting and sweating in the conference room. They couldn’t risk anyone outside hearing the discussion, so the windows were kept shut.
The psychiatrist was a woman in her forties. What struck Sven-Erik was the way she talked about lunatics, mass murderers and serial killers with such serenity and such understanding, almost with love. When she cited real-life examples she often said “that poor man” or “we had a young lad who…” or “luckily for him he was caught and convicted.” And she talked about a man who’d been in a secure psychiatric unit for years, and had then been well enough to be released and was now on the right medication, living an orderly life, working part-time for a firm of decorators, and had a dog.
“I can’t emphasize strongly enough,” she’d said, “that it’s up to the police to decide which theory you wish to work on. If the murderer is a copycat I can give you a plausible picture of him, but it’s by no means certain.”
She’d given a PowerPoint presentation and encouraged them to interrupt if they had questions.
“A man. Aged between fifteen and fifty. Sorry.”
She added the last word when she noticed their smiles.
“We’d prefer ‘twenty-seven years and three months, delivers newspapers, lives with his mother and drives a red Volvo.’ ” someone had joked.
She’d added:
“And wears size 42 shoes. Okay, imitators are notable in that they can start off with an extremely violent crime. He won’t necessarily have been convicted of any kind of serious violent crime before. And that’s backed up by the fact that you’ve got fingerprints but no match in the register.”
Nods of agreement around the room.
“He might be on the register of suspects, or have been convicted of petty crimes typical of a person without limits. Harassment along the lines of stalking or hoax calls, or maybe petty theft. But if it is a copycat then he’s been sitting in his room reading about the murder of Viktor Strandgård for a year and a half. That’s a quiet occupation. That was somebody else’s murder. That’s been enough for him up to now. But from now on he’s going to want to read about himself.”
“But the murders aren’t really alike,” somebody had interjected. “Viktor Strandgård was hit and stabbed, his eyes were gouged out and his hands were cut off.”
She’d nodded.
“True. But that could be explained by the fact that this was his first. To stab, cut, gouge with a knife gives a more, how shall I put it, close contact than the longer weapon that appears to have been used here. It’s a higher threshold to cross. Next time he might be ready to use a knife. Maybe he doesn’t like close physical proximity.”
“He did carry her up to the church.”
“But by then he’d already finished with her. By then she was nothing, just a piece of meat. Okay, he lives alone, or he has access to a completely private space, for example a hobby room where nobody else is allowed to go, or a workshop, or maybe a locked outhouse. That’s where he keeps his newspaper cuttings. He probably likes to have them on display, preferably pinned up. He’s isolated, bad at social contacts. It’s not impossible that he’s using something physical to keep people at a distance. Poor hygiene, for example. Ask about that if you have a suspect, ask if he has any friends, because he won’t have. But as I said. It doesn’t have to be a copycat. It could be somebody who just flew into a temporary rage. If we are unfortunate enough to have another murder, we can talk again.”
Sven-Erik’s thoughts were interrupted as he passed a motorist exercising his dog by holding the lead through the open car window and making the dog run beside the car. He could see that it was an elkhound cross. The dog was galloping along with its tongue lolling out of its mouth.
“Cruel bastard,” he muttered, looking in the rearview mirror.
Presumably he was an elk hunter who wanted the dog in top form for the hunt. He considered turning the car around and having a chat with the owner. People like that shouldn’t be allowed to keep animals. It was probably shut in a run in the yard for the rest of the year.
But he didn’t turn back. He’d recently been out to talk to a guy who’d broken an injunction banning him from going anywhere near his ex-wife, and was refusing to come in for an interview although he’d been sent for.
You spend day after day arguing, thought Sven-Erik. From the minute you get up until you go to bed. Where do you draw the line? One fine day you’ll be standing there on your day off yelling at people for dropping their ice cream wrappers in the street.
But the image of the galloping dog and the thought of its torn pads haunted him all the way into town.
* * *
Twenty-five minutes later Sven-Erik walked into Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot’s office. The sixty-year-old prosecutor was perched on the edge of his desk with a small child on his lap. The boy was tugging happily at the light cord dangling above the desk.
“Look!” exclaimed the prosecutor as Sven-Erik came in. “It’s Uncle Sven-Erik. This is Gustav, Anna-Maria’s boy.�
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The last remark was addressed to Sven-Erik with a myopic squint. Gustav had taken his glasses and was hitting the light cord with them so that it swung to and fro.
At the same moment Inspector Anna-Maria Mella came in. She greeted Sven-Erik by raising her eyebrows and allowing the hint of a wry smile to pass fleetingly across her horse face. Just as if they’d seen each other at morning briefing as usual. In fact it had been several months.
He was struck by how small she was. It had happened before when they’d been apart for a while, after holidays for example. It was obvious she’d had time off. She had the kind of deep suntan that wouldn’t fade until well into the dark winter. Her freckles were no longer visible because they were the same color as the rest of her face. Her thick plait was almost white. Up by her hairline she had a row of bites that she’d obviously scratched, little brown dots of dried blood.
They sat down. The chief prosecutor behind his cluttered desk, Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik side by side on his sofa. The chief prosecutor kept it short. The investigation into the murder of Mildred Nilsson had come to a standstill. During the summer it had taken up virtually all the available police resources, but now it had to be given a lower priority.
“That’s just the way it has to be,” he said apologetically to Sven-Erik, who was gazing out of the window with a stubborn expression. “We can’t tip the balance by abandoning other investigations and preliminary examinations. We’ll end up with the ombudsman after us.”
He paused briefly and looked at Gustav, who was removing the contents of the wastepaper basket and arranging his treasures neatly on the floor. An empty snuff tin. A banana skin. An empty box of cough sweets—Läkerol Special. Some screwed up paper. When the basket was empty Gustav pulled off his shoes and threw them down. The prosecutor smiled and went on.
He’d managed to persuade Anna-Maria to come back half-time until she went back up to working full time after Christmas. So the idea was that Sven-Erik should carry on as team leader and Anna-Maria devote her attention to the murder until it was time for her to go full time again.
He pushed his glasses firmly up to the bridge of his nose and scanned the table. He finally found Mildred Nilsson’s file and pushed it over to Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik.
Anna-Maria flicked through the file. Sven-Erik looked over her shoulder. He had a heavy feeling inside. It was as if sorrow filled him when he looked at the pages.
The prosecutor asked him to summarize the investigation.
Sven-Erik worked his fingers through his bushy moustache for a few seconds while he thought things through, then he explained without digressions that the priest Mildred Nilsson had been killed on the night before midsummer’s eve, June 21. She had held a midnight service in Jukkasjärvi church which had finished at quarter to twelve. Eleven people had attended the service. Six of them were tourists staying in the local hotel. They had been dragged out of their beds at around four in the morning and had been interviewed by the police. The other people at the service had all belonged to Mildred Nilsson’s old biddies’ group, Magdalena.
“Old biddies’ group?” asked Anna-Maria, looking up from the file.
“Yes, she had a Bible study group that consisted only of women. They called themselves Magdalena. One of those network things people go in for these days. They’d go to the church where Mildred Nilsson was holding a service. It’s caused bad blood in certain circles. The expression was used both by their critics and by themselves.”
Anna-Maria nodded and looked down at the file again. Her eyes narrowed when she came to the autopsy report and the remarks of the medical examiner, Pohjanen.
“She was certainly smashed up,” she said. “ ‘Impact marks from a blow to the skull…fractured skull…crush damage to the brain at the points of impact…bleeding between the soft tissue of the brain and the hard outer layer…’”
She noticed fleeting expressions of distaste on the faces of both the prosecutor and Sven-Erik and carried on looking through the text in silence.
Pointless, uncharacteristic violence, then. Most injuries about three centimeters long, with connective tissue between the edges of the wound. The connective tissue had been shattered. But there was a long wound here: “Left temple straight reddish blue contusion and swelling…the furthest edge of the impression wound is three centimeters below and two centimeters in front of the auditory canal on the left-hand side…”
Impression wound? What did it say about that in the notes? She flicked through the file.
“…the impression wound and the extended wound above the left temple with clear demarcation along its sides would suggest a crowbar-like weapon.”
Sven-Erik continued his narrative:
“After the service the priest got changed in the sacristy, locked the church and walked past the folk museum down to the river where she kept her boat. That’s where she was attacked. The murderer carried the priest back to the church. Unlocked the door and carried her up to the organ loft, put an iron chain around her neck, attached the chain to the organ and hung her from the organ loft.
“She was found not long afterward by one of the churchwardens who had cycled down to the village on an impulse to pick some flowers for the church.”
Anna-Maria glanced at her son. He had discovered the box of papers waiting to be shredded. He was ripping one sheet after another to bits. Sheer bliss.
Anna-Maria read on quickly. A considerable number of fractures to the upper jaw and zygoma. One pupil blown. Left pupil six millimeters, right four millimeters. It was the swelling in the brain that caused it. “Upper lip extremely swollen. Right-hand side discolored, bluish purple, incision shows heavy bleeding, blackish red…” God! All teeth in upper jaw knocked out. “Considerable amount of blood and blood clots in the mouth cavity. Two socks pushed into the mouth and rammed against the back of the throat.
“Nearly all the blows directed just at the head,” she said.
“Two chest wounds,” said Sven-Erik.
“ ‘Crowbar-like object.’ ”
“Presumably a crowbar.”
“Extended wound left temple. Do you think that was the first blow?”
“Yes. So we can assume he’s right-handed.”
“Or she.”
“Yes. But the murderer carried her a fair way. From the river to the church.”
“How do we know he carried her? Maybe he put her in a wheel-barrow or something.”
“Well, there’s knowing and knowing, you know what Pohjanen’s like. But he pointed out which way her blood had flowed. First of all it flowed downward toward her back.”
“So she was lying on the ground on her back.”
“Yes. The technicians found the spot in the end. Just a little way from the shore where she kept her boat. She took the boat across sometimes. She lived on the other side. In Poikkijärvi. Her shoes were on the shore too, just by the boat.”
“What else? About the bleeding, I mean.”
“Then there are lesser bleeds from the injuries to her face and head, running down toward the crown of the head.”
“Okay,” said Anna-Maria. “The murderer carried her over his shoulder with her head hanging down.”
“That could explain it. And it isn’t exactly gymnastics for housewives.”
“I could carry her,” said Anna-Maria. “And hang her from the organ. She was quite small, after all.”
Especially if I was kind of…beside myself with rage, she thought.
Sven-Erik went on:
“The final signs of bleeding run toward the feet.”
“When she was hung up.”
Sven-Erik nodded.
“So she wasn’t dead at that point?”
“Not quite. It’s in the notes.”
Anna-Maria skimmed through the notes. There was a small bleed in the skin where the neck injuries were. According to Pohjanen, the medical examiner, this indicated a dying person. Which meant that she was almost dead when she was hung up. Presumably not conscious.
“These socks in her mouth…” Anna-Maria began.
“Her own,” said Sven-Erik. “Her shoes were still down by the river, and she was barefoot when she was hung up.”
“I’ve seen that before,” said the prosecutor. “Often when somebody is killed in that particular way. The victim jerks and makes rattling noises. It’s most unpleasant. And to stop the rattling…”
He broke off. He was thinking of a domestic abuse case that had ended with the wife being murdered. Half the bedroom curtains down her throat.
Anna-Maria looked at some of the photographs. The battered face. The mouth gaping open, black, no front teeth.
What about the hands, though? she thought. The side of the hand where the little finger is? The arms?
“No sign of self-defense,” she said.
The prosecutor and Sven-Erik shook their heads.
“And no complete fingerprints?” asked Anna-Maria.
“No. We’ve got a partial print on one sock.”
Gustav had now moved on to pulling every leaf he could reach off a large rubber plant that was in a pot on the floor topped with gravel. When Anna-Maria pulled him away he let out a howl of rage.
“No, and I mean no,” said Anna-Maria when he tried to fight his way out of her arms to get back to the rubber plant.
The prosecutor attempted to say something, but Gustav was wailing like a siren. Anna-Maria tried to bribe him with her car keys and cell phone, but everything was sent crashing to the floor. He’d started stripping the rubber plant and he wanted to finish the job. Anna-Maria tucked him under her arm and stood up. The meeting was definitely over.
“I’m putting in an advert,” she said through clenched teeth. “Free to good home. Or ‘wanted: lawnmower in exchange for thriving boy aged eighteen months, anything considered.’ ”
* * *
Sven-Erik walked out to the car with Anna-Maria. Still the same old scruffy Ford Escort, he noticed. Gustav forgot his woes when she put him down so that he could walk by himself. First of all he wobbled recklessly toward a pigeon that was pecking at some scraps by a waste bin. The pigeon flew tiredly away, and Gustav turned his attention to the bin. Something pink had run over the edge; it looked like dried vomit from the previous Saturday. Anna-Maria grabbed Gustav just before he got there. He started to sob as if his life was over. She shoved him into his car seat and slammed the door. His muted sobs could be heard from inside.