The Blood Spilt

by Asa Larsson

  She turned to Sven-Erik with a wry smile.

  “I think I’ll leave him there and walk home,” she said.

  “No wonder he’s making a fuss when you’ve done him out of a snack,” said Sven-Erik, nodding toward the disgusting bin.

  Anna-Maria pretended to shrug her shoulders. There was a silence between them for a few seconds.

  “So,” said Sven-Erik with a grin, “I suppose I’ll have to put up with you again.”

  “Poor you,” she said. “That’s the end of your peace and quiet.”

  Then she became serious.

  “It said in the papers that she was a bluestocking, arranged courses in self-defense, that sort of thing. And yet there were no marks to indicate that she’d struggled!”

  “I know,” said Sven-Erik.

  He twitched his moustache with a thoughtful expression.

  “Maybe she wasn’t expecting to be hit,” he said. “Maybe she knew him.”

  He grinned.

  “Or her!” he added.

  Anna-Maria nodded pensively. Behind her Sven-Erik could see the wind farm on Peuravaara. It was one of their favorite things to squabble about. He thought it was beautiful. She thought it was ugly as sin.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “He might have had a dog,” said Sven-Erik. “The technicians found two dog hairs on her clothes, and she didn’t have one.”

  “What sort of dog?”

  “Don’t know. According to Helene in Hörby they’ve been trying to develop the technique. You can’t tell what breed it is, but if you find a suspect with a dog, you can check whether the hairs came from that particular dog.”

  The screaming in the car increased in volume. Anna-Maria got in and started the engine. There must have been a hole in the exhaust pipe, because it sounded like a chainsaw in pain when she revved up. She set off with a jerk and scorched out on to Hjalmar Lundbohmvägen.

  “I see your bloody driving hasn’t got any better!” he yelled after her through the cloud of oily exhaust fumes.

  Through the back window he saw her hand raised in a wave.

  Rebecka Martinsson was sitting in the rented Saab on the way down to Jukkasjärvi. Torsten Karlsson was in the passenger seat with his head tilted back, eyes closed, relaxing before the meeting with the parish priests. From time to time he glanced out through the window.

  “Tell me if we pass something worth looking at,” he said to Rebecka.

  Rebecka smiled wryly.

  Everything, she thought. Everything’s worth looking at. The evening sun between the pine trees. The damned flies buzzing over the fireweed at the side of the road. The places where the asphalt’s split because of the frost. Dead things, squashed on the road.

  The meeting with the church leaders in Kiruna wasn’t due to take place until the following morning. But the parish priest in Kiruna had phoned Torsten.

  “If you arrive on Tuesday evening, let me know,” he’d said. “I can show you two of Sweden’s most beautiful churches. Kiruna and Jukkasjärvi.”

  “We’ll go on Tuesday, then!” Torsten had decided. “It’s really important that he’s on our side before Wednesday. Wear something nice.”

  “Wear something nice yourself!” Rebecka had replied.

  On the plane they’d ended up next to a woman who immediately got into conversation with Torsten. She was tall, wearing a loose fitting linen jacket and a huge pendant from the Kalevala around her neck. When Torsten told her it was his first visit to Kiruna, she’d clapped her hands with delight. Then she’d given him tips on everything he just had to see.

  “I’ve got my own guide with me,” Torsten had said, nodding toward Rebecka.

  The woman had smiled at Rebecka.

  “Oh, so you’ve been here before?”

  “I was born here.”

  The woman had looked her quickly up and down. A hint of disbelief in her eyes.

  Rebecka had turned away to look out of the window, leaving the conversation to Torsten. It had upset her that she looked like a stranger. Neatly done up in her gray suit and Bruno Magli shoes.

  This is my town, she’d thought, feeling defiant.

  Just then the plane had turned. And the town lay below her. That clump of buildings that had attached itself to the mountain full of iron, and clung on tight. All around nothing but mountains and bogs, low growing forests and streams. She took a deep breath.

  At the airport she’d felt like a stranger too. On the way out to the hire car she and Torsten had met a flock of tourists on their way home. They’d smelled of mosquito repellent and sweat. The mountain winds and the September sun had nipped at their skin. Brown faces with white crow’s feet from screwing their eyes up.

  Rebecka knew how they’d felt. Sore feet and aching muscles after a week in the mountains, contented and just a bit flat. They were wearing brightly colored anoraks and practical khaki colored trousers. She was wearing a coat and scarf.

  Torsten straightened up and looked curiously at some people fly-fishing as they crossed the river.

  “We’ll just have to hope we can carry this off,” he said.

  “Of course you will,” said Rebecka. “They’re going to love you.”

  “Do you think so? It’s not good that I’ve never been here before. I’ve never been further north than bloody Gävle.”

  “No, no, but you’re incredibly pleased to be here. You’ve always wanted to come up here to see the magnificent mountains and visit the mine. Next time you come up on business you’re thinking of taking some holiday to see the sights.”

  “Okay.”

  “And none of this ‘how the hell do you cope with the long dark winter when the sun doesn’t even rise’ crap.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Even if they joke about it themselves.”

  “Yeah yeah.”

  Rebecka parked the car beside the bell tower. No priest. They strolled along the path toward the vicarage. Red wooden panels and white eaves. The river flowed along below the vicarage. The water was September-low. Torsten was doing the blackfly dance. No one opened when they rang the bell. They rang again and waited. In the end they turned to go.

  A man was walking up toward the vicarage through the opening in the fence. He waved to them and shouted. When he got closer they could see he was wearing a clerical shirt.

  “Hi there,” he said when he got to them. “You must be from Meijer & Ditzinger.”

  He held his hand out to Torsten Karlsson first. Rebecka took up the secretary’s position, half a pace behind Torsten.

  “Stefan Wikström,” said the clergyman.

  Rebecka introduced herself without mentioning her job. He could believe whatever made him comfortable. She looked at the priest. He was in his forties. Jeans, tennis shoes, clerical shirt and white dog collar. He hadn’t been conducting his official duties, then. Still had the shirt on, though.

  One of those 24/7 priests, thought Rebecka.

  “You’d arranged to meet Bertil Stensson, our parish priest,” the clergyman continued. “Unfortunately he’s been held up this evening, so he asked me to meet you and show you the church.”

  Rebecka and Torsten made polite noises and went up to the little red wooden church with him. There was a smell of tar from the wooden roof. Rebecka followed in the wake of the two men. The clergyman addressed himself almost exclusively to Torsten when he spoke. Torsten slipped smoothly into the game and didn’t pay any attention to Rebecka either.

  Of course it could be that the priest has actually been held up, thought Rebecka. But it could also mean that he’s decided to oppose the firm’s proposal.

  It was gloomy inside the church. The air was still. Torsten was scratching twenty fresh blackfly bites.

  Stefan Wikström told them about the eighteenth-century church. Rebecka allowed her thoughts to wander. She knew the story of the beautiful altarpiece and the dead resting beneath the floor. Then she realized they’d embarked on a new topic of conversation, and pricked up her ears
.

  “There. In front of the organ,” said Stefan Wikström, pointing.

  Torsten looked up at the shiny organ pipes and the Sami sun symbol in the center of the organ.

  “It must have been a terrible shock for all of you.”

  “What must?” asked Rebecka.

  The clergyman looked at her.

  “This is where she was hanging,” he said. “My colleague who was murdered in the summer.”

  Rebecka looked blankly at him.

  “Murdered in the summer?” she repeated.

  There was a confused pause.

  “Yes, in the summer,” ventured Stefan Wikström.

  Torsten Karlsson was staring at Rebecka.

  “Oh, come on,” he said.

  Rebecka looked at him and shook her head almost imperceptibly.

  “A woman priest was murdered in Kiruna in the summer. In here. Didn’t you know about it?”

  “No.”

  He looked at her anxiously.

  “You must be the only person in the whole of Sweden who…I assumed you knew. It was all over the papers. On every news broadcast…”

  Stefan Wikström was following their conversation like a table tennis match.

  “I haven’t ready any papers all summer,” said Rebecka. “And I haven’t watched any television.”

  Torsten raised his hands, palms upward, in a helpless gesture.

  “I really thought…” he began. “But obviously, nobody bloody…”

  He broke off, glanced sheepishly at the clergyman, received a smile as an indication that his sin was forgiven, and went on:

  “…nobody had the nerve to speak to you about it. Maybe you’d like to wait outside? Or would you like a glass of water?”

  Rebecka was on the verge of smiling. Then she changed her mind, couldn’t decide which expression to adopt.

  “It’s fine. But I would like to wait outside.”

  She left the men inside the church and went out. Stopped on the steps.

  I ought to feel something, of course, she thought. Maybe I ought to faint.

  The afternoon sun was warming the walls of the bell tower. She had the urge to lean against it, but didn’t because of her clothes. The smell of warm asphalt mingled with the smell of the newly tarred roof.

  She wondered if Torsten was telling Stefan Wikström that she was the one who’d shot Viktor Strandgård’s murderer. Maybe he was making something up. No doubt he’d do whatever he thought was best for business. At the moment she was in the social goody bag. Among the salted anecdotes and the sweet gossip. If Stefan Wikström had been a lawyer, Torsten would have told him how things were. Taken out the bag and offered him a Rebecka Martinsson. But maybe the clergy weren’t quite so keen on gossip as the legal profession.

  They came out to join her after ten minutes. The clergyman shook hands with them both. It felt as if he didn’t really want to let go of their hands.

  “It was unfortunate that Bertil had to go out. It was a car accident, and you can’t say no. Hang on a minute and I’ll try his cell phone.”

  While Stefan Wikström tried to ring the parish priest, Rebecka and Torsten exchanged a look. So he was genuinely busy. Rebecka wondered why Stefan Wikström was so keen for them to meet him before the meeting the following day.

  He wants something, she thought. But what?

  Stefan Wikström pushed the phone into his back pocket with an apologetic smile.

  “No luck,” he said. “Just voicemail. But we’ll meet tomorrow.”

  Brief, casual farewells since it was only one night until they were due to meet again. Torsten asked Rebecka for a pen and made a note of the title of a book the clergyman had recommended. Showed genuine interest.

  * * *

  Rebecka and Torsten drove back into town. Rebecka talked about Jukkasjärvi. What the village had been like before the big tourist boom. Dozing by the river. The population trickling silently away like the sand in an hourglass. The Konsum shop looking like some sort of antiquated emporium. The odd tourist at the folk museum, burnt coffee and a chocolate eclair with the white bloom that suggests it’s been around for a long time. It had been impossible to sell houses. They had stood there, silent and hollow-eyed, with leaking roofs and moss growing on the walls. The meadows overgrown with weeds.

  And now: tourists came from all over the world to sleep between reindeer skins in the ice hotel, drive a snowmobile at minus thirty degrees, drive a dog team and get married in the ice church. And when it wasn’t winter they came for saunas on board a boat or rode the rapids.

  “Stop!” yelled Torsten all of a sudden. “We can eat there!”

  He pointed to a sign by the side of the road. It consisted of two hand-painted planks of wood nailed together. They were sawn into the shape of arrows, and were pointing to the left. Green letters on a white background proclaimed “ROOMS” and “Food till 11 p.m.”

  “No, we can’t,” said Rebecka. “That’s the road down to Poikkijärvi. There’s nothing there.”

  “Oh, come on, Martinsson,” said Torsten, looking expectantly along the road. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Rebecka sighed like somebody’s mother and turned on to the road to Poikkijärvi.

  “There’s nothing here,” she said. “A churchyard and a chapel and a few houses. I promise you that whoever put that sign up a hundred years ago went bust a week later.”

  “When we know for certain we’ll turn round and go into town to eat,” said Torsten cheerfully.

  The road became a gravel track. The river was on their left, and you could see Jukkasjärvi on the far side. The gravel crunched beneath the wheels of the car. Wooden houses stood on either side of the track, most of them painted red. Some gardens were adorned with miniature windmills and fading flowers in containers made out of tractor tires, others with swings and sand pits. Dogs galloped as far as they could in their runs, barking hoarsely after the passing car. Rebecka could feel the eyes from inside the houses. A car they didn’t recognize. Who could it be? Torsten gazed around him like a happy child, commenting on the ugly extensions and waving to an old man who stopped raking up leaves to stare after them. They passed some small boys on bikes and a tall lad on a moped.

  “There,” Torsten pointed.

  The restaurant was right on the edge of the village. It was an old car workshop that had been converted. The building looked like a whitish rectangular cardboard box; the dirty white plaster had come off in several places. Two big garage doors on the longer side of the box looked out over the road. The doors had been fitted with oblong windows to let the light in. On one end there was a normal sized door and a window with bars. On each side of the door stood a plastic urn filled with fiery yellow marigolds. The door and window frames were painted with flaking brown plastic paint. At the other end, the back of the restaurant, some pale red snowplows stood in the tall dry autumn grass.

  Three chickens flapped their wings and disappeared around the corner when Rebecka drove into the gravel yard. A dusty neon sign that said “LAST STOP DINER” was leaning against the longer side of the building facing the river. A collapsible wooden sign next to the door proclaimed “BAR open.” Three other cars were parked in the yard.

  On the other side of the road stood five chalets. Rebecka presumed they were the rooms available for renting.

  She switched off the engine. At that moment the moped they’d passed earlier arrived and parked by the wall of the building. A very big lad was sitting on the saddle. He stayed there for a while, looking as if he couldn’t decide whether to get off or not. He peered at Rebecka and Torsten in the strange car from under his helmet and swayed backwards and forward toward the handlebars a few times. His powerful jaw was moving from side to side. Finally he got off the moped and went over to the door. He leaned forward slightly as he walked. Eyes down, arms bent at a ninety degree angle.

  “The master chef has arrived for work,” joked Torsten.

  Rebecka forced out a “hm,” the sound jun
ior associates make when they don’t want to laugh at rude jokes, but don’t want to remain totally silent and risk offending a partner or a client.

  The big lad was standing at the door.

  Not unlike a great big bear in a green jacket, thought Rebecka.

  He turned around and went back to the moped. He unbuttoned his green jacket, placed it carefully on the moped and folded it up. Then he undid his helmet and placed it in the middle of the folded jacket, as carefully as if it were made of delicate glass. He even took a step backwards to check, went forward again and moved the helmet a millimeter. Head still bent, held slightly on one side. He glanced toward Rebecka and Torsten and rubbed his big chin. Rebecka guessed he was just under twenty. But with the mind of a boy, obviously.

  “What’s he doing?” whispered Torsten.

  Rebecka shook her head.

  “I’ll go in and ask if they’ve started serving dinner,” she said.

  She climbed out of the car. From the open window, covered with a green mosquito net, came the sound of some sports program on TV, low voices and the clatter of dishes. From the river she could hear the sound of an outboard motor. There was a smell of frying food. It had got cooler. The afternoon chill was passing like a hand over the moss and the blueberry bushes.

  It’s like home, thought Rebecka, looking into the forest on the other side of the track. A pillared hall, the slender pine trees rising from the poor sandy soil, the rays of the sun reaching far into the forest between the copper colored trunks above the low growing shrubs and moss covered stones.

  Suddenly she could see herself. A little girl in a knitted synthetic sweater that made her hair crackle with static when she pulled it over her head. Corduroy jeans that had been made longer by adding an edging around the bottom of the legs. She’s coming out of the forest. In her hand she has a china mug full of the blueberries she’s picked. She’s on her way to the summer barn. Her grandmother is sitting inside. A smoky little fire is burning on the cement floor to keep the mosquitoes away. It’s just right, if you put too much grass on it the cows start to cough. Grandmother is milking Mansikka, the cow’s tail clamped to Mansikka’s flank with her forehead. The milk spurts into the pail. The chains clank as the cows stoop down for more hay.