by Asa Larsson
She got up. Something changed in her face, it was a fleeting moment, but he’d seen it in this house many times. Silent anguish. He could see the answer in her eyes. Could hear it as clearly as if she’d spoken the words out loud. Like a whore.
She picked her gloves up from the table with stiff movements, slowly, as if she had to count them to make sure she had them all. One two. She picked up the big bunch of keys.
Erik Nilsson sighed heavily and rubbed his hand over his face.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Mildred would have given me a kick up the backside. What day is it today?”
When she didn’t reply he went on:
“A week, I’ll be out of here in a week.”
She nodded. He followed her to the door. Tried to think of something to say, it wasn’t exactly the time to ask if she’d like a coffee.
“A week,” he said to her departing back.
As if it could have made her feel happy.
Rebecka tottered away from the priest’s house. Although that was just the way it felt. She wasn’t actually tottering at all. Her legs and feet carried her away from the house with steady steps.
I’m nothing, she thought. There’s nothing left inside me. No human being, no judgment, nothing. I do whatever they ask me to do. Of course. The people at the office are all I’ve got. I tell myself I can’t cope with the idea of going back. But in fact I can’t cope with the idea of ending up on the outside. I’ll do anything, absolutely anything, to be allowed to belong.
She focused on the mailbox and didn’t notice the red Ford Escort driving up the track until it slowed down and turned in between the gateposts.
The car stopped.
Rebecka felt as if she’d had an electric shock.
Inspector Anna-Maria Mella climbed out of the car. They’d met before, when Rebecka was defending Sanna Strandgård. And it had been Anna-Maria Mella and her colleague Sven-Erik Stålnacke who’d saved her life that night.
Anna-Maria had been pregnant then, shaped like a cube; now she was slim. But broad-shouldered. She looked strong although she was so small. Her hair in the same thick plait down her back as before. White, even teeth in her brown, sunburned horse face. A pony policewoman.
“Hi there!” exclaimed Anna-Maria.
Then she fell silent. Her whole body was a question mark.
“I…” said Rebecka, lost her way and tried again. “My firm has some business with the different communities within the Swedish church, we’ve had a sales meeting and…and there were one or two things they needed some help with regarding the priest’s house and as we were up here anyway I’ve been to have a word with…”
She ended the sentence with a nod toward the house.
“But it’s got nothing to do with…” asked Anna-Maria.
“No, when I came up here I didn’t even know…no. What did you have?” asked Rebecka, trying to force a smile onto her face.
“A boy. I’ve just come back to work after my maternity leave, so I’m helping out with the investigation into Mildred Nilsson’s murder.”
Rebecka nodded. She looked up at the sky. It was completely empty. The bunch of keys weighed a ton in her pocket.
What am I? she thought. I’m not ill. I haven’t got an illness. Just lazy. Lazy and crazy. I have no words of my own to speak. The silence is eating its way inward.
“Funny old world, isn’t it?” said Anna-Maria. “First Viktor Strandgård and now Mildred Nilsson.”
Rebecka nodded again. Anna-Maria smiled. She seemed completely unconcerned about the other woman’s silence, but she was waiting patiently for Rebecka to say something.
“What do you think?” Rebecka managed to force out. “Is it somebody who’d been keeping a scrapbook about Viktor’s murder, and decided to make a sequel of their own?”
“Maybe.”
Anna-Maria gazed up into a pine tree. Heard a squirrel scampering up the trunk, but couldn’t see it. It stayed on the other side, reached the top and rustled about among the branches.
Maybe it was some lunatic who was inspired by Viktor Strandgård’s death. Or it might have been somebody who knew her. Who knew she’d conducted a service in the church, knew what time it finished and that she’d go down to where she kept the boat. She didn’t defend herself. And why did somebody hang her up? It’s like in the Middle Ages, when they used to impale people’s heads on a spike. As a warning to others.
“How are you?” asked Anna-Maria.
Rebecka replied that she was fine. Just fine. Things had been difficult immediately afterward, of course, but she’d had help and support. Anna-Maria said that was good, really good.
Anna-Maria looked at Rebecka. She thought about that night when the police went to the cottage in Jiekajärvi and found her. She hadn’t been able to go with them because her contractions had started. But she’d often dreamed about it afterward. In the dream she was riding a snowmobile through the darkness and the blizzard. Rebecka lay bleeding on the sledge. The snow spraying up into her face. All the time she was afraid of running into something. Then she got stuck. Standing there in the cold. The snowmobile roaring in vain. She usually woke up with a start. Lay there gazing at Gustav, sleeping and snuffling between her and Robert. On his back. Completely secure. Arms by his sides, pointing upward at a ninety degree angle, typical of new babies. Everything worked out fine, she usually thought. Everything worked out fine.
Everything didn’t work out fine at all, she thought now.
“So are you off back to Stockholm now?” she asked.
“No, I’ve taken a bit of time off.”
“Your grandmother had a house in Kurravaara, is that where you’re staying?”
“No, I…no. Here in the village. The pub’s got a couple of chalets.”
“So you haven’t been to Kurravaara?”
“No.”
Anna-Maria looked searchingly at Rebecka.
“If you want some company we could go up there together,” she said.
Rebecka thanked her, but said no. It was just that she hadn’t had time yet, she explained. They said good-bye. Before they parted Anna-Maria said:
“You saved those children.”
Rebecka nodded.
That’s no consolation, she thought.
“What happened to them?” she asked. “I reported suspected abuse to social services.”
“I don’t think anything came of that investigation,” said Anna-Maria. “Then the whole family moved away.”
Rebecka thought about the girls. Sara and Lova. She cleared her throat and tried to think about something else.
“That sort of thing’s so expensive for the community, you see,” said Anna-Maria. “The investigations cost money. Having the children looked after costs a whole heap of money. Putting the case through the county court costs money. From the child’s point of view it would be better if the whole apparatus was run by the state. But at the moment the best solution for the community is if the problem just goes away. Bloody hell, I’ve taken kids out of a fifty-two-square-meter war zone. Then you hear that the community’s bought the family a tenancy in Örkelljunga.”
She stopped. Noticed that she’d started babbling just because Rebecka Martinsson seemed to be so close to the edge.
As Rebecka walked on down toward the village bar, Anna-Maria gazed after her. She was seized by a sudden longing for her children. Robert was at home with Gustav. She wanted to press her nose against Gustav’s soft skin, feel his strong little arms around her neck.
Then she took a deep breath and straightened her back. The sun on the yellow-white autumn grass. The squirrel, still busy up in the trees on the other side of the track. The smile poured back into her. It was never very far away. Time to talk to Erik Nilsson, the priest’s husband. Then she’d go home to her family.
* * *
Rebecka Martinsson was walking down toward the bar. Behind her, the forest was talking. Come over here, it said. Come and walk deep inside. I am endless.
Sh
e could imagine that walk.
Slender pines of beaten copper. The wind high up in the crown of the trees sounds like rushing water. Firs that look charred and blackened, covered in beard lichen. The sound of her steps: the rustle of dry reindeer lichen and organ-pipe lichen, the crunch of the pinecones eaten by the woodpecker. Sometimes you walk on a soft carpet of needles along an animal track. All you hear then is the sound of thin twigs cracking beneath your feet.
You walk and walk. At first the thoughts in your head are like a tangled skein of wool. The branches scrape against your face or catch in your hair. One by one the threads are drawn from the skein. Get caught in the trees. Fly away with the wind. In the end your head is empty. And you are transported. Through the forest. Over steaming bogs, heavy with scent, where your feet sink between the still frozen tussocks and your body feels sticky. Up a hill. Fresh breeze. The dwarf birch creeping, glowing on the ground. You lie down. And then the snow begins to fall.
She suddenly remembered what it was like when she was a child. That longing to be transported into the endlessness of it all, like a Red Indian. The mountain buzzards soaring above her head. In her dreams she had a rucksack on her back and slept under the open sky. Her grandmother’s dog Jussi was always there. Sometimes she traveled by canoe.
She remembered standing in the forest, pointing. Asking her father: “If I go that way, where will I end up?” And her father’s reply. New poetry, depending on which direction the finger was pointing in, and where they were. “Tjålme.” “Latteluokta.” “Across the river Rauta.” “Through Vistasvagge and over the Dragon’s Back.”
She had to stop. Almost thought she could see them. Hard to remember what her father’s face had actually looked like. It’s because she has seen too many photographs of him. They’ve pushed out her own memories. But she recognizes the shirt. Cotton, but soft as silk from all the washing. White background, black and red lines making a checked pattern. The knife in his belt. The leather dark and shiny. The beautifully patterned bone handle. Herself, no more than seven, she knows that for certain. Blue machine-knitted hat with a pattern of white snowflakes. Sturdy boots. She has a knife in her belt too, a small one. It’s mostly for appearance’s sake. Although she has tried to use it. Wanted to carve something with it. Figures. Like Astrid Lindgren’s Emil in Lönneberga. But it’s too feeble. If she’s going to use the knife she has to borrow Daddy’s. It’s better when she wants to split wood or sharpen kebab sticks, sometimes for carving, although it never quite turns out to be anything.
Rebecka looked down at her high-heeled boots from Lagerson’s.
Sorry, she said to the forest. I’m not dressed appropriately these days.
* * *
Micke Kiviniemi wiped over the bar counter with a cloth. It was just after four on Tuesday afternoon. Their overnight guest, Rebecka Martinsson, was sitting alone at one of the window tables gazing out toward the river. She was the only female customer, had eaten elk steak with mashed potato and Mimmi’s wild mushrooms, drinking from her glass of red wine from time to time, oblivious to the glances of the village lads.
They were usually the first in. On a Saturday they came in as early as three o’clock to have an early dinner, sink a few beers and kill the empty hours until there was something good on TV. Malte Alajärvi was chatting to Mimmi as usual. He enjoyed that. Later the evening gang would turn up to have a few beers and watch the sport. It was mostly single men who came to Micke’s to eat. But a few couples would turn up as well. And one or two from the women’s group. And the staff from Jukkasjärvi tourist village often took the boat across the river and came in to eat.
“What the hell is this supposed to be?” Malte complained, pointing at the menu. “Gno…”
“Gnocchi,” said Mimmi. “It’s like little pieces of pasta. Gnocchi with tomato and mozzarella. And you can have a piece of grilled meat or chicken with it.”
She positioned herself next to Malte and demonstratively took her notepad out of her apron pocket.
As if she needed it, thought Micke. She could take an order from a party of twelve and keep it in her head. Unbelievable.
He looked at Mimmi. If he had to choose between her and Rebecka Martinsson, Mimmi would win by a mile. Mimmi’s mother Lisa had been a looker when she was young too, the old men in the village had plenty to say about her. And Lisa was still attractive. It was hard to hide, despite the fact that she always went around with no makeup, wore terrible clothes and cut her own hair. In the middle of the night with the sheep shears, as Mimmi said. But while Lisa shut off her beauty as much as she could, Mimmi showed hers off. Apron tight around her hips. The tendrils of stripy hair curling out from underneath the little handkerchief she’d knotted around her head. Low-cut, tight black sweaters. And when she leaned forward to wipe the table, anyone who wanted could get a very pleasant eyeful of her cleavage, her breasts swinging gently, held in place by a lacy bra. Always red, black or lilac. From behind you could get a glimpse of the tattoo of a lizard high up on her right buttock when her low-cut jeans slipped down as she bent forward.
He remembered when they’d first met. She’d been visiting her mother, and offered to work one evening. There were people wanting a meal, and as usual his brother hadn’t turned up, although this whole bar thing had been his idea from the start, and so Micke was left on his own. She’d offered to throw together some bar food and do the serving. The word spread that same evening. The lads hadn’t wasted any time ringing their mates on their cell phones. Everybody came in to have a look at her.
And so she stayed. For a while, she always said evasively when he tried to sort things out. When he tried to say it would be good for the business if he knew, so they could plan for the future, she sounded uncomfortable.
“Best not count on me, then.”
Later, when they ended up in bed, he dared to ask her again. How long she’d be staying.
“Till something better turns up,” she answered that time, and grinned.
And they weren’t a couple, she’d made that very clear to him. He’d had quite a few girlfriends. Even lived with one of them for a while. So he knew what the words meant. You’re a wonderful person, but…I’m not ready…If I were going to fall in love with anybody at the moment, it would be you…Can’t tie myself down. They all meant one thing: I don’t love you. You’ll do for the moment.
She’d changed the whole place. Started by helping him get rid of his brother. Who neither worked nor did anything toward paying off the debts. Just came in and drank with his mates without paying. A bunch of losers who were quite happy to let his brother be king for the evening as long as he was getting the drinks in.
“It’s a very simple choice,” Mimmi had said to his brother. “Either we dissolve the whole thing, and you’re left with a pile of debts. Or you pass it over to Micke.”
And his brother signed. Red-rimmed eyes. The slightly stale body odor seeping through the T-shirt that hadn’t been changed for days. And that new tone of anger in his voice. The alcoholic’s temper.
“But the sign belongs to me,” he’d informed them, shoving the contract away from him.
“I’ve got loads of ideas,” he went on, tapping his head.
“Take it whenever you want,” Micke had said.
Thought: that’ll be the day.
He remembered how his brother had found the sign on the Internet. An old bar sign from the USA. “LAST STOP DINER,” white neon letters on a red background. They’d been ridiculously pleased with it at the time. But why should Micke care about it now? He’d had other plans even then. “Mimmi’s” was a good name for a bar. But she didn’t want any of that. It ended up as “Micke’s Bar and Diner.”
“Why do you have to do such weird stuff?”
Malte looked down at the menu, his expression troubled.
“There’s nothing weird about it,” said Mimmi. “In fact it’s just like dumplings, but smaller.”
“Dumplings and tomatoes, how much weirder can it get? No, gi
ve me something out of the freezer. I’ll have lasagne.”
Mimmi disappeared into the kitchen.
“And forget the rabbit food,” Malte shouted after her. “Did you hear me? No salad!”
Micke turned to Rebecka Martinsson.
“Will you be staying tonight as well?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Where would I go? she thought. Where would I drive to? What would I do? At least there’s nobody who knows me here.
“That priest,” she said. “The one who died.”
“Mildred Nilsson.”
“What was she like?”
“Bloody good, I thought. She and Mimmi are the best things that have happened to this village. And this place too. When I started it was full of nothing but unmarried old men from eighteen to eighty-three. But when Mildred moved here the women started to come in. She sort of gave the village a new lease on life.”
“Was it the priest who told them to come to the bar?”
Micke laughed.
“To eat! She was like that. Thought the women should get out a bit. Take a break from the kitchen. And then they brought their husbands with them and had a meal sometimes when they didn’t feel like cooking. The atmosphere in here changed completely when the women started coming in. Before the old men used to just sit around moaning.”
“No we didn’t,” interrupted Malte Alajärvi, who’d been eavesdropping.
“You moaned then and you’re still moaning now. Sitting here staring out across the river and complaining about Yngve Bergqvist and Jukkasjärvi…”
“Yes, but that Yngve…”
“And you whinge about the food and the government and the fact that there’s never anything good on TV…”
“A load of bloody game shows!”
“…and about everything else!”
“All I said about Yngve Bergqvist was that he’s a bloody con artist who’ll sell any damned thing as long as it says “Arctic” before it. It’s Arctic sled dogs and Arctic safari and I swear the bloody Japanese will pay an extra two hundred to go to a genuine Arctic shit-house.”