Sun Storm aka The Savage Altar

And evening came and morning came, the second day

Inspector Anna-Maria Mella is sleeping restlessly in the darkest hour of the night. Clouds cover the sky, and the room is pitch-black. It is as if God himself has cupped His hand over the town, just as a child places his hand over a scuttling insect. No one who has joined the game shall escape.

Anna-Maria tosses her head from side to side to escape the voices and faces from yesterday that have occupied her sleep. The child kicks angrily in her stomach.

In her dream Prosecutor Carl von Post pushes his face toward Sanna Strandgård and tries to force answers from her that she cannot give. He presses her and threatens to interrogate her daughters if she cannot answer. And the more he asks, the more she closes down. In the end she appears to remember nothing.

“What were you doing in the church in the middle of the night? What made you go there? You must remember something, surely? Did you see anyone else there? Do you remember calling the police? Were you angry with your brother?”

Sanna hides her face in her hands.

“I don’t remember. I don’t know. He came to me in the night. Suddenly Viktor was standing by my bed. He looked sad. When he just dissolved I knew something had happened…”

“He dissolved?”

The prosecutor looks as if he doesn’t know whether to laugh or give her a slap.

“Hang on, so you were visited by a ghost and you realized something had happened to your brother?”

Anna-Maria whimpers so much that Robert wakes up. He raises himself on his elbow and strokes her hair.

“Ssh, Mia-Mia,” he soothes her. He says her name over and over again, stroking her straw-colored hair until suddenly she gives a deep sigh and relaxes. Her face softens and the whimpering stops. When her breathing is calm and even once more, he goes back to sleep.

Those who know Carl von Post probably believe he is sleeping well tonight. That he has eaten his fill of attention and golden dreams of what the future holds in her glorious lap. He should be sleeping in his bed with a contented smile on his face.

But Carl von Post is tossing and turning as well. His jaws are clamped together so that the surfaces of his teeth grind impotently against one another. He always sleeps like this. The events of the day have not saved him.

And Rebecka Martinsson. She is in a deep sleep on the sofa bed in the kitchen of her grandparents’ house. Her breathing is calm and regular. Virku has kindly come to lie beside her, and Rebecka is sleeping with her arm around the dog’s warm body, her nose buried in the black woolly coat. There is not a sound from the outside world. No cars and no planes. No loud late-night revelers and no winter rain hammering against the windowpanes. In the bedroom Lova mumbles in her sleep, and presses closer to Sanna. The house itself creaks and groans a little, as if it were turning over in its long winter sleep.

Tuesday, February 18

Just before six o’clock Virku woke Rebecka by pushing her nose into Rebecka’s face.

“Hello, you,” whispered Rebecka. “What do you want? Time for a pee?”

She fumbled for the lamp by the bed and switched it on. The dog scampered toward the door, gave a little whimper, turned back to Rebecka and nudged her face with her nose again.

“I know, I know.”

She sat up on the edge of the bed, but kept the blanket wound around her. It was cold in the kitchen.

Everything in here is my grandmother, she thought. It’s as if I’ve been sleeping beside her in the kitchen sofa bed, allowed to stay in the warm bed while she lit the stove and put the coffee on.

She could see Theresia Martinsson sitting at the table rolling her morning cigarette. Her grandmother used newspaper instead of the expensive cigarette papers you could buy. She would tear the margin carefully down one page of the previous day’s Norbottenskuriren. It was wide and free from print, ideal for her purpose. She scattered a few strands of tobacco over it and rolled a thin cigarette between her thumb and forefinger. Her silvery hair was well tucked in under a head scarf, and she was wearing her blue-and-black-checked nylon overall. Out in the barn the cows were calling to her. “Hello, pikku-piika,” she used to say with a smile. “Are you awake?”

Pikku-piika. Little maid.

Virku yelped impatiently.

“Yes, in a minute,” answered Rebecka. “I’m just going to light the stove.”

She had slept in woolen socks, and with the blanket still wrapped around her she went over to the old kitchen stove and opened the door. Virku sat down patiently and waited. From time to time she gave a tentative little whine, just to make sure she wasn’t forgotten.

Rebecka took a sharp Mora knife and with a practiced hand shaved sticks from one of the logs by the stove. She laid two logs on top of some birch bark and the sticks, and lit them. The fire quickly took hold. She pushed in a birch log that would burn a little longer than the pine, and closed the door.

I should spend more time thinking about my grandmother, she thought. Who was it who decided it was better to concentrate on the present? There are many places in my memory where grandmother lives. But I don’t spend any time there with her. And what does the present have to offer?

Virku was whimpering and doing a little pirouette by the door. Rebecka pulled on her clothes. They were ice cold, and made her movements rapid and jerky. She pushed her feet into a pair of Lapp boots that were standing in the hallway.

“You’ll have to be quick,” she said to Virku.

On her way out she switched on the lights outside the house and the barn.

It had turned a little milder. The thermometer was showing minus fifteen, and the sky was pressing down, shutting out the light of the stars. Virku squatted down a short way off and Rebecka looked around. The ground had been cleared of snow right up to the barn. Around the house the snow had been shoveled up against the walls to provide insulation against the cold.

Who’s done the shoveling? Rebecka wondered. Could it be Sivving Fjällborg? Is he still clearing the snow for Grandmother, even though she’s gone? He must be around seventy now.

She tried to peer through the darkness at Sivving’s house on the opposite side of the road. When it was lighter she would look to see if it still said “Fjällborg” on the mailbox.

She wandered along beside the wall of the barn. The outside light glittered on the roses of rime frost on the barred windows. At the other end was her grandmother’s greenhouse. Several broken panes stared hollow-eyed and accusing at Rebecka.

You ought to be here, they said. You ought to look after the house and the garden. Look how the putty has given up. Just imagine what the roof tiles must look like under the snow. They’ve cracked and come loose. And your grandmother was so particular. So hardworking.

As if Virku could read her gloomy thoughts, she came scampering across the garden behind Rebecka through the darkness and barked happily.

“Hush,” laughed Rebecka. “You’ll wake up the whole village.”

Immediately a couple of answering barks came from far away. The black dog listened carefully.

"Don’t even think about it," warned Rebecka.

Maybe she should have brought a lead.

Virku looked at her happily and decided Rebecka would do very well as a companion for a dog in the mood for a game. She burrowed playfully down into the feather-light snow with her nose, came back up again and shook her head. Then she invited Rebecka to join in by plonking her front paws on the ground and sticking her bottom up in the air.

Come on, then, said her shiny black eyes.

“Right, then!” shouted Rebecka cheerfully, and lunged at the dog.

She immediately fell over. Virku flew at her like an arrow, jumped over her like a performing dog in a circus, spun around and half a second later was standing in front of Rebecka, her pink tongue lolling out of her laughing mouth and demanding that Rebecka get up and try again. Rebecka laughed and set off after the dog again. Virku hurtled over the piled-up snow and Rebecka clambered after her. They both sank into the untouched snow behind, a meter deep.

“I give up,” panted Rebecka after ten minutes.

She was sitting on her bottom in a snowdrift. Her cheeks were glowing red, and she was covered in snow.

When they got back in, Sanna was up and had put the coffee on. Rebecka pulled off her clothes. The outer layers soon got wet from the melting snow, and the clothes nearest her skin were already soaked in sweat. She found a Helly Hansen T-shirt and a pair of Uncle Affe’s long johns in a drawer.

“Nice outfit,” sniggered Sanna. “It’s good to see you’ve adapted to the classic look up here so quickly.”

“The baggy Gällivare look suits any figure,” replied Rebecka, wiggling her bottom so that the loose seat of the long johns flapped about.

“God, you’re thin,” exclaimed Sanna.

Rebecka straightened up at once and poured herself a cup of coffee in silence, her back toward Sanna.

“And you look so sort of dried-up,” Sanna went on. “You ought to take more care what you eat and drink.”

Her voice was gentle and concerned.

“Still,” she sighed when Rebecka didn’t respond, “it’s lucky for the rest of us that most men like a girl with something to get hold of. Although of course I think it’s really attractive to be flat-chested like you.”

Well, lucky me, thought Rebecka sarcastically. At least you think I look good.

Her silence made Sanna babble nervously.

“Just listen to me,” she said. “I sound like a real mother hen. I’ll be asking you next if you’re getting your vitamins.”

“Do you mind if I put the news on?” asked Rebecka.

Without waiting for a reply she went over to the television and switched it on. The picture was grainy. There was probably snow on the aerial.

An item about the embezzlement of some EU funds was followed by the murder of Viktor Strandgård. The voice of the reporter explained that the police were following the usual procedures in their hunt for the murderer, and as yet there was no obvious suspect. Pictures followed one another in rapid succession. Police and dogs searching the area outside the Crystal Church as they looked for the murder weapon. Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post talking about door-to-door inquiries, interviews with members of the church and those attending the service. Then Rebecka’s red Audi appeared on the screen.

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Sanna, crashing her coffee cup down on the table.

“Viktor Strandgård’s sister, who found the dead man at the scene of the crime, also arrived under somewhat dramatic circumstances to be interviewed at the police station last night.”

The whole incident was shown, but on the morning news almost all the sound had been removed, except for Rebecka’s stifled “Get out of the way.” It emerged that the reporter had reported the lawyer for assault, before the anchorman in the studio exchanged a few words with the weatherman about the forecast that would follow the break.

“But you couldn’t see how aggressive and horrible that reporter was!” said Sanna in amazement.

Rebecka felt a burning pain in her midriff.

“What is it?” asked Sanna.

What do I say? thought Rebecka, and slumped down on a chair by the kitchen table. That I’m afraid of losing my job. That they’ll freeze me out until I’m forced to resign. When she’s lost her brother. I ought to ask her about Viktor again. Ask if she wants to talk about it. I just don’t want to get drawn into her life and her problems again. I want to go home. I want to sit at the computer writing an analysis of income tax set against pension contributions.

“What do you think happened, Sanna?” she asked. “To Viktor. You said he’d been mutilated. Who could have done something like that?”

Sanna squirmed uncomfortably.

“I don’t know. That’s what I told the police. I really don’t know.”

"Weren’t you scared when you found him?"

“I wasn’t thinking like that.”

“What were you thinking, then?”

“I don’t know,” said Sanna, and put her hands on her head as if to console herself. “I think I screamed, but I’m not sure about that either.”

“You told the police Viktor woke you up, and that’s why you went there.”

Sanna lifted her eyes and looked straight at Rebecka.

“Do you really think that’s so strange? Have you started to believe that everything stops because your body no longer works? He was standing by my bed, Rebecka. He looked so sad. And I could see that it wasn’t him, not physically anyway. I knew something had happened.”

No, I don’t think it’s strange, thought Rebecka. She’s always seen more than the rest of us. A quarter of an hour before somebody came to visit completely unannounced, Sanna would put the coffee on. “Viktor’s on his way,” she’d sometimes say.

“But…” began Rebecka.

“Please,” begged Sanna, “I really don’t want to talk about it. I daren’t. Not yet. I’ve got to keep it together. For the girls’ sake. Thanks for coming up. Even though you’ve got your career to think about. You might think we’ve lost touch, but I think about you loads. It gives me strength just to know that you’re down there.”

Now Rebecka was squirming.

Stop it, she thought. We’re not friends. Her opinion of me used to mean so much. The fact that she said I was an important part of her life. But now… now it feels as if she’s spinning a web around my body.

Virku was the first to hear the sound of the snowmobile, interrupting them with a sharp bark. She pricked up her ears and looked out of the window.

“Is somebody coming?” asked Rebecka. She wasn’t sure where the noise came from, but thought it sounded as if the snowmobile was idling not far from the house. Sanna leaned her forehead against the windowpane and shaded her eyes with her hands so that she could see past her own reflection.

“Oh, no,” she exclaimed with a nervous laugh, “it’s Curt Bäckström. He was the one who gave us a lift out here. I think he’s got a bit of a thing about me. But he’s really good-looking. A bit like Elvis, somehow. Might suit you, Rebecka.”

“Stop right there,” said Rebecka firmly.

“What? What have I done?”

“You’ve been doing it for as long as I’ve known you. You attract endless brainless admirers, and then announce that they might suit me. Thanks but no, thanks.”

“I do apologize,” said Sanna in an offended voice. “I’m sorry if people I know and associate with aren’t good enough or smart enough for you. And how can you call him brainless? You don’t even know him.”

Rebecka went over to the window and looked out at the yard.

“He’s sitting on his snowmobile, it’s practically the middle of the night, and he’s staring at the house you’re staying in, instead of coming to the door,” she said. “I rest my case.”

“Besides, it’s not my fault if some men are attracted to me,” Sanna went on. “Or maybe you agree with Thomas and think I’m a whore.”

“No, but you can damn well stop making comments about my appearance or offering me your cast-off admirers.”

Rebecka grabbed her travel bag and rushed into the bathroom. She banged the door so hard that the little red wooden heart that said “Here It Is” swung violently.

“Ask him to come up,” she shouted out to the kitchen. “He can’t sit out there in the cold like an abandoned dog.”

God, she thought as she locked the door. Sanna’s witless admirers. Sanna’s loose way of dressing. It’s not my problem anymore. But it upset Thomas Söderberg. And at the time, when Sanna and I used to share an apartment, in some peculiar way it was my responsibility.

“I would like you to speak to Sanna about her clothes,” Thomas Söderberg says to Rebecka.

He is displeased with her. She can feel it in every pore. And it is as if she is being crushed to the ground. When he smiles, heaven opens and she can feel God’s love, even though she cannot hear His voice. But when Thomas has that disappointed look in his eyes, it is as if a light goes out inside her. She becomes nothing more than an empty room.

“I have tried,” she defends herself. “I’ve told her that she must think about how she dresses. That her necklines shouldn’t be so low cut. And that she should wear a bra, and longer skirts. And she understands, but… it’s as if she doesn’t see what she’s putting on in the mornings. If I’m not there to keep an eye on her when she’s getting dressed, she just forgets, somehow. Then I meet her in town and she looks like…”

She hesitates, the word “whore” sticks in her throat. Thomas wouldn’t like to hear that word from her mouth.

“… well, I don’t know what she looks like,” she goes on. “You ask her what on earth she’s got on and she looks at herself in amazement. She doesn’t do it on purpose.”

“I don’t care whether she does it on purpose or not,” Thomas Söderberg says harshly. “As long as she can’t dress decently I can’t let her take any kind of leading role in the church. How can I let her bear witness, or sing in the choir, or lead the prayers, when I know that ninety percent of all the men who are sitting there listening are just staring at her nipples sticking out under her top, and the only thing they can think about is shoving a hand between her legs.”

He stops speaking and looks out through the window. They are sitting in the prayer room at the back of the Mission church. The clear light of the late winter sun pours in through the high, narrow windows. The church is in an apartment block designed by Ralph Erskine. The people of Kiruna call the brown concrete building “The Snuffbox.” And consequently the church becomes known as the Lord’s Pinch. Rebecka thinks the church was more attractive before. Spartan and austere. Like a monastery, with its concrete walls, its concrete floor and the hard pews. But Thomas Söderberg had the fixed pulpit removed, and replaced it with a movable one made of wood. At the same time he had a wooden floor laid at the front. So that it wouldn’t be so depressing. And now the church looks just like any other free church.

Thomas lets his gaze wander up to the ceiling, where there is a huge patch of damp. It always appears in the early spring, when the snow on the roof begins to melt.

It is his way of falling silent and not meeting her eyes that makes Rebecka understand. Thomas Söderberg is angry with Sanna because she is tempting him as well. He too is one of those men who want to shove their hand inside her knickers and…

Fury bursts out like a burning rose in her breast.

Bloody Sanna, she swears to herself. You little slag.

She knows it isn’t easy to be a pastor. Thomas is tempted in every possible way. The foe would like nothing better than to catch him in a trap. And he has a weakness when it comes to sex. He was quite open about this with the young people in the Bible study group.

She remembers how he told them about a visitation by two angels. Without being able to help himself, he had been attracted to one of them. And she had known it.

“That would be the worst thing that could happen,” the angel had said. “I would become the opposite of myself. As much of the darkness as I am now of the light.”

Sanna knocked timidly on the bathroom door.

“Rebecka,” she said. “I’m going to go down and ask Curt to come up. You are going to come out of there, aren’t you? I don’t really want to be alone with him, and the girls are asleep…”

When Rebecka came out, Curt Bäckström was sitting at the table. He held his mug of coffee with both hands when he drank. He lifted it carefully from the table, and at the same time lowered his head so that he wouldn’t have to lift it too high. He had kept his boots on, and just shrugged off the upper part of his snowmobile overalls so that they hung down below his waist. He glanced sideways at Rebecka and said hello without meeting her eyes.

Where’s the resemblance to Elvis? thought Rebecka. Two eyes and a nose in the middle of his face? His hair, of course. And his moody expression.

Curt had black, wavy hair. His thick fur hat had pressed it down so that it was plastered to his forehead. The outer corners of his eyes had a slight downturn.

“Wow,” exclaimed Sanna, looking Rebecka up and down. “You look fantastic. It’s really strange, because it’s only a pair of jeans and a sweater, and it looks as if you’ve just pulled any old thing out of the wardrobe. But it’s just so obvious it’s top-quality stuff.

“Sorry,” she went on, her hand covering an embarrassed smile. “I wasn’t supposed to comment on your appearance.”

“Like I said, I just wanted to see how you were,” said Curt to Sanna.

He pushed the coffee mug away slightly to indicate that he was about to leave.

“I’m fine,” replied Sanna. “Well, I say fine… but Rebecka has been an enormous support to me. If she hadn’t come up here and gone with me to the police station, I don’t know if I could have done it.”

Her hand flew out and lightly brushed Rebecka’s arm.

Rebecka saw the muscles under the skin around Curt’s mouth stiffen. He pushed back his chair to stand up.

Well done, Sanna, thought Rebecka. Tell him how nicely dressed I am. What a support I’ve been. And touch me just to make sure he understands how close we are to each other. So you’ve put some distance between you and him, and the only one he’s angry with is me. Like the pawn placed in front of a threatened queen on the chessboard. But I’m not your damned chaperone. The pawn is handing in her resignation.

She quickly placed her hand on Curt’s back.

“No, you stay there,” she said. “Keep Sanna company. She can find some bread and something to put on it and you can both have some breakfast. I’ve got to go down to the car to fetch my cell phone and laptop. I’ll sit downstairs, make a few calls and send some e-mails.”

Sanna followed her with an inscrutable gaze as she went into the hall to put on her heavy boots. They were wet, but she was only going the short distance to the car. She could hear Sanna and Curt talking quietly at the kitchen table.

“You look tired,” said Sanna.

“I’ve been up all night praying in the church,” replied Curt. “We’ve started a chain of prayer, so there’s somebody praying all the time. You ought to go. Put yourself down just for half an hour. Thomas Söderberg has been asking about you.”

“But you didn’t tell him where I was, did you?”

“No, of course not. But you really shouldn’t stay away from the church now, you should find your refuge in it. And you ought to go home.”

Sanna sighed. “I just don’t know who I can rely on anymore. So you mustn’t tell anybody where I am.”

“I won’t. And if there’s anyone you can rely on, Sanna, it’s me.”

Rebecka appeared in the doorway just in time to see Curt’s hands working their way across the table to find Sanna’s.

“My keys,” said Rebecka. “Both my car keys and the key to the house are missing. I must have dropped them in the snow when I was playing with Virku.”

Rebecka, Sanna and Curt hunted for the keys in the snow with their torches. It hadn’t started to get light yet, and the cones of light swept across the garden, the snowdrifts and the footprints left in the deep snow.

“This is just hopeless,” sighed Sanna, burrowing aimlessly where she was standing. “Keys can sink really deep if the snow isn’t packed.”

Virku went to stand beside Sanna and starting digging like something possessed. She found a twig and shot off with it.

“And you can’t trust that one either,” said Sanna, gazing after Virku, who had been swallowed up by the darkness within a couple of meters. “She might have picked them up in her mouth and carried them off, if she couldn’t find anything else interesting.”

"You and Curt might as well go back inside with the dog," said Rebecka, trying to hide her annoyance. "The girls might wake up, and soon I won’t know which tracks are mine and which are yours."

Her feet were icy cold and damp.

“No, I don’t want to go in,” whined Sanna. “I want to help you find your keys. We’ll find them. They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

Curt was the only one who seemed to be in a good mood. It was as if the darkness gave him some protection against his shyness. And the exercise and the fresh air had made him wake up.

“It was just unbelievable last night!” he told Sanna excitedly. “God was just reminding me of His power all the time. I was completely filled by Him. You should go to the church, Sanna. When I prayed, I could feel His strength pouring over me. I could speak fluently in tongues. Shakka baraj. And my soul was dancing. Sometimes I sat down and just let the Bible fall open where God wanted me to read. And it was all about promises for the future. Bang, bang, bang. He was just bombarding me with promises.”

“You might like to pray that I find my keys,” muttered Rebecka.

“It was just as if He was burning some of the words from the Bible into my eyes with a laser,” Curt went on. “So that I would pass them on. Isaiah 43:19: ‘Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.’ ”

“You could pray yourself that you find your keys,” said Sanna to Rebecka.

Rebecka laughed. It sounded more like a snort.

“Or Isaiah 48:6,” droned Curt. “ ‘Thou hast heard, see all this; and will ye not declare it? I have showed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them.’ ”

Sanna straightened up and shone her torch straight into Rebecka’s eyes.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked in a serious voice. “Why don’t you pray for your keys yourself?”

Rebecka raised her hand against the blinding light.

“Stop it!” she said.

“And I think God showed me every single place in the New Testament where it says you can’t pour new wine into old bottles,” said Curt to Virku, who was now standing at his feet and appeared to be the only one listening to him. “Because then they crack. And everywhere it says you can’t mend an old garment with a piece of new cloth, because then the new cloth rips along with the old, and the tear is worse.”

“If you want us to pray to find your keys, we’ll do it,” said Sanna, without shifting the light from Rebecka’s face. “But don’t you stand there and pretend God would listen to my prayers and Curt’s more than yours. Don’t trample the blood of Jesus under your feet.”

“Pack it in, I said,” hissed Rebecka, pointing her torch at Sanna’s face.

Curt fell silent and looked at them both.

“Curt,” asked Rebecka, staring straight into the dazzling beam of Sanna’s torch, “do you believe God listens equally to everyone’s prayers?”

“Of course,” he said, “there is never anything wrong with His hearing, but there can be obstacles in the way of His will being done, and obstacles in the way of prayers being answered.”

“What if you don’t live according to His will, for example. Surely God can’t work in your life in the same way then?”

“Exactly.”

“But then that’s just some kind of doctrine,” exclaimed Sanna in despair. “Where’s the grace in that? And God Himself, what do you imagine He thinks of that kind of read-the-Bible-say-your-prayers-for-an-hour-a-day-and-you’ll-have-successful-faith doctrine? I pray and read the Bible when I long for Him. That’s how I’d want to be loved. Why should God be any different? And all this about living according to His will. Surely that should be one of our goals in life. Not a way of winning the star prize for effective praying.”

Curt didn’t answer.

“Sorry, Sanna,” said Rebecka eventually, lowering her torch. “I don’t want to fight about Christian faith. Not with you, at any rate.”

“Because you know I’ll win,” said Sanna with a smile in her voice, and lowered her torch as well.

They stood in silence for a moment, looking at the pools of light on the snow.

“This business with the keys is going to drive me mad,” said Rebecka eventually. “Stupid dog! It’s all your fault!”

Virku barked in agreement.

“Don’t you listen to her,” said Sanna, throwing her arms around Virku’s neck. “You’re not a stupid dog! You’re the best, most wonderful dog in the whole wide world. And I love you to bits.” She hugged Virku, who reciprocated these declarations of affection by trying to lick Sanna’s mouth.

Curt stared jealously at them.

“It’s a rented car, isn’t it?” he asked. “I can drive into town and pick up the spare keys.”

He was talking to Sanna, but it was as if she couldn’t hear him. She was completely taken up with Virku.

"I’d really appreciate that," Rebecka said to Curt.

Not that you could care less whether I appreciate it or not, she thought, contemplating the slump of his shoulders as he stood behind Sanna, waiting for her to pay him some attention.

Sivving Fjällborg, she thought then. He’s got a spare key to the house. At least he used to have. I’ll go and see him.

It was quarter past seven when Rebecka walked into Sivving Fjällborg’s house without ringing the doorbell, just as she and her grandmother had always done. There was no light in any of the windows, so he was presumably still asleep. But that couldn’t be helped. She switched on the light in the little hallway. There was a rag rug on the brown lino floor, and she wiped her feet on it. She had snow over the tops of her boots as well, but she couldn’t get much wetter now. A staircase led up to the top floor, and next to it was the dark green door down to the boiler room. The kitchen door was closed. She shouted upstairs into the darkness.

“Hello!”

A low bark came at once from the cellar, followed by Sivving’s strong voice.

“Quiet, Bella! Sit! Now! Stay!”

She heard footsteps on the stairs, then the cellar door opened and Sivving appeared. His hair had turned completely white, and he might have gone a bit thin on top, but otherwise he hadn’t changed at all. His eyebrows were set high above his eyes, making him look as if he were always about to discover something unexpected or to hear some good news. His blue-and-white-checked flannel shirt just about buttoned over his paunch, and was tucked well into a pair of combat trousers. The brown leather belt holding up the trousers was shiny with age.

“It’s Rebecka!” he exclaimed, a huge smile splitting his face.

“Come, Bella!” he called over his shoulder, and in a trice a pointer bitch came galloping up the stairs.

“Well, hello there,” said Rebecka. “Is it you that’s got such a deep voice?”

“She’s got a really manly bark,” said Sivving. “But it keeps the people trying to sell raffle tickets and the like away, so I’m not complaining. Come on in!”

He opened the kitchen door and switched on the light. Everything was terribly neat, and it smelled slightly musty.

"Sit down," he said, pointing to the rib-backed settee.

Rebecka explained why she was there, and while Sivving fetched the spare key she looked around. The freshly washed green-and-white-striped rag rug was in precisely the right place on the pine floor. Instead of an oilcloth on the table, there was a beautifully ironed linen cloth, decorated with a little vase of beaten copper, holding dried buttercups and everlasting flowers. There were windows on three sides, and from the window behind her you could see her grandmother’s house. In daylight, of course. All you could see at the moment was the reflection of the pine lamp hanging from the ceiling.

When Sivving had given her the keys he sat down at the opposite side of the table. Somehow he didn’t look quite at home in his own kitchen. He was perched on the very edge of the red-stained chair. Bella didn’t seem able to settle either, but was wandering about like a lost soul.

“It’s been a long time.” Sivving smiled, looking closely at Rebecka. “I was just about to have my first cup of coffee. Would you like one?”

“Please,” said Rebecka, sketching out a timetable in her head.

It wouldn’t take more than five minutes to pack her case. Tidying up, half an hour. She could catch the ten-thirty plane, provided Curt turned up with the car keys.

“Come on,” said Sivving, getting up.

He went out of the kitchen and down the cellar steps, with Bella at his heels. Rebecka followed them.

Everything was cozy and homely in the boiler room. A made-up bed stood against one wall. Bella climbed straight into her own bed, which was next to it. Her water and food bowls were sparkling clean, newly washed. There was a washstand in front of the water heater, and an electric hot plate stood on a little drop-leaf table.

“You can pull up that stool,” said Sivving, pointing.

He took down a little coffeepot and two mugs from a string shelf on the wall. The aroma from the tin of coffee blended with the smell of dog, cellar and soap. A pair of long johns, two flannel shirts and a T-shirt with “Kiruna Truck” on it were hanging on a washing line.

“I must apologize,” said Sivving, nodding toward the long johns. “But then, I wasn’t expecting such an elegant visitor.”

“I don’t understand,” said Rebecka in bewilderment. “Do you sleep down here?”

“Well, you see,” said Sivving, running his hand over the stubble on his chin as he carefully counted scoops of coffee into the pot, “Maj-Lis died two years ago.”

Rebecka muttered a few words of sympathy in reply.

“It was stomach cancer. They opened her up, but all they could do was stitch her back together. Anyway, the house was too big for me. The kids had moved out long ago, and with Maj-Lis gone too… First of all I stopped using the top floor. The kitchen and the little bedroom downstairs were enough. Then Bella and I realized that we were only using the kitchen. So then I moved the TV into the kitchen and slept in there, on the sofa bed. And stopped using the bedroom.”

“And in the end you moved down here.”

“Well, it’s much less cleaning. And the washing machine and the shower were down here. I bought that little fridge. It’s big enough for me.”

He pointed toward a little fridge in the corner with a plate rack on top of it.

“But what does Lena say, and…” Rebecka fumbled for the name of Sivving’s son.

“Mats. Ah, the coffee’s ready. Well, Lena makes a lot of noise and plays hell and reckons her dad’s lost the plot. When she comes to visit with the kids, they run about all over the house. And in some ways that’s good, because otherwise I might as well sell up. She’s moved to Gällivare, and she’s got three boys. But they’re getting quite big now, and starting to live their own lives. They do like fishing, though, so they usually come over quite a bit in the spring to fish through holes in the ice. Milk? Sugar?”

“Black.”

“Mats is divorced, but he’s got two kids. Robin and Julia. They usually come on the holidays and so on. What about you, Rebecka? Husband and children?”

Rebecka sipped at the hot coffee. It went all the way to her cold feet.

“No, neither.”

“No, I suppose they wouldn’t dare come near you…”

“What do you mean?” laughed Rebecka.

“Your temperament, my girl,” said Sivving as he got up and fetched a packet of cinnamon buns from the fridge. “You’ve always been a bit fierce. Here, have a bun. God, I remember that time you lit a fire in the ditch. You were a tiny little thing. Stood there like a policewoman with your hand raised when your grandmother and I came running. ‘Stop! Don’t come any closer!’ you shouted, full of authority, and you were so cross when we put the fire out. You were going to grill fish on it.”

Sivving was laughing so much, he had to wipe away a tear at the memory. Bella raised her head and barked happily.

“Or the time you threw a stone at Erik’s head because you weren’t allowed to go with the lads on their raft,” Sivving went on, laughing so that his stomach quivered.

“All barred by the statute of limitations.” Rebecka smiled as she gave Bella a piece of her bun. “Is it you who’s been clearing the snow over at Grandmother’s?”

“Well, it’s nice for Inga-Lill and Affe to be able to do other things when they come here. And I need the exercise.”

He patted his stomach.

“Hello!”

They heard Sanna’s voice on the stairs. Bella jumped up, barking.

“Down here,” called Rebecka.

“Hi,” said Sanna, and came down. “It’s okay, I like dogs.”

She was speaking to Sivving, who was holding on to Bella’s collar.

She bent down and let Bella sniff at her face. Sivving looked serious.

“Sanna Strandgård,” he said. “I read about your brother. It was a terrible thing. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” said Sanna, her lap full of friendly dog. “Rebecka, Curt rang. He’s on his way with the keys.”

Sivving stood up.

“Coffee?” he asked.

Sanna nodded and accepted a thick china mug with a pattern of brown and yellow flowers around the top. Sivving offered her the bag of buns so that she could dunk one in her coffee.

“They’re good,” said Rebecka. “Who’s been baking? Was it you?”

Sivving’s reply was an embarrassed grunt.

“Oh, that’s Mary Kuoppa. She can’t cope with the idea that there’s a freezer somewhere in the village that isn’t full of decent buns.”

Rebecka smiled at his pronunciation of “Mary.” He said it so that it rhymed with “Harry.”

“The poor woman’s called Mary, surely?” said Sanna, and laughed.

“Well, that’s what the teacher at our school thought too," said Sivving, brushing a few crumbs off the cloth; Bella licked them up straightaway. “But Mary just used to stare out of the window and pretend she didn’t realize he was talking to her when he said ‘Maaaary.’ ”

This time he sounded like a bleating sheep. Rebecka and Sanna started giggling, and looked at each other like a couple of schoolgirls. Suddenly it was as if all the awkwardness between them had been swept away.

I still care about her, in spite of everything, thought Rebecka.

“Wasn’t there somebody in the village called Slark?” she asked. “After the parents’ idol, Slark Gabble?”

“No,” laughed Sivving, “that must have been somewhere else. There’s never been anybody called Slark in this village. Then again, when your grandmother was young she knew a girl she felt really sorry for. She was very delicate when she was born, and because they didn’t think she was going to survive, they got the schoolteacher to do an emergency baptism. The teacher was called Fredrik Something-or-other. Anyway, the little girl lived, and then of course she was to be baptized properly by the priest. Of course, the priest understood only Swedish, and the parents only spoke Tornedalen Finnish. So the priest picked up the child and asked the parents what she was to be called. The parents thought he was asking who had baptized the child, so they answered, ‘Feki se kasti,’ it was Fredrik who baptized her. And so the priest wrote ‘Fekisekasti’ in the church register. And you know how people respected the priest in those days. The child was called Fekisekasti for the rest of her life.”

Rebecka glanced at the clock. Curt was bound to be here by now. She could catch the flight, even if there wasn’t an awful lot of time.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said, and stood up.

“Are you off?” asked Sivving. “Was it just a flying visit?”

“Arrived yesterday, leaving today,” replied Rebecka with a brief smile.

“You know how it is with these career women,” said Sanna to Sivving. “Always on the move.”

Rebecka pulled on her gloves with jerky movements.

“This wasn’t exactly a pleasure trip,” she said.

“I’ll hang the key up in the usual place,” she went on, turning to Sivving.

“Come back in the spring,” said Sivving. “Drive out to the old cottage at Jiekajärvi. Do you remember in the old days, when we used to go up there? Your grandfather and I took the snowmobile. And you and your grandmother and Maj-Lis and the kids skied all the way.”

"I’d like to do that," said Rebecka, and discovered that she was telling the truth.

The cottage, she thought. It was the only place grandmother allowed herself to sit still. Once the berries picked that day had been cleaned. Or the birds that had been shot had been plucked and drawn.

She could see her grandmother now, absorbed in reading a story while Rebecka played cards or a board game with her grandfather. Because the cottage got so damp when nobody was there, the pack of cards had swollen to double its size. The board game was warped and uneven, and it was difficult to balance the pieces on it. But it didn’t matter.

And the feeling of security, falling asleep as the adults sat chatting around the table beside you. Or slipping into dreams to the sound of Grandmother washing up in the red plastic bowl, with the heat radiating from the stove.

“It was good to see you,” said Sivving. “Really good. Wasn’t it, Bella?”

Rebecka gave Sanna and the children a lift home and parked outside the apartment block where Sanna lived. She would have preferred to say a quick good-bye in the car and drive off. Quick good-byes in cars were good. If you were sitting in the car it was difficult to hug. Particularly if you were wearing a seat belt. So you escaped the hugs. And in a car there were other things to talk about, apart from “We must meet up again soon” and “We mustn’t leave it so long next time.” A few words about not forgetting the bag on the backseat and not forgetting the bag in the boot and “Are you sure you’ve got everything now?” Then, once the car door had chopped off the rest of the unspoken sentences, you could wave and put your foot down without an unpleasant taste in your mouth. You didn’t have to stand there like an idiot stamping your feet up and down while your thoughts went round and round like a swarm of midges, trying to find the right words. No, she’d stay in the car. And not undo her seat belt.

But when she stopped the car Sanna jumped out without a word. A second later, Virku followed her. Rebecka felt she had to get out as well. She turned her collar up above her ears, but it gave no protection against the cold, which immediately worked its way under the fabric and fastened itself to her earlobes like two clothes pegs. She looked up at Sanna’s apartment. A little block made of panels of forest green wood, with a red tin roof. The snowplow hadn’t been around for a long time. The few parked cars had left deep tracks in the snow. An old Dodge was hibernating under a snowdrift. She hoped she wouldn’t get stuck on the way out. The building was owned by LKAB, the mining company. But only ordinary people lived here, so LKAB saved money by not using the snowplow as often as they should. If you wanted to get the car out in the mornings, you had to clear the snow yourself.

Sara and Lova were still sitting in the backseat. Their hands and elbows kept meeting in some nonsense rhyme that Sara had mastered to perfection; Lova was making a huge effort to learn it. Every so often she got it wrong, and they both exploded into giggles before starting all over again.

Virku was running around like a mad thing, taking in all the new smells with her little black nose. Circled around two unfamiliar parked cars. Read with interest a haiku that next door’s dog had drawn on the white snowdrift in golden yellow sign language; she seemed flattered. Followed the irritating trail of a mouse that had disappeared under the front steps where she couldn’t follow.

Sanna tipped her head back and sniffed the air.

“It smells like snow,” she said. “It’s going to snow. A lot.”

She turned toward Rebecka.

She’s just so like Viktor, thought Rebecka, catching her breath.

The transparent blue skin, stretched over the high cheekbones. Although Sanna’s cheeks were slightly rounder, like a child’s.

And the way she stands, thought Rebecka. Just like Viktor. Head always slightly crooked, leaning to one side or the other, as if it were a little bit loose.

“Right, well, I’d better get going, then,” said Rebecka, trying to start her good-byes, but Sanna was squatting down and calling to Virku.

“Here, girl! Come here, there’s a good girl!”

Virku came hurtling through the snow like a black glove.

It’s just like a picture from a fairy tale, thought Rebecka. The sweet little black dog, her coat tipped with tiny snow crystals. Sanna, a wood nymph in her knee-length gray sheepskin coat, her sheepskin hat on top of her thick, wavy blond hair.

There was something about Sanna that gave her the ability to relate to animals. They were somehow alike, Sanna and the dog. The little bitch who’d been mistreated and neglected for years. Where had all her troubles gone? They’d simply been washed away and replaced by sheer joy at being able to push her nose into freshly fallen snow, or to bark at a frightened squirrel in a pine tree. And Sanna. She’d only just found her brother hacked to death in the church. And now she was standing in the snow playing with the dog.

I haven’t seen her shed a single tear, thought Rebecka. Nothing touches her. Not sorrow, not people. Presumably not even her own children. But it isn’t actually my problem any longer. I have no debt to pay. I’m leaving now, and I’m never going to think about her or her children or her brother or this pit of a town ever again.

She went over to the car and opened the back door.

“Out you come, girls,” she said to Sara and Lova. “I’ve got a plane to catch.

“Bye, then,” she called after them as they disappeared up the steps to the door of the building.

Lova turned and waved. Sara pretended not to hear.

She pushed aside the forlorn feeling as Sara’s red jacket vanished through the door. A picture from the time when she lived with Sanna and Sara lit up a dark space in her memory. She was sitting with Sara on her lap, reading a story. Her cheek resting against the little girl’s soft hair. Sara pointing at the pictures.

That’s just the way it is, thought Rebecka. I’ll always remember. She’s forgotten.

Suddenly Sanna was standing beside her. The game with Virku had brought warm, pale pink roses to her blue cheeks.

“But you must come up and have something to eat before you go.”

“My plane leaves in half an hour, so…”

Rebecka finished the sentence by shaking her head.

“There’ll be other planes,” pleaded Sanna. “I haven’t even had a chance to thank you for coming up. I don’t know what I’d have done if-”

“That’s okay.” Rebecka smiled. “I really do have to go.”

Her mouth continued to smile and she stretched out her hand to say good-bye.

It was a way of marking the moment, and she knew it as she slid her hand out of her glove. Sanna looked down and refused to take her hand.

Shit, thought Rebecka.

“You and I,” said Sanna without raising her eyes. “We were like sisters. And now I’ve lost both my brother and my sister.”

She gave a short, mirthless laugh. It sounded more like a sob.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Lord.”

Rebecka steeled herself against a sudden impulse to throw her arms around Sanna and comfort her.

Don’t try this with me, she thought angrily, letting her hand drop. There are certain things you can’t fix. And you definitely can’t do it in three minutes while you’re standing out in the cold saying good-bye.

Her feet were starting to feel cold. Her Stockholm boots were far too flimsy. Her toes had been aching. Now it felt as though they were starting to disappear. She tried to wiggle them a bit.

“I’ll ring when I get there,” she said, getting into the car.

“You do that,” said Sanna without interest, fixing her eyes on Virku, who had squatted down by the wall to answer a message left in the snow.

Or maybe next year, thought Rebecka, and turned the key.

When she looked in the rearview mirror she caught sight of Sara and Lova, who had come back out onto the steps.

There was something in their eyes that made the ground beneath the car shift.

No, no, she thought. Everything’s fine. It’s nothing. Just drive.

But her feet wouldn’t release the clutch and step on the accelerator. She stopped, her eyes fixed on the little girls at the top of the steps. Saw their wide eyes, saw them shouting something to Sanna that Rebecka couldn’t hear. Saw them raise their arms and point up at the apartment, then quickly lower them as someone came out of the building.

It was a uniformed policeman, who reached Sanna in a few rapid steps. Rebecka couldn’t hear what he said.

She looked at her watch. It was pointless even to try to catch the plane. She couldn’t go now. With a deep sigh, she got out of the car. Her body moved slowly toward Sanna and the policeman. The girls were still standing on the steps and leaning over the snow-covered railings. Sara’s gaze was firmly fixed on Sanna and the policeman. Lova was eating lumps of. snow that had stuck to her gloves.

“What do you mean, house search?”

Sanna’s tone of voice made Virku stop, and approach her mistress uneasily.

“You can’t just go into my home without permission? Can they?”

The last question was directed at Rebecka.

At that very moment Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post came out, followed by two plainclothes detectives. Rebecka recognized them. It was that little woman with a face like a horse-what was her name, now? Mella. And the guy with a walrus moustache. Good God, she thought moustaches like that had gone out in the seventies. It looked as if somebody had glued a dead squirrel under his nose.

The prosecutor went up to Sanna. He was holding a bag in one hand, and he fished out a smaller transparent plastic bag. Inside it was a knife. It was about twenty centimeters long. The shaft was black and shiny, and the point curved upward slightly.

“Sanna Strandgård,” he said, holding the bag with the knife just a little too close to Sanna’s face. “We’ve just found this in your residence. Do you recognize it?”

“No,” replied Sanna. “It looks like a hunting knife. I don’t hunt.”

Sara and Lova came over to Sanna. Lova tugged at the sleeve of Sanna’s sheepskin coat to get her mother’s attention.

“Mummy,” she whined.

“Just a minute, chicken,” said Sanna absently.

Sara nestled into her mother and pressed against her so that Sanna was forced to step backward with one foot so as not to lose her balance. The eleven-year-old followed the prosecutor’s movements with her eyes and tried to understand what was going on between these serious adults standing in a circle around her mother.

“Are you absolutely certain?” von Post asked again. “Take a good look,” he said, turning the knife over.

The cold made the plastic bag crackle as he showed both sides of the weapon, holding up first the blade and then the shaft.

“Yes, I’m certain,” answered Sanna, backing away from the knife. She avoided looking at it again.

“Perhaps the questions could wait,” said Anna-Maria Mella to von Post, nodding toward the two children clinging to Sanna.

“Mummy,” repeated Lova over and over again, tugging at Sanna’s sleeve. “Mummy, I need a pee.”

“I’m freezing,” squeaked Sara. “I want to go in.”

Virku moved anxiously and tried to press herself between Sanna’s legs.

Picture number two in the book of fairy stories, thought Rebecka. The wood nymph has been captured by the villagers. They have surrounded her and some are holding her fast by her arms and tail.

“You keep hand towels and sheets in the drawer under the sofa bed in the kitchen, isn’t that right?” von Post continued. “Are you also in the habit of keeping knives among the towels?”

"Just a minute, honey," said Sanna to Sara, who was pulling and tugging at her coat.

“I need a pee,” whimpered Lova. “I’m going to wet myself.”

"Do you intend to answer the question?" pressed von Post.

Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke exchanged glances behind von Post’s back.

“No,” said Sanna, her voice tense. “I do not keep knives in the drawer.”

“What about this, then,” continued von Post relentlessly, taking another transparent plastic bag out of the larger bag. “Do you recognize this?”

The bag contained a Bible. It was covered in brown leather, shiny with use. The edges of the pages had once been gilded, but now there was very little of the gold color left, and the pages of the book were dark from much thumbing and leafing. A variety of bookmarks protruded from everywhere: postcards, plaited laces, newspaper clippings.

With a whimper Sanna sank down helplessly and sat there in the snow.

“It says Viktor Strandgård inside the cover,” von Post continued mercilessly. “Could you tell us whether it’s his Bible, and what it was doing in your kitchen? Isn’t it true that he had it with him everywhere he went, and that he had it in the church on the last night of his life?”

“No,” whispered Sanna. “No.”

She pressed her hands against the sides of her face.

Lova tried to push Sanna’s hands away so that she could look into her mother’s eyes. When she couldn’t do it, she burst into tears, inconsolable.

“Mummy, I want to go,” she sobbed.

“Get up,” said von Post harshly. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Viktor Strandgård.”

Sara turned on the prosecutor. “Leave her alone,” she screamed.

“Get these children away from here,” von Post said impatiently to Tommy Rantakyrö.

Tommy Rantakyrö took a hesitant step toward Sanna. Then Virku rushed forward and placed herself in front of her mistress. She lowered her head, flattened her ears and bared her sharp teeth with a low growl. Tommy Rantakyrö backed off.

“Right, I’ve had just about enough of this,” said Rebecka to Carl von Post. “I want to make a complaint.”

Her last remark was directed to Anna-Maria Mella, who was standing beside her and gazing up at the surrounding buildings. At every window the curtains were twitching inquisitively.

“You want to make a-” said von Post, interrupting himself with a shake of the head. “As far as I’m concerned, you can come along to the station for questioning with regard to a complaint of assault made against you by a television reporter from Channel 4’s Norrbotten news.”

Anna-Maria Mella touched von Post lightly on the arm.

“We’re starting to get an audience,” she said. “It wouldn’t look very good if one of the neighbors rang the press and starting talking about police brutality and all the rest of it. I might be mistaken, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the old guy in the flat up there to the left was filming us with a video camera.”

She pointed up at one of the windows.

“It might be best if Sven-Erik and I leave, so it doesn’t look as if there’s a whole army of us here,” she went on. “We can go and ring forensics. I assume you want them to go over the flat?”

Von Post’s upper lip was twitching with displeasure. He tried to look in through the window Anna-Maria Mella had pointed at, but the flat was completely dark. Then he realized he might be staring straight into the lens of a camera, and hastily looked away. The last thing he wanted was to be linked to police brutality, or to be censured in the press.

“No, I want to talk to the forensics guys myself,” he replied. “You and Sven-Erik can take Sanna Strandgård in. Make sure the flat’s sealed.

“We’ll speak again,” he said to Sanna before jumping into his Volvo Cross Country.

Rebecka noticed the look on Anna-Maria Mella’s face as the prosecutor’s car disappeared.

Well, I’ll be damned, she thought. Horse face tricked him. She wanted him out of here, and… Hell, she’s smart.

As soon as Carl von Post had left, silence reigned. Tommy Rantakyrö stood there uncertainly waiting for a sign from Anna-Maria or Sven-Erik. Sara and Lova were on their knees in the snow with their arms around their mother, who was still sitting on the ground. Virku lay down by their side and chomped on lumps of snow. When Rebecka bent down to stroke her, she thumped her tail just to show that everything was all right. Sven-Erik gave Anna-Maria a questioning look.

“Tommy,” said Anna-Maria, breaking the silence, “can you and Olsson seal the flat? Mark the kitchen tap so nobody uses it until the forensics team has been in.”

“Hi,” Sven-Erik said gently to Sanna. “We’re really sorry about all this. But we’re stuck with the situation now. You have to come with us to the station.”

“Can we drop the children off somewhere?” asked Anna-Maria.

“No,” said Sanna, raising her head. “I want to speak to my lawyer, Rebecka Martinsson.”

Rebecka sighed.

“Sanna, I’m not your lawyer.”

“I want to talk to you anyway.”

Sven-Erik Stålnacke glanced uncertainly at his colleague.

“I don’t know-” he began.

“Oh, please!” snapped Rebecka. “She’s being detained for questioning. Not arrested with limited access. She has every right to speak to me. Stand here and listen, we’re not going to be talking about any secrets.”

Lova whimpered in Sanna’s ear.

"What did you say, honey?"

“I’ve wet my knickers,” howled Lova.

Every gaze was turned on the little girl. It was quite true, a dark stain had appeared on her old jeans.

“Lova needs dry trousers,” said Rebecka to Anna-Maria Mella.

“Listen to me, girls,” said Anna-Maria to Sara and Lova. “Why don’t you come upstairs with me and we’ll find some dry trousers for Lova, then we’ll come back down to your mum. She won’t go anywhere till we come back. I promise.”

“Go on, do what she says,” said Sanna. “My precious little girls. Fetch some clothes for me too. And Virku’s food.”

“I’m sorry,” said Anna-Maria to Sanna. “Not your clothes. And the prosecutor will want to send everything you’re wearing to Linköping.”

“That’s okay,” said Rebecka quickly. “I’ll sort some new clothes out for you, Sanna. All right?”

The girls disappeared inside with Anna-Maria. Sven-Erik Stålnacke squatted down a little way from Sanna and Rebecka and talked to Virku. They seemed to have a lot in common.

“I can’t help you, Sanna,” said Rebecka. “I’m a tax specialist. I don’t deal with criminal cases. If you need a public defender, I can help you get hold of someone good.”

“Don’t you understand?” mumbled Sanna. “It has to be you. If you won’t help me, I don’t want anybody. God can look after me.”

“Just stop it, please,” begged Rebecka.

“No, you stop it,” said Sanna angrily. “I need you, Rebecka. And my children need you. I don’t care what you think of me, but now I’m begging you. What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees? Say you’ve got to do it for old times’ sake? It has to be you.”

“What do you mean, the children need me?”

Sanna grabbed hold of Rebecka’s jacket with both hands.

“Mum and Dad will take them away from me,” she said, pain in her voice. “That mustn’t happen. Do you understand? I don’t want Sara and Lova to spend even five minutes with my parents. And now I can’t stop it. But you can. For Sara’s sake.”

Her parents. Images and thoughts fought their way to the surface of Rebecka’s mind. Sanna’s father. Well dressed. Perfect manners. With his soft, sympathetic manner. He’d gained considerable popularity as a local politician. Rebecka had even seen him on national television from time to time. In the next election he would probably be on the list of parliamentary candidates for the Christian Democrats. But underneath the warm façade was a pack leader, hard as nails. Even Pastor Thomas Söderberg had deferred to him and shown him respect over many issues within the church. And Rebecka remembered with distaste how Sanna had told her-with a lightness of tone, as if the whole thing had happened to someone else-how he had always killed her animals. Always without warning. Dogs, cats, birds. She hadn’t even been allowed to keep an aquarium her primary-school teacher had given her. Sometimes her mother, who was completely under his thumb, had explained that it was because Sanna was allergic. Another time it might be because she hadn’t been working hard enough at school. Most of the time she got no explanation at all. The silence was such that it was not possible even to form the question. And Rebecka remembered Sanna sitting with Sara on her knee when she was small and didn’t want to go to sleep. “I’m not going to be like them,” she’d said. “They used to lock my bedroom door from the outside.”

“I need to speak to my boss,” said Rebecka.

“Are you staying?” asked Sanna.

“For a while,” replied Rebecka in a strangled voice.

Sanna’s expression softened.

“That’s all I’m asking,” she said. “And how long can it take-after all, I’m innocent. You don’t believe I did it, do you?”

An image of Sanna walking along in the middle of the night, the bloodstained knife in her hand illuminated by the street lamps, formed in Rebecka’s head.

But then, why did she go back? she thought. Why would she have taken Lova and Sara to the church to “find” him?

“Of course not,” she said.

Case number, total hours. Case number, total hours. Case number, total hours.

Maria Taube sat in her office at the law firm Meijer & Ditzinger filling in her weekly time sheet. It looked good, she decided, when she added up the number of debited hours in the box at the bottom. Forty-two. It was impossible to make Måns happy, but at least he wouldn’t be unhappy. She’d worked more than seventy hours this week in order to be able to debit forty-two. She closed her eyes and flipped down the back of her chair. The waistband of her skirt was cutting into her stomach.

I must start doing some exercise, she thought. Not just sit on my backside in front of the computer, comfort eating. It’s Tuesday morning. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Four days left until Saturday. Then I’ll do some exercise. And sleep. Unplug the phone and go to bed early.

The rain pattered against the window, sending her to sleep. Just as her body had decided to give in and rest for a little while, just as her muscles relaxed, the telephone rang. It was like being woken up by a kick in the head. She sat bolt upright and grabbed the receiver. It was Rebecka Martinsson.

“Hi, kid!” exclaimed Maria cheerfully. “Hang on a minute.”

She rolled her chair away from the table and kicked the office door shut.

“At last!” she said when she picked up the phone again. “I’ve been trying to ring you like mad.”

“I know,” replied Rebecka. “I’ve got hundreds of messages on my phone, but I haven’t even started listening to them. It’s been locked in the car, and… no, I haven’t got the energy to tell you the whole miserable story. I assume one or two might be from Måns Wenngren, who’s presumably absolutely furious?”

“Mmm, well, I’m not going to lie to you. The partners have had a breakfast meeting about what was on the news. They’re not very happy about Channel 4 showing pictures of the office and talking about angry lawyers. They’re buzzing about like bees today.”

Rebecka leaned against the steering wheel and took a deep breath. There was a painful lump in her throat that made it difficult to say anything. Outside, Virku, Sara and Lova were playing with a rug that was hanging on the line. She hoped it belonged to Sanna and not one of the neighbors.

“Okay,” she said after a while. “Is there any point in speaking to Måns, or does he just want my resignation on his desk?”

“God, no. You’ve got to talk to him. As I understand it, most of the other partners wanted to talk about how to get rid of you, but that wasn’t on Måns’ agenda at all. So you’ve still got a job.”

“Cleaning the toilets and serving coffee?”

“Wearing nothing but a thong. No, seriously, Måns seems to have really stuck up for you. But it was just a misunderstanding, wasn’t it, you acting as lawyer for the Paradise Boy’s sister? You were just with her as a friend, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but something’s just happened and…”

The car window had misted up, and Rebecka rubbed at it with her hand. Sara and Lova were standing on top of a pile of snow talking to each other. There was no sign of Virku. Where had she got to?

“I need to discuss this with Måns,” she said, “because I can’t talk for much longer. Can you put me through?”

"Okay, but don’t let on you know anything about the meeting."

“No, no-how did you find all this out anyway?”

“Sonia told me. She was sitting in.”

Sonia Berg was one of the secretaries who had been at Meijer & Ditzinger the longest. Her finest attribute was the ability to remain as silent as the grave about the firm’s affairs. Plenty of people had tried to pump her for information, and had been met with her particular cocktail of unwillingness, irritation and well-simulated incomprehension as to what the person wanted. At secret meetings-for example, to do with mergers-it was always Sonia who took the minutes.

“You’re unbelievable,” said Rebecka, impressed. “Can you get water out of stones as well?”

“Getting water out of stones was the foundation course. Getting Sonia to talk is advanced plus. But don’t talk to me about impossible tricks. What have you done to Måns? Given a voodoo doll a lobotomy or something? If I’d been on TV flattening journalists, I’d be staked out in his torture chamber experiencing my last agonizing twenty-four hours in this life.”

Rebecka laughed mirthlessly.

“Working for him in the near future is going to be a bit like that. Can you put me through?”

“Sure, but I’m warning you, he might have stuck up for you, but he’s not happy.”

Rebecka wound up the window and shouted to Sara and Lova, “Where’s Virku? Sara, go and find her and stay where I can see you. We’re going soon.

“Is he ever happy?” she said into the phone.

“Is who ever happy?”

Måns Wenngren’s chilly voice could be heard at the other end.

“Oh, hi,” said Rebecka, trying to pull herself together. “Er, it’s Rebecka.”

“I see” was all he said.

She could hear him breathing hard through his nose. He had no intention of making it easy for her, that much was clear.

“I just wanted to explain that it was a misunderstanding, this idea that I was acting for Sanna Strandgård.”

Silence.

“I see,” drawled Måns after a while. “Is that all?”

“No…”

Come on, thought Rebecka, giving herself a pep talk. Don’t get upset. Just say what has to be said and hang up. Things can’t get any worse.

“The police have found a knife and Viktor Strandgård’s Bible in Sanna Strandgård’s flat,” she said. “They’ve detained Sanna as a murder suspect; they’ve just driven off with her. I’m standing outside her flat at the moment. They’re just sealing it off. I’m going to take her daughters to school and day care.”

The irritated breathing at the other end of the phone stopped, and Rebecka permitted herself a pause before she went on.

“She wants me to defend her, refuses to have anybody else, and I can’t say no. So I’ll be staying up here for the time being.”

“You’ve got a bloody nerve,” exclaimed Måns Wenngren. “You go behind my back. Embarrass the firm on television and all over the papers. And now you’re intending to take on a case outside the terms of your employment. It’s a competitive act, and grounds for dismissal, you do know that?”

“Måns, don’t you understand, I want to take the case as a member of the firm,” said Rebecka agitatedly. “But I’m not asking for permission. I can’t back out of this. And I can do it-I mean, how difficult can it be? I’ll sit in on a few interviews, there probably won’t be too many. She doesn’t know anything and she can’t remember anything. They’ve found the murder weapon-if it was the knife-and Viktor’s Bible in her flat. She was in the church just after it happened. There isn’t a hope in hell of anybody getting her off if it gets to court. If they do decide to prosecute, which is not what I expect, I hope somebody who specializes in criminal law would back me up-Bengt-Olov Falk or Göran Carlström. There’ll be a lot of press interest, and some publicity on the criminal side would be good for the firm-you know that. It might be company law and tax cases that bring in the big money, but it’s the big crime cases that make a firm well known in the papers and on TV.”

“Thank you,” said Måns deliberately. “You’ve already made a start on publicity for the firm. Why the hell didn’t you get in touch with me when you flattened that journalist?”

“I didn’t flatten her,” Rebecka defended herself. “I was trying to get past her and she slipped-”

“I haven’t finished!” hissed Mans. “I’ve wasted an hour and a half this morning sitting in a meeting about you. If I’d had my way, I’d be asking for your resignation. Fortunately for you, other people were in a more forgiving frame of mind.”

Rebecka pretended she hadn’t heard. “I need some help with that journalist. Can you get in touch with the news team and get her to withdraw her complaint?”

Måns gave an astonished laugh. “Who the hell do you think I am? Don Corleone?”

Rebecka scrubbed at the car window again.

“I was only asking,” she said. “I’ve got to go. I’m looking after Sanna’s two kids, and the youngest is taking all her clothes off.”

“Well, let her get on with it,” said Måns crossly. “We’re not finished yet.”

“I’ll ring or send you an e-mail later. The kids are outside and it’s bitter. A four-year-old with double pneumonia is the last thing I need right now. Bye.”

She hung up before he managed to say anything else.

He didn’t tell me I couldn’t do it, she thought with relief. He didn’t tell me I couldn’t carry on, and I haven’t lost my job. How come it was so easy?

Then she remembered the children and hurled herself out of the car.

“What on earth are you doing?” she screamed at Sara and Lova.

Lova had taken off her jacket, gloves and both jumpers. She was standing there in the snow with her hat on her head, her upper body bare except for a tiny white cotton vest. Tears were pouring down her face. Virku was looking anxiously at her.

“Sara said I looked like an idiot in the jumper I borrowed from you,” sobbed Lova. “She said I’d get teased at nursery.”

"Put your clothes on at once," said Rebecka impatiently.

She grabbed hold of Lova’s arm and forced her into the jumpers. The child sobbed inconsolably.

“It’s true,” said Sara mercilessly. “She looks ridiculous. There was a girl at our school who had on a jumper like that one day. The boys got hold of her and pushed her head down the toilet and flushed it till she nearly drowned.”

“Leave me alone!” bawled Lova as Rebecka dressed her by sheer force.

“Get in the car,” said Rebecka in a tight voice. “You are going to nursery and to school.”

“You can’t force us,” screamed Sara. “You’re not our mother!”

“You want to bet?” growled Rebecka, lifting the two screaming children into the backseat. Virku hopped in after them, turning round and round anxiously on the seat.

“And I’m hungry,” wailed Lova.

“Exactly,” yelled Sara. “We haven’t had any breakfast, and that’s neglect. Give me your cell phone, I’m going to ring Granddad.”

She grabbed Rebecka’s phone.

“Like hell you are,” snapped Rebecka as she snatched back the phone.

She leapt out of the car and flung open the back door.

“Out!” she ordered, dragging Sara and Lova out of the car and throwing them down on the snow.

Both children fell silent immediately, and stared at her with big eyes.

“It’s true,” said Rebecka, trying to control her voice. “I’m not your mother. But Sanna has asked me to look after you, so neither you nor I has any choice. We’ll make a deal. First we’ll drive to the café in the bus station and have breakfast. Because it’s been such a terrible morning, you can order anything you want. Then we’ll go buy some new clothes for Lova. And for Sanna too. You can help me choose something nice for her. Now get in the car.”

Sara didn’t speak, just looked down at her feet. Then she shrugged and got in the car. Lova climbed in after her and the older girl helped her little sister with the seat belt. Virku licked the salty tears off Lova’s face.

Rebecka Martinsson started the car and reversed out of Sanna’s yard.

Please, God, she thought for the first time in many years. Please help me, God.

The redbrick houses on Gasellvägen were neatly arranged along the street like pieces of Lego. Snow-covered hedges, piles of snow and kitchen curtains covering the lower part of the windows protected them from anybody who might look in.

And this family is going to need that, thought Anna-Maria Mella as she and Sven-Erik Stålnacke got out of the car outside Gasellvägen 35.

“You can actually feel the neighbors’ eyes on the back of your neck,” said Sven-Erik, as if he’d read her thoughts. “What do you think Sanna and Viktor Strandgård’s parents might have to tell us?”

“We’ll see. Yesterday they didn’t want to see us, but once they heard their daughter had been taken in for questioning they rang and asked us to come.”

They stamped the snow off their shoes and rang the doorbell.

Olof Strandgård opened the door. He was well groomed and articulate as he invited them in. Shook hands, took their coats and hung them up. Late middle age. But with no sign of middle-age spread.

He’s got a rowing machine and weights down in the cellar, thought Anna-Maria.

“No, no, please keep them on,” said Olof Strandgård to Sven-Erik, who had bent down to take off his shoes.

Anna-Maria noticed that Olof Strandgård himself was wearing well-polished indoor shoes.

He led them into the lounge. One end of the room was dominated by a Gustavian-style dining suite. Silver candlesticks and a vase by Ulrika Hydman-Vallien were reflected in the dark mahogany surface of the table. A small reproduction crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. At the other end of the lounge was a suite consisting of a pale, squashy corner sofa made of leather, and a matching armchair. The coffee table was made of smoky glass with metal legs. Everything was spotlessly clean and tidy.

Kristina Strandgård was slumped in the armchair. Her greeting to the two detectives who had turned up in her living room was distracted.

She had the same thick, pale blond hair as her children. But Kristina Strandgård’s hair was cut in a bob following the line of her jaw.

She must have been really pretty once upon a time, thought Anna-Maria. Before this absolute exhaustion got its claws into her. And that didn’t happen yesterday, it happened a long time ago.

Olof Strandgård leaned over his wife. His voice was gentle, but the smile on his lips didn’t reach his eyes.

“Perhaps we should give Inspector Mella the comfortable chair,” he said.

Kristina Strandgård shot up out of the chair as if someone had stuck a pin into her.

“I’m so sorry, yes, of course.”

She gave Anna-Maria an embarrassed smile and stood there for a second as if she’d forgotten where she was and what she was supposed to be doing. Then she suddenly seemed to come back to the present, and sank down on the sofa next to Sven-Erik.

Anna-Maria lowered herself laboriously into the proffered armchair. It was far too low and the back wasn’t sufficiently upright to be comfortable. She turned the corners of her mouth upward in an attempt at a grateful smile. The baby was pressing against her abdomen, and she immediately got heartburn and a pain in her lower back.

“Can we get you anything?” asked Olof Strandgård. “Coffee? Tea? Water?”

As if she had been given a signal, his wife shot up again.

“Yes, of course,” she said with a quick glance at her husband. “I should have asked.”

Both Sven-Erik and Anna-Maria waved dismissively. Kristina Strandgård sat down again, but this time she perched on the very edge of the sofa, ready to leap to her feet again if something came up.

Anna-Maria looked at her. She didn’t look like a woman who’d just lost her child. Her hair was newly washed and blow-dried. Her polo-neck sweater, cardigan and trousers were all in toning shades of sandy brown and beige. Her makeup wasn’t smudged around her eyes or mouth. She wasn’t wringing her hands in despair. No screwed-up tissues on the coffee table in front of her. Instead, it was as if she’d shut out the outside world.

No, actually, thought Anna-Maria, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. She isn’t shutting out the outside world. She’s shutting herself in.

“We appreciate the fact that you were able to come straightaway,” said Olof Strandgård. “We heard just a little while ago that you’d taken Sanna in for questioning. You must realize it’s a mistake. My wife and I are extremely concerned.”

“I understand,” said Sven-Erik. “But perhaps we could take one thing at a time. If we ask some questions regarding Viktor first, we can talk about your daughter afterward.”

“Of course,” said Olof Strandgård with a smile.

Well done, Sven-Erik, thought Anna-Maria. Take command now, otherwise the visit will be over before we’ve got an answer to anything.

“Could you tell us about Viktor,” said Sven-Erik. “What kind of person was he?”

“In what way is this information likely to be of assistance in your investigation?” asked Olof Strandgård.

“It’s a question we always ask,” said Sven-Erik, not allowing himself to be provoked. “We have to try and build a picture of him, since we didn’t know him when he was alive.”

“He was gifted,” said his father seriously. “Extremely gifted. I suppose that’s what any parent would say about their child, but if you ask his teachers they’ll confirm what I say. He got top grades in every subject, and he was highly musical. He had the ability to focus. On his schoolwork. On guitar lessons. And after the accident he focused one hundred percent on God.”

He leaned back on the sofa and pulled his right trouser leg up a fraction before crossing his right leg over the left.

“It was no easy calling God laid upon the boy,” he went on. “He put everything else to one side. Left school, and gave up his music. He preached and prayed. And he had a burning conviction that the revival would come to Kiruna, but he was also convinced that this could only happen if the free churches joined together. United we stand, divided we fall, as they say. At that time there was no sense of community between the Pentecostal church, the Mission church and the Baptist church, but he was determined. Only seventeen when he got the call. He more or less forced the pastors to start meeting and praying together: Thomas Söderberg from the Mission church, Vesa Larsson from the Pentecostal church and Gunnar Isaksson from the Baptist church.”

Anna-Maria squirmed in the armchair. She was uncomfortable, and the baby was boxing with her bladder.

“He got his calling in connection with his accident?” she asked.

“Yes. The boy was riding his bike in the middle of winter, and he was hit by a car. Well, you’re from Kiruna, you know the rest. The church just kept on growing, and we were able to build the Crystal Church. It’s just as well known as the lad himself. We had some really famous singers at the Christmas concert there in December.”

“How was your relationship with him?” asked Sven-Erik. “Were you close?”

Anna-Maria could see how Sven-Erik was making a real effort to draw Kristina Strandgård in with his questions, but she was staring blankly at the pattern on the wallpaper.

“Our family is very close,” said Olof Strandgård.

“Was he going out with anybody? Did he have other interests outside the church?”

“No, as I said, he decided to put everything else in life to one side for the time being, and to work only for God.”

“But didn’t that worry you? Not having anything to do with girls, or any hobbies?”

“No, not at all.” Viktor’s father laughed, as if he found what Sven-Erik had just said utterly ridiculous.

“Who were his closest friends?”

Sven-Erik looked at the photographs on the walls. Above the television hung a large photograph of Sanna and Viktor. Two children with long, silvery blond hair. Sanna’s in ringlets. Viktor’s straight as a waterfall. Sanna must have been in her early teens. It was quite clear that she was refusing to smile for the photographer. There was something defiant in the turned-down corners of her mouth. Viktor’s expression was also serious, but natural. As if he was sitting and thinking about something else altogether, and had forgotten where he was.

“Sanna was thirteen and the boy was ten,” said Olof, who had noticed Sven-Erik looking at the photograph. “It’s obvious how much he looked up to his sister. Wanted to have long hair just like hers from when he was little, and screamed like a stuck pig if his mother ever came near him with the scissors. At first he got teased in school, but he wanted it long.”

“His friends?” prompted Anna-Maria.

“I’d like to think the family were his closest friends. He and Sanna were very close. And he idolized the girls.”

“Sanna’s daughters?”

“Yes.”

"Kristina," said Sven-Erik.

Kristina Strandgård jumped.

“Is there anything you’d like to add? About Viktor,” he explained when she looked at him questioningly.

“What can I say,” she said uncertainly, glancing at her husband. “I haven’t really got anything to add. I think Olof described him perfectly.”

“Have you got an album of clippings about Viktor?” asked Anna-Maria. “I mean, he was in the papers quite a bit.”

“There,” said Kristina Strandgård, pointing. “That big brown album on the bottom shelf.”

“May I borrow it?” asked Anna-Maria, getting up and taking it off the shelf. “You’ll have it back as soon as possible.”

She held on to the album for a moment before putting it on the table in front of her. She was desperate to get another image of Viktor into her head, instead of the white lacerated body with its eyes gouged out.

“It would be very helpful if you could write down the names of people who knew him,” said Sven-Erik. “We’d like to talk to them.”

"It’ll be a very long list," said Olof Strandgård. "The entire population of Sweden knew him. And more."

"I mean those who knew him personally," said Sven-Erik patiently. "We’ll send somebody to pick up the list this evening. When was the last time you saw your son alive?"

“On Sunday evening, at the Songs of Praise Service in the church.”

“That would be the Sunday evening preceding the murder, then. Did you speak to him?”

Olof Strandgård shook his head sorrowfully.

“No, he was part of the intercession group, so he was busy all the time.”

“When was the last time you met and had time to talk?”

“On Friday afternoon, just about two days before-” Viktor’s father broke off and looked at his wife.

“-You’d cooked some food for him, Kristina; it was Friday, wasn’t it?”

“Definitely,” she replied. “The Miracle Conference was just starting. And I know he forgets to eat, always puts others before himself. So we went round to his house and filled up the freezer. He thought I was being a mother hen.”

“Did he seem worried about anything?” asked Sven-Erik. “Was anything bothering him?”

“No,” answered Olof.

“He obviously hadn’t eaten for some considerable time when he died,” said Anna-Maria. “Do you have any idea why that might be? Could it have been because he’d just forgotten to eat?”

“Presumably he was fasting,” replied his father.

I’ll need to find the bathroom in a minute, thought Anna-Maria.

“Fasting?” she asked, concentrating on not wanting to go. “Why?”

“Well,” said Olof Strandgård, “it says in the Bible that Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert and was tempted by the devil before He appeared in Galilee and chose the first disciples. And it says that the apostles prayed and fasted when they were choosing the elders for the first churches and handing them over to God. In the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah fasted before they received God’s revelations. Presumably Viktor felt that he had an important role during the Miracle Conference, and wanted to sharpen his concentration beforehand through fasting and prayer.”

“What is this Miracle Conference?” asked Sven-Erik.

“It started on Friday evening and finishes next Sunday evening. Seminars during the day, and services in the evenings. It’s all about miracles. Faith healing, wonders, prayers being answered, various spiritual gifts of grace. Wait a minute.”

Olof Strandgård got up and went out into the hall. After a while he came back with a shiny colorful folder in his hand. He passed it to Sven-Erik, who leaned toward Anna-Maria so that she could look at it.

It was an invitation in folded A4 format. The soft-focus pictures showed happy people with their hands raised. In one picture a laughing woman was holding up her child. In another, Viktor Strandgård was praying for a man who was on his knees, his hands raised toward heaven. Viktor’s index and middle fingers rested on the man’s forehead, and his eyes were closed. The text explained that the seminars would be dealing with topics including “You Have the Power to Demand That Your Prayers Are Answered,” “God Has Already Conquered Your Illness,” and “Release Your Spiritual Gifts of Grace.” There was also information about the evening services, where you could dance in the spirit, sing in the spirit, laugh in the spirit and see God work miracles in your own life and the lives of others. And all for four thousand two hundred kronor, excluding board and lodging.

"How many participants are there in the conference?" wondered Sven-Erik.

“I can’t tell you exactly,” said Olof, betraying a hint of pride, “but somewhere around two thousand.”

Anna-Maria could see Sven-Erik calculating how much the church had made from the conference.

“We need a list of participants,” said Anna-Maria. “Who should we get in touch with?”

Olof Strandgård gave her a name, and she made a note of it. Sven-Erik could get somebody to check it against police records.

“How was his relationship with Sanna?” asked Anna-Maria.

“I’m sorry?” said Olof Strandgård.

“Could you describe their relationship?”

"They were brother and sister."

"But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they had a good relationship," Anna-Maria persisted.

Olof took a deep breath.

“They were the best of friends. But Sanna is a fragile person. Sensitive. Both my wife and I, and our son, have had to take care of her and the girls on many occasions.”

There’s a hell of a lot of talk about how fragile she is, thought Anna-Maria.

“What do you mean by ‘sensitive’?” she asked, and noticed Kristina squirm slightly.

“This isn’t easy to talk about,” said Olof. “But there are times when she finds it difficult to cope as an adult. Difficult to maintain the boundaries for the girls. And sometimes she’s found it difficult to look after them and herself, hasn’t she, Kristina?”

“Yes,” replied his wife obediently.

“She has actually spent a whole week lying in a darkened room,” Olof Strandgård went on. “We took care of the girls then, and Viktor sat and fed Sanna with a spoon, like a child.”

He paused and gazed steadily at Anna-Maria.

“She wouldn’t have been able to keep the girls without the support of the family,” he said.

Okay, thought Anna-Maria. You really do want to convince us of how frail and weak she is. Why? A neat and tidy family like you should be trying to keep a low profile about something like this, surely.

“Don’t the girls have a father?” she asked.

Olof Strandgård sighed.

“Of course,” he said. “She was only seventeen when she had Sara. And I…”

He shook his head at the memory.

“… I insisted they get married. They had to go before the highest authority, as they say. But the promise they made before God didn’t stop the young man from abandoning his wife and child when Sara was only one. Lova’s father was a passing weakness.”

“Can you give me their names? We’d like to get in touch with them,” said Sven-Erik.

“Certainly. Ronny Björnström, Sara’s father, lives in Narvik. At least, we think so. He doesn’t have any contact with his daughter. Sammy Andersson, Lova’s father, died two years ago in a tragic snowmobile accident. He was driving over a lake in early spring and the ice didn’t hold. Terrible thing.”

No, that’s it, if I’m going to avoid doing it in the armchair, thought Anna-Maria, heaving herself up.

“I’m sorry, but could I…?” she began.

“In the hall on the right,” said Olof Strandgård, getting up as she left the room.

The bathroom was as pristine as the rest of the house. It smelled of something synthetic and flowery. Presumably from one of the aerosols on top of the cupboard. In the toilet bowl hung a little container with something blue in it that ran down along with the water when you flushed.

Clean, clean, clean, thought Anna-Maria as she walked back through the hall to the living room.

“We’re very worried about the fact that Rebecka Martinsson has our girls,” said Olof Strandgård once she was settled in the armchair again. “They must be shocked and terrified by what’s happened. They need a calm, secure environment.”

“That isn’t something the police can get involved in,” said Anna-Maria. “Your daughter is responsible for the care of her children, and if she has handed them over to Rebecka Martinsson, then-”

“But I’m telling you, Sanna isn’t reliable. If it hadn’t been for my wife and me, she wouldn’t have custody of them today.”

“It still isn’t a police matter,” said Anna-Maria in neutral tones. “It’s Social Services and the courts who decide to remove custody from unsuitable parents.”

The softness in Olof Strandgård’s voice disappeared instantly.

“So we can’t expect any help from the police, then,” he snapped. “I shall of course be contacting Social Services if necessary.”

“But don’t you understand,” Kristina Strandgård suddenly burst out. “Rebecka tried to split up the family before. She’ll do everything she can to turn the girls against us. Just like she did with Sanna that time.”

The last comment was addressed to her husband. Olof sat with his jaws clamped shut, staring out of the window. His whole body was rigid, his hands clenched on his knees.

“What do you mean by ‘with Sanna that time’?” asked Sven-Erik gently.

“When Sara was three or four, Sanna and Rebecka Martinsson shared a flat,” Kristina Strandgård went on, her voice strained. “She tried to break up the family. And she is an enemy of the church and of God’s work in this town. Do you understand how it makes us feel, knowing our girls are in her power?”

“I understand,” said Sven-Erik sympathetically. “How exactly did she try to break up the family and work against the church?” “By-”

A look from her husband made her swallow the rest of the sentence.

“By what?” probed Sven-Erik, but Kristina Strandgård’s face had turned to stone, and her eyes were fixed on the shiny surface of the glass table.

“It’s not my fault,” she said in a broken voice.

She repeated it over and over again, her gaze on the table, not daring to look up at Olof Strandgård.

“It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault.”

Is she defending herself to her husband, or is she accusing him? thought Anna-Maria.

Olof Strandgård became his gentle, considerate self once again. He placed his hand lightly on his wife’s arm to silence her, then stood up.

“I think this has been a bit too much for us,” he said to Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik, and the conversation was at an end.

When Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Anna-Maria Mella emerged from the house, the doors of two cars parked in the street flew open. Out jumped two reporters equipped with microphones wrapped in thick woolen socks. A cameraman was right behind one of them.

“Anders Grape, Radio Sweden’s local news team,” said the first one to reach them. “You’ve arrested the Paradise Boy’s sister-any comment on that?”

“Lena Westerberg, TV3,” said the one who had the cameraman in tow. “You were first on the scene of the murder-can you describe what it looked like?”

Sven-Erik and Anna-Maria didn’t reply but jumped into the car and drove off.

“They must have asked the neighbors to tip them off if we turned up,” said Anna-Maria; in the rearview mirror she could see the journalists walking up to the parents’ house and ringing the doorbell.

“Poor woman,” said Sven-Erik as they pulled out onto Bävervägen. “He’s a cold bastard, that Olof Strandgård.”

“Did you notice he never mentioned Viktor by name? It was ‘the lad’ and ‘the boy’ the whole time,” said Anna-Maria.

“We need to talk to her sometime when he’s not home,” said Sven-Erik thoughtfully.

“You should do that,” said Anna-Maria. “You’ve got a way with women.”

“How come so many pretty women end up like that?” asked Sven-Erik. “Fall for the wrong kind of guy and sit at home like miserable prisoners once the kids have moved out.”

“I’m sure there aren’t more pretty ones who end up like that than any other sort,” said Anna-Maria dryly. “But the pretty ones get all the attention.”

"What are you going to do now?" asked Sven-Erik.

"Have a look at the album, and at the videos from the church," replied Anna-Maria.

She looked out through the car window. The sky was gray and leaden. When the sun couldn’t fight its way through the clouds, it was as if all the colors disappeared, and the town looked like a black-and-white photograph.

“But this just isn’t acceptable,” said Rebecka, looking in through the cell door as the guard unlocked it and let Sanna Strandgård out into the corridor.

The cell was narrow, and the stone walls were painted an indeterminate shade of beige with splashes of black and white. There was no furniture in the tiny room, just a plastic mattress placed directly on the floor and covered in paper. The reinforced window looked out over a path and apartment blocks with a façade of green corrugated tin. It had a stale, sour smell of dirt and drunkenness.

The guard accompanied Sanna and Rebecka to the interview room. Three chairs and a table stood by a window. As the women sat down, the guard went through the bags of clothes and other bits and pieces Rebecka had brought with her.

“I’m so glad they’re letting me stay here,” said Sanna. “I hope they don’t take me to the proper jail in Luleå. For the girls’ sake. I’ve got to be able to see them. They’ve got furnished holding cells, but they were all occupied, so I had to go in the drunks’ cell for the time being. But it’s really practical. If anybody’s been sick or something, they just hose it down. It’d be good if you could do that at home. Out with the hose, sluice it all down, and the Friday housework would be done in a minute. Anna-Maria Mella, you know, the little pregnant one, said there should be a normal cell today. It’s nice and light. From the window in the corridor you can see the mine and Kebnekaise, did you notice?”

“Oh, yes,” said Rebecka. “Just get a makeover expert round here and a family with three children can move in shortly and sit there beaming.”

The guard handed the bags to Rebecka with a nod, and left the room. Rebecka passed them to Sanna, who rummaged through them like a child on Christmas Eve.

“What gorgeous clothes,” smiled Sanna, her cheeks flushed with pleasure. “Look at this jumper! Pity there isn’t a mirror in here.”

She held up a red scoop-neck jumper with a shiny metallic thread running through it, and turned to Rebecka.

“Sara chose that one,” said Rebecka.

Sanna dipped into the bags again.

“And underwear and soap and shampoo and everything,” she said. “You must let me give you some money.”

“No, no, it’s a present,” insisted Rebecka. “It didn’t cost that much. We went to Lindex.”

“And you’ve got books out of the library. And bought sweets.”

“I bought a Bible too,” said Rebecka, pointing to a small bag. “It’s the new translation. I know you prefer the 1917 version, but you must know that one by heart. I thought it might be interesting to compare.”

Sanna picked up the red book, turning and twisting it several times before opening it at random and flicking through the thin pages.

“Thank you,” she said. “When the Bible Commission’s translation of the New Testament came out, I thought all the beauty of the language had been lost, but it’ll be interesting to read this one. Although it feels odd, reading a completely new Bible. You get used to your own, all the underlining and the notes. It might be really good to read new ways of putting things, and to have pages without any notes. No preconceptions.”

My old Bible, thought Rebecka. It must be in one of the boxes up in the loft in Grandmother’s barn. I can’t have thrown it away, surely? It’s like an old diary. All the cards and newspaper cuttings you put in it. And all the embarrassing places underlined in red, they give a lot away. “As the hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for Thee, O God.” “In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord, in the night my hand is outstretched and grows not weary, my soul refuses to be comforted.”

“Did it go all right with the girls today?” asked Sanna.

“In the end,” replied Rebecka tersely. “I got them to school and nursery anyway.”

Sanna bit her lower lip and opened the Bible.

“What is it?” asked Rebecka.

“I’m just thinking about my parents. They might go and pick them up.”

“What is this thing with you and your parents?”

“Nothing new. It’s just that I got tired of being their property. You must remember how things were when Sara was little.”

I remember, thought Rebecka.

Rebecka runs up the stairs to the flat she shares with Sanna. She’s late. They should have been at a children’s party ten minutes ago. And it takes at least twenty minutes to get there. More, probably, now that it’s snowed. Maybe Sanna and Sara have gone without her.

Please, please, she thinks, and notices that Sara’s winter shoes aren’t in the entrance hall. If they’ve gone, I don’t have to have a guilty conscience.

But Sanna’s boots are there. Rebecka opens the door and takes a deep breath, so she can get through all the explanations and excuses whirling around in her head.

Sanna is sitting on the floor in the hallway, in the dark. Rebecka almost falls over her, sitting there with her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms around her legs. And she is rocking back and forth. As if to console herself. Or as if the very rhythm could keep terrible thoughts at bay. It takes a while for Rebecka to reach her. To get her to talk. And the tears come at the same time.

“It was Mummy and Daddy,” sobs Sanna. “They just came and took Sara. I said we were going to party and we were going to have lots of fun this weekend, but they wouldn’t listen. They just took her with them.”

Suddenly she gets angry and hammers on the wall with her fists.

“What I want doesn’t matter,” she screams. “They don’t take any notice of what I say. They own me. And they own my child. Just like they used to own my dogs. There was Laika-Daddy just took her away from me. They’re so frightened of being alone with each other, they just-”

She breaks off and the rage and the tears turn into a long, drawn-out wail from her throat. Her hands fall helplessly to the floor.

“They just took her,” she whimpers. “We were going to make a gingerbread house, you and me and Sara.”

“Ssh,” says Rebecka, stroking the hair from Sanna’s face. “It’ll be all right. I promise.”

She dries the tears from Sanna’s cheeks with the back of her hands.

“What kind of mother am I?” whispers Sanna. “I can’t even defend my own child.”

“You’re a good mother,” Rebecka reassures her. “Listen to me, it’s your parents who’ve done something wrong. Not you.”

“I don’t want to live like this. He just comes in with his spare key and takes what he wants. What could I do? I didn’t want to start screaming and pulling at Sara. She’d have been terrified. My little girl.”

A picture of Olof Strandgård forms in Rebecka’s head. His deep, reassuring voice. Not used to being contradicted. His permanent smile above the starched shirt collar. His cardboard cutout wife.

I’ll kill him, she thinks. I’ll kill him with my bare hands.

“Come along,” she says to Sanna, in a voice that brooks no disagreement.

And Sanna gets ready and goes with her like an obedient child. She drives the car to where Rebecka wants to go.

K ristina Strandgård opens the door.

“We’ve come to collect Sara,” says Rebecka. “We’re going to a party and we’re already forty minutes late.”

Fear flashes through Kristina’s eyes. She glances over her shoulder into the house, but doesn’t move to let them in. Rebecka can hear that they have guests.

“But we agreed that Sara was coming to us this weekend,” says Kristina, trying to catch Sanna’s eye.

Sanna looks obstinately at the ground.

“As I understand it, you didn’t agree anything of the sort,” says Rebecka tersely.

“Just a minute,” says Kristina, biting her lip nervously.

She disappears into the lounge, and after a while Olof Strandgård appears in the doorway. He is not smiling. His eyes bore into Rebecka first. Then he turns to his daughter.

“What’s this nonsense?” he growls. “I thought we had an agreement, Sanna. It doesn’t do Sara any good being dragged from pillar to post. I find it very disappointing that you keep making her pay the price for your whims and fancies.”

Sanna hunches her shoulders, but still stares stubbornly at the ground. Snow is falling onto her hair, forming a helmet of ice around her head.

“Are you going to answer when you’re spoken to, or can’t you even manage to show me that much respect?” says Olof in a tightly controlled voice.

He’s afraid of causing a scene when they’ve got guests, thinks Rebecka.

Her heart is pounding, but still she takes a step forward. Her voice is shaking as she stands up to Olof.

“We’re not here for a discussion,” she says. “Now, either you fetch Sara, or I will go straight to the police with your daughter and report you for abduction. I swear on the Bible, I’ll do it. And before I do it, I’ll force my way into your living room and play hell. Sara is Sanna’s daughter, and she wants her. Your choice. You can fetch her, or the police will.”

Kristina Strandgård peers anxiously over her husband’s shoulder.

Olof Strandgård smiles scornfully at Rebecka.

“Sanna,” he says to his daughter in a commanding voice, without taking his eyes off Rebecka. “Sanna.”

Sanna looks down at the ground. Almost imperceptibly she shakes her head.

And then it happens. Olof’s mood changes abruptly. His expression becomes concerned and hurt.

“Come in,” he says, backing into the hall.

“I f it was so important to you, you only had to say,” says Olof to Sanna, who is dressing Sara in her snowsuit and boots. “I can’t read your mind. We thought it might be nice for you to have a weekend to yourself.”

Sanna puts on Sara’s hat and gloves in silence. Olof is talking quietly, afraid the guests will hear.

“You didn’t need to come here threatening and carrying on,” he insists.

“This really isn’t like you, Sanna,” whispers Kristina, but she is looking daggers at Rebecka, who is leaning against the front door.

“Tomorrow we’re getting the locks changed,” says Rebecka as they walk to the car.

Sanna is holding Sara in her arms and says nothing. Holding her as if she’ll never let her go.

God, I was so angry, thought Rebecka. And it wasn’t even my own anger. It was Sanna who should have been angry. But she just couldn’t do it. And we changed the locks, but two weeks later she’d given her parents a spare key.

Sanna grabbed hold of her arm to bring her back to the present.

“They’re going to want to have the girls while I’m in here,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” said Rebecka absently. “I’ll speak to the school.”

"How long do I have to stay here?"

Rebecka shrugged her shoulders.

“They can’t hold you for questioning for longer than three days. Then the prosecutor has to make an application for your arrest. And that has to be heard no more than four days after you were taken in for questioning. So that’s Saturday at the latest.”

“Will I be arrested then?”

“I don’t know,” said Rebecka uncomfortably. “It doesn’t look good, finding Viktor’s Bible and that knife in your kitchen.”

“But anybody could have put them there when I went to church,” exclaimed Sanna. “You know I never lock the door.”

She fell silent, fingering the red jumper.

“What if it was me?” she said suddenly.

Rebecka found it hard to breathe. It was as if they’d run out of air in the tiny room.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” whimpered Sanna, pressing her hands against her eyes. “I was asleep, I don’t know what happened. What if it was me? You’ve got to find out.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Rebecka. “If you were asleep…”

“But you know what I’m like! I forget things. Like when I fell pregnant with Sara. I didn’t even remember that Ronny and I had slept together. He had to tell me. And how good it was. I still can’t remember. But I got pregnant, so it must have happened.”

“Okay,” said Rebecka slowly. “But I don’t believe it was you. Blank spots in your memory don’t mean you can kill somebody. But you need to think.”

Sanna looked at her questioningly.

“If it wasn’t you,” said Rebecka deliberately, “then somebody planted the Bible and the knife there. Somebody wanted to put the blame on you. Somebody who knows you never lock the door. Do you understand what I’m saying? Not some oddball who’s wandered in off the street.”

“You’ve got to find out what happened,” said Sanna.

Rebecka shook her head. “That’s up to the police.”

Both of them stopped talking and looked up as the door opened and a guard poked his head in. It wasn’t the same one who had shown them to the visitors’ room. This one was tall and broad-shouldered, with a cropped, military haircut. Rebecka still thought he looked like a lost boy as he stood in the doorway. He gave Rebecka an embarrassed smile and handed Sanna a small paper bag.

“Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “But I’m off duty soon and I… I just thought you might like something to read. And I bought you some sweets.”

Sanna smiled at him. An open smile, eyes sparkling. Then she quickly lowered her eyes, as if she was embarrassed. Her eyelashes brushed her cheeks.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “You’re really kind.”

“It’s nothing,” said the guard, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I just thought you might get a bit bored in here.”

He was quiet for a moment, but when neither of the young women spoke, he went on.

“Yes, well, I’d better be off, then.”

When he’d gone Sanna looked in the bag he’d given her.

“You bought much better sweets,” she said.

Rebecka gave a resigned sigh.

“You don’t have to think my sweets are better,” she said.

“But I do, though.”

After visiting Sanna, Rebecka went to find Anna-Maria Mella. Anna-Maria was sitting in a conference room in the police station and eating a banana as if somebody were about to take it off her. In front of her on the table lay three apple cores. In the far corner of the room stood a television showing a video of an evening service at the Crystal Church. As Rebecka came into the room, Anna-Maria greeted her cheerfully. As if they were old friends.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked. “I went to get some, but I don’t know why. Can’t face it at the moment…”

She finished the sentence by pointing to her stomach.

Rebecka remained standing by the door. The past was coming to life inside her. Set in motion by the faces on the flickering screen. She clung to the door frame. Anna-Maria’s voice reached her from far away.

“Are you all right? Sit down.”

On the screen Thomas Söderberg was addressing his congregation. Rebecka sank down onto a chair. She could feel Anna-Maria Mella’s thoughtful gaze on her.

“This is from the service before the night he was murdered,” said Anna-Maria. “Do you want to watch a little bit?”

Rebecka nodded. She was thinking she ought to say something by way of explanation. Something about not having eaten, or whatever. But she remained silent.

Behind Thomas Söderberg, the gospel choir was standing guard. Some of them shouted out in agreement as he spoke. His message was accompanied by shouts of “Hallelujah” and “Amen” from both the choir and the congregation.

He’s changed, thought Rebecka. Before, he used to wear a striped shirt with a mandarin collar from Arbetarboden, jeans and a leather waistcoat. Now he looks like a stockbroker in his Oscar Jacobsson suit and trendy glasses. And the congregation is made up of cheap H & M copies of this image of success.

“He’s a talented speaker,” commented Anna-Maria.

Thomas Söderberg was switching rapidly between relaxed jokes and intense seriousness. His theme was opening your heart to the spiritual gifts of grace. Toward the end of the short sermon he invited everyone present to come forward and allow themselves to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

“Step forward and we will pray for you,” he said, and as if they had been given a sign, Viktor Strandgård, the two other pastors from the church and some of the elders were standing by his side.

“Shabala shala amen,” Pastor Gunnar Isaksson called out. He was marching back and forth, waving his hands. “Step forward, you who are tortured by sickness and pain. It is not the will of God that you should remain in your sickness. There is someone among us who suffers with migraine. The Lord sees you. Come forward. The Lord says that one of our sisters has problems with a stomach ulcer. God intends to put an end to your suffering. You will not need tablets anymore. The Lord has neutralized the corrosive acid in your body. Come forward and accept the gift of healing. Hallelujah.”

A crowd of people surged forward. Within a few minutes there was a mass of people in ecstasy around the altar. Some were lying on the floor. Others stood like swaying grass, their hands stretched upward. They were praying, laughing, weeping.

“What are they doing?” asked Anna-Maria Mella.

“Falling under the power of the spirit,” replied Rebecka curtly. “Singing, speaking and dancing in the spirit. Soon some of them will start to prophesy. And the choir will start singing hymns to accompany the whole thing.”

The choir began to sing in the background, and more and more people surged forward. Many danced their way to the front as if they were drunk.

The camera frequently zoomed in on Viktor Strandgård. He was holding his Bible in one hand and praying fervently for a stout man on crutches. A woman was standing behind Viktor with her hands held up toward his hair, also praying. As if she were filling herself with God’s power.

Viktor went up to a microphone and started to speak. He began in his usual way.

“What shall we talk about?” he asked the congregation.

He always preached like this. He prepared himself by praying. Then the congregation was permitted to decide what he should speak about. Much of the sermon was a conversation with those who were listening to him. This had also made him famous.

“Tell us about heaven,” shouted someone from the congregation.

“What can I tell you about heaven?” he said with a tired smile. “Buy my book instead, and read it. Come on! Something else.”

“Tell us about success!” said someone else.

“Success,” said Viktor. “There are no shortcuts to success in the kingdom of God. Think of Ananias and Sapphira. And pray for me. Pray for that which my eyes have seen, and shall see. Pray that the strength of God will continue to flow from Him through my hands.”

“What was that he said just now?” asked Anna-Maria. “Ana…”

She shook her head impatiently before she went on.

“… and Sapphira, who were they?”

“Ananias and Sapphira. They’re in the Acts of the Apostles,” replied Rebecka, without taking her eyes off the television screen. “They stole money from the first church, and God punished them by killing them.”

“Wow, I thought God only struck people dead in the Old Testament.”

Rebecka shook her head.

When Viktor had been speaking for a while, the prayers of intercession continued. A man of about twenty-five wearing a hooded top and loose-fitting, well-worn jeans, pushed his way forward to Viktor Strandgård.

That’s Patrik Mattsson, thought Rebecka. He’s still there, then.

The man seized Viktor’s hands, and just before the camera switched to the gospel choir, Rebecka saw Viktor jerk backwards and snatch his hands away from Patrik Mattsson.

What happened there? she thought. What’s going on between those two?

She glanced at Anna-Maria Mella, but she was bending down and rummaging though a box of videotapes on the floor.

“This is the tape from yesterday evening,” said Anna-Maria as she popped up from behind the desk. “Would you like to watch a little bit?”

On the tape from the evening following the murder, Thomas Söderberg was preaching again. The wooden floorboards beneath his feet were stained brown from the blood, and there were piles of roses on the floor.

The performance was serious; he was fired up. Thomas Söderberg exhorted the members of the congregation to arm themselves in readiness for spiritual conflict.

“We need the Miracle Conference more than ever now,” he proclaimed. “Satan shall not gain the upper hand.”

The congregation answered with cries of “Hallelujah!”

“This just can’t be true,” said Rebecka, shocked.

“Think carefully about who you can rely upon,” shouted Thomas Söderberg. “Remember: ‘He who is not with me, is against me.’ ”

“He just told people not to talk to the police,” said Rebecka thoughtfully. “He wants the church to shut itself off.”

Anna-Maria looked at Rebecka in amazement as she thought of her colleagues who had spent the day knocking on doors and speaking to members of the congregation. During the course of their inquiries every single officer had complained that it had been impossible to get people to talk to them at all.

During the prayers of intercession the collection was taken.

“If you had intended to give only ten kronor, wrap it in a hundred-kronor note!” shouted Pastor Gunnar Isaksson.

Curt Bäckström also spoke.

“What shall we talk about?” he asked the congregation, just as Viktor Strandgård used to do.

Is he mad? thought Rebecka.

People squirmed uncomfortably. Nobody spoke. Finally Thomas Söderberg saved the situation.

“Talk about the power of intercession,” he said.

Anna-Maria nodded toward the television, where Curt was instructing the congregation.

“He was in the church praying when we were speaking to the pastors,” she said. “I know you used to be a member of the church. Did you know the pastors and the congregation?”

“Yes,” said Rebecka in a reluctant tone of voice, making it clear that this was something she didn’t want to go into.

Some of them in the purely biblical sense, she thought, and suddenly the camera angle altered and Thomas Söderberg was looking straight into the lens and into her eyes.

R ebecka is sitting in the visitors’ armchair in Thomas Söderberg’s office; she is crying. The midseason sales are on. The town is full of people. Handwritten signs in red proclaiming big reductions plaster the shop windows. The atmosphere makes you feel hollow inside.

“It feels as though He doesn’t love me,” she sobs.

She is talking about God.

“I feel like His stepchild,” she says. “A changeling.”

Thomas Söderberg smiles carefully and passes her a handkerchief. She blows her nose and snivels. Just turned eighteen and crying like a baby.

“Why can’t I hear His voice?” She sniffs. “You can hear Him and talk to Him every day. Sanna can hear Him. Viktor has even met Him…”

“But Viktor is special,” interjects Thomas Söderberg.

“Exactly,” howls Rebecka. “I’d just like to feel as if I were a little bit special too.”

Thomas Söderberg sits without speaking for a little while, as if he were listening inside himself for the right words.

“It’s all a matter of training, Rebecka,” he says. “You must believe me. In the beginning when I thought I could hear His voice, it was only my own imagination I heard.”

He puts his hands together before his breast, raises his eyes and says in a childish voice:

“Do you love me, God?”

Then he answers himself in a deep voice:

“Yes, Thomas, you know I do. Very, very much.”

Rebecka laughs through her tears. There is almost too much laughter. It bubbles over because she has cried so much she has created an empty space, ready to be filled by another feeling. Thomas joins in and laughs too. Then all of a sudden he becomes serious and gazes into her eyes for a long time.

“And you are special, Rebecka. Believe me, you are special.”

Then the tears come again. They roll silently down her cheeks. Thomas Söderberg reaches out and wipes them away. Strokes her lips with the palm of his hand. Rebecka is totally still. She didn’t want to frighten him away, she thinks later.

Thomas Söderberg stretches out his other hand and wipes away the rest of her tears with his thumb, while his fingers take hold of her hair. All at once his breath is very close. It flows over her face like warm water. There is the slightly acrid smell of coffee, the sweetness of gingerbread and something else that is just him.

Then everything happens so quickly. His tongue is inside her mouth. His fingers are tangled in her hair. She clasps the back of his head with one hand and with the other tries in vain to undo at least one button on his shirt. His hands fumble at her breasts and try to find their way in under her skirt. They are in a hurry. They rush over each other’s bodies before reason catches up with them. Before the shame comes.

She locks her arms around his neck and he raises her up out of the chair, lifts her onto the desk and pushes up her skirt with a single movement. She wants to get inside him. Presses him against her body. When he pulls off her tights he scratches the outside of her thigh, but she doesn’t notice until later. He can’t get her knickers off. There isn’t time. Pushes the crotch to one side at the same time as he undoes his trousers. Over his shoulder she can see the key in the door. She thinks that they should lock it, but now he is inside her. Her mouth is open against his ear and she gasps for breath with every thrust. She clings to him like a baby monkey to its mother. He comes silently, controlled, with a final convulsion. He leans over her; she has to support herself on the desk with one hand so that she doesn’t fall backwards.

Then he backs away from her. Takes several steps, until he bumps into the door. He looks at her with no expression, and shakes his head. Then he turns his back on her and looks out through the window. Rebecka slides off the desk. She pulls on her tights and straightens her skirt. Thomas Söderberg’s back is like a wall.

“I’m sorry,” she says in a small voice. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Please go,” he says roughly. “Just go.”

She runs all the way home to the flat she shares with Sanna. Runs straight across roads without looking. It is the middle of an icy January. The cold stabs at her and hurts her throat. The inside of her thighs is sticky.

The door burst open and Prosecutor Carl von Post’s furious face appeared.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked. When he got no answer, he turned to Anna-Maria and went on:

"What are you up to? You’re not going through preliminary investigation material with her, surely?"

He jerked his head toward Rebecka.

“None of this is classified information,” said Anna-Maria loudly. “You can buy the tapes in the church bookshop. We were just having a chat. If that’s okay with you?”

“I suppose so!” snapped von Post. “But you need to talk to me now! My office. Five minutes.”

He slammed the door shut.

The two women looked at each other.

“The journalist who accused you of assault has withdrawn her complaint,” said Anna-Maria Mella.

Her voice was casual, as if to demonstrate that she’d changed track, and that what she was saying had nothing whatsoever to do with Carl von Post. But the message got through.

He’s livid about it, of course, thought Rebecka.

“She said she’d slipped, and it can’t possibly have been your intention to knock her over,” Anna-Maria went on as she slowly stood up. “I must go. Was there anything you wanted?”

Thoughts whirled around in Rebecka’s head. From Mans, who must have spoken to the journalist, to Viktor’s Bible.

“The Bible,” she said to Anna-Maria. “Viktor’s Bible, have you got it here?”

“No, they haven’t finished with it in Linköping. They’ll be hanging on to it for the time being. Why?”

“I’d like to have a look at it if possible. Would they be able to photocopy it down there? Not all of it, of course, but all the pages where there are notes. And copies of all the scraps of paper, photographs, cards, that sort of thing.”

“Of course,” said Anna-Maria thoughtfully. “That shouldn’t be a problem. In return maybe you’d be prepared to talk to me about the church if I have any questions.”

“As long as it’s not to do with Sanna,” said Rebecka, looking at her watch.

It was time to fetch Sara and Lova. She said good-bye to Anna-Maria Mella, but before she went out to the car she sat down on the sofa in reception, opened up her laptop and connected it to her cell phone. She keyed in Maria Taube’s e-mail address and wrote:

Hi, Maria.

Isn’t there an investigator at the tax office who’s got a soft spot for you? Can you ask him to check out a couple of constitutions and a nonprofit-making organization for me?

She sent the message, and the answer was on the screen before she managed to log off.

Hi, kid. I can ask him to check on anything as long as it’s not classified. M

That was the whole point, thought Rebecka with a feeling of disappointment as she logged off. Anything that isn’t classified I can check out for myself.

She’d only just shut down the computer when her phone rang; it was Maria Taube.

“You’re not as clever as people might think,” she said.

“What?” said Rebecka, surprised.

“Don’t you realize that all e-mails at work can be monitored? An employer can go into the server and read all incoming and outgoing messages. Do you want the partners to know you’re asking me to fish for classified information from the tax office? Do you really think I want them to know that?”

“No,” replied Rebecka in a small voice.

“What is it you want to find out?”

Rebecka gathered her thoughts and babbled:

“Ask him to go into the LT and CT and check out-”

"Hang on, I need to write this down," said Maria. "LT and CT, what’s that?"

“The Local and Central Transaction Systems. Ask him to check out the church of The Source of All Our Strength and the pastors employed there: Thomas Söderberg, Vesa Larsson and Gunnar Isaksson. Ask him to check up on Viktor Strandgård as well. I want the balance sheet and the proceeds for the church. And I want to know a bit about the pastors’ financial situation, and Viktor’s. Salaries, how much, from whom. What property they own. What stocks or bonds they own. Other assets.”

"Okay," said Maria, making notes.

“One more thing. Can you get into PRV and check out the organization surrounding the church? Everything on the Net is so slow when you link up through a cell phone. Check if the church owns shares in any company that isn’t listed on the stock market, or has any financial interest in a trading company or anything like that. Check out the pastors and Viktor too.”

“May one ask why?”

“I don’t know,” said Rebecka. “Just an idea. I might as well do something while I’m hanging about up here.”

"What is it they say in English?" said Maria. "Shake the tree. See what falls down. Something like that?"

“Maybe,” said Rebecka.

Outside it had already begun to grow dark. Rebecka let Virku out of the car. The dog hurtled over to a pile of snow and squatted down. The streetlights were on, and shone down on something square and white tucked under the Audi’s windscreen wiper. At first Rebecka thought she’d got a parking ticket, then she realized that her name was printed in big letters on an envelope. She let Virku into the front passenger seat, got into the car and opened the envelope. Inside was a handwritten message. The writing was sprawling and clumsy. As if the person who’d written it had been wearing gloves, or had used the wrong hand.

“When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely DIE,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked ways that he may live, that wicked man shall DIE in his iniquity, but his BLOOD I will require at your hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked ways, he shall die in his iniquity, but you have delivered yourself.”

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Rebecka could feel the fear clutching at her stomach. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck and on her arms, but she resisted the urge to turn her head to see if anyone was watching her. She screwed the piece of paper into a little ball and dropped it on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

“Show yourselves, you bloody cowards,” she said out loud as she drove out of the car park.

All the way to the school she had the feeling that she was being followed.

The head teacher of the local primary school, preschool and nursery looked at Rebecka across the desk with open dislike. She was a dumpy woman of around fifty. Her thick hair was dyed the color of a black tulip and was molded like a helmet around her square face. Her glasses, shaped like a cat’s eyes, hung on a cord around her neck, tangled up with a necklace made up of leather, feathers and bits of china.

“I really don’t understand what it is you think the school can do in this particular situation,” she said, picking a hair off her cardigan with its striking pattern.

“I have already explained,” said Rebecka, trying to hide her impatience. “The staff are not to allow Sara and Lova to leave with anyone but me.”

The head smiled indulgently.

“We do actually prefer not to get involved in family matters, and I have already explained this to the girls’ mother, Sanna Strandgård.”

Rebecka stood up and leaned over the desk.

“I couldn’t give a toss what you prefer or don’t prefer,” she said loudly. “It’s your bloody responsibility as head teacher to make sure the children are safe during school hours and until they are handed over to their parents or to the person who has responsibility for them. If you don’t do as I say, and make absolutely clear to your staff that they are to release the girls only to me, your name is going to be plastered all over the media as an accessory to inappropriate interference with children. Trust me, they’ll love it. My cell phone is absolutely stuffed with messages from journalists who want to talk about Sanna Strandgård.”

The skin was stretched tightly around the head’s mouth and jawline.

“Is this what happens when you live in Stockholm and work for some smart law firm?”

“No,” said Rebecka deliberately. “This is what happens when I have to deal with people like you.”

They looked at each other in silence until the head gave up with a shrug of her shoulders.

“It isn’t exactly easy to know what’s supposed to be happening with those particular children,” she snapped. “First of all, they can be collected by both the grandparents and the brother. Then all of a sudden last week Sanna Strandgård came marching in here and said they weren’t to go with anyone but her, and now they can’t go with anyone but you.”

“Sanna said last week that the children weren’t to go with anyone but her?” asked Rebecka. “Did she say why?”

“No idea. As far as I know, her parents are the most considerate people you could wish to meet. They’ve always supported her.”

“As far as you know,” said Rebecka crossly. “Now I’m going to fetch the girls.”

At six o’clock that evening Rebecka was sitting in her grandmother’s kitchen in Kurravaara. Sivving was at the stove with his sleeves rolled up, frying reindeer steaks in the heavy, black cast-iron pan. When the potatoes were ready he used the electric whisk in the aluminum pan to turn them into creamy mash with milk, butter and two egg yolks. Finally he seasoned the whole lot with salt and pepper. Virku and Bella sat at his feet like trained circus dogs, hypnotized by the wonderful smells coming from the stove. Lova and Sara were lying on a mattress on the floor, doing a jigsaw puzzle.

“I brought some videos, if you want to have a look,” said Sivving to the girls. “There’s The Lion King and a couple of cartoons. They’re in that bag.”

Rebecka was leafing distractedly through an old magazine. The kitchen was crowded but cozy, with Sivving spreading himself out in front of the stove. When she went to borrow the key for the second time in one day, he’d immediately asked if they were hungry, and offered to cook a meal. The fire was crackling cheerfully and the wind soughed in the chimney.

Something very strange has happened in the Strandgård family, she thought. And tomorrow I want to know from Sanna exactly what it is.

She looked at Sara. Sivving didn’t seem bothered by the fact that she was silent, her face turned away.

I’m not going to wear myself out over her, she thought. Just let her be.

“I thought they might need something to pass the time with,” said Sivving, nodding toward the girls. “Although these days it seems as if some youngsters don’t know how to play outside, what with all these videos and computer games. You know Manfred, over on the other side of the river? He said his grandchildren came to visit in the summer. In the end he had to force them to go outside and play. ‘You can only stay inside if it pours down in the summer,’ he said to them. And they went outside. But they hadn’t got a clue how to play-just stood there in the garden, completely lost. After a while Manfred noticed they were standing in a circle with their hands clasped in front of them. When he asked them what they were doing, they said they were praying to God to make it pour with rain.”

He took the pan off the stove.

“Okay, everybody, food!”

He put the meat, mashed potato and tub of ice cream with jam on the table.

“Those kids,” he laughed. “Manfred didn’t know what to say.”

Måns Wenngren was sitting on a stool in the hallway of his flat, listening to a message on the answering machine. It was from Rebecka. He was still wearing his coat, and hadn’t even switched on the light. He played the message three times. Listened to her voice. It sounded different. As if she wasn’t quite in control. At work her voice was always very obedient, walking to heel. It was never allowed to go scampering off after her feelings, giving away what was really going on inside her head.

“Thanks for sorting out that business with the reporter,” she said. “It can’t have taken you long to find a horse’s head, or did you come up with something else? I’m keeping my phone switched off all the time, because so many journalists are ringing. But I keep checking my voice mail and e-mail. Thanks again. Good night.”

He wondered if she looked different as well. Like the time he met her in reception at five o’clock in the morning. He’d been sitting in an all-night meeting, and she’d just arrived for work. She’d walked. Her hair was tousled, and one strand was stuck to her cheek. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold wind, and her eyes were sparkling and almost happy. He remembered how surprised she’d looked. And almost embarrassed. He’d tried to stop and chat, but she’d made some brief comment and slid past him into her office.

“Good night,” he said out loud, into the silent flat.