The Blood Spilt

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 9

Anna-Maria Mella looked out through the kitchen window. The woman next door was wiping the windowsills outside her house. Again! She did it once a week. Anna-Maria had never been in their house, but she could imagine it-formidably tidy, not a speck of dust in sight, and nicely decorated.

The neighbors worked hard on their house and garden. Constantly crawling around uprooting dandelions. Carefully clearing away the snow and building perfect banks at the side of the path. Cleaning windows. Changing curtains. Sometimes Anna-Maria was filled with a completely unreasonable irritation. Sometimes with sympathy. And at the moment with a kind of envy. To have the entire house clean and tidy at some point, that would really be something.

“She’s wiping down the windowsills again,” she said to Robert.

Robert grunted from somewhere around the bottom of the sports pages and his coffee cup. Gustav was sitting in front of the cupboard where the pots and pans were kept, taking everything out.

Anna-Maria was overcome by a slow wave of revulsion. They were supposed to be making a start on the Saturday housework. But she was the one who had to take the initiative. Roll up her sleeves and get the others started. Marcus had stayed the night at Hanna’s. Dodging out of his duties! She should be pleased, of course. That he had a girlfriend and mates. The worst nightmare was for your children to be different, to be outsiders. But his room!

“Can you tell Marcus today that he needs to clean his room?” she said to Robert. “I can’t keep going on at him.”

“Hello!” she said after a while. “Am I talking to myself?”

Robert looked up from the paper.

“Well, you could answer me! So I know whether you’ve actually heard or not!”

“Fine, I’ll tell him,” said Robert. “What’s the matter?”

Anna-Maria pulled herself together.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just… Marcus’ bloody room. It frightens me. I really think it’s dangerous to go in there. I’ve been in junkies’ squats that have looked like something out of Ideal Homes compared with that.”

Robert nodded seriously.

“Talking hairy apple cores…” he said.

“They frighten me!”

“… dancing in a drug-induced trance brought on by the fumes of a fermenting banana skin. We’ll have to buy some hamster cages for our new friends.”

Best strike while the iron’s..

“If you do the kitchen I’ll make a start upstairs,” suggested Anna-Maria.

It was best that way. Upstairs was total chaos. Their bedroom floor was covered in dirty washing and half-full plastic bags and cases from their driving holiday that still hadn’t been unpacked. The windowsills were speckled with dead flies and leaves. The toilet was disgusting. And the children’s room…

Anna-Maria sighed. All that sorting and putting away wasn’t Robert’s strong point. It would take him forever. It would be better if he could clean the oven, get the dishwasher going and vacuum downstairs.

It was so damned depressing, she thought. They’d said a thousand times that they’d do the cleaning on a Thursday evening instead. Then everything would be clean and tidy for Friday afternoon, when the weekend started. They could have a really nice meal on Friday, the weekend would be longer, Saturday could be spent doing something more enjoyable and everybody would be together and ecstatically happy in their nice clean house.

But it always turned out like this. On Thursday everybody was completely shattered, cleaning didn’t even come into the equation. On Friday they shut their eyes to the mess, rented a film that always sent her to sleep, then Saturday had to be spent cleaning, half the weekend ruined. Sometimes they didn’t get around to it until Sunday, and then the housework usually started with her having a complete fit.

And then there were all the things that never got done. The piles of washing waiting to be done, she never caught up, it was impossible. All those disgusting wardrobes. The last time she’d stuck her head into Marcus’ wardrobe, helping him look for something or other, she’d lifted up the pile of sweaters and other stuff and some little insect had crawled out and disappeared into the lower layers of clothes. She didn’t even want to think about it. When had she last taken off the bath panel? All those bloody kitchen drawers full of crap. How did everybody else find the time? And the energy?

Her work phone played its little tune out in the hallway. A zero-eight number she didn’t recognize was showing on the display.

It was a man who introduced himself as Christer Elsner, a professor of the history of religion. It was to do with the symbol the police authorities in Kiruna had asked about.

“Yes?” said Anna-Maria.

“Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find this particular symbol. It’s similar to the alchemists’ sign for a test or an examination of something, but the hook that carries on down through the semicircle is different. The semicircle often represents something incomplete, or sometimes it represents humanity.”

“So it doesn’t exist?” asked Anna-Maria, disappointed.

“Oh, well, now we’re getting into difficult territory straightaway,” said the professor. “What exists? What doesn’t exist? Does Donald Duck exist?”

“No,” said Anna-Maria. “He only exists as a fantasy figure.”

“In your mind?”

“Yes, and in others’ minds, but not in reality.”

“Hmm. What about love, then?”

Anna-Maria laughed in surprise. It felt as if something pleasant was spreading through her body. She was exhilarated by thinking a new thought for once.

“Now it’s getting tricky,” she said.

“I haven’t been able to find the symbol, but I’ve been looking at historical sources. Symbols do originate somewhere. It might be new. There are many symbols within certain musical genres. Similarly certain types of literature, fantasy and the like.”

“Who’d know about that sort of thing?”

“People who write about music. When it comes to books, there’s a very well-stocked bookstore for science fiction and fantasy here in Stockholm. In Gamla Stan, the Old Town.”

They ended the conversation. Anna-Maria thought it was a shame. She would have liked to carry on talking. Although what would she have said to him? It would be nice to be able to turn herself into his dog. Then he could take the dog out into the forest for walks. And talk about his latest ideas and thoughts, lots of people did that with their dogs. And Anna-Maria, temporarily transformed into his dog, could listen. Without feeling pressured to come up with any intelligent answers.

She went into the kitchen. Robert hadn’t stirred.

“I’ve got to go to work,” she said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

She wondered briefly whether she ought to ask him to make a start on the cleaning. But she left it. He wouldn’t do it anyway. And if she’d asked him, she’d have been furious and disappointed when she came back and found him sitting here at the kitchen table in exactly the same spot as she’d left him.

She kissed him good-bye. It was better not to fall out.

Ten minutes later Anna-Maria was at work. In her mailbox was a fax from the lab. They’d found plenty of fingerprints on the sketch- Mildred Nilsson’s fingerprints. They’d keep trying. It would take a few days.

She rang directory inquiries and asked for the number of a science fiction bookstore somewhere in Gamla Stan. The man on the other end of the line found it straightaway and put her through.

She explained what she wanted to the woman at the other end, described the symbol.

“Sorry,” said the bookseller. “I can’t think of anything at the moment. But fax the picture over and I’ll ask some of my customers.”

Anna-Maria promised to do that, thanked her for her help and hung up.

Just as she put the phone down it rang again. She picked up the receiver. It was Sven-Erik Stålnacke.

“You need to come,” he said. “It’s that priest Stefan Wikström.”

“Yes?”

“He’s disappeared.”

Kristin Wikström was standing in the kitchen of the priest’s house in Jukkasjärvi weeping inconsolably.

“Here!” she screamed at Sven-Erik Stålnacke. “Stefan’s passport! How can you even ask that? I’m telling you, he hasn’t gone away. Would he leave his family? He’s the best… I’m telling you, something’s happened to him.”

She threw the passport on the floor.

“I do understand,” said Sven-Erik, “but we still have to go through this in order. Couldn’t you sit down?”

It was as if she couldn’t hear him. She moved around the kitchen in despair, bumping into furniture and hurting herself. Two boys aged five and ten were sitting on the sofa, playing with Lego on a green base; they didn’t seem particularly bothered by their mother’s hysteria or the fact that Sven-Erik and Anna-Maria were in the kitchen.

Kids, thought Anna-Maria. They can accommodate anything.

All at once the problems between her and Robert seemed totally insignificant.

So what if I do more housework than him? she thought.

“What’s going to happen?” yelled Kristin. “However will I manage?”

“So he didn’t come home last night,” said Sven-Erik. “Are you sure about that?”

“He hasn’t slept in our bed,” she whimpered. “I always change the sheets on a Friday, and his side hasn’t been disturbed.”

“Maybe he got home late and slept on the sofa?” ventured Sven-Erik.

“We’re married! Why wouldn’t he sleep with me?”

Sven-Erik Stålnacke had gone down to the priest’s house in Jukkasjärvi to ask Stefan Wikström about the trip abroad the family had taken at the foundation’s expense. He’d been met by Stefan’s wife, her eyes huge. “I was just about to call the police,” she’d said.

First of all he’d borrowed the key to the church and run down there. There was no dead priest hanging from the organ loft. Sven-Erik had almost had to sit down on a pew, he was so relieved. He’d phoned in to the station and got people out checking the rest of the churches in town. Then he’d phoned Anna-Maria.

“We need the numbers of your husband’s bank accounts-have you got those?”

“What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you listening? You need to get out there and look for him. Something’s happened, I tell you! He’d never… He might be lying…”

She fell silent and stared at her sons. Then she stormed outside. Sven-Erik went after her. Anna-Maria took the opportunity to have a look around.

She quickly opened the kitchen drawers. No wallet. No jacket in the hallway with a wallet in the pocket. She went upstairs. It was just as Kristin Wikström had said. Nobody had slept on one side of the double bed.

From the bedroom you could see the mooring where Mildred Nilsson had kept her skiff. The place where she’d been murdered.

And it was still light, thought Anna-Maria. The night before midsummer’s eve.

No watch on his bedside table.

He seemed to have had his watch and his wallet with him.

She went back downstairs. One of the rooms appeared to be Stefan’s study. She tugged at the desk drawers, they were locked. After searching for a while she found the key behind some books on the bookshelf. She opened the drawers. There wasn’t much. A few letters that she glanced through. None of them seemed to have anything to do with him and Mildred. None of them was from a lover, if he had one. She peered out through the window. Sven-Erik and Kristin were still out there talking. Good.

Normally they would have waited a few days. People usually disappeared because they wanted to.

A serial killer, thought Anna-Maria. If he’s found dead, that’s what we’re dealing with. Then we’ll know.

Outside Kristin Wikström had sunk down on a garden seat. Sven-Erik was coaxing information out of her about all kinds of things. Who they could ring to take care of the children. The names of Stefan Wikström’s close friends and relatives, maybe one of them knew more than his wife. If they had a summer cottage anywhere. If the family only owned one car, the one parked in the yard?

“No,” sniveled Kristin. “His car’s gone.”

Tommy Rantakyrö rang to report that they’d checked all the churches and chapels. No dead priest.

A big cat came strolling confidently along the path toward the house. He hardly even glanced at the stranger in his garden. He didn’t change course, nor did he slink into the tall grass. He might possibly have lowered his belly and his tail slightly. He was dark gray. His fur was long and soft, it looked almost fluffy. Sven-Erik thought he looked unreliable. Flat head, yellow eyes. If a big bastard like that had attacked Manne, Manne wouldn’t have had a chance.

Sven-Erik could see Manne in his mind’s eye, lying hidden as cats do, in a ditch maybe, or under a house. Knocked about, weak. In the end he’d be easy prey for a fox or a hunting dog. All they’d have to do was snap his spine. Snip snap.

Anna-Maria’s hand brushed against his shoulder. They went off to one side. Kristin Wikström was staring straight ahead. Right hand clenched in front of her face, chewing at the index finger.

“What do you think?” asked Anna-Maria.

“We’ll start searching for him,” said Sven-Erik, looking at Kristin Wikström. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this one. Nationally to start with. Customs too. We’ll check flights and his accounts and his cell phone. And we need to have a chat with his colleagues and friends and relatives.”

Anna-Maria nodded.

“Overtime.”

“Yes, but what the hell can the prosecutor say? When the press get wind of this…”

Sven-Erik spread his hands in a helpless gesture.

“We need to ask her about the letters as well,” said Anna-Maria. “The ones she wrote Mildred.”

“But not now,” said Sven-Erik decisively. “When somebody’s come and taken the boys away.”

Micke Kiviniemi looked out over the room from his strategic position behind the bar. King of all he surveyed. His noisy, messy kingdom, smelling of fried food, cigarette smoke, beer and aftershave with undertones of sweat. He was pouring beers one after the other, with the odd glass of red or white wine or a whisky in between. Mimmi was scampering between the tables like a performing mouse, bickering happily with the customers as she wiped down tables and took orders. He could hear her saying “chicken casserole or lasagne, take it or leave it.”

The TV was on in the corner and behind the bar the stereo was doing its best. Rebecka Martinsson was sweating away in the kitchen. Food in and out of the microwave. Collecting baskets of dirty glasses from behind the bar and bringing out clean ones. It was like a really nice film. All the bad stuff seemed a long way off. The tax office. The bank. Monday mornings when he woke up feeling so bloody tired, deep in his bones, lying there listening to the rats in the garbage.

If only Mimmi could have been a little bit jealous because he’d given Rebecka Martinsson a job, everything would have been perfect. But she’d just said that was great. He’d stopped himself from saying that Rebecka Martinsson was something new for the old men to look at. Mimmi wouldn’t have said anything, but he had the feeling she had a little box hidden away somewhere. And in that little box she was collecting all the times he’d made a mistake or overstepped the mark, and when the box was full she’d pack her bags and go. Without any warning. It was only girls who cared who gave a warning.

But right now his kingdom was as full of life as an anthill in the spring.

I can do this job, thought Rebecka Martinsson as she sluiced down the plates before putting the tray into the dishwasher.

You didn’t need to think or concentrate. Just carry, work hard, get a move on. Keep up the tempo all the time. She was unaware of how her whole face was smiling as she carted a basket of clean glasses out to Micke.

“Okay?” he asked, and smiled back.

She felt her telephone buzzing in her apron pocket and got it out. No chance that it would be Maria Taube. She worked all the time, that was true, but not on a Saturday night. She’d be out and about, people buying her drinks.

Måns’ number on the display. Her heart turned over.

“Rebecka,” she yelled into the phone, pressing her hand against her other ear so she could hear.

“Måns,” he yelled back.

“Hang on,” she shouted. “Just a minute, it’s so noisy in here.”

She rushed out through the bar, waving the phone at Micke and holding up the fingers of her other hand; she mouthed “five minutes,” moving her lips clearly. Micke nodded in agreement and she slipped outside. The cool night air made the hairs on her arms stand on end.

She could hear a lot of noise at the other end of the phone too. Måns was in a bar. Then things quieted down.

“Okay, I can talk now,” she said.

“Me too. Where are you?” asked Måns.

“Outside Micke’s Bar & Restaurant in Poikkijärvi, that’s a village not far from Kiruna. What about you?”

“Outside Spyan, that’s a little village bar on the edge of Stureplan in Stockholm.”

She laughed. He sounded happy. Not so damned dismissive. He was probably drunk. She didn’t care. They hadn’t spoken to each other since the evening when she’d rowed away from Lidö.

“Are you out partying?” he asked.

“No, actually I’m working illegally.”

Now he’ll get mad, thought Rebecka. Then again, maybe not, it was a gamble.

And Måns laughed out loud.

“I see, and what is it you’re doing?”

“I’ve got a brilliant job washing up,” she said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “I’m earning fifty kronor an hour, that’ll be two hundred and fifty for the night. And they’ve promised I can keep the tips as well, but I don’t know about that, there aren’t that many people coming into the kitchen to give a tip to the washer-up, so I reckon I’ve been taken for a bit of a ride there.”

She could hear Måns laughing at the other end. A kind of snort that ended up in an almost pleading hoot. She knew he did that when he was wiping his eyes.

“Bloody hell, Martinsson,” he sniveled.

Mimmi stuck her head round the door and gave Rebecka a look that meant “crisis.”

“Look, I’ve got to go,” said Rebecka. “Otherwise they’ll dock my pay.”

“Then you’ll end up owing them money. When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll probably end up having to come and fetch you,” said Måns. “You’re just not reliable.”

You do that, thought Rebecka.

At half-past eleven Lars-Gunnar Vinsa came in. Nalle wasn’t with him. He stood in the middle of the bar looking around. It was like grass in the wind. Everybody was affected by his presence. A few hands raised in the air in greeting, a few nods, a few conversations broken off or slowed, only to resume. A few heads turned. His arrival had been registered. He leaned over the counter and said to Micke:

“That Rebecka Martinsson, has she cleared off or what?”

“No,” said Micke. “Actually, she’s working here tonight.”

Something in Lars-Gunnar’s expression made him go on:

“It’s just a one-off, it’s really busy tonight and Mimmi’s already got her hands full.”

Lars-Gunnar reached over the counter with his bearlike arm and hauled Micke toward the kitchen.

“Come with me, I want to talk to her and I want you to be there.”

Mimmi and Micke managed to exchange a glance before Micke and Lars-Gunnar disappeared through the swing door into the kitchen.

What’s going on? asked Mimmi’s eyes.

How should I know, replied Micke.

Grass in the wind again.

Rebecka Martinsson was standing in the kitchen rinsing dishes.

“So, Rebecka Martinsson,” said Lars-Gunnar. “Come out the back with Micke and me, we need to talk.”

They went out through the back door. The moon like a fish scale above the black river. The dull sounds from the bar. The wind soughing in the tops of the pine trees.

“I want you to tell Micke here who you are,” said Lars-Gunnar Vinsa calmly.

“What do you want to know?” said Rebecka. “My name is Rebecka Martinsson.”

“Maybe you should tell him what you’re doing here?”

Rebecka looked at Lars-Gunnar. If there was one thing she’d learned in her job, it was that you should never start babbling and chattering.

“You seem to have something on your mind,” she said. “You carry on.”

“This is where you come from, well, not here, but Kurravaara. You’re a lawyer, and you’re the one that killed those three pastors in Jiekajärvi two years ago.”

Two pastors and one sick boy, she thought.

But she didn’t correct him. Stood there in silence.

“I thought you were a secretary,” said Micke.

“You must understand we’re wondering, those of us who live in the village,” said Lars-Gunnar. “Why a lawyer’s got herself a job in the kitchen, working under false colors. What you’re earning tonight is probably what you’d normally pay for lunch in the city. We’re wondering why you’ve wormed your way in here… poking about. I mean, I don’t really care. People can do what they want as far as I’m concerned, but I thought Micke had a right to know. And besides…”

His eyes slid away from her and he looked out across the river. Let out a deep sigh. A weight settled on his shoulders.

“… there’s the fact that you were using Nalle. He’s only a little boy inside his head. But you had the stomach to worm your way in here with his help.”

Mimmi appeared in the doorway. Micke gave her a look that made her come outside to join them, closing the door behind her. She didn’t speak.

“I thought I recognized the name,” Lars-Gunnar went on. “I used to be in the police, so I’m well aware of what happened in Jiekajärvi. But then the penny dropped. You murdered those people. Vesa Larsson, anyway. It may well be that the prosecutor didn’t think there was a case to answer, but I can tell you as far as the police are concerned, that doesn’t mean a thing. Not a bloody thing. Ninety percent of cases where you know someone’s guilty finish up not even going to court. And you must be feeling really pleased with yourself. Getting away with murder, that’s clever. And I don’t know what you’re doing here. I don’t know if that business with Viktor Strandgård gave you the taste for more, and you’re here playing the private eye off your own bat, or if you’re maybe working for some newspaper. I don’t give a shit which it is. But in any case, the charade stops right here.”

Rebecka looked at them.

I ought to make a speech, of course, she thought. Speak out in my defense.

And say what? That this had given her something else to think about, other than putting stones in her jacket pockets and sewing them up. That she couldn’t cope with being a lawyer anymore. That she belonged to this river. That she’d saved the lives of Sanna Strandgård’s daughters.

She untied her apron and handed it to Micke. Turned away without a word. She didn’t go back through the bar. Instead she went straight past the henhouse and over the road to her chalet.

Don’t run! she told herself. She could feel their eyes on her back.

Nobody followed her demanding an explanation. She pushed her belongings into her suitcase and overnight bag, threw them on the backseat of her rented car and drove away.

She didn’t cry.

What does it matter? she thought. It’s completely and utterly insignificant. Everything is insignificant. Nothing matters at all.