The Blood Spilt

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 5

Inspector Sven-Erik Stålnacke was driving from Fjällnäs to Kiruna. The gravel clattered against the underside of the car and behind him the dust from the road swirled up in a great cloud. When he swung up toward Nikkavägen the massive ice blue bulk of Kebnekaise rose up against the sky on his left-hand side.

It’s amazing how you never get tired of it, he thought.

Although he was over fifty he still loved the changing seasons. The thin cold mountain air of autumn, flowing down through the valleys from the highest mountains. The sun’s return in the early spring. The first drips from the roof as the thaw began. And the ice breaking. He was almost getting worse with every passing year. He’d need to take a week’s holiday just to sit and stare at the countryside.

Just like Dad, he thought.

During the last years of his life, must have been at least fifteen, his father had constantly repeated the same refrain: “This summer will be my last. This autumn was the last one I’ll ever see.”

It was as if that was the thing that had frightened him most about dying. Not being able to experience one more spring, a bright summer, a glowing autumn. That the seasons would continue to come and go without him.

Sven-Erik glanced at the time. Half one. Half an hour until the meeting with the prosecutor. He had time to call in at Annie’s Grill for a burger.

He knew exactly what the prosecutor wanted. It was almost three months since the murder of Mildred Nilsson, the priest, and they’d got nowhere. The prosecutor had had enough. And who could blame him?

Unconsciously he stepped on the gas. He should have asked Anna-Maria for her advice, he realized that now. Anna-Maria Mella was his team leader. She was on maternity leave, and Sven-Erik was standing in for her. It just didn’t seem right to disturb her at home. It was strange. When they were working together she felt so close. But outside work he couldn’t think of anything to say. He missed her, but yet he’d only been to visit her once, just after the little boy had been born. She’d called in at the station to say hi once or twice, but then all the girls from the office were all over her, cackling like a flock of chickens, and it was best to keep out of the way. She was due back properly in the middle of January.

They’d knocked on enough doors. Somebody ought to have seen something. In Jukkasjärvi, where they’d found the priest hanging from the organ loft, and in Poikkijärvi, where she lived. Nothing. They’d gone round knocking a second time. Not a damned thing.

It was so odd. Somebody had killed her, on the folk museum land down by the river, quite openly. The murderer had carried her body to the church, quite openly. True, it had been the middle of the night, but it had been as light as day.

They’d found out that she was a controversial priest. When Sven-Erik had asked if she had any enemies, several of the more active women in the church had answered “Pick any man you like.” One woman in the church office, with deep lines etched on either side of her pursed mouth, had practically come out with it and said that the priest had only herself to blame. She’d made the headlines in the local paper when she was alive as well. Trouble with the church council when she arranged self-defense courses for women on church property. Trouble with the community when her women’s Bible study group, Magdalena, went out and demanded that a third of the time available at the local ice rinks should be set aside for girls’ ice hockey teams and figure skating. And just lately she’d fallen out with some of the hunters and reindeer farmers. It was all because of the she-wolf who’d settled on church ground. Mildred Nilsson had said that it was the responsibility of the church to protect the wolf. The local paper had run a picture of her and one of her opponents on its center page spread, under the headings “The Wolf Lover” and “The Wolf Hater.”

And in Poikkijärvi vicarage on the other side of the river from Jukkasjärvi sat her husband. On sick leave and in no condition to make any sense of what she’d left behind. Sven-Erik felt once again the pain that had filled him when he’d talked to the guy. “You again. It’s never enough for you lot, is it?” Every conversation had been like smashing the ice that had formed overnight over a hole in the ice. The grief welling up. The eyes wrecked by weeping. No children to share the grief.

Sven-Erik did have a child, a daughter who lived in Luleå, but he recognized that terrible bloody loneliness. He was divorced and lived alone. Although of course he had the cat, and nobody had murdered his wife and hung her from a chain.

Every conversation and every letter from the assorted lunatics confessing to the crime had been checked out. But of course nothing had come of it. Just pathetic scraps of humanity who’d been temporarily fired up by the newspaper headlines.

Because there had certainly been headlines. The television and the papers had gone completely mad. Mildred Nilsson had been murdered right in the middle of the summer when the news more or less dries up, besides which it was less than two years since another religious leader had been murdered in Kiruna-Viktor Strandgård, a leading figure in the church of The Source of All Our Strength. There had been a good deal of speculation about similarities in the two cases, despite the fact that the person who had murdered Viktor Strandgård was dead. But that was the angle they took all the same: a man of the church, a woman of the church. Both found brutally murdered in their respective churches. Priests and pastors were interviewed in the national press. Did they feel threatened? Were they thinking of moving? Was fiery red Kiruna a dangerous place to live if you were a priest? The reporters standing in for the summer traveled up and examined the police’s work. They were young and hungry and wouldn’t be fobbed off with “for reasons connected with the investigation… no comment at this stage.” The press had kept up a stubborn interest for two weeks.

“It’s getting so you have to turn your damned shoes over and shake them before you put them on,” Sven-Erik had said to the chief of police. “Just in case some bloody journalist comes tumbling out with his sting at the ready.”

But as the police weren’t getting anywhere, the news teams had eventually left the town. Two people who had been crushed to death at a festival took over the headlines.

The police had worked on the copycat theory all summer. Someone had been inspired by the murder of Viktor Strandgård. At first the national police had been very reluctant to do a profile of the perpetrator. There was no question of dealing with a serial killer, as far as anyone knew. And it wasn’t at all certain that this was a copycat murder. But the similarities with the murder of Viktor Strandgård and the demands in the media had finally brought a psychiatrist from the national police profiling team up to Kiruna, interrupting her holiday to do so.

She’d had a meeting with the Kiruna police one morning at the beginning of July. There had been a dozen or so sitting and sweating in the conference room. They couldn’t risk anyone outside hearing the discussion, so the windows were kept shut.

The psychiatrist was a woman in her forties. What struck Sven-Erik was the way she talked about lunatics, mass murderers and serial killers with such serenity and such understanding, almost with love. When she cited real-life examples she often said “that poor man” or “we had a young lad who…” or “luckily for him he was caught and convicted.” And she talked about a man who’d been in a secure psychiatric unit for years, and had then been well enough to be released and was now on the right medication, living an orderly life, working part-time for a firm of decorators, and had a dog.

“I can’t emphasize strongly enough,” she’d said, “that it’s up to the police to decide which theory you wish to work on. If the murderer is a copycat I can give you a plausible picture of him, but it’s by no means certain.”

She’d given a PowerPoint presentation and encouraged them to interrupt if they had questions.

“A man. Aged between fifteen and fifty. Sorry.”

She added the last word when she noticed their smiles.

“We’d prefer ‘twenty-seven years and three months, delivers newspapers, lives with his mother and drives a red Volvo.’ ” someone had joked.

She’d added:

“And wears size 42 shoes. Okay, imitators are notable in that they can start off with an extremely violent crime. He won’t necessarily have been convicted of any kind of serious violent crime before. And that’s backed up by the fact that you’ve got fingerprints but no match in the register.”

Nods of agreement around the room.

“He might be on the register of suspects, or have been convicted of petty crimes typical of a person without limits. Harassment along the lines of stalking or hoax calls, or maybe petty theft. But if it is a copycat then he’s been sitting in his room reading about the murder of Viktor Strandgård for a year and a half. That’s a quiet occupation. That was somebody else’s murder. That’s been enough for him up to now. But from now on he’s going to want to read about himself.”

“But the murders aren’t really alike,” somebody had interjected. “Viktor Strandgård was hit and stabbed, his eyes were gouged out and his hands were cut off.”

She’d nodded.

“True. But that could be explained by the fact that this was his first. To stab, cut, gouge with a knife gives a more, how shall I put it, close contact than the longer weapon that appears to have been used here. It’s a higher threshold to cross. Next time he might be ready to use a knife. Maybe he doesn’t like close physical proximity.”

“He did carry her up to the church.”

“But by then he’d already finished with her. By then she was nothing, just a piece of meat. Okay, he lives alone, or he has access to a completely private space, for example a hobby room where nobody else is allowed to go, or a workshop, or maybe a locked outhouse. That’s where he keeps his newspaper cuttings. He probably likes to have them on display, preferably pinned up. He’s isolated, bad at social contacts. It’s not impossible that he’s using something physical to keep people at a distance. Poor hygiene, for example. Ask about that if you have a suspect, ask if he has any friends, because he won’t have. But as I said. It doesn’t have to be a copycat. It could be somebody who just flew into a temporary rage. If we are unfortunate enough to have another murder, we can talk again.”

Sven-Erik’s thoughts were interrupted as he passed a motorist exercising his dog by holding the lead through the open car window and making the dog run beside the car. He could see that it was an elkhound cross. The dog was galloping along with its tongue lolling out of its mouth.

“Cruel bastard,” he muttered, looking in the rearview mirror. Presumably he was an elk hunter who wanted the dog in top form for the hunt. He considered turning the car around and having a chat with the owner. People like that shouldn’t be allowed to keep animals. It was probably shut in a run in the yard for the rest of the year.

But he didn’t turn back. He’d recently been out to talk to a guy who’d broken an injunction banning him from going anywhere near his ex-wife, and was refusing to come in for an interview although he’d been sent for.

You spend day after day arguing, thought Sven-Erik. From the minute you get up until you go to bed. Where do you draw the line? One fine day you’ll be standing there on your day off yelling at people for dropping their ice cream wrappers in the street.

But the image of the galloping dog and the thought of its torn pads haunted him all the way into town.

Twenty-five minutes later Sven-Erik walked into Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot’s office. The sixty-year-old prosecutor was perched on the edge of his desk with a small child on his lap. The boy was tugging happily at the light cord dangling above the desk.

“Look!” exclaimed the prosecutor as Sven-Erik came in. “It’s Uncle Sven-Erik. This is Gustav, Anna-Maria’s boy.”

The last remark was addressed to Sven-Erik with a myopic squint. Gustav had taken his glasses and was hitting the light cord with them so that it swung to and fro.

At the same moment Inspector Anna-Maria Mella came in. She greeted Sven-Erik by raising her eyebrows and allowing the hint of a wry smile to pass fleetingly across her horse face. Just as if they’d seen each other at morning briefing as usual. In fact it had been several months.

He was struck by how small she was. It had happened before when they’d been apart for a while, after holidays for example. It was obvious she’d had time off. She had the kind of deep suntan that wouldn’t fade until well into the dark winter. Her freckles were no longer visible because they were the same color as the rest of her face. Her thick plait was almost white. Up by her hairline she had a row of bites that she’d obviously scratched, little brown dots of dried blood.

They sat down. The chief prosecutor behind his cluttered desk, Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik side by side on his sofa. The chief prosecutor kept it short. The investigation into the murder of Mildred Nilsson had come to a standstill. During the summer it had taken up virtually all the available police resources, but now it had to be given a lower priority.

“That’s just the way it has to be,” he said apologetically to Sven-Erik, who was gazing out of the window with a stubborn expression. “We can’t tip the balance by abandoning other investigations and preliminary examinations. We’ll end up with the ombudsman after us.”

He paused briefly and looked at Gustav, who was removing the contents of the wastepaper basket and arranging his treasures neatly on the floor. An empty snuff tin. A banana skin. An empty box of cough sweets-Läkerol Special. Some screwed up paper. When the basket was empty Gustav pulled off his shoes and threw them down. The prosecutor smiled and went on.

He’d managed to persuade Anna-Maria to come back half-time until she went back up to working full time after Christmas. So the idea was that Sven-Erik should carry on as team leader and Anna-Maria devote her attention to the murder until it was time for her to go full time again.

He pushed his glasses firmly up to the bridge of his nose and scanned the table. He finally found Mildred Nilsson’s file and pushed it over to Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik.

Anna-Maria flicked through the file. Sven-Erik looked over her shoulder. He had a heavy feeling inside. It was as if sorrow filled him when he looked at the pages.

The prosecutor asked him to summarize the investigation.

Sven-Erik worked his fingers through his bushy moustache for a few seconds while he thought things through, then he explained without digressions that the priest Mildred Nilsson had been killed on the night before midsummer’s eve, June 21. She had held a midnight service in Jukkasjärvi church which had finished at quarter to twelve. Eleven people had attended the service. Six of them were tourists staying in the local hotel. They had been dragged out of their beds at around four in the morning and had been interviewed by the police. The other people at the service had all belonged to Mildred Nilsson’s old biddies’ group, Magdalena.

“Old biddies’ group?” asked Anna-Maria, looking up from the file.

“Yes, she had a Bible study group that consisted only of women. They called themselves Magdalena. One of those network things people go in for these days. They’d go to the church where Mildred Nilsson was holding a service. It’s caused bad blood in certain circles. The expression was used both by their critics and by themselves.”

Anna-Maria nodded and looked down at the file again. Her eyes narrowed when she came to the autopsy report and the remarks of the medical examiner, Pohjanen.

“She was certainly smashed up,” she said. “ ‘Impact marks from a blow to the skull… fractured skull… crush damage to the brain at the points of impact… bleeding between the soft tissue of the brain and the hard outer layer…’ ”

She noticed fleeting expressions of distaste on the faces of both the prosecutor and Sven-Erik and carried on looking through the text in silence.

Pointless, uncharacteristic violence, then. Most injuries about three centimeters long, with connective tissue between the edges of the wound. The connective tissue had been shattered. But there was a long wound here: “Left temple straight reddish blue contusion and swelling… the furthest edge of the impression wound is three centimeters below and two centimeters in front of the auditory canal on the left-hand side…”

Impression wound? What did it say about that in the notes? She flicked through the file.

“… the impression wound and the extended wound above the left temple with clear demarcation along its sides would suggest a crowbar-like weapon.”

Sven-Erik continued his narrative:

“After the service the priest got changed in the sacristy, locked the church and walked past the folk museum down to the river where she kept her boat. That’s where she was attacked. The murderer carried the priest back to the church. Unlocked the door and carried her up to the organ loft, put an iron chain around her neck, attached the chain to the organ and hung her from the organ loft.

“She was found not long afterward by one of the churchwardens who had cycled down to the village on an impulse to pick some flowers for the church.”

Anna-Maria glanced at her son. He had discovered the box of papers waiting to be shredded. He was ripping one sheet after another to bits. Sheer bliss.

Anna-Maria read on quickly. A considerable number of fractures to the upper jaw and zygoma. One pupil blown. Left pupil six millimeters, right four millimeters. It was the swelling in the brain that caused it. “Upper lip extremely swollen. Right-hand side discolored, bluish purple, incision shows heavy bleeding, blackish red…” God! All teeth in upper jaw knocked out. “Considerable amount of blood and blood clots in the mouth cavity. Two socks pushed into the mouth and rammed against the back of the throat.

“Nearly all the blows directed just at the head,” she said.

“Two chest wounds,” said Sven-Erik.

“ ‘Crowbar-like object.’ ”

“Presumably a crowbar.”

“Extended wound left temple. Do you think that was the first blow?”

“Yes. So we can assume he’s right-handed.”

“Or she.”

“Yes. But the murderer carried her a fair way. From the river to the church.”

“How do we know he carried her? Maybe he put her in a wheelbarrow or something.”

“Well, there’s knowing and knowing, you know what Pohjanen’s like. But he pointed out which way her blood had flowed. First of all it flowed downward toward her back.”

“So she was lying on the ground on her back.”

“Yes. The technicians found the spot in the end. Just a little way from the shore where she kept her boat. She took the boat across sometimes. She lived on the other side. In Poikkijärvi. Her shoes were on the shore too, just by the boat.”

“What else? About the bleeding, I mean.”

“Then there are lesser bleeds from the injuries to her face and head, running down toward the crown of the head.”

“Okay,” said Anna-Maria. “The murderer carried her over his shoulder with her head hanging down.”

“That could explain it. And it isn’t exactly gymnastics for housewives.”

“I could carry her,” said Anna-Maria. “And hang her from the organ. She was quite small, after all.”

Especially if I was kind of… beside myself with rage, she thought.

Sven-Erik went on:

“The final signs of bleeding run toward the feet.”

“When she was hung up.”

Sven-Erik nodded.

“So she wasn’t dead at that point?”

“Not quite. It’s in the notes.”

Anna-Maria skimmed through the notes. There was a small bleed in the skin where the neck injuries were. According to Pohjanen, the medical examiner, this indicated a dying person. Which meant that she was almost dead when she was hung up. Presumably not conscious.

“These socks in her mouth…” Anna-Maria began.

“Her own,” said Sven-Erik. “Her shoes were still down by the river, and she was barefoot when she was hung up.”

“I’ve seen that before,” said the prosecutor. “Often when somebody is killed in that particular way. The victim jerks and makes rattling noises. It’s most unpleasant. And to stop the rattling…”

He broke off. He was thinking of a domestic abuse case that had ended with the wife being murdered. Half the bedroom curtains down her throat.

Anna-Maria looked at some of the photographs. The battered face. The mouth gaping open, black, no front teeth.

What about the hands, though? she thought. The side of the hand where the little finger is? The arms?

“No sign of self-defense,” she said.

The prosecutor and Sven-Erik shook their heads.

“And no complete fingerprints?” asked Anna-Maria.

“No. We’ve got a partial print on one sock.”

Gustav had now moved on to pulling every leaf he could reach off a large rubber plant that was in a pot on the floor topped with gravel. When Anna-Maria pulled him away he let out a howl of rage.

“No, and I mean no,” said Anna-Maria when he tried to fight his way out of her arms to get back to the rubber plant.

The prosecutor attempted to say something, but Gustav was wailing like a siren. Anna-Maria tried to bribe him with her car keys and cell phone, but everything was sent crashing to the floor. He’d started stripping the rubber plant and he wanted to finish the job. Anna-Maria tucked him under her arm and stood up. The meeting was definitely over.

“I’m putting in an advert,” she said through clenched teeth. “Free to good home. Or ‘wanted: lawnmower in exchange for thriving boy aged eighteen months, anything considered.’ ”

Sven-Erik walked out to the car with Anna-Maria. Still the same old scruffy Ford Escort, he noticed. Gustav forgot his woes when she put him down so that he could walk by himself. First of all he wobbled recklessly toward a pigeon that was pecking at some scraps by a waste bin. The pigeon flew tiredly away, and Gustav turned his attention to the bin. Something pink had run over the edge; it looked like dried vomit from the previous Saturday. Anna-Maria grabbed Gustav just before he got there. He started to sob as if his life was over. She shoved him into his car seat and slammed the door. His muted sobs could be heard from inside.

She turned to Sven-Erik with a wry smile.

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

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

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

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

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

Then she became serious.

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

“I know,” said Sven-Erik.

He twitched his moustache with a thoughtful expression.

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

He grinned.

“Or her!” he added.

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

“Maybe,” she said.

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

“What sort of dog?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rebecka smiled wryly.

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

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

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

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

“Wear something nice yourself!” Rebecka had replied.

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

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

The woman had smiled at Rebecka.

“Oh, so you’ve been here before?”

“I was born here.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay”

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

“Of course not.”

“Even if they joke about it themselves.”

“Yeah yeah.”

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

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

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

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

“Stefan Wikström,” said the clergyman.

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

One of those 24/7 priests, thought Rebecka.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What must?” asked Rebecka.

The clergyman looked at her.

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

Rebecka looked blankly at him.

“Murdered in the summer?” she repeated.

There was a confused pause.

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

Torsten Karlsson was staring at Rebecka.

“Oh, come on,” he said.

Rebecka looked at him and shook her head almost imperceptibly.

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

“No.”

He looked at her anxiously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wants something, she thought. But what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There,” Torsten pointed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The big lad was standing at the door.

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

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

“What’s he doing?” whispered Torsten.

Rebecka shook her head.

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

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

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

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

“So, Pikku-piika,” says Grandmother as her hands squeeze the udders rhythmically. “Where have you been all day?”

“In the forest,” answers little Rebecka.

She pushes a few blueberries into her grandmother’s mouth. It’s only now she realizes how hungry she is.

Torsten knocked on the car window.

I want to stay here, thought Rebecka, and was surprised by how strongly she felt.

The tussocks in the forest looked like cushions. Covered with shiny dark green lingon with its thick leaves, and the fresh green of the blueberry leaves just starting to turn red.

Come and lie down, whispered the forest. Lay down your head and watch the wind swaying the tops of the trees to and fro.

There was another knock on the car window. She nodded a greeting to the big lad. He stayed out on the steps when she went in.

The two garages that made up the old workshop had been converted into an eating area and a bar. There were six pine tables, stained with a dark color and varnished, arranged along the walls, each with room for seven people if somebody sat at the corner. The plastic flooring of coral red imitation marble was matched by the pink fabric wall covering; a painted design ran right around the room and even continued straight across the swing doors leading into the kitchen. Someone had wound plastic greenery around the water pipes, also painted pink, in an attempt to cheer the place up. Behind the dark-stained bar on the left of the room stood a man in a blue apron, drying glasses and putting them on a shelf where they jostled for space with the drinks on offer. He said hello to Rebecka as she came in. He had a dark brown, neatly clipped beard and an earring in his right ear. The sleeves of his black T-shirt were pushed up his muscular arms. Three men were sitting at one of the tables with a basket of bread in front of them, waiting for their meal. The cutlery wrapped in wine-red paper serviettes. Their eyes firmly fixed on the football on TV. Fists in the bread basket. Work caps in a pile on one of the empty chairs. They were dressed in soft, faded flannel shirts worn over T-shirts with adverts printed on them, the necks well worn. One of them was wearing blue overalls with braces and some kind of company logo. The other two had unfastened their overalls so that the upper half trailed on the floor behind them.

A middle-aged woman on her own was dunking her bread in a bowl of soup. She gave Rebecka a quick smile then stuffed the piece of bread into her mouth quickly, before it fell apart. A black Labrador with the white stripes of age on his muzzle was sleeping at her feet. Over the chair beside her was an indescribably scruffy Barbie-pink padded coat. Her hair was cut very short in a style which could most charitably be described as practical.

“Anything I can help you with?” asked the earring behind the counter.

Rebecka turned toward him and had just about managed to say yes when the swing door from the kitchen flew open and a woman in her twenties hurtled out with three plates. Her long hair was dyed in stripes-blond, an unnatural pink and black. She had an eyebrow piercing and two sparkling stones in her nose.

What a pretty girl, thought Rebecka.

“Yes?” said the girl to Rebecka, a challenge in her voice.

She didn’t wait for an answer, but put the plates down in front of the three men. Rebecka had been about to ask if they served food, but she could see that they did.

“It says ‘rooms’ on the sign,” she heard herself asking instead, “how much are they?”

The earring looked at her in confusion.

“Mimmi,” he said, “she’s asking about rooms.”

The woman with the striped hair turned to Rebecka, wiped her hands on her apron and pushed a strand of sweat-soaked hair off her face.

“We’ve got cottages,” she said. “Sort of chalets. Two hundred and seventy kronor a night.”

What am I doing? thought Rebecka.

And the next minute she thought:

I want to stay here. Just me.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll be in shortly having a meal with a man. If he asks about rooms, tell him you’ve only got space for me.”

Mimmi frowned.

“Why should I do that?” she asked. “It’s bloody awful business for us.”

“Not at all. If you say you’ve got room for him as well, I’ll change my mind and we’ll both go and stay at the Winter Palace in town. So one overnight guest or none.”

“Having trouble fighting him off, are you?” grinned the earring.

Rebecka shrugged. They could think what they liked. And what could she say?

Mimmi shrugged back.

“Okay then,” she said. “But you’re both eating, are you? Or shall we say there’s only enough food for you?”

Torsten was reading the menu. Rebecka was sitting opposite, looking at him. His rounded cheeks, pink with pleasure. His reading glasses balanced as far down his nose as possible without actually stopping him from breathing. Hair tousled, standing on end. Mimmi was leaning over his shoulder and pointing as she read it out. Like a teacher and pupil.

He loves this, thought Rebecka.

The men with their powerful arms, their sheath knives hanging from their belts. Who had mumbled a reply when Torsten swept in wearing his gray suit and greeted them cheerfully. Pretty Mimmi with her big boobs and her loud voice. About as far as you can get from the accommodating girls at the Sturecompagniet nightclub. Little anecdotes were already taking shape in his head.

“You can either have the dish of the day,” said Mimmi, pointing to a blackboard on the wall where it said “Marinated elk steak with mushroom and vegetable risotto. Or you can have something out of the freezer. You can have anything that’s listed there with potatoes or rice or pasta, whichever you want.”

She pointed to the menu where a number of dishes were listed under the heading “From the freezer”: lasagne, meatballs, blood pudding, Piteå potato cakes filled with mince, smoked reindeer fillet in a cream sauce and stew.

“Maybe I should try the blood pudding,” he said excitedly to Rebecka.

The door opened and the tall lad who’d arrived on the moped came in. He stopped just inside the door. His massive body was encased in a beautifully ironed striped cotton shirt buttoned right up to the neck. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at the other customers. He kept his head twisted to one side so that his big chin was pointing out through the long narrow window. As if it were signposting an escape route.

“Nalle!” exclaimed Mimmi, abandoning Torsten to his deliberations. “Don’t you look smart!”

The big lad gave her a shy smile and a quick glance.

“Come over here and let me have a proper look at you!” called the woman with the dog, pushing her soup bowl to one side.

Rebecka suddenly noticed how alike Mimmi and the woman with the dog were. They must be mother and daughter.

The dog at the woman’s feet raised its head and gave two tired wags with its tail. Then it put its head down and went back to sleep.

The boy went over to the woman with the dog. She clapped her hands.

“Don’t you look wonderful!” she said. “Happy birthday! What a smart shirt!”

Nalle smiled at her flattery and raised his chin toward the ceiling in an almost comical pose that made Rebecka think of Rudolph Valentino.

“New,” he said.

“Well yes, we can see it’s new,” said Mimmi.

“Going dancing, Nalle?” called one of the men. “Mimmi, can you do us five takeaways from the freezer? Whatever you like.”

Nalle pointed at his trousers.

“Too,” he said.

He lifted up his arms and held them straight out from his body so that everybody could see his trousers properly. They were a pair of gray chinos held up with a military belt.

“Are they new as well? Very smart!” the two admiring women assured him.

“Here,” said Mimmi, pulling out the chair opposite the woman with the dog. “Your dad hasn’t arrived yet, but you can sit here with Lisa and wait.”

“Cake,” said Nalle, and sat down.

“Of course you can have some cake. Did you think I’d forgotten? But after your meal.”

Mimmi’s hand shot out and gave his hair a quick caress. Then she disappeared into the kitchen.

Rebecka leaned across the table to Torsten.

“I was thinking of staying the night here,” said Rebecka. “You know I grew up by this river, just a few miles upstream, and it’s made me feel a bit nostalgic. But I’ll drive you into town and pick you up in the morning.”

“No problem,” said Torsten, the roses of adventure on his cheeks in full bloom. “I can stay here as well.”

“The beds won’t exactly be the height of luxury, I shouldn’t think,” said Rebecka.

Mimmi came out with five aluminum packages under her arm.

“We were thinking of staying here tonight,” Torsten said to her. “Do you have any rooms free?”

“Sorry,” replied Mimmi. “One cottage left. Ninety centimeter bed.”

“That’s okay,” Rebecka said to Torsten. “I’ll give you a lift.”

He smiled at her. Beneath the smile and the well-paid successful partner was a fat little boy she didn’t want to play with, trying to look as if he didn’t mind. It gave her a pang.

When Rebecka got back from town it was almost completely dark. The forest was silhouetted against the blue black sky. She parked the car in front of the bar and locked it. There were several other cars parked there. The voices of burly men could be heard from inside, the sound of forks being pushed forcefully through meat and clattering on the plate underneath, the television providing a constant background noise, familiar advertising jingles. Nalle’s moped was still standing there. She hoped he’d had a good birthday.

The cottage she was sleeping in was on the opposite side of the road on the edge of the forest. A small lamp above the door lit up the number five.

I’m at peace, she thought.

She went up to the cottage door, but suddenly turned and walked a few meters into the forest. The fir trees stood in silence, gazing up toward the stars which were just beginning to appear. Their long blue green velvet coats moved tentatively over the moss.

Rebecka lay down on the ground. The pine trees put their heads together and whispered reassuringly. The last mosquitoes and black-flies of the summer sang a deafening chorus, seeking out whatever parts of her they could reach. She could cope with that.

She didn’t notice Mimmi, bringing out some rubbish.

Mimmi went into the kitchen.

“Okay,” she said, “it’s definitely wacko-warning time.”

She told him that their overnight guest had gone to bed, not in her bed in the cottage, but on the ground outside.

“It does make you wonder,” said Micke.

Mimmi rolled her eyes.

“Any minute now she’ll decide she’s a shaman or a witch, move out into the forest, start brewing up herbs over an open fire and dancing around an ancient Sami monolith.”