A Darker Shade of Sweden (14 page)

The sound of Leo's voice wakes Fredrik. At first he believes he must be at home, in his own bed, but the smell is all wrong. He smells dampness, mice droppings and resin and something else, something cold and unknown. Before answering his brother he looks around. Sees two pair of feet, very close to each other.

“You can't phone me. I thought we agreed about that,” the woman says peevishly, wagging her right foot.

“I haven't phoned!” Leo says in a surprised tone of voice.

“Really! Then who was panting on the line when the display showed your number?” she says angrily, her voice rising.

“I don't know. I forgot my cell at home this morning, so I haven't had it all day. I tinkered with my car down in the garage. Maybe Fredrik has sneaked into my room.”

“Anyway we can't keep meeting like this. I hope you understand that,” the woman's voice says.

“But I have to see you, Lovisa. I love you,” Leo whimpers in a voice Fredrik has never heard before.

The smaller feet take a step back. The larger ones follow.

“You're just horny. It'll pass. Go now and forget about me.”

“I can't!”

“You have to. A school nurse isn't allowed to have a relationship with a student.”

“But you said you loved me,” Leo says, hopelessly.

“Maybe I did, but it's over. And Ellen Borg saw us. She had a little black book where she wrote down every time we met here. She wanted money to keep quiet about it.”

“But she's dead now.”

“Right. And if you ever say a word about any of this to anyone, I'll tell them you did it. Tell them you killed her. In a very safe place I have a hammer with your fingerprints and Ellen's blood on it. Whenever I want to, I can plant it somewhere and tip off the police. And do you really think anyone would believe anything you might say after that?”

“You can't. I never thought . . . How could it have my fingerprints?”

“You put them there when you helped me put up the hanging.”

“But how could you just . . . kill her?”

“You have no idea what I can do.”

The feet belonging to Leo move across the door. The house echoes from the sound of the door being slammed. Fredrik tries to be quiet but the sobs in his throat force themselves out. A hand grabs his hair and pulls him out on the floor while the sound of Leo's car dies away. She grabs him by the scruff of his neck as if he were a kitten. A stream of words pour out of the school nurse, but he can't make them out through the roar of the waterfall inside his head. Passively he goes along with her movements and lets himself be led down through the hatch in the floor into the damply cold cellar darkness. He hears her lock the hatch. There is only darkness. And cold. And silence.

Detective Captain Maria Wern knocks again at the door and waits. Behind her, Hartman steps back and slaps his arms against his sides for warmth. Smoke is rising from the chimney of the gray cottage with the porch.

“What do you want this time?” Lovisa says when she opens the door.

Her cheeks are very red.

“Is it a bad time?”

“No, it's all right.”

Lovisa leads the way in. Her movements seem nervous and jerky to Maria. They sit down at the kitchen table. Lovisa bites her lower lip. Maria waits for a moment without speaking.

“So what is this about?” Lovisa says in a shrill voice.

“Did you pick these rowanberries yourself?”

“Yes, I did. What's that got to do with anything? What do you want?”

“You said before that you hadn't been here since midsummer. Was that true?”

Lovisa stares at the table, rubs her hands against her thighs. Then she meets Maria's gaze. “I may have been here once or twice in October. I'm not really sure.”

Maria is silent. So is Hartman. Lovisa lowers her eyes.

“Was that all you wanted to ask?” she says with a strained smile.

“Yes, for now. We may be back again later.”

Maria rises without haste. Glances out the window at the white-rimed trees. A half-eaten red apple is lying on the snow, abandoned by magpies. Long icicles hang from the edge of the roof. Then she turns to nod at Hartman, who follows her into the hallway. Lovisa remains sitting. Suddenly she gives a jerk. There is a scratching sound from below them. A weak, small voice is calling for mommy.

“If it's easier for you to tell me that way, you can put on your Ring and become invisible,” Maria Wern says and turns on the recorder.

“But what if I slip away?”

“I trust you,” Maria says, and her eyes are kind and very serious.

“I don't think I want it any longer,” Fredrik says. “You can have it.”

Anna Jansson is originally from Gotland, Sweden's largest island, situated off the east coast in the Baltic, close to sixty miles from the mainland. She was born in 1958 and initially trained and then worked for twenty years as a nurse. When her family bought its first computer in 1997, she began writing stories and finished two novels before finding a publisher for her third,
Stum sitter guden
(The God Sits Mute),
in 2000. That book introduced Detective Inspector Maria Wern with the Gotland police force, who has been the protagonist of all Anna Jansson's fourteen crime novels. Her 2006 Maria Wern novel,
Främmande fågel (Strange Bird),
was the Swedish nominee for the Glass Key Award given annually to the best crime novel published in the five Nordic countries. Beginning with that book, the Wern novels also began to be produced as TV miniseries. Jansson is one of Sweden's most popular crime authors; her novels have also appeared in translation throughout Europe. In addition to her adult writing, she also publishes books for young readers.

THE MAIL RUN

Å
SA
L
ARSSON

Åsa Larsson is one of Sweden's finest crime novelists. Her first novel,
Solstorm
(Sun Storm),
won the Swedish Crime Fiction Academy Award for Best First Novel in 2003; she went on to win the Academy's Best Novel of the Year Award for her second novel in 2004 and for her fifth in 2012. Larsson's novels are contemporary and feature a recurring heroine, public prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson. But the following story is very different.

“The Mail Run” is a historical story set in Kiruna, home of Åsa Larsson's paternal grandfather and where she herself lived from the age of four until leaving to attend college. Kiruna is a mining town at the extreme north of Sweden, built on a major iron ore deposit, which had been impossible to mine profitably before a railroad was finally built in 1891 and the newly formed Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB
(
LKAB
)
staked out large tracts in the area. The mining town, earlier called Luossavare and basically a haphazard collection of sheds, was renamed Kiruna in 1900, as a more modern town began to be built, financed, and run by the mining company. Larsson gives an insightful, humorous, and tragic image of this Swedish frontier outpost a century ago. A town of mainly railroad men and miners, with a mixed population of Samish, Finnish, and Swedish descent, was in the grip of fundamentalist religious groups, where the most important one was the Laestadians, characterized by their severe lifestyle, ecstatic services, and extreme piety. This conservative
Lutheran strain still
exists in Sweden, Finland, and the United States, though it has long since broken up into several splinter groups.

Here, then, is a tale of what might be called the Swedish frontier a century ago, with sheriffs and gunmen, set not on the sunbaked western plains but in a company town built on a northern mountain, where the mean temperature throughout the year is around twenty-nine, where the sun for two months never rises above the horizon, and where snow covers the ground, often more than two feet deep, from October to early June.

BÄCKSTRÖM'S ASSISTANT NEVER QUITE BECAME HIMSELF AGAIN AFTERWARDS
. Before it happened he had been a cheerful type. One of those who sang while he worked. Throwing two-hundred-pound sacks on his back while winking at the girls and tucking snuff under his lip. He became more serious afterwards. Surly, even. Never joked with the girls at Hannula's general store when he came to pick up goods. Began to lose half his pay at cards. Bought liquor from the bootleggers at Malmberget and sold it to the miners, young boys with more money in their pockets than sense in their heads.

But about this thing that happened. It was December 14, 1912. Bäckström, the hauler, and his assistant were on their way to Gällivare. Their sled was full of grouse intended for the train to Stockholm. But the train didn't run between Kiruna and Gällivare due to the amount of snow on the tracks. The snowstorm had lasted for three days and was only now starting to abate. But the restaurant keepers in Stockholm didn't want to wait.

Bäckström delighted in the winter evening. Huge, soft stars of snow fell slowly from the heavens. Almost sleepily they came to rest one by one on top of the outer pelt of his wolf's- fur coat, gathered on top of his Russian fur cap like a white hillock.

The moon found a rift between the snow-filled clouds. It wasn't particularly cold out, though of course his assistant was freezing, dressed as he was in only rough homespun and knitted clothes. But the hauler's assistant wrapped the reindeer skin around himself and was soon shouting his love to the mare, who really was the best in the world. Lintu, which means
bird
in Finnish. And wasn't she just like a long-necked crane? So beautiful! Now and then he gave her an encouraging lash when she stepped off the wintry road and risked sinking into the deep drifts. The sled remained right-side up, but all the newly fallen snow made it hard going. The mare steamed from exertion, though her load was light.

Hauler Erik Bäckström let his eyes follow the falling snow upwards, to the sky. A faint smile played over his lips as he thought that perhaps God's angels were a bunch of women doing needlework. Not very different from his own dead mother and the women in his childhood village. Perhaps they were sitting there crocheting in God's old cabin, dressed in their long skirts, their long hair pinned up and covered in head cloths. They had certainly been busy at needlework while alive. No matter how many socks and sweaters, caps and mufflers they made, it was never enough. They had spun, knitted, woven and mended. But now, carefree in the hands of the Lord, they could knit snowflakes. With gnarled hands that had carried well water to the cows during painfully cold winter mornings and had rinsed washing in holes cut through the ice, they were knitting all these stars, absently letting them fall to the floor.

Which is no floor, the hauler thought philosophically, but the vault of sky above our heads.

“What are you smiling about, sir?” the assistant asked, panting.

He had jumped off the sled and was trudging through the snow beside the mare, who was the light and joy of his heart, to help her manage an uphill slope. In his pocket was a cube of sugar, which he gave her.

“Nothing, really,” Bäckström replied, happy about the freedom you enjoyed in your own mind, after all. Even a workingman who was also a businessman like himself could think the most girlish thoughts without risk.

His assistant jumped back up on the sled. Brushed the snow from his pants. Wrapped his muffler around his head all the way up to his ears.

Aside from occasional snorts from their horse, the silence was as deep as it can only be in a wintry wood during snowfall. The runners slid soundlessly over the soft, new snow. Only just before meeting the other sled did they hear the horse bells.

Both Bäckström and his assistant immediately recognized the mail sled.

They called a loud greeting to the postman, whom they both knew very well indeed.

“Hello, Johansson!”

There was no answer. The postman, Elis Johansson, sat deeply hunched over in his sled and gave no reply no matter how loudly Bäckström and his assistant called.

The mail horse trotted on in the opposite direction and Bäckström and his assistant continued on towards Gällivare.

“Was he drunk?” the hauler's assistant asked, looking back over his shoulder. He could no longer see the mail sled, only the black silhouettes of trees in the weak moonlight that managed to escape between the snow-laden clouds.

“Nonsense,” Bäckström replied angrily. Johansson, never. He was a deeply devout Laestadian and a teetotaler.

“Maybe he was deep in prayer,” the assistant said mockingly.

Erik Bäckström did not reply. Shame over his recent fanciful speculations about God stopped him from defending Johansson the way he should. But he knew that Johansson was a hardworking and capable man. His faith was serious and grounded in scripture. He would never speculate freely about heaven the way Bäckström just had.

And Johansson kept his faith to himself. He never said a word if others had a drink, for instance. Many of his Laestadian brethren dared to do just that. They might be a guest in someone else's home, decline a swig but then glare indignantly at those who accepted the bottle. “That shot will soon feel lonely,” they'd preach. “It wants company, so they get to be two. Then they start arguing and a third is sent down to intervene. And then it's boozing.”

No, Johansson wasn't like that. He left others to their own. Bäckström felt an urge to smack his young assistant.

But the assistant soon got going again. Talked a blue streak about all the hypocrites and liars and drinkers among the Laestadians. Everyone knew it. There were those who went to prayers and asked forgiveness of God and their brothers just to keep sinning as usual come Monday. And really: What, if not strong drink, could make a man sleep so deeply while seated in a sled?

His harangue was interrupted when the horse suddenly stopped dead. She shied backwards a step. Her neck stretched and her eyes rolled back.

“Easy, girl,” the assistant cooed.

“What's gotten into her now?” Bäckström wondered, swinging his whip.

The horse didn't move. Her nostrils widened. She snorted. Muscles hard as steel wire under her skin.

The hauler's assistant put a hand on Bäckström's arm to stop him from delivering yet another lash with the whip.

“Lintu is a good horse,” he said softly. “Sir shouldn't whip her in anger. If she stops like that, there's a reason for it.”

He was right. Erik Bäckström dropped the whip, fumbling for his rifle under the box.
Wolf pack
is what he was thinking now. Or a bear that had been wakened from its winter sleep.

He prepared himself for the mare suddenly kicking over her traces. Turning round to bolt. Maybe tipping the sled over. And if he fell out of the sled and was left alone with the wolves, he sure wanted his gun for company.

“Is there anything up there?” the hauler's assistant said, peering through the falling snow.

“What?” Bäckström said. He couldn't see a thing.

“It's a man! Wait a moment.”

The assistant jumped out of the sled and ran on for a few paces. Now Bäckström too could see that there was something lying across the road.

The assistant ran, but then stopped himself and walked slowly the last few feet to the body lying across the middle of the road.

“Who is it?” Bäckström called.

The body was lying on its stomach, face down in the snow. The hauler's assistant bent down low and looked from the side.

“It's Oskar Lindmark,” he called to Bäckström, who was now standing in the sled, peering up ahead. “And I think he's dead.”

Oskar Lindmark was mailman Johansson's twelve-year-old errand boy.

“What do you mean?” Bäckström called back. “Has he fallen from the sled and broken his neck, or what?”

“No, I think . . .”

The handyman leaned down over the body and fell silent. Was it blood, all that black stuff? All colors disappeared in the faint, weak moonlight. Snowflakes fell in the dark puddle and dissolved.

“Hey, there,” he said, putting his hand on Oskar Lindmark's back.

Then he resolutely turned the body. Pulled on an arm until Oskar Lindmark flopped over on his back. Still thinking that Oskar might not be dead. That he needed air.

Oskar's face was as white as the snow itself. Eyes open, mouth as well.

Is it blood? the hauler's assistant wondered, pulling his mitten off and touching the black on Oskar's forehead.

Yes. Maybe. It was wet. He looked at his fingertips. Rubbed his index and middle fingers against his thumb.

Suddenly Bäckström was standing beside him.

“Is he dead?” the assistant asked. “I think he is.”

“Oh Lord,” Bäckström said in a choked voice. “Of course he's dead. Can't you see that his skull is completely smashed in?”

And that's when the hauler's assistant saw. He stood up quickly. Backed away from the body.

Bäckström turned in the direction of Jukkasjärvi.

“Johansson,” he called desperately into the forest.

The snow caught his voice. It carried nowhere. They could stand there yelling in the forest to their heart's content.

“Put the boy in the sled,” he said to his assistant, who was shaking with terror, steadying himself against a birch tree so as not to fall down.

“I can't,” the assistant trembled. “He's all covered in blood. I can't touch him.”

“Get a grip on yourself, boy,” Bäckström roared. “We have to turn the sled around and catch up with the mail run.”

Then together they dragged the dead boy and laid him on top of the grouse. Bäckström thought that the blood would seep through the sacks and stain the white birds. Then he thought that the restaurant keepers down in Stockholm never needed to know what kind of blood it was.

In the Kiruna police station, county sheriff Björnfot and his acting parish constable Spett were sitting at opposite sides of a desk. Outside, snow was drifting down in the glow of the electric street lamps. The police station was equipped with a proper tile stove and Spett had been feeding it birch logs all day. On a rag carpet on the wooden floor, his dog Kajsa was chewing on an elk jawbone.

Sheriff Björnfot was writing up the day's events in his log. It didn't come to many lines. He was the older of the two men, had served for a number of years in Stockholm, where he had met his wife, and moved back to Kiruna with her and their two daughters only a year ago. He was a sensible man and didn't have anything particular against writing up records or taking down witness interrogations, tasks that had seldom been performed during the time when Spett alone had been in charge of the station.

Spett, who was unmarried, was darning a sock. On the tile stove damper, another pair of his socks had been hung to dry. Björnfot overlooked this. When he had taken up his duties in Kiruna, Spett and Kajsa had been living at the police station. In order to keep the peace he turned a blind eye to certain habits that remained from those days.

They were both broad-shouldered men of considerable strength. Spett was wiry, while Björnfot had an impressive stomach. “Diplomatic talents and physical strength” was what the mining company, which paid the salaries of the town police force, wanted in its servants of justice. The ability to break up troublemakers, in other words. Because there were a lot of those in town. Socialists and communists, agitators and trade union organizers. Not even the religious people could be trusted. Laestadians and Bible thumpers, always on the edge of ecstasy and senselessness. In Kautokeino, a group of newly converted Laestadians—in their eagerness to put an end to sin and liquor sales—had killed both the sheriff and the local shopkeeper, set fire to the vicarage and beaten the vicar and his wife. This happened before the sheriff was born, but even so, people were still talking about the Kautokeino uprising. And then there were all the young men, navvies and miners, just kids, really, migrating here from all over. Far from their fathers and mothers, they spent their wages on drink and behaved as could be expected.