As soon as he opened the door, the wind seized hold of it.
During the day it had been sunny and calm, with no wind. But in the mountains the weather changes constantly. Now the storm was tugging and snapping at the door like a rabid dog. One moment there was hardly any wind at all, it was as if it were lying there growling and gathering its strength, then it was pulling at the door for all it was worth. Would the hinges hold? Leif Pudas got hold of the door with both hands and closed it behind him. Maybe he should have put some clothes on. Oh, what the hell, it only took a minute to have a pee.
The gusts of wind carried loose snow with them. Not soft, fine fresh snow, but sharp diamond slivers of compacted snow. It whirled across the ground like a white cat-o’-nine-tails, flaying his skin with a slow, evil rhythm.
Leif Pudas ran around the ark to shelter from the wind and got ready to pee. He might be sheltered from the wind, but it was cold so far up north. His scrotum contracted to a rock-hard ball. But at least he managed to pee. He almost expected it to freeze on its way through the air. To be transformed into a yellow arc of ice.
Just as he finished, he heard a kind of bellowing through the wind, and all of a sudden the ark was at his back. It almost knocked him over, and the next second it was gone.
It took a little while for him to understand. The storm had taken the ark. He could see the window, the square of warm light in the darkness, traveling away from him.
He ran a little way in the darkness, but now its mooring had come loose, the ark was gathering speed. He hadn’t a chance of catching up with it, it was hurtling away on its runners.
First of all he thought only about the ark. He’d built it himself of plywood, then insulated it and covered it with aluminum. Tomorrow morning when he found it, it would be firewood. All he could do was hope it didn’t cause any damage. That could lead to difficulties.
All of a sudden there came a powerful squall. It almost knocked him to the ground. Then he realized he was in danger. And he had all that beer inside him, it was as if his blood was just beneath the surface of the skin. If he didn’t manage to get inside somewhere very soon, he’d freeze to death in no time.
He looked around. It had to be at least a kilometer up to Abisko tourist station, he’d never make it, it was a question of minutes now. Where was the closest ark? The whirling snow and the storm meant he couldn’t see the lights of any other arks.
Think, he said to himself. You don’t take one single bloody step until you’ve used your head. Which direction are you facing now?
He used his head for three seconds, felt his hands starting to stiffen, and tucked them under his arms. He took four steps from where he was standing and managed to walk straight into the snowmobile. The key was in the disappearing ark, but he had a little toolbox under the seat, and he got it out.
Then he prayed to someone up there that he was going the right way, and set off in the direction of his closest neighboring ark. It was no more than twenty meters, but he wanted to weep with every step. He was so afraid of missing it. And if he did, he was a dead man.
He searched for Persson’s fiberglass ark. The wet snow covered his eyes; he tried to peer through, but it was as if a slush kept forming over his eyes and he had to wipe it away. It was impossible to see anything, darkness and snow.
He thought about his sister. And he thought about his ex-partner, about the fact that things had been good between them in many ways.
He’d almost walked straight into Persson’s ark before he saw it. Nobody home, the windows dark. He took the hammer out of his toolbox, had to use his left hand, the right one was completely useless, pain shooting through it after holding the cold steel of the toolbox handle. He fumbled his way through the darkness to the small Plexiglas window and smashed it.
The fear made him strong, and he heaved his entire bulk of over two hundred pounds in through the window. Swore when he scraped his stomach on the sharp metal frame. But what did that matter. Death had never been quite so close before, breathing down his neck.
Once he was inside, he had to do something about getting some heat going. Even if he was protected from the wind, it was bitterly cold inside the ark.
He rummaged in the drawers and found some matches. How can you hold something so small when the cold has made your hands completely useless? He pushed his fingers into his mouth to warm them until they were working well enough to allow him to light the lamp and the stove. His entire body wanted to do nothing but shiver and shake, never in his life had he felt this cold. Frozen through to his bones.
“Bloody hell it’s cold, fuck me it’s cold,” he kept saying to himself over and over again. He spoke out loud, it somehow kept the panic at bay, as if he were keeping himself company.
The wind howled through the window like a malevolent god; he grabbed a big cushion that was leaning against the wall and managed to wedge it fast between the curtain pole and the wall.
He looked around and found a red padded jacket, probably one of Mrs. Persson’s. He also found a drawer full of underwear, pulled on two pairs of long johns, one on his legs and one on his head.
The warmth came slowly, he held his limbs out toward the stove, pain shooting through his body; it was agonizing. He had no feeling at all in one cheek and ear, which wasn’t a good sign.
There was a heap of blankets on the bunk bed. They were ice cold, of course, but he could wrap himself up in them anyway, they’d provide some sort of insulation.
I’ve survived, he said to himself. What does it matter if I lose an ear?
He yanked a blanket off the bed. It was covered in big flowers in different shades of blue, a relic of the seventies.
And underneath it lay a woman. Her eyes were open and had frozen to ice, so they were completely white, like frosted glass. Something that looked like porridge, or maybe it was vomit, on her chin and hands. She was wearing sports clothes. There was a red mark on her top.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t even feel surprised. It was as if his emotions had been completely wiped out by what he’d been through.
“What the fuck” was all he said.
And the feeling that washed over him was like the feeling you get when your new puppy pees in the house for the hundredth time. Exhaustion in the face of how crap everything is.
He resisted the impulse to simply put the blanket back and forget about her.
Then he sat down to think. What on earth should he do now? He had to get to the tourist station, of course. He wasn’t too keen on going up there in the dark. But he had no choice, did he? And he didn’t much like the idea of sitting here thawing out with her.
But he needed to sit here for a little while longer. Until he wasn’t so damned cold.
It was like a kind of companionship between them. She kept him company as he sat there for an hour, tortured by the pain in various parts of his body as the warmth brought the feeling back. He held his hands out to the stove.
He didn’t say a word. And neither did she.
I
nspector Anna-Maria Mella and her colleague Sven-Erik Stålnacke reached the scene at quarter to midnight on Saturday. The police had borrowed two snowmobiles from Abisko tourist station. One of them had a sledge. One of the mountain guides had offered to help out, and he drove them both down. Storms and darkness.
Leif Pudas, who had found the body, was sitting in Abisko tourist station and had already been questioned by the squad car unit who had been first on the scene.
When Leif Pudas arrived at the tourist station, the reception desk was closed. It had taken a while before the staff in the bar took him seriously. It was Saturday night after all, and they were more than used to unconventional dress at the tourist station; people would take off their snowmobile overalls and sit there drinking beer in their underwear and all sorts. But Leif Pudas had come stumbling in dressed in a ladies’ padded jacket that only reached just below his navel, with a pair of long johns wound round his head like a turban.
It wasn’t until he burst into tears that they understood something
serious had happened. They had listened, then treated him somewhat warily while they contacted the police.
He’d found a dead woman, he said. He’d repeated several times that it wasn’t his ark. They’d still thought it was probably a matter of a guy who’d killed his wife. Nobody had wanted to look him in the eye. He’d been sitting there all alone and weeping, disturbing no one, when the police arrived.
It had proved impossible to seal off the area around the ark; the wind had simply snatched the police tape away. Instead they had tied the black and yellow tape around the ark, wrapping it up like a parcel. The tape was flapping angrily in the wind. The technicians had arrived, and were working on the small surface area in the beam of the spotlights and the muted Calor gas light afforded by the ark itself.
There just wasn’t room for more than two people inside the ark. While the technicians were working, Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke stood outside and tried to keep moving.
It was more or less impossible to hear each other through the storm and their thick hats. Even Sven-Erik was wearing a hat with ear flaps; he didn’t normally wear anything on his head, even in the middle of winter. They yelled at each other and moved about like fat Michelin men in their snowmobile overalls.
“Look,” shouted Anna-Maria. “This is ridiculous.”
She spread out her arms, standing like a sail against the wind. She was a small woman and didn’t weigh a great deal. Besides which, the snow had melted during the day, then frozen again in the evening and turned shiny and icy, so when she positioned herself like that the wind got hold of her and she began to glide slowly away.
Sven-Erik laughed and pretended to hurry over to catch her before she slid off to the opposite side of the lake.
The technicians emerged from the ark.
“She wasn’t murdered here, at any rate,” one of them bawled at Anna-Maria. “Looks like she was stabbed. But like I said, not here. You can take the body. We’ll carry on here in the morning when we can see what we’re doing.”
“And when we’re not freezing our asses off,” yelled his colleague, who wasn’t dressed nearly warmly enough.
The technicians climbed onto the sledge and were driven off to the tourist station.
Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke went into the ark.
It was cold and cramped.
“But at least we’re out of that bloody wind,” said Sven-Erik as he closed the door. “That’s better, we can talk normally.”
The small folding table attached to the wall was covered in a wood-patterned material. Four white plastic chairs were stacked on top of one another. There was a small hotplate and a place to wash the dishes. A red and white checked café curtain and a vase of artificial flowers were lying on the floor beneath the Plexiglas window. A big cushion fixed in front of the window provided a reasonable amount of protection against the wind, which was desperate to get in.
Sven-Erik opened the wardrobe. The equipment necessary for distilling alcohol was inside. He closed the door.
“We didn’t see that” was all he said.
Anna-Maria looked at the woman on the bed.
“One seventy-five?” she asked.
Sven-Erik nodded, snapping small icicles from his moustache.
Anna-Maria took the tape recorder out of her pocket. She fought with it for a while, because the batteries had got cold and it didn’t want to work.
“Oh, come on,” she said, holding it close to the stove, which was doing its best to warm up the inside of the ark despite the broken window and the many gaps in the door.
When she got it going, she put the description in first.
“Female, blonde bob, in her forties…She’s attractive, isn’t she?”
Sven-Erik mumbled something.
“Well, I think she’s attractive anyway. About one meter seventy-five, slim, large breasts. No rings on her fingers. Eye color difficult to establish in the present circumstances, maybe the pathologist…Light-colored track suit top, looks windproof, stains on it which are probably blood, but we’ll find that out soon enough, matching track suit bottoms, running shoes.”
Anna-Maria leaned over the woman.
“And she’s wearing makeup—lipstick, eye shadow and mascara,” she continued into the tape recorder. “Isn’t that a bit odd, when you’re going out to exercise? And why hasn’t she got a hat?”
“It’s been a lovely day, really warm, and yesterday was the same,” said Sven-Erik. “Just as long as you don’t get that wind…”
“It’s winter! You’re the only person who never wears a hat. At any rate, her clothes don’t look cheap, and neither does she. She’s kind of elegant, somehow.”
Anna-Maria switched off the tape recorder.
“We’ll start knocking on doors tonight. The tourist station and the eastern side of Abisko. And we’ll ask the shop owners if it’s anybody they know. You’d think somebody would have reported her missing.”
“I’ve got the feeling there’s something familiar about her,” said Sven-Erik thoughtfully.
Anna-Maria nodded.
“Maybe she lives in Kiruna, then. Think about it. Maybe you’ve seen her somewhere? Dentist? Behind the counter in a shop? In the bank?”
Sven-Erik shook his head.
“Leave it,” he said. “It’ll come to me if it wants to.”
“We need to go round the other arks as well,” said Anna-Maria.
“I know. And in this bloody storm.”
“All the same.”
“Right.”
They looked at each other for a while.
Sven-Erik looked tired, Anna-Maria thought. Tired and depressed. Dead women often had that effect on him. And the murders were usually so tragic. They lay there dead in the kitchen, the husband in floods of tears in the bedroom, and you just had to be grateful if there were no small children who’d seen it all happen.
It never really affected her that much, unless it involved children of course. Children and animals, you never got used to that. But a murder like this one. Not that it made her happy. Or that she thought it was a good thing somebody had been murdered, nothing like that. But a murder like this…it gave you something to get your teeth into, somehow. She needed that.