Authors: Åsa Larsson
He’d been shopping on the way home. Unlocked the door, grabbed the carrier bags and pushed down the door handle with his elbow.
“Mildred,” he called out once he was inside.
He stopped dead. You could have heard a pin drop. The house consisted of two hundred and eighty square meters of silence. The whole world was keeping quiet. The house was drifting through a silent dazzling universe like an empty spaceship. The only sound was the earth, creaking around on its axis. Why on earth was he calling out to her?
When she was alive he’d always known whether she was at home or not. As soon as he got through the door. Nothing odd about that, he always used to say. A newborn baby could recognize the smell of its mother, even if she was in another room. You didn’t lose that ability when you grew up. It just wasn’t part of the conscious mind. So people talked about intuition or a sixth sense.
Sometimes it still felt like that when he got home. As if she was somewhere in the house. In the room next door all the time.
He dropped the bags on the floor. Walked into the silence.
Mildred, the voice in his head called out.
At the same moment the doorbell rang.
It was a woman. She was wearing a long fitted coat and high-heeled boots. She didn’t fit in, couldn’t have stood out more if she’d been dressed in just her underwear. She took off her right glove and held out her hand. Said her name was Rebecka Martinsson.
“Come in,” he said, unconsciously running his hand over his beard and hair.
“Thank you, but there’s no need, I just want to…”
“Come in,” he said again, leading the way.
He told her to keep her boots on and asked her to sit down in the kitchen. It was clean and tidy. He’d done the cleaning and cooking when Mildred was alive, why stop now she was dead? He didn’t touch her things, though. Her red sweater was still lying in a heap on the kitchen sofa. Her papers and her post were on the worktop.
“So,” he said pleasantly.
He was good at that. Being pleasant to women. Over the years many had sat at this very kitchen table. Some had had a little one on their knee and another standing beside them clutching mummy’s sweater in a small fist. Others hadn’t been trying to get away from a man, but rather from themselves. Couldn’t stand the loneliness in an apartment in Lombolo. The sort who stood out on the veranda smoking, cigarette after cigarette out in the cold.
“I’m here on behalf of your wife’s employer,” said Rebecka Martinsson.
Erik Nilsson had been on the point of sitting down, or perhaps asking if she’d like a cup of coffee. But he remained standing. When he didn’t say anything, she went on:
“There are two things. First of all I would like her work keys. And then there’s the matter of your moving out.”
He looked out through the window. She kept talking, now she was the calm and pleasant one. She informed him that the house went with the job, that the church could help him find an apartment and a removal firm.
His breathing became heavy. His mouth a thin line. Every breath sounded like a snort down his nose.
He was gazing at her with contempt. She looked down at the table.
“Bloody hell,” he said. “Bloody hell, it’s enough to make you feel sick. Is it Stefan Wikström’s wife who can’t wait any longer? She never could stand the fact that Mildred had the biggest house.”
“Look, I don’t know anything about that. I…”
He slammed his hand down on the table.
“I’ve lost everything!”
He made a movement in the air with his fist, pulling himself together so as not to lose his self-control.
“Wait,” he said.
He disappeared through the kitchen door. Rebecka could hear his footsteps going up the stairs and across the floor above. After a while he came back, flung the bunch of keys onto the table as if it had been a bag of dog shit.
“Was there anything else?” he asked.
“Your moving out,” she said firmly.
And now she was looking him in the eye.
“How does it feel?” he asked. “How does it feel inside those fine clothes, when you’ve got a job like yours?”
She got up. Something changed in her face, it was a fleeting moment, but he’d seen it in this house many times. Silent anguish. He could see the answer in her eyes. Could hear it as clearly as if she’d spoken the words out loud. Like a whore.
She picked her gloves up from the table with stiff movements, slowly, as if she had to count them to make sure she had them all. One two. She picked up the big bunch of keys.
Erik Nilsson sighed heavily and rubbed his hand over his face.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Mildred would have given me a kick up the backside. What day is it today?”
When she didn’t reply he went on:
“A week, I’ll be out of here in a week.”
She nodded. He followed her to the door. Tried to think of something to say, it wasn’t exactly the time to ask if she’d like a coffee.
“A week,” he said to her departing back.
As if it could have made her feel happy.
Rebecka tottered away from the priest’s house. Although that was just the way it felt. She wasn’t actually tottering at all. Her legs and feet carried her away from the house with steady steps.
I’m nothing, she thought. There’s nothing left inside me. No human being, no judgment, nothing. I do whatever they ask me to do. Of course. The people at the office are all I’ve got. I tell myself I can’t cope with the idea of going back. But in fact I can’t cope with the idea of ending up on the outside. I’ll do anything, absolutely anything, to be allowed to belong.
She focused on the mailbox and didn’t notice the red Ford Escort driving up the track until it slowed down and turned in between the gateposts.
The car stopped.
Rebecka felt as if she’d had an electric shock.
Inspector Anna-Maria Mella climbed out of the car. They’d met before, when Rebecka was defending Sanna Strandgård. And it had been Anna-Maria Mella and her colleague Sven-Erik Stålnacke who’d saved her life that night.
Anna-Maria had been pregnant then, shaped like a cube; now she was slim. But broad-shouldered. She looked strong although she was so small. Her hair in the same thick plait down her back as before. White, even teeth in her brown, sunburned horse face. A pony policewoman.
“Hi there!” exclaimed Anna-Maria.
Then she fell silent. Her whole body was a question mark.
“I…” said Rebecka, lost her way and tried again. “My firm has some business with the different communities within the Swedish church, we’ve had a sales meeting and… and there were one or two things they needed some help with regarding the priest’s house and as we were up here anyway I’ve been to have a word with…”
She ended the sentence with a nod toward the house.
“But it’s got nothing to do with…” asked Anna-Maria.
“No, when I came up here I didn’t even know… no. What did you have?” asked Rebecka, trying to force a smile onto her face.
“A boy. I’ve just come back to work after my maternity leave, so I’m helping out with the investigation into Mildred Nilsson’s murder.”
Rebecka nodded. She looked up at the sky. It was completely empty. The bunch of keys weighed a ton in her pocket.
What am I? she thought. I’m not ill. I haven’t got an illness. Just lazy. Lazy and crazy. I have no words of my own to speak. The silence is eating its way inward.
“Funny old world, isn’t it?” said Anna-Maria. “First Viktor Strandgård and now Mildred Nilsson.”
Rebecka nodded again. Anna-Maria smiled. She seemed completely unconcerned about the other woman’s silence, but she was waiting patiently for Rebecka to say something.
“What do you think?” Rebecka managed to force out. “Is it somebody who’d been keeping a scrapbook about Viktor’s murder, and decided to make a sequel of their own?”
“Maybe.”
Anna-Maria gazed up into a pine tree. Heard a squirrel scampering up the trunk, but couldn’t see it. It stayed on the other side, reached the top and rustled about among the branches.
Maybe it was some lunatic who was inspired by Viktor Strandgård’s death. Or it might have been somebody who knew her. Who knew she’d conducted a service in the church, knew what time it finished and that she’d go down to where she kept the boat. She didn’t defend herself. And why did somebody hang her up? It’s like in the Middle Ages, when they used to impale people’s heads on a spike. As a warning to others.
“How are you?” asked Anna-Maria.
Rebecka replied that she was fine. Just fine. Things had been difficult immediately afterward, of course, but she’d had help and support. Anna-Maria said that was good, really good.
Anna-Maria looked at Rebecka. She thought about that night when the police went to the cottage in Jiekajärvi and found her. She hadn’t been able to go with them because her contractions had started. But she’d often dreamed about it afterward. In the dream she was riding a snowmobile through the darkness and the blizzard. Rebecka lay bleeding on the sledge. The snow spraying up into her face. All the time she was afraid of running into something. Then she got stuck. Standing there in the cold. The snowmobile roaring in vain. She usually woke up with a start. Lay there gazing at Gustav, sleeping and snuffling between her and Robert. On his back. Completely secure. Arms by his sides, pointing upward at a ninety degree angle, typical of new babies. Everything worked out fine, she usually thought. Everything worked out fine.
Everything didn’t work out fine at all, she thought now.
“So are you off back to Stockholm now?” she asked.
“No, I’ve taken a bit of time off.”
“Your grandmother had a house in Kurravaara, is that where you’re staying?”
“No, I… no. Here in the village. The pub’s got a couple of chalets.”
“So you haven’t been to Kurravaara?”
“No.”
Anna-Maria looked searchingly at Rebecka.
“If you want some company we could go up there together,” she said.
Rebecka thanked her, but said no. It was just that she hadn’t had time yet, she explained. They said good-bye. Before they parted Anna-Maria said:
“You saved those children.”
Rebecka nodded.
That’s no consolation, she thought.
“What happened to them?” she asked. “I reported suspected abuse to social services.”
“I don’t think anything came of that investigation,” said Anna-Maria. “Then the whole family moved away.”
Rebecka thought about the girls. Sara and Lova. She cleared her throat and tried to think about something else.
“That sort of thing’s so expensive for the community, you see,” said Anna-Maria. “The investigations cost money. Having the children looked after costs a whole heap of money. Putting the case through the county court costs money. From the child’s point of view it would be better if the whole apparatus was run by the state. But at the moment the best solution for the community is if the problem just goes away. Bloody hell, I’ve taken kids out of a fifty-two-square-meter war zone. Then you hear that the community’s bought the family a tenancy in Örkelljunga.”
She stopped. Noticed that she’d started babbling just because Rebecka Martinsson seemed to be so close to the edge.
As Rebecka walked on down toward the village bar, Anna-Maria gazed after her. She was seized by a sudden longing for her children. Robert was at home with Gustav. She wanted to press her nose against Gustav’s soft skin, feel his strong little arms around her neck.
Then she took a deep breath and straightened her back. The sun on the yellow-white autumn grass. The squirrel, still busy up in the trees on the other side of the track. The smile poured back into her. It was never very far away. Time to talk to Erik Nilsson, the priest’s husband. Then she’d go home to her family.
* * *
Rebecka Martinsson was walking down toward the bar. Behind her, the forest was talking. Come over here, it said. Come and walk deep inside. I am endless.
She could imagine that walk.
Slender pines of beaten copper. The wind high up in the crown of the trees sounds like rushing water. Firs that look charred and blackened, covered in beard lichen. The sound of her steps: the rustle of dry reindeer lichen and organ-pipe lichen, the crunch of the pinecones eaten by the woodpecker. Sometimes you walk on a soft carpet of needles along an animal track. All you hear then is the sound of thin twigs cracking beneath your feet.
You walk and walk. At first the thoughts in your head are like a tangled skein of wool. The branches scrape against your face or catch in your hair. One by one the threads are drawn from the skein. Get caught in the trees. Fly away with the wind. In the end your head is empty. And you are transported. Through the forest. Over steaming bogs, heavy with scent, where your feet sink between the still frozen tussocks and your body feels sticky. Up a hill. Fresh breeze. The dwarf birch creeping, glowing on the ground. You lie down. And then the snow begins to fall.
She suddenly remembered what it was like when she was a child. That longing to be transported into the endlessness of it all, like a Red Indian. The mountain buzzards soaring above her head. In her dreams she had a rucksack on her back and slept under the open sky. Her grandmother’s dog Jussi was always there. Sometimes she traveled by canoe.
She remembered standing in the forest, pointing. Asking her father: “If I go that way, where will I end up?” And her father’s reply. New poetry, depending on which direction the finger was pointing in, and where they were. “Tjålme.” “Latteluokta.” “Across the river Rauta.” “Through Vistasvagge and over the Dragon’s Back.”
She had to stop. Almost thought she could see them. Hard to remember what her father’s face had actually looked like. It’s because she has seen too many photographs of him. They’ve pushed out her own memories. But she recognizes the shirt. Cotton, but soft as silk from all the washing. White background, black and red lines making a checked pattern. The knife in his belt. The leather dark and shiny. The beautifully patterned bone handle. Herself, no more than seven, she knows that for certain. Blue machine-knitted hat with a pattern of white snowflakes. Sturdy boots. She has a knife in her belt too, a small one. It’s mostly for appearance’s sake. Although she has tried to use it. Wanted to carve something with it. Figures. Like Astrid Lindgren’s Emil in
Lönneberga.
But it’s too feeble. If she’s going to use the knife she has to borrow Daddy’s. It’s better when she wants to split wood or sharpen kebab sticks, sometimes for carving, although it never quite turns out to be anything.