The Second Deadly Sin Page 14

They could hardly cram themselves into the car quickly enough. But they had not left the drive before Stålnacke exploded.

  “Fucking hell! Stop the car! I need to shit! Christ almighty, I can’t wait. Stop now or it’ll be all over the back seat …”

  He ran back to the house.

  His colleagues watched in the rear-view mirror as Maja Larsson opened the door. There was a pause before she stepped to one side and allowed him in.

  Stålnacke sat on top of the toilet lid. He didn’t actually need to empty his bowels at all. After two minutes, he flushed the lavatory. Then he flushed it again. He washed his hands, and went out. Maja Larsson and her boyfriend were sitting at the kitchen table. He nodded to the man, then said to Larsson, “All your guesses were right.”

  She tossed her head to indicate that she could not care less, and stubbed out her cigarette on the inside of a jar lid, dropped the butt into the glass jar and screwed on the lid.

  “He fixed it so that Martinsson was dropped from the investigation team. And we can do nothing about it. Anyway, sorry about all this …”

  He gestured towards the kitchen.

  “But you can be sure that we shall do everything we can to catch whoever did it.”

  Her mouth twitched, and she looked the other way.

  “Thank you for letting me use your lav. I’m getting old, dammit!

  Constipated for a week, and then suddenly … Anyway, I’d better go.”

  “Wait a moment.”

  She was still looking away as she continued.

  “She was having an affair with a married man who lives here in the village. As you know, you have to be careful about what you say to the police sometimes. Before you know where you are, the local kids are throwing stones through your windows. I expect you think I’m a coward. But who cares who she went to bed with? She’s dead. She’s not going to come back to life. And as for that jumpedup little prat who wants to use her to further his career prospects – do we really have to read in the newspapers about who she went to bed with? For Christ’s sake …”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. All I do know is that he works in Kiruna. And lives here in the village. And that he’s married with children.”

  *

  “I thought you were never going to come back,” Rantakyrö said to Stålnacke when he got back to the car.

  “Huh,” Stålnacke said as he struggled with his seat belt. “It was a three-kilo dollop. Hell’s bells. I’ve been out of action for a whole week – then suddenly: whoosh! You’d never believe how happy it made me. I was thinking of having the little blighter christened.”

  Von Post accelerated away, gravel clattering against the chassis.

  Mella gave Stålnacke a knowing look. He nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Krister Eriksson stood alone in his kitchen and held up his tin of chewing tobacco.

  “I’m giving up,” he proclaimed to the whole universe. “I’ve had enough. No going back to baccy.”

  He threw the tin into the rubbish bin under the sink, lifted out the plastic bag and tied it in a tight knot, then carried it out to the big bin by the car port.

  Inside the house Marcus was finding it hard to settle down. He crawled about with the dogs and seemed able to carry on playing forever. Eriksson let him be. After all, it was when you went to bed that fear and horror started to prey on your mind. The same applied to adults as well. And the boy could sleep for as long as he liked the next morning.

  It was not until after eleven o’clock that he came crawling up to Eriksson and announced that the Wild Dog was tired.

  They brushed their teeth, despite the fact that the other dogs didn’t need to. But then the Wild Dog made it clear that he didn’t want to sleep in a bed under a duvet.

  “The Wild Dog wants to sleep outside in the dog kennel,” he said.

  So Eriksson set up his winter tent in the garden, next to the dog kennel.

  Then Eriksson and Marcus sat in the dog kennel with a torch. Vera, Tintin and Roy were scampering around them. The dogs were thrilled to bits to have company – and with the reindeer skins Eriksson had laid out over the floor. The place smelled reassuringly of dog, and somewhat pungently of reindeer skin.

  Eriksson read aloud from The Little Prince, lighting up the illustrations with his torch.

  “The little prince was given a fox,” Eriksson said. “Just as I got you, the Wild Dog.”

  “My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike and all men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow.”

  “Can I have a look at the fox?” Marcus said.

  Eriksson found a page with a picture of the fox, and Marcus placed his finger on it.

  “Read some more,” he said.

  “Do you see the grain-fields down yonder?” the fox said. “I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold.”

  “You don’t have any hair,” Marcus said.

  “No, but you have,” Eriksson said, stroking a hand over the boy’s blonde hair.

  Don’t get too attached to him, Eriksson told his heart sternly as his hand caressed the boy’s soft hair. He carried on reading.

  “Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat …”

  Marcus looked again at the picture of the fox. Then they turned back to the page they had reached in the story.

  The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

  “Please – tame me,” he said.

  “I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”

  “One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me …”

  Now Marcus was leaning heavily against Eriksson’s side.

  “Are you asleep?”

  “No,” the boy said, his voice slurred and sleepy. “Read more. The Wild Dog wants to hear more about the fox.”

  “What must I do, to tame you?” the little prince said.

  “You must be very patient,” the fox said. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me – like that – in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day …”

  Marcus had fallen asleep. He was breathing deeply. When Eriksson laid him gently down and zipped up the sleeping bag, he mumbled, “What happens next?”

  “The fox tells the little prince a secret,” Eriksson whispered. “But we’ll read about that tomorrow. I shall be sleeping in the tent just outside the kennel. Vera will stay in here with you. Come out to me if you wake up during the night, O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” said Marcus, almost in his sleep. “The Wild Dog is just like the fox.”

  Eriksson sat still while the boy drifted off into dreamland. Then he crawled out of the kennel. Frost was taking possession of the grass. The night was dark but starry.

  No, my friend, he thought. I’m the one who’s just like the fox.

  MONDAY, 24 OCTOBER

  Anger was hurtling around in Martinsson’s dreams, and eventually woke her up. Her mobile told her it was five o’clock – early, but not the middle of the night, at least.

  But I can wake up whenever I like, she thought. And take a morning nap. I’m not going
to work. They can go to hell.

  Björnfot had simply taken away her investigation and handed it over to von Post.

  What did he think she was going to do? Smile politely, lick her sores in silence and submissively take on his confounded tax case? Did he think she was stupid?

  I’ll never go there again, she thought.

  The Brat was lying at the bottom of her bed, snoozing. When she moved he woke up and wagged his tail a couple of times. He was never angry when he woke up. She might just as well get up and light the stove.

  The dog ran to the door and wanted to pee.

  “O.K., O.K.,” she said, putting on her shoes.

  It was dark outside, the way it was only in late autumn, just before the first snow. A sort of decaying blackness that sucked up the pale light of the moon, the lights from all the houses in the village where people were living their lives and everything was continuing just as it always did, despite what had happened. The river was skulking in the background, silent and autumnally calm. All the boats and jetties were dragged up onto its bank, and the ice would form any night now.

  The Brat disappeared into the darkness. Martinsson stood in the barely existent light from the lamp over the porch. She was restless and dying for a cigarette.

  Tell me what I should do, she thought. Where I should go.

  She suddenly heard the dog barking. A mixture of barking and growling. Fear, defence, warning. She could hear him scampering back and forth. Then a voice.

  “Hello, Rebecka. It’s only me. Maja.”

  The light of a torch became visible by the wall of the cowshed.

  “There, there, little dog. Were you scared? I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The Brat circled around her until Martinsson called him. She walked together with him towards the torchlight. He was growling deep down in his throat. People who lurked around in the dark in his territory were not to be trusted.

  “It’s only me,” Maja Larsson said again, shining the torch into her own face which looked very white with dark, ghostly shadows around her eyes.

  She lowered the torch and the beam of light fell onto a mass of cigarette ends lying on the ground. The smell of cold smoke mixed with the autumnal scents of organic decay.

  How long has she been standing here? Martinsson wondered.

  “Forgive me,” Larsson said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  She greeted the dog and allowed him to lick her hands.

  “Is it my fault? Am I the reason they’re taking you off the case?”

  Martinsson shook her head – then realised that she couldn’t be seen in the darkness.

  “No,” she said.

  Larsson had switched off the torch, put it in her pocket and lit a cigarette.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” she said.

  Her voice was deep and hoarse in a pleasant way. A real voice of the night. It was appropriate for the darkness.

  Martinsson had released the Brat, who could be heard scuttling around here and there.

  “And I’ve been thinking about your mum. It’s as if she were with me all the time. Now as well – I dreamed about her. And I felt obliged to come here and wait for you to get up. I thought you would be up early, to let the dogs out. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that Sol-Britt had been having an affair. I don’t know who with. But I obviously should have mentioned it even so. But I didn’t want to get involved.”

  “That’s O.K. They’d have taken me off the case even so.”

  “That prosecutor is a right bastard. He couldn’t care less who murdered Sol-Britt, he only wants to …”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mum—”

  “Hang on,” interrupted Martinsson in a pained voice. “I know you mean well, but I don’t want to hear about her.”

  She had to stop talking. She had a pain in her throat.

  What’s happening? she thought.

  “Just let me tell you this,” said Larsson in a low voice. “If you give me five minutes, I’ll promise to leave you in peace from then on. Then she might leave me in peace.”

  Martinsson said nothing.

  “Your mum,” Larsson began. “I know what they say about her here in the village. She rolled up here from Kiruna, pretty and well made-up. Started a relationship with your dad. Grew tired of him. Took you with her and moved back to Kiruna. They say it was her fault that he started drinking, no doubt you’ve heard about that. Then she moved to Åland to live with a new man, and left you here. Had children with her new bloke, then killed herself in a road accident.”

  “No,” Martinsson said, “she was run over. She wasn’t even in the car, she had got out …”

  “Yes. Your younger brother as well. She had him in his pram.”

  “But I never met him, so …”

  “I have to tell you. People say your dad was too nice before he met her, but the fact is that he was too weak. That’s not the same thing. For instance, he sometimes worked for a haulage contractor in Gällivare: when it was time for him to be paid, they opened up a container full of tools that they were taking to a building site, and he was allowed to take whatever he wanted instead of being given any money. As you’ll have gathered, the tools didn’t belong to them anyway – Mikko realised that as well. They let him to steal while they just stood there, watching. By Christ, he hated every moment of that. But he simply couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. Sometimes there was a wreck of a car that would be worth something if only somebody could fix this and that. Your dad was hopeless at mending cars – there were two old bangers rusting away in their garden. Your grandma despaired, but she was only strong in her home territory, and was incapable of asserting herself in the world at large. He was paid for that in diesel – the haulier could claim a tax rebate on the value of the diesel, but the payment to your dad was based on filling station prices. National insurance and pension contributions? You could forget that …”

  Larsson lit another cigarette from the glowing butt of the previous one. The Brat was digging away like a madman by the cowshed wall; they could hear him squealing in excitement. Presumably a field mouse. No doubt it was a hundred miles away by now, but the scent was quite fresh, of course, and totally irresistible.

  “And then he joined Sven Vajstedt’s company,” Larsson went on. “Sven had an excavator. Your dad took out a loan and bought a dumper truck. Sven was the one with the gift of the gab, and talked his way into setting up most of the jobs. Somehow or other, the costs were shared extremely scrupulously, but most of the income landed up in Sven’s pocket. Your mum put a stop to all that. She severed the link between Sven’s company and your dad and his dumper truck, and so he was able to do jobs off his own bat. She looked after the accounts, and would accept no payment except ready cash. She drummed up jobs for him as well – but the company belonged to your dad and his mother, and all the profits were ploughed into their house and garden. That was around the time when package holidays started to become popular. Your mum wanted to travel. But she got nowhere with that. Travel abroad? What was the point of that? …”

  Martinsson said nothing, didn’t move a muscle. Larsson chuckled.

  “She liked dancing. And they actually met at a dance. But then he stopped going out dancing with her. And as for the talk about him starting to drink after she’d left him – he drank too much before then as well.”

  “I don’t understand what you want from me,” Martinsson said, her voice non-committal.

  The Brat came running up to them and sat down beside Martinsson with a deep sigh.

  He wanted his breakfast.

  Larsson stamped on what was left of her cigarette.

  “I just wanted to tell you this. I’m sitting at the bedside of my dying mother. Sometimes I want it to be all over as quickly as possible. So that I can get away from Kurravaara. And her. People often have good cause to be angry. And I know you have. But then, life is so blasted short. Cheers.”

  She strode off like an elk. Disappeared i
nto the darkness. Martinsson had no opportunity to respond. But she couldn’t have done anyway. Her voice was stuck fast in her throat.

  What’s going on? she asked herself. I’ve had enough of this. I must be out of my mind, she thought as she went back into the house. Why on earth did I come back here?

  She saw traces of her dad in this house all the time. The spot on the door frame he used to hold on to when he pulled off his boots. Her mum engrossed in a weekly magazine at the kitchen table. Her grandma marching resolutely down the drive, always on the way to tell somebody off – children or animals, workmen taking a break, a neighbour desperate for a coffee.

  If only I had somebody to hug me, she thought. Until it all blows over.

  Perhaps she ought to phone Måns? – No, she wasn’t in a fit state to talk to him. What would be the point of sobbing?

  It wouldn’t help, she thought. He cannot put me to rights. All those who could help are dead.

  She checked her mobile. She had a text message. It was from Eriksson.

  Ring me as soon as you read this, it said. It’s about Marcus!

  On Saturday, 8 August 1914, Managing Director Lundbohm is due to host a crayfish party. The crayfish are transported live from the Östermalm Market Hall in Stockholm, in wooden crates filled with ice and sawdust. Lizzie reads up in her Hemmets kokbok how to cook them, and she and the girls grimace as they drop them, still alive, into the largest of the copper cauldrons and watch them turn red as they die a horrific death. She serves them in large dishes with crushed ice.

  Elina is one of the guests. She has sent off for a velvet bow tie to wear under her collar, and a long scarf, by mail order.

  Lundbohm has invited people who are important in their different ways to the community. All their efforts will now be recognised and encouraged. He gives a welcome speech and calls them his friends. Less than a week ago His Majesty the King announced that Sweden will maintain strict neutrality, so people are no longer gathering in the streets in an attempt to discover the latest news, ascertain the facts and spread rumours. The war will not last very long, all reasonable people agree on that. And Kiruna – indeed, Sweden as a whole – will be able to earn money as a result of the war, Lundbohm predicts. Just as they did in the Crimean War.