The Second Deadly Sin Read online

  But she looks at him. He is sleeping as if somebody had hit him hard on the head. If only he had chatted to her for a while, as they used to do. If only he had whispered that he loved her, and then fallen fast asleep like a child in her arms. No, he simply turned over on his back and fell asleep like a shot. She gets up and washes her private parts. Goes back to bed. Contemplates him a while longer. It’s impossible to sleep.

  Her thoughts are like gravel. She breathes in gravel with every breath she takes. Soon the whole of her is nothing more than a pile of grey slag from the mine. He doesn’t love her. She means nothing to him.

  In the end she gets dressed and goes home in the middle of the night. He sleeps on.

  *

  A layer of ice is now covering Lake Luossajärvi. It thickens quickly in the middle of a cold night like this one. It crackles and rumbles. The Lapps have a special word for this. Jåmidit, when the ice sings and rumbles even without anybody walking on it.

  All the way home Elina can hear the sad singing of the ice in her ears; it is sobbing, crackling and sighing.

  “Pretty sure,” said Marianne Aspehult at Be-We’s, pointing at the passport photograph of Jocke Häggroth. “Well, absolutely certain, in fact. He sometimes shops here, but I don’t remember if he’s bought a top-up card in the past week or so.”

  Mella looked around the shop. Very pleasant indeed. She had never set foot in it before, although it had been here forever.

  Aspehult looked at the photographs of the two men who Sivving had said owned a fishing hut in the Abisko area.

  “Well, it’s possible that they also shop here now and then, but I don’t recall having seen them. But I don’t think … no.”

  Mella nodded.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I really must ask you,” Aspehult said. “Has this got anything to do with the murder in Kurravaara?”

  Mella shook her head apologetically.

  “No, of course not,” Aspehult said. “Take a few goodies if you fancy anything. Or an evening paper.”

  People are so nice, Mella thought as she left the shop. Helpful and kind. Most of them don’t spend their time killing their neighbours.

  Then she rang von Post. It was time to bring in Häggroth for questioning.

  Martinsson drove down to Jukkasjärvi. Sol-Britt’s son Matti had been employed by the ice workshop linked to the Ice Hotel.

  That was where they sawed up blocks of ice to use when they began building the hotel every winter, provided the sculptors with blocks from which they created their sculptures, and carved patterns into the ice in accordance with their instructions, using special machines. They also made drinking glasses out of ice, plates of ice, everything you could think of that could be used in the Ice Hotel when the tourists started arriving.

  It was like an ordinary workshop: the sound was the same, the rasping and roaring of saws and drills. The big difference was the cold.

  I ought to have brought my quilted jacket, she thought.

  Martinsson eventually tracked down Hannes Karlsson. He was the one who had found Matti Uusitalo after he had been run over. The records of the inquiry were somewhat scanty, but it had said that they had been workmates.

  Karlsson was working with a small saw. He was making five-centimetre-long polished crystals of ice.

  When he saw her approaching, he took off his protective goggles and earmuffs.

  “These will become part of a cut-glass chandelier – but instead of glass it will be made of ice. We make all the individual pieces with the ice we have in store. Then the artists and the interior decorators will apply the finishing touches. We’re waiting for winter to come now, so we can build the hotel itself. When it’s finished I usually move up to Björkis and work there when the skiing season begins.”

  He had a close-clipped black beard and was still suntanned. He looked strong, despite his thin, sinewy body. He regarded Martinsson with unconcealed interest.

  He’s one of those adventurous souls, Martinsson thought. Someone who drives dog teams and goes canoeing down waterfalls. One of those restless types.

  “Let’s go somewhere more comfortable,” he said with a nod of the head that indicated he realised she was feeling the cold. “It’s time I took a break anyway.”

  “It was a terrible tragedy,” he said when they had installed themselves in the coffee room with a mug each. “It’s three years now since Matti was run over and killed. Marcus was four. If Sol-Britt hadn’t been there … And now … A terrible tragedy, as I said … How is he?”

  “I can’t really judge that,” Martinsson said. Then she took a sip of coffee and continued. “One of the police officers is looking after him. Matti and you were workmates, is that right?”

  “It certainly is.”

  “Can you tell me about … you know, when Matti … It was you who found him, I gather.”

  “Yes, of course. I thought you’d been asking Sol-Britt about that.”

  She waited patiently.

  “What can I say? He died while he was doing his regular jog. Three mornings a week he used to run all the way from Kurra to Kiruna. He’d have a shower and get changed at my place – I lived in Kiruna at that time – and then he’d join me in the car and I’d drive out to Jukkas. In the afternoon, after work, he’d run back home from my place.”

  “Was it always the same days of the week?”

  “Yep! Monday, Thursday and Friday.”

  Martinsson nodded encouragingly.

  “What can I say?” he said again. “It was a Thursday. We had to finish work on stuff to send to the ice bar in Copenhagen, so we didn’t want to be late. There was no sign of him. I got a bit impatient and rang. Sol-Britt answered. And she was worried because he’d set off ages ago and ought to have arrived at my place by then. I called work and told them I was going to be late, and then I drove all the way to Kurravaara. Still no sign of him. I drove back – and then I saw him: it was on that side of the road that he was lying. In the bushes. It was early summer, so the leaves were still quite small – if it had been high summer I’d never have seen him. He’d been sent flying quite a long way from the road. Why are you asking about this?”

  “I don’t know, I just have a funny feeling in my stomach.” Martinsson made an attempt to laugh. “But maybe it’s just something I’ve eaten.”

  “Maybe I’ve eaten the same thing … You know, I thought it was a bit odd. It was in the middle of a straight stretch of road. Broad daylight. And he was wearing a reflective jacket. But let’s face it, there are drunks, and drivers as high as kites, and others who fall asleep at the wheel. I asked the police if they were intending to check all the cars in Kurravaara. They were; but you know what it’s like in the villages – everybody knows which of the old blokes definitely shouldn’t have driving licences but are out on the road anyway, half blind and half asleep. And everybody knows who drives into Kiruna at that unearthly hour in the morning, half past six – there aren’t very many. ‘Check up on the obvious suspects,’ I said. There can’t be all that many of them, I thought. But they didn’t. ‘If we have a suspect,’ they said. But they just wrote it off. A hit-and-run accident.”

  He stood up and fetched some more coffee for both of them.

  “I actually ferreted around in Kurravaara myself. I suppose I was in shock after finding him, but I didn’t understand that. I took a few days’ leave from work – Göran said I didn’t need a sick note or anything like that. We were all in a bit of a state. And we thought about the young lad. I mean, everybody knew that Sol-Britt …”

  He held a pretend glass in his hand and mimed emptying it in one gulp.

  “. . . and we thought that she wouldn’t be able to look after him. We knew that his mother didn’t want anything to do with him. Matti had a hell of a time with her. He thought she would want to meet her son now and then, you know – a week in the summer, at least. But no. She simply washed her hands of him. Her own bloody son. But Sol-Britt pulled herself together. Someho
w or other. When the police had talked to me and it became obvious that they weren’t going to lift a finger to … Well, I got into my own car and did the rounds in Kurravaara. I asked somebody I know down there about who sets off for work early, and who’s not fit to drive a car but does so nevertheless. I checked at least ten cars. I was looking for a dent, or for a car that had been thoroughly washed and cleaned …”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. So I don’t know. I suppose it was something I needed to do to get some peace of mind.”

  Martinsson said nothing. They sat in silence for a while.

  But if it wasn’t an accident, Martinsson thought. Everybody knew that he ran to Kiruna three mornings every week. If I’d wanted to kill him, I’d have done exactly what his murderer did. That way you avoid having the police poking around as well. If everybody thinks it was a hit-and-run accident, the police are not going to spend much time on it.

  “Hello there!” Karlsson said in the end. He waved his hand in front of Martinsson’s face. “Have you been on a trip to outer space?” He smiled.

  “Yes,” she said with a grin. “Thank you for your time. And thank you for the coffee.”

  “Are you any the wiser?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug.

  She stood up.

  “Did you know he was related to Hjalmar Lundbohm?” Karlsson asked in an attempt to hold her interest. “Lundbohm was his maternal great-grandfather.”

  “Yes, I’d heard that. And the teacher Lundbohm had the child with – what does that make her? His maternal great-grandmother, I suppose – she was murdered.”

  “Oh dear, I didn’t know that. Anyway, we shall be having a surströmming party at the inn on Friday – they serve excellent fermented Baltic herring. Staff and friends. A first-class live band. Would you like to join us?”

  “Sorry, I can’t,” Martinsson said untruthfully. “My boyfriend’s coming up to visit me on Friday.”

  And if I’m unlucky he might just do that, she thought.

  *

  Martinsson got into her car and started surfing through the radio channels. She stopped when she came across the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on one of the frequencies. Just as she stretched out her hand to turn up the volume, Mella rang. Martinsson turned down the volume instead, and answered.

  “I think we’ve got him,” Mella announced, somewhat out of breath. “The bloke who was having an affair with Sol-Britt Uusitalo. I just wanted you to know. We’re on our way now to search his house and all that.”

  “Good,” Martinsson said.

  She could hear that she sounded unhappy about it, but told herself that it was not Mella’s fault.

  “How did you track him down?” she said, mainly to show they had her support.

  “We traced his pay-as-you-go top-up card to the place where he bought it, Be-We’s. And then we saw that he’d been using his mobile in central Kiruna during the day, and in Kurra in the evenings.”

  “So he lives in Kurravaara, then,” Martinsson said.

  “Yes,” said Mella. “Jocke Häggroth. “Is it somebody you—”

  “No! I know next to nobody in Kurravaara.”

  Silence reigned. Both women were determined not to get angry. And both were wondering if they ought to say sorry, but decided not to.

  “We had intended to arrest him at work,” Mella said after a while.

  “But Sven-Erik rang and they said he was at home, ill.”

  “Ill, eh? No doubt he’s in bed with galloping angst.”

  “Presumably. Anyway, we’ll get him now.”

  “Good luck,” Martinsson said. “And just so that you hear it from me first, I’m checking up on that hit-and-run accident. When Sol-Britt’s son died.”

  “O.K. …”

  It sounded as if Mella wanted to say something more, but she didn’t.

  “Thank you for ringing,” Martinsson said in the end

  “Oh, it was really … It was nothing.”

  “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” had come to an end on the radio.

  Well, well, well, Martinsson thought. It won’t do any harm for me to keep myself occupied.

  She looked out at the hunchbacked birch trees that were stretching their spindly arms up towards the cloudless blue sky. Just a few yellow and red leaves were still clinging to them. Flocks of black birds were rising and spreading themselves out as they soared skywards.

  Martinsson dialled Pohjanen’s number.

  Mella’s Ford Escort shot along the road down towards Kurravaara like the ball in a pinball machine. With her in the car were Stålnacke, Olsson and Rantakyrö. They were on their way to apprehend Jocke Häggroth, who lived just outside the village, in Lähenperä.

  Mella’s colleagues exchanged glances. She was driving like a madwoman.

  “Somebody might be coming the other way,” Stålnacke said, but she did not seem to hear him.

  “What about the kids?” Rantakyrö said.

  Did she have no mothering instincts? Who would look after her youngsters if she killed herself?

  District Prosecutor von Post had been left behind in his new Mercedes G.L.K.

  “They are six and ten,” Mella said, who thought he was asking about Häggroth’s children. “Häggroth himself is fifteen years younger than Sol-Britt, but that’s not a problem, of course.”

  “What gets into people?” she asked her colleagues.

  Nobody answered. They were all too busy hanging on for dear life as the car flew round the bends.

  “I would never have time to have a fling with somebody on the side. I’m only too pleased to get together with my old man now and then.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be him, of course,” she continued as the car left the main road and started bouncing along the dirt road.

  The others instinctively pressed their feet down onto the floor and slammed the brakes on – to no effect.

  *

  It was a timber-clad house, painted red. Not far from the house was a barn and an adjacent cowshed. And a wooden smithy down by the shore.

  The farm had been handed down from one generation to the next in Häggroth’s family, but when his parents died he and his wife had clear-felled the forest, divided the ground up into lots, and sold them off.

  So they were not short of money, according to the villagers.

  It was his wife who answered the door. She had her hair gathered in a bun, dyed blonde but with dark streaks, and was wearing tracksuit bottoms. A lot of make-up around her eyes, and all kinds of fuzzy tattoos crept out from underneath her wide T-shirt in all directions – roses, lizards, tribals and runic symbols.

  “Jocke is ill,” she said, looking over Mella’s shoulder at the other three people clambering stiff-legged out of the car. “What do you want?”

  Von Post drove in through the gate and parked quite a long way away from Mella’s car. He stepped out, adjusted his long overcoat and brushed a speck of dirt from his paisley-patterned scarf.

  “He must come with us even so,” Mella said. “And you should put on a jacket and some shoes because we’re going to search the house.”

  “Come off it,” fru Häggroth said. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  But she put on a jacket that was hanging within arm’s reach, and slipped her feet into a pair of boots as she shouted to her husband.

  He looked like death warmed up. A pallid face, unshaven and red-eyed. Dark rings under his eyes. He said nothing when he saw the plain-clothed police officers. Seemed not to be surprised.

  “We want you to come with us,” Mella said. “Is there anybody else in the house?”

  “No,” said his wife.

  Her eyes shifted between all the people spread out over her premises. Rantakyrö disappeared into the barn, Olsson into the garage.

  “The kids are at school. Can somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “Your husband had an affair with Sol-Britt Uusitalo,” von Post said. �
�And now we want him to come with us and answer a few questions. And we shall search through your house.”

  Fru Häggroth laughed mirthlessly.

  “What a lot of rubbish!” And, after a pause, she said, “You’re lying.”

  She turned to look at her husband.

  “Say that they are lying.”

  Häggroth looked down at the floor.

  “Would you like a jacket?” Mella said.

  The devil take von Post. Why did he have to mention that?

  “Go on, tell them they’re lying,” fru Häggroth yelled shrilly.

  There followed a few seconds of eerie silence. Then she punched him on the chest.

  “Look me in the eye, you bastard! And say that they are lying! Say something, at least!”

  Häggroth raised his arm to protect his head.

  “I need some shoes,” he said.

  His wife looked at him in disgust. She put her hand over her mouth.

  “You fucking bastard,” she said. “You little creep. That old bag … For Christ’s sake. This can’t be true.”

  Mella reached out for the biggest pair of shoes standing in the hall and placed them in front of Häggroth.

  He put them on and walked cautiously through the porch. Mella prepared to catch him if he should fall over.

  “I’m sorry,” he said without turning his head.

  His wife knocked over a chair standing in the porch.

  “You’re sorry!” she yelled. “Sorry?”

  She grabbed hold of a ceramic pot that was standing upside down in a dish and serving as an ashtray, and threw it at her husband’s back.

  He stumbled, and took a step forward so as not to lose his balance. Stålnacke put a hand behind his back and led him to the car.

  “Calm down,” Mella said to fru Häggroth. “Otherwise we shall have to—”

  “Calm down?” Fru Häggroth screamed.

  Then she caught up with her husband, who was about to get into the car through the door being held open for him by Stålnacke. She attacked him from behind. Threw herself at him and started scratching his face. When Stålnacke took hold of her she hung onto her husband’s clothes and refused to let go.