The Second Deadly Sin Page 9

  “You’ve called a press conference. Now. I’d already called one. Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.”

  Von Post folded his arms.

  “I’m sorry that things developed rather quickly. I ought to have let you know that things had changed, of course. I’m in charge of the preliminary investigation, and I think the sooner we talk to the press, the better. You know what can happen otherwise. Our own minions will be bribed to leak information about the state of the investigation – the press will stop at nothing in order to sell a few more copies.”

  “You don’t need to tell me how to handle the press. In charge of the preliminary investigation? Don’t make me laugh. Martinsson is in charge of the preliminary investigation.”

  Von Post looked at Martinsson, who had joined them and was standing beside Mella.

  “No, she’s not,” he said coldly. “Alf Björnfot has appointed me.”

  Alf Björnfot was the chief prosecutor. When Martinsson moved back to Kiruna and stopped working as a lawyer in Stockholm, he was the one who had persuaded her to join the local prosecution service.

  Mella opened her mouth to say that he would never do anything as bloody stupid as that, but closed it again. It was obvious that von Post would not simply take over on his own initiative. He wasn’t an idiot. Or rather, he was an idiot: but not quite as stupid as that.

  Martinsson nodded, but said nothing. There was silence for a few seconds, until von Post broke it.

  “The basic fact is that you are too close to the dead woman. Alf asked me to take over.”

  “I didn’t know her,” Martinsson said.

  “No, but you lived in the same village, and sooner or later someone you know will turn up as a witness. It’s a sensitive situation. You must recognise that. Björnfot can’t allow anything like that to happen. There’s too big a risk that we would lay ourselves open to being challenged.”

  He looked hard at her. She did not move a muscle.

  She must have a bit of brain damage, he thought. A slight handicap.

  *

  Martinsson managed to keep her face expressionless. The strain made itself felt in her forehead, but she was pretty sure that her face betrayed no hint of it. They had swept her aside as if she were nothing more than old rubbish. And Björnfot had not even rung her to explain the circumstances.

  Don’t show any signs of being hurt, she told herself.

  That would be a bonus that von Post would really appreciate. He would gormandise on her wounded self-esteem like a vulture on its prey.

  “And then, of course, he’s a bit worried about you,” von Post said in a gentle tone of voice. “After all, you have form when it comes to illness, and a case like this one can be rather trying.”

  He leaned his head on one side, and stared at Martinsson.

  Don’t say a thing, Martinsson said to herself.

  Von Post sighed, and scrutinised his iPhone.

  “We’d better get started,” he said. “What did the pathologist have to say? In a nutshell.”

  “I don’t have time,” Martinsson said. “I have to go and fetch the dogs.”

  But she made no move. Simply stood there.

  “He said nothing,” Mella said. “He hadn’t even started.”

  Both women crossed their arms. They stood there without moving for a while. Then Martinsson dropped her arms, turned on her heel and left.

  Von Post watched her get into her car and drive away. So that’s that, he thought.

  One little nigger boy less, he thought.

  He found it hard to suppress his smile.

  Only one little nigger boy left now. And that bitch Mella had better not get it into her head that she can stir things up.

  “I’m not prepared to put up with any crap from you, Mella,” he said. “Either you can tell me what he said, or you’re off this case.”

  Mella stared at him in disbelief.

  “I mean what I say,” he said, continuing to look her in the eye. “A police officer who doesn’t keep the person in charge of the preliminary investigation informed has serious problems when it comes to cooperation. And I can assure you that if you behave in that way, I shall have you transferred to traffic duties at the drop of a hat. The chief constable of the province is a mate of mine – he rents my summer cottage at Riksgränsen.”

  He eyed her with raised eyebrows: how would she react?

  “But he didn’t have much to say,” Mella said.

  Her cheeks were bright pink.

  “She had probably been attacked with a hayfork. She died more or less straight away. There were an astonishing number of stabs. Or blows, or whatever you want to call them.”

  “Good,” von Post said, tapping her on the shoulder. “Let’s get going. It’s time for the press conference.”

  “Is there always as much snow here as this?”

  Fröken Elina Pettersson is gazing out over Kiruna from the elevated driver’s seat. She is alone up there, because the young driver has jumped down from the sleigh and is leading the horses, which are panting and steaming after their exertions.

  “No,” he said. “There’s always a lot, I suppose, but we’ve had a snowstorm lasting for three days. And then this morning there was a sudden change, and it’s been fine and warm. That’s a lesson you can learn straight away – you’re in the mountains now. The weather can change at a moment’s notice. Last Midsummer’s Eve we youngsters were at a dance out at Jukkas. It was warm and very pleasant. The leaves had just begun to come out. And at about eight o’clock in the evening it started snowing.”

  The memory of it makes him laugh.

  The whole town seems to be covered by a feather duvet. All the buildings have long white skirts. The snow has drifted up high against the walls. Young boys are shovelling away on the roofs for all they’re worth. They are naked from the waist up, but they’re wearing heavy winter boots.

  “If they don’t do that, the roofs will collapse when the thaw comes,” the young driver said.

  The street lights are wearing Cossack hats, the mountain with all the mine shafts is covered in snow and could be any old mountain. The birch branches are sagging down under the weight of the snow, forming fairytale doorways that glisten in the sunlight flowing through them. She is dazzled by the intense light, and finds it hard even to screw up her eyes and peep through the narrow slits. She has heard that one can become snowblind – is this what that means?

  “You’re supposed to wait in the school,” the driver said. “Somebody will come and fetch you. I’ll leave all your belongings on the sleigh, and take them down to where you’ll be living later.”

  So she sits waiting on her own in the school. It is Sunday, and the place is deserted. Strangely quiet. A thin veil of dust dances upwards in the beams of the sun shining in through the windows.

  There is a blackboard – excellent – and a lot of posters and wall-charts, motifs from the Bible, maps, pictures of plants and animals. She can already hear herself telling her pupils the most exciting stories from the Old Testament: David and Goliath, of course, Moses in the bulrushes, the heroic Queen Esther. She wonders how many of the plants and animals pictured can be found this far north. The children will press flowers for themselves, and learn about the flora and fauna in their own environment. There is a harmonium, and a guitar hanging on the wall.

  She wonders how long she will have to wait, for she feels very hungry. She has not eaten anything since finishing off the last of the sandwiches she had taken with her for the journey – and that was around two o’clock the previous day, almost twenty-four hours ago.

  She hears the sound of somebody closing the outside door, then stamping off the snow from his or her shoes out in the corridor. Then the classroom door opens and in comes a woman of about her own age. No, on second thoughts, even younger. Elina had been misled at first by her dumpy body, her ample bosom and rounded bottom. She is still young enough for it to be considered puppy fat, but this young girl will soon become a stout matron
. She is attractive, though. It occurs to Elina that they are similar in some respects – snub-nosed and round-cheeked. Although the new arrival has dark hair. Her brown eyes are inquisitive and expectant: she looks as if she is expecting Elina to tell her some good news.

  “Fröken Elina Pettersson?”

  She holds out her right hand. It is a little red and dry. Hard skin and very short nails. The hand of a hardworking woman.

  Like my mother’s, Elina thought, feeling guilty about her own soft, upper-class hand.

  “I’m Managing Director Lundbohm’s housekeeper, Klara Andersson. But you can call me Lizzie, like all my friends do. Busy Lizzie! I mean, there’s no point in being formal if we’re going to be sharing the same lodgings. Come.”

  She takes hold of Elina’s arm and leads her out into the snowy sunshine. The pace is fast, and Elina finds herself almost having to jog. Lizzie chatters away as if they have been friends forever.

  “At last, that’s all I can say. I’ve told the Managing Director a hundred times that what I want is a place of my own. I’ve been sleeping in the maids’ dormitory in the boss’s house until now. But with all the guests he always has as well! Artists and businessmen and mine managers, and lots of those adventure-loving tourists who really must explore the mountains and get lost and have to be rescued. First you have to make sure that they can eat and drink and be waited on – and that can be at any time of day or night: the boss’s little mother did a terrific job of spoiling him when he was a kid. And then, when you can collapse into bed at last, knowing that you’ll have to be up again, slaving away after only an hour or two’s sleep, the drunken overnight guests stagger in and start scratching and growling like dogs outside your bedroom door! Ugh! Disgusting dirty old men! The door’s locked and bolted, of course, but you don’t bloody dare to sleep! Not Lundbohm, I hasten to say – he has never … Anyway, I have a place of my own at last.”

  She dangles a key in front of Elina’s nose.

  “I expect you’re used to having a place of your own. But there’s a shortage of accommodation in Kiruna. You have to share here.”

  She clings onto Elina’s arm.

  “And I’m delighted to share with you. I could see that the moment I met you!”

  *

  The place is called B12 – short for building number twelve. It’s a so-called tin box. It’s almost impossible to see that the walls are green, as they are covered by ice and snow. The tin roof is red, Lizzie informs Elina.

  “Just wait and see how it gleams in the summer, thanks to the midnight sun! It’s so beautiful here!”

  Their flat comprises a large kitchen and a living room upstairs. No furniture. A simple wooden floor.

  “A stove!” exclaims Lizzie. “A real iron stove with an oven!”

  She inspects the Husqvarna stove. The hotplates seem to be in working order, as is the ash door. And there are two special baking plates.

  Lizzie turns to look at Elina with a broad smile.

  “We can bake every morning. And sell stuff to the labourers who work in the mine or at the ironworks during the week. If you and I sleep down here in the kitchen, we can rent out the living room – there’s enough space there to sleep four people. During the day we can stand their mattresses on end and make sufficient room for a drop-leaf table with two chairs. So you can read and work there, or have sessions with your pupils. I mean, the tenants won’t come back home until eight or nine o’clock at night. Maybe a bit earlier if they have their dinner here – that would give us a bit of extra income. But if we only give them bed and breakfast, we would earn eight kronor a week from them. And then we’d earn a bit more from selling bread as well.”

  Having heard all this talk about bread and breakfast and dinner, Elina has to sit down – she’s so hungry. She flops down onto the firewood bin. It dawns on Lizzie the state she’s in.

  “What an idiot I am!” she exclaims, taking hold of Elina’s head with both hands and kissing her on the forehead. “I ought to have realised.”

  She instructs Elina not to move from the spot – she’ll be back directly.

  While Lizzie is away, Elina feels her body filling up with happiness. It is as if the early spring sunshine is flowing through her veins, a stream of gold. She has acquired a friend, she can feel it. A cheerful, irrepressible, lovely friend. Who has hurried away because Elina “must get something solid in her belly”!

  Elina looks around. That’s where the kitchen sofa must stand, the wooden bench that converts into a double bed. There must be rugs on the floor, and the walls need painting – white, obviously. Everything must be simple but tasteful, just as Ellen Key recommends. And there must be geraniums on the window ledges in the summer, of course.

  She recalls all the lonely evenings and Sundays she has endured over the last three years. Never again.

  Lizzie comes back, accompanied by a young girl who works as a housemaid. They are laden with cleaning equipment: aprons, buckets, scouring cloths, soft soap, a big cauldron for heating up water, and brushes. She has some sandwiches for Elina, and a piece of dried, salted reindeer meat. She takes a knife and cuts the almost black meat into thin slices.

  “It tastes a bit different if you’re not used to it, but it warms the cockles of your heart. Try a bit. You’ve only got your posh travelling clothes, but I thought I could give this place a thorough clean …”

  Elina bursts out laughing. Does Lizzie think she is so posh that she doesn’t know how to do the cleaning? Her clothes can be washed, after all. If Lizzie would be so good as to hand over an apron, she will soon see what her new friend is capable of!

  Lizzie laughs as well, and says that she has not yet come across anybody who is better than she is at cleaning. The housemaids can look after Lundbohm this evening. She has produced a steak from the larder and no guests are expected, so she and Elina can brush and scrub away until midnight, no problem.

  Then they start cleaning. There is only the kitchen and a living room, and with some help from the housemaid it is all done in no time. They go out into the garden and fill the cauldron with snow, then heat it up on the stove. They use a mop to clean the ceiling, dust the walls and doors, and get down on their knees to scrub the floor. The neighbour from the flat downstairs comes up to inform them politely that it has started raining in the room down below, so could they please take it easy with all the water. They go over everything again with lots of cloths and a modicum of clean water, then polish the window panes with newspaper. Steam is gushing forth from the floors and the cauldron – the little flat resembles a sauna. They open all the windows wide, and the fresh air mixes with the smell of soft soap. All the time they are singing at the top of their voices: hymns and folk songs about mothers who murder their children, unhappy love, and poverty-stricken children who die of an endless stream of afflictions.

  In the afternoon two removal men arrive with Lizzie’s furniture: a kitchen sofa bed exactly as Elina had envisaged it, with mattresses, covers and pillows; a small drop-leaf table, two Windsor-style chairs, a commode, a washbasin and a water jug. A large pile of rugs and tablecloths. Two chests full of goodness only knows what.

  Lizzie and Elina sit down on the firewood bin, each of them with a traditional wooden mug of hot coffee. Every muscle in their bodies is aching after all that carrying and scrubbing. Their skin is covered in a thin layer of salty, evaporated sweat.

  But they both know exactly how to spruce themselves up and flirt with the removal men: they toss their heads, stroke their hair to one side, offer them coffee and cakes – and hey presto! The men produce a wide plank of wood and various pieces of timber with which they construct a couple of trestles that the plank can rest on to make a bench for the lodgers to sit on in the kitchen when they have their breakfast; and it all fits neatly under the kitchen sofa when they are not being used.

  As the removal men walk down the stairs, they meet the young sleigh driver and a friend who are carrying up Elina’s luggage.

  The chest is so
big and heavy that it’s almost impossible to manoeuvre it up the stairs – the young boys nearly let it slip and end up underneath it. The removal men give them a hand.

  “What on earth have you got in there?” Lizzie wonders.

  Everybody looks at Elina.

  “You didn’t need to bring a chest full of iron ore,” says one of the removal men. “We’ve got plenty of that here already.”

  “It’s books.”

  Lizzie’s eyes bulge like those of a squirrel.

  “Books? My God! Where the devil will we put them?”

  “I thought we could have a bookcase.”

  Lizzie stares at Elina as if she has just suggested that they should keep tigers and elephants in the flat. A bookcase! Only the gentry have anything like that.

  The removal men roar with laughter, and promise that they will soon be back with appropriate bits of wood and nails – but in return Lizzie must offer them a meal: they have heard about her reputation as a cook. She nods without smiling, unable to avert her eyes from the chest.

  Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot looked at the display on his mobile. Martinsson. He cursed to himself. He ought to have phoned her. He was tempted not to answer the call, but he was not that much of a coward.

  “Hello Rebecka,” he said. “Damn and blast—”

  “Had you intended to ring me?” she said, interrupting him.

  “Yes,” he said, taking a deep breath. “But the day simply flew past – you know how it is.”

  Don’t ask her to forgive you, he told himself.

  “Go on, then,” she said in a calm voice. “That’ll be best, as I really don’t know what to say.”

  “Well,” he said. “Von Post came to me and … er, he offered to take over responsibility for the preliminary investigation. She lived in Kurravaara after all, and you live there as well and so … No doubt you can see the problem.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on, Rebecka. Surely everybody in the village knows everybody else? Sooner or later there was bound to be a hell of a difficult situation.”