The Blood Spilt (14 page)

On the rare occasions when Rebecka thought about her, she always remembered her as being frozen. Wearing two thick sweaters and woolly socks at home by the kitchen table.

Or like now, shoulders slightly raised, there’s no room for a thick sweater under the elegant coat. The hand that isn’t holding the cigarette is hidden in the coat pocket. She peers into the car and finds Rebecka. Narrow, searching eyes. Corners of her mouth turned down. Who’s crazy now?

I’m not crazy, thought Rebecka. I’m not like you.

She got out of the car and walked quickly toward the parish hall. Almost running away from the memory of the woman in the pea green coat.

Someone had kindly smashed the light above the back door of the hall. Rebecka tried the keys. There might be an alarm. Either the cheap version that only sounds inside the building, to frighten away thieves. Or a proper one that goes through to a security firm.

It’s okay, she told herself. The national guard aren’t likely to turn up; it’ll be some tired security guy in a car who’ll pull up outside the front door. Plenty of time to get away.

Suddenly one of the keys fitted. Rebecka turned it and slipped inside into the darkness. Silence. No alarm. No beeping noise to indicate that she had sixty seconds to punch in a code. The parish hall was in the basement, so the back door was upstairs and the main entrance was on the ground floor. She knew the office was upstairs. She didn’t bother creeping about.

There’s nobody here, she said to herself.

It felt as if her footsteps were echoing as she walked quickly across the stone floor to the office.

The room containing the lockers was inside. It was narrow and windowless; she had to put the light on.

Her pulse rate increased and she fumbled with the keys as she tried them in the locks of the unmarked gray lockers. If anybody came along now, she had no way of escape. She tried to listen out on to the stairs and the street. The keys were making more noise than church bells.

When she tried the third locker the key turned smoothly in the lock. It must be Mildred Nilsson’s. Rebecka opened it and looked inside.

It was a small locker. There wasn’t much, but it was almost full. A number of small boxes and fabric bags containing jewelry. A pearl necklace, some heavy gold rings with stones inset, earrings. Two wedding rings, worn smooth with age, left to her no doubt. A blue folder, containing a pile of papers. There were also several letters in the locker. The addresses on the envelopes were in different handwriting.

Now what do I do? thought Rebecka.

She wondered what the parish priest might know about the contents of the locker? Would he miss anything?

She took a deep breath, then went through the whole lot. Sat on the floor and sorted it all into piles around her. Her brain was working as it usually did now, quickly, taking in information, processing, sorting. Half an hour later Rebecka switched on the office’s photocopier.

She took the letters as they were. There might be prints or traces on them. She put them in a plastic bag she found in a drawer.

She copied the papers from the blue folder. She put the copies along with the letters in the plastic bag. She put the folder back in the locker and locked it, turned off the light and left. It was half past three in the morning.

Anna-Maria Mella was woken by her daughter Jenny tugging at her arm.

“Mummy, there’s somebody ringing the doorbell.”

The children knew they weren’t allowed to open the door at unusual times. As a police officer in a small town, you could get strange visitors at odd times. Tearful thugs looking for the only mother confessor they had, or colleagues with serious faces and the car engine running. And sometimes, very rarely, but it did happen, somebody who was angry or high on something, often both.

* * *

Anna-Maria got up, told Jenny to creep in beside Robert, and went down into the hall. She had her cell phone in the pocket of her dressing gown, the number to the main police switchboard already keyed in, checked through the spy hole first and then opened the door.

Rebecka Martinsson was standing outside.

Anna-Maria asked her in. Rebecka stood just inside the door. Didn’t take her coat off. Didn’t want a cup of tea or anything.

“You’re investigating the murder of Mildred Nilsson,” she said. “These are letters and copies of personal papers that belonged to her.”

She handed over a plastic bag of papers and letters, and explained briefly how she’d got hold of the material.

“I’m sure you understand that it wouldn’t look good for me if it came out that I’d passed this on to you. If you can come up with some other explanation, I’d be grateful. If you can’t, well…”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“… well, then I’ll just have to roll with it,” she said with a wry smile.

Anna-Maria peered into the bag.

“A locker in the priests’ office?” she asked.

Rebecka nodded.

“Why didn’t anybody tell the police that…”

She broke off and looked at Rebecka.

“Thank you!” she said. “I won’t tell anybody how we got hold of them.”

Rebecka made a move to go.

“You did the right thing,” said Anna-Maria. “You do know that?”

It was difficult to know whether she was talking about what had happened two years ago in Jiekajärvi, or if she meant the photocopies and letters in the plastic bag.

Rebecka made a movement with her head. She might have been nodding. But she might have been shaking her head.

When she’d gone Anna-Maria stood there in the hall. She had an irresistible urge to scream out loud. What the hell, she wanted to yell. How the hell could they not hand this over to us?

R
ebecka Martinsson is sitting on the bed in her chalet. She can see the contours of the back of the chair outlined against the gray rectangle of moonlight in the window.

Now, she thought. Now the panic ought to kick in. If anybody finds out about this, I’m toast. I’ll be convicted of illegal entry and unauthorized interference, I’ll never work again.

But the panic wouldn’t come. No regrets either. Instead she felt quite light hearted.

I can always get a job as a ticket collector, she thought.

She lay down and looked up at the ceiling. Felt slightly elated in a crazy way.

A mouse was rustling about in the wall. Nibbling and scampering up and down. Rebecka knocked on the wall and it went quiet for a while. Then it started again.

Rebecka smiled. And fell asleep. With her clothes on and without having brushed her teeth.

She had a dream.

She is sitting up on Daddy’s shoulders. It’s blueberry time. Daddy’s got the basket on his back. It’s heavy, with the basket and Rebecka.

“Don’t lean,” he says when she stretches over to catch the beard lichen hanging from the trees.

Grandmother is walking behind them. Blue cardigan and gray head scarf. She has an economical way of moving in the forest. Doesn’t lift her foot any higher than necessary. A kind of rapid trot with short steps. They have two dogs with them; Jussi, the gray dog, sticks with Grandmother. He’s getting old, saving his strength. And Jacki, the youngster, some kind of pointer cross, rushes here and there, he can never get enough of the different smells, disappears from sight, sometimes you hear him barking several kilometers away.

Late in the afternoon she is lying by the fire and sleeping while the adults have gone a little further away to pick berries. She’s using Daddy’s Helly Hansen as a pillow. The afternoon sun warms her, but the shadows are long. The fire keeps the mosquitoes away. The dogs come and look at her from time to time. Nudge her face gently with their noses then scamper away before she has time to pat them or put her arms around their necks.

YELLOW LEGS

It’s late winter. The sun climbs above the tops of the trees and warms the forest. Lumps of heavy snow slide down from the trees. A difficult time for hunting. During the day the deep white blanket is softened by the warmth. It’s hard to run after prey. If the pack hunts at night by moonlight or at dawn, the icy surface slashes their pads to ribbons.

The alpha female begins to run. She is getting restless and irritable. Any of the pack who approach her can expect to be snapped at or told off. She positions herself in front of the subordinate males and urinates with her leg lifted so high that she almost has difficulty keeping her balance. The whole pack is affected by her moodiness. There is growling and howling. Scraps are constantly breaking out between the members of the pack. The young wolves roam around uneasily on the edge of the resting place. There is always one of the older wolves ready to put them in their place. At mealtimes the rank order is rigidly maintained.

The alpha female is Yellow Legs’ half-sister. Two years ago she challenged the old alpha bitch at exactly this time of year. The lead bitch was about to start running, and was asserting her superiority over the other females. She turned to Yellow Legs’ half-sister, stretched her gray-striped head forward, curled back her lips and bared her teeth with a threatening low growl. But instead of slinking backwards in fear, her tail pressed between her legs, Yellow Legs’ half-sister took up the challenge. She looked the old bitch straight in the eyes and her hackles rose. The fight broke out in a split second and was over in a minute. The old alpha female lost. A deep bite in her side and a ragged ear were enough to make her retreat, whimpering. Yellow Legs’ half-sister drove her away from the pack. And the pack had a new alpha female.

Yellow Legs never challenged the old leader. Nor does she stand up to her half-sister. And yet it seems as if her half-sister is particularly irritated by her. On one occasion she clamps Yellow Legs’ muzzle firmly between her jaws and takes her on a half circuit through the pack. Yellow Legs slinks along humbly, her back bent, her eyes turned away. The young wolves get up and begin to walk around uneasily. Afterward Yellow Legs licks her half-sister’s mouth submissively. She doesn’t want to fight or assert herself.

It’s hard to get the silver gray alpha male’s attention. When the old female was there he used to follow her around for weeks before she finally decided to mate. He sniffed at her bottom and put the other males in their place so that she could see. Often, he would come back to her as she lay resting. He’d tap her with his front paw to ask “what about now?”

Now the alpha male is lying inert, apparently uninterested in Yellow Legs’ half-sister. He’s seven years old, and there’s no one in the pack showing the least interest in taking his place. In a year or so he’ll be older and weaker, and will have to assert himself more. But for the moment he can lie here and let the sun warm his fur while he licks his paws and snaps up a little bit of snow. Yellow Legs’ half-sister is watching him. Squats down and urinates close to him in order to arouse his interest. Walks past him, very close. Keen and bloody around the base of her tail. In the end he obliges and covers her. The whole pack breathes a sigh of relief. The level of tension in the group drops immediately.

The two one-year-olds wake Yellow Legs and want to play. She has been lying under a pine tree a little distance away, half asleep. But now the youngsters hurl themselves upon her. One of them thumps his huge front paws down into the snow. His whole body bent playfully forward. The other comes hurtling over at full speed and jumps over her as she lies there. She leaps to her feet and sets off after them. Their barking and yapping echoes through the trees. A terrified squirrel shoots up a tree trunk like a red streak. Yellow Legs catches up with one of the youngsters and he does a double somersault in the snow. They wrestle for a while, then it’s her turn to be chased. She flies like an arrow between the trees. Sometimes slows down so they can almost catch up with her, then shoots away again. She won’t get caught until she wants to be.

T
HURSDAY
S
EPTEMBER
7

At half past six in the morning, Mimmi took her breakfast break. She’d been working in the bar since five. The aroma of coffee and newly baked bread mingled with the meaty smells of freshly made lasagne and stew. Fifty aluminum food containers stood cooling on the stainless steel worktop. She’d been working in the kitchen with the door propped open so that it wouldn’t be so hot. And because they liked it, the old men. It was company for them, she supposed. Watching her fly about, working, filling up the coffee pot. And they could eat in peace, no critical eyes watching if they happened to chew with their mouths open or spill coffee down their shirts.

Before she sat down to eat her own breakfast, she dashed out into the dining room and gave the customers a little treat, going round with the coffee pot to offer a top-up. She pressed them to accept and offered round the bread basket. At that moment she belonged to all of them, she was their wife, their daughter, their mother. Her stripy hair was still damp from her morning shower, done up in a plait under the handkerchief she wore tied around her head. The looks she got said it all. She would never run around in the bar with loose, wet hair, dripping onto her tight sweater from H&M. Miss Wetter and Wetter T-shirt. She put the coffee pot down on the hot plate and announced:

“Just help yourselves, I’m going to sit down for quarter of an hour.”

“Mimmi, come over here and have a chat,” one of the men sang out in reply.

Some of them were on their way to work. They were the ones taking quick little gulps of coffee to get it down as rapidly as possible, although it was still too hot, bolting their sandwich in two bites. The others spent an hour or so here before they ambled home to loneliness. They tried to start conversations and flicked aimlessly through the previous day’s newspaper, today’s wouldn’t be here for ages. In the village people didn’t say they were unemployed or off sick or had taken early retirement. They said they were at home.

Their overnight guest Rebecka Martinsson was sitting alone at a table by the window, looking out over the river. Eating her muesli and drinking coffee, in no hurry.