The Second Deadly Sin (11 page)

“That’s enough of that,” Pohjanen growled.

At that very moment Mella’s mobile rang. She answered, relieved to have been given an escape route. It was Stålnacke.

He didn’t beat about the bush. “I thought we were going to have a press conference tomorrow morning,” he said.

“That’s right,” said Mella.

“Really? Then why is von Post chatting with a gang of journalists in the conference room at this very minute?”

Mella refrained from exclaiming, “What the hell are you on about?”

“I’ll be there right away,” she said instead, and hung up.

“You’re not going to like this,” she said to Martinsson.

We meet again, thought District Prosecutor Carl von Post when he saw Inspector Anna-Maria Mella and Rebecka Martinsson getting out of their cars. You bloody idiots.

It was several years now since Martinsson had arrived in Kiruna to poke her nose into his investigation concerning the murder of Viktor Strandgård. The moment she stepped off the plane, she thought she was somebody. A successful lawyer with Meijer & Ditzinger. As if that was of any significance. Her boyfriend was a partner. He, von Post, had no difficulty in understanding how she had got the job – but the media, all those damned journalists, had worshipped her. Once the murder had been cleared up, you could read about her everywhere. He had been presented as the idiot who had arrested the wrong person. He had thought he would have been rid of her after that – but oh, no. She had floated up to the surface again and started work as a prosecutor. She and that dwarf of a police inspector Mella had somehow blundered their way through the investigation into the murder of Wilma Persson and Simon Kyrö. It was a miracle that the murderer was caught, but the press – these bloody journalists again – had described her as a Modesty Blaise.

For years he had been spending his time on cases involving drunkenness, thefts of snow scooters and assaults. On the whole. One murder, though. A bloke from Harads who killed his brother of a Saturday evening.

Carl von Post was stuck as a prosecutor working on minor cases
up in Lapland. And it was all their fault. Modesty Bloody Blaise and that policewoman she had on a leash. He did not have a snowball’s chance in hell of landing a job in a decent-sized law firm in Stockholm. But he had made up his mind. Things were going to change. It was his turn now to come into the spotlight, be written about. A spectacular murder like this one was just what the doctor ordered. She did not need it. And now he had made sure it was going to be his case. That pair were not going to get it back again, and he was about to make that clear to them.

Carl von Post turned to face the assembled journalists. They were all keeping an eye on their iPhones, and scanning Twitter and Flashback in search of something extra. Microphones had been switched on. The national evening papers
Expressen
and
Aftonbladet
had sent their usual freelancers. Reporters from local papers
N.S.D.
and
Norbottens-Kuriren
were hovering in the corridor a little further away, in the hope of collaring somebody they knew. The hacks from Swedish Television and T.V.4 were each wielding a gigantic camera. And then there were people he did not know from Adam. They were all trying to talk him into allowing them a few minutes of extra time afterwards.

“Five minutes,” he said, gesturing at the rows of chairs in the conference room, then hurried out in order to make sure that he could talk to Martinsson and Mella out of earshot of the reporters.

*

Mella strode purposefully towards Carl von Post. He slowed down so as not to give the impression of being stressed – but she had seen through the glass doors how he had almost run to the exit. Martinsson was lagging behind.

“Hi,” von Post said with a smile. “Good that you could come. I heard you’d been to see the pathologist – perhaps you could brief me on what he had to say, so—”

“Now listen here,” Mella interrupted. “I’m about to have a heart attack. I hope you can utter a few well-chosen words that will calm me down …”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?!”

Mella thrust her arms up into the air, then her hands landed on the top of her head as if to prevent it from exploding.

“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.”