The Second Deadly Sin (18 page)

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.

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

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.”

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 into 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.

There are about thirty guests squashed together round the long table in the dining room. Among them are the chairmen of the Provincial Education Authority and the Poor Relief Board. The head of the Northern State Railways is discussing with the local
pharmacist the pointless panic buying of groceries, smoked and salted goods, conserves and macaroni. And flour. Especially flour. People didn’t even act in such an idiotic fashion during the General Strike of 1909.

District Police Superintendent Björnfot is there with his melancholy wife, whose silent hatred of Kiruna and everything connected with it grows inside her body like a cancerous tumour. Elina tries to talk to her, but soon gives up.

The acting parish constable, a notorious ladies’ man, spends the whole evening flirting with Elina and passing on shells and crayfish heads to his dog, which duly throws up a pile of vomit on Lundbohm’s bearskin rug during dessert.

Old Johan Tuuri, representing the Lappish population, laughs loudly and swears that he has never eaten anything like these crayfish, waves some claws around, and puts on a little act with two quarrelling crayfish in the leading roles.