September sun had nipped at their skin. Brown faces with white crow’s feet from screwing their eyes up.
Rebecka knew how they’d felt. Sore feet and aching muscles after a week in the mountains, contented and just a bit flat. They were wearing brightly colored anoraks and practical khaki colored trousers. She was wearing a coat and scarf.
Torsten straightened up and looked curiously at some people fly-fishing as they crossed the river.
“We’ll just have to hope we can carry this off,” he said.
“Of course you will,” said Rebecka. “They’re going to love you.”
“Do you think so? It’s not good that I’ve never been here before. I’ve never been further north than bloody Gavle.”
“No, no, but you’re incredibly pleased to be here. You’ve always wanted to come up here to see the magnificent mountains and visit the mine. Next time you come up on business you’re thinking of taking some holiday to see the sights.”
“Okay”
“And none of this ‘how the hell do you cope with the long dark winter when the sun doesn’t even rise’ crap.”
“Of course not.”
“Even if they joke about it themselves.”
“Yeah yeah.”
Rebecka parked the car beside the bell tower. No priest. They strolled along the path toward the vicarage. Red wooden panels and white eaves. The river flowed along below the vicarage. The water was September-low. Torsten was doing the blackfly dance. No one opened when they rang the bell. They rang again and waited. In the end they turned to go.
A man was walking up toward the vicarage through the opening in the fence. He waved to them and shouted. When he got closer they could see he was wearing a clerical shirt.
“Hi there,” he said when he got to them. “You must be from Meijer & Ditzinger.”
He held his hand out to Torsten Karlsson first. Rebecka took up the secretary’s position, half a pace behind Torsten.
“Stefan Wikstrom,” said the clergyman.
Rebecka introduced herself without mentioning her job. He could believe whatever made him comfortable. She looked at the priest. He was in his forties. Jeans, tennis shoes, clerical shirt and white dog collar. He hadn’t been conducting his official duties, then. Still had the shirt on, though.
One of those 24/7 priests, thought Rebecka.
“You’d arranged to meet Bertil Stensson, our parish priest,” the clergyman continued. “Unfortunately he’s been held up this evening, so he asked me to meet you and show you the church.”
Rebecka and Torsten made polite noises and went up to the little red wooden church with him. There was a smell of tar from the wooden roof. Rebecka followed in the wake of the two men. The clergyman addressed himself almost exclusively to Torsten when he spoke. Torsten slipped smoothly into the game and didn’t pay any attention to Rebecka either.
Of course it could be that the priest has actually been held up, thought Rebecka. But it could also mean that he’s decided to oppose the firm’s proposal.
It was gloomy inside the church. The air was still. Torsten was scratching twenty fresh blackfly bites.
Stefan Wikstrom told them about the eighteenth-century church. Rebecka allowed her thoughts to wander. She knew the story of the beautiful altarpiece and the dead resting beneath the floor. Then she realized they’d embarked on a new topic of conversation, and pricked up her ears.
“There. In front of the organ,” said Stefan Wikstrom, pointing.
Torsten looked up at the shiny organ pipes and the Sami sun symbol in the center of the organ.
“It must have been a terrible shock for all of you.”
“What must?” asked Rebecka.
The clergyman looked at her.
“This is where she was hanging,” he said. “My colleague who was murdered in the summer.”
Rebecka looked blankly at him.
“Murdered in the summer?” she repeated.
There was a confused pause.
“Yes, in the summer,” ventured Stefan Wikstrom.
Torsten Karlsson was staring at Rebecka.
“Oh, come on,” he said.
Rebecka looked at him and shook her head almost imperceptibly.
“A woman priest was murdered in Kiruna in the summer. In here. Didn’t you know about it?”
“No.”
He looked at her anxiously.
“You must be the only person in the whole of Sweden who… I assumed you knew. It was all over the papers. On every news broadcast…”
Stefan Wikstrom was following their conversation like a table tennis match.
“I haven’t ready any papers all summer,” said Rebecka. “And I haven’t watched any television.”
Torsten raised his hands, palms upward, in a helpless gesture.
“I really thought…” he began. “But obviously, nobody bloody…”
He broke off, glanced sheepishly at the clergyman, received a smile as an indication that his sin was forgiven, and went on:
“… nobody had the nerve to speak to you about it. Maybe you’d like to wait outside? Or would you like a glass of water?”
Rebecka was on the verge of smiling. Then she changed her mind, couldn’t decide which expression to adopt.
“It’s fine. But I would like to wait outside.”
She left the men inside the church and went out. Stopped on the steps.
I ought to feel something, of course, she thought. Maybe I ought to faint.
The afternoon sun was warming the walls of the bell tower. She had the urge to lean against it, but didn’t because of her clothes. The smell of warm asphalt mingled with the smell of the newly tarred roof.
She wondered if Torsten was telling Stefan Wikstrom that she was the one who’d shot Viktor Strandgard’s murderer. Maybe he was making something up. No doubt he’d do whatever he thought was best for business. At the moment she was in the social goody bag. Among the salted anecdotes and the sweet gossip. If Stefan Wikstrom had been a lawyer, Torsten would have told him how things were. Taken out the bag and offered him a Rebecka Martinsson. But maybe the clergy weren’t quite so keen on gossip as the legal profession.
They came out to join her after ten minutes. The clergyman shook hands with them both. It felt as if he didn’t really want to let go of their hands.
“It was unfortunate that Bertil had to go out. It was a car accident, and you can’t say no. Hang on a minute and I’ll try his cell phone.”
While Stefan Wikstrom tried to ring the parish priest, Rebecka and Torsten exchanged a look. So he was genuinely busy. Rebecka wondered why Stefan Wikstrom was so keen for them to meet him before the meeting the following day.
He wants something, she thought. But what?
Stefan Wikstrom pushed the phone into his back pocket with an apologetic smile.
“No luck,” he said. “Just voicemail. But we’ll meet tomorrow.”
Brief, casual farewells since it was only one night until they were due to meet again. Torsten asked Rebecka for a pen and made a note of the title of a book the clergyman had recommended. Showed genuine interest.
Rebecka and Torsten drove back into town. Rebecka talked about Jukkasjarvi. What the village had been like before the big tourist boom. Dozing by the river. The population trickling silently away like the sand in an hourglass.
