Kristina straightened her back and took a deep breath. “He didn’t want to have children.”
It wasn’t the answer Irene had expected. Kristina didn’t look at her, focusing instead on a point behind Irene’s back. She bit her bottom lip hard to keep it from trembling.
“But he was a teacher. He must have liked children,” Irene said.
“Yes. But he didn’t want any of his own.”
Strange. Irene’s brain went into overdrive. “He wasn’t seeing other women?” she asked vaguely, for lack of anything better.
“No.”
Again Kristina sat, her head bowed, looking as if she was waiting for a punishment.
Now Irene became aware of the image in an embroidered wall hanging that was above the television. It was a Christ figure, a figure surrounded by light, raising his palms in a gesture of blessing toward the beholder. When Irene turned her head, she could see through the half-open door to the bedroom. A simple wooden cross in a light wood hung above the headboard of the bed. Otherwise, the walls were bare.
“Did you, or your sister, embroider this beautiful wall hanging?” Irene asked.
“I did. My sister weaves.”
“Where in Norrland are you from?”
“Vilhelmina. But we moved around a lot. My father was a preacher.”
“A preacher? In the Pentecostal Movement?”
“He. . we were Laestadians.”
Irene had fuzzy recollections from school religious lessons about an ecstatic congregation that had been founded in Norrland in the 1800s. Weren’t they the ones who weren’t allowed to have curtains? Kristina had beautiful white lattice-woven curtains in her windows.
“You say ‘were’ Laestadians. You aren’t any longer?”
“No. My older sister left the congregation and joined the Swedish church. She’s a pastor and works here in Karlstad.”
“Is that why you moved here?”
Kristina hesitated but then she nodded.
“Is her name also Olsson?”
“Yes. Kerstin Olsson. She never married.”
“Are your parents still living in Norrland?”
“Father is dead. Mother lives near our brother outside Vitangi.”
“Are there any more siblings?”
“No.”
Irene unconsciously took a deep breath before she asked her next question. “Was it you or Jacob who wanted to get a divorce?”
“It was me.”
Kristina looked down at her clenched fists again.
“Because he didn’t want to have children with you?” Irene said for clarification.
Kristina nodded without raising her eyes from her hands.
Irene felt that it was impossible to come up with the right questions for her. And even if Irene asked the right questions, getting a real answer seemed hopeless. Was she hiding something? Or just terrified? Irene didn’t understand her.
IRENE WALKED back to the center of town. She followed the signs and used her good sense of direction. The shining sun felt wonderful, even if it had started to set and didn’t add much warmth. It was a few degrees colder in Goteborg than here. She passed over a glittering watercourse. Quacking ducks and honking Canada geese were swimming and walking along the edges. She didn’t know what the stream or river was called. Even though Krister’s family lived in Saffle and her own family usually spent several weeks every year in the parents-in-law’s cottage outside Sunne, she had been in Karlstad three times at the most. Which was really a pity.
As she strolled and peered into shop windows, she realized how hungry she was. She had an hour and a half before the train left, time enough to eat.
Once, long ago, on one of her three trips here, she and Krister had taken the kids to a cozy restaurant next to Stora Torget. She remembered that it was on the same side of the square as the magnificent city hall, but that you had to walk down one of the side streets. Her memories were fuzzy, but she managed to find the restaurant, which, she remembered now, was named Kallaren Munken.
When she walked in through the heavy doors and down the worn stone steps, she recognized the basement with its many passages. It had been freshened up since her previous visit, but the cozy atmosphere still prevailed.
The maitre d’ showed her to a table which was covered with a white linen cloth. He recommended the day’s special, grilled char with almondine potatoes and chive sauce. Irene decided to take his advice, and ordered a Hof as well. After her interview with Kristina Olsson, she deserved a beer. Maybe two. The home-baked bread she was served was still so warm that the butter melted when she spread it. A feeling of pleasure suffused her, and she stopped thinking about the conversation she had just had. There would be plenty of time on the train.
WAS KRISTINA Olsson mentally ill? The answer would have to be no, but with the reservation that she appeared to be near a nervous breakdown-if she hadn’t already had one, which was difficult for a layman to decide.
Was she hiding something? Irene was almost convinced that that was the case. But what was she hiding? And why? What was she afraid of?
Irene realized that she had forgotten to ask Kristina if she had been threatened. How could she forget such an obvious question? Maybe not so entirely obvious, though, since Kristina hadn’t had any contact with either Jacob or his parents in more than nine months.
Was there something in Kristina’s past that was frightening her? As members of a fundamentalist religious sect, she and her siblings would have had a strict religious upbringing, but it seemed that both Kristina and her sister had freed themselves from the faith of their childhoods. Even so, they might be deeply spiritual. The decor of Kristina’s apartment bore the stamp of Christian faith with ascetic elements. Except, of course, that she had curtains.
IRENE PROMISED herself that she would look up Laestadianism in an encyclopedia. Personally, she wasn’t very interested in religious questions. The Huss family was about as religious as most of the other people in Sweden. They went to church for baptisms, weddings, and funerals; never otherwise. But she had realized several times, in the course of this investigation, how annoyingly ignorant she was.
And Satanism had popped up as a counterweight to all this Christian faith with Laestadians, synods, and goodness knows what else. How relevant was this negativity toward Christianity? The clues were there, but did they mean anything?
The questions whirled around in her mind; she had no answers.
WHEN SHE got off at the Goteborg Central Station, she was met with the latest edition of the
Chapter 8
”SOME IDIOT LEAKED!”
Superintendent Andersson was in a terrible mood. He stared grimly at the group during Friday’s morning prayers. None of those present looked guilty, and he hadn’t really suspected any of them. But it was enormously irritating not to have a specific person to pounce on.
Svante Malm, just joining the meeting with a lab report in his hand, said, “The strange thing is that no one
