His hair was long and dyed deep black. Beneath his eyes was a black, sooty line of kohl. He was wearing a scruffy black leather jacket and tight black trousers with huge holes in the knees.
“Hi!” shouted Anna-Maria. “Do you live here? I’m looking for Stefan Wikstrom, do you know if…”
She didn’t get any further. The boy stared at her. Then he turned on his heel and ran. Ran off along the road. For a moment Anna-Maria considered running after him, but then she came to her senses. What for?
She got in the car and drove toward the town. Kept an eye open for the boy dressed in black as she was driving through the village, but there was no sign of him.
Could he have been one of the priest’s children? Or was it somebody who’d maybe been thinking of breaking in? Who was surprised because there was somebody there?
Something else was tapping her on the head as well.
Stefan Wikstrom’s wife. She was called Kristin Wikstrom.
Kristin. She recognized that name.
Then she remembered. Pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. Reached out for the pile of letters to Mildred that Fred Olsson had sorted out and thought might be of interest.
Two of them were signed “Kristin.”
Anna-Maria glanced through them. One was dated in March, and was neatly handwritten:
Leave us in peace. We want peace and quiet. My husband needs a peaceful working life. Do you want me to beg on my knees? I’m on my knees. And I’m begging: Leave us in peace.
The second was dated just a month later. It was obviously written by the same person, but the handwriting was all over the place, the downward strokes of the letter
Perhaps you think we don’t KNOW. But everybody knows it wasn’t just chance that you went for the job in Kiruna just one year after my husband had taken up his post here in town. But I can ASSURE you, we KNOW. You are working with groups and organizations whose SOLE aim is to work against him. You are poisoning wells with your HATRED. You shall drink that HATRED yourself!
Now what do I do? thought Anna-Maria. Go back and get her up against a wall?
She rang Sven-Erik Stalnacke on her cell phone.
“Let’s talk to her husband instead,” he suggested. “I was on the way to the parish offices in any case to pick up the books of that wolf foundation.”
Stefan Wikstrom sighed heavily, sitting behind his desk. Sven-Erik Stalnacke had settled himself in the armchair. Anna-Maria was leaning against the door with her arms folded.
Sometimes she was just so… unprofessional, thought Sven-Erik, looking at Anna-Maria.
He really should have dealt with this little runt himself, that would have been better. Anna-Maria didn’t like him, and couldn’t hide the fact. Of course, Sven-Erik had read about the quarrel between Mildred and this priest, but they were here to work.
“Yes, I know about the letters,” said the priest.
His left elbow was resting on the desk, his forehead supported by his thumb and fingertips.
“My wife… she… sometimes she’s not well. I don’t mean she’s mentally ill, but she’s a bit unstable at times. She’s not really like this.”
Neither Sven-Erik Stalnacke nor Anna-Maria Mella spoke.
“Sometimes she sees ghosts in broad daylight. But she wouldn’t… you can’t think she…?”
He lifted his head and banged the desk with the palm of his hand.
“If that’s what you think, it’s completely ridiculous. My God, Mildred had a hundred enemies.”
“Including you?” asked Anna-Maria.
“Certainly not! Am I a suspect as well? Mildred and I disagreed on some professional matters, that’s true, but to think that either I or poor Kristin would have anything to do with her murder…”
“That isn’t what we said,” interjected Sven-Erik.
He frowned in a way that made Anna-Maria keep quiet and listen.
“What did Mildred say about these letters?” asked Sven-Erik.
“She told me she’d received them.”
“Why do you think she kept them?”
“I don’t know, I mean, I even keep all the Christmas cards I get.”
“Did anybody else know about them?”
“No, and I’d be grateful if we could keep it that way.”
“So Mildred didn’t tell anybody else.”
“No, not as far as I know.”
“Did that make you feel grateful?”
Stefan Wikstrom blinked.
“What?”
He almost burst out laughing. Grateful. Was he supposed to have felt grateful to Mildred? The idea was just bizarre. But what could he say? He couldn’t tell them anything. Mildred still had him trapped in a cage. And she’d made his wife into the padlock. And expected gratitude.
In the middle of May he’d gone crawling to Mildred and asked her for the letters. He joined her as she walked along Skolgatan on the way down to the hospital. She was going to visit somebody. It was the worst time of the year. Not at home in Lund, of course. But in Kiruna it was. The streets were full of gravel and all kinds of crap that appeared as the snow melted. Nothing green. Just dirt, rubbish and great drifts of gravel.
Stefan had spoken to his wife on the telephone. She was staying with her mother in Katrineholm with the youngest children. Her voice sounded more cheerful. Stefan looks at Mildred. She seems cheerful too. Turns her face up to the sun and sometimes takes deep, pleasurable breaths. It must be a blessing to have no sense of beauty. That must mean your mood isn’t affected by dirt and gravel.
It’s very odd, he thinks, not without some bitterness, that Kristin feels happier and draws strength from being away from him for a while. That isn’t really what he thinks marriage should be about, you should gain strength from each other and support each other. He accepted long ago that she wasn’t the support he’d hoped for. But now it’s beginning to feel as if she doesn’t think he’s enough for her either. “Oh, just a bit longer,” she answers evasively when he wonders how long she’s going to be away.
Mildred doesn’t want to give him the letters.
“You could smash my life to bits at any moment,” he says to her with a twisted smile.
She looks at him steadily.
“Then you must get used to trusting me,” she says.
He looks at her sideways. As they walk along side by side, it’s obvious how small she is. Her front teeth really are unnaturally narrow. She looks exactly like a shrew.
“I’m thinking of raising the question of the hunting lease for Poikkijarvi hunting club with the church council. The lease expires at Christmas. If we lease the rights to somebody who can pay…”
He can’t believe his ears.
“So that’s the way things are,” he says, surprised at how calm he sounds. “You’re threatening me! If I vote for the lease to stay with the club, you’ll tell everybody about Kristin. That stinks, Mildred. You’re really showing your true colors now.”
He can feel his mouth, living a life of its own. It contorts into a grimace, close to tears.
If Kristin can just get some rest, she’ll get back on track. But if this business with the letters comes out… he knows she won’t be able to cope. He can already hear her accusing people of talking about her behind her back. She’ll have even more enemies. Soon she’ll be waging war on several fronts simultaneously. And then they’ll go under.
“No,” says Mildred. “I’m not threatening you. I’ll keep quiet whatever happens. I just wish you could…”
“Feel grateful?”
“… accommodate me in this one matter.”
“Go against my conscience?”
And now she flares up. Shows her real self.
“Oh, come on! It’s hardly that, is it? A question of conscience?”
