with a rattling squeak. “But I can confirm that the water in Wilma Persson’s lungs had entirely different algae and micro-organic flora from the water in the river where she was found.”
Mella stood up.
“So she didn’t die in the river,” she said.
“No, she didn’t die in the river,” Pohjanen said.
SATURDAY, 25 APRIL
Sven-Erik Stalnacke was woken by his mobile.
Feeling the familiar wave of early-morning fatigue flow through his body, he answered the phone.
“It’s me,” Anna-Maria Mella said, sounding chirpy.
Holding the phone at arm’s length, he squinted at the display. Twenty past seven.
Mella was an early bird. He was a night owl. They had always had an unspoken agreement that it was O.K. for either of them to ring and wake the other one up. Stalnacke might think of something at 1.00 in the morning and phone Mella. She might phone him bright and early, already in her car and on the way to pick him up. But that had been then.
Then, before Regla, Stalnacke would have said, “Are you up already?” and Mella would have said something about having to drag Gustav out of bed and take him to nursery during the week, while at weekends he would be jumping up and down on her head at dawn, begging her to switch on the television for the children’s programmes.
“Sorry to disturb you so early,” Mella said.
She regretted having phoned him; she had done it without thinking. But things were not as they had been.
Stalnacke could hear the change in her voice, and felt a mixture of regret and bad conscience.
Then he became angry. It was not his fault that things had turned out as they had done.
“Pohjanen rang me late last night,” Mella said, as if to stress that she was not the only one who phoned colleagues at odd times.
In bed next to Stalnacke, Airi Bylund opened her eyes. “Coffee?” she mimed. He nodded. Airi got up and pulled on her red towelling dressing gown. Boxar the cat, who had been fast asleep on Stalnacke’s legs, jumped eagerly down from the bed and tried to grab the belt of Airi’s dressing gown as she tied it round her waist, making it jiggle up and down irresistibly.
“He’s taken samples of water from Wilma Persson’s lungs and from the river, and that’s not where she died,” Mella said.
“You don’t say.”
“You thought that business of the car with no petrol in the tank was odd. Why venture into the back of beyond without enough juice to get them home again? Now we hear that she didn’t die in the river. So how did she get there?”
“You tell me.”
Neither spoke for a while. Finally she said, “I’m going to drive out to Piilijarvi today and ask if anybody there knows where the kids intended to go diving.”
Now was his chance, his opportunity to say he would accompany her.
“Didn’t they ask questions like that when she disappeared?” he said instead.
“Yes, no doubt they asked the people closest to her. But the situation has changed. Now I’m going to ask everyone.”
“Fair enough. Do that. Good luck.”
The silence between them was heavy with disappointment and accusation.
“Thank you,” she said, and hung up.
Airi came in with coffee and open sandwiches on a tray.
“What was all that about?” she said.
“Anna-Maria,” Stalnacke said. “She rings and wakes you up on a Saturday morning and expects you to drop everything and be at her beck and call. She can forget it.”
Airi said nothing. Handed him his mug of coffee.
“She’s so bloody inconsiderate,” he said.
“You know,” Airi said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, “I’ve heard you say that so often this year. But I think that being in-considerate means thinking about not doing something and then doing it anyway. That business at Regla – she just… Well, it just happened.”
“She doesn’t think!”
“That’s as may be. But it’s how she is. She’s impulsive, quick to act. I love you, darling, but it would be pretty boring if people were all the same. All I’m trying to say is that I don’t think she just stood there and said to herself, right, I’m going to put my life and Sven-Erik’s at risk.”
Stalnacke got up. Pulled on his trousers. Shoved Boxar exasperatedly to one side just as she went on the attack.
“Anyway,” he said, “it’s going to be pretty mild today. I’d better go home and check that there isn’t any snow still lying on the roof. It’ll be wet and heavy if it is.”
“I know,” Airi said to Boxar with a sigh when Stalnacke had left. “It’s a waste of time trying to reason with him.”
Morning sun and pink clouds above the treetops. But all Mella saw was black forest on all sides, and dirty snowdrifts. Her eyes searched automatically for reindeer wandering along the edge of the road, but otherwise concentrated on the frost-damaged tarmac.
Her mood improved significantly when she got out of her car outside Anni Autio’s house.
“There’s a lovely smell of baking in the air,” she said when Anni opened the door.
Once in the kitchen, Anni packed buns and biscuits into plastic bags for Mella to take home with her.
“What else is there for me to do with them?” she said when Mella tried to protest. “All the old folk in the village have freezers chock-a-block with their own buns and biscuits. Surely you can let me offload the odd goodie on you, especially as they’re newly baked? You’re not on a G.I. diet, are you?”
“Good Lord, no.”
“Well, then, dunk away!”
Mella broke a corner off a cinnamon biscuit and dipped it in her coffee.
“Did Wilma and Simon tell you where they were going diving?” she said.
“I didn’t even know they were going diving. I told the police that when they went missing. Nobody knew anything at all. Simon’s mother said that his diving gear had disappeared from the garage, so we assumed they had gone diving. But as you know, they didn’t find the car. No sign of it.”
“I see. Do you think they might have told someone? Their friends in the village, perhaps?”
“There are hardly any young people left in the village. Just us old-timers. The children live in Kiruna or somewhere in the south. They argue among themselves about who’s going to look after the houses they’ve inherited from their parents. They make no attempt to sell them, and they never come to the village, not even in summer. The houses are falling to pieces. I usually refer to my nephews, Tore and Hjalmar Krekula, as ‘the boys’ – but they’re over fifty, for God’s sake. And Tore has two sons of his own: they do a bit of driving for their dad, but they also live in Kiruna. So Wilma and Simon used to stay at home most of the time. They
