draining board. Then he lay down on the kitchen sofa, his arms crossed over his chest, and closed his eyes.
“Fair enough,” Mella said, feeling a complete idiot. “But can’t you explain what you meant?”
There was no response from the sofa. The conversation was over. Svarvare’s chest rose and fell rapidly.
“For fuck’s sake!” Mella said as she got into her car.
She knew she ought to have let him talk. He had been on the way to telling her something. Stalnacke would have sat there quietly, waiting. Let Svarvare speak in his own good time. Damn that Stalnacke! And what was all that about Isak Krekula having a heart attack? How was it revelant?
“We’d better have a word with Isak Krekula,” Mella said to herself as she turned the ignition key.
The Krekulas’ houses formed a group of three at the far end of the village. Mella parked, got out of the car and stood beside it. So this was where Tore and Hjalmar lived, and their parents as well. She tried to guess which house belonged to whom. All were clad in red-painted wooden panels. One of the houses was older than the other two, and had a barn attached, with a roof of irregular corrugated-iron sheets. Embroidered curtains in the windows. This had to be where the parents lived.
Mella hesitated. A feeling of unease swept over her. In a pen at the side of the older house, a hunting dog was hurling itself over and over again at the wire netting, barking for all it was worth. Baring its fangs. Gnawing at the wooden frame. Snarling and snapping at the air. Barking and barking. Tireless and aggressive.
Spruce trees grew close together along the boundary of the plot. The house stood in deep shade. Nobody ever seemed to have bothered to thin the trees. They were very tall, seemingly bent forward. Black, straggly and threatening. The branches looked wispy and weak, drooping down onto the slope. The image they evoked was of a father in a bedroom doorway, belt in hand, ready to attack. Of a mother, her feeble arms dangling at her sides.
Don’t go in there, a voice said deep inside Mella.
The hair stood up on the back of her neck.
Afterwards, she would recall the feeling. But now she was paying no attention to it.
The dog was scratching away at the netting. The air was a thick soup of hostility. One of the curtains twitched slightly. Someone was at home.
A notice on the door proclaimed: “No beggers. No hawkers.” When Mella rang the bell, the door opened a fraction. The face of an old woman wondered what she wanted. Mella introduced herself.
Anni’s sister, she thought. What had Anni said her name was? Kerttu. Mella tried to see if there was a family resemblance. Perhaps, but then Mella realized that what she had noticed most about Anni were the signs of old age. Her bearing, her many wrinkles, her scraggy hands. Mella tried to imagine what the sisters had looked like when they had been her age. Anni had little hair left. Her face was long and narrow, just like Mella’s own. Kerttu Krekula still had thick hair. Her cheekbones were high. No doubt she had been the pretty sister. She was younger, as well.
But Anni had been happy. Except when she was grieving over Wilma, of course.
The sides of Kerttu Krekula’s mouth were drawn downwards, as if she had a devil on each shoulder pulling at them with a boathook.
“I don’t usually allow strangers in my house,” she said. “You never know.”
“You are Anni Autio’s sister, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve just come from Anni’s. She’s been baking.”
“I never bake. What’s the point? When you can buy stuff. Besides, my hands are so bad.”
At least she’s talking, Mella thought.
“Do you have a toilet?” she said.
“Yes, of course.”
“Do you think I might use it? I badly need a pee. It’s a long way back to town.”
“Come in, then, before you let the winter in with you,” Kerttu said, opening the door just wide enough for Mella to squeeze through.
“No, I didn’t think much of Wilma. She filled my sister’s head with no end of nonsense, if you ask me.”
They were sitting at the kitchen table. Mella had hung her jacket over a green- painted chair.
“In what ways did she fill your sister’s head with nonsense?”
“Huh, in all kinds of ways. Last summer they went swimming in the lake, stark naked. Not after a sauna or anything like that. In broad daylight. For no reason at all. Anni’s dugs were hanging down to her belly. Disgusting, it was. Made you feel ashamed. But Wilma didn’t seem to have anything against displaying herself to all the men for miles around. Flashed her pussy and her tattooed bottom.”
The dog started barking again in its pen. A man’s voice shouted “Shut up!” to no effect whatsoever. There was a sound of feet stamping off snow outside the front door. Shortly afterwards two men appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Tore and Hjalmar, Mella thought.
She had heard about them. A long time ago, just after she had moved back to Kiruna after completing her course at police college, an accusation of assault had been withdrawn by the injured party. Mella recalled the fear in the plaintiff’s eyes as he begged the prosecutor to drop the case. It was Hjalmar Krekula who got off on that occasion. Hjalmar already had a record for several assaults. Two or three, she seemed to remember. And there were several other cases that had never progressed past suspicion. She had heard that Hjalmar was big. And he certainly was. Head and shoulders taller than his brother. Well built and decidedly overweight. He leaned listlessly against the door jamb. Washed-out-looking skin hung from his cheekbones, which were badly in need of a shave.
Not much in the way of fruit and veg in his diet, Mella thought. Both men, in their fifties, were wearing work trousers. Tore Krekula’s hair was close-cropped. He seemed unable to keep still. There was something restless about him.
“So you have visitors, eh?” he said to his mother, without introducing himself to Mella.
“From the police,” Kerttu said curtly. “Asking about Wilma and Simon.”
“The police?” Tore said, staring at Mella as if she were from another world. “Well, I’ll be damned. We don’t see the likes of you very often. Or what do you think, Hjallie?”
Hjalmar stayed leaning against the door jamb and said nothing. His face was expressionless, his eyes blank, his mouth open. It was impossible to say if he had heard what his brother had said. A shiver ran down Mella’s spine.
“When Stig Rautio’s summer cottage was burgled, could we get you out here to investigate?” Tore said. “Like hell. We told you what you needed to do – check cars with Polish registration. If you’d done that, you’d have found his stuff in a flash. They’ve caught on to the fact that it’s a waste of time picking berries up here. They can break into people’s property and earn themselves a packet, no risk at all, ’cos the police… fuck only knows what you get up to, you seem to have more important things to do than catch thieves. Bikes, out-board motors… no matter what gets nicked, everyone knows it’s pointless going to the police. Our
