going to visit Hjorleifur Arnarson yesterday.
Wilma Persson was buried on April 28 at 10.00 in the morning. The mourners stood in the churchyard, clustered round the grave. Hjalmar Krekula looked around. He had not bothered to take his dark suit out of the wardrobe that morning. It was God knows how many years since he had grown out of it.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, he had shaved and thought, I can’t cope with this. I can’t take any more.
Then he had sliced up a whole loaf of rye bread for breakfast. Spread each slice thickly with butter. Eaten it while standing by the draining board. Eventally he had calmed down. His heart had stopped pounding against his ribcage.
Now he was standing beside the grave containing the coffin, feeling uncomfortable in his camouflage trousers and jacket – although at least he had had the sense not to wear his duffel coat. Lots of young people had turned up, each carrying a red rose to drop onto the coffin. All of them were dressed in black with jewellery in their eyebrows and noses and lips; all had black make-up around their eyes. But none of that could conceal their smooth skin, their rounded cheeks.
They’re so young, he thought. All of them are so young. Wilma as well.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
Wilma’s mother had travelled up from Stockholm. She was sobbing loudly. Shouting “Oh my God!” over and over again. A sister was holding one arm, a cousin the other.
Anni Autio stood there like a shrivelled autumn leaf, teeth clenched. There seemed to be no room for her sorrow. Wilma’s mother took up all the available space with her shrill shrieks and loud sobbing. Hjalmar Krekula was angry on Anni’s behalf. Wished he could get rid of those shrieks, so that Anni had room to cry.
There Wilma lay in her coffin.
There was a lot for him to think about now. He needed to get away from there soon. Before he also started shouting and shrieking.
Not long ago her cheeks had been just as rounded as those of the girls standing nearby, holding one another’s hands. He did not dare to look at them. He knew what their faces would express if they caught his eye: disgust with the fat paedo.
It was not long ago that Wilma had been sitting at his kitchen table. Her hair, the same red colour as that of all the women in her family – her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, Anni and his own mother, Kerttu. Wilma’s red hair, tumbling down on both sides of her face as she struggled with her maths homework. She spoke to him like, well, just like she spoke to everyone else.
But then.
Her hands hammering away at the ice beneath his feet.
Now she was hammering away at her coffin lid. On the inside of his skull.
It’ll soon be over, he thought. Nothing shows.
Afterwards, at the wake, he forced down several slices of cake. He was aware that people were looking at him. Thinking that he ought to resist the temptation, that it was no wonder he was so fat.
Let them look, he thought, stuffing a few sugar lumps into his mouth, chewing and then letting them dissolve. It eased the pain, made it easier to take. Eating helped him to calm down.
Inspector Tommy Rantakyro was squatting down outside Hjorleifur Arnarson’s house, stroking Hjorleifur’s dog, when Mella and Martinsson parked their snow scooter not far away.
He stood up and went over to meet them.
“She’s refusing to move,” he said, nodding towards the dog.
Mella was annoyed to see that the other inspectors had parked their scooter immediately in front of the porch.
“Can you move the scooter,” she said curtly to Rantakyro. “We need to tape this area off so the forensic team can search for clues. How many people have touched the front door handle?”
Rantakyro shrugged.
Mella stamped off to the house.
Martinsson went over to the dog.
“Now then, my girl,” she said softly, scratching the dog’s chest gently. “You can’t stay here, I’m afraid.”
“We’ll have to have her put down,” Rantakyro said.
Yes, I suppose so, Martinsson thought.
She stroked the dog’s triangular ears: they were very soft, one of them sticking straight up and the top of the other one folded down. The animal was black with white markings, with a white patch round one eye.
“What sort of a mutt are you, then?” she said.
The dog made licking movements in the air. A signal that she was well-disposed towards Martinsson, who stuck out her own tongue and licked her lips in response. She was friend, not foe.
“Do you recognize me?” she said. “Yes, of course you do.”
Then she heard herself saying to Rantakyro: “She has intelligent eyes, like a border collie – see how she looks right at you? She doesn’t feel threatened when you look back at her. Isn’t that so, my love? And you’re friendly like a Labrador, aren’t you? Don’t take her away. I’ll look after her. If he has a relative who’s prepared to take her on, O.K. – but if he hasn’t, well then…
Mans will have a fit, she thought.
“O.K.,” Rantakyro said, looking pleased and relieved. “I wonder what her name is.”
“Vera,” Martinsson said. “He said it yesterday.”
“I see,” Rantakyro said. “Was it you who was here with Mella yesterday, then? Sven-Erik is pretty pissed off about that. I can see his point.”
Stalnacke was in the kitchen, talking to Goran Sillfors.
Hjorleifur was lying on his back on the kitchen floor in front of the larder. Next to him was a collapsed pair of steps. The door to the cupboard above the larder was open. There were two rucksacks on the floor.
“What the hell’s going on?” Mella said when she entered the kitchen. “You can’t just go wandering around in here. The forensic boys will have a fit. We must tape the whole place off.”
“Who are you bursting in here and telling me what to do?” Stalnacke said.
“No doubt you’d have preferred me not to come at all,” Mella said. “When I got to work, Sonja told me about Hjorleifur.”
“And I heard from Goran Sillfors that you’d already been here and questioned Hjorleifur. Great. It didn’t occur to you to mention that to your colleagues at yesterday’s meeting, did it?”
Sillfors looked first at one and then at the other of them.
“Hjorleifur rang me yesterday, after you’d been here,” he said. “I’d given him a mobile phone with a prepaid card. He thinks that using them will make you die young…”
Cutting himself short, he looked down at Hjorleifur lying dead on the floor.
“Sorry,” Sillfors said. “Sometimes words just come tumbling out. Anyway, he was most reluctant to use the mobile. But I told him that one of these days he might break a leg and need help, and that it didn’t matter if he kept it in a drawer somewhere, switched off. The card was on special offer, so it didn’t cost much. Sometimes you get a new bike or goodness knows what else when you buy a new mobile, although then you need to agree to a rental contract, of course. Anyway, I reckoned it was worth spending a bit on a fellow human being. And we used to get honey and mosquito repellant off him – not that I think much of his mosquito repellant, but still… Anyway, he used it yesterday – the mobile, I mean… rang me to say that you’d been here. He wondered what the hell we’d told the police, and I had to calm him down. What did you say to him? This morning I thought I’d better drive out and see how he was. And of course make sure he didn’t think we’d been
