beating him, reduced it to an occasional box on the ears or smack in the face. When Hjalmar celebrated his eighteenth birthday, his father stopped all that as well.
But his anger did not subside. All that changed was the way it was expressed. Isak’s body has grown weaker as he has become older. He can no longer lift a kitchen chair and smash it to pieces by bashing it against the wall. His voice is now the bearer of his anger. It has become shriller, squeakier. His choice of words is cruder. He searches for words at the very bottom of the dunghill. He wallows in sexual references and swearwords like a village dog in the body of a dead cow.
And now it is directed at Kerttu. It simply has to come out. All that wrath boiling and fermenting inside Isak.
“Huh, that fucking woman. So she’s gone swanning off to the doctor’s now, has she?” he says.
Steeling himself, Hjalmar takes a swig of beer.
“I suppose she has to find someone she can flash her boobs at,” Isak says, and fortifies himself with another swallow.
He goes on to argue that it is a good job there are folk around who get paid for gaping at naked old crones. So that nobody else has to look at their drooping dugs, their sagging bellies, their dried-up pussies. No, it’s better to feast your eyes on young women, isn’t that right, Hjallie? But then, for Christ’s sake, Hjallie hasn’t a clue about that.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever had one, have you? Eh?”
Hjalmar wants to say, “Pack it in now.” But he knows better.
Nevertheless Isak notices how distressed his son has become as a result of his ranting. That he has hit the nail on the head. With what he has said about Kerttu, and what he has said about his son’s naivety. The fact that Hjalmar has never had a woman. Isak cannot know for sure, but he keeps on at him.
“Not even a good screw with some dead-drunk tart?” he says.
That seems to have eased things for Isak. The pressure inside him is reduced when he tortures his son. Hjalmar looks down at his fat belly draped over his thighs.
“I don’t want to hear any more about Mother,” he says, pouring water over the stones so that the steam fizzles and splutters.
Isak pauses for a moment. His son does not usually have anything to say for himself. But the older man cannot hold back.
“You think,” he says, and the influence of the toddies he drank in the village and the strong beer in the sauna is making itself felt, “you seem to think that she’s a saint.”
Leaning back against the wall, he farts loudly.
“A saint in hell,” he says. “You should know. August ’43. The resistance hid Danish and Norwegian freedom fighters and Finnish deserters. She was bloody brilliant at getting people to talk. Sweet and young and innocent, you know what I’m saying. In those days. Some Danish resistance fighters had escaped from a German iron-ore freighter in Lulea harbour – they’d been working as slave labourers. Three of them. She went to a dance and persuaded a young man to tell her all about it. Everything. Made a bloody whore of herself, that’s what she did. They were in a hut in the forest. Things didn’t turn out well for them at all.”
Hjalmar is filled with horror and disgust. What? What is his father saying?
Isak turns to look at his son. Something resembling a smile creeps over his face. A grin. Hjalmar thinks he looks like a snake, a bug, something you find when you turn over a stone. His old-man’s teeth protrude provocatively. He does not have false teeth, but what he does have is enough to send shivers up your spine.
“What’s happened to Simon and Wilma?” Isak says.
Hjalmar shrugs.
Isak does not know. Nobody has told him. Of course he has his suspicions. The alcohol encourages him to ask. He is raving over having been excluded, shut out. He has been shrugged off, an old man who does not count. Someone who has to be protected. Someone who cannot be trusted. He is not allowed to know. He is not allowed to drive a car. Anger is gnawing away inside him like a parasite.
“She’ll burn in hell,” he says. “You probably think that’s what will happen to me. But she’ll be a few levels further down. So there.”
His tone of voice changes. He becomes self-absorbed.
“So there, so there,” he says over and over again.
Then he falls silent. Seems to regret having said too much.
“Huh,” he says petulantly. “It wasn’t all that hot in here. You didn’t make the fire hot enough. There’s still too much of a chill in the walls.”
He clambers down from the bench and goes out into the cooling room. Hjalmar can hear him splashing away in the wash basin. Then the outside door closes with a bang.
“What about Hjorleifur Arnarson?” Martinsson says. “What happened to him?”
“That was Tore,” Hjalmar says. “He hit him with a piece of firewood. We couldn’t risk him having seen something. We moved him. Knocked the kitchen stool over. Opened the cupboard and put one of the rucksacks inside it. It was supposed to look like an accident.” Closing his eyes, he recalls his brother telling him to hold up Hjorleifur’s blood-covered head so that it would not leave a trail on the floor when Tore dragged him along by his legs.
Thank you, God, Martinsson thinks. That means we can put Tore behind bars. The spots of blood on his jacket plus Hjalmar’s testimony. A watertight case.
“What are you intending to do now?” she says. “You’re not thinking of shooting yourself, I hope?”
“No.”
She starts talking more quickly.
“Because if you did…” she says, “I couldn’t cope. Not after Lars-Gunnar Vinsa. I was there when he shot himself and Nalle. He’d locked me in the cellar.”
“I know. I read about it. But I’m not going to.”
Looking down at his mug of coffee, he shakes his head.
“Mind you, I did think about it.”
He looks up at her.
“You told me to go out into the forest. And I did. Something happened that I can’t explain. A bear looked at me. It came really close.”
“And?”
“It was as if there was something bigger than me. And I don’t mean the bear. Afterwards I just knew that I had to confess. I had to get it all out of me. All the lies.”
She looks at him doubtfully.
“So why did you come out here?”
“I thought I’d better come here and wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“I don’t know. For whatever was going to happen. For everything that had to happen.”
Tore Krekula stops the snow scooter beside Hjalmar’s car. There is another car parked there as well. But smoke is only coming from Hjalmar’s chimney. So who is there with Hjalmar? Tore texts the Road Licensing Authorities, asking who owns a car with that registration number. The reply comes immediately. Rebecka Martinsson, Kurravaara. Prosecutor. Her being there is not a problem. He will finish her off. And then his brother.
The death of Hjalmar Krekula will have to look like suicide. Given the state he seems to be in at the moment, he might well kill himself anyway. Maybe he just needs a bit of persuasion. Tore will fix that. Hjalmar killed Wilma and Simon. And as for Hjorleifur, let’s see… Hjalmar borrowed Tore’s jacket… No, that’s no good: Hjalmar’s so bloody fat, he would never fit into his brother’s jacket. No, here we go: Tore was
