She hangs up.
“Let’s go,” Mella says to Stalnacke. “We’ll get Hjalmar’s confession on tape.”
“Where is he?” Martinsson says.
“He’s sitting on the steps outside the front door. We had to let him rest.”
“Hang on a minute.”
Martinsson goes down on all fours. Every movement is agonizing. But she manages it eventually. Sliding the rag rug to one side, she lifts up the lino and the floorboard, then produces the oilcloth package with the maths books and the Advanced Level Certificate of Education.
“What’s that?” Mella says.
Martinsson does not answer.
“What is it?” Mella says again, with irritation in her voice. But she falls silent when she notices Stalnacke’s expression.
Leave her alone, his eyes say.
Martinsson staggers out through the door. Hjalmar is sitting at the top of the steps.
Olsson and Rantakyro are standing beside him. She puts the package on Hjalmar’s knee.
“Thank you,” he says.
The moment he says it, he realizes that he has not used that expression for a very long time.
“Thank you,” he says again. “That was kind of you, really kind.”
He taps the package with his hand.
Martinsson goes back indoors. Rantakyro supports her discreetly with a hand under her elbow.
Anni has fallen asleep on the posh sofa in the drawing room. It is a puffed-up leather affair, not especially attractive. Much too big for the room. Hanging over the back of it are small white embroidered cloths, presumably to protect against the ill effects of someone sitting on the sofa with dirty hair or too much pomade.
I sit in the armchair and look at her. We never used this room. It feels unfamiliar. We always sat and talked in the kitchen. And when I was alive, the television was always on the upstairs landing, which was big enough to use as a room. The drawing room was only used for special occasions, for coffee after funerals or for christenings. Whenever the vicar came to visit, he was always served coffee in the best china in the drawing room.
It’s evening. The sun is going down. The atmosphere in the room is warm and conducive to an afternoon nap.
When I died, Anni asked Hjalmar to carry the television down to the drawing room. Now she often has a lie-down here. I assume she doesn’t have the strength to climb the stairs. She has a woollen blanket over her legs. It’s a rather fine blanket whose sole role used to be to hang decoratively over the armrest. It still shouldn’t really be used, and so Anni hasn’t unfolded it completely: it’s lying doubled over her legs. If I could, I would open the blanket out to cover her completely. Silly old Anni! What’s the point of not making full use of everything now?
I look around. Everything is so neat and tidy, but it’s not really Anni. It’s a collection of all the poshest and best things she possesses. The dark-stained bookcase has books – not all that many, mind you – in neat rows. Cheap ornaments, a hollow swan made of glass and containing a red fluid that rises up its neck when the pressure is high, a painted plate from Tenerife on a stand – Anni has never been there. Professionally taken photographs of relatives in dusty frames. There’s one of me when I was a child. I look like nothing on earth, with my hair newly washed; properly combed and electrically dried, it’s sticking to my forehead. I remember the dress I’m wearing: the seams chafed against my skin. The crotch of my tights was halfway down my thighs. How on earth did they get me into that outfit? Did they drug me?
Anni is so thin under her two cardigans. There’s nothing more than skin and bones left of her. But she’s still breathing. And now her eyelids are flickering. Her hands and legs start jerking like the limbs of a sleeping dog. She has a bruise on her cheek where Kerttu slapped her.
I’m sitting in her best armchair, trying to remember if I ever told her how much she meant to me. I want to thank her for loving me unconditionally. And I want to thank her for never restricting me – I could come and go like a pet cat, but she was always there to heat up a bowl of soup or make me a sandwich or two if I was hungry. Mother used to say that Anni spoilt me. It’s true. She did. I want to thank her for that. My mother was so different, with all her hang-ups: drama, tears, screams and curses one minute, red-eyed, emotional and guilt-ridden the next. “Please forgive me, my darling: you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Can you plea-plea-please forgive me?” In the end I became an ice-cold teenager. “Pass the sick bag,” I used to say when she became devastated and wet and tearful and hiccupy. Anni said, “Wilma can come and live with me. If she needs a bit of a break. And she can start revising her maths.” Mother thought I’d go mad out here in the sticks. “I did when I lived there,” she said. But she was wrong.
I’m sitting in Anni’s best armchair and thinking how much I loved her. I never told her, perhaps because I’m allergic to the word. Mother must have used it thousands of times, but she’s about as mature as a nestling. I ought to have told Anni, though. All those times when she sat on the kitchen sofa with her legs up, trying to reach her feet so that she could massage them: I ought to have massaged them for her. I ought to have brushed her hair. I ought to have helped her up the stairs every night. I never realized. I used to lie on my bed, listening to music.
I look at her more closely. The light is dim in the room, and I can’t see her chest moving. Is she breathing?
I hear a voice from the kitchen doorway saying, “Is that you, sitting there?” And when I turn round, there she is.
She looks exactly like she always did, but not at all like the Anni lying on the sofa.
“No,” she says with a smile when she catches on to my question. “I’m just asleep. I’m going to live for another sixteen years. But it’s time for you to go now. Don’t you think?”
Yes, says something inside me. And suddenly there we are, standing on the shore of the lake. It’s summer. The far shore doesn’t look at all like the other side of Piilijarvi. But the boat is Anni’s. It’s her old rowing boat, the one her cousin made for her ages ago. The water is gurgling beneath the bows, which smell of tar. The sun glitters like trolling-spoons in the ripples. Mosquitoes sing their hymns to summer as Anni unties the painter and holds onto the boat while I jump aboard and lay the oars in the rowlocks.
Anni pushes off, then jumps aboard as well. I do the rowing.
As I’m rowing, I see Hjalmar.
He’s standing in the prison chapel, singing away. He’s with seven other inmates. The prison chaplain is a thin-haired man in his forties. He’s quite good on the guitar, and they’re singing “Childhood Faith”, the religious song made famous by the north’s favourite singer, Lapp-Lisa. The sound echoes back and forth, to and from the melancholy walls. The chaplain is glad that Hjalmar has joined his group. Hjalmar is big and commands respect, and, as some of the other prisoners want to keep on his good side, they turn up for every Wednesday service. The chaplain can demonstrate the results of his prison activities to his own congregation, so everyone is happy. For it is surely marvellous that these criminals are allowed out on parole to attend Sunday service at the Philadelphia Pentecostal Church. They pay homage to Jesus. And are only too pleased to describe the miserable lives they led before they saw the light, so that the whole congregation is inspired.
Happiest of them all is Hjalmar. He has new maths books in his cell.
His fat cheeks are rose-pink. He enjoys singing, likes to belt out “Childhood faith, childhood faith, you are a golden bridge to heaven”.
He always jokes that he’s never going to appeal against his sentence.
