There was something about Sanna that gave her the ability to relate to animals. They were somehow alike, Sanna and the dog. The little bitch who’d been mistreated and neglected for years. Where had all her troubles gone? They’d simply been washed away and replaced by sheer joy at being able to push her nose into freshly fallen snow, or to bark at a frightened squirrel in a pine tree. And Sanna. She’d only just found her brother hacked to death in the church. And now she was standing in the snow playing with the dog.
I haven’t seen her shed a single tear, thought Rebecka. Nothing touches her. Not sorrow, not people. Presumably not even her own children. But it isn’t actually my problem any longer. I have no debt to pay. I’m leaving now, and I’m never going to think about her or her children or her brother or this pit of a town ever again.
She went over to the car and opened the back door.
“Out you come, girls,” she said to Sara and Lova. “I’ve got a plane to catch.
“Bye, then,” she called after them as they disappeared up the steps to the door of the building.
Lova turned and waved. Sara pretended not to hear.
She pushed aside the forlorn feeling as Sara’s red jacket vanished through the door. A picture from the time when she lived with Sanna and Sara lit up a dark space in her memory. She was sitting with Sara on her lap, reading a story. Her cheek resting against the little girl’s soft hair. Sara pointing at the pictures.
That’s just the way it is, thought Rebecka. I’ll always remember. She’s forgotten.
Suddenly Sanna was standing beside her. The game with Virku had brought warm, pale pink roses to her blue cheeks.
“But you must come up and have something to eat before you go.”
“My plane leaves in half an hour, so…”
Rebecka finished the sentence by shaking her head.
“There’ll be other planes,” pleaded Sanna. “I haven’t even had a chance to thank you for coming up. I don’t know what I’d have done if-”
“That’s okay.” Rebecka smiled. “I really do have to go.”
Her mouth continued to smile and she stretched out her hand to say good-bye.
It was a way of marking the moment, and she knew it as she slid her hand out of her glove. Sanna looked down and refused to take her hand.
Shit, thought Rebecka.
“You and I,” said Sanna without raising her eyes. “We were like sisters. And now I’ve lost both my brother and my sister.”
She gave a short, mirthless laugh. It sounded more like a sob.
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Lord.”
Rebecka steeled herself against a sudden impulse to throw her arms around Sanna and comfort her.
Don’t try this with me, she thought angrily, letting her hand drop. There are certain things you can’t fix. And you definitely can’t do it in three minutes while you’re standing out in the cold saying good-bye.
Her feet were starting to feel cold. Her Stockholm boots were far too flimsy. Her toes had been aching. Now it felt as though they were starting to disappear. She tried to wiggle them a bit.
“I’ll ring when I get there,” she said, getting into the car.
“You do that,” said Sanna without interest, fixing her eyes on Virku, who had squatted down by the wall to answer a message left in the snow.
Or maybe next year, thought Rebecka, and turned the key.
When she looked in the rearview mirror she caught sight of Sara and Lova, who had come back out onto the steps.
There was something in their eyes that made the ground beneath the car shift.
No, no, she thought. Everything’s fine. It’s nothing. Just drive.
But her feet wouldn’t release the clutch and step on the accelerator. She stopped, her eyes fixed on the little girls at the top of the steps. Saw their wide eyes, saw them shouting something to Sanna that Rebecka couldn’t hear. Saw them raise their arms and point up at the apartment, then quickly lower them as someone came out of the building.
It was a uniformed policeman, who reached Sanna in a few rapid steps. Rebecka couldn’t hear what he said.
She looked at her watch. It was pointless even to try to catch the plane. She couldn’t go now. With a deep sigh, she got out of the car. Her body moved slowly toward Sanna and the policeman. The girls were still standing on the steps and leaning over the snow-covered railings. Sara’s gaze was firmly fixed on Sanna and the policeman. Lova was eating lumps of. snow that had stuck to her gloves.
“What do you mean, house search?”
Sanna’s tone of voice made Virku stop, and approach her mistress uneasily.
“You can’t just go into my home without permission? Can they?”
The last question was directed at Rebecka.
At that very moment Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post came out, followed by two plainclothes detectives. Rebecka recognized them. It was that little woman with a face like a horse-what was her name, now? Mella. And the guy with a walrus moustache. Good God, she thought moustaches like that had gone out in the seventies. It looked as if somebody had glued a dead squirrel under his nose.
The prosecutor went up to Sanna. He was holding a bag in one hand, and he fished out a smaller transparent plastic bag. Inside it was a knife. It was about twenty centimeters long. The shaft was black and shiny, and the point curved upward slightly.
“Sanna Strandgard,” he said, holding the bag with the knife just a little too close to Sanna’s face. “We’ve just found this in your residence. Do you recognize it?”
“No,” replied Sanna. “It looks like a hunting knife. I don’t hunt.”
Sara and Lova came over to Sanna. Lova tugged at the sleeve of Sanna’s sheepskin coat to get her mother’s attention.
“Mummy,” she whined.
“Just a minute, chicken,” said Sanna absently.
Sara nestled into her mother and pressed against her so that Sanna was forced to step backward with one foot so as not to lose her balance. The eleven-year-old followed the prosecutor’s movements with her eyes and tried to understand what was going on between these serious adults standing in a circle around her mother.
“Are you absolutely certain?” von Post asked again. “Take a good look,” he said, turning the knife over.
The cold made the plastic bag crackle as he showed both sides of the weapon, holding up first the blade and then the shaft.
“Yes, I’m certain,” answered Sanna, backing away from the knife. She avoided looking at it again.
“Perhaps the questions could wait,” said Anna-Maria Mella to von Post, nodding toward the two children clinging to Sanna.
“Mummy,” repeated Lova over and over again, tugging at Sanna’s sleeve. “Mummy, I need a pee.”
“I’m freezing,” squeaked Sara. “I want to go in.”
Virku moved anxiously and tried to press herself between Sanna’s legs.
Picture number two in the book of fairy stories, thought Rebecka. The wood nymph has been captured by the villagers. They have surrounded her and some are holding her fast by her arms and tail.
“You keep hand towels and sheets in the drawer under the sofa bed in the kitchen, isn’t that right?” von Post continued. “Are you also in the habit of keeping knives among the towels?”
'Just a minute, honey,' said Sanna to Sara, who was pulling and tugging at her coat.
“I need a pee,” whimpered Lova. “I’m going to wet myself.”
'Do you intend to answer the question?' pressed von Post.
Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stalnacke exchanged glances behind von Post’s back.
“No,” said Sanna, her voice tense. “I do not keep knives in the drawer.”
“What about this, then,” continued von Post relentlessly, taking another transparent plastic bag out of the larger bag. “Do you recognize this?”
The bag contained a Bible. It was covered in brown leather, shiny with use. The edges of the pages had once been gilded, but now there was very little of the gold color left, and the pages of the book were dark from much
