from her subconscious and creep out through a gap in the syllables as she spoke. “There’s something… something that makes me feel frustrated when I look at all this. Besides the fact that this corpse is in the worst state I’ve ever seen-”
“Hey, you two! His lordship the assistant chief prosecutor is on his way up the hill.”
Tommy Rantakyro had stuck his head in through the doorway.
“Who the hell rang him?” asked Sven-Erik, but Tommy had already disappeared.
Anna-Maria looked at him. Four years ago when she became team leader Sven-Erik had hardly spoken to her for the first six months. He had been deeply hurt because she had got the job he wanted. And now that he’d found his feet as her second in command, he didn’t want to take that extra step forward. She made a mental note to give him a pep talk later. But now he’d just have to manage by himself. Just as Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post stormed in through the door, she gave Sven-Erik an encouraging look.
“What the fuck is going on here?” yelled von Post.
He yanked off his fur hat and his hand went up to his mane of curly hair from sheer force of habit. He stamped his feet. The short walk up from the car park was enough to turn his feet to ice in his smart shoes from Church’s. He strode up to Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik but recoiled when he caught sight of the body on the floor.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he burst out, and looked anxiously down at his shoes to check whether he might have got them dirty.
“Why didn’t somebody ring me?” he went on, turning to Sven-Erik. “From now on I’m taking over the investigation, and you can expect a serious talk with the chief if you’ve been keeping me in the dark.”
“Nobody’s been keeping you in the dark, we didn’t know what had happened and we still don’t really know anything,” ventured Sven-Erik.
“Crap!” snapped the prosecutor. “And what the hell are you doing here?”
This was directed at Anna-Maria, who was standing in silence gazing at Viktor Strandgard’s mutilated arms.
“I rang her,” explained Sven-Erik.
“I see,” said von Post through clenched teeth. “So you rang her, but not me.”
Sven-Erik said nothing, and Carl von Post looked at Anna-Maria, who raised her eyes and met his gaze calmly.
Carl von Post clamped his teeth together so hard that his jaws ached. He’d always had a problem with this midget of a policewoman. She seemed to have her male colleagues on the Investigation squad by the balls, and he couldn’t work out why. And just look at her. One meter fifty at the most in her stocking feet, with a long horse’s face which more or less covered half her body. At the moment she was ready for a circus freak show with her enormous belly. Like a grotesque cube, she was as broad as she was tall. It just had to be the inevitable result of generations of inbreeding in those little isolated Lapp villages.
He waved his hand in the air as if to waft away his sharp words and started on a new tack.
“How are you feeling, Anna-Maria?” he asked, pasting on a gentle and sympathetic smile.
“Fine,” she answered without expression. “And you?”
“I reckon we’ll have the press round our ears in maybe an hour or so. It’ll be all hell let loose, so tell me what you know so far about the murder and the dead man; all I know is that he was a religious celebrity.”
Carl von Post sat down on one of the blue chairs and pulled off his gloves.
“I’ll let Sven-Erik tell you,” said Anna-Maria in a laconic but not unfriendly tone. “I’m supposed to be on desk duty until my time comes. I came along with Sven-Erik because he asked me to, and because two pairs of eyes see more than… well, you know all that. And now I need to pee. If you’ll excuse me.”
She noticed with satisfaction the pained smile on von Post’s face as she went off to the bathroom. To think that the word “pee” could offend his ears quite so much. She wouldn’t mind betting that his wife made sure she directed the stream of liquid onto the porcelain when she peed so his delicate little ears wouldn’t be troubled by the sound of piddling. Bloody man.
“Well,” said Sven-Erik when Anna-Maria had disappeared, “you can see things for yourself, and we don’t know much more. Somebody has killed him. And they’ve done it very thoroughly, I must say. The dead man is Viktor Strandgard, or the Paradise Boy as he’s known. He’s the main attraction in this huge church community. Nine years ago he was involved in a terrible car accident. He died at the hospital. His heart stopped and everything, but they got him back, and he could tell them all about what had happened during the operation and when they were trying to resuscitate him, that the doctor had dropped his glasses and so on. And then he said he’d been in heaven. He met angels, and Jesus. Anyway, one of the nurses who’d been involved in the operation was saved, and the woman who ran into him, and suddenly the whole of Kiruna was one big revivalist meeting. The three biggest free churches joined together to make one new church, The Source of All Our Strength. The congregation grew and in recent years they’ve built this church, started their own school and their own nursery, and held huge revivalist meetings. Tons of money is pouring in, and people come here from all over the world. Viktor Strandgard is-or was, I should say-employed by the church full-time, and he’s written a best seller…”
“Himlen Tur och Retur,
“That’s the one. He’s their golden calf, he’s been in all the papers, even
“Exactly,” said von Post, and stood up, looking impatient. “I don’t want anyone leaking information to the press. I’ll take over all contact with the media and I want you to report to me on a regular basis; anything that emerges during interrogation and so on, is that clear? Everything is to be passed on to me. When the journalists start asking questions you can say I’ll be holding a press conference on the steps of the church at twelve midday today. What’s your next move?”
“We need to get hold of the sister, she was the one who found the body; then we need to speak to the three pastors. The medical examiner is on his way from Lulea; he should be here any minute now.”
“Good. I want a report on the cause of death and a credible version of the course of events leading up to it at eleven-thirty, so be by the phone then. That’s all. If you’re done here I’ll just take a look around on my own for a bit.”
“Oh, come on,” said Anna-Maria to Sven-Erik Stalnacke. “This has got to be better than sitting around interviewing pissed-up snowmobile riders.”
Her Ford Escort wouldn’t start, and Sven-Erik was giving her a lift home.
It was just as well, she thought; he needed encouragement so that he didn’t get fed up with the job.
“It’s that bastard von Pisspot,” Sven-Erik replied with a grimace. “As soon as I have anything to do with him I just feel like saying sod the lot of it, and just going through the motions every day until it’s time to go home.”
“Well, don’t think about him now. Think about Viktor Strandgard instead. The lunatic who killed him is out there somewhere, and you’re going to find him. Let that pompous old fool scream and shout and talk to the newspapers. The rest of us know who actually does all the work.”
“How can I not think about him? He’s watching me like a hawk all the time.”
“I know.”
She looked out through the car window. The houses still lay sleeping in the darkness of the streets, with just an occasional light in a window. The orange paper Advent stars were still hanging here and there. This year nobody had burned to death. There had been fights and the usual dose of misery, but no worse than usual. She felt slightly sick. Hardly surprising. She’d been up for a good hour and had eaten nothing. She realized she wasn’t concentrating on what Sven-Erik was saying, and rewound her memory to catch up. He’d asked how she’d managed to work with von Post.
“We never actually had that much to do with each other,” she said.
“Look, I could really do with your help, Anna-Maria. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of pressure on those of us working on this case, without that bully on top of everything else. I could do with a colleague’s support right now.”
“That sounds like blackmail to me.” Anna-Maria couldn’t help laughing.
“I’ll do whatever it takes. Blackmail, threats. In any case, it’s good for you to get a bit of exercise. You could at least be there and talk to the sister when we find her. Just help me get started.”
“Fine, ring me when you’ve found her.”
Sven-Erik bent forward over the steering wheel and looked up at the night sky.
