I didn’t come here to learn about growing mushrooms, thought Rebecka.
“I think you loved him too,” she said.
Patrik breathed in sharply through his nose, clamped his lips tightly together and gazed up at the ceiling.
“He was just a sham,” he said violently. “Nothing matters anymore. And I’m glad he’s dead.”
“What do you mean? What sort of sham?”
“Leave it,” he said. “Just leave it, Rebecka.”
“Did you write him a card telling him you loved him, and that what you were doing wasn’t wrong?”
Patrik Mattsson buried his face in his hands and shook his head.
“Did you have a relationship, or not?”
He started to cry.
“Ask Vesa Larsson,” he sniveled. “Ask him about Viktor’s sex life.”
He broke off and fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. When he didn’t find one, he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his sweater. Rebecka took a step toward him.
“Don’t touch me!” he snapped.
She froze on the spot.
'Do you know what you’re asking? You, who just ran away when things got difficult.'
“Yes,” she whispered.
He lifted his hands.
“Do you understand, I can raze the whole temple to the ground! There will be nothing but ash left of The Source of All Our Strength and the movement and the school and-all of it! The town will be able to turn the Crystal Church into an ice hockey rink.”
“ ‘The truth shall set you free,’ it says.”
He fell silent.
“Free!” he spat. “Is that what you are?”
He looked around, seemed to be looking for something.
A knife-the thought went through Rebecka’s head.
He made a gesture with his hand, the fingers together, palm facing her, which seemed to indicate that he wanted her to wait. Then he disappeared through a door farther down the room. There was a heavy click as it closed behind him, then silence. Just the sound of dripping from behind the plastic curtain. The electricity humming through the light cables.
A minute passed. She thought about the man who had disappeared in the mine in the 1960s. He’d gone down, but never came up again. His car was in the parking lot, but he was gone. Without a trace. No body. Nothing. Never found.
And Virku in the car in the big parking lot, how long would she cope if Rebecka didn’t come back? Would she start barking, and be found by somebody passing by? Or just lie down and go to sleep in the snow-covered car?
She went to the door that led out to the road into the mine, and pushed it. To her relief, it wasn’t locked. She had to control herself to stop herself from running toward the workshop. As soon as she saw the people inside and heard the noise of their tools and the sound of steel being bent and shaped, her fear started to ebb away.
A man came out of the workshop. He took off his helmet and went over to one of the cars parked outside.
“Are you going up?” asked Rebecka.
“Why?” He smiled. “Want a lift?”
She drove back up with the lad from the workshop. She could feel him looking at her from the side, amused and curious. Although of course he couldn’t see much in the darkness.
“So,” he said, “do you come here often?”
Virku was full of reproaches when Rebecka got back to the car in the parking lot at the mine.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” said Rebecka, with a pang of guilt. “We’re going to pick up Sara and Lova soon, then we’ll play outside for a long time, I promise. We’re just going to pop into the tax office first and check something on their computers, okay?”
She drove through the falling snow to the local tax office.
“I hope this is over soon,” she said to Virku. “Although it’s not looking too good. I can’t make any sense of it.”
Virku sat beside her on the front seat, listening carefully. She tilted her head anxiously to one side, and looked as if she understood every single word Rebecka said.
She’s like Jussi, Grandmother’s dog, thought Rebecka. The same clever expression.
She remembered how the men in the village used to sit and talk to Jussi, who was allowed to come and go as he pleased. “The only thing he can’t do is talk,” they used to sigh.
“Your mistress didn’t feel too good during the interrogation today,” Rebecka went on. “She sort of curls up and disappears through the window when they push her. Sounds far away, as if she doesn’t care. She drives the prosecutor mad.”
The tax office was in the same building as the police station. Rebecka looked around as she parked outside. The bad feeling from the previous day when she’d found the note on the car just wouldn’t go away.
“Five minutes,” she said to Virku, locking the car door behind her.
Ten minutes later she was back. She placed four computer printouts in the glove compartment and scratched the top of Virku’s head.
“Right, that’s it,” she said triumphantly. “This time they’d better answer me when I start asking questions. We can fit in one more thing before we pick up the girls.”
She drove up to the Crystal Church on Sandstensberget and let Virku jump out of the car in front of her.
I might need somebody who’s on my side, she thought.
Her heart was pounding as she walked up the hill toward the cafe and the bookshop. The risk of bumping into somebody she knew was relatively high. Just as long as it wasn’t one of the pastors or the elders.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. It might as well happen now as later.
Virku raced from one lamppost to the next, reading and replying to messages. A lot of male dogs had been along here, ones Virku didn’t already know.
There wasn’t a soul inside the bookshop, apart from the girl behind the counter. Rebecka had never met her before. She had short curly hair and a large cross covered in glass beads on a short chain around her neck. She smiled at Rebecka.
“Just let me know if you need any help,” she trilled.
It was obvious that she vaguely recognized Rebecka, but couldn’t place her.
She’s seen me on television, thought Rebecka. She nodded at the girl, told Virku to stay by the door, brushed the snow off her coat and set off toward the nearest shelf.
Christian pop poured out of the loudspeakers, the volume low. Glass lights from IKEA hung from the ceiling, and spotlights illuminated the shelves on the walls, filled with books and CDs. The shelves in the middle of the shop were so low you couldn’t hide behind them. Rebecka could see straight through the big glass doors leading into the cafe. The wooden floor was almost dry. Not many people with snowy shoes had come in here today.
“Isn’t it quiet?” she said to the girl behind the counter.
“Everyone’s at seminars,” replied the girl. “The Miracle Conference is on at the moment.”
“You decided to go ahead with it, even though Viktor Strandgard…”
“Yes,” the girl answered quickly. “It’s what he would have wanted. And God wanted it too. Yesterday and the day before there were loads of journalists in here, asking questions and buying tapes and books, but today it’s quiet.”
There it was. Rebecka found the shelf with Viktor’s book.
At that moment she heard a voice right behind her.
