scratch his master’s scalp very gently. Sven-Erik opened his eyes at once and detached the claws from his head. He stroked the cat’s gray striped back affectionately.
“Bloody cat,” he said cheerfully. “Do you think it’s time to get up, then?”
Manne meowed accusingly, jumped down from the bed and disappeared through the bedroom door. Sven-Erik heard him run to the outside door and position himself there, wailing.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
He’d taken over Manne from his daughter when she and her partner had moved to Lulea. “He’s used to his freedom,” she’d said, “you know how miserable he’d be in an apartment in the middle of town. He’s like you, Dad. Needs the forest around him to be able to live.”
Sven-Erik got up and opened the outside door for the cat. But Manne just poked his nose out into the snow, then turned and padded back into the hall. As soon as Sven-Erik closed the door, the cat let out another long, drawn-out howl.
“Well, what do you want me to do?” asked Sven-Erik. “I can’t help it if it’s snowing and you don’t like it. Either you go out, or you stay in and keep quiet.”
He went into the kitchen and got out a tin of cat food. Manne made encouraging noises, winding himself around Sven-Erik’s legs until the food was safely in the bowl. Then he put the coffee percolator on, and it gurgled into action. When Anna-Maria Mella rang he’d just taken his first bite of a sandwich.
“Listen to this,” she said, her voice crackling with energy. “I was talking to Sanna Strandgard yesterday morning and we were discussing the fact that the murder seemed so ritualistic and about passages in the Bible where it talks about hands being cut off and eyes put out and all that sort of thing.”
Sven-Erik grunted between mouthfuls, and Anna-Maria went on:
“Sanna quoted Mark 9:43: ‘And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ ”
“And?” said Sven-Erik, with the feeling that he was being rather slow.
“But she didn’t read the beginning of the text!” Anna-Maria went on excitedly. “This is what it says in Mark 9:42: ‘And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck.’ ”
Sven-Erik clamped the receiver between his shoulder and his ear and picked up Manne, who was rubbing against his legs.
“There are parallel passages in the gospels of both Luke and Matthew,” said Anna-Maria. “In Matthew it says that a child’s angels in heaven always see the face of God. And when I checked in my confirmation Bible, there was a note explaining that this was a very clear expression of the fact that children are under God’s special protection. According to Hebrew belief at that time, each individual has their own angel who speaks for them before God, and only the most elevated angels were believed to have access to the throne of God.”
'So you mean somebody killed him because he caused one of these little ones to sin,' said Sven-Erik thoughtfully. 'Do you mean he…?'
He broke off, feeling distaste wash over him before he went on.
“With Sanna’s girls, then.”
“Why did she miss the beginning?” said Anna-Maria. “Von Post is right, in any case. We have to talk to Sanna Strandgard’s children. She might have had a damned good reason to hate her brother. We need to get in touch with the child protection unit. They can help us talk to the girls.”
When they’d hung up, Sven-Erik stayed at the kitchen table with the cat on his knee.
Shit, he thought. Anything but that.
It was the pastors’ secretary Ann-Gull Kyro who answered the office telephone at the church when Rebecka rang at quarter past eight in the morning. Rebecka had just dropped the children off and was on her way back to the car. When she asked for Thomas Soderberg, she heard the woman on the other end of the phone inhale sharply.
“Unfortunately,” said Ann-Gull, “he and Gunnar Isaksson are busy with the morning service and cannot be disturbed.”
“Where’s Vesa Larsson?”
“He’s not well today, he’s not to be disturbed either.”
“Perhaps I could leave a message for Thomas Soderberg. I’d like him to ring me; the number is-”
“I’m sorry,” Ann-Gull interrupted her politely. “But during the Miracle Conference the pastors are extremely busy and won’t have time to ring people who are trying to get hold of them.”
“But if I could just explain,” said Rebecka, “I’m representing Sanna Strandgard and-”
The woman on the other end of the line interrupted her again. This time there was a certain element of sharpness beneath the polite tones.
“I know exactly who you are, Rebecka Martinsson,” she said. “But as I said, the pastors have no time during the conference.”
Rebecka clenched her hands.
“You can tell the pastors that I’m not going to disappear just because they’re ignoring me,” she said furiously. “I-”
“I have no intention of telling them anything,” Ann-Gull Kyro interjected. “And there’s no point in threatening me. This conversation is over. Good-bye.”
Rebecka pulled out her earpiece and pushed it into her coat pocket. She had reached the car. She turned her face up to the sky and let the snowflakes land on her cheeks. After a few seconds she was wet and cold.
You bastards, she thought. I’m not about to slink away like a dog that’s afraid of being beaten. You will talk to me about Viktor. You say I’ve got nothing to threaten you with. We’ll see about that.
Thomas Soderberg lived with his wife, Maja, and their two daughters in an apartment in the middle of town, above a clothes shop. Rebecka’s footsteps echoed on the stairs as she made her way up to the top floor. Shell-colored fossils were inlaid in the brown stone. The nameplates were all made of brass, and etched in the same neat, italic script. It was the kind of silent stairwell where you can just imagine the elderly residents inside their stuffy apartments, ears pressed to the door, wondering who’s there.
Pull yourself together, Rebecka said to herself. There’s no point in wondering whether you want to do this or not. You’ve just got to get it over with. Like a visit to the dentist. Open wide and it’ll soon be over. She pressed the bell on the door marked “Soderberg.” For a split second she thought that Thomas might open the door, and suppressed the urge to turn tail and run down the stairs.
It was Maja Soderberg’s sister, Magdalena, who opened the door.
“Rebecka” was all she said. She didn’t look surprised. Rebecka got the feeling she was expected. Perhaps Thomas had asked his sister-in-law to take some time off work, and installed her as a guard dog to protect his little family. Magdalena hadn’t changed. Her hair was cut in the same practical pageboy bob as it had been ten years ago. She was wearing unfashionable jeans tucked into a pair of hand-knitted woolen kneesocks.
She’s sticking to her own special style, thought Rebecka. If there’s anyone who isn’t about to fall for the idea of dressing for success and slipping on a pair of high heels, it’s Magdalena. If she’d been born in the nineteenth century she’d have worn her well-starched nurse’s uniform all the time and paddled her own canoe along the rivers to the godforsaken villages with her super-size syringe in her bag.
“I’ve come to talk to Maja,” said Rebecka.
“I don’t think you’ve got anything to talk about,” said Magdalena, holding firmly onto the door handle with one hand and resting the other on the doorjamb so that Rebecka wouldn’t be able to get past her.
Rebecka raised her voice so that it could be heard in the flat.
“Tell Maja I want to talk to her about Victory Print. I want to give her the chance to persuade me not to go to the police.”
“Right, I’m closing the door,” said Magdalena angrily.
Rebecka placed her hand on the door frame.
“You’ll break my fingers if you do,” she said so loudly that it bounced off the walls of the stairwell. “Come on,
