Sun Storm aka The Savage Altar

She was carrying Lova under one arm like a bundle, and in the other hand she was carrying the child’s pink denim rucksack

“I can walk by myself,” whined Lova.

“I know, honey,” said Rebecka. “But we haven’t got time. It’s quicker if I carry you.”

She pushed Sivving’s door open with her elbow and dropped Lova in a heap on the hall floor.

“Hello,” she called, and Bella answered at once with an excited bark.

Sivving appeared in the doorway leading down to the cellar.

“Thanks for taking her,” said Rebecka breathlessly, trying in vain to pull Lova’s shoes off without undoing them. “Useless idiots. They could at least have told me yesterday when I picked her up.”

When she had arrived at nursery with Lova, she’d been informed that the staff had a training day and that none of the children were to attend. That had been exactly one hour before the hearing about Sanna’s arrest, and now she was really pushed for time. Before long the wind would have blown so much snow up against the car that she might not be able to get out. And then she’d never make it in time.

She pulled at Lova’s shoelaces, but Sara had tied double knots when she helped her little sister get dressed.

“Let me do it,” said Sivving. “You’re in a hurry.”

He picked Lova up and sat with her on his knee on a little green wooden chair that completely disappeared under his bulk. Patiently he started to undo the knots.

Rebecka looked gratefully at him. The route march from the nursery to the car and from the car to Sivving had made her hot and sweaty. She could feel her blouse sticking to her body, but there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that she would have time to shower and change her clothes. She had half an hour.

“Now, you’re going to stay here with Sivving, and I’ll be back soon to pick you up, okay?” she said to Lova.

Lova nodded and turned her face up toward Sivving so that she was looking at the underside of his chin.

“Why are you called Sivving?” she asked. “It’s a funny name.”

“Yes, it is,” laughed Sivving. “My real name is Erik.”

Rebecka looked at him in surprise, and forgot that she was in a hurry.

“What?” she said. “Isn’t your name Sivving? Why are you called that, then?”

“Don’t you know?” Sivving smiled. “It was my mother. I was at college in Stockholm, studying to be a mining engineer. Then I moved back home, and was due to start work with LKAB, the mining company. And my mother got a bit above herself. She was proud of me, of course. And she’d had to put up with a lot of nonsense from other people in the village when she sent me away to study. It was really only posh people who sent their children away to study, and they thought there was no call for her to start getting big ideas about herself.”

The memory brought a wry smile to his lips, and he went on:

“Anyway, I rented a room on Arent Grapegatan and my mother sorted out a telephone subscription. And she wrote down my title, and it ended up in the phone book. Civ.eng, civil engineer. Well, you can imagine what they all said to start with: ‘Oh look, it’s civ.eng himself calling to see us.’ But after a while people forgot where the name came from, and I just ended up being called Sivving. And I got used to it. Even Maj-Lis called me Sivving.”

Rebecka looked at him, smiling in amazement.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said.

“Weren’t you in a hurry?” asked Sivving.

She gave a start and shot out through the door.

“Don’t you go killing yourself in that car, you hear?” he called after her through the gale.

“Don’t go putting ideas in my head,” she yelled back, and jumped into the car.

What do I look like, she thought as the car slithered up the tortuous road into town. If only I’d had another half hour to have a shower and put something different on.

She was beginning to know her way into town now. Didn’t need to concentrate a hundred percent, could let her thoughts drift away instead.

R ebecka is lying on her bed with her hands pressed against her stomach.

It wasn’t too bad, she says to herself. And now it’s over.

Strangers dressed in white with soft, impersonal hands. (“Hi, Rebecka, I’m just going to put a cannula in your arm for the drip,” a wad of cold cotton wool against her skin, the nurse’s fingers are cold too, maybe she’s taken a minute to have a quick cigarette out on the balcony in the spring sunshine, “just a sharp prick, that’s it, all done.”)

She had been lying there looking out at the sun as it poured down onto the snow and made the world outside almost unbearably bright. Happiness came floating along down a plastic tube, straight into her arm. All her worries and difficulties drained away, and after a little while two of the people dressed in white came and wheeled her away for the operation.

That was yesterday morning. Now she is lying here with a searing pain in her stomach. She has taken several painkillers, but it doesn’t help. She can’t stop shivering. If she has a shower she’ll get warm. Perhaps it will ease the cramps in her stomach.

In the shower, gouts of blood spurt out of her. She watches them run down her leg, horrified.

S he has to go back to the hospital. Another drip in her arm, and she has to stay overnight.

“You’re not in any danger,” says one of the sisters when she notices the thin line of Rebecka’s lips. “An abortion can sometimes lead to an infection afterward. It’s nothing to do with poor hygiene, or anything you’ve done. The antibiotics will sort it out.”

Rebecka tries to smile back at her, but all she can manage is a peculiar grimace.

It isn’t a punishment, she thinks. He isn’t like that. It isn’t a punishment.

Sanna Strandgard was arrested on Friday, February 21, at 10:25, on the basis that there was sufficient reason to suspect her of the murder of Viktor Strandgard. The press and television gobbled up the decision like a pack of hungry foxes. The corridor outside the courtroom was illuminated by camera flashes and film lights as Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post addressed the media.

Rebecka Martinsson stood with Sanna in the arrest room just inside the court. Two guards were waiting to escort Sanna to the car and back to the station.

“We’ll appeal, of course,” said Rebecka.

Sanna twirled a lock of her hair absentmindedly between her thumb and forefinger.

“That young lad who was taking the minutes was really staring at me. Did you notice?”

“You do want me to lodge an appeal, don’t you?”

“He was looking at me as if we knew each other, but I didn’t know him.”

Rebecka slammed her briefcase shut.

“Sanna, you’re a murder suspect. Every single person in the courtroom was looking at you. Shall I file an appeal on your behalf, or not?”

“Yes, of course,” said Sanna, and looked at the guards. “Shall we go?”

When they had gone Rebecka stood there staring at the door leading out to the car park. The door of the courtroom behind her opened. When she turned round she met Anna-Maria Mella’s inquiring gaze.

“How are things?”

“So-so,” said Rebecka with a grimace. “What about you?”

“Oh, you know… so-so.”

Anna-Maria flopped down on a chair. She unzipped her thick padded jacket and let her stomach out. Then she pulled off her grayish white woolly hat without bothering to tidy her hair afterward.

“I can honestly say that I’m dying to be a real person again.”

“ ‘To be a real person,’ what does that mean?” asked Rebecka with a little smile.

“To be able to sneeze and drink coffee like ordinary people,” laughed Anna-Maria.