see properly. Black spots are clouding her vision. As if somebody had fired paintballs at a shop window.
She’s going to faint. There’s no time.
She points the gun at him.
'Don’t do it, Rebecka,' he says. 'You won’t be able to live with yourself. I never wanted this, Rebecka. It’s over now'
She wishes he would do something. Make a move to get up. Reach for the axe.
Maybe she can trust him. Maybe he’ll put her and the children in the sledge and take them back. Give himself up to the police.
Or maybe not. And then-roaring fire. The terrified eyes of the girls as they tug at the ropes binding their hands and feet to the bed. The flames melting the flesh on their bones. If Vesa sets the place on fire, there’s nobody to tell. Thomas and Curt will get the blame, and he’ll walk free.
He came here to kill us, she says to herself. Just remember that.
He is weeping now, Vesa Larsson. Just a moment ago Rebecka was sixteen, sitting in the cellar of the Pentecostal church in the middle of all his painting gear, talking about God, life, love and art.
“Think of my children, Rebecka.”
It’s him or the girls.
She closes her eyes as her finger squeezes the trigger. The report is deafening. When she opens her eyes he is still sitting there in the same position. But he no longer has a face. A second passes, then the body falls to one side.
Don’t look at it. Don’t think. Sara and Lova.
She drops the gun and hauls herself up onto all fours. Her whole body shakes from the exertion as she crawls toward the bed, inch by inch. A ringing, howling noise fills her ears.
Sara’s hand. One hand is enough. If she can free one hand…
She crawls over Curt’s lifeless body. Fumbles with his belt. Gropes under his body with her hand. There’s the knife. She undoes the sheath, draws it out. It looks as if she has dipped her hand in blood. She’s reached the bed.
Steady hand, now. Don’t cut Sara.
She cuts through the hemp rope and pulls it off Sara’s wrist. Places the knife in Sara’s free hand and sees her fingers close around the handle.
Now rest.
She slumps down on the floor.
After a little while Lova and Sara’s faces appear above her. She grabs Sara’s sleeve.
“Remember,” she croaks. “Stay inside the cabin. Keep the door shut and put on your snowsuits and all the blankets. Sivving and Bella are coming in the morning. Wait for them. Are you listening, Sara? I’m just going to have a little rest.”
Nothing hurts anymore. But her hands are ice cold. She loses her grip on Sara’s sleeve. Their faces drift away. She is sinking down into a well; they are standing at the top in the sun, looking down at her. And all the time it’s getting darker and colder.
Sara and Lova crouch down on either side of Rebecka. Lova turns to her older sister.
“What did she say?” she asks.
“I thought it sounded like ‘Will you receive me?’ ” replies Sara.
The winter wind was tearing frantically at the spindly birch trees outside the hospital in Kiruna. Pulling at their gnarled arms, reaching up into the blue black sky. Snapping their spindly, frozen fingers.
Mans Wenngren hurtled straight past the intensive care reception desk. The cold glare of the fluorescent lights bounced off the polished surface of the floor and the pallid cream walls of the corridor, with their indescribably ugly pattern in wine red. His whole being was revolted by the impression. The smell of disinfectant and cleaning fluid mixed with the stale, creeping stench of crumbling bodies. The constant clatter of metal trollies delivering food, samples or Lord knows what.
At least it isn’t Christmas, he thought.
His father had had his final heart attack on Christmas day. It was many years ago now, but Mans could still see the hospital staff’s unfortunate and unsuccessful attempts to create a festive atmosphere on the ward. Cheap, mass-produced ginger biscuits served with afternoon tea on paper serviettes with a Christmas motif. A plastic tree at the far end of the corridor, its needles pointing the wrong way and squashed flat after a long year in its box up on a shelf in the storeroom. Odd baubles dangling from the branches on a piece of thread. And beneath the lower branches, gaudy packages that you knew had nothing in them.
He shook off the memories before they got as far as his parents. Swung around without pausing, his wool coat streaming out behind him like a cloak.
“I’m looking for Rebecka Martinsson,” he roared. “Is anybody working here, or what?”
That morning he had been woken by the telephone. It was the police in Kiruna, wondering if it was true that he was Rebecka Martinsson’s boss. Yes, it was true. They hadn’t managed to find any records of close relatives. Perhaps the firm knew if she had a partner or boyfriend? No, the firm didn’t know that. He had asked what had happened. The police had finally told him Rebecka was undergoing an operation, but they refused to part with any more information.
He had phoned the hospital in Kiruna. They hadn’t even been prepared to confirm that she’d been admitted. “Classified” was the only word he could get out of them.
Then he’d phoned one of the two female partners in the firm.
“Mans, darling,” she’d said, “Rebecka is your assistant.”
In the end he’d taken a taxi to the airport at Arlanda.
Halfway down the corridor a nurse caught up with him. She followed him, a torrent of words spilling out as he opened various doors and looked in. He registered only fragments of her babble. Classified. Unauthorized. Security.
“I’m her partner,” he bluffed as he carried on opening doors and looking in.
He found Rebecka alone in a four-bed room. Next to the bed was a drip with a plastic bag half full of clear fluid. Eyes closed. Face deathly white, even her lips.
He pulled a stool up to the bed, but didn’t sit down. Instead he turned and growled at the little woman who was pursuing him. She disappeared at once, her Birkenstocks clattering frantically down the corridor.
After a moment another woman wearing a white coat and white trousers came in. In two strides he was right in front of her, reading the small name badge pinned to her breast pocket.
“Right, Sister Frida,” he said aggressively, before she’d even managed to open her mouth, “would you be so kind as to explain this to me?”
He pointed at Rebecka’s hands. Both were securely tied to the sides of the bed with gauze bandage.
Sister Frida blinked in surprise before she answered.
“Come out here with me,” she said softly. “Then we can calm down and have a little chat.”
Mans waved his hand in front of him as if she’d been a fly.
“Fetch the doctor who’s responsible for her,” he said angrily.
Sister Frida was attractive. She was a natural blonde. She had high cheekbones, and her mouth was subtly painted with pink lip gloss. She was used to people obeying her soft voice. She was known for it. She’d never been a fly before. She wondered whether to call security. Or maybe the police, in view of these particular circumstances. But then she looked at Mans Wenngren. Her gaze swept over him, from the improbably well-ironed shirt collar, over the gray-and-black-striped tie, to the discreet black suit and the beautifully polished shoes.
“All right, come with me and you can speak to the doctor,” she said brusquely, turned on her heel and stalked out with Mans trailing in her wake.
The doctor was a short man with thick, gray-blond hair. His face was sunburned and his nose had begun to peel slightly. Presumably he’d recently had a little holiday abroad. His white coat was left casually unbuttoned over jeans and a turquoise T-shirt. The pocket of his coat was stuffed with several pens, a notebook and a pair of glasses.
Middle-aged angst with traces of hippie syndrome, thought Mans, standing just a little too close when they shook hands so that the doctor was forced to look upward like a stargazer.
