ASA LARSSON ~ THE SAVAGE ALTAR (14 page)

I haven’t seen her shed a single tear, thought Rebecka. Nothing touches her. Not sorrow, not people. Presumably not even her own children. But it isn’t actually my problem any longer. I have no debt to pay. I’m leaving now, and I’m never going to think about her or her children or her brother or this pit of a town ever again.

She went over to the car and opened the back door.

“Out you come, girls,” she said to Sara and Lova. “I’ve got a plane to catch.

“Bye, then,” she called after them as they disappeared up the steps to the door of the building.

Lova turned and waved. Sara pretended not to hear.

She pushed aside the forlorn feeling as Sara’s red jacket vanished through the door. A picture from the time when she lived with Sanna and Sara lit up a dark space in her memory. She was sitting with Sara on her lap, reading a story. Her cheek resting against the little girl’s soft hair. Sara pointing at the pictures.

That’s just the way it is, thought Rebecka. I’ll always remember. She’s forgotten.

Suddenly Sanna was standing beside her. The game with Virku had brought warm, pale pink roses to her blue cheeks.

“But you must come up and have something to eat before you go.”

“My plane leaves in half an hour, so…”

Rebecka finished the sentence by shaking her head.

“There’ll be other planes,” pleaded Sanna. “I haven’t even had a chance to thank you for coming up. I don’t know what I’d have done if—”

“That’s okay.” Rebecka smiled. “I really do have to go.”

Her mouth continued to smile and she stretched out her hand to say good-bye.

It was a way of marking the moment, and she knew it as she slid her hand out of her glove. Sanna looked down and refused to take her hand.

Shit, thought Rebecka.

“You and I,” said Sanna without raising her eyes. “We were like sisters. And now I’ve lost both my brother and my sister.”

She gave a short, mirthless laugh. It sounded more like a sob.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Lord.”

Rebecka steeled herself against a sudden impulse to throw her arms around Sanna and comfort her.

Don’t try this with me, she thought angrily, letting her hand drop. There are certain things you can’t fix. And you definitely can’t do it in three minutes while you’re standing out in the cold saying good-bye.

Her feet were starting to feel cold. Her Stockholm boots were far too flimsy. Her toes had been aching. Now it felt as though they were starting to disappear. She tried to wiggle them a bit.

“I’ll ring when I get there,” she said, getting into the car.

“You do that,” said Sanna without interest, fixing her eyes on Virku, who had squatted down by the wall to answer a message left in the snow.

Or maybe next year, thought Rebecka, and turned the key.

When she looked in the rearview mirror she caught sight of Sara and Lova, who had come back out onto the steps.

There was something in their eyes that made the ground beneath the car shift.

No, no, she thought. Everything’s fine. It’s nothing. Just drive.

But her feet wouldn’t release the clutch and step on the accelerator. She stopped, her eyes fixed on the little girls at the top of the steps. Saw their wide eyes, saw them shouting something to Sanna that Rebecka couldn’t hear. Saw them raise their arms and point up at the apartment, then quickly lower them as someone came out of the building.

It was a uniformed policeman, who reached Sanna in a few rapid steps. Rebecka couldn’t hear what he said.

She looked at her watch. It was pointless even to try to catch the plane. She couldn’t go now. With a deep sigh, she got out of the car. Her body moved slowly toward Sanna and the policeman. The girls were still standing on the steps and leaning over the snow-covered railings. Sara’s gaze was firmly fixed on Sanna and the policeman. Lova was eating lumps of. snow that had stuck to her gloves.

“What do you mean, house search?”

Sanna’s tone of voice made Virku stop, and approach her mistress uneasily.

“You can’t just go into my home without permission? Can they?”

The last question was directed at Rebecka.

At that very moment Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post came out, followed by two plainclothes detectives. Rebecka recognized them. It was that little woman with a face like a horse—what was her name, now? Mella. And the guy with a walrus moustache. Good God, she thought moustaches like that had gone out in the seventies. It looked as if somebody had glued a dead squirrel under his nose.

The prosecutor went up to Sanna. He was holding a bag in one hand, and he fished out a smaller transparent plastic bag. Inside it was a knife. It was about twenty centimeters long. The shaft was black and shiny, and the point curved upward slightly.

“Sanna Strandgård,” he said, holding the bag with the knife just a little too close to Sanna’s face. “We’ve just found this in your residence. Do you recognize it?”

“No,” replied Sanna. “It looks like a hunting knife. I don’t hunt.”

Sara and Lova came over to Sanna. Lova tugged at the sleeve of Sanna’s sheepskin coat to get her mother’s attention.

“Mummy,” she whined.

“Just a minute, chicken,” said Sanna absently.

Sara nestled into her mother and pressed against her so that Sanna was forced to step backward with one foot so as not to lose her balance. The eleven-year-old followed the prosecutor’s movements with her eyes and tried to understand what was going on between these serious adults standing in a circle around her mother.

“Are you absolutely certain?” von Post asked again. “Take a good look,” he said, turning the knife over.

The cold made the plastic bag crackle as he showed both sides of the weapon, holding up first the blade and then the shaft.

“Yes, I’m certain,” answered Sanna, backing away from the knife. She avoided looking at it again.

“Perhaps the questions could wait,” said Anna-Maria Mella to von Post, nodding toward the two children clinging to Sanna.

“Mummy,” repeated Lova over and over again, tugging at Sanna’s sleeve. “Mummy, I need a pee.”

“I’m freezing,” squeaked Sara. “I want to go in.”

Virku moved anxiously and tried to press herself between Sanna’s legs.

Picture number two in the book of fairy stories, thought Rebecka. The wood nymph has been captured by the villagers. They have surrounded her and some are holding her fast by her arms and tail.

“You keep hand towels and sheets in the drawer under the sofa bed in the kitchen, isn’t that right?” von Post continued. “Are you also in the habit of keeping knives among the towels?”

"Just a minute, honey," said Sanna to Sara, who was pulling and tugging at her coat.

“I need a pee,” whimpered Lova. “I’m going to wet myself.”

"Do you intend to answer the question?" pressed von Post.

Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke exchanged glances behind von Post’s back.

“No,” said Sanna, her voice tense. “I do not keep knives in the drawer.”

“What about this, then,” continued von Post relentlessly, taking another transparent plastic bag out of the larger bag. “Do you recognize this?”

The bag contained a Bible. It was covered in brown leather, shiny with use. The edges of the pages had once been gilded, but now there was very little of the gold color left, and the pages of the book were dark from much thumbing and leafing. A variety of bookmarks protruded from everywhere: postcards, plaited laces, newspaper clippings.

With a whimper Sanna sank down helplessly and sat there in the snow.

“It says Viktor Strandgård inside the cover,” von Post continued mercilessly. “Could you tell us whether it’s his Bible, and what it was doing in your kitchen? Isn’t it true that he had it with him everywhere he went, and that he had it in the church on the last night of his life?”

“No,” whispered Sanna. “No.”

She pressed her hands against the sides of her face.

Lova tried to push Sanna’s hands away so that she could look into her mother’s eyes. When she couldn’t do it, she burst into tears, inconsolable.

“Mummy, I want to go,” she sobbed.

“Get up,” said von Post harshly. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Viktor Strandgård.”

Sara turned on the prosecutor. “Leave her alone,” she screamed.

“Get these children away from here,” von Post said impatiently to Tommy Rantakyrö.

Tommy Rantakyrö took a hesitant step toward Sanna. Then Virku rushed forward and placed herself in front of her mistress. She lowered her head, flattened her ears and bared her sharp teeth with a low growl. Tommy Rantakyrö backed off.

“Right, I’ve had just about enough of this,” said Rebecka to Carl von Post. “I want to make a complaint.”

Her last remark was directed to Anna-Maria Mella, who was standing beside her and gazing up at the surrounding buildings. At every window the curtains were twitching inquisitively.

“You want to make a—” said von Post, interrupting himself with a shake of the head. “As far as I’m concerned, you can come along to the station for questioning with regard to a complaint of assault made against you by a television reporter from Channel 4’s Norrbotten news.”

Anna-Maria Mella touched von Post lightly on the arm.

“We’re starting to get an audience,” she said. “It wouldn’t look very good if one of the neighbors rang the press and starting talking about police brutality and all the rest of it. I might be mistaken, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the old guy in the flat up there to the left was filming us with a video camera.”

She pointed up at one of the windows.

“It might be best if Sven-Erik and I leave, so it doesn’t look as if there’s a whole army of us here,” she went on. “We can go and ring forensics. I assume you want them to go over the flat?”

Von Post’s upper lip was twitching with displeasure. He tried to look in through the window Anna-Maria Mella had pointed at, but the flat was completely dark. Then he realized he might be staring straight into the lens of a camera, and hastily looked away. The last thing he wanted was to be linked to police brutality, or to be censured in the press.

“No, I want to talk to the forensics guys myself,” he replied. “You and Sven-Erik can take Sanna Strandgård in. Make sure the flat’s sealed.

“We’ll speak again,” he said to Sanna before jumping into his Volvo Cross Country.

Rebecka noticed the look on Anna-Maria Mella’s face as the prosecutor’s car disappeared.

Well, I’ll be damned, she thought. Horse face tricked him. She wanted him out of here, and… Hell, she’s smart.

As soon as Carl von Post had left, silence reigned. Tommy Rantakyrö stood there uncertainly waiting for a sign from Anna-Maria or Sven-Erik. Sara and Lova were on their knees in the snow with their arms around their mother, who was still sitting on the ground. Virku lay down by their side and chomped on lumps of snow. When Rebecka bent down to stroke her, she thumped her tail just to show that everything was all right. Sven-Erik gave Anna-Maria a questioning look.

“Tommy,” said Anna-Maria, breaking the silence, “can you and Olsson seal the flat? Mark the kitchen tap so nobody uses it until the forensics team has been in.”

“Hi,” Sven-Erik said gently to Sanna. “We’re really sorry about all this. But we’re stuck with the situation now. You have to come with us to the station.”

“Can we drop the children off somewhere?” asked Anna-Maria.

“No,” said Sanna, raising her head. “I want to speak to my lawyer, Rebecka Martinsson.”

Rebecka sighed.

“Sanna, I’m not your lawyer.”

“I want to talk to you anyway.”

Sven-Erik Stålnacke glanced uncertainly at his colleague.

“I don’t know—” he began.

“Oh, please!” snapped Rebecka. “She’s being detained for questioning. Not arrested with limited access. She has every right to speak to me. Stand here and listen, we’re not going to be talking about any secrets.”

Lova whimpered in Sanna’s ear.

"What did you say, honey?"

“I’ve wet my knickers,” howled Lova.

Every gaze was turned on the little girl. It was quite true, a dark stain had appeared on her old jeans.

“Lova needs dry trousers,” said Rebecka to Anna-Maria Mella.

“Listen to me, girls,” said Anna-Maria to Sara and Lova. “Why don’t you come upstairs with me and we’ll find some dry trousers for Lova, then we’ll come back down to your mum. She won’t go anywhere till we come back. I promise.”

“Go on, do what she says,” said Sanna. “My precious little girls. Fetch some clothes for me too. And Virku’s food.”

“I’m sorry,” said Anna-Maria to Sanna. “Not your clothes. And the prosecutor will want to send everything you’re wearing to Linköping.”

“That’s okay,” said Rebecka quickly. “I’ll sort some new clothes out for you, Sanna. All right?”

The girls disappeared inside with Anna-Maria. Sven-Erik Stålnacke squatted down a little way from Sanna and Rebecka and talked to Virku. They seemed to have a lot in common.

“I can’t help you, Sanna,” said Rebecka. “I’m a tax specialist. I don’t deal with criminal cases. If you need a public defender, I can help you get hold of someone good.”

“Don’t you understand?” mumbled Sanna. “It has to be you. If you won’t help me, I don’t want anybody. God can look after me.”

“Just stop it, please,” begged Rebecka.

“No, you stop it,” said Sanna angrily. “I need you, Rebecka. And my children need you. I don’t care what you think of me, but now I’m begging you. What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees? Say you’ve got to do it for old times’ sake? It has to be you.”

“What do you mean, the children need me?”

Sanna grabbed hold of Rebecka’s jacket with both hands.

“Mum and Dad will take them away from me,” she said, pain in her voice. “That mustn’t happen. Do you understand? I don’t want Sara and Lova to spend even five minutes with my parents. And now I can’t stop it. But you can. For Sara’s sake.”

Her parents. Images and thoughts fought their way to the surface of Rebecka’s mind. Sanna’s father. Well dressed. Perfect manners. With his soft, sympathetic manner. He’d gained considerable popularity as a local politician. Rebecka had even seen him on national television from time to time. In the next election he would probably be on the list of parliamentary candidates for the Christian Democrats. But underneath the warm façade was a pack leader, hard as nails. Even Pastor Thomas Söderberg had deferred to him and shown him respect over many issues within the church. And Rebecka remembered with distaste how Sanna had told her—with a lightness of tone, as if the whole thing had happened to someone else—how he had always killed her animals. Always without warning. Dogs, cats, birds. She hadn’t even been allowed to keep an aquarium her primary-school teacher had given her. Sometimes her mother, who was completely under his thumb, had explained that it was because Sanna was allergic. Another time it might be because she hadn’t been working hard enough at school. Most of the time she got no explanation at all. The silence was such that it was not possible even to form the question. And Rebecka remembered Sanna sitting with Sara on her knee when she was small and didn’t want to go to sleep. “I’m not going to be like them,” she’d said. “They used to lock my bedroom door from the outside.”