ASA LARSSON ~ THE SAVAGE ALTAR (19 page)

Rebecka laughs through her tears. There is almost too much laughter. It bubbles over because she has cried so much she has created an empty space, ready to be filled by another feeling. Thomas joins in and laughs too. Then all of a sudden he becomes serious and gazes into her eyes for a long time.

“And you are special, Rebecka. Believe me, you are special.”

Then the tears come again. They roll silently down her cheeks. Thomas Söderberg reaches out and wipes them away. Strokes her lips with the palm of his hand. Rebecka is totally still. She didn’t want to frighten him away, she thinks later.

Thomas Söderberg stretches out his other hand and wipes away the rest of her tears with his thumb, while his fingers take hold of her hair. All at once his breath is very close. It flows over her face like warm water. There is the slightly acrid smell of coffee, the sweetness of gingerbread and something else that is just him.

Then everything happens so quickly. His tongue is inside her mouth. His fingers are tangled in her hair. She clasps the back of his head with one hand and with the other tries in vain to undo at least one button on his shirt. His hands fumble at her breasts and try to find their way in under her skirt. They are in a hurry. They rush over each other’s bodies before reason catches up with them. Before the shame comes.

She locks her arms around his neck and he raises her up out of the chair, lifts her onto the desk and pushes up her skirt with a single movement. She wants to get inside him. Presses him against her body. When he pulls off her tights he scratches the outside of her thigh, but she doesn’t notice until later. He can’t get her knickers off. There isn’t time. Pushes the crotch to one side at the same time as he undoes his trousers. Over his shoulder she can see the key in the door. She thinks that they should lock it, but now he is inside her. Her mouth is open against his ear and she gasps for breath with every thrust. She clings to him like a baby monkey to its mother. He comes silently, controlled, with a final convulsion. He leans over her; she has to support herself on the desk with one hand so that she doesn’t fall backwards.

Then he backs away from her. Takes several steps, until he bumps into the door. He looks at her with no expression, and shakes his head. Then he turns his back on her and looks out through the window. Rebecka slides off the desk. She pulls on her tights and straightens her skirt. Thomas Söderberg’s back is like a wall.

“I’m sorry,” she says in a small voice. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Please go,” he says roughly. “Just go.”

She runs all the way home to the flat she shares with Sanna. Runs straight across roads without looking. It is the middle of an icy January. The cold stabs at her and hurts her throat. The inside of her thighs is sticky.

T
he door burst open and Prosecutor Carl von Post’s furious face appeared.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked. When he got no answer, he turned to Anna-Maria and went on:

"What are you up to? You’re not going through preliminary investigation material with her, surely?"

He jerked his head toward Rebecka.

“None of this is classified information,” said Anna-Maria loudly. “You can buy the tapes in the church bookshop. We were just having a chat. If that’s okay with you?”

“I suppose so!” snapped von Post. “But you need to talk to me now! My office. Five minutes.”

He slammed the door shut.

The two women looked at each other.

“The journalist who accused you of assault has withdrawn her complaint,” said Anna-Maria Mella.

Her voice was casual, as if to demonstrate that she’d changed track, and that what she was saying had nothing whatsoever to do with Carl von Post. But the message got through.

He’s livid about it, of course, thought Rebecka.

“She said she’d slipped, and it can’t possibly have been your intention to knock her over,” Anna-Maria went on as she slowly stood up. “I must go. Was there anything you wanted?”

Thoughts whirled around in Rebecka’s head. From Mans, who must have spoken to the journalist, to Viktor’s Bible.

“The Bible,” she said to Anna-Maria. “Viktor’s Bible, have you got it here?”

“No, they haven’t finished with it in Linköping. They’ll be hanging on to it for the time being. Why?”

“I’d like to have a look at it if possible. Would they be able to photocopy it down there? Not all of it, of course, but all the pages where there are notes. And copies of all the scraps of paper, photographs, cards, that sort of thing.”

“Of course,” said Anna-Maria thoughtfully. “That shouldn’t be a problem. In return maybe you’d be prepared to talk to me about the church if I have any questions.”

“As long as it’s not to do with Sanna,” said Rebecka, looking at her watch.

It was time to fetch Sara and Lova. She said good-bye to Anna-Maria Mella, but before she went out to the car she sat down on the sofa in reception, opened up her laptop and connected it to her cell phone. She keyed in Maria Taube’s e-mail address and wrote:

She sent the message, and the answer was on the screen before she managed to log off.

That was the whole point, thought Rebecka with a feeling of disappointment as she logged off. Anything that isn’t classified I can check out for myself.

She’d only just shut down the computer when her phone rang; it was Maria Taube.

“You’re not as clever as people might think,” she said.

“What?” said Rebecka, surprised.

“Don’t you realize that all e-mails at work can be monitored? An employer can go into the server and read all incoming and outgoing messages. Do you want the partners to know you’re asking me to fish for classified information from the tax office? Do you really think I want them to know that?”

“No,” replied Rebecka in a small voice.

“What is it you want to find out?”

Rebecka gathered her thoughts and babbled:

“Ask him to go into the LT and CT and check out—”

"Hang on, I need to write this down," said Maria. "LT and CT, what’s that?"

“The Local and Central Transaction Systems. Ask him to check out the church of The Source of All Our Strength and the pastors employed there: Thomas Söderberg, Vesa Larsson and Gunnar Isaksson. Ask him to check up on Viktor Strandgård as well. I want the balance sheet and the proceeds for the church. And I want to know a bit about the pastors’ financial situation, and Viktor’s. Salaries, how much, from whom. What property they own. What stocks or bonds they own. Other assets.”

"Okay," said Maria, making notes.

“One more thing. Can you get into PRV and check out the organization surrounding the church? Everything on the Net is so slow when you link up through a cell phone. Check if the church owns shares in any company that isn’t listed on the stock market, or has any financial interest in a trading company or anything like that. Check out the pastors and Viktor too.”

“May one ask why?”

“I don’t know,” said Rebecka. “Just an idea. I might as well do something while I’m hanging about up here.”

"What is it they say in English?" said Maria. "Shake the tree. See what falls down. Something like that?"

“Maybe,” said Rebecka.

O
utside it had already begun to grow dark. Rebecka let Virku out of the car. The dog hurtled over to a pile of snow and squatted down. The streetlights were on, and shone down on something square and white tucked under the Audi’s windscreen wiper. At first Rebecka thought she’d got a parking ticket, then she realized that her name was printed in big letters on an envelope. She let Virku into the front passenger seat, got into the car and opened the envelope. Inside was a handwritten message. The writing was sprawling and clumsy. As if the person who’d written it had been wearing gloves, or had used the wrong hand.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Rebecka could feel the fear clutching at her stomach. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck and on her arms, but she resisted the urge to turn her head to see if anyone was watching her. She screwed the piece of paper into a little ball and dropped it on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

“Show yourselves, you bloody cowards,” she said out loud as she drove out of the car park.

All the way to the school she had the feeling that she was being followed.

T
he head teacher of the local primary school, preschool and nursery looked at Rebecka across the desk with open dislike. She was a dumpy woman of around fifty. Her thick hair was dyed the color of a black tulip and was molded like a helmet around her square face. Her glasses, shaped like a cat’s eyes, hung on a cord around her neck, tangled up with a necklace made up of leather, feathers and bits of china.

“I really don’t understand what it is you think the school can do in this particular situation,” she said, picking a hair off her cardigan with its striking pattern.

“I have already explained,” said Rebecka, trying to hide her impatience. “The staff are not to allow Sara and Lova to leave with anyone but me.”

The head smiled indulgently.

“We do actually prefer not to get involved in family matters, and I have already explained this to the girls’ mother, Sanna Strandgård.”

Rebecka stood up and leaned over the desk.

“I couldn’t give a toss what you prefer or don’t prefer,” she said loudly. “It’s your bloody responsibility as head teacher to make sure the children are safe during school hours and until they are handed over to their parents or to the person who has responsibility for them. If you don’t do as I say, and make absolutely clear to your staff that they are to release the girls only to me, your name is going to be plastered all over the media as an accessory to inappropriate interference with children. Trust me, they’ll love it. My cell phone is absolutely stuffed with messages from journalists who want to talk about Sanna Strandgård.”

The skin was stretched tightly around the head’s mouth and jawline.

“Is this what happens when you live in Stockholm and work for some smart law firm?”

“No,” said Rebecka deliberately. “This is what happens when I have to deal with people like you.”

They looked at each other in silence until the head gave up with a shrug of her shoulders.

“It isn’t exactly easy to know what’s supposed to be happening with those particular children,” she snapped. “First of all, they can be collected by both the grandparents and the brother. Then all of a sudden last week Sanna Strandgård came marching in here and said they weren’t to go with anyone but her, and now they can’t go with anyone but you.”

“Sanna said last week that the children weren’t to go with anyone but her?” asked Rebecka. “Did she say why?”

“No idea. As far as I know, her parents are the most considerate people you could wish to meet. They’ve always supported her.”

“As far as you know,” said Rebecka crossly. “Now I’m going to fetch the girls.”

A
t six o’clock that evening Rebecka was sitting in her grandmother’s kitchen in Kurravaara. Sivving was at the stove with his sleeves rolled up, frying reindeer steaks in the heavy, black cast-iron pan. When the potatoes were ready he used the electric whisk in the aluminum pan to turn them into creamy mash with milk, butter and two egg yolks. Finally he seasoned the whole lot with salt and pepper. Virku and Bella sat at his feet like trained circus dogs, hypnotized by the wonderful smells coming from the stove. Lova and Sara were lying on a mattress on the floor, doing a jigsaw puzzle.

“I brought some videos, if you want to have a look,” said Sivving to the girls. “There’s
The Lion King
and a couple of cartoons. They’re in that bag.”

Rebecka was leafing distractedly through an old magazine. The kitchen was crowded but cozy, with Sivving spreading himself out in front of the stove. When she went to borrow the key for the second time in one day, he’d immediately asked if they were hungry, and offered to cook a meal. The fire was crackling cheerfully and the wind soughed in the chimney.

Something very strange has happened in the Strandgård family, she thought. And tomorrow I want to know from Sanna exactly what it is.

She looked at Sara. Sivving didn’t seem bothered by the fact that she was silent, her face turned away.

I’m not going to wear myself out over her, she thought. Just let her be.

“I thought they might need something to pass the time with,” said Sivving, nodding toward the girls. “Although these days it seems as if some youngsters don’t know how to play outside, what with all these videos and computer games. You know Manfred, over on the other side of the river? He said his grandchildren came to visit in the summer. In the end he had to force them to go outside and play. ‘You can only stay inside if it pours down in the summer,’ he said to them. And they went outside. But they hadn’t got a clue how to play—just stood there in the garden, completely lost. After a while Manfred noticed they were standing in a circle with their hands clasped in front of them. When he asked them what they were doing, they said they were praying to God to make it pour with rain.”