Red Wolf: A Novel (19 page)

She slumped, putting her hands in front of her face. Annika didn’t hesitate this time but put an arm across the woman’s shoulders.

‘Did you say this to the police?’

She collected herself at once, stretched for a napkin and wiped her nose, then nodded. Annika let her arm drop.

‘I don’t know if they were interested,’ she said, ‘but
they wrote it down anyway. On Saturday I was so upset I didn’t think to say anything, but I called them yesterday and then they came and collected the armchair and looked for fingerprints on the doors and furniture.’

‘And the gun?’

‘They took that on Saturday, said it was standard procedure.’

‘Kurt was in the civil defence?’

Gunnel Sandström nodded. ‘All these years,’ she said. ‘He did the officers’ course at the Home Guard Combat School in Vällinge.’

‘Where did he keep the rifle?’

‘In the gun cabinet. Kurt was always meticulous about keeping it locked. Even I don’t know where he kept the key.’

‘So he must have taken it out himself?’

Another nod.

‘Have you ever been threatened?’

She shook her head this time, slumping a little further.

‘No strange phone calls before the one on Friday, no odd letters?’

The woman stiffened, tilting her head slightly.

‘There was a strange letter in today’s post,’ she said. ‘Complete nonsense, I threw it in the bin.’

‘A letter? Who from?’

‘Don’t know, it didn’t say.’

‘Have you emptied the bin?’

Gunnel Sandström thought for a moment.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, getting up and going over to the cupboard under the sink. She pulled out the bin and rummaged through the crusts and potato-peelings.

She looked up at Annika. ‘It’s not here. I must have emptied it after all.’

‘You wouldn’t have thrown it somewhere else?’ Annika asked.

The woman put the bin back in the cupboard.

‘Why do you think it’s important?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know if it is important,’ Annika said. ‘What did it say?’

‘Something about the peasants’ movement, I don’t really know. I thought it was something about the Federation of Swedish Farmers.’

‘A mail-shot, a leaflet?’

‘No, nothing like that. Handwritten.’

‘Think for a moment. Is there anywhere else you might have put it?’

‘In the fireplace, I suppose,’ she said, pointing.

In two strides Annika was at the hearth. There were several crumpled balls of paper in there, at least two of them coloured flyers from local shops. She took a piece of wood out of the basket and prodded them.

The woman came over to her, holding out her hand for them.

‘Yes, it might be here, I do throw paper on here sometimes. It’s good for getting the fire started.’

‘Hang on,’ Annika said. ‘Have you got any gloves?’

Gunnel Sandström stopped and looked up at her in surprise, then disappeared into the hall. Annika leaned forward to look at the balls of paper. Three were glossy adverts, one green with black text; the fifth was a sheet of lined A4.

‘Get that one,’ Annika said when the woman came back wearing a pair of leather gloves, pointing at the lined paper.

Gunnel Sandström leaned over, and with a little groan managed to get hold of it. She straightened up and smoothed it out.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘This is it.’

Annika moved to stand beside her as she slowly read out the anonymous text.

‘
The present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event
,’ Gunnel read in a tone of blank suspicion. ‘
In China’s central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back
.’

She lowered the letter.

‘What does that mean?’

Annika shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Have you still got the envelope?’

They found it beneath the adverts, a simple little envelope with the ‘Sverige’ brand, and an ice-hockey player on the stamp. It was addressed to the Sandström family and postmarked in Uppsala the previous day.

‘Can you lay it out on the table so I can copy it?’

Dark fear swept across Gunnel’s eyes. ‘Do you think it’s something serious?’

Annika looked at the woman, her grey hair, her knitted cardigan, soft cheeks and bent back, and was overwhelmed by a sympathy that took her breath away.

‘No,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘I don’t think so. But I still think you should tell the police about the letter.’

Annika copied the letter on the kitchen table. The handwritting was even, soft and round, the words symmetrically placed on the page, every other line left blank to make it easier to read. She noted the torn edge, which showed that the sheet had been pulled from a pad of lined paper, and wondered if she ought to feel the quality of the paper in one corner, but decided against it.

‘Are you going to write anything in the paper about Kurt?’ Gunnel Sandström asked when she had stood up and pushed in her chair.

‘I don’t know,’ Annika said. ‘Maybe. If I do, I’ll call you first to let you know.’

She took the woman’s hand.

‘Have you got anyone to look after you?’ she asked.

Gunnel nodded. ‘We’ve got a son and two daughters. They’re coming this afternoon with their families.’

Annika felt the room spin again. There was something here, a sense of belonging that ran through the generations, a love that had lived here for centuries.

Maybe people shouldn’t leave their roots
, she thought.
Maybe our longing for progress ruins the natural force that makes us capable of love
.

‘You’ll be okay,’ she said, surprised that she was so certain.

Gunnel Sandström looked at her with eyes that Annika could see were devoid of something vital.

‘I’m going to get justice as well,’ she said.

Then she suddenly turned and went out into the hall, then up a creaking staircase to the floor above.

Annika quickly pulled on her outdoor clothes, and hesitated at the foot of the stairs.

‘Well, thank you,’ she shouted cautiously.

No reply.

Berit Hamrin bumped into Annika at the caretaker’s booth by the lifts.

‘Are you coming for something to eat?’ she asked.

Annika put the car-keys on the counter and looked at the time.

‘Not today,’ she said. ‘I’ve got loads to check, and I have to get the kids. Are you faint with hunger, or have you got time to look at something?’

Berit pondered this theatrically.

‘Faint with hunger,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘Follow me,’ Annika said, and sailed off towards her office. She tossed her outdoor clothes in the usual corner and emptied the contents of her bag on the desk, picking out her notebook. She leafed through to the last page, then rushed round the desk and tugged open the second drawer, pulling out another pad.

‘Read this,’ she told Berit, holding up two pages of notes.

Her colleague took the first pad and read the opening line aloud.

‘
The present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event
.’ She put down the pad. ‘But this is a classic text.’

‘In what way?’ Annika said, like a coiled spring.

Without looking away from Annika, Berit intoned loudly and clearly from memory:

‘
In China’s central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back
.’

Annika felt her jaw drop; she stared speechlessly at her colleague.

‘Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan,’ Berit said. ‘Written in nineteen forty-nine, if I remember rightly. One of Mao Tse-tung’s most famous works. We all knew it off by heart.’

Annika searched through a box and pulled out a couple more notebooks. She leafed through them until she found what she was looking for.

‘What about this?’

She gave Berit the notes she had taken up in Luleå.

‘
There is no construction without destruction
,’ Berit read. ‘
Destruction means criticism and rejection, it means revolution. It involves reasoning things out, which means construction. If you concentrate on destruction first, you get construction as part of the process
.’

‘And?’ Annika said.

‘Another Mao quote. Why have you written them down?’

Annika had to sit down.

‘They’re letters,’ she said. ‘Anonymous letters to murder victims. The destruction one was sent to Benny Ekland’s workplace a couple of days after the first murder, the peasants’ movement was sent to a local councillor in Östhammar the day after his presumed suicide.’

Berit sat down on Annika’s desk, her face pale. ‘What the . . . ?’

Anna shook her head, pressing her hands to her
forehead. ‘I have to speak to Linus Gustafsson’s mother,’ she said.

The phone rang out into the echoing, frozen space a thousand kilometres north. Her hand was sweating as she pressed the phone to her ear.

‘Should I go?’ Berit mouthed, pointing first at herself, then at the sliding door.

Annika shook her head, closed her eyes.

In the middle of a ring the phone was picked up. The voice that answered sounded newly woken, confused.

‘My name’s Annika Bengtzon, I’m calling from the
Evening Post
in Stockholm,’ Annika said in the slow, clear tone of voice she had learned to use in her years as a night editor, the shift when most phone calls reached people who were fast asleep.

‘Who?’ the woman on the phone said.

‘I wrote about Linus in the paper,’ Annika said, suddenly feeling tears welling up. ‘I just wanted to call to say how very sorry I am.’

Suddenly the boy was in front of her, his spiked hair and watchful eyes, his defensive body language and uncertain voice; she couldn’t help a sudden and audible sob.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I—’ She put her hand over her mouth to cover her sobs, ashamed that Berit, who was now sitting down in one of the chairs, should see her like this.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ the woman said, still sounding sleepy.

‘Are you his mum?’

‘I’m Viveka.’ She pronounced it unusually.

‘I feel horribly guilty,’ Annika said, realizing that the phone call wasn’t turning out as she had imagined. ‘I shouldn’t have written about Linus.’

‘We’ll never know,’ the woman said flatly. ‘But I thought it was a good thing that you got it out of him. I couldn’t work out what was wrong with him. He was a different person after it happened, and he refused to tell me what it was.’

‘Well,’ Annika said, ‘but what if—’

The woman interrupted her, rather sharply. ‘Do you believe in God, Annika Bengtzon?’

Annika hesitated as the tears dried up. ‘Not really,’ she managed to say.

‘Well, I do,’ the woman said slowly, and with slightly forced emphasis. ‘It’s helped me through many trials over the years. The Lord called Linus to Him; I don’t understand why, but I accept it.’

Sorrow travelled like an ice–cold wind down the phone line from Luleå, making Annika shiver. The destructive power of human loss, where God’s love might provide the flickering flame that prevented the definitive final chill.

‘My grandmother died,’ Annika said. ‘Seven years ago. I think of her every day. I can’t even begin to imagine your loss.’

‘I have to continue my time on earth without Linus,’ his mother said, ‘even if I can’t see right now how I’m going to manage. But I’m firm in my faith that God the Father is doing what is best for me, that His hand rests above me.’

The woman fell silent, Annika could hear her weeping. She waited, not sure if she should try to end the conversation and hang up.

‘In time I may come to understand why,’ the woman went on suddenly, in a clear, lucid voice. ‘And I shall meet Linus again, of course, in the House of Our Lord. I know this to be true. It gives me the strength to carry on living.’

‘I wish I had your God,’ Annika said.

‘He is there for you, too,’ the woman said. ‘He is there, if only you want to take Him to you.’

The silence that followed could have been difficult, but to her surprise Annika found it warm.

‘There was something else I wanted to ask,’ she said. ‘Have you had anything strange in the post since Linus died?’

Viveka Gustafsson thought for a few seconds before she replied. ‘You mean that thing about youth?’

Annika looked over at Berit.

‘Youth?’

‘An anonymous letter arrived, no signature or anything; I thought it was a note of sympathy from one of the neighbours who didn’t want to disturb me by knocking.’

‘Have you still got it?’

The woman let out a deep sigh that stemmed from the hopelessness of having to do anything connected with the living, the sort of daily routines that had brought light and united her with the rest of the world for decades but had now suddenly lost all meaning.

‘I think I put it in the pile with the newspapers, hang on, I’ll go and get it . . .’

A sharp noise hit Annika’s ear as the other phone was put down on a wooden table somewhere in Svartöstaden. There was the sound of rustling on the line, of footsteps coming and going.

‘Sorry to take so long,’ the woman said tiredly. ‘I’ve got it. It says:
How should we judge whether a youth is revolutionary? How to discern this? There is only one criterion: if he is disposed to stand, and stands in practice, with the great worker and peasant masses. He is revolutionary if he wants to do so and does it; otherwise he is non-revolutionary or counter-revolutionary
.’

Annika stared wide-eyed at Berit and grabbed a pen.

‘Can you repeat that slowly, please? I’d like to write it down. “How should we judge whether a youth is revolutionary?”’

‘
How to discern this? There is only one criterion: if he is disposed to stand, and stands in practice, with the great worker and peasant masses. He is revolutionary if he wants to do so and does it; otherwise he is non-revolutionary or counter-revolutionary
.’