The Black Path (30 page)

“They’re lovely,” she says.

Then she tells Ester to make sure she adds the flowers’ Latin names next to their Sami names.

“They like that sort of thing,” she says.

“They.” She means the tourists at the mountain station. Mother thinks Ester should frame the pictures in passe-partout, “it’s cheap and it looks nice,” and sell them at Abisko tourist station. Ester isn’t sure.

“You can buy your own oils with the money,” says her mother, and the decision is made.

Ester is sitting in the lobby of the tourist station. A train carrying iron ore is passing by on the way up to Narvik, and she looks out the window. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. A group of mountain walkers are standing out in the sun, adjusting the straps of their rucksacks. A happy-looking dog is running around their feet. It reminds her of Musta.

Suddenly she becomes aware of someone looking at her pictures. She turns her head and sees a middle-aged woman. The woman is wearing a red anorak and putty-colored Fjällräven trousers that look brand new. “They” spend thousands on clothes for their days out.

The woman is leaning over the drawings.

“Are these your drawings?”

Ester nods. She ought to say something, of course, but her mouth is stiff, she can’t produce a single thought or a single word.

The woman doesn’t seem bothered by her silence. She’s picked the drawings up now, and is examining them carefully. Then she examines Ester, narrowing her eyes.

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.” Ester manages to get the word out, staring at the floor.

The woman waves her hand in the air and a man of the same age appears at her side. He fishes out his wallet and the woman buys three pictures.

“Do you paint anything else, apart from flowers?” she asks.

Ester nods, and somehow it’s arranged that they will come to Mother’s studio to have a look.

They turn up that evening in a rented Audi. The woman has changed into jeans and a woolen sweater that looks expensively simple. The man is still wearing spotless Fjällräven trousers, a shirt, and some kind of leather cowboy hat. He walks a few paces behind the woman. She is the first to extend her hand. She introduces herself as Gunilla Petrini, telling Mother that she’s the curator at the Color Factory, and is on the board of the national art council.

Mother gives Ester a long look.

“What’s the matter?” Ester whispers to her mother while Gunilla Petrini is going through the boxes containing Ester’s pictures.

“You said it was a tourist who wanted to come and look.”

Ester nods. They are tourists.

Mother hunts around in the larder and finds half a packet of plain biscuits to offer them, and Ester looks on in surprise as she arranges them in a neat circle on a plate.

Gunilla Petrini and her husband also look at Mother’s pictures with polite interest, but she scrabbles in the boxes containing Ester’s work like a hare in a plowed field.

Her husband likes the pictures Ester drew when she and her mother went to the swimming baths in Kiruna. There’s Siiri Aidanpää drying her hair with her eyes closed. She has her curlers in, and is wearing silver earrings representing Sami symbols, although she herself isn’t Sami. Her ample bosom has been stuffed into a plain, sturdy bra of generous proportions; her stomach and bottom are also substantial.

“She’s so beautiful,” he says, looking at the seventy-year-old.

Ester has painted the enormous knickers salmon pink. It’s the only color in the picture. She’s seen old, hand-colored photographs, and was trying to achieve that same gentle tone.

Other pictures from the baths show middle-aged men swimming in a row in the exercise pool, the old changing rooms from the beginning of the sixties, built of dark wood, with a daybed and a little wardrobe, and the sign to the room before the showers with the words
ultraviolet lamp
written in silver letters. All the rest of the pictures are from Rensjön and Abisko.

What a small world, Gunilla Petrini and her husband are thinking.

“As I said, I’m the curator at the Color Factory,” Gunilla Petrini says to Ester’s mother.

They’re alone. Ester and Gunilla’s husband have gone outside to look at the reindeer in the enclosure on the far side of the railway line.

“I’m on the board of the national art council, and I’m a buyer for a number of large companies. I have a considerable amount of influence in the art world in Sweden.”

Mother nods. She’s probably seen what’s coming.

“I’m impressed by Ester. And I’m not often impressed. She’s finished school; what’s she intending to do now?”

“Ester’s not much of a one for studying. But she’s got a place to train as a care worker.”

Gunilla Petrini has to control herself. She feels like a knight in shining armor, riding in at the very last minute to save the girl. A care worker!

“You haven’t considered allowing her to study art?” she asks in her gentlest voice. “She might be too young for art college, but there are preliminary training courses she could do. At the Idun Lovén Art School, for example. The principal and I are old friends.”

“Stockholm,” says Ester’s mother.

“It’s a big city, but I would look after her, of course.”

Gunilla Petrini has misheard. It isn’t anxiety because Ester is so young to be going to the big city that she can hear in her mother’s voice. It’s restlessness. It’s the fact that she’s stuck here, stuck in her life with a family and children. It’s all the unpainted pictures she carries deep down in her soul.

Later that evening they sit at the kitchen table with Father, telling him all about it.

“Of course they think you’re exotic,” says Mother, crashing dishes around. “An Indian girl in a Sami dress painting mountains and reindeer.”

“I don’t want to go,” says Ester in an attempt to pacify her mother, although she has no idea what’s wrong.

“Of course you do,” says her mother firmly.

Father says nothing. When it comes to the crunch, Mother is the one who makes the decisions.

A
nna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke drove away from Regla. In the rearview mirror Anna-Maria could see Mikael Wiik opening the gate for the Chevrolet with the tinted windows.

“So who was that?” she asked.

Just as she spoke, she realized. The practical boots, the friendly nod between Mikael Wiik and the driver of the Chevy.

“Security,” she said to Sven-Erik. “I wonder what’s going on.”

“I suppose they have these summit meetings,” said Sven-Erik. “But unlike Swedish politicians, they have bodyguards.”

Anna-Maria’s telephone rang and Sven-Erik grabbed the wheel while she rummaged in her pocket. It was Tommy Rantakyrö.

“Telephone exchange here,” he said, pretending to sound upset.

Anna-Maria laughed.

“That payment into Inna Wattrang’s account,” he went on. “It was made from the bank’s branch office on Hantverkargatan. There’s a guy who’s phoned Inna Wattrang’s private cell phone lots of times from an address near there.”

“Could you possibly text me the address? Sven-Erik gets so
stressed if I’m chatting on the phone and writing down addresses and driving at the same time.”

She beamed at Sven-Erik.

“No problem,” said Tommy Rantakyrö. “Keep your hands on that wheel.”

Anna-Maria passed the phone to Sven-Erik. Thirty seconds later the name and address appeared on the display.

“Malte Gabrielsson, Norr Mälarstrand 34.”

“We might as well drive over there,” said Anna-Maria. “I mean, we haven’t got anything else to do.”

An hour and ten minutes later they were standing outside the main door at Norr Mälarstrand 34, waiting. They managed to get in when a lady with a dog came out.

Sven-Erik looked for Malte Gabrielsson’s name on the board showing who lived in the building. Anna-Maria took a look around. In one direction was the outside door, in the other an inner courtyard.

“Look,” she said, nodding toward the courtyard.

Sven-Erik looked, but couldn’t see what she meant.

“They’ve been getting all their paper ready for collection out there. Come on.”

Anna-Maria went outside and started to rummage through the paper sacks.

“Bingo,” she said after a while, holding up a golfing magazine with Malte Gabrielsson’s name on the address label. “This bag belongs to Mr. Gabrielsson.”

She carried on digging through the sack, and after a while she passed an envelope to Sven-Erik. On the back of the envelope somebody had written a shopping list in ink.

“Milk, mustard, crème fraîche, mint…” read Sven-Erik.

“No, look at the handwriting. It’s the same as on that paying-in slip. ‘Not for your silence.’”

Malte Gabrielsson lived on the third floor. They rang the bell. After a while the door was opened a fraction. A man in his sixties peered at them over the security chain. He was wearing a dressing gown.

“Malte Gabrielsson?” asked Anna-Maria.

“Yes?”

“Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke, Kiruna police. We’d like to ask you a few questions about Inna Wattrang.”

“Excuse me, but how did you even get in here? You need a security code to get through the outside door.”

“May we come in?”

“Am I suspected of something?”

“Not at all, we’d just like to—”

“The thing is, I’ve got a terrible cold and I’m…well, I’m feeling pretty rough. If you’ve got any questions they’ll have to wait.”

“It won’t take long,” Anna-Maria began, but before she’d finished speaking Malte Gabrielsson had closed the door.

Anna-Maria leaned her forehead against the door frame.

“Give me strength,” she said. “That’s it, I’ve just about had enough of these bloody people treating me like their Polish cleaner.”

She hammered on the door.

“Open this bloody door!” she roared.

She pushed open the letterbox and shouted into the apartment.

“We’re carrying out a murder investigation here. If I were you, I’d talk to us now. Otherwise I’ll be sending my uniformed colleagues to where you work to bring you in for interrogation. I’ll be knocking on your neighbors’ doors and asking questions about you. I know you paid Inna Wattrang two hundred thousand kronor before she died. I can prove that. It’s your handwriting on the paying-in slip. I’m not going anywhere.”

The door opened again, and Malte Gabrielsson undid the security chain.

“Come in,” he said, looking around the stairwell.

All of a sudden he was amiability personified. Standing there in his dressing gown, hanging up their coats in the hallway. It was as if he’d never tried to fob them off at all.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked once they were settled in the living room. “I haven’t managed to do any shopping, what with having such a cold, but perhaps a cup of tea or coffee?”

The sofas were white, the carpet was white, the walls were white. Large abstract oil paintings and objets d’art contributed color to the room. It was a fantastically light apartment. High ceiling, huge windows. Not a thing was out of place. The nameplate on the door carried only his name, so he must live alone in this pristine space.

“We’re fine, thanks,” said Anna-Maria Mella.

Then she got straight to the point:

“‘Not for your silence,’ what was that all about?”

Malte Gabrielsson fished a handkerchief out of his dressing gown pocket; he had folded it into a small pad, and wiped his sore nose with small, careful dabbing movements. Anna-Maria shuddered at the thought of picking up the snot-soaked hankie to put it in the washing machine.

“It was just a gift,” he said.

“Do me a favor,” said Anna-Maria pleasantly. “I did say I wasn’t going anywhere until we sort this out.”

“Okay,” he said. “I suppose it’ll all come out anyway in the end. We were seeing each other for a while, Inna and I. And then we had a quarrel, and I gave her a couple of slaps.”

“And?”

All at once Malte Gabrielsson looked sad, sorrowful and slightly vulnerable, sitting there in his dressing gown.

“I think it’s because I knew she’d grown tired of me. She would have left me anyway. I couldn’t bear that. So I allowed myself to…lose control, or however you want to put it. Then I could fool myself that was why she’d left me. But she would have gone anyway. Somewhere inside, I knew that. I’ve thought about it a lot since then.”

“Why did you give her the money?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time. I left a message on her answering machine: ‘This is not for your silence. I’m a pig. If you want to go to the police, then do it. Buy yourself something nice. A picture or a piece of jewelry. Thanks for the good times, Inna.’ I really wanted it to be like that. That it was me who was a pig. And that I was the one who’d ended our relationship by raising my hand to her.”

“Two hundred thousand is rather a lot for a couple of slaps,” said Anna-Maria.

“The crime sheet would still say physical abuse. I’m a lawyer. If she’d reported me to the police, I’d have been out on my ear.”

He suddenly looked at Anna-Maria and said sharply, “I didn’t kill her.”

“You did know her, though. Is there anyone who really would have wanted her dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was her relationship with her brother like?”

“She didn’t talk about him much. I got the impression that she was pretty fed up with him. I think she’d got tired of covering up his mistakes. Why don’t you ask him about his relationship with her?”

“I’d love to, but he’s in Canada on a business trip.”

“Oh, so Mauri and Diddi are in Canada.” Malte Gabrielsson dabbed at his nose again. “They didn’t spend much time grieving, then.”

“Mauri Kallis isn’t in Canada, just Diddi Wattrang,” said Anna-Maria.

Malte Gabrielsson broke off his nose dabbing.

“Just Diddi? I hardly think so!”

“What do you mean?”

“According to Inna, it’s a long time since Mauri allowed Diddi to travel and take care of things on his own. He has no judgment. Made some really crazy decisions, quick and dirty. No, if he travels at all it’s with Inna—well, not anymore of course, but before—or with Mauri. Never on his own. He messes things up. Besides which, I don’t think Mauri trusts him.”