The Second Deadly Sin (22 page)

“And?”

“Nothing. So I don’t know. I suppose it was something I needed to do to get some peace of mind.”

Martinsson said nothing. They sat in silence for a while.

But if it wasn’t an accident, Martinsson thought. Everybody knew that he ran to Kiruna three mornings every week. If I’d wanted to kill him, I’d have done exactly what his murderer did. That way you avoid having the police poking around as well. If everybody thinks it was a hit-and-run accident, the police are not going to spend much time on it.

“Hello there!” Karlsson said in the end. He waved his hand in
front of Martinsson’s face. “Have you been on a trip to outer space?” He smiled.

“Yes,” she said with a grin. “Thank you for your time. And thank you for the coffee.”

“Are you any the wiser?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug.

She stood up.

“Did you know he was related to Hjalmar Lundbohm?” Karlsson asked in an attempt to hold her interest. “Lundbohm was his maternal great-grandfather.”

“Yes, I’d heard that. And the teacher Lundbohm had the child with – what does that make her? His maternal great-grandmother, I suppose – she was murdered.”

“Oh dear, I didn’t know that. Anyway, we shall be having a
surströmming
party at the inn on Friday – they serve excellent fermented Baltic herring. Staff and friends. A first-class live band. Would you like to join us?”

“Sorry, I can’t,” Martinsson said untruthfully. “My boyfriend’s coming up to visit me on Friday.”

And if I’m unlucky he might just do that, she thought.

*

Martinsson got into her car and started surfing through the radio channels. She stopped when she came across the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on one of the frequencies. Just as she stretched out her hand to turn up the volume, Mella rang. Martinsson turned down the volume instead, and answered.

“I think we’ve got him,” Mella announced, somewhat out of breath. “The bloke who was having an affair with Sol-Britt Uusitalo. I just wanted you to know. We’re on our way now to search his house and all that.”

“Good,” Martinsson said.

She could hear that she sounded unhappy about it, but told herself that it was not Mella’s fault.

“How did you track him down?” she said, mainly to show they had her support.

“We traced his pay-as-you-go top-up card to the place where he bought it, Be-We’s. And then we saw that he’d been using his mobile in central Kiruna during the day, and in Kurra in the evenings.”

“So he lives in Kurravaara, then,” Martinsson said.

“Yes,” said Mella. “Jocke Häggroth. “Is it somebody you—”

“No! I know next to nobody in Kurravaara.”

Silence reigned. Both women were determined not to get angry. And both were wondering if they ought to say sorry, but decided not to.

“We had intended to arrest him at work,” Mella said after a while.

“But Sven-Erik rang and they said he was at home, ill.”

“Ill, eh? No doubt he’s in bed with galloping angst.”

“Presumably. Anyway, we’ll get him now.”

“Good luck,” Martinsson said. “And just so that you hear it from me first, I’m checking up on that hit-and-run accident. When Sol-Britt’s son died.”

“O.K. …”

It sounded as if Mella wanted to say something more, but she didn’t.

“Thank you for ringing,” Martinsson said in the end

“Oh, it was really … It was nothing.”

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” had come to an end on the radio.

Well, well, well, Martinsson thought. It won’t do any harm for me to keep myself occupied.

She looked out at the hunchbacked birch trees that were stretching their spindly arms up towards the cloudless blue sky. Just
a few yellow and red leaves were still clinging to them. Flocks of black birds were rising and spreading themselves out as they soared skywards.

Martinsson dialled Pohjanen’s number.

Mella’s Ford Escort shot along the road down towards Kurravaara like the ball in a pinball machine. With her in the car were Stålnacke, Olsson and Rantakyrö. They were on their way to apprehend Jocke Häggroth, who lived just outside the village, in Lähenperä.

Mella’s colleagues exchanged glances. She was driving like a madwoman.

“Somebody might be coming the other way,” Stålnacke said, but she did not seem to hear him.

“What about the kids?” Rantakyrö said.

Did she have no mothering instincts? Who would look after her youngsters if she killed herself?

District Prosecutor von Post had been left behind in his new Mercedes G.L.K.

“They are six and ten,” Mella said, who thought he was asking about Häggroth’s children. “Häggroth himself is fifteen years younger than Sol-Britt, but that’s not a problem, of course.”

“What gets into people?” she asked her colleagues.

Nobody answered. They were all too busy hanging on for dear life as the car flew round the bends.

“I would never have time to have a fling with somebody on the side. I’m only too pleased to get together with my old man now and then.”

“But it doesn’t have to be him, of course,” she continued as the car left the main road and started bouncing along the dirt road.

The others instinctively pressed their feet down onto the floor and slammed the brakes on – to no effect.

*

It was a timber-clad house, painted red. Not far from the house was a barn and an adjacent cowshed. And a wooden smithy down by the shore.

The farm had been handed down from one generation to the next in Häggroth’s family, but when his parents died he and his wife had clear-felled the forest, divided the ground up into lots, and sold them off.

So they were not short of money, according to the villagers.

It was his wife who answered the door. She had her hair gathered in a bun, dyed blonde but with dark streaks, and was wearing tracksuit bottoms. A lot of make-up around her eyes, and all kinds of fuzzy tattoos crept out from underneath her wide T-shirt in all directions – roses, lizards, tribals and runic symbols.

“Jocke is ill,” she said, looking over Mella’s shoulder at the other three people clambering stiff-legged out of the car. “What do you want?”

Von Post drove in through the gate and parked quite a long way away from Mella’s car. He stepped out, adjusted his long overcoat and brushed a speck of dirt from his paisley-patterned scarf.

“He must come with us even so,” Mella said. “And you should put on a jacket and some shoes because we’re going to search the house.”

“Come off it,” fru Häggroth said. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

But she put on a jacket that was hanging within arm’s reach, and slipped her feet into a pair of boots as she shouted to her husband.

He looked like death warmed up. A pallid face, unshaven and red-eyed. Dark rings under his eyes. He said nothing when he saw the plain-clothed police officers. Seemed not to be surprised.

“We want you to come with us,” Mella said. “Is there anybody else in the house?”

“No,” said his wife.

Her eyes shifted between all the people spread out over her premises. Rantakyrö disappeared into the barn, Olsson into the garage.

“The kids are at school. Can somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Your husband had an affair with Sol-Britt Uusitalo,” von Post said. “And now we want him to come with us and answer a few questions. And we shall search through your house.”

Fru Häggroth laughed mirthlessly.

“What a lot of rubbish!” And, after a pause, she said, “You’re lying.”

She turned to look at her husband.

“Say that they are lying.”

Häggroth looked down at the floor.

“Would you like a jacket?” Mella said.

The devil take von Post. Why did he have to mention that?

“Go on, tell them they’re lying,” fru Häggroth yelled shrilly.

There followed a few seconds of eerie silence. Then she punched him on the chest.

“Look me in the eye, you bastard! And say that they are lying! Say something, at least!”

Häggroth raised his arm to protect his head.

“I need some shoes,” he said.

His wife looked at him in disgust. She put her hand over her mouth.

“You fucking bastard,” she said. “You little creep. That old bag … For Christ’s sake. This can’t be true.”

Mella reached out for the biggest pair of shoes standing in the hall and placed them in front of Häggroth.

He put them on and walked cautiously through the porch. Mella prepared to catch him if he should fall over.

“I’m sorry,” he said without turning his head.

His wife knocked over a chair standing in the porch.

“You’re sorry!” she yelled. “Sorry?”

She grabbed hold of a ceramic pot that was standing upside down in a dish and serving as an ashtray, and threw it at her husband’s back.

He stumbled, and took a step forward so as not to lose his balance. Stålnacke put a hand behind his back and led him to the car.

“Calm down,” Mella said to fru Häggroth. “Otherwise we shall have to—”

“Calm down?” Fru Häggroth screamed.

Then she caught up with her husband, who was about to get into the car through the door being held open for him by Stålnacke. She attacked him from behind. Threw herself at him and started scratching his face. When Stålnacke took hold of her she hung onto her husband’s clothes and refused to let go.

Häggroth tried to protect his face from her blows.

“You bastards,” she yelled when Mella and Stålnacke combined to tug her loose from her husband. “I’ll kill you, by God I shall … Let me go! Let me go!”

“Calm down now,” Stålnacke said. “If you calm down, I’ll let you go so that you can be at home when your children come back from school. Think about that.”

She stopped screaming immediately. Ceased struggling.

“Are you going to stay cool now?” Mella said.

Fru Häggroth nodded.

She stood with her arms hanging by her sides, and just as Mella closed the car door she said to her husband, “Don’t dare come back here. Do you hear that? Never.”

Then she ran off at high speed to von Post’s new Mercedes. It was parked next to a wheelbarrow.

Before anybody could raise a finger she lifted up the wheelbarrow, held it at arm’s length over her head, then threw it at von Post’s car. It landed on the bodywork with a loud bang.

Then she turned on her heel and ran off into the trees.

They let her go. Von Post raised his arms. He slowly bent over the car, placing his hands on it as if to heal it. Then he yelled out, in a voice so strained that it broke, “Catch her, for God’s sake! After her!”

“We’ll do that another day,” Stålnacke said. “You have witnesses, and it will be taken care of. We must search the house now.”

At that very moment Rantakyrö whistled loudly. He was waving his hand to attract their attention. When his colleagues turned round he crept underneath the barn. When he emerged he was holding a three-pronged hayfork in his hand.

Von Post let go of his car and straightened up again.

Mella’s heart missed a beat. Three prongs. What were the chances of that? Most hayforks only have two.

It must be him, she thought. We’ve got him.

When she turned back, her eyes met Häggroth’s gaze. He looked at her vacantly, then his gaze focused on Rantakyrö, standing there with the fork in his hand.

You shameless swine, Mella thought. Häggroth crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back in his seat and stared fixedly ahead.

Martinsson was smoking a cigarette with Pohjanen on the wooden bench in the mortuary staffroom. Pohjanen was breathing in short gasps, as if his lungs were longing to take a deep breath, but were incapable of doing so.

From time to time he was afflicted by a persistent cough. When that happened, he would take a crumpled handkerchief out of his pocket and hold it up to his mouth. When he finished coughing he would contemplate the contents of the handkerchief before stuffing it back into his pocket.

“Thank you,” he croaked.

“Eh? It was your cigarette,” Martinsson said.

“Thank you for sitting here with me,” he said. “Nobody else smokes with me anymore. They regard it as deeply immoral.”

Martinsson grinned.

“I’m only doing it because I want you to do me a favour.”

Pohjanen chuckled raucously. Then he handed her his cigarette butt. Martinsson put it into the ashtray. He leaned back and put on his glasses, which were hanging on a band round his neck.

“So, this character who was mauled by a bear …”

“Eaten by a bear. Frans Uusitalo.”

“So he was Sol-Britt Uusitalo’s dad, is that right?”

“Yes. He was reported missing in June. In September a bear was shot, and in its body they found the remains of a human hand. So
the hunting team called in a few extra helpers and they searched the area. And found him.”

“No doubt it was an appetiser. I didn’t do the postmortem – if I had done I’d remember it. It must have been one of my colleagues in Umeå.”

“Hmm. There wasn’t much left of him.”

Pohjanen’s eyes narrowed. Out with the handkerchief again. He cleared his throat into it.

“Hmm. What exactly do you want, Martinsson?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have. No doubt the postmortem took place on the assumption that he died a natural death in the forest, and that the bear found the body. Or that the bear mauled and killed him. But I’d like you to look at him a bit more … a bit more carefully.”

“A feeling,” Pohjanen muttered.

*

Martinsson has a feeling, Pohjanen thought. Pfuh! But she has been right before. Eighteen months ago she had had a dream about a girl who had drowned, and she had persuaded him to make tests on the water in the dead girl’s lungs. Sure enough, they discovered that she had not died in the river where they found her, and that it had not been an accident.

A feeling, he thought, pushing his glasses up to his forehead and letting them slide down onto his nose again. We use the word carelessly.

More than ninety per cent of a human being’s intelligence, creativity and analytical ability was based in the unconscious. And all those things people called gut feelings or intuition were often the result of an intellectual process which they hadn’t the slightest idea they had been involved in.