The Second Deadly Sin (27 page)

She thought about von Post. He had stared at the dog as if he wanted to kill it.

“That dog,” she said to Pohjanen when they had reached her kitchen and relit the fire in the stove. “Sol-Britt’s dog. When I read the record of the interrogation Mella had with Marcus, he didn’t say a word about the night of the murder. It was as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. But he did say that their dog had gone missing.”

“Really?”

With considerable effort she took out her mobile and rang Sivving. He answered immediately, as if he had been sitting by the phone waiting for a call. She felt a pang of conscience. She ought to have invited him to the sauna as well.

“I have a question,” she said. “Didn’t Sol-Britt use to have a dog? Do you know when it disappeared?”

“Yes, she did,” Sivving said. “She posted lost notices all over the village. When can it have been? Less than a month ago. I’ve told you, haven’t I: keep Vera on a leash! There are weird people around. Some go out of their way to run over dogs if they get the chance.”

“Thank you,” Martinsson said. “I’ll ring you again later.”

“Have you been drinking? You sound a bit jolly.”

“Of course not,” Martinsson said and hung up before Sivving could say anything else.

“It went missing about a month ago,” she said to Pohjanen. “If I were planning to break into a house and murder somebody, I’d certainly make sure they didn’t have a dog.”

Pohjanen nodded.

“Yes indeed,” he said. “The gangs who break into every house in a street in the middle of the night, when people are fast asleep in their beds, always miss out houses where there are dogs.”

“If it really was Jocke Häggroth who did it …” Martinsson said “. . . if it was … Then he didn’t do it on the spur of the moment.”

The day after the incident with Fasth, Elina comes home at about three o’clock. Lizzie and Johan-Albin are sitting at the table. The lodgers are still at work. Johan-Albin is sitting with his head bowed, and Lizzie is holding his hands. She gives Elina a serious look. Johan-Albin is staring down at the table.

“What’s the matter?” Elina asks. “What’s happened?”

Johan-Albin shakes his head, but Lizzie explains.

“It’s Fasth,” she says. “He’s sacked Johan-Albin.”

“Not sacked,” Johan-Albin says.

“No, he daren’t do that because of the reaction there would be from the trade union. There’s a lot of dissatisfaction simmering away everywhere just now, and Johan-Albin is popular. But Fasth has redeployed him. He was a loader earning six kronor an hour, and Fasth has now switched him to the stone crusher – three kronor an hour! That’s barely enough to live on. And of course, we’re meant to be saving for our future …”

“It just involves keeping an eye on things and making adjustments when necessary,” Johan-Albin says. “They don’t pay much for that kind of work. And Heikki’s new job is emptying the shithouses in the resting huts.”

Elina cannot even bring herself to enter the kitchen. She remains standing in the hall.

The stone crusher. The machine from hell that crushes the ore into small stones. There is no worse job in the whole mine. Workers
are made deaf by the noise from the enormous screw-like auger that crushes the stones and spits them out into the wagons standing underneath. Their lungs become black as a result of the flying dust. And it is highly dangerous as well. The attendants stand around with their iron rods and prise away loose stones and slabs that get stuck in the screw. The rod can also get stuck and drag the operator down into the crusher, or spring back and give him fatal injuries. It can happen in a split second.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s my fault.”

Johan-Albin shakes his head again, but neither he nor Lizzie contradict her.

Lizzie’s face, which is always so bright and cheerful, is full of worry. She gives Elina a stern look.

“You’ll have to talk to Lundbohm.”

Elina turns white.

Lizzie stands up and walks over to her. She adjusts Elina’s scarf and strokes her cheek.

“You really must talk to him … no matter what. Don’t you think?” she says quietly, her eyes roving over Elina’s breasts and stomach.

Elina nods without speaking. Of course. Two women who sleep in the same bed. What can they possibly hide from each other?

“It’s nothing you need to plan or to worry about,” Lizzie says. “He’s at home. Just go and tell him.”

What shall I do? wondered Martinsson.

Pohjanen and the Brat had fallen asleep on the sofa in the little lounge. The fire had died down and the last of the small logs were glowing red in the darkness.

Von Post had succeeded in frightening her. Good and proper. Martinsson could not bear the thought of neuropathological tests. Some second-rater with his head on one side: “How do you really feel, Rebecka?” And some poor soul from the union who would have to hold her hand … Never. She might as well resign the next day.

But what would she do then? Everybody seemed to think that working in the solicitors’ office in Stockholm was always there as an alternative. Måns thought so as well.

But that would finish me off …

The very idea of life in the office. The frenzied efforts of the trainees, pressure from the partners, the lawyers with children who simply couldn’t cope with the lifestyle. Everybody always felt so ill. But superficial appearances were everything. And the money.

This is where I want to be, no question.

She felt the urge to talk to somebody. Much to her surprise. But who could she talk to about something like this? She still had a friend in the Stockholm office, Maria Taube – but no, Maria was about to become a partner. She was busy toeing the line. She had become one of them. She simply could not understand what Martinsson was doing in a prosecutor’s office in the far north of Lapland.

Martinsson put on a jacket and went down the stairs. The Brat woke up and insisted on going with her.

Then she cycled to Maja Larsson’s place. It had stopped snowing, but there was a layer of snow thick enough to make pedalling hard work. Sometimes the wheels spun round and round as the tyres failed to grip, but she managed it.

The Brat was rushing about, back and forth. As happy as a sandboy in all the snow.

Fröken Elina Pettersson is sitting in Hjalmar Lundbohm’s study, plucking up courage. He calls the room his smoking room. She has always felt at home here. It smells of cigars, and in cold weather there is always a crackling fire in the grate.

One of the girls has just been in and added some more wood: the fire is now spitting and sizzling and spluttering and crackling, and before long it is blazing away. The flames are thrusting their way eagerly up the chimney.

The fireplace was created by Lundbohm’s good friend the sculptor Christian Eriksson. The side columns are made of sandstone: one depicts two bear cubs climbing up it, and the other a female bear playing with her cubs. In the fireplace itself are three cast-iron plates with motifs from the interior of a Lapp tent, the centre one depicting a Lapp couple and the other two children playing, and a reindeer-herding dog.

Elina knows that it is when the fire has died down and only the embers are still glowing that the images really come to life. She and Lundbohm have often sat in front of the fire and said that the people depicted are them and their children, and joked about Lundbohm having lost such a lot of weight. Then he has suddenly become serious and declared that this is how he would like to live, free and unconstrained, close to nature. And she has talked about her love of that very freedom, how that was the reason why she became a
teacher – so that she could support herself. Not be dependent on anybody else.

She recalls some of their first nights when he asked what she thought about marriage, and she said: never!

Freedom is simple when love is strong.

But now she is prepared to sacrifice that freedom. Now she wants him to go down on his knees before her. Or just say: “Shouldn’t we …”

Her gaze wanders over what can be seen of the wood-clad walls, the top half of them covered by a tapestry from Jukkasjärvi; the mahogany furniture polished red, the table with its carved legs, the chairs with their high backs. It is a beautiful room. He was helped by his artistic friends when he planned it. It looks simple, but she knows better.

On the floor are a polar bear skin and a brown bear skin, side by side. Not long ago she was lying stretched out on them. Now she is sitting here, straight-backed, on the bench standing next to the wall, as if she is a representative of some worthy association or other, respectfully asking the managing director of the mine for a modest contribution to their activities.

She wants to live in this house as his wife. She wants to accompany him on his journeys. She and the boy, because she knows it is a boy. She wants to see America and Canada. And when she is unable to accompany him, she wants to be at home here, waiting for him, longing for him, borrowing his desk and writing long letters to him while the children run up and down the stairs and Lizzie sings out in the kitchen. She wants to. Oh, how she wants to.

But she is proud as well. She would never force herself upon him. But if, instead of proposing to her, he asked how much she wanted paying? What would she do then? When her fantasy conversation gets that far, her brain comes to a stop.

Now Lundbohm comes into his study, and apologises for keeping her waiting. Then he kisses her. On her forehead!

He sits down – not next to her, but on one of the chairs round the library table. He looks her in the eye, but she notices how his gaze soon shifts to the Stjärnsund clock in the corner.

Elina’s heart sinks. Like a stone in black wintry water.

She asks if he has a lot to do, and he says yes, he certainly has. What she wants to talk to him about is like a living, silent being between them.

They talk about how the mining company, L.K.A.B., is providing the whole of Europe with steel. A lot of travelling, a lot of business. And things are not made any easier by all the newspaper articles and arguments about the political status of Kiruna. The agitators are still upset after the ballot in 1909. The people of Kiruna wanted the place to be a market town, in which case the local council would receive taxes paid by the mining company, and be able to build the necessary infrastructure. But the management of the mining company wanted Kiruna to become an urban district: that would mean that the company would pay taxes where its headquarters were situated,
i.e.
in Stockholm. A ballot took place in 1909. Voting was based on how much tax an individual paid – which meant that the more you earned, the more votes you had. Lundbohm himself had the maximum number of votes, a hundred, while an ordinary worker had just one vote.

Lundbohm voted as his superiors in Stockholm wanted, and the engineers and bourgeois of Kiruna voted in the same way as Lundbohm. And so Kiruna became an urban district.

The question is still being debated. Passionately.

“How can they call me a traitor?” he says angrily to Elina, and Elina assures him that deep down everybody knows he is on the side of the people.

But the mood is restless. People are indignant. That is what happens when so much in the rapidly growing town simply does not work. Protesters gather on every street corner. When the women are
not holding meetings agitating for the right to vote, they meet to complain about such matters as water supplies. They wonder, very loudly, how it can be that there are only twelve water pumps in Kiruna, but no fewer than twenty-four alehouses.

Elina braces herself. She is afraid that he suspects something unpleasant is on the way. That he might suddenly stand up and claim that duty calls, and that the opportunity of speaking up will be lost.

“I miss you when you’re away,” she says, trying to force her voice to maintain a light-hearted tone.

“And I miss you,” he says.

And taps her on the hand!

“But I’m an inconsistent person,” he says.

She nods, for she has heard this before.

He is an inconsistent person. The opposite of what is called a well-organised person. Oh, when she lay on his arm and heard him say all that for the first time! Then his words made her feel almost frantic with happiness. “I can’t,” he had said then, “do like so many other people and adhere to certain regular rules and habits.”

And now comes the speech about his personality once again. She forces herself to nod and smile as he delivers his – yes, his speech about himself.

Sometimes he works conscientiously, he tells her. At other times he is lazy and only works on and off. Sometimes he observes the obligations of politeness, makes visits and attends parties, answers letters and writes some himself; but at other times he lives the life of a hermit, declines invitations and neglects his correspondence completely. That is his nature. He will never be like most ordinary folk. He has to keep travelling, not only on business but also because the nomad inside him becomes too strong.

He looks down at his shoes as he talks. Not so long ago she lay on his arm, kissed him and said: “Never become like other folk.”
Most folk, the rest of the world, were boring and colourless. She and Hjalmar were two burning torches in the snow.

But now, she feels, she is like other folk. Other women.

“What do you think about us, Hjalmar?” she asks in the end.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you thought about anything more than …”

She allows a gesture to conclude the sentence for her.

Now he is under pressure. She can see that. But she must have an answer now.

“I thought you were a free spirit who was satisfied with the way we conducted our relationship,” he says.

When she makes no reply, he continues.

“I’m an old man. You don’t want me.”

But who doesn’t want whom is perfectly obvious.

She braces herself.

“There are going to be consequences,” she says.

He sits for a long time without saying anything. And already, during this unbearable silence, she knows she ought to stand up and leave. For if he still loved her he would not hesitate, would not need to think. He would simply embrace her.