The Second Deadly Sin (31 page)

Utsi looked down at the floor and pulled a face.

“That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. You joke about it. But whenever you saw him with no clothes on … He was always covered in old bruises.”

“Do you know her?”

“Well, not really.”

“Did you know he was having an affair with Sol-Britt Uusitalo?”

“Yes, I was sometimes his alibi. But …”

“But what?”

“He always used to say he would never leave Jenny, even if he wanted to. For the sake of the children, and …”

“And what?”

“And because she would kill him. That’s what he said.”

Or kill Sol-Britt perhaps, Mella thought, and could see that the others were thinking the same.

“How do you think she would react if she found out he was having an affair with another woman?”

“She wouldn’t exactly be pleased,” Utsi said. “Not pleased at all.”

“Bring her in,” von Post said. “And if anybody squeals to the press, then …”

He ended the sentence by looking at all the others in the room, clenching his fist and crushing something invisible.

Bringing Jenny Häggroth in was like sticking an arm into a sack full of snakes.

A woman with eyes swollen from weeping answered the door and introduced herself as Jenny’s sister. She turned and shouted into the house for Jenny.

Is this a job? Mella thought, trying not to look at the wet children’s shoes and small quilted jackets hanging up in the hall. Turning children into orphans and collecting immigrant families when they are going to be ordered to leave the country. Bloody hell! I think I hate this job.

Olsson and Rantakyrö were standing behind Mella, ready to act if necessary. Nobody had spoken a word during the journey to Kurravaara.

Rantakyrö hopped from one foot to the other, raised his arms and put his hand over the back of his head. Then started scratching intensely.

Stand still, for God’s sake! she thought angrily.

Jenny appeared in the hall: unwashed hair, tracksuit bottoms and hooded jumper. Eyes narrow with hatred.

“I’m sorry,” Mella said, “but you must come with us.”

“So that you can throw me out of a window?”

“Jenny, you must understand—”

“Listen here, you,” Jenny yelled so loudly that she made the police officers and her sister jump, “don’t you even dare mention my name! Is that understood, you fucking police whore? Bloody fuzz filth! Shit heaps, the lot of you!”

Without taking her eyes off them, she smashed her fist into the hall mirror. It cracked, and several splinters fell onto the floor.

The officers stared in horror at the blood pouring out of the cuts on her hand.

“Jenny!” exclaimed her sister.

“You shut your gob!” Jenny bawled.

Then she shouted up to the upper floor.

“You kids! Come here! Now!”

Two boys appeared at the top of the stairs. The older one was wearing a cap, even though he was indoors, a large T-shirt and sagging jeans. The younger one also had a big jumper and sagging jeans, and was holding a games console. He tried to take hold of his brother’s hand, but wasn’t allowed to.

“Here,” screamed Jenny, holding out her bleeding hands. “Put the cuffs on me. Go on. In front of my children. These are the bastards who murdered your dad.”

“Can’t you just calm down and come with us?” Mella said.

“Calm down? I’ll mark you for life,” Jenny said, taking a step forward towards Mella.

Mella raised her hands to cover her face, and then Jenny was onto her. Grabbed her hair with one hand and punched her with the other. Tried to hit her in the face but only made contact with Mella’s lower arms, then tried to push the policewoman’s face up against the broken mirror. The children and her sister started screaming.

Rantakyrö and Olsson threw themselves at Jenny and dragged her away from Mella. Jenny was spitting and kicking, managed to pull one hand loose and scratched at Olsson’s face.

Olsson shouted: “My eye!” and put his hands over one of his eyes.

Rantakyrö rushed forward, hit Jenny hard and pushed her onto
the floor. He forced her down and pulled her arms up behind her back, Mella helped to put on the handcuffs, and they dragged her out of the house while she, her sister and the children carried on screaming and shouting.

Olsson showed his eye to Rantakyrö.

“It’s still there,” said Rantakyrö grimly, massaging his right hand.

Then Olsson sat down in the driver’s seat.

“Hey,” Mella said. “This is my car.”

“For Christ’s sake, Mella,” Olsson roared. “Get into the car and hold your tongue. The last thing we need now is for you to crash the car and kill the lot of us.”

And so they drove off. And the police officers were just as silent as they had been on the way there.

But Jenny Häggroth was anything but silent. She never let up, all the way to the police station. They were whores and arseholes and monsters and lunatics. She would sue them and kill them and get her own back and they had better watch out.

Nobody told her to shut up. Mella looked furtively at her face. It was swollen up after Rantakyrö’s punch, and that bleeding hand needed treatment.

When Jenny met von Post at the police station, she lost no time in making him aware of her opinion of him as well: it had much to do with his deviant sexual preferences. Then she announced, surprisingly calmly, “I’m not going to say a word until I have a lawyer present, and I want Silbersky.”

They put her in a cell, and von Post said he would do his best to provide her with her chosen lawyer.

“After all,” he said, leaning against the wall in the corridor, “she’s under arrest on suspicion of murder. And in view of what has happened today, we must make sure we do everything in strict accordance with the rules. What the hell have you done to her?”

“Violent resistance,” Mella said, nodding in the direction of Olsson, who was still bleeding from the wound over his eye. “And that’s just the start.”

“There were three of you,” von Post said wearily. “Arresting one lone woman. It’s one hell of a cock-up, you must realise that yourselves.”

He looked at the clock.

“Do whatever you like. We can’t interrogate her until she has a solicitor present. If Silbersky is able to take it on, he’ll have to get the first available flight tomorrow morning. We’ll meet here at eight o’clock.”

He marched off.

“I don’t know about you,” Mella said to her colleagues, “but I’m intending to go to Landström’s for a beer.”

*

They sat right at the back in Landström’s, and drank their first beer in silence. They could sense that people were looking at them. The news was out already. A talented troubadour was singing Cornelis Vreeswijk songs in another part of the premises.

After a while the alcohol had smoothed down the sharp edges of the awful day. They ordered well-hung beef and Baltic herring with mashed potatoes and crispbread.

Mella relaxed a little. It was good to unwind, and even better to receive compliments from Rantakyrö and Olsson, which increased in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed.

“I swear to God you’re the best boss I’ve ever had,” Rantakyrö said.

“The only one he’s ever had, but all the same,” Olsson said, proposing a toast.

“The best you could ever ask for,” Rantakyrö said, looking at her like a faithful dog.

“That’s enough now, she’ll get ever so big-headed”’ Olsson said.

Then he became serious.

“Dammit all, I’m so sorry for today, Mella. I got so bloody het up.”

“No problem,” she said. ‘I think it’s the worst day I’ve ever experienced. Those poor kids …”

“Those poor police officers,” Rantakyrö said. “When Silbersky sees her black eye he’ll report me. I’ll be charged with assault. And then I’ll lose my job.”

“If only Martinsson was still in charge of the case,” Olsson said. “She’s not impressed by upstart solicitors, and isn’t scared by them either. That bloody idiot von Post will throw you to the wolves as long as he gets away unscathed.”

“You won’t lose your job,” Mella said. “I promise you that.”

Rantakyrö waltzed off to the bar.

Mella and Olsson listened to the troubadour, who was singing the Swedish version of “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh”.

“It’s beyond belief,” Olsson said.

“You can say that again,” Mella said.

“She beat him up. He confesses to the murder and then commits suicide.”

Rantakyrö came back with an Arvo special for Mella, and tequila with lemon and salt for himself.

“My favourite,” Mella said. “Like a baby’s dummy, but tastier.”

Rantakyrö licked some salt, knocked back the tequila and took a bite of lemon.

“Sho what do you shay,” he said, with the lemon still in his mouth, like a monkey. “Do you think she’sh capable of killing shomebody?”

Mella couldn’t help giggling.

Olsson sprayed beer through his nose.

And then they all burst out laughing uncontrollably. Tears
were running down their cheeks. People sitting close to them fell silent and stared. Olsson sounded as if he were crying. Rantakyrö clutched his stomach. Then they all managed to calm down for a few moments – before bursting out laughing again.

They laughed and laughed until their jaws ached.

People round about were giving them strange looks. But they could not stop.

*

Mella walked home on her own. She felt uplifted by the newly fallen snow that lit up the darkness. But it would take more than snow to make her feel happy. She was longing for her husband and her children. And she was thinking about Jenny and Jocke Häggroth’s poor children. About Jenny holding out her bleeding hands so that the police officers could handcuff her.

She could have done it, Mella thought. But I wonder …

Winter arrives like a raging demon. Stormy winds pile up snow against the walls of buildings, thrash any poor souls who have to be out in the streets, batter them in the face, fling them down onto the ground.

There is no point in clearing away snow – the pavements are knee-deep again within minutes. Pedestrians have to plough their way through it as best they can, and can’t see where they are going.

Householders build up their fires until the whole building creaks and crackles. Some people burn their furniture when they run out of firewood. Water trickles out of the walls of poorly built houses with inadequately dried wooden cladding. Opening outside doors is asking for trouble – snow forces its way in and the winds threaten to wrench doors from their hinges. All windows are caked with snow and ice.

Frans Olof is two weeks old, and Elina hasn’t set foot outside the house since he was born.

But on the evening of November 18, it suddenly becomes calm. The roaring and rumbling from outside fades away. The wind lies down and goes to sleep. Kiruna is completely white and silent. The moon heaves itself up, fat and yellow.

Elina makes a bed for her little boy in the sledge used for transporting firewood. She really must go out and get some exercise.

Narrow paths of troddendown snow have already been made by
people who had been aching to get out of doors at last. They are like the tracks of field mice in the deep snow. Some children are playing with a dog. Frans Olof is asleep in the firewood sledge.

Elina is lost in thought, then finds herself standing outside the school.

Her heart aches as she thinks about the children, and the career that she will never again be able to pursue. She wonders if the children miss her, if the new teacher has replaced her in their hearts without any problems. She wonders if the classroom looks the same as it did before, or if the new teacher has changed everything.

Nobody locks doors in Kiruna. Perhaps she should be so bold as to go in and take a look. It wouldn’t hurt anybody.

She lifts Frans Olof out of the firewood sledge, still wrapped up in all his blankets, and goes into the school. The lower halves of the windows are all iced up, but enough moonlight penetrates the top halves for her to be able to see.

No, not much has changed. She concludes that the new teacher is lacking in imagination. She herself had changed at least a thousand things during her first week …

Feeling warm, she places the sleeping Frans Olof on the floor behind the organ, and unbuttons her winter coat. As she puts it down on the teacher’s desk, she hears the outside door open and then close again. Then her blood runs cold as she hears the unmistakable voice.

“Frööken. Frööööken Pettersson.”

When he appears in the doorway, his face is swathed in darkness.

“So this is where you are. Running around the town like a bitch on heat as soon as the baby is born. Obviously.”

She is incapable of movement as he carefully locks the classroom door from the inside and puts the key in his pocket.

All she can think about is the baby. Please don’t let the little boy wake up …

If he discovers the baby he will kill me and leave the boy out in the cold to die, she thinks.

She knows for certain that is what will happen.

She puffs and pants like an animal under stress as he grabs her wrists with his powerful hands.

She turns her face away, but he takes hold of her chin and forces his mouth over hers.

“If you bite me, I’ll kill you,” he growls.

He rips open her blouse and forces her down on her back over the desk. She whimpers as he squeezes her breasts, so tender after feeding her baby.

He seems to be provoked because she doesn’t scream and cry, doesn’t try to defend herself.

He punches her in the face.

It does not even hurt. She just feels warmth spreading over her face, and she can taste blood in her mouth.

She realises that he intends to kill her. That is what he is going to do. He hates her. He is incensed by her youth, her beauty, her affair with Hjalmar.

He pulls down her knickers and takes out his cock. She is still in a bit of a mess down there after having given birth. He forces himself inside her.

“There you are!” he shouts. “You like that, don’t you, you bloody whore? Don’t you? Don’t you?’”

He punches her. Bashes her head onto the desk. Rips out handfuls of her hair.