The Second Deadly Sin (32 page)

Blood is running from her shattered nose and down into her throat.

He thrusts and thrusts, and shouts out louder than ever.

Then his iron fingers clamp themselves around her neck. She tries to defend herself, but her arms are so weak.

The moon and the stars force their way in through the ceiling. The whole classroom is filled with light.

The little boy sleeps like an angel. When he wakes up and starts crying an hour later, there is nobody there – apart from his mother lying dead on the desk.

The weather turned, and it became warmer. The snow turned into slush. The grey sky glowered at the miserable spectacle down below.

Jenny Häggroth lay on the bunk in her cell, staring up at the ceiling. When she was interrogated, she had suggested that the police should go to hell. Besides, she maintained, if she had known that Jocke had been unfaithful to her, she wouldn’t have murdered Sol-Britt – she would have murdered Jocke.

Leif Silbersky didn’t interrupt her. He said very little during the interrogation. He waited until later.

And then the lawyer who considered himself a class above everybody else really went to town. He held a press conference at the Ferrum hotel.

Björnfot kept to the sidelines. He did what he felt was necessary as a standin for Martinsson, and listened in silence as von Post complained about colleagues and solicitors and suspects and journalists. The papers were full of comments about “the horrific mistakes made by the police”: “Now the children are orphans!”, “An innocent man accused – Took his own life!”

The weather and the murder investigation, Björnfot thought as he put on his jacket. What a joke, the whole business.

*

At eight o’clock in the morning Eriksson dropped Marcus off at his school.

“I’ll be here waiting for you at hometime,” he said.

He sat in his car and watched Marcus running across the playground. Three older boys saw him, and made to follow him – but Marcus managed to disappear into the school building before the they caught up with him.

Trouble, Eriksson thought.

Two girls passed by the car, and he wound down the driver’s window.

“Hi there! Excuse me!” he shouted. “Don’t be afraid – I was burnt in a fire when I was a little boy. Do you know Marcus Uusitalo? He’s in class 1B.”

The girls kept their distance – but yes, they knew who Marcus was. Why did he want to know?

“His grandmother has been murdered,” one of the girls said.

“I know,” Eriksson said. “I’m a policeman. Those are my police dogs sitting in the cage at the back there. This lady in the passenger seat, Vera, is an ordinary civilian dog. But please tell me, is anybody being nasty to Marcus at school?”

The girls hesitated for a moment.

“Yes. Hampus and Willy and a few of the lads in 3A. But don’t say that we told you anything.”

“What do they do?”

“They hit him and kick him. Say things. They take people’s money as well, if anybody has any. Once they forced Marcus to eat gravel.”

“Who’s the leader?”

“Willy.”

“What’s his surname?”

“Niemi. Are you going to put him in prison?”

“No.”

But I’d like to, Eriksson thought, as he drove off.

There is a family grave not far from Katrineholm. Elina’s parents and a younger brother are already buried there.

Lizzie says goodbye to the coffin at the railway station. It is one of the coldest days of the winter. The snow creaks and squeaks underfoot. Hoar frost forms wherever body heat seeps out through clothes – on eyelashes, on scarves close to mouths, at the bottom of coat sleeves.

When the coffin is lifted into the goods wagon, Lizzie sobs uncontrollably, and the cold air makes it painful for her to breathe in so violently. The tears turn into ice on her cheeks. Johan-Albin has to hold her tightly to prevent her from falling in a heap.

There are not many people present – a memorial service was held at the Salvation Army hall earlier in the week. There was not enough room for all those who wanted to attend. The murder of the town’s former schoolteacher has aroused sorrow and gloom throughout Kiruna. There were articles about it in the national newspapers.

They close the doors of the goods wagon, but all Lizzie wants to do is to cry and sob. The cold is causing her agony in her feet.

“Come on, my lovely, it’s time to go home now,” Johan-Albin says in the end.

And he insists on her going back home with him. But when they get there they see Elina’s trunk, and all her books, and her clothes that have been washed and ironed and mended and starched so
that they look absolutely new. Lizzie starts sobbing again.

But when Johan-Albin has made coffee for her, given her some biscuits, and a little twelve-year-old girl comes from the wet nurse carrying Frans, she stops crying.

She holds the baby in her arms and he looks her in the eye, and wraps his little hand round her finger.

“I’m going to look after him,” she tells Johan-Albin. “Elina has a sister, but she couldn’t possibly take him on.”

Johan-Albin listens intently and dunks his biscuit in the hot coffee.

“He has only me in the world,” she says. “If you want to cancel our engagement, I won’t hold it against you. You have never promised to become responsible for a little baby. And I shall cope. You know that.”

She smiles bravely at him.

Johan-Albin puts down his tin mug, and stands up. Lizzie forgets to breathe. Is he about to leave her?

No, he sits down beside her on the kitchen sofa and puts his arms around her and the baby.

“I shall never leave you,” he says. “Even if you have a score of babies with you in the nest. It’s obvious that you will cope no matter what – but I can’t live without my Lizzie.”

Now she has to cry once more. And laugh as well. Johan-Albin has to rub his eyes – after all, he was sold at a pauper’s auction as a young boy. Life has a lot to answer for.

They don’t hear the footsteps on the stairs, and both of them jump when there is a knock on the door.

In marches Blenda Mänpää, one of Fasth’s maids. She looks serious. And she declines the offer of coffee.

“I have to speak to you,” she says to Lizzie. “About Elina. And Fasth.”

Grey and gloomy outside. Martinsson took her third mug of morning coffee and stared grimly out of the window at what ought to have been winter. The Brat barked. Immediately afterwards she heard footsteps on the stairs.

Björnfot was standing outside.

Martinsson could feel the anger mounting inside her.

“Can we have a chat?” he said.

She invited him in with a shrug. They sat down at the kitchen table. The Brat jumped up and sat on Björnfot’s lap.

“Do you think you’re a lapdog?” Björnfot said. “Rebecka, my wife tells me I’m very bad at saying sorry. But I’d like to say sorry to you. It was wrong of me to take you off that investigation. But you know how it is, he goes around for years with a chip on his shoulder, and he badly wanted this case. So I just let him have it without thinking about it. I suppose I thought – or hoped, at least – that you wouldn’t mind.”

Martinsson realised to her surprise that all her anger and associated emotions were loosening up and fading away.

“Go to hell,” she said in a tone of voice that suggested he was forgiven. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Let’s hope to God that we can find some trace of Jenny Häggroth on that hayfork,” Björnfot said when he had been served with coffee and kangos biscuits. “But it’s far from certain that we can nail her.”

“No,” Martinsson said. “That hayfork has been easily accessible to
anybody at all, lying there under their barn. It would be perfectly natural if there were some traces of her prints on the fork. She might well have used it, after all. We’d have to find traces of her in Sol-Britt Uusitalo’s house. Incidentally, von Post seems to think I’m trying to sabotage his investigation.”

“Yes, I know that,” Björnfot said. “But I had a word with Pohjanen, so I know what you two have been up to. And somebody shot Sol-Britt Uusitalo’s father. The National Forensic Lab have let it be known that it was a bullet that damaged the bone you dug up. From the freezer in the forensic medicine depot in Umeå!”

“Pure chance. But there were traces on his shirt as well. Did Pohjanen tell you about that?”

“Yes. The poor bastard wasn’t mauled by a bear. He was shot, then left out in the forest and was eaten up. What should we conclude from that?”

Martinsson shook her head.

“It all seems so improbable. But if somebody is trying to eradicate the whole family – who is there that could hate them that much? To be sure, Sol-Britt Uusitalo wasn’t universally liked: but she wasn’t hated, just despised. I shall pretend not to notice that you have my dog on your knee and are feeding him biscuits. Well, little Brat, are you going to go home to herr Björnfot’s place and sit in his best armchair and gobble no end of biscuits?”

“Just one biscuit is nothing.”

“But as far as he’s concerned, ten biscuits are nothing.”

“Perhaps there is somebody who hates Hjalmar Lundbohm’s family,” Björnfot said, trying to drink his coffee despite the efforts of the Brat who had changed position on his lap and started scratching at him with his enormous paw in order to suggest that Björnfot ought to be stroking him instead. “Frans Uusitalo was Hjalmar Lundbohm’s son – but I expect you knew that.”

“Yes. Sivving knows all about that sort of thing. But who
could possibly hate Lundbohm to that extent? It all seems so improbable.”

“I don’t know. But there are always loonies around. And Lundbohm wasn’t the saint that a lot of people seem to think he was. I know for instance that there was a rock-blaster in the mine, Venetpalo, who discovered some iron ore deposits in Tuolluvaara. He reported the find to Lundbohm who promptly filled in a prospecting licence application in his own name. Then Lundbohm handed over the prospecting rights to a private company of which he was the managing director. Venetpalo got nothing. You can get angry for less than that …”

“How do you know about all that?”

“My grandfather was the district police superintendent for Kiruna at the beginning of the twentieth century, so quite a lot of stories have been passed down through generations of the family. And I also recall somebody called Venetpalo sending a letter to the editor of
Norländska Socialdemokraten
about the Tuolluvaara mine a few years ago. He seemed a bit on the dogmatic side – the type who could end up going over the top. I remember thinking that at the time, in any case.”

“Yes indeed,” Martinsson said. “Bitterness can persist for generations. I can have a word with that bloke. It’s not much of a straw to clutch at, but I’ve got nothing else to do.”

Björnfot looked at her in resignation.

“Does that mean you’re not going to come back to your job?”

“I’ll be back in six weeks’ time,” she said. “Provided von Post is back in Luleå by then.”

Two muffled-up women turn up at the Kiruna police station. When they have brushed off all the snow and unwound themselves from their shawls, they turn out to be Lizzie Andersson, Lundbohm’s housekeeper, and Blenda Mänpää, a maid working for Manager-in-Chief Fasth.

District Police Superintendent Björnfot is sitting at his desk. He is busy writing up the week’s events in the logbook. Writing minutes and summarising interrogations are not among his favourite occupations, but today it’s minute-writing weather. Outside, snowflakes are cascading down and glistening in the light from the streetlamps.

He is a broad-shouldered fellow with considerable physical strength, an impressive stomach and fists like sledgehammers. The mining company, which pays the wages of the police authorities in Kiruna, requires its servants of the law to possess “diplomatic skills and physical strength”. In other words, the ability to separate troublemakers – of which there are rather a lot in Kiruna. Socialists and Communists, agitators and trades union activists. And not even religious enthusiasts can be relied upon: Laestadians
^†
and other low-church preachers are always hovering on the edge of ecstatic fits and lunatic behaviour. And then all the young men – navvies and miners, little more than schoolboys, who flock to Kiruna from all over the
place. Far away from their mothers and fathers, they spend their wages on booze and you can guess the rest.

But at the moment, all the cells are empty. Thanks to the wintry cold, people are drinking themselves silly at home rather than brawling in the streets.

The superintendent has never wished as ardently as he does now that there was somebody in the cells. A week has passed since the murder of the schoolteacher Elina Pettersson, and nobody has said anything. Nobody knows anything.

The caretaker discovered her when he arrived in the morning to light the stoves in the classrooms, and to tidy the place up. It had begun snowing again during the night, so there were no footprints outside.

The snow the two women haven’t managed to brush off themselves is now melting on their clothes, and they will soon be wet through. Their cheeks are rosy red. The police station has a very efficient tiled stove, and thanks to the superintendent a roaring fire is blazing away inside it.

It is Lizzie who speaks first.

“We’ve come about Elina Pettersson,” she says, coming straight to the point.

Then she nudges Blenda Mänpää.

“Tell him what you told me!”

“I work for Manager-in-Chief Fasth,” she says. “He is a pest as far as we girls are concerned. We always work in twos when he is around. We don’t even go to light the stoves on our own if he’s in the room.”

“Is that so?” Björnfot says, beginning to feel uneasy.

“But after the murder of fröken Pettersson he has been calmer than he has ever been before. He hasn’t made advances to any of us – he hasn’t even slapped our bottoms. It’s as if he has become … satiated. Satiated and satisfied. Do you understand what I mean?”

“No,” Björnfot says, although a little voice inside him says he understands very well.

“This is a very serious accusation you are making,” he says eventually. “Very, very serious.”