The Second Deadly Sin (36 page)

“What the hell are you on about?” Lelle Niemi snarled. “That Marcus Uusitalo has serious problems. His mother abandoned him. His father was run over and killed about a few years ago. His grandmother …”

He finished the sentence by whistling and making a gesture with his thumb against his mouth suggesting that she was a boozer.

“And now she’s been murdered and it’s all over the pages of
Expressen
and the rest of the media. It’s all very tragic. But for Christ’s sake don’t drag my son into it.”

“Quite right,” fru Niemi burbled. “I don’t understand why you are chasing up Willy. It’s harassment.”

“I know what you and your mates have been doing,” Eriksson said to Willy. “You’ve been hounding him ever since he started at nursery school. Calling him a cunt or a queer, throwing snowballs with stones inside, putting dog shit in his rucksack, knocking him over whenever you walk past him. It’s gone far enough.”

Willy shrugged.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Have the police nothing better to do than harass law-abiding citizens?” Lelle Niemi wanted to know. “Shouldn’t you be out chasing thieves? It’s time you were on your way. We’ve nothing more to say.”

“And stop pestering ordinary people,” fru Niemi said, looking at Eriksson without attempting to disguise her disgust.

Eriksson returned her gaze until she was forced to look away.

“But the fact is,” Stålnacke said, breaking his silence, “you’re not ordinary people. Lelle Niemi, you have been on sickness benefit for the last two years.”

“Whiplash injury,” Niemi said.

“But you are still working as a painter and decorator. On the black market.”

“This is slander,” fru Niemi whimpered. “I thought that was against the law.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Niemi said.

“That’s a nice swimming pool you have,” Stålnacke said calmly. “And two new cars in the drive. If we were to check your Visa card

*

I’m sure we’d find Christmas trips to Thailand and goodness only knows what else. Can that be right? How can you afford all that on your sickness benefit and your wife’s part-time wages, especially as you have three kids as well? It’s the kind of thing the fraud squad would be very interested to hear about.”

“And I think we’d find an awful lot of paint bought using your credit card,” Eriksson said.

“There’s never any problem in finding witnesses in cases of this sort. People are surprisingly honest and talkative as long as they don’t end up in court. It’s not a serious crime to employ a painter and decorator on the black market now and then. But what you are doing, well …”

The Niemis said nothing. Young Willy looked anxiously at first one, then the other. The T.V. was showing a somewhat past-it Hollywood celebrity peeling a cucumber with religious fervour.

“If you ask me, there’s a hell of a lot hanging over your heads,” Stålnacke said. “Drawing sickness benefit when you are perfectly fit to work is gross fraud. And on top of that you’re trading on the black market. Serious tax crime and false accounting.”

“Jail,” Eriksson said. “Several years. And when you come out again after the state has confiscated your mansion and you’re trying to make ends meet in a poky little flat, and it’s time to pay back all the tax you owe, you’ll find you’re not allowed by law to run your own business, and so you’ll be a wage slave living on the breadline.”

“You are not an ordinary person,” Stålnacke said in a friendly tone of voice. “Ordinary people slave away and pay tax so that your boy can go to school, so that you can have an asphalted road to drive your car on. And they pay your sickness benefit. You’re nothing more than a parasite.”

“But still,” Eriksson said. “What I’m more concerned about is Marcus Uusitalo. I’m not going to tip off my colleagues in the fraud squad provided you instruct this young man to leave Marcus
Uusitalo in peace. And the same applies to your mates, Willy. Leave Marcus alone. Totally. And absolutely.”

“But I haven’t—” Willy began.

“Hold your tongue,” Niemi said. Then he added quietly, “You heard what the man said. Leave him alone.”

“We’ll be off now,” Eriksson said, getting to his feet. “But you’d be well advised to discuss all this pretty seriously among yourselves. About how you want things to be. Because you only have half a chance. Just one look, one word, and I’ll ring them. I’m not the patient type.”

*

“Have we made the world a better place now?” Stålnacke wondered as they walked away from the house.

They could hear fru Niemi shrieking, and her husband bellowing back, although they couldn’t make out the words.

They got into the car. Eriksson was going to drive Stålnacke home.

“No,” Eriksson said. “Those kids will only find somebody else to kick around. But we’ve made the world a better place for Marcus. And that’s good enough for me today.”

When Manager-in-Chief Fasth is accidentally killed in the stone-crusher, Hjalmar Lundbohm is obliged to return to Kiruna.

Lizzie takes the opportunity of resigning. She has done it lots of times while lying awake at night. Called him a coward. Told him straight that if he had accepted his responsibilities, Elina would still have been alive. That it happened because he had turned his back on her.

But now she stands there in the kitchen and listens as he tells her how many guests there will be for dinner – engineers and their wives.

When he has finished talking she curtseys. It is enough to drive her mad. There was never any question of her curtseying when she rehearsed her resignation speech during the sleepless nights. The managing director was always shattered by his feelings of guilt. And she was always ruthless. Stood there in front of him and unleashed a series of truths like an avenging angel.

But now she is unable to utter a single word about Elina. All she says is that Johan-Albin has got a job in Luleå. He doesn’t mention her either, although just for a second he seems to have something on his conscience that must come out.

But the moment passes and the telephone rings. He hurries to his study. It occurs to her that if that confounded telephone had rung during his mother’s funeral he would still have dashed off and taken the call. She returns to the kitchen and starts ordering the maids
about with such fervour that they scurry around like frightened mice, dropping things, hardly daring to breathe without asking her how she would like them to do it.

She is furious deep down inside because Lundbohm did not even ask about the boy.

But there again, perhaps it is as well that he did not. What if he had in fact taken on responsibility for the child? Who would have looked after the boy then? Some housekeeper?

Nevertheless, she thinks as she allows the white sauce to burn at the bottom of the pan: he ought to have asked how the boy was!

*

It is late evening. Lundbohm is in the courtyard of his official residence, all by himself, smoking a cigar. He has donned his large wolfskin coat and accompanied his guests on the first stage of their walk home.

It has been a very pleasant evening – almost disgracefully pleasant, bearing in mind that Manager-in-Chief Fasth has not even been buried yet. Nobody so much as mentioned his name during the course of the dinner. When Lundbohm said a few words and proposed a toast in his memory, everyone raised their glasses in appropriate silence: but they were all keen to talk about something else the moment their glasses had been set down on the table.

Perhaps I’m the only one who will miss him, Lundbohm thinks as he gazes up at the pole star as usual.

Fasth was a tough customer, and widely disliked. But he did his job, and did it well.

And mine too, Lundbohm admits to himself. He took care of all the things I prefer to have nothing to do with – discipline, rules and regulations, bookkeeping.

And now Lundbohm has lost his housekeeper as well.

He tries to erase Lizzie’s expressionless face from his memory. She is always sunshine itself, just like …

Elina.

But he is not going to think about Elina. He must not. Nothing can turn the clock back. What is done cannot be undone.

Pegasus, Taurus, the Charioteer – they all stare coldly down at him. He stands alone in the wintry night, and feels so shatteringly lonely. The words of the Bible float into his mind:
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

I am nobody, he thinks, and suddenly feels just as lonely as he did during those early years in the infant school. Even then he was an overweight dreamer, without friends.

And now – if I didn’t have the mine, and this home? Who would I be then? The whole world knows the managing director of the mine. But who knows Hjalmar Lundbohm?

Elina, he thinks. Did she really love me? Did she? All those men who regularly turned their heads to look at her. All the letters they used to leave outside her door.

He recalled her skin. Her body. His own surprise at the beginning – because she really did seem to want him. Even though he was old enough to be her father.

He has difficulty in breathing, drops the cigar in the snow. He suddenly feels afraid of falling. And not being able to stand up again.

It’s just that I’m tired, he tells himself. This is nothing. It’s just that I’ve been working too hard.

He staggers indoors, arms outstretched in order to keep his balance.

Once inside, he flops down onto the bench in the hall.

The boy – obviously it could be his. But she didn’t confirm or deny it when he asked. And how would he be able to look after him?
The lad needs a mother. And he knows that Lizzie and her fiancé have taken him to their hearts.

That is the best thing for him.

The house is so quiet. There is nothing in his bed apart from his hot-water bottles.

He shuffles slowly up the stairs to his bedroom. Muttering to himself on every step: best thing for him, best thing for him.

Ten million, Martinsson thought as she drove home. The share certificates were in her handbag on the back seat.

Canadian dollars, she thought as she stood at a loss in her kitchen, the share certificates in her hands. Eventually she placed them right at the bottom of the pile of invoices lying on her desk.

“I shall go and fetch Marcus,” she said to Vera and the Brat. “You can wait here.”

But when she opened the front door, Vera took advantage of the opportunity to sneak out.

“Huh, typical,” Martinsson said as she opened the car door. “You never pay any attention to what I say, do you? So you are going to come with me and fetch Marcus, are you?”

Vera jumped in and sat down on the front passenger seat. Martinsson could hear the Brat yapping away inside the house.

She drove along the dirt road until she came to the path leading to the River Rautas.

The last of the daylight was fading away. The sky was dull blue. The moon shone out through narrow gaps in the clouds. Drops of moisture trembled on tree branches. Patches of snow here and there shone like polished mirrors.

The path was slippery, and you couldn’t see where you were going. The wooden bridge over the bog was even worse.

Vera scampered along, digging in her claws, but both she and Martinsson slipped several times. Tumbled down into the mud.

When they reached the far side of the bog, Vera’s stomach was soaking wet, and Martinsson was wet up to her knees.

Her boots were sliding in all directions. Her toes were icy cold.

The cottages on the riverbank were shrouded in darkness. Abandoned and empty. Boats were lying upside down on the riverbank. Tarpaulins were spread over bicycles and sandpits and garden furniture.

Martinsson wondered which of the cottages Larsson was renting.

“Ah well,” she said to Vera. “Come on.”

Vera sneaked off into the trees. Martinsson kept going until she saw a light in one of the cottages. She knocked on the door.

Maja Larsson opened it.

“Good heavens,” she said when she saw Martinsson’s soaking wet legs.

She produced a pair of dry skiing socks, and put the coffee on the stove.

Martinsson massaged her feet, and felt the pain as the cold slowly faded away.

“Örjan and Marcus went upstream to do some fishing,” Larsson said. “Let’s hope they don’t slip and smash their skulls in the dark. They ought to be back any minute now. Why not take off your jeans while you’re waiting? Would you like a sandwich with liver pâté?”

“Yes please. I haven’t had any lunch. Did you know that Sol-Britt had a half-brother?”

“What? No, I didn’t. She always used to say that it was lucky I was around because she didn’t have any siblings. Hang on a minute, I have to count in order to make sure that your coffee isn’t too strong. Örjan always says that the spoon ought to be able to stand up in the cup of its own accord …”

“So she didn’t know about it?”

Larsson switched on the coffee machine and produced a loaf of
bread from a plastic bag. She seemed to be thinking hard as she made the sandwich. She cut the bread slowly into exactly identical slices. Then spread the butter and liver pâté as if she were painting in oils.

“No, I suppose I ought to be absolutely astounded. But then, all families have their secrets, don’t you think?”

She placed the sandwiches in front of Martinsson.

“She said nothing to me. But she must surely have known about it. After her father’s death, in any case.”

Martinsson’s mobile rang. Maja turned away and collected two coffee mugs from a cupboard. Martinsson took her mobile from out of her overcoat pocket. A text message from Sonja.

Sol-Britt Uusitalo’s half-brother. I’ll send his name, personal identity number and passport pic by e-mail.

Martinsson opened her e-mails.

Örjan Bäck, 19480914-6910.

*

Martinsson stopped breathing. It took several seconds before the passport photograph appeared. She recognised that mop of fair hair.

“How did it happen?” she said, trying hard to make her voice sound the same as normal. “How did you and Örjan get together?”