Until Thy Wrath Be Past (27 page)

The air turns blue as Wilma curses and swears over her maths book. God’s angels come out in goose pimples when they hear her.

“Hell, damnation, shit, fuck, cunt,” she says, snarling.

“Hey, calm down now,” Anni says disapprovingly.

“But I don’t want to,” Wilma says. “I’m thick, I can’t understand a thing. Bloody algebra shit-talk. ‘When we multiply a conjugate pair, the radical vanishes and we are left with a rational number.’ I’ve had enough of this crap. I’m going to ring Simon, and we can go out on the snow scooter.”

“Do that.”

“Aaaargh! But I really have to learn this stuff!”

“Don’t ring him, then.”

Anni sees that Hjalmar has almost finished. She puts the coffee pan on the stove. Five minutes later he sticks his head round the door and announces that it is all done. Anni will not let him go. She tells him she has only just put the coffee on. She and Wilma will not be able to drink it all themselves. And she has thawed out some buns as well.

He allows himself to be persuaded and sits down at the kitchen table. Keeps his jacket on, only unzipping it halfway as a sign that he does not intend to stay long.

He says nothing. He hardly ever does; people are used to it. Anni and Wilma take care of the talking, know better than to try to include him by asking lots of questions.

“I’m going to ring Simon,” Wilma says in the end, and goes out into the hall where the telephone stands on a little teak table with a stool beside it and a mirror behind.

Anni gets up to fetch a 50-krona note from an old cocoa tin standing on the edge of the cooker hood. It is part of the ritual: she will try to persuade Hjalmar to accept the money for clearing the snow. He always refuses, but in the end he usually takes a bag of buns, or some beef stew in a plastic jar. Or something of the sort. While Anni fumbles around in the cocoa tin, Hjalmar pulls over Wilma’s maths book. He glances quickly through the text, then in about a minute flat he solves nine algebraic equations, one after the other.

“Wow,” Anni says. “Fancy that, I’d almost forgotten. You were very good at maths when you were at school. Maybe you could help Wilma? Her maths is driving her up the wall.”

But Hjalmar has to leave. He zips up his jacket, grunts a thank you for the coffee and grabs the 50-krona note in order to avoid arguing.

That evening Wilma turns up at Hjalmar Krekula’s house. She has her maths book in her hand.

“You’re good at this stuff!” she says without preamble, marches into his kitchen and sits down at the table. “You’re a genius, after all.”

“Oh, I don’t know . . .” Hjalmar says, but is interrupted.

“You must teach me. I can’t understand a damned thing.”

“No, I can’t,” he says, and starts struggling for breath, but Wilma has already wriggled out of her jacket.

“Oh yes!” she says. “Yes you can!”

“Alright,” he says. “But I’m no schoolmistress.”

She looks at him entreatingly. She positively pleads with him. So he feels obliged to sit down beside her.

They slog away together for more than two hours. She shouts and moans as she usually does when things are not going well for her. To her surprise, he shouts as well. He slams his fist down on the table and says that for God’s sake she must stop gaping out of the window and concentrate on her maths book. Is she meditating? What the hell is she doing? And when she starts crying, worn out by second-order polynomials, he taps her awkwardly on the head and asks if she would like a soda. And so they drink Coca-Cola together.

In the end she understands how to solve “those bloody quadratic equations”.

They are both utterly exhausted. Washed out. Hjalmar warms up some Russian pasty, which they eat with ice cream.

“My God, but you’re a clever bastard,” she says. “Why are you driving lorries? You ought to be a professor.”

He laughs.

“Professor of class-nine maths!”

How could she possibly understand? Ever since he finished reading the maths books he stole from Herr Fernström’s car, he has been doing his sums. He has ordered books from university book-shops and antiquarian booksellers. In algebra he is busy with Lagrange’s theorem and groups of permutations. He has been taking correspondence courses for years, and not just in maths. Driven down to Stockholm in order to take the exams at Hermod’s Correspondence College. Pretended that he was going to Finland to do some shopping. Or to Luleå to collect an engine. When he was twenty-five he took the high-school leaving examination at Hermod’s. He drove out to his summer cottage the following weekend. He had bought a bottle of wine. Not that he was much of a drinker, and especially not of wine. But he sat there with a Duralex glass of red. It tasted foul. Hjalmar smiles at the memory.

They work for a bit longer, but eventually it is time for Wilma to go home. She puts on her jacket.

“Don’t tell anybody about this,” he says before she leaves. “You know. Not Tore . . . Not anybody. Don’t tell them I’m good at maths and all that.”

“Of course not,” she says with a smile.

She is already elsewhere in her thoughts. Presumably with Simon Kyrö. She thanks Hjalmar for his help, and leaves.

Rebecka Martinsson and Hjalmar Krekula are standing in the cemetery. Martinsson has the feeling that she is sitting in a boat and Hjalmar has fallen into the water. He’s clinging on to the rail, but she doesn’t have the strength to pull him into the boat. He will soon be dangerously close to hypothermia. He will lose his grip on the rail. He will sink. There’s nothing she can do.

“How are you?” she says.

She regrets it the moment she’s said it. She doesn’t want to know how he is. He’s not her responsibility.

“I’ve got heartburn or something,” he says, thumping his chest with his fist.

“Really?”

“I have to go,” he says. But he shows no sign of moving.

“I see.”

She has the dog in her car. She ought to go too.

“I can’t stop wondering what I should do,” he says. His face is twitching.

She looks away in the direction of the trees. Avoids looking him in the eye.

“When I felt at rock bottom, I used to go out for a walk in the country. Sometimes that helps.”

He trudges off.

Impotence weighs her down.

Martinsson arrived back at the police station at 2.15 in the afternoon. In the entrance she bumped into Anna-Maria Mella. Vera, overcome with joy, jumped up to greet Mella. Left wet paw marks on her jeans.

Mella’s eyes were shining and full of life. Her cheeks were red. Her hair seemed to be longing to be free; strands were working their way loose from her plait and looked as if they wanted to fly away.

“Have you heard?” she said. “We’ve had a report from the lab. There was blood from Hjörleifur Arnarson on Tore Krekula’s jacket.”

“Wow,” Martinsson said, feeling as if she had been jerked violently out of a dream. Her thoughts had been totally immersed in the meeting with Hjalmar Krekula at the cemetery. “What are you . . .”

“We’re going to arrest Tore Krekula, of course. We’re about to set off for his house right now.”

Mella paused. She looked guilty.

“I ought to have rung you. But you’ve been busy with proceedings all morning, haven’t you? Do you want to come with us and help nail him?”

Martinsson shook her head.

“Before you go,” she said, placing a hand on Mella’s arm to hold her back, “I was at the cemetery.”

Mella made a heroic effort to hide her impatience.

“And?” she said, pretending to be interested.

“Hjalmar Krekula was there as well. To visit Wilma’s grave. I think he was on the brink of . . . well, I don’t know what. He’s not well. I had the feeling he wanted to tell me something.”

Mella became a little more attentive.

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know. It was mainly a feeling I had.”

“Don’t be angry,” Mella said, “but don’t you think your imagination might be running away with you? All this business might have triggered memories of your own experience. How you felt bad when you . . . you know.”

Martinsson could feel her emotions tying themselves in knots.

“That’s a possibility, of course,” she said stiffly.

“We can talk more about it when I get back,” Mella said. “But keep away from Hjalmar Krekula, O.K.? He’s a dangerous swine, remember that.”

Martinsson shook her head thoughtfully.

“He would never hurt me,” she said.

“Famous last words,” Mella said with a wry smile. “I’m serious, Rebecka. Suicide and homicide have a lot in common. We had a bloke last year who ran amok in his cottage out at Laxforsen, releasing first his wife and then his children aged seven and eleven from the sufferings of this world. Then he succeeded in taking his own life with an overdose of ordinary iron tablets. His kidneys and liver gave up the ghost. Mind you, it took more than two months for him to die. He was in hospital in Umeå with tubes wherever you looked, under arrest for murder.”

Neither of them spoke. Mella wanted to bite her tongue off. She thought about when Martinsson had shot those men at Jiekajärvi. The circumstances had been quite different, of course. And how she had lost the plot and wanted to kill herself. But those circumstances had also been quite different. Why was everything always so complicated? The ground around Martinsson was a minefield. Why the hell did she have to bump into her in the doorway?

Rantakyrö and Olsson came charging down the corridor. Greeting Martinsson hurriedly, they looked questioningly at Mella.

“Right, we’re off to pick up Tore Krekula,” Mella said. “I expect you’ll want to be present at the interrogation?”

Martinsson nodded and the pack raced out of the door, baying and howling, sniffing the ground.

She remained where she was, feeling left out.

Oh dear, she said to herself, how little and insignificant you are.

Vera suddenly started barking. Krister Eriksson had just parked his car and let out Tintin and Roy. His face lit up when he caught sight of Martinsson. He went over to her.

“I was looking for you,” he said with a smile so big that his pink skin seemed tightly stretched. “Do you think you could look after Tintin for a while? I’m going to put Roy through his paces, and Tintin is always so miserable when she’s left behind in the car.”

Vera stood submissively still, wagging her tail in a friendly greeting, as Tintin and Roy sniffed at her, under her stomach and around her rump.

“I’d love to,” Martinsson said.

“How are things?” he said. Martinsson had the feeling he could see right through her.

“Fine,” she lied.

She told him about Tore Krekula’s jacket, about how he was about to be arrested.

Eriksson said nothing, just stood there and waited. Looked sympathetically at her.

You’re a right one for standing there and waiting, Martinsson thought. Wait on.

She had no intention of telling him about Hjalmar Krekula and their meeting in the cemetery.

Then he smiled suddenly. Tapped her gently on the arm. As if he simply could not keep his hands off her.

“So long, then. I’ll collect her this evening.”

He instructed Tintin to stay with Martinsson, went back out to his car and drove off with Roy.

Laura Krekula took her time before opening the door. She eyed the police officers standing outside. Mella could not resist flashing her I.D.

She could see the fear in Laura Krekula’s eyes. Rantakyrö and Olsson were wearing their serious faces.

I don’t feel sorry for her, Mella thought. How on earth could she marry such an idiot?

“Here you are again,” Laura said in a weak voice.

“We’re looking for Tore,” Mella said.

“He’s at work,” his wife said. “You won’t find him at home in the middle of the day.”

“Is that his car parked over there?” Mella said.

“Yes, but he’s making a delivery to Luleå today and won’t be back home until late tonight,” his wife said.

“Is it O.K. if we take a look round the house? One of the drivers at the garage said Tore was at home.”

Laura Krekula stepped to one side and let them in.

They opened wardrobes. Checked the garage and laundry room. Laura remained in the hall. After five minutes, the police thanked her and left.

When they had driven off, Laura went upstairs. She collected the big, long, hexagonal spanner that fitted the hatch to the cold loft. Turning the spanner, she let the hatch fall open and unfolded the ladder.

Tore Krekula climbed down.

Walking past his wife, he bounded down the stairs to the ground floor.

Laura followed him. Said nothing. Watched him pull on his boots and jacket. He went into the kitchen wearing his outdoor clothes. Spread some butter on the side of the crispbread with the deepest holes and cut some slices of sausage which he laid on top.

“Don’t say a thing,” he said with his mouth full. “Not a word to your mother or your sister. Is that clear?”

Hjalmar is skiing through the forest. The afternoon sun is warming everything. There are big balls of new snow in the trees, but it has started to melt and drip. I’m sitting in the birch trees among all the watery pearls, watching him. Moving from tree to tree. Being weightless, I can perch on the thinnest of twigs. In winter they are black and the frost makes them straggly. Now they’ve assumed a violet tinge. The colour of spring. I run like a lynx up a pine trunk smelling of resin. The bark is golden brown, just like Anni’s ginger biscuits. The branches are dressed in her green cable-knit cardigan. I hide inside the cardigan. Lying in wait for Hjalmar.

It must be at least twenty years since he last went skiing. His boots and skis are much older than that. Old-fashioned, untarred, unwaxed skis with ancient mousetrap bindings. He can’t make them slide. He has to keep stopping in order to scrape away the snow clinging onto the bottoms. He sinks down into the snow even though he is trying to follow the scooter tracks. His ungreased, cracked leather boots are soon soaked through. His trousers as well.

His poles sink into the snow. Deep down, and it’s hard work pulling them out again. The discs get stuck. When he manages to pull them up again they look like cylinders, with 30 centimetres of snow clinging to the poles above the discs.