Until Thy Wrath Be Past (30 page)

Schörner orders the others to keep quiet as he draws his pistol and approaches the hut.

It is only when he does this that Kerttu becomes vaguely aware that Viebke will feel that she has betrayed him. That had not occurred to her before. It had all been a sort of adventure.

Schörner and the other soldiers walk cautiously towards the hut. They go inside. After a short while they come out again.

“There’s nobody here,” Schörner says disapprovingly.

He looks accusingly at Kerttu.

She opens her mouth to defend herself. She was here only yesterday with Viebke and met the Danes. Nice chaps, all three of them.

At that very moment they hear voices not far away in the woods. Laughter. It is the Danes. Schörner and the others hurry back into the trees. Dragging Kerttu with him, he whispers that she should lie down and keep quiet.

Here they come, walking through the trees. Viebke and the Danes. He is so handsome with his curly hair and happy laugh. They have been fishing. Viebke is carrying a pike and three perch. He has threaded a switch of willow through their gills. He is holding a pipe in his other hand. The Danes are carrying fishing rods made of birch branches.

Kerttu’s spirits rise when she sees Viebke. Then her stomach ties itself in a knot.

Sonja on the switchboard transfers the incoming call to Martinsson’s mobile.

Martinsson has been out for a walk with the dogs. The afternoon sun is exuding warmth. Tintin and Vera are strutting around, exploring the parking area in front of the house. Vera is digging away eagerly at the woodpile, sending wet soil and moss flying in all directions. Some poor field mouse is no doubt sitting petrified underneath all the wood, its heart pounding, convinced that its end is nigh. Tintin waltzes off towards the paddock where the neighbour keeps his horses. They are used to dogs, and do not even condescend to glance at her. She finds a lovely pile of horse manure, guzzles down half of it, then rolls around in what is left. Martinsson decides not to intervene. She can put both dogs in the shower when they eventually come inside. Then they can lie in front of the fire to dry. She considers ringing Krister Eriksson and telling him how his pretty miss behaves the moment his back is turned. Joking about having made up her mind that she needs a holiday so that she can become a dog.

No sooner has she registered the thought than the phone rings. At first she thinks it is Eriksson sensing that she has been thinking about him, but then she realizes that it is the police switchboard. After Sonja tells her she has a call, Martinsson hears a man clearing his throat.

“Er, hi. It’s Hjalmar Krekula. I want to profess,” he says.

Then corrects himself.

“Confess.”

“I see,” she says.

Hell and damnation, she thinks. No tape recorder handy, nothing.

“It was me who killed them. Wilma Persson. And Simon Kyrö.”

There’s something wrong. Martinsson can feel it in her bones. She can hear that he is in his car. Where is he going?

Thoughts as quick as swimming vipers.

“O.K.,” she says calmly. “I’d like to record this. Can you come to the police station?”

Holding the receiver away from her face, she swallows. He must not hear that she is worried or afraid.

“No.”

“We can come to you. Are you at home?”

“No. This will have to do. I’ve said it now. So now you know.”

No, no. He must not hang up. She can see a little boy in front of her, his eyes red with crying.

“No, that won’t do,” she says. “How do I know that you’re telling the truth? People ring us to make confessions all the time.”

But he has already hung up.

“Shit, shit, shit!” she yells, making the dogs pause and look at her.

But as soon as they realize that she is not angry with them, they continue about their business. Vera has found a pine cone and laid it at Tintin’s feet. Backing off a few paces, she has crouched down. Come on, she is saying. Let’s have a game. See if you can grab it before I do. Tintin yawns demonstratively.

Martinsson tries to ring Anna-Maria Mella, but there is no answer. “Ring me right away,” she tells the answering machine.

She looks at the dogs. Vera has soil and clay on her legs and belly. Tintin has applied horse-shit perfume to her neck and behind her ears.

“Filthy swine,” she says to them. “Criminals. What the hell do I do now?”

The moment she says that, she knows. She must drive to his house. So that he does not. So that he does not. The dogs. She will have to take them with her. Despite the filthy state they are in.

“You’re coming with me,” she says to them.

But no. Nobody answers the door when she gets to Hjalmar’s place. Martinsson trudges all the way round the house through the wet snow, peering in through the windows. She knocks on them as well. But she decides that he is not at home. And his car is not there.

Anni Autio. Maybe she will know.

Nobody opens the door at Anni’s house either.

A flock of ravens is circling above the house, round and round.

What’s the matter with them? Martinsson wonders.

The door is unlocked, so she goes in.

Anni is lying on the kitchen sofa. Her eyes are closed.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Martinsson says.

Anni opens one eye.

“Yes, well . . . the door wasn’t locked, so . . . I’m looking for Hjalmar Krekula. You’re his aunt, aren’t you, Anni? Aren’t you? Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

She closes her eye again.

If I were him, Martinsson thinks, I’d run away to my cottage.

“Does he have a cottage somewhere?”

“If I tell you where it is, and I can draw you a map, will you leave me in peace? I don’t want to hear his name ever again. I don’t want to speak to anybody. Help me up. You’ll find pen and paper on the countertop, by the scales.”

What if I get there too late, Martinsson thinks as she drives like a madwoman along the E10 and then turns off along the Kuosanen road down to the River Kalix. What if he has shot himself? What if he is lying on the floor in a pool of blood? If the back of his head has been shot away? If he does not have any face left? That could be what is in store for me. It could be.

She tries to ring Mella again. Gets the answering machine again.

“I’m on my way to Hjalmar Krekula’s cottage,” she says. “He’s confessed to the murder of Wilma and Simon. And I have a nasty feeling . . . Don’t panic, there’s no danger. But ring me. If I can pick up, I will.”

Then she rings Krister Eriksson.

“Hi,” he says before she has a chance to say anything.

It is such a tender-sounding “hi”. It sounds happy over the fact that she has called him, and ever so intimate. It sounds like a “hi” the second before a man slides his hand under his lover’s hair and round the back of her head. He saw from the display that it was her, and so that is how he sounds.

She is thrown off balance. Feels warm from somewhere between her ribs down to her pelvis.

“How’s my little girl doing?” he says, and at first she does not realize that he is talking about Tintin.

She tells him that all is well and then mentions that Tintin felt the need to break away from her policing role and just be a dog for a while. So she has been rolling around in horse shit.

“That’s my girl,” Eriksson says, laughing proudly.

Then Martinsson tells him where she is going, and why.

“We searched his house last Tuesday,” she says. “I really don’t know how to explain this.”

Becoming serious, Eriksson says nothing. Does not tell her that in no circumstances must she go there alone.

“I saw an entirely different person when I looked right at him,” she says. “It was as if I should, well, not that I should help him, but that we shared similar problems, as it were. There was something in the atmosphere. I have to make a choice.”

She is fumbling for words to explain her feelings, but suddenly feels that she is just making a fool of herself.

“I understand,” he says.

“I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” Martinsson says.

“You don’t need to. Just do what you feel is right. And look after Tintin.”

“I’d never allow anything to happen to her.”

“I know.”

A brief silence follows. There is a lot waiting to be expressed, but in the end he simply says, “Bye for now,” and hangs up.

Hjalmar Krekula’s cottage at Saarisuanto is built of brown-stained logs. The window frames and door are painted blue, and the two lots of steps leading up to the door have been fused together crudely. The roof is corrugated iron, but the chimneys are properly built in. Beautiful pine trees grow on the slope down to the riverbank. An old red-painted boathouse leans provocatively under the snow. It might survive one more summer, but that is far from certain. Not far from the cottage, at the very edge of the water, is the sauna. A circular iron chimney sticks up into the air. A wooden jetty has been beached: the half of it that has thawed peers out from the snow.

The barrier is up and the road has been ploughed, but not all the way to the cottage. Hjalmar’s car is parked where the road comes to an end. Martinsson has to walk along the snow-scooter tracks for the last bit. Someone has walked there before her. It must be him. Far from easy going – his feet have sunk into the snow after every third or fourth step.

Vera and Tintin are racing around like crazy, noses to the ground. There are spoors made by reindeer that have followed the scooter tracks to conserve energy. Ptarmigans have scuttled back and forth among the birches. At one point there are traces of an elk. It takes more than fifteen minutes to get to the cottage.

Martinsson knocks on the door. When she gets no response, she opens it.

The cottage consists of one large room. The kitchen area is just inside the door. On the wall to the left are old kitchen cabinets with sliding doors above a hotplate and countertop. Turned upside down on the countertop is an orange washing-up bowl, with a brush lying neatly by its side.

In front of the cabinets and countertop are a small dining table and three unmatched Windsor chairs, painted with several layers of thick paint, most recently cornflower-blue. A bit further into the room is a sofa. The knobbly ivory-coloured cushions, striped nougat, green and dark brown down the middle, are on the floor, leaning against the armrests, so that they will not become too damp and mouldy underneath.

A fire is burning in the hearth, but it has not yet dispersed the raw smell of damp.

Hjalmar is on the sofa. Instead of using one of the cushions, he is sitting directly on the hard wooden frame. He is still wearing his jacket and his fake fur peaked cap.

“What are you doing here?” he says.

“I don’t know,” Martinsson says, and remains standing. “I have two dogs outside who are scratching your front door to bits. Is it O.K. if I let them in? They’re absolutely filthy.”

“Yes, let ’em in.”

She opens the door. Vera almost overturns the table in her eagerness to greet Hjalmar. Tintin ignores him, tours the room sniffing every nook and cranny, and eventually lies down on her side in front of the open fire.

Hjalmar cannot resist stroking Vera, who takes this as a sign that she is welcome to jump up onto the sofa.

Martinsson says, “Vera!” in a stern voice, but Hjalmar gestures that it’s O.K. Vera, feeling that they are now ready to take their relationship a step further, clambers onto his lap. It is not easy to find enough room as his stomach is so big, but she eventually settles down and licks him heartily on the mouth.

“Steady on!” Hjalmar says, trying to sound stern.

But he immediately starts picking clumps of snow out of her fur. She likes that. She leans on him with all her weight and licks his mouth again.

“She’s just eaten a field mouse,” Martinsson says. “I thought you might like to know.”

“Oh, what the hell . . .” he says, and there is laughter in his voice.

“Not guilty,” Martinsson says. “I’m not the one who brought her up.”

“Is that so,” Hjalmar says. “Now then, old girl, that’s enough. Who did bring you up, then?”

Martinsson says nothing.

But then she thinks: no lies.

“She’s Hjörleifur Arnarson’s dog,” she says.

Hjalmar nods thoughtfully and strokes Vera’s ears.

“I never noticed that he had a dog,” he says. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

“Maybe you could make it? I’m a bit busy here. There’s a packet in the cupboard.”

Martinsson starts to make coffee. Hjalmar has a percolator. She fills it with water and coffee. Next to the cooker is an open Bible. She reads the sentence that has been underlined.

“‘Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.’ Are you fond of the Psalms?”

“Not really, but I read them sometimes. The Bible’s the only book I have out here.”

Martinsson picks it up and thumbs through it. It is small and black, its delicate pages gilded along the edges. The print is so small that it is almost illegible.

“I know,” he says, as if he has read her thoughts. “I use a magnifying glass.”

The Bible feels pleasant and used in her hand. She admires the quality of the paper. Printed in 1928, and it has not even begun to turn yellow. She sniffs it. It smells good. Church,
Farmor
, another age.

“Do you read it?” he says.

“Sometimes,” she says. “I have nothing against the Bible. It’s the church that . . .”

“What do you read?”

“Oh, it depends. I like the Prophets. They are so sharp. I like the language they use. And they are so human. Jonah, for instance. He’s such a whinger. And unreliable. God says, ‘Go to Nineveh and preach the word.’ And Jonah prances off in the opposite direction. And in the end, when he’s been in the whale’s belly for three days, he prophesies the destruction of Nineveh. But then, when the people of Nineveh do penance, God changes his mind and decides not to destroy them after all. Huh, then Jonah is miserable as sin because he’d prophesied death and destruction, and thinks he has lost face when his prophesy turns out to be wrong.”

“The belly of a whale.”