“I’ll ring when I get there,” she said, getting into the car.
“You do that,” said Sanna without interest, fixing her eyes on Virku, who had squatted down by the wall to answer a message left in the snow.
Or maybe next year, thought Rebecka, and turned the key.
When she looked in the rearview mirror she caught sight of Sara and Lova, who had come back out onto the steps.
There was something in their eyes that made the ground beneath the car shift.
No, no, she thought. Everything’s fine. It’s nothing. Just drive.
But her feet wouldn’t release the clutch and step on the accelerator. She stopped, her eyes fixed on the little girls at the top of the steps. Saw their wide eyes, saw them shouting something to Sanna that Rebecka couldn’t hear. Saw them raise their arms and point up at the apartment, then quickly lower them as someone came out of the building.
It was a uniformed policeman, who reached Sanna in a few rapid steps. Rebecka couldn’t hear what he said.
She looked at her watch. It was pointless even to try to catch the plane. She couldn’t go now. With a deep sigh, she got out of the car. Her body moved slowly toward Sanna and the policeman. The girls were still standing on the steps and leaning over the snow-covered railings. Sara’s gaze was firmly fixed on Sanna and the policeman. Lova was eating lumps of. snow that had stuck to her gloves.
“What do you mean, house search?”
Sanna’s tone of voice made Virku stop, and approach her mistress uneasily.
“You can’t just go into my home without permission? Can they?”
The last question was directed at Rebecka.
At that very moment Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post came out, followed by two plainclothes detectives. Rebecka recognized them. It was that little woman with a face like a horse-what was her name, now? Mella. And the guy with a walrus moustache. Good God, she thought moustaches like that had gone out in the seventies. It looked as if somebody had glued a dead squirrel under his nose.
The prosecutor went up to Sanna. He was holding a bag in one hand, and he fished out a smaller transparent plastic bag. Inside it was a knife. It was about twenty centimeters long. The shaft was black and shiny, and the point curved upward slightly.
“Sanna Strandgård,” he said, holding the bag with the knife just a little too close to Sanna’s face. “We’ve just found this in your residence. Do you recognize it?”
“No,” replied Sanna. “It looks like a hunting knife. I don’t hunt.”
Sara and Lova came over to Sanna. Lova tugged at the sleeve of Sanna’s sheepskin coat to get her mother’s attention.
“Mummy,” she whined.
“Just a minute, chicken,” said Sanna absently.
Sara nestled into her mother and pressed against her so that Sanna was forced to step backward with one foot so as not to lose her balance. The eleven-year-old followed the prosecutor’s movements with her eyes and tried to understand what was going on between these serious adults standing in a circle around her mother.
“Are you absolutely certain?” von Post asked again. “Take a good look,” he said, turning the knife over.
The cold made the plastic bag crackle as he showed both sides of the weapon, holding up first the blade and then the shaft.
“Yes, I’m certain,” answered Sanna, backing away from the knife. She avoided looking at it again.
“Perhaps the questions could wait,” said Anna-Maria Mella to von Post, nodding toward the two children clinging to Sanna.
“Mummy,” repeated Lova over and over again, tugging at Sanna’s sleeve. “Mummy, I need a pee.”
“I’m freezing,” squeaked Sara. “I want to go in.”
Virku moved anxiously and tried to press herself between Sanna’s legs.
Picture number two in the book of fairy stories, thought Rebecka. The wood nymph has been captured by the villagers. They have surrounded her and some are holding her fast by her arms and tail.
“You keep hand towels and sheets in the drawer under the sofa bed in the kitchen, isn’t that right?” von Post continued. “Are you also in the habit of keeping knives among the towels?”
"Just a minute, honey," said Sanna to Sara, who was pulling and tugging at her coat.
“I need a pee,” whimpered Lova. “I’m going to wet myself.”
"Do you intend to answer the question?" pressed von Post.
Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke exchanged glances behind von Post’s back.
“No,” said Sanna, her voice tense. “I do not keep knives in the drawer.”
“What about this, then,” continued von Post relentlessly, taking another transparent plastic bag out of the larger bag. “Do you recognize this?”
The bag contained a Bible. It was covered in brown leather, shiny with use. The edges of the pages had once been gilded, but now there was very little of the gold color left, and the pages of the book were dark from much thumbing and leafing. A variety of bookmarks protruded from everywhere: postcards, plaited laces, newspaper clippings.
With a whimper Sanna sank down helplessly and sat there in the snow.
“It says Viktor Strandgård inside the cover,” von Post continued mercilessly. “Could you tell us whether it’s his Bible, and what it was doing in your kitchen? Isn’t it true that he had it with him everywhere he went, and that he had it in the church on the last night of his life?”
“No,” whispered Sanna. “No.”
She pressed her hands against the sides of her face.
Lova tried to push Sanna’s hands away so that she could look into her mother’s eyes. When she couldn’t do it, she burst into tears, inconsolable.
“Mummy, I want to go,” she sobbed.
“Get up,” said von Post harshly. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Viktor Strandgård.”
Sara turned on the prosecutor. “Leave her alone,” she screamed.
“Get these children away from here,” von Post said impatiently to Tommy Rantakyrö.
Tommy Rantakyrö took a hesitant step toward Sanna. Then Virku rushed forward and placed herself in front of her mistress. She lowered her head, flattened her ears and bared her sharp teeth with a low growl. Tommy Rantakyrö backed off.
“Right, I’ve had just about enough of this,” said Rebecka to Carl von Post. “I want to make a complaint.”
Her last remark was directed to Anna-Maria Mella, who was standing beside her and gazing up at the surrounding buildings. At every window the curtains were twitching inquisitively.
“You want to make a-” said von Post, interrupting himself with a shake of the head. “As far as I’m concerned, you can come along to the station for questioning with regard to a complaint of assault made against you by a television reporter from Channel 4’s Norrbotten news.”
Anna-Maria Mella touched von Post lightly on the arm.
“We’re starting to get an audience,” she said. “It wouldn’t look very good if one of the neighbors rang the press and starting talking about police brutality and all the rest of it. I might be mistaken, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the old guy in the flat up there to the left was filming us with a video camera.”
She pointed up at one of the windows.
“It might be best if Sven-Erik and I leave, so it doesn’t look as if there’s a whole army of us here,” she went on. “We can go and ring forensics. I assume you want them to go over the flat?”
Von Post’s upper lip was twitching with displeasure. He tried to look in through the window Anna-Maria Mella had pointed at, but the flat was completely dark. Then he realized he might be staring straight into the lens of a camera, and hastily looked away. The last thing he wanted was to be linked to police brutality, or to be censured in the press.
“No, I want to talk to the forensics guys myself,” he replied. “You and Sven-Erik can take Sanna Strandgård in. Make sure the flat’s sealed.