“We’ll speak again,” he said to Sanna before jumping into his Volvo Cross Country.
Rebecka noticed the look on Anna-Maria Mella’s face as the prosecutor’s car disappeared.
Well, I’ll be damned, she thought. Horse face tricked him. She wanted him out of here, and… Hell, she’s smart.
As soon as Carl von Post had left, silence reigned. Tommy Rantakyrö stood there uncertainly waiting for a sign from Anna-Maria or Sven-Erik. Sara and Lova were on their knees in the snow with their arms around their mother, who was still sitting on the ground. Virku lay down by their side and chomped on lumps of snow. When Rebecka bent down to stroke her, she thumped her tail just to show that everything was all right. Sven-Erik gave Anna-Maria a questioning look.
“Tommy,” said Anna-Maria, breaking the silence, “can you and Olsson seal the flat? Mark the kitchen tap so nobody uses it until the forensics team has been in.”
“Hi,” Sven-Erik said gently to Sanna. “We’re really sorry about all this. But we’re stuck with the situation now. You have to come with us to the station.”
“Can we drop the children off somewhere?” asked Anna-Maria.
“No,” said Sanna, raising her head. “I want to speak to my lawyer, Rebecka Martinsson.”
Rebecka sighed.
“Sanna, I’m not your lawyer.”
“I want to talk to you anyway.”
Sven-Erik Stålnacke glanced uncertainly at his colleague.
“I don’t know-” he began.
“Oh, please!” snapped Rebecka. “She’s being detained for questioning. Not arrested with limited access. She has every right to speak to me. Stand here and listen, we’re not going to be talking about any secrets.”
Lova whimpered in Sanna’s ear.
"What did you say, honey?"
“I’ve wet my knickers,” howled Lova.
Every gaze was turned on the little girl. It was quite true, a dark stain had appeared on her old jeans.
“Lova needs dry trousers,” said Rebecka to Anna-Maria Mella.
“Listen to me, girls,” said Anna-Maria to Sara and Lova. “Why don’t you come upstairs with me and we’ll find some dry trousers for Lova, then we’ll come back down to your mum. She won’t go anywhere till we come back. I promise.”
“Go on, do what she says,” said Sanna. “My precious little girls. Fetch some clothes for me too. And Virku’s food.”
“I’m sorry,” said Anna-Maria to Sanna. “Not your clothes. And the prosecutor will want to send everything you’re wearing to Linköping.”
“That’s okay,” said Rebecka quickly. “I’ll sort some new clothes out for you, Sanna. All right?”
The girls disappeared inside with Anna-Maria. Sven-Erik Stålnacke squatted down a little way from Sanna and Rebecka and talked to Virku. They seemed to have a lot in common.
“I can’t help you, Sanna,” said Rebecka. “I’m a tax specialist. I don’t deal with criminal cases. If you need a public defender, I can help you get hold of someone good.”
“Don’t you understand?” mumbled Sanna. “It has to be you. If you won’t help me, I don’t want anybody. God can look after me.”
“Just stop it, please,” begged Rebecka.
“No, you stop it,” said Sanna angrily. “I need you, Rebecka. And my children need you. I don’t care what you think of me, but now I’m begging you. What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees? Say you’ve got to do it for old times’ sake? It has to be you.”
“What do you mean, the children need me?”
Sanna grabbed hold of Rebecka’s jacket with both hands.
“Mum and Dad will take them away from me,” she said, pain in her voice. “That mustn’t happen. Do you understand? I don’t want Sara and Lova to spend even five minutes with my parents. And now I can’t stop it. But you can. For Sara’s sake.”
Her parents. Images and thoughts fought their way to the surface of Rebecka’s mind. Sanna’s father. Well dressed. Perfect manners. With his soft, sympathetic manner. He’d gained considerable popularity as a local politician. Rebecka had even seen him on national television from time to time. In the next election he would probably be on the list of parliamentary candidates for the Christian Democrats. But underneath the warm façade was a pack leader, hard as nails. Even Pastor Thomas Söderberg had deferred to him and shown him respect over many issues within the church. And Rebecka remembered with distaste how Sanna had told her-with a lightness of tone, as if the whole thing had happened to someone else-how he had always killed her animals. Always without warning. Dogs, cats, birds. She hadn’t even been allowed to keep an aquarium her primary-school teacher had given her. Sometimes her mother, who was completely under his thumb, had explained that it was because Sanna was allergic. Another time it might be because she hadn’t been working hard enough at school. Most of the time she got no explanation at all. The silence was such that it was not possible even to form the question. And Rebecka remembered Sanna sitting with Sara on her knee when she was small and didn’t want to go to sleep. “I’m not going to be like them,” she’d said. “They used to lock my bedroom door from the outside.”
“I need to speak to my boss,” said Rebecka.
“Are you staying?” asked Sanna.
“For a while,” replied Rebecka in a strangled voice.
Sanna’s expression softened.
“That’s all I’m asking,” she said. “And how long can it take-after all, I’m innocent. You don’t believe I did it, do you?”
An image of Sanna walking along in the middle of the night, the bloodstained knife in her hand illuminated by the street lamps, formed in Rebecka’s head.
But then, why did she go back? she thought. Why would she have taken Lova and Sara to the church to “find” him?
“Of course not,” she said.
Case number, total hours. Case number, total hours. Case number, total hours.
Maria Taube sat in her office at the law firm Meijer & Ditzinger filling in her weekly time sheet. It looked good, she decided, when she added up the number of debited hours in the box at the bottom. Forty-two. It was impossible to make Måns happy, but at least he wouldn’t be unhappy. She’d worked more than seventy hours this week in order to be able to debit forty-two. She closed her eyes and flipped down the back of her chair. The waistband of her skirt was cutting into her stomach.
I must start doing some exercise, she thought. Not just sit on my backside in front of the computer, comfort eating. It’s Tuesday morning. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Four days left until Saturday. Then I’ll do some exercise. And sleep. Unplug the phone and go to bed early.
The rain pattered against the window, sending her to sleep. Just as her body had decided to give in and rest for a little while, just as her muscles relaxed, the telephone rang. It was like being woken up by a kick in the head. She sat bolt upright and grabbed the receiver. It was Rebecka Martinsson.
“Hi, kid!” exclaimed Maria cheerfully. “Hang on a minute.”
She rolled her chair away from the table and kicked the office door shut.
“At last!” she said when she picked up the phone again. “I’ve been trying to ring you like mad.”
“I know,” replied Rebecka. “I’ve got hundreds of messages on my phone, but I haven’t even started listening to them. It’s been locked in the car, and… no, I haven’t got the energy to tell you the whole miserable story. I assume one or two might be from Måns Wenngren, who’s presumably absolutely furious?”
“Mmm, well, I’m not going to lie to you. The partners have had a breakfast meeting about what was on the news. They’re not very happy about Channel 4 showing pictures of the office and talking about angry lawyers. They’re buzzing about like bees today.”
Rebecka leaned against the steering wheel and took a deep breath. There was a painful lump in her throat that made it difficult to say anything. Outside, Virku, Sara and Lova were playing with a rug that was hanging on the line. She hoped it belonged to Sanna and not one of the neighbors.