“Step forward and we will pray for you,” he said, and as if they had been given a sign, Viktor Strandgård, the two other pastors from the church and some of the elders were standing by his side.
“Shabala shala amen,” Pastor Gunnar Isaksson called out. He was marching back and forth, waving his hands. “Step forward, you who are tortured by sickness and pain. It is not the will of God that you should remain in your sickness. There is someone among us who suffers with migraine. The Lord sees you. Come forward. The Lord says that one of our sisters has problems with a stomach ulcer. God intends to put an end to your suffering. You will not need tablets anymore. The Lord has neutralized the corrosive acid in your body. Come forward and accept the gift of healing. Hallelujah.”
A crowd of people surged forward. Within a few minutes there was a mass of people in ecstasy around the altar. Some were lying on the floor. Others stood like swaying grass, their hands stretched upward. They were praying, laughing, weeping.
“What are they doing?” asked Anna-Maria Mella.
“Falling under the power of the spirit,” replied Rebecka curtly. “Singing, speaking and dancing in the spirit. Soon some of them will start to prophesy. And the choir will start singing hymns to accompany the whole thing.”
The choir began to sing in the background, and more and more people surged forward. Many danced their way to the front as if they were drunk.
The camera frequently zoomed in on Viktor Strandgård. He was holding his Bible in one hand and praying fervently for a stout man on crutches. A woman was standing behind Viktor with her hands held up toward his hair, also praying. As if she were filling herself with God’s power.
Viktor went up to a microphone and started to speak. He began in his usual way.
“What shall we talk about?” he asked the congregation.
He always preached like this. He prepared himself by praying. Then the congregation was permitted to decide what he should speak about. Much of the sermon was a conversation with those who were listening to him. This had also made him famous.
“Tell us about heaven,” shouted someone from the congregation.
“What can I tell you about heaven?” he said with a tired smile. “Buy my book instead, and read it. Come on! Something else.”
“Tell us about success!” said someone else.
“Success,” said Viktor. “There are no shortcuts to success in the kingdom of God. Think of Ananias and Sapphira. And pray for me. Pray for that which my eyes have seen, and shall see. Pray that the strength of God will continue to flow from Him through my hands.”
“What was that he said just now?” asked Anna-Maria. “Ana…”
She shook her head impatiently before she went on.
“… and Sapphira, who were they?”
“Ananias and Sapphira. They’re in the Acts of the Apostles,” replied Rebecka, without taking her eyes off the television screen. “They stole money from the first church, and God punished them by killing them.”
“Wow, I thought God only struck people dead in the Old Testament.”
Rebecka shook her head.
When Viktor had been speaking for a while, the prayers of intercession continued. A man of about twenty-five wearing a hooded top and loose-fitting, well-worn jeans, pushed his way forward to Viktor Strandgård.
That’s Patrik Mattsson, thought Rebecka. He’s still there, then.
The man seized Viktor’s hands, and just before the camera switched to the gospel choir, Rebecka saw Viktor jerk backwards and snatch his hands away from Patrik Mattsson.
What happened there? she thought. What’s going on between those two?
She glanced at Anna-Maria Mella, but she was bending down and rummaging though a box of videotapes on the floor.
“This is the tape from yesterday evening,” said Anna-Maria as she popped up from behind the desk. “Would you like to watch a little bit?”
On the tape from the evening following the murder, Thomas Söderberg was preaching again. The wooden floorboards beneath his feet were stained brown from the blood, and there were piles of roses on the floor.
The performance was serious; he was fired up. Thomas Söderberg exhorted the members of the congregation to arm themselves in readiness for spiritual conflict.
“We need the Miracle Conference more than ever now,” he proclaimed. “Satan shall not gain the upper hand.”
The congregation answered with cries of “Hallelujah!”
“This just can’t be true,” said Rebecka, shocked.
“Think carefully about who you can rely upon,” shouted Thomas Söderberg. “Remember: ‘He who is not with me, is against me.’ ”
“He just told people not to talk to the police,” said Rebecka thoughtfully. “He wants the church to shut itself off.”
Anna-Maria looked at Rebecka in amazement as she thought of her colleagues who had spent the day knocking on doors and speaking to members of the congregation. During the course of their inquiries every single officer had complained that it had been impossible to get people to talk to them at all.
During the prayers of intercession the collection was taken.
“If you had intended to give only ten kronor, wrap it in a hundred-kronor note!” shouted Pastor Gunnar Isaksson.
Curt Bäckström also spoke.
“What shall we talk about?” he asked the congregation, just as Viktor Strandgård used to do.
Is he mad? thought Rebecka.
People squirmed uncomfortably. Nobody spoke. Finally Thomas Söderberg saved the situation.
“Talk about the power of intercession,” he said.
Anna-Maria nodded toward the television, where Curt was instructing the congregation.
“He was in the church praying when we were speaking to the pastors,” she said. “I know you used to be a member of the church. Did you know the pastors and the congregation?”
“Yes,” said Rebecka in a reluctant tone of voice, making it clear that this was something she didn’t want to go into.
Some of them in the purely biblical sense, she thought, and suddenly the camera angle altered and Thomas Söderberg was looking straight into the lens and into her eyes.
R ebecka is sitting in the visitors’ armchair in Thomas Söderberg’s office; she is crying. The midseason sales are on. The town is full of people. Handwritten signs in red proclaiming big reductions plaster the shop windows. The atmosphere makes you feel hollow inside.
“It feels as though He doesn’t love me,” she sobs.
She is talking about God.
“I feel like His stepchild,” she says. “A changeling.”
Thomas Söderberg smiles carefully and passes her a handkerchief. She blows her nose and snivels. Just turned eighteen and crying like a baby.
“Why can’t I hear His voice?” She sniffs. “You can hear Him and talk to Him every day. Sanna can hear Him. Viktor has even met Him…”
“But Viktor is special,” interjects Thomas Söderberg.
“Exactly,” howls Rebecka. “I’d just like to feel as if I were a little bit special too.”
Thomas Söderberg sits without speaking for a little while, as if he were listening inside himself for the right words.
“It’s all a matter of training, Rebecka,” he says. “You must believe me. In the beginning when I thought I could hear His voice, it was only my own imagination I heard.”
He puts his hands together before his breast, raises his eyes and says in a childish voice:
“Do you love me, God?”
Then he answers himself in a deep voice:
“Yes, Thomas, you know I do. Very, very much.”