The apartment is as silent as the grave. The only sound is his own breathing and the low drone of the air-conditioning. Apart from that, every other sound is outside. The humming of the electricity meter out in the stairwell. The practiced tread of the paperboy on the stairs. Every other step going up, every third step going down. The cars and people still out for the night down on the street. When the boys were little, their room used to be filled with the sounds they made. Little Johan’s short, rapid breathing. Calle, snuffling under a mountain of cuddly toys. And Madelene, of course, who started snoring as soon as she had even a hint of a cold. Then it became quieter and quieter. The boys moved into their own room. Madelene lay quiet as a mouse, pretending to be asleep when he got home late.
No, that’s it. He’ll stick an old Clint movie in the video and pour himself a Macallan. Maybe he’ll doze off in the armchair.
It is still snowing in the mountains. In Kurravaara cars and houses are buried under a thick white blanket. In the sofa bed in her grandmother’s house, Rebecka lies awake.
I ought to get up and see if the dog’s here, she thinks. She might be standing out there in the snow freezing her paws off.
It’s impossible to get back to sleep. She closes her eyes and alters her position, shifts onto her side. But her brain is wide-awake inside her tired body.
There is something peculiar about the knife. Why had it been washed? If someone wanted to put the blame on Sanna, and put the knife in her drawer, then why did that person wash the blade? Surely it would have been better to clean the handle to get rid of any possible prints, and to leave the blade covered in blood. There was a risk they might not be able to tie the weapon to the murder. There is something she isn’t seeing. Like one of those pictures that is made up of a jumble of dots. All of a sudden the image appears. That’s how it feels now. All the little dots are there. It’s just a question of finding the pattern that links them together.
She switches on the bedside light and gets up carefully. The bed creaks by way of an answer. She listens to make sure the children haven’t woken up. Slides her feet into ice-cold shoes and goes out to shout for Virku.
She stands there in the falling snow, shouting for a dog that doesn’t come.
When Rebecka comes back inside, Sara is standing in the middle of the kitchen. She turns stiffly toward Rebecka. Her thin body is swamped by the big woolly sweater and baggy pants.
“What’s the matter?” asks Rebecka. “Have you been dreaming?”
At the same time she realizes Sara is crying. It is a terrible cry. Dry and hacking. Her lower jaw is working up and down, like a clattering puppet made of wood.
“What’s the matter?" Rebecka asks again, kicking her shoes off quickly. "Is it because Virku’s gone?”
There is no answer. Her face is still distorted by the strange crying. But her arms move forward slightly, as if she would have held them out to Rebecka, if only she could.
Rebecka picks her up. Sara doesn’t resist. It is a small child Rebecka holds in her arms. Not someone who is almost a teenager. Just a little girl. And she is so light. Rebecka lays her down on the bed and crawls in behind her. She puts her arms around Sara’s body, feeling it tense as if she is aching with tears that won’t come. At last they fall asleep.
At around five Rebecka is woken by Lova, who comes tiptoeing in. She creeps into bed behind Rebecka, cuddles into her back, slips her arm under Rebecka’s sweater and falls asleep.
It is as warm as toast under all the blankets, but Rebecka lies there wide-awake, as still as stone.
Thursday, February 20
At half past five in the morning Manne the cat decided to wake Sven-Erik Stålnacke. He padded to and fro across Sven-Erik’s sleeping body, emitting a plaintive cry from time to time. When that didn’t work, he made his way up to Sven-Erik’s face and laid a tentative paw against his cheek. But Sven-Erik was in a deep sleep. Manne moved the paw to his hairline and unsheathed his claws just enough to catch the skin and scratch his master’s scalp very gently. Sven-Erik opened his eyes at once and detached the claws from his head. He stroked the cat’s gray striped back affectionately.
“Bloody cat,” he said cheerfully. “Do you think it’s time to get up, then?”
Manne meowed accusingly, jumped down from the bed and disappeared through the bedroom door. Sven-Erik heard him run to the outside door and position himself there, wailing.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
He’d taken over Manne from his daughter when she and her partner had moved to Luleå. “He’s used to his freedom,” she’d said, “you know how miserable he’d be in an apartment in the middle of town. He’s like you, Dad. Needs the forest around him to be able to live.”
Sven-Erik got up and opened the outside door for the cat. But Manne just poked his nose out into the snow, then turned and padded back into the hall. As soon as Sven-Erik closed the door, the cat let out another long, drawn-out howl.
“Well, what do you want me to do?” asked Sven-Erik. “I can’t help it if it’s snowing and you don’t like it. Either you go out, or you stay in and keep quiet.”
He went into the kitchen and got out a tin of cat food. Manne made encouraging noises, winding himself around Sven-Erik’s legs until the food was safely in the bowl. Then he put the coffee percolator on, and it gurgled into action. When Anna-Maria Mella rang he’d just taken his first bite of a sandwich.
“Listen to this,” she said, her voice crackling with energy. “I was talking to Sanna Strandgård yesterday morning and we were discussing the fact that the murder seemed so ritualistic and about passages in the Bible where it talks about hands being cut off and eyes put out and all that sort of thing.”
Sven-Erik grunted between mouthfuls, and Anna-Maria went on:
“Sanna quoted Mark 9:43: ‘And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ ”
“And?” said Sven-Erik, with the feeling that he was being rather slow.
“But she didn’t read the beginning of the text!” Anna-Maria went on excitedly. “This is what it says in Mark 9:42: ‘And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck.’ ”
Sven-Erik clamped the receiver between his shoulder and his ear and picked up Manne, who was rubbing against his legs.
“There are parallel passages in the gospels of both Luke and Matthew,” said Anna-Maria. “In Matthew it says that a child’s angels in heaven always see the face of God. And when I checked in my confirmation Bible, there was a note explaining that this was a very clear expression of the fact that children are under God’s special protection. According to Hebrew belief at that time, each individual has their own angel who speaks for them before God, and only the most elevated angels were believed to have access to the throne of God.”
"So you mean somebody killed him because he caused one of these little ones to sin," said Sven-Erik thoughtfully. "Do you mean he…?"