They looked at each other in silence. Without knowing it, they were both thinking about the other one’s hair. That it used to look better. When it was allowed to grow more freely, go its own way. When it was obvious it was friends who were wielding the scissors.
“Nice view,” said Rebecka, and added: “Although maybe not just at the moment.”
All you could see outside was a curtain of falling snow.
“Why not?” said Vesa Larsson. “Maybe this is the best view of all. It’s beautiful, the winter and the snow. Everything’s simpler. Less to take in. Fewer colors. Fewer smells. Shorter days. Your head can have a rest.”
“What was going on with Viktor?” asked Rebecka.
Vesa Larsson shook his head.
“What’s Sanna told you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” replied Rebecka.
“What do you mean, nothing?” said Vesa Larsson suspiciously.
“Nobody’s telling me a damned thing,” said Rebecka angrily. “But I don’t believe she did it. She’s on another planet sometimes, but she can’t have done this.”
Vesa Larsson sat in silence, gazing at the falling snow.
“Why did Patrik Mattsson say I should ask you about Viktor’s sexual inclinations?” asked Rebecka.
When Vesa Larsson didn’t answer, she went on:
“Did you have a relationship with him? Did you send him a card?”
Did you put a threatening note on my car? she thought.
Vesa Larsson replied without meeting her eyes.
“I’m not even going to comment on that.”
“Right,” she said harshly. “Soon I’ll be thinking it was you three pastors who killed him. Because he wanted to blow the whistle on your dubious financial dealings. Or maybe because he was threatening to tell your wife about the two of you.”
Vesa Larsson hid his face in his hands.
“I didn’t do it,” he mumbled. “I didn’t kill him.”
I’m losing it, thought Rebecka. Running around accusing people.
She rubbed her fist across her forehead in an attempt to force a sensible thought out of her brain.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand why you’re all keeping quiet. I don’t understand why somebody put the knife in Sanna’s kitchen drawer.”
Vesa Larsson turned and looked at her in horror.
“What do you mean?” he said. “What knife?”
Rebecka could have bitten off her tongue.
“The police haven’t told the press yet,” she said. “But they found the murder weapon in Sanna’s kitchen. In the drawer under the sofa bed.”
Vesa Larsson stared at her.
“Oh, my God,” he said. “Oh, God!”
“What is it?”
Vesa Larsson’s face changed to a stiff mask.
“I’ve broken the vow of silence once too often,” he said.
“Fuck the vow of silence,” exclaimed Rebecka. “Viktor’s dead. He couldn’t give a shit if you break the vow of silence as far as he’s concerned.”
“I have a vow of silence toward Sanna.”
"Fine!" Rebecka exploded. "Don’t bother talking to me, then! But I’m prepared to turn over every last stone to see what crawls out. And I’m starting with the church and your financial affairs. Then I’m going to find out who loved Viktor. And I’m going to get the truth out of Sanna this afternoon."
Vesa Larsson looked at her, his expression tortured.
“Can’t you just leave it, Rebecka? Go home. Don’t let yourself be used.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He shook his head with an air of resignation.
“Do what you think you have to do,” he said. “But you can’t take anything from me that I haven’t already lost.”
“Screw the lot of you,” said Rebecka, but she hadn’t the strength to inject any emotion into the words.
“ ‘Let he who is without sin…’ ” said Vesa Larsson.
Oh, yes, thought Rebecka. I’m a murderer after all. A child killer.
Rebecka is standing in her grandmother’s woodshed chopping wood. No, “chopping” isn’t the right word. She has picked out the thickest and heaviest logs and is splitting them in a kind of feverish frenzy. Brings the axe down onto the reluctant wood with every ounce of her strength. Lifts the axe with the log hanging from its blade and slams the back of it down onto the chopping block with all her might. The weight and the force drive the axe in like a wedge. Now she must pry it apart and work at it. At last the log is split in two. She splits the halves in two again, then places the next log on the chopping block. Sweat is pouring down her back. Her shoulders and arms are aching from the effort, but she doesn’t spare herself. If she’s lucky the child will come out. Nobody has said that she shouldn’t chop wood. Perhaps then Thomas will say that it was not God’s will that she should be born.
It, Rebecka corrects herself. That it was not meant to be born. The child. And yet, she knows deep within herself that it’s a girl. Johanna.
When she hears Viktor’s voice behind her, the tape inside her head rewinds and she realizes that he has been standing behind her for some while and has said her name several times without her hearing him.
It feels strange to see him sitting there on the broken wooden chair that never quite makes it to the fire. The back of the chair is missing, and there are holes at the back of the seat where the wooden staves used to be. It’s been standing there for years, waiting to be turned into firewood.
“Who told you?” asks Rebecka.
"Sanna," he replies. "She said you’d be furious."
Rebecka shrugs her shoulders. She hasn’t the strength to be angry.
“Who else knows?” she asks.
Now it’s Viktor’s turn to shrug his shoulders. The news has got around, then. Of course. What did she expect? He’s wearing his secondhand leather jacket and a long scarf that some girl has knitted for him. His hair is neatly parted in the center, and is tucked into his scarf.
"Marry me," he says.
Rebecka looks at him in amazement.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I love you,” he says. “I love the child.”
The air smells of sawdust and wood. Outside she can hear water dripping from the roof. The tears are stuck in her throat, and it hurts.
“Just like you love all your brothers and sisters, friends and enemies?” she says.
Like the love of God. The same for everyone. Prepacked and issued to everyone who joins the queue. Maybe that’s the kind of love for her. Maybe she should take what she can get.
He looks so tired.
Where have you gone, Viktor? she thinks. After your journey to God, there are so very many people queueing up for a little bit of you.
“I’d never abandon you,” he says. “You know that.”
“You don’t understand anything,” says Rebecka; tears and snot are pouring down her face, and she can’t stop herself. “As soon as I answer, I’ve already been abandoned.”
At half past six in the evening Rebecka arrived at the police station with Sara and Lova. They had spent the afternoon at the swimming baths.
Sanna came into the meeting room and looked at Rebecka as if she had stolen something from her.
"Oh, so here you are," she said. "I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me."
The girls took off their outdoor clothes and each climbed up onto a chair. Lova was laughing, because a piece of her hair that had been sticking out from under her hat was frozen solid.
“Look, Mummy,” she said, shaking her head so that the clumps of ice in her hair made a tinkling noise.