But she didn’t mention the grief over a lost colleague, Anna-Maria noted coldly.
“Is he at home?” she asked mercilessly.
Kristin Wikström sighed. Looked at Anna-Maria as if she were a child who’d disappointed her. Disappointed her a great deal.
“I don’t actually know,” she said. “I’m not the kind of woman who has to keep tabs on my husband all the time.”
“Then I’ll try the priest’s house in Jukkasjärvi first, and if he’s not there I’ll go into town,” said Anna-Maria, resisting the urge to roll her eyes to heaven.
Kristin Wikström remains standing on the porch of the priest’s house in Poikkijärvi. She watches the departing red Ford Escort. She didn’t like that woman detective. She doesn’t like anyone. No, that isn’t true, of course. She loves Stefan. And the children. She loves her family.
In her head she has a film projector. She doesn’t think it’s very common. Sometimes it just shows rubbish. But now she is going to close her eyes and watch a film she likes very much. The autumn sun warms her face. It’s still late summer, it’s hard to believe this is Kiruna, when it’s as warm as this. It fits in very well. Because the film is from last spring.
The spring sun is shining in through the window and warming her face. The colors are muted. The picture is in soft focus, so it looks as if she has a halo around her hair. She is sitting on a chair in the kitchen. Stefan is sitting on the chair next to her. He is leaning forward, his head on her lap. Her hands are caressing his hair. She says: ssh. He is weeping. “Mildred,” he says. “I can’t cope much longer.” All he wants is peace and quiet. Peace at work. Peace at home. But with Mildred spreading her poison through the congregation… She strokes his soft hair. It’s a sacred moment. Stefan is so strong. He never seeks consolation from her. She enjoys being needed by him. Something makes her look up. In the doorway stands their eldest son Benjamin. What a mess he looks, with his long hair and his tight black ripped jeans. He stares at his parents. Doesn’t say a word. But his eyes look completely crazy. She indicates with her eyebrows that he should disappear. She knows Stefan won’t want the children to see him like this.
The film ends. Kristin grabs hold of the banister. This will be her and Stefan’s house. If Mildred’s husband thinks he can just leave all the furniture behind, and that nobody will dare to move it out, then he’s wrong. As she walks toward the car, she allows the film in her head to run once more. This time she edits out her son Benjamin.
Anna-Maria drove into the yard of the priest’s house at Jukkasjärvi. She rang the bell, but nobody answered.
When she turned, a boy was walking toward the house. He was about the same age as Marcus, maybe fifteen. His hair was long and dyed deep black. Beneath his eyes was a black, sooty line of kohl. He was wearing a scruffy black leather jacket and tight black trousers with huge holes in the knees.
“Hi!” shouted Anna-Maria. “Do you live here? I’m looking for Stefan Wikström, do you know if…”
She didn’t get any further. The boy stared at her. Then he turned on his heel and ran. Ran off along the road. For a moment Anna-Maria considered running after him, but then she came to her senses. What for?
She got in the car and drove toward the town. Kept an eye open for the boy dressed in black as she was driving through the village, but there was no sign of him.
Could he have been one of the priest’s children? Or was it somebody who’d maybe been thinking of breaking in? Who was surprised because there was somebody there?
Something else was tapping her on the head as well.
Stefan Wikström’s wife. She was called Kristin Wikström.
Kristin. She recognized that name.
Then she remembered. Pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. Reached out for the pile of letters to Mildred that Fred Olsson had sorted out and thought might be of interest.
Two of them were signed “Kristin.”
Anna-Maria glanced through them. One was dated in March, and was neatly handwritten:
Leave us in peace. We want peace and quiet. My husband needs a peaceful working life. Do you want me to beg on my knees? I’m on my knees. And I’m begging: Leave us in peace.
The second was dated just a month later. It was obviously written by the same person, but the handwriting was all over the place, the downward strokes of the letter g were long, and some words had been scribbled out:
Perhaps you think we don’t KNOW. But everybody knows it wasn’t just chance that you went for the job in Kiruna just one year after my husband had taken up his post here in town. But I can ASSURE you, we KNOW. You are working with groups and organizations whose SOLE aim is to work against him. You are poisoning wells with your HATRED. You shall drink that HATRED yourself!
Now what do I do? thought Anna-Maria. Go back and get her up against a wall?
She rang Sven-Erik Stålnacke on her cell phone.
“Let’s talk to her husband instead,” he suggested. “I was on the way to the parish offices in any case to pick up the books of that wolf foundation.”
Stefan Wikström sighed heavily, sitting behind his desk. Sven-Erik Stålnacke had settled himself in the armchair. Anna-Maria was leaning against the door with her arms folded.
Sometimes she was just so… unprofessional, thought Sven-Erik, looking at Anna-Maria.
He really should have dealt with this little runt himself, that would have been better. Anna-Maria didn’t like him, and couldn’t hide the fact. Of course, Sven-Erik had read about the quarrel between Mildred and this priest, but they were here to work.
“Yes, I know about the letters,” said the priest.
His left elbow was resting on the desk, his forehead supported by his thumb and fingertips.
“My wife… she… sometimes she’s not well. I don’t mean she’s mentally ill, but she’s a bit unstable at times. She’s not really like this.”
Neither Sven-Erik Stålnacke nor Anna-Maria Mella spoke.
“Sometimes she sees ghosts in broad daylight. But she wouldn’t… you can’t think she…?”
He lifted his head and banged the desk with the palm of his hand.
“If that’s what you think, it’s completely ridiculous. My God, Mildred had a hundred enemies.”
“Including you?” asked Anna-Maria.
“Certainly not! Am I a suspect as well? Mildred and I disagreed on some professional matters, that’s true, but to think that either I or poor Kristin would have anything to do with her murder…”
“That isn’t what we said,” interjected Sven-Erik.
He frowned in a way that made Anna-Maria keep quiet and listen.
“What did Mildred say about these letters?” asked Sven-Erik.
“She told me she’d received them.”
“Why do you think she kept them?”
“I don’t know, I mean, I even keep all the Christmas cards I get.”
“Did anybody else know about them?”
“No, and I’d be grateful if we could keep it that way.”
“So Mildred didn’t tell anybody else.”
“No, not as far as I know.”
“Did that make you feel grateful?”
Stefan Wikström blinked.
“What?”
He almost burst out laughing. Grateful. Was he supposed to have felt grateful to Mildred? The idea was just bizarre. But what could he say? He couldn’t tell them anything. Mildred still had him trapped in a cage. And she’d made his wife into the padlock. And expected gratitude.
In the middle of May he’d gone crawling to Mildred and asked her for the letters. He joined her as she walked along Skolgatan on the way down to the hospital. She was going to visit somebody. It was the worst time of the year. Not at home in Lund, of course. But in Kiruna it was. The streets were full of gravel and all kinds of crap that appeared as the snow melted. Nothing green. Just dirt, rubbish and great drifts of gravel.