“Is he there?”
Anna-Maria Mella had phoned the medical examiner’s office in Luleå. Anna Granlund, the autopsy technician, answered, but Anna-Maria wanted to speak to Lars Pohjanen, the senior police surgeon. Anna Granlund kept an eye on him like a mother looking after her sick child. She kept the autopsy room in perfect order. Opened up the bodies for him, lifted out the organs, put them back when he’d finished, stitched them up and wrote the major part of his reports as well.
“He can’t retire,” she’d said to Anna-Maria on one occasion. “It’s like a marriage in the end, you know; I’ve got used to him, I don’t want anybody else.”
And Lars Pohjanen kept plodding on. Seemed as if he were breathing through a pipe, sucking out the fluid. Just talking made him breathless. A year or so earlier he’d had an operation for lung cancer.
Anna-Maria could see him in her mind’s eye. He was probably asleep on the scruffy seventies sofa in the staff room. The ashtray beside his well-worn clogs. His green scrubs spread over him like a blanket.
“Yes, he’s here,” Anna Granlund replied. “Just a minute.”
Pohjanen’s voice on the other end of the phone, scratchy and rattling.
“Tell me,” said Anna-Maria, “you know how bloody useless I am at reading.”
“There isn’t much. Hrrrm. Shot in the chest from the front. Then in the head, at very close range. There’s an explosive effect in the exit wound from the head.”
A long intake of breath, the sucking noise.
“… waterlogged skin, but not swollen… although you know when he disappeared…”
“Friday night.”
“I’d assume he’s been there since then. Minor damage to those parts of the skin not covered by clothing, the hands and face. The fish have been nibbling. Not much more. Have you found the bullets?”
“They’re still looking. Any signs of a struggle? No other injuries?”
“No.”
“And otherwise?”
Pohjanen’s voice became snappy.
“Nothing, I told you. You’ll have to ask somebody… to read the report out loud for you.”
“I meant how were things with you.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, his tone instantly more amiable. “Everything’s crap, of course.”
Sven-Erik Stålnacke was talking to the police psychiatrist. He was sitting in the parking lot in his car. He liked her voice. Right from the start he’d taken to its warmth. And he liked the fact that she spoke slowly. Most women in Kiruna talked too bloody fast. And loudly. It was like a hail of bullets, you didn’t stand a chance. He could hear Anna-Maria’s voice in his head: “What do you mean, you don’t stand a chance, we’re the ones that don’t stand a chance. No chance of getting a sensible answer within a reasonable amount of time. You ask: How was it, then? And then there’s silence, and more bloody silence, and after an interminable consideration the answer comes: Good. Then it’s hell trying to squeeze out anything more- from Robert, anyway. So we have to kind of talk for two. Don’t stand a chance? Do me a favor.”
Now he was listening to the psychiatrist’s voice and he could hear her sense of humor. Although the conversation was serious. If he’d just been a few years younger…
“No,” she said. “I don’t believe it’s a copycat murder. Mildred Nilsson was put on display. Stefan Wikström’s body wasn’t even meant to be found. And no use of violence to relieve tension either. This is a completely different modus operandi. It could be another person altogether. So the answer to your question is no. It’s highly unlikely that Stefan Wikström was murdered by a serial killer suffering from a psychological disorder, and that the murder was committed in a highly emotional state and inspired by Viktor Strandgård. Either it was somebody else, or Mildred Nilsson and Stefan Wikström were killed for a more, how shall I put it, down to earth reason.”
“Yes?”
“I mean, Mildred’s murder seems very… emotional. But Stefan’s murder is more like…”
“… an execution.”
“Exactly! It feels a bit like a crime of passion. I’m just speculating now, I want you to bear that in mind, I’m just trying to communicate the emotional picture I’m getting… okay?”
“Fine.”
“Like a crime of passion, then. Husband kills his wife in a rage. Then kills the lover in a more cold-blooded way.”
“But they weren’t a couple,” said Sven-Erik.
Then he thought, as far as we know.
“I don’t mean they’re a married couple. I just mean…”
She fell silent.
“… I don’t know what I mean,” she said. “There could be a link. It could definitely be the same perpetrator. Psychopath. Certainly. Maybe. But not necessarily, not at all. And not to the extent that your grasp on reality has completely lost its basis in reality.”
It was time to hang up. Sven-Erik did so with a pang of loss. And Manne was still missing.
Rebecka Martinsson walks into Micke’s. Three people are having breakfast in the bar. Elderly men who look at her appreciatively. A real live beautiful woman. Always welcome. Micke’s mopping the floor.
“Hi,” he says to Rebecka, putting the mop and bucket aside. “Come with me.”
Rebecka follows him into the kitchen.
“I’m really sorry,” he says. “Everything turned out wrong on Saturday. But when Lars-Gunnar told us, I just didn’t know what to think. Were you the one that killed those pastors in Jiekajärvi?”
“Yes. Although it was actually two pastors and a…”
“I know. A madman, wasn’t it? It was in all the papers. Although they never said what your name was. They never put Thomas Söderberg’s name or Vesa Larsson’s either, but everybody around here knew who it was. It must have been terrible.”
She nods. It must have been.
“On Saturday, I thought maybe what Lars-Gunnar said was true. That you’d come here to snoop. I did ask you if you were a journalist and you said no, but then I thought well, no, maybe she isn’t a journalist, but she works for a newspaper all the same. But you don’t, do you?”
“No, I… I ended up here by mistake, because Torsten Karlsson and I were looking for somewhere to eat.”
“The guy who was with you the first time?”
“Yes. And it isn’t something I usually tell people. Everything that happened… then. Anyway, I ended up staying here, because I wanted some peace, and because I didn’t dare go out to Kurravaara. My grandmother’s house is out there and… but in the end I went there with Nalle after all. He’s my hero.”
The last remark is accompanied by a smile.
“I came to pay for the cabin,” she says, holding out the money.
Micke takes it and gives her change.
“I’ve included your wages as well. What does your other boss think about you working in a bar on the side?”
Rebecka laughs.
“Oh, now you’ve got a hold over me!”
“You ought to say good-bye to Nalle, you’ll be passing his house on your way. If you take a right up toward the chapel…”
“I know, but it’s probably a really bad idea, his father…”
“Lars- Gunnar’s in town and Nalle’s on his own at home.”
No chance, thinks Rebecka. There are limits.
“Say good-bye for me,” she says.
Back in the car she rings Måns.
“I’ve done it,” she says.
Måns Wenngren answers her the way he used to answer his wife. He doesn’t even need to think about it.
“That’s my girl!”
Then he quickly adds:
“Well done, Martinsson. I’ve got to go to a meeting now. Talk to you soon.”
Rebecka sits there with her cell phone in her hand.
Måns Wenngren, she thinks. He’s like the mountains. It’s raining and it’s horrible. Howling wind. You’re tired and your shoes are soaked through and you don’t really know who you are. The map doesn’t seem to match the reality. And then all of a sudden the clouds part. Your clothes dry out in the wind. You sit on the side of the mountain looking down over a sun-drenched valley. Suddenly it’s all worth it.