If only there were time.
He goes out into the yard. Tries, although he knows it won’t work:
“Nalle!”
But Nalle doesn’t hear anything. Round and round he goes.
Lars-Gunnar has thought about this moment a thousand times. But in his thoughts Nalle has been sleeping peacefully. He and Lars-Gunnar have had a wonderful day. Maybe they’ve been in the forest. Or been on the river on the snow scooter. Lars-Gunnar has sat by Nalle’s bed for a while. Nalle has fallen asleep, and then…
This is too much. It couldn’t be any bloody worse than this. He runs his hand over his cheek. It seems as if he’s crying.
And he sees Mildred in front of him. He’s been on his way to this point ever since then. He realizes that now. The first blow. At the time he was full of rage toward her. But afterward. Afterward it was his own life he smashed to bits. Hung it up for everyone to see.
To the car. The rifle is there. It’s loaded. It has been all summer. He releases the safety catch.
“Nalle,” he says thickly.
He still wants to say good-bye. He would have liked to have done that.
“Nalle,” he says to his big lad.
Now. Before it gets to the point where he can’t hold the gun. He can’t be sitting here when they arrive. Can’t let them take Nalle away.
He raises the gun to his shoulder. Takes aim. Fires. The first bullet in the back. Nalle falls forward. The second bullet in the head.
Then he goes in.
What he’d like to do most of all is to open the trapdoor and kill her. What is she? Nothing.
But the way he feels at the moment, he hasn’t the strength to shift the cupboard.
He slumps down on the kitchen sofa.
Then he gets up. Opens the door of the wall clock and stops the pendulum with his hand.
Sits down again.
The barrel in his mouth. It’s been torture for as long as he can remember. This will be a relief. It will be over at last.
Down in the darkness she hears the shots. They come from outside. Two shots. Then the outside door slams. She hears footsteps across the kitchen floor. Then the final shot.
Something old wakes up inside her. Something from times past.
She scrambles up the steps to get away. Bangs her head on the trapdoor. Almost falls back down, but grabs hold of something.
It’s impossible to shift the trapdoor. She bangs on it with her fists. Her knuckles are torn open. She rips off her nails.
Anna-Maria Mella drives into Lars-Gunnar Vinsa’s yard at half past three in the afternoon. Sven-Erik is sitting beside her in the car. They haven’t spoken all the way down to Poikkijärvi. It isn’t a nice feeling, knowing that you’re going to have to tell a former colleague that you’re seizing his gun and taking it in for testing.
Anna-Maria is driving slightly too fast as usual, and she very nearly runs over the body lying on the gravel.
Sven-Erik curses. Anna-Maria slams the brakes on and they jump out of the car. Sven-Erik is already on his knees, feeling the side of the neck with his hand. A black swarm of heavy flies lifts from the bloody back of the head. He shakes his head in reply to Anna-Maria’s unspoken question.
“It’s Lars-Gunnar’s boy,” he says.
Anna-Maria looks toward the house. She hasn’t got her gun with her. Shit.
“Don’t you even think about doing anything stupid,” Sven-Erik warns her. “Get in the car and we’ll call for backup.”
It’ll take forever before the others get here, thinks Anna-Maria.
“Thirteen minutes,” says Sven-Erik, checking the time.
It’s Fred Olsson and Tommy Rantakyrö in an unmarked car. And four colleagues in bulletproof vests and black overalls.
Tommy Rantakyrö and Fred Olsson park up on the ridge and come running down to Lars-Gunnar’s yard, crouching as they run. Sven-Erik has reversed Anna-Maria’s car out of firing range of the house.
The second police car pulls up in the yard. They shelter behind it.
Sven-Erik Stålnacke picks up a megaphone.
“Hello!” he shouts. “Lars-Gunnar! If you’re in there, come on out so we can have a chat.”
No response.
Anna-Maria meets Sven-Erik’s eyes and shakes her head. Nothing to wait for.
The four men in bulletproof vests go in. Two through the outside door. One first, the other right behind him. Two get in through a window at the back.
There isn’t a sound, apart from the noise of breaking glass from the back of the house. The others wait. One minute. Two.
Then one of them comes out onto the porch and waves. Okay to come in.
Lars-Gunnar’s body is lying on the floor in front of the kitchen sofa. The wall behind the sofa is spattered with his blood.
Sven-Erik and Tommy Rantakyrö push aside the cupboard that’s standing in the middle of the floor on top of the trapdoor.
“There’s somebody down here!” shouts Tommy Rantakyrö.
“Come on,” he says, reaching down a hand.
But the person who’s down there doesn’t come. In the end Tommy climbs down. The others can hear him.
“Shit! Okay, take it easy. Can you stand up?”
She comes up through the trapdoor. It takes a long time. The others help her. Support her under the arms. That makes her whimper a little.
It takes a fraction of a second before Anna-Maria recognizes Rebecka Martinsson.
Half of Rebecka’s face is swollen and black and blue. She has a large wound on her forehead and her upper lip is hanging off, held only by a flap of skin. “Looked like a pizza with everything on it,” Tommy Rantakyrö will say much later.
Anna-Maria is thinking mainly of her teeth. They’re clenched so tightly, as if her jaws have locked together.
“Rebecka,” says Anna-Maria. “What…”
But Rebecka waves her away. Anna-Maria sees her glance at the body on the kitchen floor before she walks stiffly out through the door.
Anna-Maria Mella, Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Tommy Rantakyrö follow her out.
Outside the sky has turned gray. The clouds are hanging low, heavy with rain.
Fred Olsson is standing out in the yard.
Not a word passes his lips when he catches sight of Rebecka. But his mouth opens around the unspoken words, and his eyes are staring.
Anna-Maria is watching Rebecka Martinsson. She’s standing like a statue in front of Nalle’s dead body. There’s something in her eyes. They all sense instinctively that this is not the time to touch her. She’s in a place of her own.
“Where the hell are the paramedics?” asks Anna-Maria.
“On the way,” someone replies.
Anna-Maria glances upward. It’s starting to spit with rain. They need to get something over the body lying outside. A tarpaulin or something.
Rebecka takes a step backwards. She waves her hand in front of her face as if there were something there she was trying to shoo away.
Then she begins to walk. First of all she staggers toward the house. Then she sways and walks toward the river instead. It’s as if she were blindfolded, doesn’t seem to know where she is or where she’s going.
The rain comes. Anna-Maria feels the chill of autumn like a torrent of cold air. It sweeps across the yard. Heavy, cold rain. A thousand icy needles. Anna-Maria pulls up the zip of her blue jacket, her chin disappears into the neckline. She needs to sort out that tarpaulin for the body.
“Keep an eye on her,” she shouts to Tommy Rantakyrö, pointing at Rebecka Martinsson who is still tottering away. “Keep her away from the gun in there, and from yours too. And don’t let her go down to the river.”