He doesn’t hear what I’m saying, Mella thought. That’s because I’m not saying anything. He’s doing all the talking.
“You what?” Sillfors shouted to his wife. “Why should she be interested in that? Talk to her yourself if you must.”
“What’s all that about?” Mella said.
“Huh, she’s going on about the door to our shed. How someone pinched it last winter.”
Mella’s heart skipped a beat. She recalled the flakes of green paint Pohjanen had found under Wilma Persson’s fingernails.
“What colour was the door?” she said.
“Black,” Göran Sillfors said.
Mella’s hopes collapsed. It had been too good to be true. She heard Sillfors’ wife saying something in the background.
“Ah yes. You’re right,” he said. “It was black on the outside – that was the side I painted a couple of years ago. You know how weather and especially wind ruins paintwork. I had a bit of black paint left over from when I helped our neighbour to paint our fences. There wasn’t much, but I thought I might as well give the outside a coat at least.”
“Go on,” Mella said, concealing her impatience with difficulty.
“The inside was green. Why do you want to know?”
Mella gasped. This was it. Bloody hell, this was it!
“Stay where you are,” she yelled into the telephone. “Where do you live? I’m on my way.”
Göran Sillfors and his wife Berit took Mella to their cottage at Vittangijärvi. It was a brown-painted timber house with white window frames. The porch was unusually wide with a little roof supported by carved wooden columns. Göran drove the snow scooter with Mella in the sledge.
“Shall we go in?” Berit said when they arrived.
Mella shook her head.
“Where’s the shed door?” she said.
“There isn’t a door,” Göran said. “That’s the problem.”
The snow on the shed roof had melted and then frozen again. An enormous cake of ice hung ominously from the edge.
Mella took off her woolly hat and unzipped her scooter overalls. She was much too hot.
“You know what I mean,” she said with a jolly smile. “Show me where the door was. At the back?”
The opening, at the gable end, had been boarded over.
“I’ll sort out a new door in time for the spring,” Göran said. “We’re not here in the winter, so this is a bit amateurish.”
Mella examined the door frame. No sign of green paint, or of black paint, come to that.
“Could you remove the boards, please?” she said. “Just so I can go inside and take a quick look round.”
“Might one ask what you’re looking for?”
“Obviously I’m hoping there’s a bit of green paint left on the inside of the door frame. So that we can take some samples.”
“No, there won’t be any. It must be, let’s see, fifteen years ago that I painted it green. I unscrewed the hinges and laid it down on trestles. So there won’t be any paint on the frame.”
Göran Sillfors’ expression changed from pride at having done the painting so carefully to worry when he saw how disappointed Mella was.
“But do you know what?” he said. “One of the doors inside the cottage was painted with the same stuff. From the same tin. I painted it the same day, if I remember rightly. Will that do?”
Mella’s face lit up, and she threw her arms round a somewhat surprised Göran Sillfors.
“Will it do?” she shouted in delight. “You bet your life it will!”
“Shall we go inside after all, then?” Berit Sillfors said. “It would be good if I could check the mousetraps while we’re here.”
Scraping a bit of paint from the green door between the cottage’s vestibule and large hall, Mella put the flakes carefully in an envelope.
“Scrape as much as you like,” Göran said generously. “It needs repainting anyway.”
Berit Sillfors emptied the mousetraps in the upstairs wardrobes and beneath the sink. When she had finished she showed the result to Mella and her husband: five frozen mice in a red plastic bucket.
“I’ll just go and dispose of them,” she said.
“I’m finished,” Mella said.
She looked out through the hall window. The whole lake still seemed to be covered with ice. With a lot of snow on top of it.
What if they made a hole in the ice and went diving through it? Mella asked herself. And then someone laid the door over the hole so that they would drown? That might be what had happened. But why move her body? And where is his? Is the door still out there on the ice, hidden beneath the snow?
“Can I go out on the ice and have a look?” she said.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Göran said. “It’s slushy and unreliable.”
“Is there anybody who spends time out here in winter?” Mella said. “Who owns the other house? I’m just wondering if there might be someone who could have seen something or met Wilma and Simon.”
“No, there’s never anyone in the house next to ours,” Berit said sadly. “The man who owns it is too ill and too old, and his nephews and nieces have shown no interest in it at all. But there’s Hjörleifur…”
“That’s enough!” Göran said. “You can’t send her to Hjörleifur.”
“But she was asking.”
“Leave Hjörleifur out of this! He can’t cope with the authorities.”
“Anyway,” Berit said, shaking the bucket with the dead mice as if to attract attention, “Hjörleifur Arnarson lives in a remote farmhouse about a kilometre from here. Do you know who he is?”
Mella shook her head.
“He bathes in the lake. Walks here through the forest, summer and winter alike. He usually cuts a hole in the ice by our jetty. He’s become very grumpy. You have to agree, Göran.”
“Hjörleifur has nothing to do with this,” Göran said firmly. “He’s as crazy as a loon, but there’s no evil in him.”
“I’m not suggesting that there’s any evil in him,” Berit said defensively. “But he’s become very grumpy.”
“What do you mean, grumpy?” Mella said.
“Well, for example, he doesn’t like intruders up here. He borrowed your shotgun without permission, didn’t he, Göran? And scared off some anglers. Was that two years ago?”
Göran Sillfors gave his wife a dirty look that said, “Hold your tongue!”
Mella said nothing. She was not going to go on about Göran Sillfors evidently not keeping his shotgun locked up in a gun safe.
Unconcerned, Berit went on talking.“I sometimes call in on him to buy some of the anti-mosquito oil he concocts, and we have a little chat. Last summer when I went to see him, I found his billy goat hanging in a tree.”
“Eh? How do you mean, hanging in a tree?”
“I asked him: ‘What on earth’s been happening, Hjörleifur?’ He told me the goat had butted him, and he was so angry that he killed it and threw its body into the air with all his strength. The poor thing ended up in the birch tree outside Hjörleifur’s house, got stuck there with its horns. I helped him to get it down. If I hadn’t, the crows would have started pecking at it. Hjörleifur was so sorry. The billy goat had just been in rut – that makes them a bit excited.”
Berit Sillfors turned to look at Mella.
“But Hjörleifur would never do anything to people. I agree with Göran. He’s a bit potty, but there’s no evil in him. Just be careful how you handle him. Would you like us to go with you?”
Mella checked her watch.
“I have to go home now,” she said with a smile. “If I don’t, my husband will throw me up into the birch tree.”
It’s Sunday evening at the haulage firm’s garage. I’m sitting on top of the cabin, watching Hjalmar. He’s opened up the hydraulic lift on the back of one of the lorries and is oiling the pistons. He attaches the greasing gun to the nipples and fills them. He doesn’t hear Tore come in. Suddenly Tore is standing by the lorry, yelling at him.