“I can never work out which one is Keb,” he said. “I’m told it’s not the one that looks the highest.”
She pointed. He leaned towards her in order to see what she was pointing at.
“That’s Tuolpagorni,” she said. “The peak with the little crater. And the one next to it, to the right, is Kebne.”
He moved away from her.
“Please forgive me,” he said. “I’m leaning all over you, stinking of sweat.”
“No problem,” she said, and felt a wave of emotion surge through her body.
“The highest mountain in Sweden,” he said enthusiastically, screwing up his eyes and gazing at the massif.
“The most beautiful building in Sweden, dating from 2001,” Martinsson said, pointing at the church.
“The most beautiful building in Sweden, dating from 1964,” Eriksson said, pointing at the town hall.
“The most beautiful town in Sweden,” she said with a laugh. “The municipal architect really tried his best to make the town a work of art. In those days they still designed towns so that a network of streets all led to the square and the town hall. But the streets of Kiruna were allowed to wander along the hillside as they pleased.”
“I can’t get my head round the fact that they’re talking about moving the whole town.”
“Nor can I. Haukivaara was such a perfect mountainside to build a town on.”
“But if the seam of iron ore turns out to run under the town…”
“… then the town has to move.”
“That’s what the authorities say,” Eriksson said. “I don’t come from Kiruna myself. But I have the impression that the locals aren’t too worried. When I ask them what they think about the town having to move, they just shrug their shoulders. My next-door neighbour is eighty, and she thinks that of course the town ought to move to the west because that way she’d be closer to the shops. I think it’s all very odd. The only person who seems to have a view is someone who’ll be dead and buried when the move actually takes place.”
“I think people are concerned,” Martinsson said hesitatingly. “But the people of Kiruna have always been aware that the only reason we’re here is that this is where the iron ore is. And if the mine isn’t profitable any more, then we’ve no income to live off. So if the company needs to move the mine, well, there’s nothing to argue about. So we accept the inevitable. But if we accept it, don’t be misled into thinking that we don’t care.”
“But one thing doesn’t exclude the other.”
“No, I know. But I think we need time before we understand what it’s really all about. Before we realize that although we have no choice, we can still regret that our town will never be the same again.”
“There ought to be farewell concerts in the buildings that will be demolished,” Eriksson said. “Weeping ceremonies. Music. Lectures. Story-telling.”
“I’ll be there,” Martinsson said with a smile.
She remembered what it had been like when she’d walked up Mt Luossavaara with Måns Wenngren. He had felt cold and uncomfortable. She would have liked to point out the sites to him and talk about them. As she was doing now.
Martinsson was sitting on the kitchen sofa in Sivving Fjällborg’s boiler room. She was wearing thick woollen socks and a knitted jumper that had once belonged to her father.
Fjällborg was standing over the cooker wearing one of Maj-Lis’s aprons Martinsson had not seen before. It had blue and white stripes with frills round the bottom and the armholes.
He was heating up some smoked pike in a cast-iron pan. One of Maj-Lis’s embroidered pot-holders was hanging from the handle. Almond potatoes were boiling in an aluminium saucepan.
“I need to make a phone call,” Martinsson said. “Is that O.K.?”
“Ten minutes,” Fjällborg said. “Then we’ll eat.”
Martinsson dialled Anna-Maria Mella’s number. Mella answered immediately. A child could be heard crying in the background.
“Sorry,” Martinsson said. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all,” Mella said with a sigh. “It’s Gustav. I locked myself into the loo, hoping to read the latest issue of Luxury Living in peace and quiet. Now he’s rattling the door handle and yelling hysterically. Hang on a minute.”
“Robert!” she bellowed. “Can you see to your son!”
Martinsson could hear a high-pitched male voice urging: “Gustav, Gustav, come to Daddy!”
“Come on, it’s obvious he’s not going to… Pick him up and get him away from the door!” Mella yelled. “Before I cut my throat!”
After a while Martinsson could hear that the screaming brat was being carried away from the bathroom door.
“That’s better,” Mella said. “Now we can talk.”
Martinsson summed up what she had heard from Johannes Svarvare about the aeroplane, and how he felt threatened by the Krekula brothers.
“I think you were right from the start,” Martinsson said. “It’s the brothers.”
Mella hummed in agreement to show that she was listening.
“I was at the archives this afternoon,” Martinsson said. “To dig out a bit of information about the haulage business.”
“And?”
“I found a register of haulage contractors in Kiruna municipality. You know the kind of thing – how many vehicles were owned by the firm and how many drivers they employed. In 1940 the Krekula Haulage Contractors had two lorries, by 1942 they had four, by 1943 eight and by 1944 eleven.”
“Really? Wow!”
“Yes, their business expanded impressively during those years. By nearly 500 per cent. And they acquired five refrigerated vans during the same period. When I compared them with other haulage companies, none of them expanded anywhere near as much.”
“Really?”
“Isak Krekula was on very good terms with the German army. There’s nothing odd about that – lots of firms were. In Luleå, for instance, the Germans had enormous depots for weapons and provisions. Transport was needed to move all the stuff to the Eastern front. I found a copy of a contract between the German army and Swedish Road Freight Centre Ltd. German soldiers were freezing to death in Finnish Lapland during the winter of 1941-2, and the German military attaché in Sweden ordered wooden huts from Swedish manufacturers. And so of course they also needed contracts with transport companies to carry those huts to the Eastern front. That’s what the S.R.F.C. contract was all about. So that winter there was nonstop shuttle traffic between the north of Sweden and the Eastern front. Isak Krekula’s haulage firm was one of the signatories to the contract between the S.R.F.C. and the German army. The contract was approved by the Foreign Ministry and the Swedish government.”
“I see,” Mella said, trying to resist the temptation to read an article about storage in her magazine.
“Once all the huts had been transported, deliveries continued to be made to the German front line. Including weapons, although there was nothing about that in the S.R.F.C. contract. And what’s more,” Martinsson continued, “I found a letter from Oberleutnant Walther Zindel, an army officer stationed in Luleå and in charge of the German depots in the region, to Martin Waldenström, the managing director of L.K.A.B. In it Zindel asks for Isak Krekula to be released from his contract with the Kiruna mine concerning four lorries for transporting iron ore, so that they could be used by the German army in Finnish Lapland.”
“Excuse me for being a bit slow on the uptake…” Mella began.
“You’re not slow on the uptake. All this doesn’t necessarily mean a thing. But it’s set me thinking. How come that Isak Krekula’s firm could grow so much more quickly than any of his competitors? A haulage firm was a lucrative business during the war. Obviously, everyone involved wanted to invest and expand. Where did Isak Krekula get all the money that enabled him to invest so much more than the others? It’s just not possible for him to have earned so much from his haulage business alone – I mean, if that were the case, at least one or two of his competitors would have been able to expand at a similar rate. And my neighbour Sivving says that the Krekulas were crofters as far back as anybody can remember, so there’s no money in the family.”