“And why must places like this always have such cheerful names?” he hissed. “Fjällgården, Mountain Lodge, Sunshine Hill, Rose Cottage.”
Martinsson could not help laughing.
“Woodland Glade,” she said.
“It sounds like a tract from the Baptists. Anyway, let’s go in. You should be aware that his short-term memory is pretty bad. But don’t be misled if he seems a bit confused. His long-term memory is fine.”
Fjällborg knocked on the door and they entered.
Karl-Åke Pantzare had white, neatly combed hair. His eyebrows and sideburns were bushy, with the stubbly, spiky hair typical of old men. He was wearing a shirt, pullover and tie. His trousers were immaculately clean and smartly pressed. It was obvious that earlier in his life he had been very good-looking. Martinsson checked his hands: his nails were clean and cut short.
Pantzare shook hands with both her and Fjällborg in a pleasant, friendly fashion. But behind his welcoming look was a trace of anxiety: had he ever met these people before? Ought he to recognize them?
Fjällborg hurried to allay his uncertainty.
“Sivving Fjällborg,” he said. “From Kurravaara. When I was a lad they used to call me Erik. Arvid Fjällborg is my cousin. Or was. He’s been dead for quite a few years now. And this is Rebecka Martinsson, the granddaughter of Albert and Theresia Martinsson. She’s from Kurravaara as well. But you haven’t met her before.”
Pantzare relaxed.
“Erik Fjällborg,” he said brightly. “Of course I remember you. But goodness me, you’ve aged a lot.”
He winked to show that he was teasing.
“Huh,” Fjällborg said, pretending to be offended. “I’m still a teenager.”
“Of course,” Pantzare said with a grin. “Teenager. That was a long time ago.”
Fjällborg and Martinsson accepted the offer of a coffee, and Fjällborg reminded Pantzare of a dramatic ice-fishing session with Fjällborg’s cousin and Pantzare on Jiekajaure.
“And Arvid used to tell me about how you cycled into town whenever there was a dance on a Saturday night. He said that the 13 kilometres from Kurra to Kirra was nothing, but if you met a nice bit of skirt from Kaalasluspa, that meant you had to cycle back with her first, and it was a long way home from there. And then of course he had to be up at 6.00 the next morning to do the milking. He sometimes fell asleep on the milking stool. Uncle Algot would be furious with him.”
The usual run-through of relatives they both knew followed. How a sister of Pantzare’s had rented a flat in Lahenperä. Fjällborg thought it was from the Utterströms, but Pantzare was able to inform him that it was in fact from the Holmqvists. How another of Fjällborg’s cousins, a brother of Arvid’s, and one of Pantzare’s brothers had been promising skiers, had even competed in races in Soppero and beaten outstanding Vittangi boys. They ran through who was ill. Who had died or moved to Kiruna, and, in those cases, who had taken over the childhood home.
Eventually Fjällborg decided that Pantzare was sufficiently relaxed and that it was time to come to the point. Without beating around the bush, he said that he had heard from his cousin that both he and Pantzare had been members of the resistance organization in Norbotten. He explained that Martinsson was a prosecutor, and that two young people who had been murdered had been diving in search of a German aeroplane in Lake Vittangijärvi.
“I’ll tell you straight, because I know it will go no further than these four walls, that there’s reason to assume that Isak Krekula from Piilijärvi and his haulage business were mixed up in it somehow.”
Pantzare’s face clouded over.
“Why have you come to see me?”
“Because we need help,” Fjällborg said. “I don’t know anybody else who is familiar with how things were in those days.”
“It’s best not to talk about that,” Pantzare said. “Arvid should never have told you. What can he have been thinking?”
Standing up, he took an old photograph album from a bookshelf.
“Have a look at this,” he said.
He produced a newspaper cutting that had been hidden among the pages of the album. It was dated five years earlier.
Pensioners Robbed and Murdered, ran the headline. The article described how a ninety-six-year-old man and his wife aged eighty-two had been murdered in their home just outside Boden. Martinsson glanced through it and was disgusted to read that the woman had been found with a pillow tied over her face. She had been beaten up, choked and strangled, and “violated” after she died.
Violated, Martinsson thought. What do they mean by that?
As if he had read her thoughts, Pantzare said, “They shoved a broken bottle up her pussy.”
Martinsson carried on reading. The man had been alive at 6.00 that morning when the district nurse had come to give his wife her insulin injection. He had been badly beaten, punched and kicked, and died later in hospital. According to the article, the police had conducted a door-to-door, but without success. As far as anybody knew, the couple had not kept significant sums of money or other valuables in their home.
“He was one of us,” Pantzare said. “I knew him. And no bloody way was this a robbery, I’m absolutely certain of that. They were neo-Nazis or some other gang of right-wing extremists who had discovered that he had been a member of the resistance. Nobody’s safe even though it was so long ago. Youngsters impress old Nazis by doing things like that. They made the old man watch while they beat his wife to death. Why would a robber want to violate her? They wanted to torture him. They’re still looking for us. And if they find us…”
A shake of the head completed the sentence.
Of course he’s scared, Martinsson thought. It’s easier to risk your life when you’re young, healthy and immortal than when you’re shut up in a place like this and all you can do is wait.
“We simply had to do something,” Pantzare said, as if he were talking to himself. “The Germans were sending ship after ship to Luleå – lots of them never recorded in the port registers. Many of them left again with cargoes of iron ore, of course. And provisions and equipment and weapons and soldiers. The official line was that the soldiers were going on leave. The hell they were! I watched S.S. units marching on and off those ships. They took trains up to Norway, or were transported to the Eastern front. We often considered sabotage, but that would have meant declaring war on our own country. After all it was Swedish customs officials and police officers and troops guarding the ports and depots, and supervising the transports. If we’d been an occupied country, the whole situation would have been different. The Germans had far more problems in occupied Norway, with the local resistance movements and the inhospitable terrain, than in comparatively flat and so-called neutral Sweden.”
“So what can you tell us about Isak Krekula and his haulage company?” Fjällborg said.
“I don’t know. I mean, there were so many haulage contractors. But I do know that one of the haulage firm owners up here informed for the Germans. At least one, that is. We didn’t know who it was, but we were told that it was a haulier. That put the wind up us, because a large part of our work was building up and servicing Kari.”
“What was that?” Martinsson said.
“The Norwegian resistance movement, X.U., had an intelligence base on Swedish territory, not far from Torneträsk. It was called Kari. The radio station there was called Brunhild. Kari passed information from ten substations in northern Norway to London. It was powered by a wind turbine, but it was located in a hollow so you couldn’t see it unless you came to within 15 metres of it.”
“Are you saying that there was an intelligence base in Sweden?”
“There were several. Sepal bases on Swedish territory were run with the support of the British secret service and the American O.S.S., which eventually became the C.I.A. They specialized in intelligence, sabotage and recruitment, and training in weapons, mine-laying and explosives.”