“It was thanks to those services that the British were able to sink the Terpitz,” Fjällborg said to Martinsson.
“Both the radio stations and the wind turbines had to be maintained,” Pantzare said, “and they needed provisions and equipment. We needed hauliers, and it was always a dodgy business initiating a new one, especially as we knew there was a haulier who was a German informer. My God, once a new driver – a lad from Råneå – and I were on our way to Pältsa. We had a cargo of sub-machine-guns. We took a short cut via the Kilpisjärvi road, which the Germans controlled, and they stopped us at a roadblock. The driver suddenly started talking in German to the officer in charge. I thought he was informing on me: I didn’t even know he could speak German, and I was about to leap out of the lorry and run for my life. But the German officer just laughed and let us through, after we’d given him a few packets of cigarettes. The lad had simply told him a joke. I gave him a telling off afterwards. He could have told me that he spoke German, after all! Although of course there were quite a few who could in those days. It was the first foreign language in Swedish schools. It had the same sort of status that English has now. Anyway, everything went well on that occasion.”
Pantzare fell silent. A hunted look flitted across his face.
“Were there occasions when things didn’t go so well?” Martinsson asked.
Pantzare reached for the photograph album and opened it at a particular page.
He pointed at a photograph that looked as if it had been taken in the 1940s. It was a full-length picture of a young man. He was leaning against a pine tree. It was summer. Sunlight was reflected in his curly blond hair. He was casually dressed in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and loose-fitting trousers with the cuffs turned up untidily. He gripped his upper arm with one hand, while the other held a pipe.
“Axel Viebke,” Pantzare said. “He was a member of the resistance group.”
Sighing deeply, he continued.
“Three Danish prisoners of war escaped from a German cargo ship moored in Luleå harbour. They ended up with us. Axel’s uncle owned a hut used at haymaking time to the east of Sävast. It was standing empty. He put them up there. They all died when the hut burned down. The newspapers called it an accident.”
“What do you think really happened?” Fjällborg said.
“I think they were executed. The Germans discovered they were there, and killed them. We never found out who had leaked the information.”
Pantzare grimaced.
Martinsson took the photograph album and turned a page.
There was a picture of Viebke and Pantzare standing on each side of a pretty woman in a flowered dress. She was very young. A nicely trimmed lock of hair hung down over one eye.
“Here you are again,” Martinsson said. “Who’s the girl?”
“Oh, just a bit of skirt,” Pantzare said, without looking at the photograph. “He had a weakness for the girls, did our Axel. He was always with a different one.”
Martinsson turned back to the photograph of Viebke by the pine tree. That page had been opened often; the edge was well-thumbed and darker than the others. The photographer’s shadow was visible.
He’s a charmer, she thought. He’s really posing. Lolling back against the pine trunk, pipe in hand.
“Were you the photographer?” she said.
“Yes,” Pantzare said, his voice sounding hoarse.
She looked round the room. Pantzare had no pictures of children hanging on the walls. There were no wedding photos among the framed ones on the bookshelf.
You did more than just like him, she thought, looking hard at Pantzare.
“He would have approved of you telling us about this,” she said. “That you continued to be brave.”
Pantzare nodded and his eyes glazed over.
“I don’t know all that much,” he said. “About the haulier in question, that is. The British said there was someone reporting to the Germans, and that we should watch our step. They were particularly concerned about the intelligence stations, of course. They called him the Fox. And there’s no doubt that Isak Krekula was on good terms with the Germans. He made lots of shipments for them, and it has always been the money that counted as far as he was concerned.”
“Pull yourself together!” Tore Krekula said.
He was standing in Hjalmar Krekula’s bedroom looking at his brother, who was in bed with the covers over his head.
“I know you’re awake. You’re not ill! That’s enough now!”
Tore opened the blinds with such force that it sounded as if the cords were going to snap. He wanted them to snap. It was snowing.
When Hjalmar had failed to turn up for work, his brother had taken the spare key and gone to his house. Not that a key was necessary. Nobody in the village locked their doors at night.
Hjalmar did not respond. Lay under the covers like a corpse. Tore was tempted to rip them off, but something held him back. He did not dare. The person lying there was unpredictable. It was as if a voice under the covers were saying: Give me an excuse, give me an excuse.
This was not the old Hjalmar who could be kicked around however you liked.
Tore felt helpless. This was an emotion he found difficult to handle. He was not used to people not doing as they were told. First that police bitch. Now Hjalmar.
And what could Tore threaten his brother with? He had always threatened Hjalmar.
He made an impatient tour of the house. Piles of dirty dishes. Empty crisp and biscuit packets. The kitchen smelled of stale slops. Big empty plastic bottles. Clothes on the floor. Underpants, yellow at the front, brown at the back.
He went back to the bedroom. Still no sign of movement.
“For fuck’s sake,” he said. “For fuck’s sake, what a mess this place is. What a pigsty. And you. You disgust me. Like a bloody big beached whale, rotting away. Ugh!”
Turning on his heel, he marched out.
Hjalmar heard the door bang closed behind him.
I can’t go on, he thought. There’s no way out.
There was an opened packet of cheese nibbles next to the bed. He took a few handfuls.
He heard a voice inside his head. His old schoolmaster, Fernström: “It’s up to you to decide what you’re going to do next.”
No, Fernström never understood.
He did not want to think about all that. But it made no difference what he wanted. Thoughts came flooding in like water through an open sluicegate.
Hjalmar Krekula is thirteen years old. On the radio Kennedy is debating with Nixon in the run-up to the presidential elections. Kennedy is a playboy; nobody thinks he is going to win. Hjalmar is not interested in politics. He is sitting in the classroom with his elbows on the varnished lid of his desk. His head is resting on his hands, his palms against his cheekbones. He and Herr Fernström are the only ones there. Once all the other children have gone home and the smell of wet wool and stables has disappeared along with them, the smell of school takes over. The smell of dusty books, the sour smell of the rag used to clean the blackboard. The smell of soft soap from the floor, and the peculiar smell of the old building.
Hjalmar Krekula can sense Herr Fernström occasionally looking up as he sits at his desk, correcting exercise books. Hjalmar avoids meeting his gaze. Instead, his eyes trace the wood grain of his desk lid. It resembles a woman lying down. To the right is an imaginary creature, or perhaps a ptarmigan: the mark where a twig branched off is an eye.
The headmaster, Herr Bergvall, enters the room. Herr Fernström closes the exercise book he has been marking and pushes it to one side.