The Savage Altar (12 page)

R
ebecka gave Sanna and the children a lift home and parked outside the apartment block where Sanna lived. She would have preferred to say a quick good-bye in the car and drive off. Quick good-byes in cars were good. If you were sitting in the car it was difficult to hug. Particularly if you were wearing a seat belt. So you escaped the hugs. And in a car there were other things to talk about, apart from “We must meet up again soon” and “We mustn’t leave it so long next time.” A few words about not forgetting the bag on the backseat and not forgetting the bag in the boot and “Are you sure you’ve got everything now?” Then, once the car door had chopped off the rest of the unspoken sentences, you could wave and put your foot down without an unpleasant taste in your mouth. You didn’t have to stand there like an idiot stamping your feet up and down while your thoughts went round and round like a swarm of midges, trying to find the right words. No, she’d stay in the car. And not undo her seat belt.

But when she stopped the car Sanna jumped out without a word. A second later, Virku followed her. Rebecka felt she had to get out as well. She turned her collar up above her ears, but it gave no protection against the cold, which immediately worked its way under the fabric and fastened itself to her earlobes like two clothes pegs. She looked up at Sanna’s apartment. A little block made of panels of forest green wood, with a red tin roof. The snowplow hadn’t been around for a long time. The few parked cars had left deep tracks in the snow. An old Dodge was hibernating under a snowdrift. She hoped she wouldn’t get stuck on the way out. The building was owned by LKAB, the mining company. But only ordinary people lived here, so LKAB saved money by not using the snowplow as often as they should. If you wanted to get the car out in the mornings, you had to clear the snow yourself.

Sara and Lova were still sitting in the backseat. Their hands and elbows kept meeting in some nonsense rhyme that Sara had mastered to perfection; Lova was making a huge effort to learn it. Every so often she got it wrong, and they both exploded into giggles before starting all over again.

Virku was running around like a mad thing, taking in all the new smells with her little black nose. Circled around two unfamiliar parked cars. Read with interest a haiku that next door’s dog had drawn on the white snowdrift in golden yellow sign language; she seemed flattered. Followed the irritating trail of a mouse that had disappeared under the front steps where she couldn’t follow.

Sanna tipped her head back and sniffed the air.

“It smells like snow,” she said. “It’s going to snow. A lot.”

She turned toward Rebecka.

She’s just so like Viktor, thought Rebecka, catching her breath.

The transparent blue skin, stretched over the high cheekbones. Although Sanna’s cheeks were slightly rounder, like a child’s.

And the way she stands, thought Rebecka. Just like Viktor. Head always slightly crooked, leaning to one side or the other, as if it were a little bit loose.

“Right, well, I’d better get going, then,” said Rebecka, trying to start her good-byes, but Sanna was squatting down and calling to Virku.

“Here, girl! Come here, there’s a good girl!”

Virku came hurtling through the snow like a black glove.

It’s just like a picture from a fairy tale, thought Rebecka. The sweet little black dog, her coat tipped with tiny snow crystals. Sanna, a wood nymph in her knee-length gray sheepskin coat, her sheepskin hat on top of her thick, wavy blond hair.

There was something about Sanna that gave her the ability to relate to animals. They were somehow alike, Sanna and the dog. The little bitch who’d been mistreated and neglected for years. Where had all her troubles gone? They’d simply been washed away and replaced by sheer joy at being able to push her nose into freshly fallen snow, or to bark at a frightened squirrel in a pine tree. And Sanna. She’d only just found her brother hacked to death in the church. And now she was standing in the snow playing with the dog.

I haven’t seen her shed a single tear, thought Rebecka. Nothing touches her. Not sorrow, not people. Presumably not even her own children. But it isn’t actually my problem any longer. I have no debt to pay. I’m leaving now, and I’m never going to think about her or her children or her brother or this pit of a town ever again.

She went over to the car and opened the back door.

“Out you come, girls,” she said to Sara and Lova. “I’ve got a plane to catch.

“Bye, then,” she called after them as they disappeared up the steps to the door of the building.

Lova turned and waved. Sara pretended not to hear.

She pushed aside the forlorn feeling as Sara’s red jacket vanished through the door. A picture from the time when she lived with Sanna and Sara lit up a dark space in her memory. She was sitting with Sara on her lap, reading a story. Her cheek resting against the little girl’s soft hair. Sara pointing at the pictures.

That’s just the way it is, thought Rebecka. I’ll always remember. She’s forgotten.

Suddenly Sanna was standing beside her. The game with Virku had brought warm, pale pink roses to her blue cheeks.

“But you must come up and have something to eat before you go.”

“My plane leaves in half an hour, so…”

Rebecka finished the sentence by shaking her head.

“There’ll be other planes,” pleaded Sanna. “I haven’t even had a chance to thank you for coming up. I don’t know what I’d have done if—”

“That’s okay.” Rebecka smiled. “I really do have to go.”

Her mouth continued to smile and she stretched out her hand to say good-bye.

It was a way of marking the moment, and she knew it as she slid her hand out of her glove. Sanna looked down and refused to take her hand.

Shit, thought Rebecka.

“You and I,” said Sanna without raising her eyes. “We were like sisters. And now I’ve lost both my brother and my sister.”

She gave a short, mirthless laugh. It sounded more like a sob.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Lord.”

Rebecka steeled herself against a sudden impulse to throw her arms around Sanna and comfort her.

Don’t try this with me, she thought angrily, letting her hand drop. There are certain things you can’t fix. And you definitely can’t do it in three minutes while you’re standing out in the cold saying good-bye.

Her feet were starting to feel cold. Her Stockholm boots were far too flimsy. Her toes had been aching. Now it felt as though they were starting to disappear. She tried to wiggle them a bit.

“I’ll ring when I get there,” she said, getting into the car.

“You do that,” said Sanna without interest, fixing her eyes on Virku, who had squatted down by the wall to answer a message left in the snow.

Or maybe next year, thought Rebecka, and turned the key.

When she looked in the rearview mirror she caught sight of Sara and Lova, who had come back out onto the steps.

There was something in their eyes that made the ground beneath the car shift.

No, no, she thought. Everything’s fine. It’s nothing. Just drive.

But her feet wouldn’t release the clutch and step on the accelerator. She stopped, her eyes fixed on the little girls at the top of the steps. Saw their wide eyes, saw them shouting something to Sanna that Rebecka couldn’t hear. Saw them raise their arms and point up at the apartment, then quickly lower them as someone came out of the building.

It was a uniformed policeman, who reached Sanna in a few rapid steps. Rebecka couldn’t hear what he said.

She looked at her watch. It was pointless even to try to catch the plane. She couldn’t go now. With a deep sigh, she got out of the car. Her body moved slowly toward Sanna and the policeman. The girls were still standing on the steps and leaning over the snow-covered railings. Sara’s gaze was firmly fixed on Sanna and the policeman. Lova was eating lumps of. snow that had stuck to her gloves.

“What do you mean, house search?”

Sanna’s tone of voice made Virku stop, and approach her mistress uneasily.

“You can’t just go into my home without permission? Can they?”

The last question was directed at Rebecka.

At that very moment Assistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post came out, followed by two plainclothes detectives. Rebecka recognized them. It was that little woman with a face like a horse—what was her name, now? Mella. And the guy with a walrus moustache. Good God, she thought moustaches like that had gone out in the seventies. It looked as if somebody had glued a dead squirrel under his nose.

The prosecutor went up to Sanna. He was holding a bag in one hand, and he fished out a smaller transparent plastic bag. Inside it was a knife. It was about twenty centimeters long. The shaft was black and shiny, and the point curved upward slightly.

“Sanna Strandgård,” he said, holding the bag with the knife just a little too close to Sanna’s face. “We’ve just found this in your residence. Do you recognize it?”

“No,” replied Sanna. “It looks like a hunting knife. I don’t hunt.”

Sara and Lova came over to Sanna. Lova tugged at the sleeve of Sanna’s sheepskin coat to get her mother’s attention.

“Mummy,” she whined.

“Just a minute, chicken,” said Sanna absently.

Sara nestled into her mother and pressed against her so that Sanna was forced to step backward with one foot so as not to lose her balance. The eleven-year-old followed the prosecutor’s movements with her eyes and tried to understand what was going on between these serious adults standing in a circle around her mother.

“Are you absolutely certain?” von Post asked again. “Take a good look,” he said, turning the knife over.

The cold made the plastic bag crackle as he showed both sides of the weapon, holding up first the blade and then the shaft.

“Yes, I’m certain,” answered Sanna, backing away from the knife. She avoided looking at it again.

“Perhaps the questions could wait,” said Anna-Maria Mella to von Post, nodding toward the two children clinging to Sanna.

“Mummy,” repeated Lova over and over again, tugging at Sanna’s sleeve. “Mummy, I need a pee.”

“I’m freezing,” squeaked Sara. “I want to go in.”

Virku moved anxiously and tried to press herself between Sanna’s legs.

Picture number two in the book of fairy stories, thought Rebecka. The wood nymph has been captured by the villagers. They have surrounded her and some are holding her fast by her arms and tail.

“You keep hand towels and sheets in the drawer under the sofa bed in the kitchen, isn’t that right?” von Post continued. “Are you also in the habit of keeping knives among the towels?”

"Just a minute, honey," said Sanna to Sara, who was pulling and tugging at her coat.

“I need a pee,” whimpered Lova. “I’m going to wet myself.”

"Do you intend to answer the question?" pressed von Post.

Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke exchanged glances behind von Post’s back.

“No,” said Sanna, her voice tense. “I do not keep knives in the drawer.”

“What about this, then,” continued von Post relentlessly, taking another transparent plastic bag out of the larger bag. “Do you recognize this?”

The bag contained a Bible. It was covered in brown leather, shiny with use. The edges of the pages had once been gilded, but now there was very little of the gold color left, and the pages of the book were dark from much thumbing and leafing. A variety of bookmarks protruded from everywhere: postcards, plaited laces, newspaper clippings.

With a whimper Sanna sank down helplessly and sat there in the snow.

“It says Viktor Strandgård inside the cover,” von Post continued mercilessly. “Could you tell us whether it’s his Bible, and what it was doing in your kitchen? Isn’t it true that he had it with him everywhere he went, and that he had it in the church on the last night of his life?”

“No,” whispered Sanna. “No.”

She pressed her hands against the sides of her face.

Lova tried to push Sanna’s hands away so that she could look into her mother’s eyes. When she couldn’t do it, she burst into tears, inconsolable.

“Mummy, I want to go,” she sobbed.

“Get up,” said von Post harshly. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Viktor Strandgård.”

Sara turned on the prosecutor. “Leave her alone,” she screamed.

“Get these children away from here,” von Post said impatiently to Tommy Rantakyrö.

Tommy Rantakyrö took a hesitant step toward Sanna. Then Virku rushed forward and placed herself in front of her mistress. She lowered her head, flattened her ears and bared her sharp teeth with a low growl. Tommy Rantakyrö backed off.

“Right, I’ve had just about enough of this,” said Rebecka to Carl von Post. “I want to make a complaint.”

Her last remark was directed to Anna-Maria Mella, who was standing beside her and gazing up at the surrounding buildings. At every window the curtains were twitching inquisitively.

“You want to make a—” said von Post, interrupting himself with a shake of the head. “As far as I’m concerned, you can come along to the station for questioning with regard to a complaint of assault made against you by a television reporter from Channel 4’s Norrbotten news.”

Anna-Maria Mella touched von Post lightly on the arm.

“We’re starting to get an audience,” she said. “It wouldn’t look very good if one of the neighbors rang the press and starting talking about police brutality and all the rest of it. I might be mistaken, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the old guy in the flat up there to the left was filming us with a video camera.”

She pointed up at one of the windows.

“It might be best if Sven-Erik and I leave, so it doesn’t look as if there’s a whole army of us here,” she went on. “We can go and ring forensics. I assume you want them to go over the flat?”

Von Post’s upper lip was twitching with displeasure. He tried to look in through the window Anna-Maria Mella had pointed at, but the flat was completely dark. Then he realized he might be staring straight into the lens of a camera, and hastily looked away. The last thing he wanted was to be linked to police brutality, or to be censured in the press.