Anni suddenly looked worried.
"It"s very cold up there. I turned off the heating when she . . . I mean, she wasn"t . . . I suppose I was just thinking of the expense."
She fell silent, standing by the countertop. Anxiously brushed traces of flour from her ap.r.o.n.
"It"s O.K.," Mella said. "It costs a lot of money to keep a house warm. I know. I live in one myself."
"It"s not O.K. The heating should have been on. The house and I ought to have been ready for her."
"Do you know what?" Mella said. "You can be practical at the same time as you"re worrying or grieving. I reckon you were doing both."
"I don"t want to start crying again," Anni said, looking entreatingly at Mella as if hoping that she would be able to stop her going on about it. "You should have felt what the house was like when she was living here. So full of life. I still keep waking up and thinking it"s time to make her breakfast. I don"t suppose you believe me, knowing that I turned the heating off."
"Listen, Anni, I couldn"t care less about the heating being off."
Anni smiled wanly.
"I was so happy back then. I enjoyed every day, every morning when she was here with me. I didn"t take it for granted, though. I knew she could move back to Stockholm at any moment."
This isn"t a typical teenager"s room, Mella thought as she entered Wilma"s room.
An old office desk stood in front of the window. A blue-painted Windsor-style chair served as a desk chair. The bed was narrow 80 centimetres, perhaps. On it was a white embroidered bedspread. There were no posters on the walls, no ancient teddy bears or other plush toys to remind Wilma of her childhood. A photograph of her with Simon was pinned to the wall beside the bed. It looked as if Wilma had taken it herself. She was roaring with laughter, he was smiling in mild embarra.s.sment. Mella"s heart bled as she looked at it.
She searched the desk drawers. No maps. No diary.
She could hear Anni Autio struggling up the stairs, and hastened to open the wardrobe and look through the clothes piled at the bottom. When Anni entered the room, Mella was standing on a chair, examining the top of the wardrobe. Anni sat down on the bed.
"What are you looking for?" she said not aggressively, she was just interested.
Mella shook her head.
"I don"t really know. Something that might indicate where they went. Where they were going to go diving."
"But you found her in the river at Tervaskoski. Isn"t that where they were diving?"
"I don"t know."
"Maybe you should talk to Johannes Svarvare," Anni said. "He lives in that little red house with the glazed porch on the right just after the curve as you enter the village. He used to lend maps to Wilma and Simon when they were going exploring in the forest. I"m going to lie down here for a while. Perhaps you could call in and help me down the stairs before you drive back to town?"
Mella felt the urge to give Anni a big hug. To console her. And hopefully find a bit of consolation for herself.
But all she said was: "Thanks for the coffee. I"ll stop by on my way home."
Johannes Svarvare also offered Mella coffee. She accepted even though she was feeling a bit queasy from having drunk so much already. He fetched the best china from the gla.s.s-fronted cupboard in the living room. The cups clinked against the saucers as he put the tray down on the kitchen table. They were delicate, with handles you could not fit your finger through, ivory-coloured with pink roses.
"Please excuse the mess," Svarvare said, gesturing towards himself. "It never occurred to me that the forces of law and order would come visiting on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon."
His hair was unkempt, and he looked as if he had slept in his clothes. His brown woollen trousers were almost falling down. His crumpled shirt had several stains down the front.
"How nice to have a wood-burning stove in the kitchen," Mella said, in an attempt to lessen his embarra.s.sment.
Christmas curtains were still hanging in the windows. Rag rugs lay chaotically on the floor, one on top of the other, to keep the heat in. The floor itself was covered in crumbs.
His eyesight can"t be all that good, Mella thought. He doesn"t see that the place could do with a good vacuuming.
What a fascinating village, she thought. It"s just as Anni said: in a few years" time there"ll be n.o.body left. At best, the houses will have become summer cottages for surviving family members. The place will be completely deserted in winter.
"This is a big loss for poor old Anni," Svarvare said, moving his jaw from side to side. "A tragic accident."
It looked as if his false teeth were a bad fit. There was a gla.s.s of water on the draining board no doubt that was where he normally kept them. Mella suspected that he only put his teeth in when he was about to eat or expecting visitors.
"I"m trying to find out what happened," she said, coming straight to the point. "Various details are unclear. Did she tell you where they were going to dive?"
"Didn"t you find her downstream from Tervaskoski?"
"Yes . . . even so."
""Even so?" What do you mean, details that are unclear?"
Mella hesitated. She preferred not to put her cards on the table. But sometimes you had to take a gamble to get results.
"There are indications that she didn"t drown in the river," she said.
Svarvare slammed his cup down on the saucer.
"What do you mean?"
"I don"t mean anything at all! Really! It"s just that I need to investigate this death in a bit more detail. And then, of course, we want to find Simon Kyro as well."
"She came here," Svarvare said. "She came here . . ."
As he spoke, he made sweeping gestures with both hands on the kitchen table.
"We chatted. The way one does. People need to talk. I mean, the only people left in the village are us old wrecks. As a result, perhaps we talk too much."
"What do you mean?" Mella said.
"What do I mean? What do I mean?" Svarvare said, lost in thought. "Do you know that just over a week before they disappeared, Isak Krekula had a heart attack? He"s back home now, but I haven"t even seen him going to his post box to collect the newspaper."
"I"m sorry to hear that," Mella said. "But I don"t understand what you"re getting at."
Svarvare poked at a scratch on the kitchen table with a dirty fingernail. He looked at the wall clock. It had stopped at 7.00. In fact it was 12.05.
"Oh dear," he said, sounding as if he had made up his mind. "I need to lie down. I"m an old man, you know."
He stood up, removed his dentures and put them in the gla.s.s of water on the draining board. Then he lay down on the kitchen sofa, his arms crossed over his chest, and closed his eyes.
"Fair enough," Mella said, feeling a complete idiot. "But can"t you explain what you meant?"
There was no response from the sofa. The conversation was over. Svarvare"s chest rose and fell rapidly.
"For f.u.c.k"s sake!" Mella said as she got into her car.
She knew she ought to have let him talk. He had been on the way to telling her something. Stlnacke would have sat there quietly, waiting. Let Svarvare speak in his own good time. d.a.m.n that Stlnacke! And what was all that about Isak Krekula having a heart attack? How was it revelant?
"We"d better have a word with Isak Krekula," Mella said to herself as she turned the ignition key.
The Krekulas" houses formed a group of three at the far end of the village. Mella parked, got out of the car and stood beside it. So this was where Tore and Hjalmar lived, and their parents as well. She tried to guess which house belonged to whom. All were clad in red-painted wooden panels. One of the houses was older than the other two, and had a barn attached, with a roof of irregular corrugated-iron sheets. Embroidered curtains in the windows. This had to be where the parents lived.
Mella hesitated. A feeling of unease swept over her. In a pen at the side of the older house, a hunting dog was hurling itself over and over again at the wire netting, barking for all it was worth. Baring its fangs. Gnawing at the wooden frame. Snarling and snapping at the air. Barking and barking. Tireless and aggressive.
Spruce trees grew close together along the boundary of the plot. The house stood in deep shade. n.o.body ever seemed to have bothered to thin the trees. They were very tall, seemingly bent forward. Black, straggly and threatening. The branches looked wispy and weak, drooping down onto the slope. The image they evoked was of a father in a bedroom doorway, belt in hand, ready to attack. Of a mother, her feeble arms dangling at her sides.
Don"t go in there, a voice said deep inside Mella.
The hair stood up on the back of her neck.
Afterwards, she would recall the feeling. But now she was paying no attention to it.
The dog was scratching away at the netting. The air was a thick soup of hostility. One of the curtains twitched slightly. Someone was at home.
A notice on the door proclaimed: "No beggers. No hawkers." When Mella rang the bell, the door opened a fraction. The face of an old woman wondered what she wanted. Mella introduced herself.
Anni"s sister, she thought. What had Anni said her name was? Kerttu. Mella tried to see if there was a family resemblance. Perhaps, but then Mella realized that what she had noticed most about Anni were the signs of old age. Her bearing, her many wrinkles, her scraggy hands. Mella tried to imagine what the sisters had looked like when they had been her age. Anni had little hair left. Her face was long and narrow, just like Mella"s own. Kerttu Krekula still had thick hair. Her cheekbones were high. No doubt she had been the pretty sister. She was younger, as well.
But Anni had been happy. Except when she was grieving over Wilma, of course.
The sides of Kerttu Krekula"s mouth were drawn downwards, as if she had a devil on each shoulder pulling at them with a boathook.
"I don"t usually allow strangers in my house," she said. "You never know."
"You are Anni Autio"s sister, is that right?"
"Yes."
"I"ve just come from Anni"s. She"s been baking."
"I never bake. What"s the point? When you can buy stuff. Besides, my hands are so bad."
At least she"s talking, Mella thought.
"Do you have a toilet?" she said.
"Yes, of course."
"Do you think I might use it? I badly need a pee. It"s a long way back to town."
"Come in, then, before you let the winter in with you," Kerttu said, opening the door just wide enough for Mella to squeeze through.
"No, I didn"t think much of Wilma. She filled my sister"s head with no end of nonsense, if you ask me."
They were sitting at the kitchen table. Mella had hung her jacket over a green-painted chair.
"In what ways did she fill your sister"s head with nonsense?"
"Huh, in all kinds of ways. Last summer they went swimming in the lake, stark naked. Not after a sauna or anything like that. In broad daylight. For no reason at all. Anni"s dugs were hanging down to her belly. Disgusting, it was. Made you feel ashamed. But Wilma didn"t seem to have anything against displaying herself to all the men for miles around. Flashed her p.u.s.s.y and her tattooed bottom."
The dog started barking again in its pen. A man"s voice shouted "Shut up!" to no effect whatsoever. There was a sound of feet stamping off snow outside the front door. Shortly afterwards two men appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Tore and Hjalmar, Mella thought.
She had heard about them. A long time ago, just after she had moved back to Kiruna after completing her course at police college, an accusation of a.s.sault had been withdrawn by the injured party. Mella recalled the fear in the plaintiff"s eyes as he begged the prosecutor to drop the case. It was Hjalmar Krekula who got off on that occasion. Hjalmar already had a record for several a.s.saults. Two or three, she seemed to remember. And there were several other cases that had never progressed past suspicion. She had heard that Hjalmar was big. And he certainly was. Head and shoulders taller than his brother. Well built and decidedly overweight. He leaned listlessly against the door jamb. Washed-out-looking skin hung from his cheekbones, which were badly in need of a shave.
Not much in the way of fruit and veg in his diet, Mella thought. Both men, in their fifties, were wearing work trousers. Tore Krekula"s hair was close-cropped. He seemed unable to keep still. There was something restless about him.
"So you have visitors, eh?" he said to his mother, without introducing himself to Mella.
"From the police," Kerttu said curtly. "Asking about Wilma and Simon."
"The police?" Tore said, staring at Mella as if she were from another world. "Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned. We don"t see the likes of you very often. Or what do you think, Hjallie?"
Hjalmar stayed leaning against the door jamb and said nothing. His face was expressionless, his eyes blank, his mouth open. It was impossible to say if he had heard what his brother had said. A shiver ran down Mella"s spine.
"When Stig Rautio"s summer cottage was burgled, could we get you out here to investigate?" Tore said. "Like h.e.l.l. We told you what you needed to do check cars with Polish registration. If you"d done that, you"d have found his stuff in a flash. They"ve caught on to the fact that it"s a waste of time picking berries up here. They can break into people"s property and earn themselves a packet, no risk at all, "cos the police . . . f.u.c.k only knows what you get up to, you seem to have more important things to do than catch thieves. Bikes, out-board motors . . . no matter what gets nicked, everyone knows it"s pointless going to the police. Our drivers have stuff pinched all the time. The crooks cut open the tarps and take whatever they like. There hasn"t been a single thief brought to book all the years I"ve worked for the firm."
He leaned over the table. Thrust his face close to Mella"s.
"You couldn"t give a f.u.c.k about us," he said. "Snotty-nosed kids vandalize cars and smash windscreens, and the worst that can happen is that they end up with some old crone at Social Services who tells them what deprived childhoods they"ve had. Half-witted, feather-brained old biddies. That"s what the b.l.o.o.d.y lot of you are, if you ask me. So, what are you nosing around here for?"
"If you back off, I"ll be pleased to inform you," Mella said, slipping into the measured, professional tone of voice she always used when dealing with people who were aggressive or drunk and looking for trouble.
"You think I should back off, do you?" Tore said, without shifting a millimetre.
He jabbed his index finger hard on the table in front of Mella.
"I pay your wages. Just bear that in mind, constab.i.t.c.h. Me, my brother, my father. People like us with real jobs who actually do something useful and pay taxes. You could say you"re my employee. And I think you do a b.l.o.o.d.y awful job. Am I allowed to think that?"
"You can if you like," Mella said. "I"m leaving."
Tore"s face was still pressed up against hers. Now he backed off slightly and waved his hand about in front of her face.
"There"s no charge for fresh air, I suppose you know that?" he said.
"Didn"t you want to use the toilet?" Kerttu said. "You came in because you wanted to go to the toilet. It"s to the right in the hall."
Mella nodded. Hjalmar Krekula moved unhurriedly to one side, so that she could get past him.
Once safely in the toilet, she took a deep breath. What ghastly people.