Part 11 (1/2)

”I have to go home now,” she said with a smile. ”If I don't, my husband will throw me up into the birch tree.”

It's Sunday evening at the haulage firm's garage. I'm sitting on top of the cabin, watching Hjalmar. He's opened up the hydraulic lift on the back of one of the lorries and is oiling the pistons. He attaches the greasing gun to the nipples and fills them. He doesn't hear Tore come in. Suddenly Tore is standing by the lorry, yelling at him.

”What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?”

Hjalmar glances at Tore, but continues working. Tore races to fetch some supports and jams them under the hydraulic platform.

”You f.u.c.king idiot!' he says. ”You can't work under the hydraulic platform without making it secure, surely you realize that?”

Hjalmar says nothing. What is there to say?

”I can't run this firm on my own,” Tore says. ”It's bad enough having Father in bed and unable to help with the book-keeping. You're no use to me as a cripple or a corpse. Is that clear?”

Tore is upset. He spits as he talks.

”Don't you dare let me down!” he says, pointing a finger at Hjalmar.

When Hjalmar doesn't respond, Tore says, ”You're an idiot! A b.l.o.o.d.y idiot!”

Turning on his heel, he leaves.

No, Hjalmar thinks. I won't let you down. Not again.

They spend five days and nights looking for Tore. Volunteers from the old Emergency Service and the Mountain Rescue Service are out searching. Police officers and a company of soldiers from the I. 19 regiment in Boden are also taking part. An aeroplane makes two reconnaissance flights over the wooded areas north of Piilijarvi. No sign of Tore. The men from the village spend most of their time outside the Krekulas' house. Drinking coffee. They are either on their way into the forest or on their way back from it. They want to talk to Hjalmar, ask him where he and his brother went, what the route looked like. What the swamp looked like. Hjalmar does not want to talk, tries to keep out of the way, but he is forced to answer questions. He is back at home now, having spent the first couple of nights with Elmina Salmi. On the morning of the second day, she took Hjalmar home and said to Kerttu Krekula, ”You have a son here who is alive. Be grateful for that.”

Kerttu gave him some porridge, but did not say anything. She still has not said anything to Hjalmar.

When the men ask him questions, he turns himself inside out trying to answer them. But he does not know. Cannot remember. In the end he starts making things up and telling lies, just to have something to tell them. Did they see Hanhivaara mountain? Yes, maybe. Was the sun on their backs as they walked? Yes, he thought it was. Had the trees been thinned? No, they had not been.

They search the forest to the north of the village. That is where he came from when he emerged onto the main road. And everything he says suggests that it is where the boys got lost.

He has to get used to days like this. To people falling silent when he approaches. To comments such as: ”May G.o.d forgive you” or ”What the h.e.l.l were you thinking of, boy?” To head-shakings and piercing looks. To his mother's silence. Not that she ever had much to say for herself. But now she does not even look at him.

Once he overhears his father say to one of the men from the village: ”What I'd really like to do is kill the little s.h.i.+t, but that wouldn't bring Tore back.”

”Jumala on antanu anteeksi,” says the man, who is a believer. G.o.d has forgiven that sin.

But Isak Krekula does not believe in G.o.d. He has nothing to console him. Nor can he do as Job did, wave his fist in the air and cry out to the Lord. He mutters something evasive and embarra.s.sed in reply. But he clenches his fists whenever he looks at his son.

On the sixth day, the search for Tore Krekula is called off. A six-year-old boy is incapable of surviving for five days and nights in the forest. He has probably been sucked into one of the bogs. Or perhaps he has drowned in the beck the brothers were standing by when they parted. Or he has been savaged by a bear. The house feels empty. Some of the villagers consider it their duty to spend an hour there in the evening on the sixth day. But all of them have their own lives to lead. What is the point of looking for someone who is already dead?

That night Hjalmar Krekula lies awake in the little bedroom. He can hear his mother sobbing through the wall.

”It's our punishment,” she wails.

He can hear the bed creaking and complaining as his father gets up.

”That's enough of that shut up!” he says.

Hjalmar listens to his mother crying, then suddenly the bedroom door is wrenched open. It is his father.

”Get up,” he bellows. ”Get up, and down with your trousers.”

He lashes his son with his belt. As hard as he can. Hjalmar can hear his father grunting with the strain. At first the boy is determined that he is not going to cry. No, no. But in the end the pain is too much for him. His tears and screams just flow out of him, whether he wants them to or not.

Not a sound from the big bedroom.

Now she is the one lying silent, listening to him.

The miracle occurs on the morning of 23 June, 1956. At about 5.00, before his mother has gone to the cowshed, before his father has even got up, Tore Krekula trudges up to the front door. Going into the kitchen, he shouts, ”Paivaa!” Hi there!

His mother has been in the toilet, putting her hair up. She emerges and stares at Tore. Then she bursts into tears. Shouts, screams. Hugs him so tightly that he howls in pain and she has to let him go.

He has been so badly bitten by mosquitoes, gnats and horseflies that his s.h.i.+rt collar is soaked in blood and appears to be stuck to his neck. His mother has to cut it loose with scissors. His feet are tender and swollen. For the last few days he has been carrying his boots something people laughed about later, the fact that he did not want to lose his boots no matter what.

All day, villagers keep popping in to watch Tore eating. Or to watch Tore lying asleep on the kitchen sofa. Or to watch Tore eating again.

The story gets into the newspapers, and is repeated on the radio. The Krekulas receive letters from all over the country. People send presents clothes, shoes, skis. People turn up from Kiruna and Gallivare to see Tore Krekula with their own eyes. Sweden's most popular singer, Ulla Billquist, sends a telegram.

Kerttu and Tore Krekula take the train down to Stockholm, and the boy is interviewed by the legendary Lennart Hylund on the children's programme Roundabout.

Hjalmar sits listening to it all. Thank G.o.d Tore did not say anything on the radio about his brother hitting him. But word has spread around the village. Hjalmar Krekula hit his little brother, three years younger than he is. And then abandoned him in the forest.

MONDAY, 27 APRIL.

Morning meeting in the conference room at Kiruna police station. Inspectors Sven-Erik Stlnacke, Fred Olsson and Tommy Rantakyro were waiting for Anna-Maria Mella.

Stlnacke's moustache dipped into his coffee mug as he drank. It had hung down beneath his nose like a dead grey squirrel until his steady relations.h.i.+p with Airi Bylund had begun, since when he had kept it tidily trimmed.

More like an angry hedgehog nowadays, was Rantakyro's comment. Stlnacke also trimmed his nasal hair and had lost weight, despite being an enthusiastic consumer of Airi's cooking.

Olsson was playing with his Blackberry. Rantakyro had already asked his usual ”But can you make telephone calls with it?” and was listening with half an ear while Olsson went on about push functions and gigabytes.

Mella strode into the room, ruddy-faced, still in her street clothes. She pulled off her woolly hat. Her hair was neither plaited nor brushed. She looked totally untamed.

”Lousy morning, eh?” Olsson said.

”Sorry I'm late,” Mella said, trying to sound calm. ”You don't want to know. I've spent so much energy on my four-year-old today . . . First I had to force him into his snowsuit while he fought and screamed the house down. Then I had to wrestle with him to get it off again. With the nursery staff watching patiently the entire time. I expect Social Services will take him away from me before the day's out.”

She took off her jacket and sat down.

”I just wanted to put you in the picture regarding the investigation into Wilma Persson's death and Simon Kyro's disappearance. Wilma's body was found in the River Torne just downstream from Tervaskoski. But when Pohjanen sent samples of water from her lungs to Rudbeck Laboratory, the D.N.A. pattern didn't fit. She didn't die in the river. Last summer a couple of kids canoeing in the lake at Vittangijarvi stopped for a coffee with Berit and Goran Sillfors they own one of the summer cottages there. Wilma and Simon told the Sillforses that they were taking depth soundings for the M.H.I. But I phoned the M.H.I. and they hadn't ordered soundings in Vittangijarvi. Wilma and Simon have never done any work for them. So what were the kids really doing there? And someone nicked the Sillforses' shed door at some point during the winter. One side of it was painted green. Pohjanen found flakes of green paint under the fingernails of Wilma's right hand the few fingers that she had left, that is.”

”So you think they were diving in the lake, and someone placed a door over the hole in the ice?” Rantakyro said.

”I don't know, but I want to investigate further. There's too much that doesn't add up.”

”But don't you wear gloves when you go diving in winter?” Rantakyro said.

Mella shrugged.