Part 18 (1/2)

”Now.”

”Now? But it's only . . .”

”Yes, but you know what old people are like. When they finally get the chance to get the night's sleep they've always longed for, they wake up at 4.00 in the morning.”

”I hope you're right.”

”I am. I'm sitting in my car outside his house. He just looked out at me from behind his kitchen curtain for the third time.”

”She's mad,” Mella said when she had hung up.

”Who?” Robert said as he caressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

”Rebecka Martinsson. She's taken over the investigation. I like the woman, for Christ's sake I mean, I saved her life back there in Jiekajarvi: that does things to you. And she's fun to talk to when she relaxes. Even if we are very different. She's a b.l.o.o.d.y good prosecutor.”

Robert kissed the back of her neck, and pressed his lower body against her backside.

Mella sighed.

”I suppose I'm put out because she seems to be taking everything over. I'd really prefer to run this case myself.”

”She needs to realize that you're an alpha female,” Robert said, squeezing her nipples.

”Yes,” she said.

”Didn't you read a book recently? What was it called There's a Special Place in h.e.l.l for Women Who Don't Help Each Other?”

”No, you're thinking of There's a Special Place in h.e.l.l for Men Who Don't Have the Sense to Agree When Their Wives Act Like a b.i.t.c.h. Hey, what do you think you're going to do with this?”

”I don't know,” he said softly into her ear. ”What does the alpha b.i.t.c.h want me to do with it?”

Svarvare offered Martinsson a cup of coffee to start the day. Declining his best china, she asked for a mug instead. And accepted his offer of a sandwich. He smelled dirty the way old men do; hygiene was evidently not his strong point. He was wearing a vest under a knitted cardigan. A pair of black trousers, very s.h.i.+ny at the rear, held up by braces. She could not suppress the feeling that she did not want to put anything in her mouth that he had touched. When had he last washed his hands? She shuddered at the thought that the fingers he had used to hold his false teeth had also been in contact with the bread and whatever he had put into the sandwich.

But then again I can allow a dog I have never seen before to lick my mouth, she thought.

She smiled and looked down at Vera, who was sniffing around under the kitchen table, gulping down sc.r.a.ps of food and crumbs, and licking the legs of the bench where something had trickled down and dried up.

Including you, you filthy little swine! she thought. I must be out of my mind.

”You knew Wilma, is that right?” she said.

”Yes, of course,” Svarvare said, downing half his mug of coffee.

There are questions he is dreading that I might ask, Martinsson thought. I'll start with the easy ones.

”Can you tell me a bit about her?”

He seemed surprised. Relieved at the same time.

”She was so young,” Svarvare said, shaking his head. ”Much too young. But you know, it's a good thing if youngsters come to a village like this one. And when she moved in with Anni, Simon Kyro also started to come and visit his uncle. The whole place seemed to come to life. Those of us who live here are all old-timers. But her and her friends well, they looked like . . .”

He held up both hands and bent his fingers to look like claws, and pulled a face intended to be frightening.

”Black all round their eyes, and black clothes. But they were fun. And there was no harm in them. Once they borrowed kick-sledges from us old-timers and went racing around the village. There must have been ten of them. Careering around and shouting and laughing. Taking it in turns to give the others rides. Like a flock of crows. They say that young people nowadays just sit around indoors and gape at computers. Not her.”

”Did she visit you sometimes?”

”Oh yes, often. She liked to hear me going on about the old days. It's not the old days for me, of course: everything seems to have happened quite recently. You'll understand what I mean one of these days. It's only your body that grows old. Inside here I feel . . .”

He tapped the side of his forehead and grinned.

”. . . like a seventeen-year-old.”

”Did you tell her anything you regret having told her?”

He fell silent. Stared at a deep scratch in the middle of the kitchen table.

”You liked her, I think?”

He nodded.

”She was murdered, as you know. She and Simon went diving, and someone made sure they never came back up again. At any rate, she never came back up again. Strictly speaking the boy's still missing, but presumably he's somewhere in Vittangijarvi.”

”I thought they found her in the Torne, downstream from Tervaskoski?”

”Yes, they did. But she'd been moved there. Don't you think you owe it to her to tell me what's nagging at you?”

He stared at the scratch on the table.

”You should let sleeping dogs lie,” he said.

Martinsson's hand shot out of its own accord and covered the scratch in the table.

”But sometimes those sleeping dogs wake up,” she said. ”And now Wilma's dead. I think you're an honourable man. Think of Wilma. And Anni Autio.”

Her last remark was a gamble. She had no idea what sort of a relations.h.i.+p he had with Anni Autio.

He poured himself some more coffee. She noticed that he placed his left hand over his right one in order to keep it steady.

”Well,” he said. ”But don't tell anybody I said anything, mind. I told Wilma about an aeroplane that had been missing since 1943. It came down somewhere. I've spent ages thinking about that aeroplane. Wondering where it might have crashed. I told Wilma I thought it must have come down either in Vittangijarvi, Harrijarvi or ovre Vuolusjarvi.”

”What kind of a plane was it?”

”I don't know, I never saw it. But it was German. The Germans had big storage depots in Lule. One of them was right next to the cathedral. Oberleutnant Walther Zindel was in charge of them. The German troops in the north of Norway and Finnish Lapland needed weapons and food supplies, of course, and so the Germans used the port of Lule in the north of Sweden. Their fleet was inferior to the British one, so they didn't dare rely on supplies reaching them via the Norwegian coast.”

”I know, of course, that they were allowed to use our railway network,” Martinsson said slowly. ”For transporting troops going on leave and coming back again.”

Sucking hard at his dentures, Svarvare eyed her up and down as if she were mentally deficient.

”Well, yes,” he said. ”Anyway, Isak Krekula was a haulier. I left school at the age of twelve and started working for him. I was strong, and I could carry things and load lorries. I also did a bit of driving now and then they weren't so strict about it in them days. Anyway, that evening in the autumn of 1943, Isak drove one of his lorries to Kurravaara, and I went with him. Swedish Railways had stopped transporting German troops that summer, so we were never short of work not that we had been before, come to that. The troops had to be provided for. So we sat there, waiting and waiting. There was me, Isak, and some of the lads from the village he'd hired to help with the unloading and reloading. But we gave up when morning came and nothing had happened. Isak paid one of the village lads to stay on and look out for the aeroplane, and to telephone if it turned up. But it seemed to have been gobbled up somewhere. Isak heard eventually that n.o.body knew what had happened to it. But you know, people didn't talk about that sort of thing. Not then, and certainly not now. It was sensitive, you see.”