The Blood Spilt (13 page)

Her bony elbow on the table. The nail of her index finger tapping thoughtfully on the varnished surface. She looks deep in thought, with that stubborn expression she always gets when she’s come up with some idea.

He’s used to preparing food for her. Takes the plate covered with clingfilm out of the fridge when she gets home late, pops it in the microwave. Makes sure she eats. Or runs a bath. Tells her not to keep winding her hair round her finger, because she’ll finish up bald. But now he doesn’t know what to do. Or say. He wants to ask her what it’s like. On the other side.

I don’t know, she says. But it’s drawing me toward it. It’s powerful.

He might have bloody known it. She’s here because she wants something. He’s suddenly terrified that she’ll disappear. Gone.

“Help me,” he says to her. “Help me get out of here.”

She can see that he won’t manage it on his own. And she sees his rage. The secret hatred of the dependent, who can’t cope on their own. But it doesn’t matter anymore. She gets up. Places her hand on the back of his neck. Draws his face toward her breast.

Let’s go, she says after a while.

It’s quarter past seven when he closes the door of the house behind him for the very last time in his life. Everything he’s taking with him fits into a supermarket carrier bag. One of the neighbors pulls the curtain aside, leans against the windowpane and watches him with curiosity as he chucks the bag into the backseat of the car.

Mildred gets into the passenger seat. When the car drives out through the gate he feels almost elated. Like the summer before they got married. When they drove around Ireland. And Mildred is definitely sitting there with a little smile on her face.

They stop on the track outside Micke’s. He just wants to drop the key off with that Rebecka Martinsson.

To his surprise she’s standing outside the bar. Her cell phone is in her hand, but she’s not talking. Her arm is hanging straight down by her side. When she catches sight of him she almost looks as if she’d like to run away. He approaches her slowly, almost pleading. As if he were approaching a frightened dog.

“I thought I’d give you the key to the house,” he says. “Then you can pass it on to the priest along with Mildred’s work keys, and tell him I’ve moved out.”

She doesn’t say anything. Takes the key. Doesn’t ask about his furniture or property. Stands there. Cell phone in one hand, the key in the other. He’d like to say something. Ask for forgiveness, perhaps. Take her in his arms and stroke her hair.

But Mildred has got out of the car and is standing by the side of the road calling to him.

Come away now! she shouts. There’s nothing you can do for her. Somebody else will help her.

So he turns around and shambles back to the car.

As soon as he’s sitting down the unhappiness Rebecka Martinsson has infected him with begins to ease. The road up to town is dark and exciting. Mildred is sitting beside him. He parks outside the Ferrum hotel.

“I’ve forgiven you,” he says.

She looks down at her lap. Shakes her head slightly.

I didn’t ask for forgiveness, she says.

I
t’s two o’clock in the morning. Rebecka Martinsson is sleeping. Curiosity works its way in through the window like the tendrils of a climbing plant. Winds itself around her heart. Sends out roots and shoots, spreading through her body. Twining around her rib cage. Spinning a cocoon around her chest.

When she wakes up in the middle of the night it has grown into an irresistible compulsion. The sounds from the bar have died away in the autumn night. A branch is whipping and banging angrily on the metal roof of the chalet. The moon is almost full. The deathly pale light pours in through the window. Catches the bunch of keys, lying there on the pine table.

She gets up and dresses. Doesn’t need to put the light on. The moonlight is enough. She looks at her watch. Thinks of Anna-Maria Mella. She likes the policewoman. She’s a woman who’s chosen to try to do the right thing.

She goes outside. There’s a strong wind blowing. The rowans and the birch trees are whipping wildly to and fro. The trunks of the pine trees creak and groan.

She gets into the car and drives off.

She drives to the churchyard. It isn’t far. Nor is it very big. She doesn’t have to search for long before she finds the priest’s grave. Lots of flowers. Roses. Heather. Mildred Nilsson. And an empty space for her husband.

She was born in the same year as Mum, thinks Rebecka. Mum would have been fifty-five in November.

Everything is silent. But Rebecka can’t hear the silence. The wind is blowing so hard it’s roaring in her ears.

She stands there for a while looking at the stone. Then she goes back to the car, parked on the other side of the wall. When she gets into the car, it’s suddenly quiet.

What did you expect? she says to herself. Did you think the priest would be standing there, an apparition on her grave, pointing the way?

That would have made things easier, of course. But it’s her own decision.

So the parish priest wants the key to Mildred Nilsson’s locker. What’s in there? Why hasn’t anybody told the police about the locker? They want the key handed over discreetly. They’re expecting Rebecka to do just that.

It doesn’t matter, she thinks. I can do whatever I like.

I
nspector Anna-Maria Mella woke up in the middle of the night. It was the coffee. Whenever she drank coffee late in the evening, she always woke up in the middle of the night and lay there tossing and turning for an hour before she could get back to sleep. Sometimes she’d get up. It was quite a nice time, really. The whole family was asleep, and she could listen to the radio with a cup of camomile tea in the kitchen, or fold laundry, or whatever, and lose herself in her thoughts.

She went down to the cellar and switched on the iron. Let the conversation with the husband of the murdered woman replay in her head.

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: We’ll sit here in the kitchen so we can keep an eye on your car.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
: Oh yes?

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: Our friends usually park down by the bar or a little distance away. Otherwise there’s the risk that you might get your tires slashed or the paint scratched or something.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
: I see.

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: Oh, it’s not too bad. But a year ago there was a lot of that sort of thing going on.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
: Did you report it to the police?

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: They can’t do anything. Even if you know who it is, there’s never any proof. Nobody’s ever seen anything. And people are scared. It might be their shed on fire next time.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
: Did somebody set fire to your shed?

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: Yes, it was a man in the village… At least we think it was him. His wife left him and stayed here with us for a while.

That was nice, thought Anna-Maria. Erik Nilsson had his chance to have a go at her then, but he let it go. He could have let bitterness creep into his voice, talked about how the police didn’t do anything and ended up blaming them for his wife’s death.

She was ironing one of Robert’s shirts, God, the cuffs were really worn. The shirt steamed beneath the iron. There was a good smell of freshly ironed cotton.

And he was well used to talking to women, that was obvious. Sometimes she forgot herself and answered his questions, not to gain his trust, but because he’d managed to gain hers. Like when he asked about her children. He knew just what was typical at their ages. Asked if Gustav had learned the word no yet.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
: It depends. If it’s me saying no, he doesn’t understand. But if it’s him…

Erik Nilsson laughs, but all at once becomes serious.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
: Big house.

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: (sighs) It’s never really been a home. It’s half priest’s house and half hotel.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
: But now it’s empty.

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: Yes, the women’s group, Magdalena, thought there’d be too much talk. You know, the priest’s widower consoling himself with assorted vulnerable women. They’re probably right, I suppose.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
: I have to ask, how were things between you and your wife?

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: Must you?

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
:—

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: Fine. I had an enormous amount of respect for Mildred.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
:—

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: She wasn’t the sort of woman who’s a dime a dozen. Not that sort of priest either. She was so incredibly… passionate about everything she did. She really felt she had a calling here in Kiruna and in the village.

A
NNA
-M
ARIA
: Where did she come from originally?

E
RIK
N
ILSSON
: She was born and bred in Uppsala. Daughter of a parish priest. We met when I was studying physics. She used to say she was fighting against moderation. “As soon as you feel too strongly about something, the church sets up a crisis group.” She talked too much, too quickly and too loudly. And she was almost manic once she got an idea in her head. It could drive you mad. I wished a thousand times that she was a bit more moderate. But… [gestures with his hand]… when a person like that is snatched away… it isn’t only my loss.

She’d looked around the house. There was nothing next to Mildred’s side of the double bed. No books. No alarm clock. No Bible.

Suddenly Erik Nilsson was standing behind her.

“She had her own room,” he said.

It was a little room under the eaves. There were no flowers in the window, just a lamp and some ceramic birds. The narrow bed was still unmade, just as she must have left it. A red fleecy dressing gown lay carelessly tossed across it. On the floor beside the bed, a tower of books. Anna-Maria had looked at the titles:
Beyond the Bible, Language for an Adult Belief,
a biblical reference book, some children’s books and books for teenagers. Anna-Maria recognized
Winnie-the-Pooh, Anne of Green Gables,
and underneath the whole lot an untidy pile of torn out newspaper articles.

“There’s nothing to see here,” said Erik Nilsson tiredly. “There’s nothing more for you to see.”

* * *

It was odd, thought Anna-Maria, folding the children’s clothes. It was as if he was hanging on to his dead wife. Her mail lay unopened in a big pile on the table. Her glass of water was still on the bedside table, and beside it her reading glasses. The rest of the house was so clean and tidy, he just couldn’t bring himself to tidy her away. And it was a lovely home. Just like something out of one of those interior design magazines. And yet he’d said it wasn’t a home, but “half priest’s house, half hotel.” And then he also said he “respected her.” Strange.

R
ebecka drove slowly into town. The gray white moonlight was absorbed by the asphalt and the rotting leaf canopy. The trees were pulled back and forth in the wind, seemed as if they were almost reaching out hungrily for the poor light, but getting nothing. They remained naked and black. Wrung out and tortured just before their winter sleep.

She drove past the parish hall. It was a low building made of white bricks and dark-stained wood. She turned up on to Gruvvägen and parked behind the old dry cleaner’s.

She could still change her mind. No, actually, she couldn’t.

What’s the worst that can happen? she thought. I can get arrested and fined. Lose a job I’ve already lost.

Having got this far, it felt as if the worst she could do would be to go back to the chalet and back to bed. Get on the plane to Stockholm tomorrow morning and keep on hoping that she’d be sufficiently sorted out on the inside to go back to work again.

She thought about her mother. The memory rose to the surface, vivid and tangible. She could almost see her through the side window of the car. Nice hair. The pea green coat she’d made herself, with a wide belt around the waist and a fur collar. The one that made the neighbors roll their eyes to heaven when she swished past. Who exactly did she think she was? And the high-heeled boots that she hadn’t even bought in Kiruna, but in Luleå.

It felt like a stab of love in her breast. She’s seven years old, reaching out her hand for her mummy. Her coat is so beautiful. And her face too. Sometime when she was even younger she’d said, “You’re like a Barbie doll, Mummy.” And Mummy laughed and hugged her. Rebecka took the opportunity to breathe in all those wonderful aromas at close quarters. Mummy’s hair smelled nice. The powder on her face too, but it smelled different. And the perfume in the hollow of her throat. Rebecka said the same thing on several occasions afterward too: “You look like a Barbie doll,” just because Mummy had been so pleased. But she was never as pleased as that again. It was as if it had only worked the first time. “That’s enough, now” her mother had said in the end.

Now Rebecka remembered. There was more. If you looked a little more closely. What the neighbors didn’t see. That the shoes were cheap. The nails split and bitten right down. The hand that carried the cigarette to the lips shaking slightly, as it does when people are of a nervous disposition.