The Blood Spilt (40 page)

If only there were time.

He goes out into the yard. Tries, although he knows it won’t work:

“Nalle!”

But Nalle doesn’t hear anything. Round and round he goes.

Lars-Gunnar has thought about this moment a thousand times. But in his thoughts Nalle has been sleeping peacefully. He and Lars-Gunnar have had a wonderful day. Maybe they’ve been in the forest. Or been on the river on the snow scooter. Lars-Gunnar has sat by Nalle’s bed for a while. Nalle has fallen asleep, and then…

This is too much. It couldn’t be any bloody worse than this. He runs his hand over his cheek. It seems as if he’s crying.

And he sees Mildred in front of him. He’s been on his way to this point ever since then. He realizes that now. The first blow. At the time he was full of rage toward her. But afterward. Afterward it was his own life he smashed to bits. Hung it up for everyone to see.

To the car. The rifle is there. It’s loaded. It has been all summer. He releases the safety catch.

“Nalle,” he says thickly.

He still wants to say good-bye. He would have liked to have done that.

“Nalle,” he says to his big lad.

Now. Before it gets to the point where he can’t hold the gun. He can’t be sitting here when they arrive. Can’t let them take Nalle away.

He raises the gun to his shoulder. Takes aim. Fires. The first bullet in the back. Nalle falls forward. The second bullet in the head.

Then he goes in.

What he’d like to do most of all is to open the trapdoor and kill her. What is she? Nothing.

But the way he feels at the moment, he hasn’t the strength to shift the cupboard.

He slumps down on the kitchen sofa.

Then he gets up. Opens the door of the wall clock and stops the pendulum with his hand.

Sits down again.

The barrel in his mouth. It’s been torture for as long as he can remember. This will be a relief. It will be over at last.

* * *

Down in the darkness she hears the shots. They come from outside. Two shots. Then the outside door slams. She hears footsteps across the kitchen floor. Then the final shot.

Something old wakes up inside her. Something from times past.

She scrambles up the steps to get away. Bangs her head on the trapdoor. Almost falls back down, but grabs hold of something.

It’s impossible to shift the trapdoor. She bangs on it with her fists. Her knuckles are torn open. She rips off her nails.

A
nna-Maria Mella drives into Lars-Gunnar Vinsa’s yard at half past three in the afternoon. Sven-Erik is sitting beside her in the car. They haven’t spoken all the way down to Poikkijärvi. It isn’t a nice feeling, knowing that you’re going to have to tell a former colleague that you’re seizing his gun and taking it in for testing.

Anna-Maria is driving slightly too fast as usual, and she very nearly runs over the body lying on the gravel.

Sven-Erik curses. Anna-Maria slams the brakes on and they jump out of the car. Sven-Erik is already on his knees, feeling the side of the neck with his hand. A black swarm of heavy flies lifts from the bloody back of the head. He shakes his head in reply to Anna-Maria’s unspoken question.

“It’s Lars-Gunnar’s boy,” he says.

Anna-Maria looks toward the house. She hasn’t got her gun with her. Shit.

“Don’t you even think about doing anything stupid,” Sven-Erik warns her. “Get in the car and we’ll call for backup.”

* * *

It’ll take forever before the others get here, thinks Anna-Maria.

“Thirteen minutes,” says Sven-Erik, checking the time.

It’s Fred Olsson and Tommy Rantakyrö in an unmarked car. And four colleagues in bulletproof vests and black overalls.

Tommy Rantakyrö and Fred Olsson park up on the ridge and come running down to Lars-Gunnar’s yard, crouching as they run. Sven-Erik has reversed Anna-Maria’s car out of firing range of the house.

The second police car pulls up in the yard. They shelter behind it.

Sven-Erik Stålnacke picks up a megaphone.

“Hello!” he shouts. “Lars-Gunnar! If you’re in there, come on out so we can have a chat.”

No response.

Anna-Maria meets Sven-Erik’s eyes and shakes her head. Nothing to wait for.

The four men in bulletproof vests go in. Two through the outside door. One first, the other right behind him. Two get in through a window at the back.

There isn’t a sound, apart from the noise of breaking glass from the back of the house. The others wait. One minute. Two.

Then one of them comes out onto the porch and waves. Okay to come in.

Lars-Gunnar’s body is lying on the floor in front of the kitchen sofa. The wall behind the sofa is spattered with his blood.

Sven-Erik and Tommy Rantakyrö push aside the cupboard that’s standing in the middle of the floor on top of the trapdoor.

“There’s somebody down here!” shouts Tommy Rantakyrö.

“Come on,” he says, reaching down a hand.

But the person who’s down there doesn’t come. In the end Tommy climbs down. The others can hear him.

“Shit! Okay, take it easy. Can you stand up?”

She comes up through the trapdoor. It takes a long time. The others help her. Support her under the arms. That makes her whimper a little.

It takes a fraction of a second before Anna-Maria recognizes Rebecka Martinsson.

* * *

Half of Rebecka’s face is swollen and black and blue. She has a large wound on her forehead and her upper lip is hanging off, held only by a flap of skin. “Looked like a pizza with everything on it,” Tommy Rantakyrö will say much later.

Anna-Maria is thinking mainly of her teeth. They’re clenched so tightly, as if her jaws have locked together.

“Rebecka,” says Anna-Maria. “What…”

But Rebecka waves her away. Anna-Maria sees her glance at the body on the kitchen floor before she walks stiffly out through the door.

Anna-Maria Mella, Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Tommy Rantakyrö follow her out.

Outside the sky has turned gray. The clouds are hanging low, heavy with rain.

Fred Olsson is standing out in the yard.

Not a word passes his lips when he catches sight of Rebecka. But his mouth opens around the unspoken words, and his eyes are staring.

Anna-Maria is watching Rebecka Martinsson. She’s standing like a statue in front of Nalle’s dead body. There’s something in her eyes. They all sense instinctively that this is not the time to touch her. She’s in a place of her own.

“Where the hell are the paramedics?” asks Anna-Maria.

“On the way,” someone replies.

Anna-Maria glances upward. It’s starting to spit with rain. They need to get something over the body lying outside. A tarpaulin or something.

Rebecka takes a step backwards. She waves her hand in front of her face as if there were something there she was trying to shoo away.

Then she begins to walk. First of all she staggers toward the house. Then she sways and walks toward the river instead. It’s as if she were blindfolded, doesn’t seem to know where she is or where she’s going.

The rain comes. Anna-Maria feels the chill of autumn like a torrent of cold air. It sweeps across the yard. Heavy, cold rain. A thousand icy needles. Anna-Maria pulls up the zip of her blue jacket, her chin disappears into the neckline. She needs to sort out that tarpaulin for the body.

“Keep an eye on her,” she shouts to Tommy Rantakyrö, pointing at Rebecka Martinsson who is still tottering away. “Keep her away from the gun in there, and from yours too. And don’t let her go down to the river.”

* * *

Rebecka Martinsson makes her way across the yard. There’s a big dead dead dead boy lying on the gravel. Not long ago he was sitting in the cellar with a biscuit in his hand, feeding a mouse.

It’s windy. The wind is roaring down inside her ears.

The sky is filled with black scratch marks, deep gouges that in their turn are filled with black ink. Is it raining? Has it started raining? She raises her hands tentatively toward the sky to see if they get wet. Her sleeves fall back, exposing the thin, bare wrists, the hands like naked birch trees. She drops her scarf on the grass.

* * *

Tommy Rantakyrö catches up with Rebecka Martinsson.

“Listen,” he says. “Don’t go down to the river. There’ll be an ambulance here in a minute, and then…”

She isn’t listening. Staggers on toward the riverbank. Now he thinks this is unpleasant. She’s unpleasant. Horrible staring eyes in that raw meat face. He doesn’t want to be alone with her.

“Sorry,” he says, grabbing hold of her arm. “I can’t… You just can’t go down there.”

* * *

Now the world splits open like a rotten fruit. Somebody’s got hold of her arm. It’s Pastor Vesa Larsson. He no longer has a face. A brown dog’s head is sitting on his shoulders. The black doggy eyes are looking accusingly at her. He had children. And dogs, who can’t weep.

“What do you want from me?” she screams.

Pastor Thomas Söderberg is standing there too. He is lifting dead babies out of the well. Bending down and lifting them out, one after the other. Holding them upside down, by the heel or by their little feet. They are naked and white. Their skin is loose, they’ve been in the water for a long time. He throws them onto a great big pile. It grows and grows in front of him.

When she quickly turns away, she’s standing face to face with her mother. She’s so clean and smart.

“Don’t you touch me,” she says to Rebecka. “Do you understand? Do you understand what you’ve done?”

* * *

Anna-Maria Mella has got hold of a rug. She’s going to put it over Lars-Gunnar’s son. It’s not so easy to know what the scene of crime technicians will want her to do. She also needs to set up some kind of barricade before the whole village starts turning up. And the press. Why did it have to bloody rain? In the middle of everything, when she’s shouting about barricades and half-running with the rug, she longs for Robert. For this evening, when she’ll be able to sob in his arms. Because everything is so pointless and so unbearable.

Tommy Rantakyrö calls out to her and she turns.

“I can’t hold her,” he shouts.

He’s wrestling with Rebecka Martinsson in the grass. Her arms are flailing, hitting out wildly. She breaks free and begins to run down to the river.

Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Fred Olsson set off after her. Anna-Maria hardly has time to react before Sven-Erik has almost caught up with her. Fred Olsson is right behind him. They grab hold of Rebecka. She’s like a snake in Sven-Erik’s arms.

“It’s okay,” says Sven-Erik loudly. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Tommy Rantakyrö is holding his hand under his nose. A trickle of blood is seeping through his fingers. Anna-Maria always has paper tissues in her pockets. Gustav always needs something wiped off his face. Ice cream, banana, snot. She passes the tissue to Tommy.

“Get her down on the ground,” shouts Fred Olsson. “We need to cuff her.”

“Like hell we do,” answers Sven-Erik sharply. “Is the ambulance coming soon?”

The last remark is shouted to Anna-Maria. She makes a movement with her head to indicate that she doesn’t know. Sven-Erik and Fred Olsson are now each holding on to one of Rebecka Martinsson’s arms. She’s on her knees between them, lurching from side to side.

At that very moment the ambulance finally arrives. Closely followed by another radio car. Flashing lights and sirens slicing through the hard gray rain. There’s a hell of a noise.

And right through the middle of it all Anna-Maria can hear Rebecka Martinsson screaming.

* * *

Rebecka Martinsson is screaming. She’s screaming like someone who’s lost her mind. She can’t stop.

YELLOW LEGS

He’s as black as Satan. Comes racing through a sea of brownish pink fireweed that’s gone to seed. The white, woolly seed heads whirl like snow in the autumn sunshine. He stops dead. A hundred meters away from her.

* * *

His chest is broad. So is his head. Long, coarse black bristles around his neck. He isn’t handsome. But he’s big. Just like her.

He remains stock-still as she approaches him. She’s been listening to him ever since yesterday. She’s enticed him, called him. Sung for him. Told him in the darkness that she’s all alone. And he’s come. At last he’s come.

Happiness is prickling in her paws. She trots straight up to him. Her admiration is totally unconditional. She draws her ears together and places herself in the courtship position. Arches her neck. Her long back like a sinuous S. His tail makes long, slow, sweeping movements.

Nose to nose. Nose to genitals. Nose under the tail. And then nose to nose once again. Chest puffed out, neck extended. The whole thing is unbearably ceremonious. Yellow Legs places all she has before him. If you want me, you can have me, she says clearly.

And then he gives her the sign. He places one of his front paws on her shoulder. Then he springs forward skittishly.

And she can’t hold back any longer. The sense of playfulness she’d forgotten she possessed returns with full force. She leaps away from him. Hurtles away, the soil spraying up behind her. Accelerates, does a U-turn, races back and soars over him with a long leap. Turns around. Lowers her head, wrinkles her nose and shows her teeth. And off again.

He races after her and they tumble over and over together when he catches her.

They’re full of it. Playing like mad things. Afterward they lie in a heap, panting.

She stretches her neck lazily and licks his jaws.

The sun is sinking among the pine trees. Their legs are tired and contented.

Everything is now.

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Rebecka Martinsson will get back on her feet, I believe in that little girl in her red Wellington boots. And remember: in my story I’m God. The characters might make a fuss about their free will from time to time, but I invented them. The places in the book are also mostly invented. There is a village called Poikkijärvi by the river Torne, but that’s where any resemblance ends, there’s no gravel track, no bar, no priest’s house.

Many people have helped me and I would like to thank some of them here: jur. kand. Karina Lundström, who sniffs out interesting characters within the police authorities. Senior doctor Jan Lindberg who helped me with my dead bodies. PhD candidate Catharina Durling and deputy judge Viktoria Edelman, who always checks the statute book for me when I don’t understand something or I’ve run out of energy. Dog handler Peter Holmström, who told me about Clinton the superdog.