Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot stamped the compacted snow off his boots and carefully scraped the soles clean when he entered the corridor of the police station. Three years ago he’d been in a hurry, slipped on his icy soles and banged his hip. He’d been on painkillers for a week after that.
A sign of old age, he thought. Being afraid of falling over.
He didn’t usually work weekends. And certainly not this early on a Sunday morning. But Inspector Anna-Maria Mella had telephoned the previous evening and told him about the dead woman who’d been found in an ark up on the marshes, and he’d asked for a briefing the following morning.
The prosecution offices were located on the top floor of the police station. The chief prosecutor glanced guiltily at the stairs and pressed the button to call the lift.
As he passed Rebecka Martinsson’s room he had the feeling for some reason that there was somebody in there. Instead of going into his office, he turned around, went back, knocked on the door and opened it.
Rebecka Martinsson looked up from behind her desk.
She must have heard me in the lift and the corridor, thought Alf Björnfot. But she doesn’t let on. Just sits there quiet as a mouse, hoping not to be discovered.
He didn’t think she disliked him. And she wasn’t shy, even if she was a real lone wolf. She wanted to hide how hard she worked, he presumed.
“It’s seven o’clock,” he said as he walked in, removed a pile of documents from the visitor’s chair, and sat down.
“Hi there. Come on in. Have a seat.”
“Okay, okay. We operate an open door policy here, you know. It’s Sunday morning. Have you moved in?”
“Yes. Would you like a coffee? I’ve got a flask. Instead of the wastewater from the LKAB pelletizing plant that’s in the machine.”
She poured him a mug.
He’d thrown her straight into the job as special prosecutor. She wasn’t the type to start off gently, observing somebody else for weeks on end, and he’d realized that from day one. They’d gone to Gällivare, sixty miles to the south, where the rest of the district prosecutors were based. She had gone round politely saying hello to everybody, but had seemed restless and ill at ease.
On the second day he’d dumped a pile of files on her desk.
“Small beer,” he’d said. “File the prosecution and let the girls in the office do the processing. If you’re not sure of anything, you only have to ask.”
He’d thought that would last her a week.
The following day she’d asked for more work.
Her work rate made her colleagues uneasy.
The other prosecutors joked with her, asking if she was trying to put them out of a job. Behind her back they said she didn’t have a life, and in particular that she didn’t have a sex life.
The women in the office were stressed out. They explained to their boss that the new woman couldn’t possibly expect them to keep up with processing the summons applications in all the cases she was raining down on them, they did actually have other things to do as well.
“Like what?” Rebecka Martinsson had asked when the chief prosecutor explained the problem as delicately as he could. “Surfing the Net? Playing solitaire on the computer?”
Then she’d held up her hand before he could open his mouth to reply.
“It’s okay. I’ll do it myself.”
Alf Björnfot let her carry on working that way. She could be her own secretary.
“It’ll work out fine,” he said to the office manager. “You won’t have to come up to Kiruna so often.”
The office manager didn’t think it was fine at all. It was difficult to regard oneself as indispensable when Rebecka Martinsson seemed to be managing perfectly well without a secretary. She took her revenge by dumping three criminal court sessions a week on Rebecka Martinsson. Two would have been too many.
Rebecka Martinsson responded by not complaining.
Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot didn’t like conflict. He knew it was the secretaries, led by the office manager, who ruled his district. He appreciated the fact that Rebecka Martinsson didn’t moan, and found more and more reasons to work in Kiruna rather than Gällivare.
He turned his cup around. It was good coffee.
At the same time, he didn’t want her to work herself to death. He wanted her to be happy here. To stay.
“You work hard,” he said.
Rebecka Martinsson sighed and pushed back her chair. She kicked off her shoes.
“I’m used to working like this,” she said. “You don’t need to worry. That wasn’t my problem.”
“I know, but…”
“I have no children. No family. Not even houseplants, actually. I like working hard. Let me get on with it.”
Alf Björnfot shrugged his shoulders. He felt relieved; at least he’d tried.
Rebecka took a gulp of her coffee and thought about Måns Wenngren. In the law firm you just worked yourself to death. But that was fine by her, she’d had nothing else.
I must have been out of my mind, she thought. I could work all night just for a brief “good” from him, or even a nod of approval.
Don’t think about him, she told herself.
“What brings you here today?” she asked.
Alf Björnfot told her about the woman they’d found in the ark.
“I don’t think it’s all that strange that she hasn’t been reported missing,” said Rebecka. “If somebody’s killed his wife or partner, he’ll be sitting there drinking himself under the table, crying and feeling sorry for himself. And nobody else has had time to miss her yet.”
“Could be.”
There was a knock, and after a second Inspector Anna-Maria Mella stuck her head round the door.
“Oh, so this is where you are,” she said cheerfully to the chief prosecutor. “We’re ready to go over the whole thing. Everybody’s here. Are you joining us?”
The question was addressed to Rebecka Martinsson.
Rebecka shook her head. She and Anna-Maria Mella bumped into each other sometimes. They said hello, but not much more. It was Anna-Maria Mella and her colleague Sven-Erik Stålnacke who’d been there when she cracked up. Sven-Erik had held on to her until the ambulance arrived. She thought about it sometimes. Somebody holding on to her. It had felt good.
But it was difficult to talk to them. What would she say? Before she went home from work, she usually glanced out the window at the parking lot below. Sometimes she saw Anna-Maria Mella or Sven-Erik Stålnacke there. When that happened, she’d hang about for a little while until they’d disappeared.
“What’s happened?” asked Alf Björnfot.
“Nothing since we last spoke,” said Anna-Maria Mella. “Nobody’s seen a thing. We still don’t know who she is.”
“Can I have a look at her?” said Alf Björnfot, reaching out his hand.
Anna-Maria Mella passed over a photo of the dead woman.
“I think I recognize her,” said Alf Björnfot.
“May I?” asked Rebecka.
Alf Björnfot passed over the photo and looked at Rebecka.
She was wearing jeans and a sweater. He’d never seen her like that since she’d started working for him. It was because it was Sunday. She normally had her hair up, and wore well-tailored suits. It made him think she was a kind of strange, exotic bird, somehow. Some of the other prosecutors would put on a suit if they were involved in proceedings. He himself had given that up long ago. Made do with pulling on a jacket if he had to go to court. He ironed just the collars of his shirts, and wore a sweater over the top.
But Rebecka always looked expensive, somehow. Expensive and very simple in her gray and black suits with a white shirt.
Something stirred in his mind. That woman. He’d seen her with a suit on.
Like Rebecka. A white shirt and a suit. She was an exotic bird too.
Different from the others.
What others?
A picture of a female politician came into his head. A suit, with the shirt collar on the outside. The hair in a blonde bob. She’s surrounded by men in suits.
The thought was lurking just out of reach, like a pike among the reeds. It could feel the vibrations of something approaching. The EU? UN?
No. She wasn’t a politician.
“Now I remember,” said Alf Björnfot. “I was watching a news item. They were filming a gang of suits who’d got together for a group photo in the snow here in Kiruna. What the hell was it about? I remember laughing because they weren’t dressed for the weather at all. No overcoats. Thin black shoes. They stood there in the snow lifting their feet up like storks. They just looked so funny. And she was there…”
He beat his forehead as if to get the coin to drop down into the machine and pay out.
Rebecka Martinsson and Anna-Maria Mella waited patiently.
“I’ve got it…” he said, clicking his fingers. “It was that former resident of Kiruna who’s got one of those new mining companies. They were having their company meeting or something like that up here…Oh, what’s the matter with my brain!
“Come on!” he said pleadingly to Rebecka and Anna-Maria. “It was on the news before Christmas.”
“I fall asleep on the sofa after the children’s programs,” said Anna-Maria.
“Oh!” exclaimed Alf Björnfot. “I’ll ask Fred Olsson. He’s bound to know.”
Inspector Fred Olsson was thirty-five, and completely indispensable as the unofficial computer expert for the entire building. He was the one everybody rang when the computer had frozen or when they wanted to download music from the Net. He had no family, so he was happy to come over in the evening and help his colleagues with their electronics at home if need be.
And he kept an eye on people in town. He knew where the villains lived and what they were up to. Bought them a coffee from time to time and kept himself informed. He knew the fine-meshed net of power. Knew which of the important people in town were watching each other’s backs, and whether it was because they were related, because they had something on each other, or because they were doing each other a mutual favor.
Alf Björnfot got up and plodded along the corridor and down the stairs to police headquarters.
Anna-Maria gave Rebecka a signal, and both women ran after him.
On the way to Fred Olsson’s office, Alf Björnfot suddenly turned back to the pursuing women and shouted:
“Kallis. Mauri Kallis, that’s his name. He was born here, although it’s a long time since he moved away.”
Then he carried on toward Fred Olsson’s office.
“What’s Mauri Kallis got to do with anything?” Anna-Maria muttered to Rebecka. “It was a woman we found.”
All three of them were standing in the doorway of Fred Olsson’s office.
“Fredde!” puffed the prosecutor. “Mauri Kallis! Didn’t he have a meeting up here with a load of bigwigs in December?”
“He did,” said Fred Olsson. “Kallis Mining has a company here in town called Northern Explore Ltd., one of the few companies of theirs that’s listed on the stock exchange. A Canadian investment company sold off all their holdings at the end of the year, so there were a lot of changes on the board….”
“Can you find a picture of the meeting?”
Fred Olsson turned his back on the three people who had popped up in his doorway and switched on the computer. The three visitors waited patiently.
“They elected somebody from Kiruna, Sven Israelsson, onto the board,” said Fred Olsson; “I’ll do a search on him. If I look for Mauri Kallis I’m bound to get thousands of hits.”
“I’ve got a vague memory of a gang of suits standing in the snow having their photo taken,” said Alf Björnfot. “I think the woman in the ark was in that picture.”
Fred Olsson tapped away at his keyboard for a little while. Then he said:
“There. Looks like it is her.”
On the screen was a picture of a group of men in suits. In the center of the picture stood a woman.
“Yes,” said Anna-Maria. “She’s got that antique nose, it kind of starts up between her eyebrows.”
“Inna Wattrang, head of information,” read Alf Björnfot.
“Bingo!” said Anna-Maria Mella. “Get her identified. Inform her next of kin. I wonder how she ended up on the marsh.”
“Kallis Mining has a cabin in Abisko,” said Fred Olsson.
“You’re joking!” exclaimed Anna-Maria.
“It’s true! I know because my sister’s ex is a plumbing and heating engineer. And he was working up there when they built it. And it isn’t really a cabin. More like a proper house with top sports facilities, something like that.”
Anna-Maria turned to Alf Björnfot.
“No problem,” he said before she could get the question out. “I’ll sign a search warrant straightaway. Shall I ring Benny the locksmith?”
“Please,” said Anna-Maria. “Let’s go!” she shouted, racing to her room to pick up her jacket. “We’ll do the briefing this afternoon instead!”
Her voice could be heard from inside her office.
“You come too, Fredde! Sven-Erik!”
A minute later, they’d all disappeared. There was a sudden Sunday silence in the building. Alf Björnfot and Rebecka Martinsson were still standing in the corridor.
“So,” said Alf Björnfot. “Where were we?”
“We were drinking coffee,” Rebecka said, smiling. “It was just time for a top-up.”
“Isn’t it beautiful,” said Anna-Maria Mella. “Like a tourist brochure.”
They were driving along Norgevägen in her red Ford Escort. To the right of them lay Torneträsk. Clear blue sky. Sun and sparkling snow. Everywhere along the length of the lake were arks in every conceivable color and shape. On the other side of the road the mountains stretched away into the distance.
The wind had dropped. But it hadn’t turned warm. Anna-Maria looked in among the birch trees and thought the snow had formed a solid crust. They might be able to use kick sledges in the forest.
“Try looking at the road instead,” said Sven-Erik, who was sitting next to her.
Kallis Mining’s mountain cabin was a large, timbered house. It was situated in an attractive spot down by the lake. In the opposite direction Nuolja Mountain towered above.
“My sister’s ex told me about this place when he was working up here,” said Fred Olsson. “His father was involved in the building. It’s actually two chalets from Hälsingland that they’ve transported here. The timber is two hundred years old. And the sauna’s down there by the shore of the lake.”
Benny the locksmith was sitting outside in his van. He wound down the window and shouted, “I’ve opened up, but I’ve got to go.” He raised his hand in a quick salute and drove away.
The three police officers walked in. Anna-Maria thought she’d never seen anything like it. The hand-hewn silver-gray timber walls were sparsely decorated with small oil paintings featuring motifs from the mountains, and mirrors in heavy gilded frames. Enormous Indian-style wardrobes in pink and turquoise contrasted sharply with their simple surroundings. The ceiling had been opened up, with the beams exposed. The broad wooden floor planks were covered with rag rugs in every room but one: in front of the big open fire in the living room lay a polar bear skin with the head on and its mouth gaping open.
“Good grief,” commented Anna-Maria.
The kitchen, hall and living room were open plan; on one side were huge windows giving a view over the marsh, sparkling in the late winter sunshine. On the other side of the room the light filtered in through small high-set leaded windows with hand-blown glass in different shades.
On the kitchen table stood a carton of milk and a packet of muesli, a used bowl and a spoon. On the draining board dirty plates were piled high, with the cutlery sticking out in between.
“Ugh,” said Anna-Maria as she shook the carton of milk and heard the soured lumps clunking around inside.
Not that her house was ever tidy. But to think that somebody could stay in such a fine place all by themselves and not keep it nice. That’s what she’d do if she ever had the chance to live like this. Strap her skis on outside the door and go for a long cross-country trek over the marsh. Come home and cook dinner. Listen to the radio while washing up, or just enjoy the silence and think her own thoughts with her hands in the warm water. Lie on that inviting sofa in the living room and light a fire, crackling in the hearth.
“Perhaps these people aren’t the kind that wash up,” commented Sven-Erik. “There’s probably somebody who comes in and cleans up after them when they’ve gone.”
“In that case we need to get hold of that person,” said Anna-Maria quickly.
She opened the doors to the four bedrooms. Big double beds with Sami coverlets. Above the bed heads hung reindeer skins, silver gray against the silver gray walls.
“Nice,” said Anna-Maria. “Why doesn’t my house look like this?”
There were no wardrobes in the bedrooms; instead big American trunks and antique chests stood on the floor to store things in. Coat hangers hung from beautiful Indian folding screens and elegant hooks or horns on the wall. There was a sauna, a laundry room and a big drying cupboard. Next to the sauna was a large changing room with space for ski clothes and boots.
In one of the bedrooms was an open suitcase. Clothes lay in a heap both in and out of the case. The bed was unmade.
Anna-Maria poked about among the clothes.
“A bit of a mess, but no sign of a struggle or a break-in,” said Fred Olsson. “No blood anywhere, nothing unusual. I’ll check the bathrooms.”
“No, nothing’s happened here,” said Sven-Erik Stålnacke.
Anna-Maria swore to herself. It would have been helpful if this had been the scene of the murder.
“I wonder what she was doing here,” she said, eyeing a skirt that looked expensive, and a pair of silky stockings. “These aren’t exactly the clothes for a skiing holiday.”
Fred Olsson reappeared behind them. He was holding a purse. It was made of black leather, with a gold-colored chain.
“This was in the bathroom,” he said. “Prada. Ten to fifteen thousand kronor.”
“Inside it?” asked Sven-Erik.
“No, that’s how much it costs.”
Fred Olsson tipped out the contents onto the unmade bed. He opened the wallet and held Inna Wattrang’s driving license up to Anna-Maria.
Anna-Maria Mella nodded. It was definitely her. No doubt.
She looked at the rest of the things that had fallen out of the bag. Tampons, nail file, lipstick, sunglasses, face powder, a load of yellow credit card slips, a pack of painkillers.
“No cell phone,” she established.
Fred Olsson and Sven-Erik nodded. There was no telephone anywhere else either. That might mean the perpetrator was somebody she knew, somebody whose number was programmed into the phone.
“We’ll take her stuff to the station,” said Anna-Maria. “And we’ll seal this off anyway.”
Her glance fell on the purse again.
“It’s wet,” she said.
“I was just coming to that,” said Fred Olsson. “It was in the sink. The tap must have been dripping.”
They looked at each other in surprise.
“Strange,” said Anna-Maria.
Sven-Erik’s substantial moustache came to life beneath his nose, moving in and out and from side to side.
“Can you take a walk around the outside?” asked Anna-Maria. “I’ll just go round inside one more time.”
Fred Olsson and Sven-Erik Stålnacke disappeared outside. Anna-Maria walked around slowly.
If she didn’t die here, she thought, the killer has at least been here. And he was the one who took the phone. But of course she might have had it with her when she went out running, or whatever she was doing. In her pocket.
She looked in the washbasin where the purse had been. What had it been doing there? She opened the bathroom cabinet. Completely empty. Typical for a place that’s going to be used by guests and employees or rented out; nothing personal is left behind.
I can assume that any personal items that are here were hers, thought Anna-Maria.
There were a few microwave meals in the refrigerator. Three of the four bedrooms were completely untouched.
There’s nothing more to see here, she thought, walking back into the hallway.
On a white bureau in the hall stood an old lamp. It would have looked kitsch anywhere else, but it fitted in well here, thought Anna-Maria. The base was made of porcelain. It had a painted landscape on it that looked as if it might be from the German Alps, with a mountain in the background and a magnificent stag in the foreground. The shade was the color of cognac, with a fringe. The switch was just below the lightbulb fitting.
Anna-Maria tried to switch it on. When it didn’t work, she discovered that it wasn’t because the bulb had gone, but because the electric cord was missing.
In the base of the lamp there was just a hole where the cord had been.
What have they done with it? she wondered.
Maybe they’d bought the lamp at a flea market or in an antique shop, and it was already like that. Perhaps they’d put it on the bureau thinking they’d fix it soon, it could stand there for the time being.
Anna-Maria had thousands of things like that at home. Things they were going to fix any year now. But in the end, you just got used to the defects. The front of the dishwasher, for example. It had been made in the same style as the kitchen cupboards, but it had come loose about a hundred years ago and now the door of the dishwasher was too light for the spring. The whole family had got used to loading and unloading the dishwasher with one foot on the door so that it wouldn’t close by itself. She did the same thing in other people’s houses without even thinking about it. Robert’s sister always laughed at her when Anna-Maria was helping load their machine.
Perhaps they’d just moved the lamp and the cord had got caught between the wall and a piece of furniture, and been pulled out. But that could be dangerous. If the cord was still plugged in, but not attached to the lamp.
She thought about the fire risk and then she thought about Gustav, her three-year-old, and about all the plastic covers on the sockets at home to keep them child-safe.
She got a fleeting picture in her head of Gustav when he was eight months old, and crawling everywhere. What a nightmare. A plug in a socket with a broken cord lying on the floor. The copper wires clearly visible inside the plastic covering. And Gustav, whose main method of investigating the world around him was putting things in his mouth. She quickly pushed the picture aside.
Then it struck her. Electric shock. She’d seen several during her career. God, there was that guy who’d died five years ago. She’d gone along to confirm that it was an accident. He’d been standing on the draining board in his bare feet, fiddling with a ceiling light. The skin on the soles of his feet had been badly burned.
Inna Wattrang had a circular burn around her ankle.
You could imagine someone ripping an ordinary cord out of a lamp, thought Anna-Maria. Opening it up and removing the plastic covering and winding one of the copper wires around someone’s ankle.
She flung the door open and shouted to her colleagues. They came striding quickly through the deep snow.
“Bloody hell!” she yelled. “She died here! I’m sure of it! Call in Tintin and Krister Eriksson.”
Krister Eriksson, inspector and dog handler, arrived at the scene almost an hour after his colleagues had rung him. They’d been lucky; he was often out and about on duty with Tintin.
Tintin was a black Alsatian bitch. An excellent tracker dog, good at finding dead bodies. Eighteen months earlier she’d found a murdered priest in Nedre Vuolusjärvi; someone had wound an iron chain around his body, then sunk it in the lake.
Krister Eriksson looked like some kind of alien. His face had been badly burned in an accident when he was a youngster. He had no nose, just two holes in his face. His ears looked like a mouse’s ears. He had no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes. His eyes looked very strange, because his eyelids had been reconstructed using plastic surgery.
Anna-Maria looked at his shiny pink skin, like a pig’s, and her thoughts bounced back to Inna Wattrang and her burned ankle.
I must ring Pohjanen, she thought.
Krister Eriksson put Tintin on the lead. She was dancing around his feet, whimpering with expectation.
“She always gets so excited,” said Krister, disentangling himself from the lead. “You still have to hold her back, otherwise she searches a bit too quickly, and then she might miss something.”
Krister Eriksson and Tintin went into the house alone. Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Fred Olsson plowed around the corner and looked in through the window.
Anna-Maria Mella went and sat in her car and rang Lars Pohjanen. She told him about the missing cord.
“Well?” she said.
“The burn mark around her ankle could certainly be the result of a wire conducting electricity through her body,” said Pohjanen.
“The end of a cord, split and wound around her ankle?”
“Definitely. And you use the other end of the cord to transmit the electricity.”
“Has she been tortured?”
“Maybe. It could also be a game that got out of hand, of course. Not very common, but it has happened. There’s one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“There are traces of stickiness on her ankles and wrists. You should get the technicians to check the furniture in the house. She’s been taped, it could just be that her hands and feet were taped together. But she could have been bound to a piece of furniture, bedposts or a chair or…Just hang on.”
It took a minute. Then she heard the doctor’s hoarse voice again.
“I’ve just put my gloves on and I’m looking at her now,” he said. “There’s a tiny but distinct mark on her neck.”
“The mark from the other part of the electric cable,” said Anna-Maria.
“A lamp cord, you said?”
“Mmm.”
“Then there should be traces of copper where the epidermis has melted. I’ll take a tissue sample and do a histology test, then you’ll know for sure. But that’s probably what happened. Something certainly interrupted the rhythm of her heart. And she ended up in a state of shock. That would explain the fact that she’d chewed her tongue, and the marks of her own nails on her palms.”
Sven-Erik Stålnacke knocked on the car window and pointed at the house.
“I’ve got to go,” said Anna-Maria. “I’ll call you later.”
She got out of the car.
“Tintin’s found something,” said Sven-Erik.
Krister Eriksson was standing in the kitchen with Tintin. She was tugging at the lead, barking and scrabbling madly at the floor.
“She’s marking something there,” said Krister Eriksson, pointing to a spot on the kitchen floor between the sink and the stove. “I can’t see anything, but she seems convinced.”
Anna-Maria looked at Tintin, who was now howling with frustration at not being allowed to get to her goal.
The floor was covered with turquoise linoleum with an Oriental design. Anna-Maria walked over and looked closely at it. Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Fred Olsson accompanied her.
“I can’t see anything,” said Anna-Maria.
“Nope,” said Fred Olsson, shaking his head.
“Could there be something underneath the floor covering?” wondered Anna-Maria.
“There’s definitely something,” said Krister Eriksson; it was all he could do to hold on to Tintin.
“Okay,” said Anna-Maria, checking her watch. “We’ve got time to have lunch at the tourist station while we’re waiting for the technicians.”
By two-thirty in the afternoon the scene-of-crime team had taken up the linoleum floor covering. When Anna-Maria Mella, Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Fred Olsson got back to the house, it was lying in the hallway, rolled up and wrapped in paper.
“Look at this,” said one of the technicians to Anna-Maria, pointing at a tiny nick in the wood that had been underneath the linoleum.
In the little nick there was something brown that looked like dried blood.
“That dog must have one hell of a nose.”
“Yes,” said Anna-Maria. “She’s very good.”
“It has to be blood, given the dog’s reaction,” said the technician. “Linoleum is such fantastic stuff for floors. My mother had it on her floor, and it looked good for over thirty years. It heals itself, if it’s damaged.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if it’s damaged in some way, cut or something, it pulls itself back together so that it doesn’t show. It looks as if something sharp and pointed, a weapon or a tool, went straight through and cut into the wood underneath. Then the blood ran down into the nick. The linoleum knitted itself back together, and once you’ve cleaned the floor, there’s no trace. We’ll send the blood, if that’s what it is, for analysis and then we’ll know if it’s Inna Wattrang’s.”
“I’d put money on it,” said Anna-Maria. “This is where she died.”
It was eight o’clock on Sunday evening when Anna-Maria pulled on her jacket and rang Robert to tell him she was going to call it a day. He didn’t sound tired or annoyed, just asked if she’d eaten and said there was food ready to be warmed up for her. Gustav was asleep, they’d been out playing on the sledge. Petter had been with them too, despite the fact that he usually stayed indoors. Jenny had gone to a friend’s, he said, adding quickly that she was on her way home right now before Anna-Maria had even managed to think “school tomorrow.”
Anna-Maria was almost ridiculously happy. They’d been out in the fresh air having fun. They’d been enjoying themselves. Robert was a good father. It didn’t matter at all if everyone’s clothes were lying in a heap on the hall floor and dinner had only been half cleared away. She’d tidy up after them with a cheerful heart.
“Is Marcus home?” she asked.
Marcus was their eldest son. He was in his final year at high school.
“No, I think he’s staying over at Hanna’s. How did it go?”
“Fine. Really good. It’s only twenty-four hours, and we know who she is: Inna Wattrang, a big noise in Kallis Mining. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. We’ve found the scene of the murder, although whoever did it tried to clean up after themselves and hide any traces. Even if the national crime squad ends up taking over, nobody can say we didn’t do a good job.”
“Was she stabbed with something?”
“Well yes, but that’s not all. The killer electrocuted her as well. The technicians were there this evening and they’ve found traces of sticky tape on one of the kitchen chairs, on the arms and the legs. And the same stuff on her ankles and wrists. Somebody taped her to the kitchen chair and gave her electric shocks.”
“Shit. What with?”
“With an ordinary lamp cord, I think; they’ve opened up the end of it, split the wires, wound one round her wrist, and placed the other on her neck.”
“And then he stabbed her to death.”
“Yes.”
“What’s it all about?”
“Don’t know. It could be a madman, or a hate crime. Could be a sex game of some kind that’s gone wrong somehow, although there doesn’t seem to be any semen inside her or on her clothing. There was something white and slimy around her mouth, but it was just vomit.”
Robert made a slightly distressed noise.
“Promise you’ll never leave me,” he said. “Just imagine being in a bar looking for somebody new…and then when you get home, she wants you to electrocute her.”
“You’re better off with me, I’m happy with the missionary position.”
“Good old honest boring sex.”
Anna-Maria cooed at him.
“I like good old boring sex,” she said. “If all the children are asleep when I get home…”
“Don’t try that one with me—you’ll have something to eat, then you’ll fall asleep on the sofa in front of Six Feet Under. Perhaps we ought to spice things up a bit.”
“We could buy a book about the Kama Sutra.”
Robert laughed on the other end of the phone. Anna-Maria was pleased. She’d made him laugh. And they were talking about sex.
I ought to do this more often, she thought. Flirt and joke with him.
“Exactly,” said Robert. “Positions like ‘The Flight of the Crane over the Vault of the Heavens’ or something like that, where I have to hang upside down and you do the splits.”
“Okay, forget it. I’ll be straight home.”
Anna-Maria had barely hung up when the telephone rang again. It was Alf Björnfot.
“Hi there,” he said. “Just wanted to let you know that Mauri Kallis is coming up tomorrow.”
Anna-Maria had to think for a second. She’d expected it to be Robert again, suddenly remembering to ask her to pick something up from the shops on the way home.
“Mauri Kallis as in Kallis Mining?”
“Yep. His secretary just rang me. Our colleagues in Stockholm called too. They’ve informed Inna Wattrang’s parents. Who were shocked, of course. Didn’t know she was up in Abisko, they said. But Inna Wattrang and her brother Diddi both work for Kallis Mining. And he owns some big place on Lake Mälaren where they both live. Her parents said they’d let her brother know and ask Mauri Kallis to come up and identify her.”
“Tomorrow!” groaned Anna-Maria. “I was just on my way home.”
“Go home then.”
“I can’t go home. I need to speak to him. About Inna Wattrang and her role in the company and so on. I don’t know a damned thing about Kallis Mining. He’ll think we’re idiots.”
“Rebecka Martinsson is in court tomorrow, so she’s bound to be in her office. Ask her to read up about Kallis Mining and give you a half-hour summary first thing in the morning.”
“Oh no, I can’t ask her. She…”
Anna-Maria broke off briefly. She was going to say that Rebecka Martinsson had a life too, but then again…People said she lived out in the country all on her own, and didn’t socialize with anybody.
“…she needs her sleep just like anybody else,” she said instead. “I can’t ask her.”
“Okay.”
Anna-Maria thought about Robert, waiting at home.
“Or can I?”
Alf Björnfot laughed.
“Well, I’m going to park myself in front of Six Feet Under,” he said.
“That’s another thing,” said Anna-Maria, feeling rebellious.
She finished her conversation with the prosecutor and looked out the window. Yes, Rebecka Martinsson’s car was still in the parking lot.
Three minutes later, Anna-Maria Mella was knocking on the door of Rebecka Martinsson’s office.
“Look, I know you’re really busy,” she started off. “And this isn’t your job. So it’s perfectly okay if you want to say no…”
She looked at the pile of documents on Rebecka’s desk.
“Forget it,” she said. “You’re up to your eyes in work.”
“What is it?” said Rebecka. “If it’s to do with Inna Wattrang, just ask. It’s…”
She broke off.
“I was going to say ‘it’s cool working on a murder,’” she went on, “but that’s not what I meant.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Anna-Maria. “I know exactly what you mean. There’s something special about a murder investigation. I absolutely don’t want one single person to be murdered. But if they are, then I really want to be involved in solving it.”
Rebecka Martinsson looked relieved.
“That’s what I used to dream about once upon a time, when I decided to join the police,” said Anna-Maria. “Perhaps you did too, when you took up a career in law?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I moved from Kiruna and started studying because I’d fallen out with my church. The fact that I went in for law was more or less chance. Then I worked hard and the jobs just came along. I kind of slipped into things. I don’t think I ever made a real choice until I moved back here.”
They had quickly got close to a serious topic of conversation. But they didn’t know each other well enough to carry on along that particular route. So they stopped, and neither spoke for a little while.
But Rebecka noticed gratefully that the silence didn’t feel awkward.
“So,” said Rebecka at last, with a little smile. “What did you want to ask me?”
Anna-Maria smiled back. There had always been a kind of tension between her and Rebecka Martinsson for some reason. She hadn’t really given it much thought, but sometimes it occurred to her that you weren’t necessarily close to another person just because you’d saved their life. But all of a sudden it felt as if that tension had flown out the window.
“Inna Wattrang’s boss, Mauri Kallis, is coming up here tomorrow,” she said.
Rebecka whistled.
“It’s true,” Anna-Maria went on. “And I have to talk to him, but I don’t know anything about the company or what Inna Wattrang’s job involved.”
“There must be loads of stuff on the Net.”
“Exactly,” said Anna-Maria, with a pained expression.
She hated reading. Swedish and math had been her worst subjects in school. She’d only just scraped the grades she needed to get into the police training college.
“I understand,” said Rebecka. “You’ll have a summary in the morning. Let’s say eight-thirty, because I’m in court all day and they start at nine.”
“Are you sure?” said Anna-Maria. “It’s a lot of work.”
“But that’s my thing,” said Rebecka. “Turning a great big pile of rubbish into a two-page summary.”
“And then you’re in court all day. Have you finished preparing for that?”
Rebecka grinned.
“Now you’re starting to feel guilty,” she teased. “First of all you want me to do you a favor. Now you want absolution as well.”
“Forget it,” said Anna-Maria. “I’d rather have a guilty conscience than do all that reading. And it’s one of those company things too…”
“Mmm, Kallis Mining’s an international company. Not a group as such, you could call it a sphere. But I’ll explain the company structure as well, it isn’t that complicated really.”
“Yeah, right! As soon as you say company and group and sphere I come out in hives. But I really appreciate your doing this. And I’ll think about you as I’m flopping down on the sofa in front of the TV this evening. But seriously—shall I go and get you a pizza or something? I assume you’re staying here?”
“I’m going home, I have every intention of flopping down in front of the TV as well. I’ll get this done first.”
“Who are you? Superwoman?”
“That’s right. Off you go now, home to the TV. Haven’t you got lots of children to kiss good night as well?”
“Mmm, the eldest two don’t kiss Mummy any longer. And the little girl only kisses Daddy.”
“But there’s your youngest.”
“Gustav. He’s three. Oh yes, he wants to kiss his old mummy.”
Rebecka smiled. It was a warm, kind smile with a fleeting hint of sorrow. It made her look softer.
I feel sorry for her, thought Anna-Maria a while later as she was on her way home in the car. She’s gone through a lot.
She felt a pang of conscience over talking about her children; Rebecka had none.
But what can I do? she defended herself. They’re a huge part of my life. If mentioning them is taboo, it’s going to be impossible to chat.
Robert had put everything away, and even wiped the kitchen table. She warmed up fish fingers and mashed potato in the microwave and drank a glass of red wine to go with it. Enjoyed the fact that the mash was homemade, with real potatoes. Felt that she had the best life anybody could possibly wish for.