ASA LARSSON ~ THE SAVAGE ALTAR (21 page)

“Are you awake?”

It was Anna-Maria Mella. The policewoman with the long plait and the huge stomach.

Sanna answered, and Anna-Maria’s face appeared in the doorway.

“I just thought I’d see if you wanted some breakfast. Tea and a sandwich?”

Sanna said yes, and Anna-Maria disappeared. She left the cell door slightly ajar.

From the corridor Sanna heard the guard’s resigned voice:

“For God’s sake, Mella!”

Then she heard Anna-Maria’s reply:

“Oh, come on. What do you think she’s going to do? Come out here and blast her way through the security door?”

I’ll bet she’s a good mother, thought Sanna. The sort who leaves the door open a bit so the children can hear her moving about in the kitchen. The sort who leaves a light on by the bed if they’re scared of the dark.

After a while Anna-Maria Mella came back with two gherkin sandwiches in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. She had a file clamped under one arm, and pushed the door shut with her foot. The mug was chipped, and once upon a time had belonged to “The Best Grandmother in the World.”

“Wow,” said Sanna gratefully, sitting up. “I thought it was just bread and water in jail.”

“This is bread and water,” laughed Anna-Maria. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

Sanna gestured invitingly toward the foot of the bunk, and Anna-Maria sat down. She placed the file on the floor.

“It’s dropped,” said Sanna between mouthfuls of tea, nodding at Anna-Maria’s stomach. “It’s nearly time.”

“Yes.” Anna-Maria smiled.

There was a comfortable silence between them. Sanna took small bites of her sandwich. The gherkin crunched between her teeth. Anna-Maria gazed out of the window at the heavy snow.

“The murder of your brother was so—how shall I put it—religious,” said Anna-Maria thoughtfully. “Ritualistic, somehow.”

Sanna stopped chewing. The piece of sandwich stuck in her mouth like a huge lump.

“The gouged-out eyes, the severed hands, all the stab wounds,” Anna-Maria went on. “The place where the body was lying. Right in the middle of the aisle, in front of the altar. And no sign of struggle or violence.”

“Like a sacrificial lamb,” said Sanna quietly.

“Exactly,” agreed Anna-Maria. “It made me think of a place in the Bible, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ ”

“It’s in one of the Books of Moses,” said Sanna, reaching for her Bible, which was on the floor next to her bunk.

She searched for a moment, then she read out loud:

“ ‘And if any harm follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth…’ ”

She paused and read silently to herself before continuing:

“ ‘…hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’ ”

“Who had a reason to take revenge on him?” asked Anna-Maria.

Sanna didn’t reply, but flicked through the Bible, apparently aimlessly.

“They often put out people’s eyes in the Old Testament,” she said. “The Philistines put out Samson’s eyes. The Ammonites offered the besieged people of Rabbah peace, on condition that they were allowed to put out the right eye of every single one.”

She fell silent as the door was pushed wide open and the guard appeared with Rebecka Martinsson behind him. Rebecka’s hair was lying on her shoulders in wet clumps. Her mascara had run into two black circles under her eyes. Her nose was an angry red dripping tap.

“Good morning,” she said, glaring at the two smiling women on the bunk. “Don’t ask!”

The guard disappeared and Rebecka remained standing in the doorway.

“What’s this, morning prayers?” she asked.

“We were talking about eyes being put out in the Bible,” said Sanna.

“ ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ for example,” added Anna-Maria.

“Mmm,” said Rebecka. “And then there’s that place in one of the gospels: ‘if thine eye offend thee’ and so on—where was it?”

Sanna flicked through the Bible.

“It’s in Mark,” she said. “Here it is, Mark 9:43 onward. ‘And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ ”

“Good grief!” said Anna-Maria with feeling.

“What made you start talking about this?” asked Rebecka, struggling out of her coat.

Sanna put the Bible down.

“Anna-Maria said she thought Viktor’s murder seemed so ritualistic,” she replied.

A tense silence filled the little room. Rebecka looked grimly at Anna-Maria.

“I don’t want you to talk to Sanna about the murder when I’m not present,” she said sharply.

Anna-Maria leaned forward with difficulty and picked the file up off the floor. She stood up and looked steadily at Rebecka.

“I hadn’t planned it,” she said. “It just happened. I’ll take you to a room where you can talk. Rebecka, can you ask the guard to take Sanna along to the shower when you’ve finished, then we’ll all meet in the interview room in forty minutes.”

She held the file out to Rebecka.

“Here,” she said with a conciliatory smile. “The copies of Viktor’s Bible you wanted. I really hope we can work well together.”

No points to you, thought Rebecka as Anna-Maria walked ahead of them.

When they were alone Rebecka sank down on a chair and looked resolutely at Sanna, who was standing by the window looking out at the falling snow.

“Who could have put the murder weapon in your flat?” asked Rebecka.

“I can’t think of anybody,” said Sanna. “I don’t know any more now than I did before. I was asleep. Viktor was standing by my bed. I put Lova in the sledge and took Sara by the hand and we went to the church. He was lying there.”

They fell silent. Rebecka opened the file Anna-Maria had given her. The first sheet was a copy of the back of a postcard. There was no stamp. Rebecka stared at the handwriting. A chill went though her body. It was the same writing as the message on her car. Sprawling. As if the person who had written it had been wearing gloves, or had written it with the wrong hand. She read:

“What is it?” asked Sanna, terrified, as she watched the color drain from Rebecka’s face.

I can’t say anything about the note on the car, thought Rebecka. She’ll go mad. She’ll be terrified something will happen to the girls.

"Nothing," she replied, “but listen to this.”

She read the postcard out loud.

“Who loved him, Sanna?” she asked.

Sanna looked down.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Loads of people.”

“You really don’t know a thing,” said Rebecka crossly.

She felt upset. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t work out what it was.

“Had you fallen out with Viktor when he died?” she asked. “Why weren’t he and your parents allowed to pick up the girls?”

"I’ve explained all that," said Sanna impatiently. "Viktor would just have given them to my parents."

Rebecka didn’t speak, she just gazed out of the window. She was thinking about Patrik Mattsson. On the video from the church service he’d grabbed at Viktor’s hands. And Viktor had snatched them away.

“I need to go for a shower now if I’m going to fit it in before the interview,” said Sanna.

Rebecka nodded absently.

I’ll talk to Patrik Mattsson, she thought.

She was jerked back to the present by Sanna running her hand quickly over Rebecka’s hair.

“I love you, Rebecka,” she said softly. “My dearest, dearest sister.”

It’s just amazing how everybody loves me, thought Rebecka. They lie, deceive and eat you up for breakfast, all out of love.

R
ebecka and Sanna are sitting at the kitchen table. Sara is lying on a beanbag in the living room listening to Jojje Wadenius. It’s her morning routine. Porridge and Jojje on the beanbag. In the kitchen the radio is turned to P1. The orange Advent star is still hanging in the window, although it’s February. But you need to hang on to a little bit of Christmas, its decorations and its light, just to keep you going until the spring arrives. Sanna is standing by the stove making sandwiches. The coffee percolator gurgles one last time, then falls silent. She pours two mugs and places them on the kitchen table.

Nausea floods through Rebecka like an enormous wave. She jumps up
from the table and rushes into the bathroom. She doesn’t even manage to lift the lid properly. Most of the vomit ends up all over the lid and the floor.

Sanna follows her. She stands in the doorway in her tatty green fluffy dressing gown, looking at Rebecka with anxious eyes. Rebecka wipes away a strand of mucus and vomit from her mouth with the back of her hand. When she turns her face up toward Sanna, she can see that Sanna has realized.

“Who?” asks Sanna. “Is it Viktor?”

“
H
e has the right to know,” says Sanna.

They are sitting at the kitchen table again. The coffee has been thrown away.

“Why?” says Rebecka harshly.

She feels as if she is trapped inside thick glass. It’s been like this for a while now. Her body wakes long before she does in the mornings. Her mouth opens for the toothbrush. Her hands make the bed. Her legs make their way to the Hjalmar Lundbohm school. Sometimes she stops dead in the middle of the street, wondering whether it’s Saturday. If she has to go to school at all. But it’s remarkable. Her legs are always right. She arrives in the right room on the right day at the right time. Her body can manage perfectly well without her. She’s avoided going to church. Blamed schoolwork and the flu and gone to visit her grandmother in Kurravaara. And Thomas Söderberg hasn’t asked about her, or phoned.

“Because it’s his child,” says Sanna. “He’s bound to realize, in any case. I mean, it’ll show in a few months.”

“No,” says Rebecka tonelessly. “It won’t.”

She sees how the meaning of what she has just said sinks in.

“No, Rebecka,” says Sanna, shaking her head.

Tears well up in her eyes and she reaches for Rebecka’s hand, but Rebecka gets up and puts on her shoes and padded jacket.

“I love you, Rebecka,” pleads Sanna. “Don’t you understand that it’s a gift? I’ll help you to…”

She stops speaking as Rebecka looks at her with contempt.

“I know,” she says quietly. “You don’t think I’m even capable of looking after myself and Sara.”

Sanna buries her head in her hands and begins to weep inconsolably.

Rebecka leaves the flat. Rage is pounding through her body. Her fists are clenched inside her gloves. It feels as if she could kill someone. Anyone.

When Rebecka has gone, Sanna picks up the telephone and dials. It is Thomas Söderberg’s wife, Maja, who answers.

P
atrik Mattsson was woken at quarter past eleven in the morning by the sound of a key being turned in the outside door of his flat. Then his mother’s voice. Fragile as ice in the autumn. Full of anxiety. She called his name, and he heard her go through the hall and past the bathroom where he was lying. She stopped at the door of the living room and called again. After a while she knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hello! Patrik!”

I ought to answer, he thought.

He moved slightly, and the tiles on the floor laid their coolness against his face. He must have fallen asleep in the end. On the bathroom floor. Curled up like a fetus. He still had his clothes on.

His mother’s voice again. Determined hammering on the door.

“Hello, Patrik, open the door, there’s a good boy. Are you all right?”

No, I’m not all right, he thought. I’ll never be all right again.

His lips formed the name. But no sound was allowed to pass his lips.

Viktor. Viktor. Viktor.

Now she was rattling the door handle.

“Patrik, either you open this door right now or I’m ringing the police and they can kick it in.”

Oh, God. He managed to get to his knees. His head was pounding like a pneumatic drill. The hip that had been resting on the hard tiled floor was aching.

“I’m coming,” he croaked. “I’ve… not been too well. Hang on.”

She backed away as he opened the door.

“You look terrible,” she burst out. “Are you ill?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Shall I ring up and say you’re not coming in?”

“No, I’ve got to go now.”

He looked at the clock.

She followed him into the lounge. Flowerpots lay smashed on the floor. The rug had ended up in one corner. One of the armchairs had been tipped upside down.

“What’s been going on here?” she asked weakly.

He turned and put his arm around her shoulders.

“I did it myself, Mum. But it’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m feeling better now.”

She nodded in reply, but he could see that tears weren’t far away. He turned away from her.

“I must get off to the mushroom farm,” he said.

“I’ll stay here and clean up for you,” his mother said from behind him, bending down to pick up a glass from the floor.

Patrik Mattsson defended himself against her submissive concern.

“No, honestly, Mum, you don’t need to do that,” he said.

“For my sake,” she whispered, trying to catch his eye.

She bit her lower lip in an attempt to keep the tears at bay.

“I know you don’t want to confide in me,” she went on. “But if you’d just let me tidy up, then…”

She swallowed once.

“… then at least I’ll have done something for you,” she finished.

He dropped his shoulders and forced himself to give her a quick hug.