ASA LARSSON ~ THE SAVAGE ALTAR (3 page)

“Himlen Tur och Retur,
Heaven and Back
.”

“That’s the one. He’s their golden calf, he’s been in all the papers, even
Expressen
and
Aftonbladet,
so there’s bound to be a lot written now. And the TV cameras will be up here.”

“Exactly,” said von Post, and stood up, looking impatient. “I don’t want anyone leaking information to the press. I’ll take over all contact with the media and I want you to report to me on a regular basis; anything that emerges during interrogation and so on, is that clear? Everything is to be passed on to me. When the journalists start asking questions you can say I’ll be holding a press conference on the steps of the church at twelve midday today. What’s your next move?”

“We need to get hold of the sister, she was the one who found the body; then we need to speak to the three pastors. The medical examiner is on his way from Luleå; he should be here any minute now.”

“Good. I want a report on the cause of death and a credible version of the course of events leading up to it at eleven-thirty, so be by the phone then. That’s all. If you’re done here I’ll just take a look around on my own for a bit.”

“O
h, come on,” said Anna-Maria to Sven-Erik Stålnacke. “This has got to be better than sitting around interviewing pissed-up snowmobile riders.”

Her Ford Escort wouldn’t start, and Sven-Erik was giving her a lift home.

It was just as well, she thought; he needed encouragement so that he didn’t get fed up with the job.

“It’s that bastard von Pisspot,” Sven-Erik replied with a grimace. “As soon as I have anything to do with him I just feel like saying sod the lot of it, and just going through the motions every day until it’s time to go home.”

“Well, don’t think about him now. Think about Viktor Strandgård instead. The lunatic who killed him is out there somewhere, and you’re going to find him. Let that pompous old fool scream and shout and talk to the newspapers. The rest of us know who actually does all the work.”

“How can I not think about him? He’s watching me like a hawk all the time.”

“I know.”

She looked out through the car window. The houses still lay sleeping in the darkness of the streets, with just an occasional light in a window. The orange paper Advent stars were still hanging here and there. This year nobody had burned to death. There had been fights and the usual dose of misery, but no worse than usual. She felt slightly sick. Hardly surprising. She’d been up for a good hour and had eaten nothing. She realized she wasn’t concentrating on what Sven-Erik was saying, and rewound her memory to catch up. He’d asked how she’d managed to work with von Post.

“We never actually had that much to do with each other,” she said.

“Look, I could really do with your help, Anna-Maria. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of pressure on those of us working on this case, without that bully on top of everything else. I could do with a colleague’s support right now.”

“That sounds like blackmail to me.” Anna-Maria couldn’t help laughing.

“I’ll do whatever it takes. Blackmail, threats. In any case, it’s good for you to get a bit of exercise. You could at least be there and talk to the sister when we find her. Just help me get started.”

“Fine, ring me when you’ve found her.”

Sven-Erik bent forward over the steering wheel and looked up at the night sky.

“Just look at the moon,” he said with a smile. “I should be out there hunting foxes.”

I
n Meijer & Ditzinger’s offices Rebecka Martinsson took the telephone from Maria Taube.

A Moomin troll, Maria had said. But there was only one Moomintroll. The image of a snub-nosed face suddenly materialized on the inside of her eyelids.

“Rebecka Martinsson.”

“It’s Sanna. I don’t know if you’ve heard it on the news already, but Viktor’s dead.”

“Yes, I heard it just now. I’m sorry.”

Without thinking, Rebecka picked up a pen from the table and wrote, “Say no! NO!” on a yellow Post-it note.

On the other end of the phone Sanna Strandgård took a deep breath.

“I know we haven’t kept in touch lately, but you’re still my closest friend. I didn’t know who to call. I was the one who found Viktor in the church, and I… but perhaps you’re busy?”

Busy? thought Rebecka, and felt confusion rising in her like mercury in a hot thermometer. What kind of question is that? Did Sanna seriously think that anybody could answer that question?

“Of course I’m not busy when it involves something like this,” she answered gently, pressing her hand to her eyes. “Did you say you found him?”

“It was terrible.” Sanna’s voice was quiet and flat. “I got to the church at about three in the morning. He was supposed to have come over to me and the girls for a meal in the evening, but he never turned up. I just thought he’d forgotten. You know what he’s like when he’s alone in the church, praying; he forgets what time it is and where he is. I often tell him, ‘You can be that sort of Christian when you’re a young guy, and you’re not responsible for any kids. I have to take the chance when I can, and say a prayer sitting on the toilet.’ ”

She was quiet for a moment, and Rebecka wondered whether she had realized that she was talking about Viktor as if he were still alive.

“But then I woke up in the middle of the night,” said Sanna, “and I had the feeling that something had happened.”

She broke off and began to hum a psalm. The Lord is My Shepherd.

Rebecka fixed her eyes on the flickering text on the screen in front of her. But the letters jumped out of their places, regrouped and formed a picture of Viktor Strandgård’s angelic face covered in blood.

Sanna Strandgård was talking again. Her voice was like thin September ice. Rebecka recognized that voice. Cold black water swirled under the shining surface.

"They’d cut off his hands. And his eyes were, well, it was all so strange. When I turned him over the back of his head was completely… I think I’m going mad. And the police are looking for me. They came to the house early this morning, but I told the girls to be as quiet as mice, and we didn’t open the door. The police probably believe I murdered my own brother. Then I took the girls and left. I’m so scared of cracking up. But that’s not the worst thing."

“No?” asked Rebecka.

“Sara was with me when I found him. Well, Lova was too, but she was sleeping in the sledge outside the church. And Sara is in total shock. She won’t speak. I’ve tried to reach her, but she just sits and stares out through the window and tucks her hair behind her ears.”

Rebecka could feel her stomach tying itself in knots.

“For God’s sake, Sanna. Get some help. Ring the Psychiatric Service and tell them it’s an emergency. Both you and the girls could do with some support at the moment. I know it sounds dramatic, but—”

“I can’t, you know I can’t,” wailed Sanna. “Mum and Dad will say I’ve gone mad and they’ll try to take the girls away from me. You know what they’re like. And the church is totally against psychologists and hospitals and all that. They’d never understand. I daren’t talk to the police, they’ll just make everything worse. And I daren’t answer the phone in case it’s some reporter; it was difficult enough when the revival first started, with everybody ringing up and saying he was hallucinating and he was crazy.”

“But you do understand that you can’t just stay away,” pleaded Rebecka.

“I can’t cope with this, I can’t cope with this,” said Sanna as if she were talking to herself. “I’m very sorry I rang and disturbed you, Rebecka. You get on with your work now.”

Rebecka swore to herself. Shit, shit, shit.

“I’ll come,” she sighed. “You have to let the police interview you. I’ll come up and go with you, okay?”

“Okay,” whispered Sanna.

“Can you manage to drive the car? Can you get to my grandmother’s house in Kurravaara?”

“I can ask someone to give me a lift.”

“Good. There’s never anyone there in the winter. Take Sara and Lova. You remember where the key is. Get the fire going. I’ll be there this afternoon. Can you manage until then?”

R
ebecka stared at the telephone when she had put the receiver down. She felt empty and confused.

“Unbelievable,” she said to Maria Taube in an exhausted voice. “She didn’t even have to ask me.”

Rebecka looked down at her watch. Then she closed her eyes, breathed in through her nose and straightened her head at the same time, then breathed out through her mouth and let her shoulders drop. Maria had seen her do it many times. Before negotiations and important meetings. Or when she was sitting working in the middle of the night with a deadline hanging over her.

“How do you feel?” asked Maria.

“I don’t think I want to find out.”

Rebecka shook her head and let her gaze fly out through the window to avoid Maria’s troubled eyes. She bit her lips hard from the inside. It had stopped raining.

“Listen, kid, you shouldn’t work so bloody hard,” said Maria gently. “Sometimes it’s a good idea just to let go and scream a bit.”

Rebecka clasped her hands on her lap.

Let go, she thought. What happens if you find out you keep on falling? And what happens if you can’t stop screaming. Suddenly you’re fifty. Pumped full of drugs. Shut up in some mental hospital. With the scream that never stops inside your head.

“That was Viktor Strandgård’s sister,” she said, and was surprised at how calm she sounded. “Evidently she found him in the church. It seems as if she and her two daughters could do with some help right now, so I’m going to take some time off and go up there for a few days. I’ll take my laptop and work from up there.”

“This Viktor Strandgård, he was something big up there?” asked Maria.

Rebecka nodded.

“He had a near-death experience, and then there was a kind of religious explosion in Kiruna.”

“I remember,” said Maria. “It was in the evening papers. He’d been to heaven, and he said that if you fell over, it didn’t hurt; the ground just sort of received you into its embrace. I thought it sounded lovely.”

“Mmm.” Rebecka went on, “And he said he’d been sent back to this earthly life to tell everyone that God had great plans for Christianity in Kiruna. A great revival was coming, and it would spread from the north over the whole world. Wonders and miracles would happen if the churches would only unite and believe.”

“Believe in what?”

“In the power of God. In the vision. In the end all those who believed in everything joined together to form a new church, The Source of All Our Strength. And then the whole of copper red Kiruna turned into one big revivalist meeting. Viktor wrote a book that was translated into loads of languages. He stopped studying and started preaching. They built a new church, the Crystal Church; it was supposed to make people think of the ice church and the ice sculptures they build in Jukkasjärvi every winter. Above all, it wasn’t meant to remind anyone of the Kiruna church, which is really dark inside.”

“And what about you? Were you part of all this?”

“I was already a member of the Mission church before Viktor’s accident. So I was there from the start.”

“And now?” asked Maria.

“Now I’m a heathen,” said Rebecka with a mirthless smile. “The pastors and the elders requested that I leave the church.”

“But why?”

“It’s a long story; some other time.”

“Okay,” said Maria hesitantly. “What do you think Måns is going to say when you tell him you’re taking some leave at such short notice?”

“Nothing. He’s just going to kill me, tear me limb from limb and feed my body to the fish in Nybroviken. I’ll have to talk to him as soon as he gets in, but first I’ll ring the police in Kiruna so they don’t pull Sanna in for questioning; she won’t be able to cope with that.”

A
ssistant Chief Prosecutor Carl von Post stood at the door of the Crystal Church and stared at the people who were getting on with the business of packing up Viktor Strandgård’s body. The police surgeon, Senior Medical Examiner Lars Pohjanen, was drawing heavily on a cigarette as usual, mumbling orders to Anna Granlund, the autopsy technician, and two burly men with a stretcher.

“Try and loop his hair up so it doesn’t get caught in the zip. Pull the plastic round the whole thing and try to keep the intestines inside the body when you lift it. Anna, can you sort out a paper bag for the hand?”

A murder, thought von Post. And a sodding awful murder. Not some miserable bloody tale of an alky who finally kills the old woman more or less by mistake after a week on the booze. A terrible murder. Worse than that—the terrible murder of a celebrity.

And it was all his. It belonged to him. All he had to do was take the helm, let the whole world switch on the spotlights and sail straight into fame. And then he could get away from this pit. He had never meant to stay here, but his qualifications had only been good enough to get a place with the court in Gällivare. Then he’d got a job with the prosecutor’s office. He’d applied for plenty of jobs in Stockholm, but without success. All of a sudden the years had gone by.

He stepped to one side to let the men carrying the stretcher, with its well-sealed gray plastic body bag, pass by. Senior Medical Examiner Lars Pohjanen came limping behind, shoulders slightly hunched as if he were cold, eyes fixed on the ground. The cigarette was still dangling from the corner of his mouth. His hair was usually plastered over his shiny bald head; now it was hanging tiredly down over his ears. Anna Granlund was just behind him. She was carrying a paper bag containing Viktor Strandgård’s hand. When she caught sight of von Post her lips tightened. He stopped them on their way out.