The Second Deadly Sin (17 page)

She fell asleep with her mobile in her hand.

District Prosecutor von Post and Inspectors Mella, Stålnacke, Olsson and Rantakyrö drove to Kurravaara to interview Maja Larsson.

Von Post had explained why it was necessary for there to be so many of them. It was not to scare her. But Larsson should not assume that she could get away with keeping quiet or telling lies this time. That was why there had to be several of them. That was why the interrogation would take place in her home.

What a load of bollocks, Mella thought. Of course he wants to frighten her, and he likes to have an audience. That’s his personality reduced to its basic characteristics. A real bastard.

The type who takes the credit for work done by others. Trims his sails to every wind and saves his own skin. If he praises you, you’d better watch out because you know he wants something from you. But he considers himself to be socially competent.

He had gone out of his way to learn the names of her children, and always asked after them. She hated responding to his faked interest and squirmed in embarrassment when she told him about Jenny’s pony-riding or about Petter’s progress at school.

Now he had decided to make use of the fifteen-kilometre journey to Kurravaara where Larsson was staying by giving his fellow passengers a crash course in interrogation techniques.

“It is absolutely essential to gain the trust of the witness. She must have confidence in the interrogator.”

You don’t say, Mella thought.

“An experienced interrogator interprets all the signs – body language, for instance.”

Somebody in the back seat grunted. Stålnacke blew his nose.

“An uninhibited conversation. That’s what we try to achieve. What we are working towards. We don’t ask any direct questions. We simply talk about things. In that way an experienced interrogator can … can get to know absolutely everything.”

Now Olsson seemed to have something stuck in his throat.

Thank God it’s dark inside the car, Mella thought. She joined in the grunting.

*

Maja Larsson opened the door with her arms full of dirty washing.

The thousand silver plaits were dangling down over her neck.

Incredibly beautiful, thought Mella, who had been living for almost half a century without a man ever turning his head to look at her.

And she didn’t seem put out in the least by the prosecutor and his crew.

“Will it take long?” she asked wearily. “Can I sling this stuff in the machine?”

“Well,” von Post began – but by then she had already turned on her heel and disappeared into the bathroom. After a while they heard the washing machine starting to turn.

Mella noted the look of irritation on von Post’s face as she and her colleagues took their shoes off in the hall. He kept his shoes on.

Only country yokels walk around in their stockinged feet, Mella thought. The upper classes always have a servant to clean up after them.

“Örjan!” Larsson shouted to somebody at the top of the stairs.

“The police are here.”

They all looked up and saw a man in his sixties looking down at
them. Mella couldn’t see much more of him than his hair. No deforestation there. He stared down at the gathering in the hall below.

“What the hell have you been doing? Robbing a bank?”

Larsson shrugged.

So much for trust in the interrogator and uninhibited conversation, Mella thought, the whole of her body gripped with squirming embarrassment.

Her colleagues traipsed into the kitchen after von Post. It took some considerable time. Everyone was trying to be last, hoping that there wouldn’t be enough room for all of them so that the luckiest could wait outside. Back to their schooldays …

When they had all ended up in the kitchen, they looked at each other. Von Post and Larsson had sat down on either side of a tape recorder that he had placed between them.

I can’t possibly join them in there, Mella thought from the doorway. I’d be much too close. How big can a kitchen be? In the end she decided to join her colleagues. They were lined up, leaning against the sink. They stood there, shuffling from one foot to the other, clearing their throats, contemplating the decorative fringes of the rugs, wondering what on earth to do with their hands.

“Anyway, fru Larsson,” said von Post loudly and clearly, “when Rebecka Martinsson spoke to you, you didn’t mention the fact that your cousin Sol-Britt was in a relationship. Can you tell us about that now?”

Larsson sat there for a few seconds that felt like an eternity. Then she lit a cigarette and inhaled twice before answering.

“I thought she was the prosecutor in charge of the investigation?”

“Not any more she isn’t. I thought you said you were prepared to cooperate with us. Your cousin has been murdered. I don’t know, but isn’t it a bit odd that you don’t seem to be prepared to help the police?”

God help us all, Mella thought.

“You look young,” Larsson said. “How old are you?”

“Forty-five. We’re just trying to do our job, as I’m sure you understand.”

Von Post leaned forward and placed his hand on Larsson’s side of the table. She leaned back.

“Who was she having a relationship with?”

“You look younger. Much younger.”

Larsson moved her head back and forth, in a figure-of-eight shape, staring hard at his face.

“You haven’t had an operation, but you must be using Restylane – right?”

Von Post withdrew his hand. He glanced sideways at the row of police officers.

“Certainly not, but …”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. Looking after your appearance. Why shouldn’t a man … ? Especially if you’re keen to make a good impression in the media. And your fingernails are shit hot – if I could afford it I’d have mine looked after by manicure professionals as well.”

Von Post opened his mouth, then closed it again. In the end he said, “Why did you lie?”

“Have I lied?”

“You didn’t say that Sol-Britt had a lover. Martinsson must have asked you about that, surely?”

Mella gasped for breath. It had dawned on her what von Post was after. He wanted Larsson to say that she hadn’t lied, and that Martinsson had never asked. He wanted to have Martinsson’s error in black and white. She realised now why von Post had insisted on recording the interview, and having a transcript. He wanted everybody to know that Martinsson had boobed.

Larsson said nothing.

“Huh,” she said eventually.

Von Post raised an eyebrow.

“You really are driven by all the wrong motives, aren’t you? My cousin is dead. She has been stabbed to death. You want to become a celebrity and put your colleague in the shit. You want me to say …”

She turned to look at Mella and her colleagues.

“How did he manage to get Martinsson sacked from the investigation? I’d like to know that.”

Nobody spoke. Von Post leaned back on his chair and crossed his arms. As if to signal that he wasn’t going to allow himself to be provoked. That he had all the time in the world. That they could remain sitting here until sunrise tomorrow if necessary.

“You’re wearing expensive clothes as well,” she said. “Just look at those shoes that you didn’t condescend to take off before stamping around on my mother’s woven carpets. You couldn’t afford those on a prosecutor’s wage. So you must have a wife who earns more than you do. I can see that it can’t be easy to cope with that. Given the way you are. My guess is that you either beat her up or screw somebody else in your office because you hate her and are so het up about the injustice of life.”

It was now so silent in the kitchen that the ticking of the wall clock sounded like thunder. Everybody knew that von Post’s wife worked in a bank and earned much more than he did. It was also common knowledge that he bedded young would-be prosecutors, district court clerks and the occasional witness. Olsson contemplated his cuticles and Stålnacke was stroking his moustache.

Larsson was now going for the kill.

“I’ll bet you anything you like that your dad had the same job as you. But that he was more successful. A lawyer, I expect? Or was he a senior doctor?”

Von Post was looking pale. His father was a Justice of the Supreme Administrative Court.

“Are you refusing to answer my question?”

“I don’t know who she was having an affair with, O.K.? We didn’t know each other all that well. There was a lot of crap talked about her. But I don’t know any more than that. Have I annoyed you so much that you’re going to arrest me on those grounds?”

“You haven’t annoyed me,” von Post said. His voice had become a little muffled.

“I’m glad to hear it. I hope that means you will now clear off and leave me in peace. I have to make breakfast for my dying mother in the morning: she has difficulty in swallowing now. It takes an age. The carers don’t have time …”

*

They could hardly cram themselves into the car quickly enough. But they had not left the drive before Stålnacke exploded.

“Fucking hell! Stop the car! I need to shit! Christ almighty, I can’t wait. Stop now or it’ll be all over the back seat …”

He ran back to the house.

His colleagues watched in the rear-view mirror as Maja Larsson opened the door. There was a pause before she stepped to one side and allowed him in.

Stålnacke sat on top of the toilet lid. He didn’t actually need to empty his bowels at all. After two minutes, he flushed the lavatory. Then he flushed it again. He washed his hands, and went out. Maja Larsson and her boyfriend were sitting at the kitchen table. He nodded to the man, then said to Larsson, “All your guesses were right.”

She tossed her head to indicate that she could not care less, and stubbed out her cigarette on the inside of a jar lid, dropped the butt into the glass jar and screwed on the lid.

“He fixed it so that Martinsson was dropped from the investigation team. And we can do nothing about it. Anyway, sorry about all this …”

He gestured towards the kitchen.

“But you can be sure that we shall do everything we can to catch whoever did it.”

Her mouth twitched, and she looked the other way.

“Thank you for letting me use your lav. I’m getting old, dammit!

Constipated for a week, and then suddenly … Anyway, I’d better go.”

“Wait a moment.”

She was still looking away as she continued.

“She was having an affair with a married man who lives here in the village. As you know, you have to be careful about what you say to the police sometimes. Before you know where you are, the local kids are throwing stones through your windows. I expect you think I’m a coward. But who cares who she went to bed with? She’s dead. She’s not going to come back to life. And as for that jumpedup little prat who wants to use her to further his career prospects – do we really have to read in the newspapers about who she went to bed with? For Christ’s sake …”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. All I do know is that he works in Kiruna. And lives here in the village. And that he’s married with children.”

*

“I thought you were never going to come back,” Rantakyrö said to Stålnacke when he got back to the car.

“Huh,” Stålnacke said as he struggled with his seat belt. “It was a three-kilo dollop. Hell’s bells. I’ve been out of action for a whole week – then suddenly: whoosh! You’d never believe how happy it made me. I was thinking of having the little blighter christened.”

Von Post accelerated away, gravel clattering against the chassis.

Mella gave Stålnacke a knowing look. He nodded almost imperceptibly.

Krister Eriksson stood alone in his kitchen and held up his tin of chewing tobacco.

“I’m giving up,” he proclaimed to the whole universe. “I’ve had enough. No going back to baccy.”

He threw the tin into the rubbish bin under the sink, lifted out the plastic bag and tied it in a tight knot, then carried it out to the big bin by the car port.

Inside the house Marcus was finding it hard to settle down. He crawled about with the dogs and seemed able to carry on playing forever. Eriksson let him be. After all, it was when you went to bed that fear and horror started to prey on your mind. The same applied to adults as well. And the boy could sleep for as long as he liked the next morning.

It was not until after eleven o’clock that he came crawling up to Eriksson and announced that the Wild Dog was tired.

They brushed their teeth, despite the fact that the other dogs didn’t need to. But then the Wild Dog made it clear that he didn’t want to sleep in a bed under a duvet.

“The Wild Dog wants to sleep outside in the dog kennel,” he said.

So Eriksson set up his winter tent in the garden, next to the dog kennel.

Then Eriksson and Marcus sat in the dog kennel with a torch. Vera, Tintin and Roy were scampering around them. The dogs were thrilled to bits to have company – and with the reindeer skins
Eriksson had laid out over the floor. The place smelled reassuringly of dog, and somewhat pungently of reindeer skin.

Eriksson read aloud from
The Little Prince
, lighting up the illustrations with his torch.

“The little prince was given a fox,” Eriksson said. “Just as I got you, the Wild Dog.”

“Can I have a look at the fox?” Marcus said.

Eriksson found a page with a picture of the fox, and Marcus placed his finger on it.

“Read some more,” he said.

“You don’t have any hair,” Marcus said.

“No, but you have,” Eriksson said, stroking a hand over the boy’s blonde hair.