Åsa Larsson - Until Thy Wrath Be Past

“Really?”

“So they’d have been stuck. They’d never have made it back to Piilijärvi. The nearest petrol station is in Vittangi.”

Mella made a sort of humming noise to indicate surprise.

“It’s strange, don’t you think?” Stålnacke said. “I mean, they weren’t stupid, were they? How did they think they were going to get home?”

“I’ve no idea,” Mella said with a shrug.

“Oh well,” Stålnacke said, obviously irritated by the fact that she did not share his puzzlement over the empty petrol tank. “I just thought you might be interested.”

“Of course.” Mella made an effort. “Maybe someone siphoned off the petrol while the car was standing here during the winter. Someone on a snow scooter, perhaps?”

“There aren’t any scratches on the cap to the petrol tank. Mind you, if I could find the key, no doubt anybody else could have as well. I still think it’s odd, though.”

“Everything O.K.?”

Eriksson knocked on the open door of Martinsson’s office. He remained standing in the doorway. This time he took a good look round the place. The desk was piled high with legal documents. A cardboard box full of material having to do with some environmental investigation occupied the visitor’s chair. It was obvious that she was working her socks off. But he had known that already. Everyone in the police station knew it. When she had taken up her post in Kiruna, she had set lawsuits in motion at such a rate that the local solicitors complained. And God help any police officer who submitted inadequate preliminary-investigation documents – she would chase them up, thrust instructions detailing what needed to be done into their hands, then phone and nag them until they did what she wanted them to do.

Martinsson looked up from the file on a drink-driving case.

“No problems at all. How did it go out there? Did you find him?”

“No. What have you done with Tintin?”

“She’s here,” Martinsson said, rolling back her desk chair. “Under my desk.”

“What?” Eriksson said. His face was one big smile as he bent over to investigate. “Now look here, old girl; did it take just one afternoon for you to forget your boss? You’re supposed to jump up and dance out to greet me the moment you hear my footsteps in the corridor.”

When Eriksson bent down and started talking to her, Tintin got up and walked over to him, her tail wagging.

“Just look at her,” he said. “Now she’s ashamed because she didn’t show me the respect I deserve.”

Martinsson smiled at Tintin, who was arching her back submissively, wagging her tail excitedly and trying to lick her master on the mouth. Then she suddenly seemed to remember Martinsson. She hurried back, sat down beside Martinsson’s chair and placed her paw on the woman’s knee. Then she scurried back to Eriksson again.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Eriksson said. “Amazing! She stayed under your desk even as I was approaching. And now this. She’s giving you the highest possible marks. She’s normally very loyal to her master. This is most unusual.”

“I like dogs,” Martinsson said.

She looked him in the eye. Did not avert her gaze. He returned the look.

“Lots of people like dogs,” he said. “But dogs obviously like you. Are you thinking of getting one?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But the dogs I have in mind are those I played with as a child. It’s difficult to find intelligent hunting dogs now. Mind you, I don’t hunt myself. I want a dog that runs loose around the village during the winter, but that’s not allowed any more. That’s how it was when I was a girl. They knew everything that was going on. And hunted mice in the stubble-fields.”

“One like her, in other words?” he said, nodding towards Tintin. “Wouldn’t that be the right dog for you?”

“Of course. She’s lovely.”

Several long seconds passed. Tintin sat between them, looking first at one, then the other.

“Anyway,” Martinsson said eventually, “you didn’t find him.”

“No, but I knew we wouldn’t from the start.”

“How could you know that? What do you mean?”

Eriksson looked out of the window. Sunshine and a light blue sky, softening up the icy crust on the snow. Icicles hung in pretty rows dripping from gutters. The trees were suffering the pains of spring.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just that I sometimes get a feeling. Sometimes I know the dog is about to find something even before it starts barking. Or that we aren’t going to find anything, as on this occasion. It’s when I feel… how shall I put it?… maybe open is the right word. A human being is something special. There’s more to us than we realize. And Mother Earth is more than just a lump of dead rock. She’s also alive. If there’s a dead body lying somewhere in the countryside, you can feel it when you reach the place. The trees know, and vibrate with the knowledge. The stones know. The grass. They create an atmosphere. And we can perceive it if we just…”

He shrugged as a way of finishing the sentence.

“Like people do when they are dowsing for water,” Martinsson said, feeling that this sounded awkward. “They don’t really need a divining rod. They simply know that the water is there.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “Something like that, perhaps.”

He gave her a searching look, suspected that there was something she wanted to tell him.

“What’s on your mind?” he said.

“The girl they found,” Martinsson said. “I had a dream about her.”

“Really?”

“It was nothing much. Anyway, I have to go home now. Need a lift?”

“No, but thanks all the same. A mate of mine’s coming to help me with the car. So you saw Wilma, did you?”

“I dreamt about her.”

“What did she want, do you think?”

“It was a dream,” Martinsson said again. “Don’t they say that all the people in your dreams are really yourself?”

Eriksson smiled.

“Cheerio,” was all he said.

And off he went, with the dog.

Mella drove down to Piilijärvi, some 60 kilometres south-east of Kiruna. The snow had melted from the road. All that was left was an icy ridge in the middle. Mella needed to inform Anni Autio, Wilma Persson’s great-grandmother, that the girl had been found, and that she was dead. It would have been helpful to have Stålnacke with her, but that was out of the question. He could not forgive her for what had happened during the shooting in Regla.

“And what the hell am I supposed to do about that?” Mella said aloud to herself. “He’ll be retiring soon, so he won’t have to put up with me much longer. He can stay at home with Airi and her cats.”

But it nagged at her. She was used to laughing and joking with her colleagues. It had always been such fun, going to work. But now…

“Not much bloody fun at all!” she said to herself as she turned off onto the narrow, winding road leading from the E10 to the village.

And things were not getting any better. She rarely asked the others if they fancied lunch somewhere as a group. Often she just drove home and forced down some yoghourt and muesli on her own. She had started ringing her husband from work. In the middle of the day. To talk about nothing at all. Or she would invent errands: “Did you remember Gustav’s extra pair of gloves when you took him to nursery?” “Can you pick up some shopping on the way home?”

Anni Autio lived in a pink Eternit-clad house in the middle of the village, by the lake. The wooden steps up to the front door were stained brown, carefully looked after, and generously sanded to prevent falls. The handrail was black-painted iron. A handwritten note inside a plastic pocket, attached to the front door with a drawing pin, read: