Åsa Larsson - Until Thy Wrath Be Past

Morning sun and pink clouds above the treetops. But all Mella saw was black forest on all sides, and dirty snowdrifts. Her eyes searched automatically for reindeer wandering along the edge of the road, but otherwise concentrated on the frost-damaged tarmac.

Her mood improved significantly when she got out of her car outside Anni Autio’s house.

“There’s a lovely smell of baking in the air,” she said when Anni opened the door.

Once in the kitchen, Anni packed buns and biscuits into plastic bags for Mella to take home with her.

“What else is there for me to do with them?” she said when Mella tried to protest. “All the old folk in the village have freezers chock-a-block with their own buns and biscuits. Surely you can let me offload the odd goodie on you, especially as they’re newly baked? You’re not on a G.I. diet, are you?”

“Good Lord, no.”

“Well, then, dunk away!”

Mella broke a corner off a cinnamon biscuit and dipped it in her coffee.

“Did Wilma and Simon tell you where they were going diving?” she said.

“I didn’t even know they were going diving. I told the police that when they went missing. Nobody knew anything at all. Simon’s mother said that his diving gear had disappeared from the garage, so we assumed they had gone diving. But as you know, they didn’t find the car. No sign of it.”

“I see. Do you think they might have told someone? Their friends in the village, perhaps?”

“There are hardly any young people left in the village. Just us old-timers. The children live in Kiruna or somewhere in the south. They argue among themselves about who’s going to look after the houses they’ve inherited from their parents. They make no attempt to sell them, and they never come to the village, not even in summer. The houses are falling to pieces. I usually refer to my nephews, Tore and Hjalmar Krekula, as ‘the boys’ – but they’re over fifty, for God’s sake. And Tore has two sons of his own: they do a bit of driving for their dad, but they also live in Kiruna. So Wilma and Simon used to stay at home most of the time. They drove into Kiruna now and then. He had a bedsit there. More coffee?”

“No thanks, I’ve had three cups already! Can I take a look at her room?”

“Of course. I won’t come with you, it’s upstairs.”

Anni suddenly looked worried.

“It’s very cold up there. I turned off the heating when she… I mean, she wasn’t… I suppose I was just thinking of the expense.”

She fell silent, standing by the countertop. Anxiously brushed traces of flour from her apron.

“It’s O.K.,” Mella said. “It costs a lot of money to keep a house warm. I know. I live in one myself.”

“It’s not O.K. The heating should have been on. The house and I ought to have been ready for her.”

“Do you know what?” Mella said. “You can be practical at the same time as you’re worrying or grieving. I reckon you were doing both.”

“I don’t want to start crying again,” Anni said, looking entreatingly at Mella as if hoping that she would be able to stop her going on about it. “You should have felt what the house was like when she was living here. So full of life. I still keep waking up and thinking it’s time to make her breakfast. I don’t suppose you believe me, knowing that I turned the heating off.”

“Listen, Anni, I couldn’t care less about the heating being off.”

Anni smiled wanly.

“I was so happy back then. I enjoyed every day, every morning when she was here with me. I didn’t take it for granted, though. I knew she could move back to Stockholm at any moment.”

This isn’t a typical teenager’s room, Mella thought as she entered Wilma’s room.

An old office desk stood in front of the window. A blue-painted Windsor-style chair served as a desk chair. The bed was narrow – 80 centimetres, perhaps. On it was a white embroidered bedspread. There were no posters on the walls, no ancient teddy bears or other plush toys to remind Wilma of her childhood. A photograph of her with Simon was pinned to the wall beside the bed. It looked as if Wilma had taken it herself. She was roaring with laughter, he was smiling in mild embarrassment. Mella’s heart bled as she looked at it.

She searched the desk drawers. No maps. No diary.

She could hear Anni Autio struggling up the stairs, and hastened to open the wardrobe and look through the clothes piled at the bottom. When Anni entered the room, Mella was standing on a chair, examining the top of the wardrobe. Anni sat down on the bed.

“What are you looking for?” she said – not aggressively, she was just interested.

Mella shook her head.

“I don’t really know. Something that might indicate where they went. Where they were going to go diving.”

“But you found her in the river at Tervaskoski. Isn’t that where they were diving?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should talk to Johannes Svarvare,” Anni said. “He lives in that little red house with the glazed porch on the right just after the curve as you enter the village. He used to lend maps to Wilma and Simon when they were going exploring in the forest. I’m going to lie down here for a while. Perhaps you could call in and help me down the stairs before you drive back to town?”

Mella felt the urge to give Anni a big hug. To console her. And hopefully find a bit of consolation for herself.

But all she said was: “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll stop by on my way home.”

Johannes Svarvare also offered Mella coffee. She accepted even though she was feeling a bit queasy from having drunk so much already. He fetched the best china from the glass-fronted cupboard in the living room. The cups clinked against the saucers as he put the tray down on the kitchen table. They were delicate, with handles you could not fit your finger through, ivory-coloured with pink roses.

“Please excuse the mess,” Svarvare said, gesturing towards himself. “It never occurred to me that the forces of law and order would come visiting on a Saturday afternoon.”

His hair was unkempt, and he looked as if he had slept in his clothes. His brown woollen trousers were almost falling down. His crumpled shirt had several stains down the front.

“How nice to have a wood-burning stove in the kitchen,” Mella said, in an attempt to lessen his embarrassment.

Christmas curtains were still hanging in the windows. Rag rugs lay chaotically on the floor, one on top of the other, to keep the heat in. The floor itself was covered in crumbs.

His eyesight can’t be all that good, Mella thought. He doesn’t see that the place could do with a good vacuuming.

What a fascinating village, she thought. It’s just as Anni said: in a few years’ time there’ll be nobody left. At best, the houses will have become summer cottages for surviving family members. The place will be completely deserted in winter.

“This is a big loss for poor old Anni,” Svarvare said, moving his jaw from side to side. “A tragic accident.”

It looked as if his false teeth were a bad fit. There was a glass of water on the draining board – no doubt that was where he normally kept them. Mella suspected that he only put his teeth in when he was about to eat or expecting visitors.

“I’m trying to find out what happened,” she said, coming straight to the point. “Various details are unclear. Did she tell you where they were going to dive?”

“Didn’t you find her downstream from Tervaskoski?”

“Yes… even so.”

“‘Even so?’ What do you mean, details that are unclear?”

Mella hesitated. She preferred not to put her cards on the table. But sometimes you had to take a gamble to get results.

“There are indications that she didn’t drown in the river,” she said.