Åsa Larsson - Until Thy Wrath Be Past

“Go on,” Mella said, concealing her impatience with difficulty.

“The inside was green. Why do you want to know?”

Mella gasped. This was it. Bloody hell, this was it!

“Stay where you are,” she yelled into the telephone. “Where do you live? I’m on my way.”

Göran Sillfors and his wife Berit took Mella to their cottage at Vittangijärvi. It was a brown-painted timber house with white window frames. The porch was unusually wide with a little roof supported by carved wooden columns. Göran drove the snow scooter with Mella in the sledge.

“Shall we go in?” Berit said when they arrived.

Mella shook her head.

“Where’s the shed door?” she said.

“There isn’t a door,” Göran said. “That’s the problem.”

The snow on the shed roof had melted and then frozen again. An enormous cake of ice hung ominously from the edge.

Mella took off her woolly hat and unzipped her scooter overalls. She was much too hot.

“You know what I mean,” she said with a jolly smile. “Show me where the door was. At the back?”

The opening, at the gable end, had been boarded over.

“I’ll sort out a new door in time for the spring,” Göran said. “We’re not here in the winter, so this is a bit amateurish.”

Mella examined the door frame. No sign of green paint, or of black paint, come to that.

“Could you remove the boards, please?” she said. “Just so I can go inside and take a quick look round.”

“Might one ask what you’re looking for?”

“Obviously I’m hoping there’s a bit of green paint left on the inside of the door frame. So that we can take some samples.”

“No, there won’t be any. It must be, let’s see, fifteen years ago that I painted it green. I unscrewed the hinges and laid it down on trestles. So there won’t be any paint on the frame.”

Göran Sillfors’ expression changed from pride at having done the painting so carefully to worry when he saw how disappointed Mella was.

“But do you know what?” he said. “One of the doors inside the cottage was painted with the same stuff. From the same tin. I painted it the same day, if I remember rightly. Will that do?”

Mella’s face lit up, and she threw her arms round a somewhat surprised Göran Sillfors.

“Will it do?” she shouted in delight. “You bet your life it will!”

“Shall we go inside after all, then?” Berit Sillfors said. “It would be good if I could check the mousetraps while we’re here.”

Scraping a bit of paint from the green door between the cottage’s vestibule and large hall, Mella put the flakes carefully in an envelope.

“Scrape as much as you like,” Göran said generously. “It needs repainting anyway.”

Berit Sillfors emptied the mousetraps in the upstairs wardrobes and beneath the sink. When she had finished she showed the result to Mella and her husband: five frozen mice in a red plastic bucket.

“I’ll just go and dispose of them,” she said.

“I’m finished,” Mella said.

She looked out through the hall window. The whole lake still seemed to be covered with ice. With a lot of snow on top of it.

What if they made a hole in the ice and went diving through it? Mella asked herself. And then someone laid the door over the hole so that they would drown? That might be what had happened. But why move her body? And where is his? Is the door still out there on the ice, hidden beneath the snow?

“Can I go out on the ice and have a look?” she said.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Göran said. “It’s slushy and unreliable.”

“Is there anybody who spends time out here in winter?” Mella said. “Who owns the other house? I’m just wondering if there might be someone who could have seen something or met Wilma and Simon.”

“No, there’s never anyone in the house next to ours,” Berit said sadly. “The man who owns it is too ill and too old, and his nephews and nieces have shown no interest in it at all. But there’s Hjörleifur…”

“That’s enough!” Göran said. “You can’t send her to Hjörleifur.”

“But she was asking.”

“Leave Hjörleifur out of this! He can’t cope with the authorities.”

“Anyway,” Berit said, shaking the bucket with the dead mice as if to attract attention, “Hjörleifur Arnarson lives in a remote farmhouse about a kilometre from here. Do you know who he is?”

Mella shook her head.

“He bathes in the lake. Walks here through the forest, summer and winter alike. He usually cuts a hole in the ice by our jetty. He’s become very grumpy. You have to agree, Göran.”

“Hjörleifur has nothing to do with this,” Göran said firmly. “He’s as crazy as a loon, but there’s no evil in him.”

“I’m not suggesting that there’s any evil in him,” Berit said defensively. “But he’s become very grumpy.”

“What do you mean, grumpy?” Mella said.

“Well, for example, he doesn’t like intruders up here. He borrowed your shotgun without permission, didn’t he, Göran? And scared off some anglers. Was that two years ago?”

Göran Sillfors gave his wife a dirty look that said, “Hold your tongue!”

Mella said nothing. She was not going to go on about Göran Sillfors evidently not keeping his shotgun locked up in a gun safe.

Unconcerned, Berit went on talking.“I sometimes call in on him to buy some of the anti-mosquito oil he concocts, and we have a little chat. Last summer when I went to see him, I found his billy goat hanging in a tree.”

“Eh? How do you mean, hanging in a tree?”

“I asked him: ‘What on earth’s been happening, Hjörleifur?’ He told me the goat had butted him, and he was so angry that he killed it and threw its body into the air with all his strength. The poor thing ended up in the birch tree outside Hjörleifur’s house, got stuck there with its horns. I helped him to get it down. If I hadn’t, the crows would have started pecking at it. Hjörleifur was so sorry. The billy goat had just been in rut – that makes them a bit excited.”

Berit Sillfors turned to look at Mella.

“But Hjörleifur would never do anything to people. I agree with Göran. He’s a bit potty, but there’s no evil in him. Just be careful how you handle him. Would you like us to go with you?”

Mella checked her watch.

“I have to go home now,” she said with a smile. “If I don’t, my husband will throw me up into the birch tree.”

It’s Sunday evening at the haulage firm’s garage. I’m sitting on top of the cabin, watching Hjalmar. He’s opened up the hydraulic lift on the back of one of the lorries and is oiling the pistons. He attaches the greasing gun to the nipples and fills them. He doesn’t hear Tore come in. Suddenly Tore is standing by the lorry, yelling at him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Hjalmar glances at Tore, but continues working. Tore races to fetch some supports and jams them under the hydraulic platform.

“You fucking idiot!’ he says. “You can’t work under the hydraulic platform without making it secure, surely you realize that?”

Hjalmar says nothing. What is there to say?

“I can’t run this firm on my own,” Tore says. “It’s bad enough having Father in bed and unable to help with the book-keeping. You’re no use to me as a cripple or a corpse. Is that clear?”

Tore is upset. He spits as he talks.

“Don’t you dare let me down!” he says, pointing a finger at Hjalmar.

When Hjalmar doesn’t respond, Tore says, “You’re an idiot! A bloody idiot!”

Turning on his heel, he leaves.

No, Hjalmar thinks. I won’t let you down. Not again.

They spend five days and nights looking for Tore. Volunteers from the old Emergency Service and the Mountain Rescue Service are out searching. Police officers and a company of soldiers from the I. 19 regiment in Boden are also taking part. An aeroplane makes two reconnaissance flights over the wooded areas north of Piilijärvi. No sign of Tore. The men from the village spend most of their time outside the Krekulas’ house. Drinking coffee. They are either on their way into the forest or on their way back from it. They want to talk to Hjalmar, ask him where he and his brother went, what the route looked like. What the swamp looked like. Hjalmar does not want to talk, tries to keep out of the way, but he is forced to answer questions. He is back at home now, having spent the first couple of nights with Elmina Salmi. On the morning of the second day, she took Hjalmar home and said to Kerttu Krekula, “You have a son here who is alive. Be grateful for that.”