Åsa Larsson - Until Thy Wrath Be Past

Kerttu says nothing. Looks the other way. Hjalmar also looks away. Only Tore stares at the door with interest. It is as if he has suddenly come alive.

“What did Tore do?” Martinsson says.

“Nothing,” Hjalmar says. “It was me. I was the one who…”

The person beneath the ice swims away from the door. Tore, staring like a raptor at its prey, stops whistling.

“It’s her,” he says quietly. “She’s so little. It’s her.”

Hjalmar does not want to hear. It is not her. It is someone.

Now someone starts cutting a hole through the ice, stabbing and jabbing with a diving knife.

Tore seems amused.

“Bloody she-cat!” he says, seeming rather impressed. “She’s got spunk, you’ve got to give her that.”

He stands a couple of metres off and watches as the hole grows bigger and bigger. Eventually a hand sticks up through the ice.

Tore immediately runs over and grabs hold of it.

“Hi there, pleased to meet you!” he says, laughing as he pulls the hand back and forth.

He looks provocatively at Hjalmar. The same sort of look he used to give his brother when they were growing up. Stop me if you can, it says. Say something if you dare.

Hjalmar says nothing. He switches off his face, just as he always did. Lets Tore carry on.

Suddenly Tore is standing there with nothing but a diving glove in his hand. Someone has managed to shake off his grip.

“Oh, fuck!” he says in annoyance.

Then he sees someone swimming away beneath the ice. He runs behind, waving the diving glove.

“Wait!” he shouts, and starts laughing. “You’ve forgotten something! Hello!”

All the time he remains above the person swimming beneath the ice.

“Whore!” he shouts.

He sounds angry now. Keeping above her. Panting. He is not used to running. The ice is shiny and slippery, and she is swimming quite fast underneath it.

“Fucking Stockholm whore!”

She is back beneath the door now, scratching and hammering.

Then she swims off again. With Tore after her.

Then it is the end. She stops. So does Tore.

“Now,” he says, breathing heavily. “Now.”

He kneels down and presses his face against the ice.

“Let’s put an A.P.B. out on Tore Krekula,” Anna-Maria Mella says to Stålnacke, Rantakyrö and Olsson.

They have assembled at the police station.

“Inform the duty officers in Gällivare, Boden, Luleå, Kalix and Haparanda for starters. Fax a list of all the vehicles owned by the haulage company and by members of the Krekula family.”

Her mobile pings; there is a voicemail message. She dials the number and listens.

“Oh, shit!” she says.

Her colleagues raise their eyebrows.

“Rebecka has driven off to Piilijärvi to talk to Hjalmar Krekula. Apparently he called her to say he wants to confess.”

She dials Martinsson’s number. No answer.

“Bloody inconsiderate,” she says.

Her colleagues say nothing. Mella looks at Stålnacke. She can see that he is thinking about Regla. If there is anyone who is inconsiderate, it is Mella.

Suddenly she feels exhausted and miserable. She tries to steel herself for anything Stålnacke might say, but she feels vulnerable and defenceless, does not have the strength to clench her fists, roll up her sleeves, put her guard up.

I’ll resign, she thinks. I can’t take any more. I’ll have another child.

A few seconds pass, but an awful lot can happen in a few seconds. Mella looks at Stålnacke. Stålnacke looks at her. Finally he says, “That’s over and done with. Let’s go to Piilijärvi.”

The burden falls from Mella’s shoulders. Like melting snow from a roof in the spring.

“That’s over and done with.” He means Regla.

Hjalmar Krekula takes a sip of coffee. Holds the mug with both hands. Vera scratches demonstratively at his leg: he is not allowed to stop stroking her.

“I didn’t realize that it was her,” he says to Martinsson. “I just didn’t have the strength to think about it. She died there. I stood there.”

“But you’ve thought about her since?”

“Yes,” he says. “A lot.”

“How did she get into the river?”

“Mother said we ought to move her. She didn’t want Wilma’s body to be found there. The aeroplane, you know. People shouldn’t know about that. We pulled her out. We waited for him, but he never came up to the surface.”

Hjalmar closes his eyes. He relives the way they smashed up the door and threw the bits into the hole in the ice.

And we forgot the rucksacks, he thinks. You’re convinced you’re keeping a cool head, but in fact you’re not.

Wiping his face with his hand, he goes on.

“We took the four-wheel-drive into the forest. I was holding her in my lap. That’s when it started to feel unbearable. And that feeling never went away. If only I hadn’t held her in my lap. Then, maybe… I don’t know, I might have been able to forget. We put her in their car, where they’d left it near the track. I drove the car to Tervaskoski. The river still hadn’t frozen there. There was only just enough petrol. Tore drove our mother home. Then he drove our car out to where I was. We carried her as far as the rapids, then threw her in. Hid the car keys in the wheel arch.”

“Your mother,” Martinsson says to Hjalmar. “I believe she sold information to the Germans during the war.”

Hjalmar nods.

That could well be, he thinks. He recalls a dance he and his brother went to when they were teenagers. He remembers a lad about their own age giving them a scornful Hitler salute. The lad’s dad was a Communist. It ended up in one hell of a brawl. They did not stop fighting until someone yelled that the police were on their way.

He remembers his mother shouting from the bedroom when his brother lost his way in the forest: “This is the punishment.”

He remembers his father in the sauna. That was not all that long ago. After Johannes Svarvare had told them he had spoken to Wilma about the aeroplane. After Isak’s heart attack. After the killing.

The mood at home was troubled and the atmosphere heavy with everything that could not be said or referred to. Kerttu was wracked with pain. Worse than ever. She complained loudly about how difficult it was to look after her husband. Even so, he was better then. Last winter. One morning at the beginning of March, he was unable to get out of bed. The doctors said he probably had had a series of small heart attacks during the night. He had to stay in bed. But it was better last winter.

“He smells,” Kerttu says to Hjalmar.

She is sitting at the kitchen table wearing her best coat and shoes and with her handbag on her lap, waiting for Tore’s wife Laura to collect her and drive her into town. Kerttu has a doctor’s appointment. Such occasions are the only times she ever leaves the village, when she has to go to the doctors’s, as she puts it. With an extra ’s .

It is clear why she has become aware that her husband smells. She herself has just had a shower and sprayed herself with deodorant and is wearing clean underclothes.

Isak Krekula is out in the village. Walking around despite the serious heart attack he had last autumn. This is something the villagers do now and again – make the rounds. You pay a call on a few other residents, sit in their kitchens, drink coffee and exchange information about the latest goings-on. There are a few other villagers Isak can still visit. Johannes Svarvare, and one or two more. But he no longer talks to most of them. You can fall out with a lot of people during your life. A lot of people no longer want to see him. Business is business, Isak has always said, and there are folk who get angry and feel they have been cheated.