It was sparkling with cold outside, and the rime frost had made the steps slippery. He almost fell on the millstone at the bottom. Leaning on the wall with his right hand he made his way around the corner and released the urine in a crooked stream, aiming at the forest. He closed his eyes, enjoying the relief. When he had shaken off the drops and tucked it away, he took a few deep breaths and gazed out across the landscape. Dense forest to the north, but over to the east there was a more open aspect towards the marsh where the sawmill had once stood. The moon and stars made the frost sparkle; he could make out the light and the colours.
Then the cold struck his lungs again, making him cough. He tore his gaze away from the view and made his way back indoors. He switched on the lamp in the porch and the fluorescent light in the kitchen, the sudden brightness making him blink. The cat was licking her lips over by the larder, a few tufts of hair and splinters of bone bearing witness to the recent slaughter.
The old man went over to the sink and picked up the water scoop. He took a swig as the cat leapt up and began to lap from the bucket.
“Delicious,” said the old man, smacking his lips.
Then it was time to fetch the wood.
The thought made his guts twist with apprehension.
First of all, he lit the stove with the kindling he had brought in the previous evening, the iron of the door cold to his touch. As he struck the match he noticed that his hand was shaking. He knew what was waiting for him. Laboriously he got to his feet and picked up the basket and the flashlight.
Holding his left hand straight out in front of him to help him balance, he shuffled across to the woodshed, the flashlight rolling around in the bottom of the basket. On the other side of the ditch he stopped and switched it on, pointing the beam at the ground. He blinked. Damned eyesight. Even if there were tracks in the rime frost, he couldn’t make them out. When he lifted the hasp and opened the door, he knew. He couldn’t have explained why, perhaps the smell of another person somehow lingered, perhaps there was the faintest rise in the temperature left behind, but he was certain. Someone had been here very recently.
He swept the beam of the flashlight across the piles of wood, the carefully sawn, split, dried, stacked, sorted, and stored logs, all exactly the same length so that they would fit the kitchen stove, cut into the different dimensions necessary to catch quickly and then keep the fire going. Alder, aspen, birch, pine, and fir, different piles for the different kinds of wood, boxes of birch bark and other types of bark.
When the beam reached the pile of birch logs, he gasped out loud. So it was the birch tonight. He staggered across to the pile and ran his hand over the wood; yes, he was right. His eyes might miss things, but his hands remembered; there were logs missing from here. Rage and impotence twisted like cramps in his abdomen, and he groaned out loud. Clenched his fists, the nails burrowing into his palm to overcome the pain. His wood! The birch that he had worked so hard on last spring. The sections of trunk he had dragged all the way from Gorgsjö, where the birch tree had been brought down by the wind. It had been a fine tree, right by the shore of the lake, with rustling leaves and plenty of thick branches. He had made use of every one, chopping up the tree and bringing home every last scrap. His entire spring lay in these piles of wood. He sniffed loudly as the tears overflowed. Bastard! Some bastard was stealing his wood! Bastard wood thief!
He sank down onto the chopping block and wept.
Annika Bengtzon kissed her grandmother’s hair.
“I won’t be long.”
Her grandmother patted her on the cheek.
Annika looped her bag over her shoulder and picked up the plastic carrier. Out on the steps she stopped, screwing up her eyes in the sharp winter light and taking several deep breaths. The lake down below Lyckebo had frozen; if it stayed this cold she would be able to go ice skating after Christmas.
The rime frost crunched beneath her feet as she headed for the turnpike, past the rented car from the garage at Norrtull. Old Gustav lived on the other side of the track in a cottage next to the marsh where the sawmill had been; it was known as Lillsjötorp, and she had visited him every Christmas Eve for as long as she could remember. He had already been ancient when she was a child.
Annika walked quickly and purposefully along the forest track; she knew it well. She had grown up in these Sörmland forests around Hälleforsnäs, had lived here all her life until last autumn. For the last two months she had been working nights on Kvällspressen, a newspaper in Stockholm. The autumn’s events, especially her investigation of a young woman’s murder[1], had meant that she had been unable to come home for some time. But the job had created a vacuum in her life that could be filled only by solid traditions such as Christmas at her grandmother’s cottage by the shores of the lake.
Lillsjötorp sparkled like a little jewel on the edge of the forest, the frost glittering on its walls, so picturesque you could almost weep. White and Falun red, leaded windows, blue door, mossy apple trees.
But as Annika drew closer, the deterioration became obvious. The garden was overgrown with lupins, the black stems bearing pods surrounding the house like rotting exclamation marks. The odd tracks on the ground had been made by Old Gustav’s shuffling gait and bad hips; one led to his pissing-place around the corner, one to the outside toilet, and the deepest, of course, to the woodshed. The outside walls needed brushing down and painting. The putty had started to come away around the windowpanes; Gustav appeared to have repaired it with cement. On the edge of the forest she could see a mountain of empty tins and empty schnapps bottles.
Annika sighed and knocked on the door. No response. She knocked harder.
“Uncle Gustav!”
A coal-black cat came skittering out of the trees, ran up the steps, and started rubbing around her legs.
“Hello Blackie, is your daddy not at home?”
She tried the handle; the door wasn’t locked.
“Hello...?”
She stepped onto the porch, blinking in the darkness, and discovered she was staring straight down a double-barrelled shotgun. She deafened herself with her scream, and the barrel jerked.
“For Christ’s sake, Gustav, what the hell are you doing?”
The old man lowered the gun, staring at her in confusion. He was dirty and unshaven; she could smell the odour coming off his body from over three feet away. His hair was greasy, his eyes cloudy. His face looked slightly swollen.
“Gustav, what on earth is going on?”
Her heart was pounding in her chest; she had been really scared. The cat slipped past them into the kitchen, and Annika closed the outside door. The porch was in darkness; she could see the old man only as a silhouette against the kitchen doorway.
“Maria’s Annika?” he said, lowering the gun slightly.
“Of course!” she said, sounding more angry than she intended. “What the hell are you doing standing here on the porch with a shotgun?”
The old man turned and shuffled into the kitchen, with Annika following close behind. The heat was oppressive in there, the kind of suffocating heat produced by an old wood-burning stove made of iron, with the fire well banked up. The cat had curled up on the tiled edging between the stove and the wall; Annika wondered how it managed to avoid being roasted alive. Gustav sat down on a wooden chair by the kitchen table, resting the gun on his knees. Annika put her bags down next to the sofa bed; the old man hadn’t made his bed today. She walked over to him and firmly took the gun away; he didn’t protest. She broke it open; it wasn’t loaded. With a sigh, she pushed it under the bed.