“Right, Gustav,” she said, sitting down opposite him. “Start talking — what’s going on?”
The old man started weeping. His shoulders slumped and shook as he hid his face in his hands.
“Now, now,” said Annika, patting him clumsily on the arm. “Come on, Uncle Gustav, tell me what’s happened!”
“The wood thief,” the old man said quietly. “It’s the wood thief.”
He blew his nose in his hand and wiped the snot on his trousers.
“Is someone stealing your wood?” Annika asked.
He nodded. She looked at the little old man. Gustav had worked as a forester for many, many years. He had spent his whole life in this tiny cottage, first with his mother, then all alone since her death. He had electricity and cold water, which he kept in a bucket on the draining board and shared with the cat.
Gustav lived on a very small pension, so he had permission to take the trees blown down by the wind in the forest owned by the estate. He dedicated his life to these trees. To him, the woodshed was a treasure trove of memories, thoughts, nature, and work.
She remembered all the summers she had helped Gustav with the wood. He had taught her how to pile it high on her left arm, balancing it perfectly as the right hand built a tall mountain. She had learned to split great big logs with a single blow at the age of only seven, and had had her own little chopping block next to Gustav’s large one.
When they were having their snack, always perched on their own logs, Gustav would tell her about the remarkable things the trees had witnessed. He had shown her the age rings and described the trees at different periods in history, both global and local.
Look, when this one was the same size as a Christmas tree, the Bolsheviks took over in Russia. This birch was no more than a leafy twig when the crofters’ children coughed themselves to death up in Löfberga. This is where I was born, this is where you were born. The trees have seen everything, they know everything, make no mistake about that.
“Shall we go and have a look in the woodshed?” Annika suggested.
Gustav was walking very badly, she noticed.
“It started three weeks ago,” the old man ground out. “I noticed it right away. First it was the fir from the White Mountains, then the pine from the other side of the marsh. Now it’s the Gorgsjö birch.”
He lifted the hasp and pushed the door open. Inside, the logs were stacked to the ceiling, layer upon layer, as much wood as you could possibly want. To Annika and anyone else on this earth it was just firewood, any old firewood.
“Here,” said Gustav, patting one of the piles. “The birch. That’s what the wood thief stole last night.”
Annika looked around. There were several tracks outside the woodshed, made by both people and animals.
“Did you see or hear anything? A car? A motorbike?” she asked.
The old man shook his head. His eyesight wasn’t very good, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing. Annika studied the ground.
“There are no tracks made by a bike, either. The wood thief must have come on foot. So you know what that means, Gustav?”
The old man didn’t reply.
“Nobody can carry wood farther than a couple of hundred yards,” said Annika. “So it has to be someone from Hedberga.”
Together they looked over at the forest track leading down to the village.
When Annika had left Old Gustav with the Christmas ham and dried fish and gravlax and wished him a very happy Christmas, in spite of the wood thief, she set off along the track through the trees. Feather-light snowflakes had begun to drift towards the ground with infinite slowness, hovering in the air. Annika caught a few on her tongue.
After a few minutes she reached the first of the wooden houses in Hedberga. The entire village was an ancient collection of heaps of timber huddled against the backdrop of the vast forest. The odd satellite dish shattered the picture-postcard idyll.
She walked along slowly, studying the village houses, all decorated for Christmas. The electric candles dispersed a warm glow through the windows. She had some kind of relationship with every single person in this village.
There, in the biggest house of all, lived Åke and Inga Karlsson; he had been her teacher at junior school.
Next door lived Asta and Folke Nykander and their son Petter; he had learning difficulties of some kind. Petter was a couple of years older than Annika; she had been afraid of him when she was little.
Farther along was the manor house where Hjalmar Pettersson, the church pastor, lived with his hypocritical wife Elsa. Hjalmar had once condemned Annika’s mother in public after her divorce.
On the farm over by the edge of the forest lived Karin and Anders Bergström and their three young children. She and Karin had been classmates; Anders was well known in the area for being bone idle.
He can’t even be bothered to put on a condom, thought Annika as she passed the yard, toys strewn all over the place.
Ingela Jönsson, known as the Sperm Bucket because she was such a slag, lived in a small cottage she had inherited from her mother. It looked silent, dark, and empty. Annika glared at it; her boyfriend had been one of those carrying on with the Sperm Bucket.
Around the corner lived Axelsson, the farmer, with his five children who always smelt of the farmyard. Annika used to babysit for them sometimes when she was in high school.
One of these people stole Old Gustav’s wood, Annika thought.
She sighed and turned off towards Lyckebo.
The early morning Christmas service at the church in Floda began at six o’clock. Annika and her grandmother were already there at twenty to. The Axelssons stomped in with almost all of their children, and there sat arrogant Hjalmar and his Elsa, and Asta and Folke Nykander, but not their son. Åke and Inga Karlsson arrived just after the bell began to ring; Åke looked as if he had a hangover.
The big church exuded peace in the winter darkness. Annika closed her eyes and listened to the familiar tones of the traditional entry hymn, “Var hälsad sköna morgonstund,” raucously delivered by the Sörmland farmers. The classic readings of Christmas floated past her, Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed....
She nodded off and woke with a start as the bells rang out once more; the service was over. She was carried along with everyone else to the doorway in some confusion, and got in the car with her grandmother to head back towards Lyckebo along Stöttestensvägen. It had stopped snowing, but the landscape was enveloped in a thick layer of white cotton wool.
They were passing Granhed, with Hedberga up on their left, when Annika suddenly gave a start.
“Did you see that?” she said.
“What?” asked her grandmother, who had dozed off in the warmth of the car.
“Someone was standing on the edge of the forest.”
“That doesn’t seem very likely,” said her grandmother. “I expect it was a deer.”
“Wearing a hood?” Annika said sceptically.
They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey, but when Annika had helped the old woman into the cottage, she said:
“I’m just going out for a while.”
“At this time of day?”
“I want to check on Gustav,” said Annika, taking a big flashlight out of her bag. On the steps outside, she pushed the switch forward — yes, it was working.
The moon was still shining over the forest like a round spotlight; she didn’t need any other source of light out here. She moved quickly between the trees, thinking about the autumn when she had picked chanterelles as big as toilet seats here. The ground was completely covered in snow now; she stumbled over hidden branches here and there.