He is stuck. He can’t move. He struggles, but it is like being cast in concrete.
“Rebecka,” he shouts. “Rebecka! I’m stuck in the snow!”
I croak with the ravens. We land in the trees. Cut through the air with our loud, rasping, ominous-sounding cries.
The ice sinks. The water rises. Martinsson is getting wet.
She is up to her knees in water. Then she hears the crust of ice over the old snow-scooter tracks cracking. The next moment she is immersed.
Snow and ice fall over her. She gropes for the edge of the hole, searching for something she can hold on to. She hears Hjalmar shouting her name. He shouts that he is stuck in the snow.
The ice is thick, half a metre at least, but loose; it just keeps breaking. She is lying in a soup of ice and snow. Whenever she tries to grab onto the edge of the hole, the ice breaks and falls onto her in big chunks.
Tintin comes running over to the hole.
Hjalmar cannot see Martinsson; the edge of the hole is too high. But he can see the dog.
“The dog!” he shouts. “The dog’s coming after you!”
And then he sees the dog fall into the hole. The edges are not strong enough to support her.
He hears Martinsson yelling.
“Oh, hell!” she screeches.
And the dog is howling like a banshee. Screaming with fear. Then it falls silent. Is fully occupied with trying to stay alive. It is swimming for all it is worth and scratching at the edge of the hole, but the ice just crumbles away.
Martinsson gropes for the edge of the hole with one hand and grabs hold of Tintin’s fur with the other.
The current is strong; she can feel it trying to drag her legs under the ice. She cannot resist it; it is too strong. The cold is sucking her strength away.
She summons all the strength she can muster and kicks hard with both legs. At the same time she tries to lift Tintin up by her fur.
Tintin scrambles up. She claws her way onto the ice. And it holds her.
“Shout to the dog,” Martinsson yells to Hjalmar. “Shout to her!”
Hjalmar shouts, “Come on, girl! Over here! There’s a good girl!”
The dog makes her way over to him. Teetering with exhaustion the last few metres. Staggers up to Hjalmar. Collapses by his side.
“Have you got her?” Martinsson shouts.
Her legs are sliding under the ice. As if someone were pulling her feet.
“Have you got her?”
Hjalmar responds, sobbing.
“I’ve got her. She’s here with me.”
“Don’t let go of her,” Martinsson shouts.
“I’m holding on to her collar,” he shouts. “I won’t let go.”
Now she cannot shout to him any more. She has to… She has to… Try to resist.
Martinsson struggles in vain as her hips are pressed up against the edge of the hole and she finds herself almost lying on her back. She is well on the way to being dragged under the ice. Snow is tumbling over her face. She wipes it away, only now realizing how fiendishly cold she is.
She cannot resist any more. Her shoulders are under the edge of the ice. The current is tugging at her, pressing her body against its underside.
Then she hears Hjalmar starting to sing.
Hjalmar has a hold of Tintin’s collar. He is holding on to her with a grip of iron. She is shivering.
He tries once again to lift himself out of the snow, but it is impossible.
Martinsson shouts and asks if he has the dog. He tells her that he does.
He holds on to the dog and thinks yes, he has her. She is all he has just now. At least the dog is alive. It is going to live. It starts whimpering. It sounds as if it is crying. It lies down in the snow and whines.
And then Hjalmar also starts crying. He cries for Wilma. For Martinsson. He cries for his brother and for Hjörleifur. For himself. For all the fat stuck in the snow as if in a vice.
And then he starts singing.
It starts of its own accord. At first his voice is hoarse and unpractised, but then it becomes more forceful, stronger.
“I lay my sins on Jesus, the spotless lamb of God,” he sings. “He bears them all and frees us from the accursed load.”
It is several years since he heard that hymn. But the words come without any hesitation.
“I bring my guilt to Jesus, to wash my crimson stains white in his blood most precious, till not a spot remains.”
The early spring sunshine scorches the glittering white snow on top of the ice. There are no human beings for many kilometres around apart from Martinsson, in the hole in the ice, and Hjalmar, in the snow. The shadows lie blue in the scooter tracks and in the footprints where dogs and people have sunk down into the snow today.
Martinsson is lying in the water. Most of her body is under the ice. Over the edge round the hole she can see the tops of trees at the perimeter of the forest on the other side of the river. She did not manage to get that far. The firs have black trunks and are laden with cones near their tops.
The birches are spindly. In the south these slender-limbed trees will be blossoming now. Flowering magnolias and cherry trees will be gracing the parks like young girls in their best frocks. Here the birches are thin, but not in the least like young girls. Knobbly, straggly and bent like old crones, they stand at the edge of the forest looking out for spring.
It wasn’t really that far, Martinsson thinks apathetically as she gazes at the trees. I ought to have kept on running. I shouldn’t have stopped. That was stupid.
Hjalmar is singing his head off on the other bank. His voice is not all that unpleasant. “O guide me, call me, draw me, uphold me to the end; and then in heaven receive me, my saviour and my friend.” As he comes to the climax of the hymn, the ravens seem to want to join in. They caw and croak up in the trees.
Then Martinsson panics as the water comes up over her mouth, her nose.
And the next moment she has been sucked under the ice. Its underside is sharp and uneven. She glides helplessly along with the current through the black water. She rolls over, the back of her head hits against the ice, or maybe it is a stone. She does not know. Everything is black. Bump, bump.
Mella, Stålnacke, Olsson and Rantakyrö clamber out of Mella’s Ford Escort next to where Hjalmar’s and Martinsson’s cars are parked.
“I have a nasty feeling about this,” Stålnacke says, looking towards the forest where a wisp of smoke is coming from one of the chimneys.
“Me too,” Mella says.
She has her gun. So do her colleagues.
Then they hear someone screaming. The silence all around them makes the sound even more dreadful. It is a scream that does not seem to want to end. It is inhuman.
The police officers look at one another. Nobody can bring themselves to say anything.
Then they hear a man’s voice shouting, “Shut up! Stop screeching!”
They don’t hear anything else as they race for all they are worth along the old snow-scooter track. Rantakyrö, who is the youngest, is in the lead.
Martinsson glides along beneath the ice. There is no air. She struggles and scratches in vain.
The cold threatens to split open her skin. Her lungs are bursting.
Then she bumps against something with her knees and her back at the same time. She is stuck. She is stuck, crouching on all fours. The current has pushed her into the riverbank. She is on her hands and knees on ice-cold stones, with the sheet of ice above her back.
The ice is flexible. It has become thin and brittle in the shallows. She pushes through it and is able to stand up. Her lungs suck in fresh air. Then she starts bellowing. Screams and screams.
Hjalmar stops singing abruptly, and stares in shock at Martinsson, whose head and torso have shot up through the ice like an arrow.
She screams and screams until her voice cracks.
“That’s enough!” he shouts in the end. “Shut up! Stop screeching! Come and get the dog.”