Tintin is lying motionless by his side.
Then Martinsson starts to cry. She wades through the brittle ice and onto dry land, sobbing loudly. Hjalmar starts laughing. He laughs until his stomach aches. He has not laughed for many years – maybe just occasionally when there was something funny on the television. He can hardly breathe.
Martinsson walks up to the cottage to fetch a spade. She vomits twice on the way there.
When Mella and her colleagues reach the cottage, they see Martinsson and Hjalmar down by the riverbank. Hjalmar has sunk into the snow; they can only see the top half of his body. Martinsson is digging away the snow from around him. Her clothes are soaked through, as is her hair. Her coat has been flung on the ground. Blood is pouring from a wound in her head. Her hands are also bleeding, but Martinsson does not seem to notice. She is digging away frenetically. Hjalmar has started singing again. “He heals all my diseases, he doth my soul redeem. Hallelujah.” Snow is flying in all directions.
The police officers approach cautiously. Rantakyrö and Olsson put away their pistols.
“What’s happened?” Mella says.
Neither Hjalmar nor Martinsson answers.
Hjalmar is clinging to Tintin and singing away. Tintin is also soaked through. She is lying in the snow. Lifts her head, manages a wag of her tail.
“Rebecka,” Mella says. “Rebecka.”
When she does not get an answer, she walks over to Martinsson and takes hold of the spade.
“You must go inside, into the cottage…” she begins, but does not have the opportunity to say anything more.
Martinsson snatches the spade back and hits Mella over the head. Then she drops it and falls backwards into the snow.
Rebecka Martinsson is sitting on a kitchen chair in Hjalmar Krekula’s cottage. Someone has taken all her clothes off her, and she is wrapped in a blanket. The fire is burning vigorously in the stove. She has a police jacket round her shoulders. The whole of her body is vibrating with cold. In fact she is jumping up and down on the chair. Her teeth are chattering, rattling. Her hands and feet ache, as do her thighs and her bottom. A flour mill is grinding away inside her head.
She has a mug of warm water in front of her.
Sven-Erik Ståhlnacke is also sitting at the kitchen table. He occasionally presses a towel against her battered, blood-stained hands, and against her head and face.
“Have a drink,” he says.
She wants to drink, but doesn’t dare to. She feels that she will simply sick it back up immediately.
“Tintin?” she says.
“Krister has been to collect her.”
“Is she O.K.?”
“She’ll be alright. Come on now, have a drink.”
Mella comes in. She has her mobile in one hand. The other is pressing a snowball against her forehead.
“How is she?” she says.
“Everything’s fine,” Stålnacke says. “All quiet on the Western front.”
“I’ve got Måns on the phone,” Mella says to Martinsson. “Do you feel like talking to him? Are you up to it?”
Martinsson nods and reaches for the mobile, then drops it on the floor.
Mella has to hold it for her.
“Yes,” she croaks.
“Is there no limit to what you’ll do to draw attention to yourself?” Wenngren says.
“No,” she says with a laugh that comes over as a cough. “I’ll do anything at all.”
Then he turns serious.
“They tell me you were stuck in a hole in the ice. That you drifted under the ice and then managed to break through it and climb out.”
“Yes,” she says in her hoarse, rasping voice.
Then she says,“I must look a right bloody mess.”
Silence at the other end. She thinks she can hear him crying.
“Come up here,” she says. “Come up here, darling, and give me a big hug.”
“Yes,” he says. His voice sounds strained, then he clears his throat. “I’m in a taxi on my way to the airport.”
She hangs up.
“Let’s go,” Mella says to Stålnacke. “We’ll get Hjalmar’s confession on tape.”
“Where is he?” Martinsson says.
“He’s sitting on the steps outside the front door. We had to let him rest.”
“Hang on a minute.”
Martinsson goes down on all fours. Every movement is agonizing. But she manages it eventually. Sliding the rag rug to one side, she lifts up the lino and the floorboard, then produces the oilcloth package with the maths books and the Advanced Level Certificate of Education.
“What’s that?” Mella says.
Martinsson does not answer.
“What is it?” Mella says again, with irritation in her voice. But she falls silent when she notices Stålnacke’s expression.
Leave her alone, his eyes say.
Martinsson staggers out through the door. Hjalmar is sitting at the top of the steps.
Olsson and Rantakyrö are standing beside him. She puts the package on Hjalmar’s knee.
“Thank you,” he says.
The moment he says it, he realizes that he has not used that expression for a very long time.
“Thank you,” he says again. “That was kind of you, really kind.”
He taps the package with his hand.
Martinsson goes back indoors. Rantakyrö supports her discreetly with a hand under her elbow.
Anni has fallen asleep on the posh sofa in the drawing room. It is a puffed-up leather affair, not especially attractive. Much too big for the room. Hanging over the back of it are small white embroidered cloths, presumably to protect against the ill effects of someone sitting on the sofa with dirty hair or too much pomade.
I sit in the armchair and look at her. We never used this room. It feels unfamiliar. We always sat and talked in the kitchen. And when I was alive, the television was always on the upstairs landing, which was big enough to use as a room. The drawing room was only used for special occasions, for coffee after funerals or for christenings. Whenever the vicar came to visit, he was always served coffee in the best china in the drawing room.
It’s evening. The sun is going down. The atmosphere in the room is warm and conducive to an afternoon nap.
When I died, Anni asked Hjalmar to carry the television down to the drawing room. Now she often has a lie-down here. I assume she doesn’t have the strength to climb the stairs. She has a woollen blanket over her legs. It’s a rather fine blanket whose sole role used to be to hang decoratively over the armrest. It still shouldn’t really be used, and so Anni hasn’t unfolded it completely: it’s lying doubled over her legs. If I could, I would open the blanket out to cover her completely. Silly old Anni! What’s the point of not making full use of everything now?
I look around. Everything is so neat and tidy, but it’s not really Anni. It’s a collection of all the poshest and best things she possesses. The dark-stained bookcase has books – not all that many, mind you – in neat rows. Cheap ornaments, a hollow swan made of glass and containing a red fluid that rises up its neck when the pressure is high, a painted plate from Tenerife on a stand – Anni has never been there. Professionally taken photographs of relatives in dusty frames. There’s one of me when I was a child. I look like nothing on earth, with my hair newly washed; properly combed and electrically dried, it’s sticking to my forehead. I remember the dress I’m wearing: the seams chafed against my skin. The crotch of my tights was halfway down my thighs. How on earth did they get me into that outfit? Did they drug me?
Anni is so thin under her two cardigans. There’s nothing more than skin and bones left of her. But she’s still breathing. And now her eyelids are flickering. Her hands and legs start jerking like the limbs of a sleeping dog. She has a bruise on her cheek where Kerttu slapped her.