Authors: Åsa Larsson
She took a wallet out of her pocket.
“No, no,” said Rebecka, waving her hand, and Lisa dropped the wallet on the ground.
All her cards fell out onto the gravel, her library ticket, supermarket loyalty card, her Visa card and her driving license.
And the photograph of Mildred.
Lisa bent down quickly to gather everything up, but Nalle had already picked up the photograph of Mildred. It had been taken during a coach trip the Magdalena group had gone on, to a retreat in Uppsala. Mildred was smiling at the camera, surprised and reproachful. Lisa had been holding the camera. They’d stopped to stretch their legs.
“Illred,” said Nalle to the photograph, and laid it against his cheek.
He smiled at Lisa as she stood there, her hand impatiently outstretched. She had to exercise an iron control not to snatch it off him. It was a bloody good job nobody else was there.
“They were friends, those two,” she said, nodding toward Nalle, who still had the photograph pressed against his cheek.
“She seems to have been a very special priest,” said Rebecka seriously.
“Very,” said Lisa. “Very.”
Rebecka bent down and patted the dog.
“He’s such a blessing,” said Lisa. “You forget all your troubles when you’re with him.”
“Isn’t it a bitch?” asked Rebecka, peering under the dog’s stomach.
“I was talking about Nalle,” said Lisa. “This is Majken.”
She stroked the dog absentmindedly.
“I’ve got a lot of dogs.”
“I like dogs,” said Rebecka, stroking Majken’s ears.
Not so keen on people, though? thought Lisa. I know. I was like that myself for a long time. Probably still am.
But Mildred had got Lisa to do whatever she wanted. Right from the start. Like when she got Lisa to give talks about budgeting. Lisa had tried to refuse. But Mildred had been… stubborn was a ridiculous word. You couldn’t contain Mildred in that word.
* * *
“Don’t you care?” asks Mildred. “Don’t you care about people?”
Lisa is sitting on the floor with Bruno lying alongside her. She’s clipping his claws.
Majken is standing beside them like a nurse, supervising. The other dogs are lying in the hallway hoping it will never be their turn. If they keep really still and quiet, maybe Lisa will forget about them.
And Mildred is sitting on the sofa in the kitchen and explaining. As if the problem was that Lisa didn’t understand. Magdalena, the women’s group, wants to help women who’ve gone adrift in purely financial terms. Long term unemployed, those on benefit because they’re signed off sick for a long time, with the authorities after them and the kitchen drawers stuffed full of papers from debt collecting agencies and God knows who else. And Mildred just happens to know that Lisa works as a debt counselor and budgeting advisor for the council. Mildred wants Lisa to run a course for these women. So they can get their private finances sorted out.
Lisa wants to say no. Say that she doesn’t actually care about people. That she cares about her dogs, cats, goats, sheep, lambs. The female elk that turned up the winter before last, thin as a rake, so she fed her and looked after her.
“They won’t turn up,” Lisa replies.
She clips Bruno’s last claw. He gets a pat and disappears to join the rest of the gang in the hall. Lisa gets up.
“They’ll say ‘yeah, yeah, brilliant’ when you invite them,” she goes on. “But they won’t turn up.”
“We’ll see,” says Mildred, narrowing her eyes. Then her little lingonberry mouth widens into a smile. A row of tiny teeth, like a child’s.
Lisa goes weak at the knees, looks away, says “okay, I’ll do it” just to get rid of the priest before she collapses completely.
Three weeks later Lisa is standing in front of a group of women, talking. Drawing on a whiteboard. Circles and pieces of pie, red, green and blue. Glances at Mildred, hardly dares look at her. Looks at the rest of her audience instead. They’ve got dressed up, God help us. Cheap blouses. Bobbly cardigans. Gold colored costume jewelry. Most of them are listening obediently. Others are staring at Lisa, almost with hatred in their eyes, as if the way their lives have turned out might be her fault.
Gradually she’s drawn into other projects with the women’s group. She just gets carried along. She even attends the Bible study group for a while. But in the end it just doesn’t work anymore. She can’t look at Mildred, because it feels as if the others can read her face like an open book. She can’t avoid looking at her the whole time, that’s just as obvious. She doesn’t know where to turn. Doesn’t hear what they’re talking about. Drops her pen and makes a fuss. In the end she stops going.
She keeps away from the women’s group. Her restlessness is like an incurable illness. She wakes up in the middle of the night. Thinks about the priest all the time. She starts running. Mile after mile. Along the roads at first. Then the ground dries out and she can run in the forest. She goes to Norway and buys another dog, a Springer spaniel. It keeps her busy. She renews the putty in all the windows and doesn’t borrow the rotovator from her neighbor for the potato patch as she usually does, but turns it over by hand instead during the light May evenings. Sometimes she thinks she can hear the telephone ringing in the house, but she doesn’t answer it.
“Can I have the picture, Nalle?” said Lisa, trying to make her voice sound neutral.
Nalle was holding on to the picture with both hands. His smile went from one ear to the other.
“Illred,” he said. “Swinging.”
Lisa stared at him, took the picture off him.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said in the end.
She spoke to Rebecka, a little too quickly, but Rebecka didn’t appear to notice anything:
“Nalle was confirmed by Mildred. And her confirmation classes were quite… unconventional. She understood that he was a child, so there was plenty of playing on the swings and boat trips and eating pizza. Isn’t that right, Nalle, you and Mildred, you used to have pizza. Quattro Stagione, wasn’t it?”
“He had three helpings of meat soup today,” said Rebecka.
Nalle left them and set off toward the henhouse. Rebecka shouted a good-bye after him, but he didn’t seem to hear.
Lisa didn’t seem to hear either when Rebecka said good-bye and went off to her chalet. Answered distractedly, staring after Nalle.
* * *
Lisa padded after Nalle like a fox stalking its prey. The henhouse was at the back of the bar.
She thought about what he’d said when he saw the picture of Mildred.
“Illred. Swinging.” But Nalle didn’t go on the swings. She’d like to see the swing he could fit into. So they can’t have gone to the playground together to go on the swings.
Nalle opened the henhouse door. He usually collected the eggs for Mimmi.
“Nalle,” said Lisa, trying to attract his attention. “Nalle, did you see Mildred swinging?”
He pointed above his head with his hand.
“Swinging,” he replied.
She followed him inside. He stuck his hand under the hens and collected the eggs they were sitting on. Laughed when they pecked angrily at his hand.
“Was she high up? Was it Mildred?”
“Illred,” said Nalle.
He stuffed the eggs in his pockets and went out.
My God, thought Lisa. What am I doing? He just repeats whatever I say.
“Did you see the space rocket?” she asked, making a flying movement with her hand. “Whoosh!”
“Whoosh!” smiled Nalle, taking an egg out of his pocket with a sweeping movement.
Out on the road Lars-Gunnar’s car stopped, and the horn sounded.
“Your daddy,” said Lisa.
She raised a hand and waved to Lars-Gunnar. She could feel how stiff and awkward it was. Her body betrayed her. It was completely impossible for her to meet his eyes or even exchange a word.
She stayed behind the bar as Nalle hurried off toward the car.
Don’t think about it, she said to herself. Mildred’s dead. Nothing can change that.
* * *
Anki Lindmark lived in an apartment on the second floor at Kyrkogatan 21D. She opened the door when Anna-Maria rang the bell, and peered over the security chain. She was in her thirties, maybe a bit younger. She’d bleached her hair herself, and the roots were showing. She was wearing a long sweater and a denim skirt. As Anna-Maria looked at her through the narrow opening, it struck her that the woman was quite tall, at least half a head taller than her ex-husband. Anna-Maria introduced herself.
“Are you Magnus Lindmark’s ex?” she asked.
“What’s he done?” asked Anki Lindmark.
Suddenly the eyes behind the security chain widened.
“Is it to do with the boys?”
“No,” said Anna-Maria. “I just want to ask a few questions. It won’t take long.”
Anki Lindmark let her in, put the chain back on and locked the door.
They went into the kitchen. It was clean and tidy. Porridge oats, O’Boy drinking chocolate powder and sugar in Tupperware containers on the worktop. A little cloth covering the microwave. On the windowsill stood wooden tulips in a vase, a glass bird, and a little miniature cart made of wood. Children’s drawings were fastened to the refrigerator and freezer with magnets. Proper curtains with tiebacks, a pelmet and frilled edges.
At the kitchen table sat a woman in her sixties. She had carrot-colored hair and was staring angrily at Anna-Maria. Shook a menthol cigarette out of its packet and lit up.
“My mother,” explained Anki Lindmark when they’d sat down.
“Where are the children?” asked Anna-Maria.
“At my sister’s. It’s their cousin’s birthday today.”
“Your ex-husband, Magnus Lindmark…” Anna-Maria began.
When Anki Lindmark’s mother heard her former son-in-law’s name she blew out a cloud of smoke like a snort.
“… he’s said himself that he hated Mildred Nilsson,” Anna-Maria went on.
Anki Lindmark nodded.
“He caused damage to her property,” said Anna-Maria.
The next second she could have bitten off her tongue. “Caused damage to her property,” what kind of official jargon was that? It was the smoking carrot-woman’s narrow eyes that were making her be so formal.
Sven-Erik, come and help me, she thought.
He knew how to talk to women.
Anki Lindmark shrugged her shoulders.
“Anything we discuss is just between you and me,” said Anna-Maria in an attempt to push the continental shelves together. “Are you afraid of him?”
“Tell her why you live here,” said her mother.
“Well,” said Anki Lindmark. “In the beginning, after I left him, I lived in Mum’s cottage in Poikkijärvi…”
“It’s been sold now,” said her mother. “We can’t go out there anymore. Carry on.”
“… but Magnus kept giving me articles out of the evening paper about fires and so on, and in the end I didn’t dare live there anymore.”
“And the police can’t do a thing,” said the mother with a mirthless smile.
“He’s not bad to the boys, you mustn’t think that. But sometimes when he drinks… well, he sometimes comes up and shouts and yells at me… whore and all sorts… kicking the door. So it’s best to live here where we’ve got neighbors and no windows at ground level. But before I got this apartment and found the courage to live on my own with the boys, I stayed with Mildred. But she got her windows smashed and he… and slashed tires… and then her shed caught fire.”
“And that was Magnus?”
Anki Lindmark looked down at the table. Her mother leaned over to Anna-Maria.
“The only people who don’t believe it was him are the bloody police,” she said.
Anna-Maria refrained from explaining the difference between believing something and being able to prove it. She nodded thoughtfully instead.
“I just hope he’ll find somebody new,” said Anki Lindmark. “Preferably have children with her. But things have been better lately, since Lars-Gunnar talked to him.”
“Lars-Gunnar Vinsa,” said her mother. “He’s a policeman, or he was—he’s retired now. And he’s the leader of the hunting club. He talked to Magnus. And if there’s one thing Magnus doesn’t want, it’s to lose his place with the hunt.”
Lars-Gunnar Vinsa, Anna-Maria knew who he was. But he’d only worked for a year after she started in Kiruna, and they’d never worked together. So she couldn’t say she knew him. He had a mentally handicapped son, she remembered. She remembered how she’d found that out too. Lars-Gunnar and a colleague had arrested a heroin user who was playing up down at the Cupola club. Lars-Gunnar had asked if she had any needles in her pockets before he searched her. No bloody chance, they were at home in her apartment. So Lars-Gunnar had stuck his hands in her pockets to go through them and had jabbed himself with a needle. The girl had come into the station with her upper lip like a burst football and blood pouring from her nose. His colleagues had talked Lars-Gunnar out of owning up, that’s what Anna-Maria had heard. That was in 1990. It took six months to get a definite result from an HIV test. After that there was a lot of talk about Lars-Gunnar and his six-year-old son. The boy’s mother had abandoned the child and Lars-Gunnar was all he had.
“So Lars-Gunnar spoke to Magnus after the fire?” asked Anna-Maria.
“No, it was after the cat.”
Anna-Maria waited in silence.
“I used to have a cat,” said Anki, clearing her throat as if she had something stuck in it. “Puss. When I left Magnus I shouted for her, but she’d been gone for a while. I thought I’d come back later to collect her. I was so nervous. I didn’t want to meet Magnus. He kept ringing me. And my mother. In the middle of the night, sometimes. Anyway, he rang me at work and said he’d hung a carrier bag with some things of mine in it on the door of the apartment.”
She stopped speaking.
Her mother blew a cloud of smoke at Anna-Maria. It drifted apart in thin veils.
“Puss was in the bag,” she said, when her daughter didn’t speak. “And her kittens. Five of them. They’d all had their heads chopped off. It was just blood and fur.”
“What did you do?”
“What could she do?” her mother went on. “You lot can’t do anything. Even Lars-Gunnar said the same. If you report something to the police, it has to be a crime. If they’d suffered, it could have been cruelty to animals. But as he’d chopped their heads off, they wouldn’t have suffered at all. It could have been criminal damage if they’d had any financial value, if they’d been pedigree cats or an expensive hunting dog or something. But they were just farm cats.”