A Darker Shade of Sweden

by John-Henri Holmberg (Editor)

  In the morning, he had awakened before her. Told her not to light a fire in the stove to make coffee. She mustn’t touch the stove for a few days, he said. And his pants were soiled. He asked her to wash them for him. “I helped the cobbler with his Christmas pig,” he said. “He sure bled all over me. I asked if I could have the head to bring you.”

  She laughed and pretended to shudder. Later, when she heard about the two murders, she stopped laughing. But she said nothing. Perhaps didn’t want to know. Lit no fires in her stove.

  “And he, Edvin Pekkari,” she said to herself, forgetful of the presence of Spett and Björnfot, “he was such a nasty man. Never said a word. Didn’t even say hello when you went into the post office. But stared at me as soon as he thought I wouldn’t notice. In that way, you know. The whites of his eyes all yellow. It could have been him. It should have been him.”

  Sheriff Björnfot threw open the courtroom door. Judge Manfred Brylander lost his way in the middle of a sentence. People turned their heads.

  “Pekkari is innocent,” Björnfot called out, striding up to the bar. “Release him!”

  “What are you talking about?” judge Brylander exclaimed.

  He had grown vexed and worried when Björnfot and Spett left the courtroom. His thin hair now lay sweaty and flat on his head. He was gasping for air like a clubbed fish.

  “I’ve got the money from the robbery in my hand,” Björnfot called, holding high the parcel he had found in Majken Behrn’s stovepipe.

  “And this,” he went on, lifting his other hand, “is the murderer’s trousers. Stained by Oskar Lindmark’s blood.”

  All the spectators gasped in unison. Theirs was a joint inhalation of horror at the sight of the wet pants in Björnfot’s hand, and perhaps an inhalation of rapture at the amount of money known to be in the parcel he held.

  Per-Anders Niemi rose quickly. Before anyone managed to stop him, or even realized that he ought to be stopped, a few quick steps had brought him to the side door at the front of the room, the door through which the accused Pekkari had been brought in only an hour before.

  “Stop!” sheriff Björnfot roared, but by then Per-Anders Niemi was already out of the room.

  Outside the doorway he ran straight into the hard fist of acting parish constable Spett.

  It took only a second or two. Then Spett walked in, holding Per-Anders Niemi by the scruff of his neck.

  Björnfot looked around for the men who had helped Per-Anders Niemi bring Edvin Pekkari to the police station. One of them was crouched down in his seat like a sinner at the altar. Björnfot grabbed his hair and pulled him to his feet.

  “I’ll talk,” he whimpered.

  “You’ll shut up!” Per-Anders Niemi yelled, trying to pry himself loose from Spett’s closed hand.

  “No,” his friend cried in desperation. “I want to speak. I haven’t slept since it happened. Per-Anders told me about the money. Said we should rob the mail sled. But only that. He never said anything about killing anyone. We took the sled since the hauler was gone. We stopped at Luossajokki, turned the sled over and pretended that its runner had broken. We had mufflers up to our ears and caps pulled down low. They’d never have recognized us, we didn’t need to . . . Per-Anders hid behind a tree, since the postman knew him. They stopped to help us. Oskar jumped out of the mail sled and bent down to look at the runner. Postman Johansson stayed in the sled, holding back the horse since it wanted to go on. Then Per-Anders slipped out from behind the tree. He jumped on the sled and shot Johansson in the back.”

  “With Johansson’s gun?” Björnfot asked.

  “No, with his own. We found Johansson’s later and pretended to discover it in Pekkari’s room when we rushed him. Even Pekkari though we found it in his drawer. Tried to tell us that someone else must have put it there. Sneaked in while he was sleeping.”

  “But after that,” Björnfot said. “Out in the woods. When Per-Anders Niemi had shot mailman Johansson.”

  “The shot made the horses go crazy. Our horse reared up and tried to run, but the sled was turned over and stuck in the snow. The mail horse bolted. Per-Anders Niemi was standing in the sled, holding on, and called out to me. The boy, he said. Get him!”

  Per-Anders Niemi’s friend tottered. In his mind, the scene was played out again. The sheriff had to grab hold of him to keep him from falling down.

  Oskar Lindmark’s face is pale blue in the moonlight. He is kneeling by the sled to look at the runner that is supposedly broken. Eyes wide. He hasn’t understood what has happened, though the shot has been fired and the mail horse has neighed in panic and bolted. The mail horse is running, though not very fast in the loose snow. Per-Anders Niemi is standing in the mail sled, yelling:

  “I have to break it open to get the money. The kid! Get him. Don’t let him get away!”

  They stare at each other, Per-Anders Niemi’s friend and Oskar Lindmark. Frozen in fear of this deed that lies before them. The grown man’s mind calls out: I can’t!

  Their horse rears up, trying to get loose. And suddenly Oskar Lindmark jerks. He gets to his feet. Stumbles, but doesn’t fall. Runs off like a hare in the moonlight.

  “Get him,” Per-Anders Niemi roars. “If he escapes in the woods we’re done for.” His friend takes the axe. And goes after the boy.

  The snowflakes dance so beautifully in the air. As though they can’t make up their minds whether to fall or rise. Clouds float across the moon. Like a woman’s behind in a smoking sauna, fat and shiny. Hiding and revealing itself in a dance of veils. The shadows of the trees on the snow are now sharp and black, now soft and almost invisible. Not even if the moon is entirely hidden by clouds will Oskar Lindmark get away. It’s easy to follow his footprints in the snow. But still Per-Anders Niemi’s friend runs so hard that he can taste blood. His feet sink down in the snow, but since he can run in Oskar’s tracks he is gaining on him. And he is just a little boy. Oh, God. Per-Anders Niemi’s friend has soon caught up with him. He raises the axe and strikes the boy’s head before he manages to turn around. The boy mustn’t look at him; he wouldn’t have been able to endure it. Now Oskar Lindmark lies before him, face down. His feet are still running, like those of a sleeping dog.

  The man hits him over and over, because of those feet.

  Per-Anders Niemi’s friend kept his eyes on Björnfot.

  “Lindmark ran. But I caught up with him quickly. I hit his head with the back of the axe. He died in the snow. I walked back to the sled and managed to get it right side up on the road. Held the horse until Per-Anders came trudging up with the money. He had Johansson’s pistol. My pants were bloody. It drove me insane, that blood, so Per-Anders said we could switch. He put on my bloody pants and gave me his clean ones. Outside town we jumped off, lashed the horse and walked home, each to his own place. The snow was coming down heavier. We knew all the tracks would soon be gone.”

  The third man who had come along when they took Pekkari to the police station suddenly stood up.

  “It can’t be true!” he exclaimed, looking in horror at Per-Anders Niemi and his friend who had just confessed to the awful deed. “You damned bastards. I believed you. When you came to me and said we should search Pekkari’s room. When you said that you suspected him. You bastards!”

  The room grew deathly silent. Then Spett spoke up.

  “Out, all of you,” he cried. “There will be a new trial here tomorrow. But now. Get out! Get out!”

  People rose from the benches, as if stunned.

  Nobody spoke. They had sat there, willing an innocent man’s death. Guilt pulled a thick blanket over the courtroom. The Laestadian brethren looked awkwardly down at the ground. Nobody looked at Edvin Pekkari.

  Pekkari, who stood up by the bar, still in chains, and who called out:

  “But I did it. Can’t you hear me? I am guilty. I AM GUILTY!”

  The snowstorm lasted for three days. Then it went on its way to ravage other places, leaving Kiruna in peace under a soft, white blanket. H
orses pulled snowplows and drifts cracked fences. Birch tree branches bent all the way down to the ground under their snowy loads.

  Björnfot and Spett stood at the railroad station, watching Edvin Pekkari board the southbound train. The mining company had ordered men to shovel snow from the tracks. People were moving back and forth over the platform, passengers and goods.

  Pekkari with huddled shoulders and a knitted cap. He carried all his belongings in one suitcase. Nobody was going with him. Nobody had come to see him off.

  “So, I guess he’s moving out, then,” Spett said.

  Björnfot nodded.

  “Why the devil did he confess?” Spett wondered.

  “Who knows,” Björnfot said. “Perhaps the attention,” he said. “He became famous overnight. And before that he was a loner nobody wanted to know.”

  He thought of when they had searched Pekkari’s room. Not a single letter in any of the drawers. Not a single photograph.

  “He would have had his head cut off,” Spett protested. “It’s senseless.”

  “The evidence pointed to him. Perhaps he imagined that he had done it. That what everyone said was true. Who can know?”

  Spett snorted incredulously, then laughed at Kajsa who was greeting the train conductor and trying to invite him to play. She ran a few crazy turns, spattering him with snow.

  “Well,” Björnfot said, stroking his moustache. “People talk about the mystery of God. But I’d say people can be just as great a mystery.”

  “I thought that only applied to women,” Spett said.

  Speaking about women made sheriff Björnfot remember to check his watch. He had arranged to meet his wife at one o’clock. It was time to get going.

  “But admit that it’s strange,” Spett said before Björnfot hurried off. “The Laestadian brethren, I mean. They could forgive Pekkari for being a cold-blooded killer. But they couldn’t forgive him for being a simple liar.”

  “People are a mystery,” Björnfot said again and bid him good-bye for now.

  She stood waiting at the street corner as he came panting up the hillside. Her dark, wide eyebrows under the ermine hat. Her hands in the white muff. Her long, black coat had a rim of snow.

  “Just wait!” Björnfot said cheerfully and linked his arm through hers.

  The walk to the new music pavilion took only three minutes. He had borrowed a key. On the stage up front was a Steinway grand piano.

  “It’s yours every Thursday from two till half past three,” he said. “Nobody will disturb you.”

  She looked at the grand piano. Felt herself lured into a trap.

  She thought of her first trip up north to Kiruna. In Gällivare, the train conductor had come up to her and inquired whether she had someone to “answer for her.”

  “What do you mean?” she had asked.

  “You can’t travel to Kiruna by yourself,” he had replied. “You must have a man to answer for you. Or at least a certificate stating that a man will meet you up there and answer for you.”

  “Answer for me?” she had exclaimed, but at that moment Albert and the girls had entered the compartment. They had just been outside, taking a walk on the platform during the stop.

  The conductor had excused himself, checked their tickets and gone his way.

  Albert had defended him.

  “It’s not like Stockholm,” he had said. “It’s a mining town. But they don’t want it to turn into another Malmberget, full of drunkenness and . . .”

  He had stopped talking and glanced at the girls, who were following their discussion with rapt expressions.

  “. . . and women who oblige with this and that,” he said. “They want to keep that kind of womenfolk out. There’s no need for you to take offense.”

  “In Finland, women are allowed to vote,” she had said. “Here, we’re not allowed to take the train.”

  Kiruna was a town belonging to men. The gentlemen and their businesses. And of course the sheriff was always invited when this or that was to be discussed.

  How he polished his boots when he was invited to visit managing director Lundbohm. Spat and buffed. The director himself sometimes turned up for meetings dressed as a navvy.

  She had expected something else from this town of the future. Something that felt modern. But the women here sighed devoutly in front of the altarpiece painted by Prince Eugén.

  And she suffered poverty badly. All those women and children whose cheekbones stuck out from their faces like mountaintops. From hand to mouth, all the time. All those women whose men came to harm in the mines. The child auctions. They had them in Stockholm as well. But here, it was all so close. It affected her badly.

  Albert had a five-year contract as sheriff. She couldn’t understand how she would bear it. Nowadays she could hardly stand him either. His heavy breathing when sleeping. His table manners had begun to annoy her. She felt ashamed of herself. But what did that accomplish? Sometimes she wished that she would come down with some illness. Just to escape it all.

  He opened his uniform coat and pulled out the parcel with the sheet music her mother had sent her.

  “I can’t,” she said. “My fingers are frozen stiff.”

  He dropped the music. Took her hands in his.

  “You don’t want to?” he said, pleadingly. “Don’t you have any feelings left for me?”

  She gave in. Loosened herself from his hold and sat down at the piano. Struck a chord. Hoped for it to be out of tune. It wasn’t.

  I’ll drown here, she thought.

  And at that moment, her fingers dove down onto the keys.

  They landed on the opening chord to Debussy’s La Cathédrale Engloutie.

  The piano can’t lie to Debussy. The first tones sound one by one. But the grand piano keeps the promise it made from the start.

  Now the cathedral bells are ringing down in the depths of the sea. She strikes each key distinctly. Oh, these pealing sounds. The storm tears the surface. Waves rise high. The bells below toll and ring out.

  Her touch is hard and demanding. Furious.

  Her fingers aren’t long enough. Her arms aren’t long enough. Her coat arms are tight as a straitjacket. She sweats. Her back hurts when she stretches.

  Then she looks at Albert. He is smiling, but below that smile is worry. He doesn’t understand this music. It frightens him. She frightens him when she shows him this side of herself.

  Abruptly, she stops playing. Her hands land in her lap. She almost wants to sit on them.

  “Go on,” he says.

  Why, she wants to ask him. You don’t understand.

  And as if he could see right through her, he says:

  “I’m a simple man . . .”

  His voice thickens. The thought of his crying scares her half to death.

  “. . . but if you knew how proud I am of you, my songbird. When you play. I wish I could . . . I’m really trying . . .”

  He is unable to go on speaking. His lips compress and the muscles under their skin twitch.

  She looks out the window. A squirrel runs along a branch. Snow loses its grip and falls to the ground. It is light outside. Beyond all the white, the sky is colored rose.

  Her heart is not as heavy as before.

  I’ll try to be happy, she decides. Thursdays from two until three-thirty. Maybe that’s what I need.

  She smiles at him. Then she puts her hands on the keys again and begins to play. She picks Schubert’s Impromptu in G Flat Major. It’s lyrical and she knows that he likes it very much. She looks at him and smiles. Goes on playing tunes he appreciates.

  Now he is smiling back at her, his heart happy. As if she were the returning sun.

  He is a good man, she thinks. He deserves better.

  She is miserable in Kiruna. Sometimes she thinks she’ll go mad.

  But he is a good man. And soon it will be Christmas.

  Åsa Larsson was born in 1966 in the university town Uppsala, roughly fifty miles north of Stockholm. At four she moved with her
family to Kiruna, a mining town some 750 miles farther north, where she grew up; her paternal grandfather Erik August Larsson, who lived there until his death in 1982, was a cross-country skier who won one gold and one bronze medal at the 1936 Winter Olympics, but who later renounced sports and became a preacher in the Firstborn Laestadians congregation, noted for its highly traditionalist and conservative pietism.

  Åsa Larsson grew up in the strict Laestadian faith, to which her parents also subscribed. As a student, however, she gradually rejected the extreme views of the Laestadians, returned to Uppsala to study law and went to work as a tax lawyer. But the harsh landscapes of the extreme north and issues of faith and religious conflict remain important and recurring themes in her fiction.

  She published her first novel in 2003, Solstorm (Sun Storm), which won the Best First Novel Award from the Swedish Crime Fiction Academy; it also introduced her recurring protagonist, prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson. Her second novel, Det blod som spillts (The Blood Spilt, 2004), won the academy’s Best Novel of the Year Award, as did her fifth novel, Till offer åt Molok (Sacrifice to Molok, 2012). Larsson’s novels have been extensively translated; she now writes full time and lives in Mariefred, a small town fairly close to Stockholm, with her husband and two children.

  BRAIN POWER

  STIEG LARSSON

  Stieg Larsson’s first and only professionally published works of fiction were the three novels known as The Millennium Trilogy, which he began writing in the summer of 2002, shortly before his forty-eighth birthday, and that after his death in late 2004 became an international publishing phenomenon, selling so far a total of more than seventy-five million copies in some fifty languages.

  What few of Stieg Larsson’s readers may know, however, is that he had dreamed of becoming a fiction writer for most of his life. By age ten he was already writing stories; in his teens, he tried his hand at novels and also published a handful of stories in mimeographed science fiction fanzines published by himself or others. Later on he worked on at least one very ambitious science fiction novel which never satisfied him and that he finally discarded.