The Savage Altar

by Unknown

  He jerked his head toward Rebecka.

  “None of this is classified information,” said Anna-Maria loudly. “You can buy the tapes in the church bookshop. We were just having a chat. If that’s okay with you?”

  “I suppose so!” snapped von Post. “But you need to talk to me now! My office. Five minutes.”

  He slammed the door shut.

  The two women looked at each other.

  “The journalist who accused you of assault has withdrawn her complaint,” said Anna-Maria Mella.

  Her voice was casual, as if to demonstrate that she’d changed track, and that what she was saying had nothing whatsoever to do with Carl von Post. But the message got through.

  He’s livid about it, of course, thought Rebecka.

  “She said she’d slipped, and it can’t possibly have been your intention to knock her over,” Anna-Maria went on as she slowly stood up. “I must go. Was there anything you wanted?”

  Thoughts whirled around in Rebecka’s head. From Mans, who must have spoken to the journalist, to Viktor’s Bible.

  “The Bible,” she said to Anna-Maria. “Viktor’s Bible, have you got it here?”

  “No, they haven’t finished with it in Linköping. They’ll be hanging on to it for the time being. Why?”

  “I’d like to have a look at it if possible. Would they be able to photocopy it down there? Not all of it, of course, but all the pages where there are notes. And copies of all the scraps of paper, photographs, cards, that sort of thing.”

  “Of course,” said Anna-Maria thoughtfully. “That shouldn’t be a problem. In return maybe you’d be prepared to talk to me about the church if I have any questions.”

  “As long as it’s not to do with Sanna,” said Rebecka, looking at her watch.

  It was time to fetch Sara and Lova. She said good-bye to Anna-Maria Mella, but before she went out to the car she sat down on the sofa in reception, opened up her laptop and connected it to her cell phone. She keyed in Maria Taube’s e-mail address and wrote:

  Hi, Maria.

  Isn’t there an investigator at the tax office who’s got a soft spot for you? Can you ask him to check out a couple of constitutions and a nonprofit-making organization for me?

  She sent the message, and the answer was on the screen before she managed to log off.

  Hi, kid. I can ask him to check on anything as long as it’s not classified. M

  That was the whole point, thought Rebecka with a feeling of disappointment as she logged off. Anything that isn’t classified I can check out for myself.

  She’d only just shut down the computer when her phone rang; it was Maria Taube.

  “You’re not as clever as people might think,” she said.

  “What?” said Rebecka, surprised.

  “Don’t you realize that all e-mails at work can be monitored? An employer can go into the server and read all incoming and outgoing messages. Do you want the partners to know you’re asking me to fish for classified information from the tax office? Do you really think I want them to know that?”

  “No,” replied Rebecka in a small voice.

  “What is it you want to find out?”

  Rebecka gathered her thoughts and babbled:

  “Ask him to go into the LT and CT and check out—”

  "Hang on, I need to write this down," said Maria. "LT and CT, what’s that?"

  “The Local and Central Transaction Systems. Ask him to check out the church of The Source of All Our Strength and the pastors employed there: Thomas Söderberg, Vesa Larsson and Gunnar Isaksson. Ask him to check up on Viktor Strandgård as well. I want the balance sheet and the proceeds for the church. And I want to know a bit about the pastors’ financial situation, and Viktor’s. Salaries, how much, from whom. What property they own. What stocks or bonds they own. Other assets.”

  "Okay," said Maria, making notes.

  “One more thing. Can you get into PRV and check out the organization surrounding the church? Everything on the Net is so slow when you link up through a cell phone. Check if the church owns shares in any company that isn’t listed on the stock market, or has any financial interest in a trading company or anything like that. Check out the pastors and Viktor too.”

  “May one ask why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rebecka. “Just an idea. I might as well do something while I’m hanging about up here.”

  "What is it they say in English?" said Maria. "Shake the tree. See what falls down. Something like that?"

  “Maybe,” said Rebecka.

  Outside it had already begun to grow dark. Rebecka let Virku out of the car. The dog hurtled over to a pile of snow and squatted down. The streetlights were on, and shone down on something square and white tucked under the Audi’s windscreen wiper. At first Rebecka thought she’d got a parking ticket, then she realized that her name was printed in big letters on an envelope. She let Virku into the front passenger seat, got into the car and opened the envelope. Inside was a handwritten message. The writing was sprawling and clumsy. As if the person who’d written it had been wearing gloves, or had used the wrong hand.

  “When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely DIE,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked ways that he may live, that wicked man shall DIE in his iniquity, but his BLOOD I will require at your hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked ways, he shall die in his iniquity, but you have delivered yourself.”

  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

  Rebecka could feel the fear clutching at her stomach. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck and on her arms, but she resisted the urge to turn her head to see if anyone was watching her. She screwed the piece of paper into a little ball and dropped it on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

  “Show yourselves, you bloody cowards,” she said out loud as she drove out of the car park.

  All the way to the school she had the feeling that she was being followed.

  The head teacher of the local primary school, preschool and nursery looked at Rebecka across the desk with open dislike. She was a dumpy woman of around fifty. Her thick hair was dyed the color of a black tulip and was molded like a helmet around her square face. Her glasses, shaped like a cat’s eyes, hung on a cord around her neck, tangled up with a necklace made up of leather, feathers and bits of china.

  “I really don’t understand what it is you think the school can do in this particular situation,” she said, picking a hair off her cardigan with its striking pattern.

  “I have already explained,” said Rebecka, trying to hide her impatience. “The staff are not to allow Sara and Lova to leave with anyone but me.”

  The head smiled indulgently.

  “We do actually prefer not to get involved in family matters, and I have already explained this to the girls’ mother, Sanna Strandgård.”

  Rebecka stood up and leaned over the desk.

  “I couldn’t give a toss what you prefer or don’t prefer,” she said loudly. “It’s your bloody responsibility as head teacher to make sure the children are safe during school hours and until they are handed over to their parents or to the person who has responsibility for them. If you don’t do as I say, and make absolutely clear to your staff that they are to release the girls only to me, your name is going to be plastered all over the media as an accessory to inappropriate interference with children. Trust me, they’ll love it. My cell phone is absolutely stuffed with messages from journalists who want to talk about Sanna Strandgård.”

  The skin was stretched tightly around the head’s mouth and jawline.

  “Is this what happens when you live in Stockholm and work for some smart law firm?”

  “No,” said Rebecka deliberately. “This is what happens when I have to deal with people like you.”

  They looked at each other in silence until the head gave up with a shrug of her shoulders.

  “It isn’t exactly easy to know what’s supposed to be
happening with those particular children,” she snapped. “First of all, they can be collected by both the grandparents and the brother. Then all of a sudden last week Sanna Strandgård came marching in here and said they weren’t to go with anyone but her, and now they can’t go with anyone but you.”

  “Sanna said last week that the children weren’t to go with anyone but her?” asked Rebecka. “Did she say why?”

  “No idea. As far as I know, her parents are the most considerate people you could wish to meet. They’ve always supported her.”

  “As far as you know,” said Rebecka crossly. “Now I’m going to fetch the girls.”

  At six o’clock that evening Rebecka was sitting in her grandmother’s kitchen in Kurravaara. Sivving was at the stove with his sleeves rolled up, frying reindeer steaks in the heavy, black cast-iron pan. When the potatoes were ready he used the electric whisk in the aluminum pan to turn them into creamy mash with milk, butter and two egg yolks. Finally he seasoned the whole lot with salt and pepper. Virku and Bella sat at his feet like trained circus dogs, hypnotized by the wonderful smells coming from the stove. Lova and Sara were lying on a mattress on the floor, doing a jigsaw puzzle.

  “I brought some videos, if you want to have a look,” said Sivving to the girls. “There’s The Lion King and a couple of cartoons. They’re in that bag.”

  Rebecka was leafing distractedly through an old magazine. The kitchen was crowded but cozy, with Sivving spreading himself out in front of the stove. When she went to borrow the key for the second time in one day, he’d immediately asked if they were hungry, and offered to cook a meal. The fire was crackling cheerfully and the wind soughed in the chimney.

  Something very strange has happened in the Strandgård family, she thought. And tomorrow I want to know from Sanna exactly what it is.

  She looked at Sara. Sivving didn’t seem bothered by the fact that she was silent, her face turned away.

  I’m not going to wear myself out over her, she thought. Just let her be.

  “I thought they might need something to pass the time with,” said Sivving, nodding toward the girls. “Although these days it seems as if some youngsters don’t know how to play outside, what with all these videos and computer games. You know Manfred, over on the other side of the river? He said his grandchildren came to visit in the summer. In the end he had to force them to go outside and play. ‘You can only stay inside if it pours down in the summer,’ he said to them. And they went outside. But they hadn’t got a clue how to play—just stood there in the garden, completely lost. After a while Manfred noticed they were standing in a circle with their hands clasped in front of them. When he asked them what they were doing, they said they were praying to God to make it pour with rain.”

  He took the pan off the stove.

  “Okay, everybody, food!”

  He put the meat, mashed potato and tub of ice cream with jam on the table.

  “Those kids,” he laughed. “Manfred didn’t know what to say.”

  Måns Wenngren was sitting on a stool in the hallway of his flat, listening to a message on the answering machine. It was from Rebecka. He was still wearing his coat, and hadn’t even switched on the light. He played the message three times. Listened to her voice. It sounded different. As if she wasn’t quite in control. At work her voice was always very obedient, walking to heel. It was never allowed to go scampering off after her feelings, giving away what was really going on inside her head.

  “Thanks for sorting out that business with the reporter,” she said. “It can’t have taken you long to find a horse’s head, or did you come up with something else? I’m keeping my phone switched off all the time, because so many journalists are ringing. But I keep checking my voice mail and e-mail. Thanks again. Good night.”

  He wondered if she looked different as well. Like the time he met her in reception at five o’clock in the morning. He’d been sitting in an all-night meeting, and she’d just arrived for work. She’d walked. Her hair was tousled, and one strand was stuck to her cheek. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold wind, and her eyes were sparkling and almost happy. He remembered how surprised she’d looked. And almost embarrassed. He’d tried to stop and chat, but she’d made some brief comment and slid past him into her office.

  “Good night,” he said out loud, into the silent flat.

  And evening came and morning came, the third day

  At quarter past three in the morning it begins to snow. Just a few flakes at first, then more and more. Above the dense clouds the Aurora Borealis hurls herself recklessly across the heavens. Writhing like a snake. Opening herself up to the constellations.

  Kristina Strandgård is sitting in her husband’s metallic gray Volvo in the garage beneath the house. It is dark in the garage. Only the map-reading light inside the car is lit. Kristina is wearing a shiny quilted dressing gown and slippers. Her left hand is resting on her knee, and her right hand is clutching the car keys. She has rolled up several rag rugs and stuffed them along the bottom of the garage door. The door leading into the house is closed and locked. The gaps between the door and the frame are covered with tape.

  I ought to cry, she thinks. I ought to be like Rachel: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation: Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, for they were no more.” But I don’t feel anything. It’s as if all I have inside is rustling white paper. I’m the one in this family who’s sick. I didn’t think that was the problem, but I’m the one who’s sick.

  She puts the key in the ignition. But the tears won’t come now either.

  Sanna Strandgård is standing in her cell, her forehead pressed against the cold steel bars in front of the reinforced glass window. She is looking out at the pavement in front of the green metal façades on Konduktörsgatan. In the glow of a street lamp, Viktor is standing in the snow. He is naked, apart from the enormous dove-gray wings that he has wrapped around his body in order to cover himself a little. The snowflakes fall around him like stardust. Sparkle in the light of the street lamp. They do not melt when they land on his naked skin. He raises his eyes and looks up at Sanna.

  “I can’t forgive you,” she whispers, drawing on the window with her finger. “But forgiveness is a miracle that happens in the heart. So if you forgive me, then perhaps…”

  She closes her eyes and sees Rebecka. Rebecka’s hands and arms are covered in blood, right up to her elbows. She stretches out her arms and places one hand protectively above Sara’s head, the other above Lova’s.

  I’m so sorry, Rebecka, thinks Sanna. But you’re the one who has to do it.

  When the town hall clock strikes five, Kristina Strandgård takes the key out of the ignition and gets out of the car. She takes the rugs away from the garage door. She rips the tape off the door to the house, screws it up and puts it in the pocket of her dressing gown. Then she goes up to the kitchen and begins to make bread. She adds some linseed to the flour; Olof’s stomach can be a little sluggish.

  Wednesday, February 19

  Early in the morning the telephone rang at Anna-Maria Mella’s house.

  “Leave it,” said Robert hoarsely.

  But with the conditioning of many years, Anna-Maria’s hand had already reached out and lifted the receiver.

  It was Sven-Erik Stålnacke.

  “It’s me,” he said tersely. “You sound out of breath.”

  “I’ve just come upstairs.”

  “Have you looked outside yet? It’s been snowing like mad all night.”

  “Mmm.”

  “We’ve had an answer from Linköping,” said Sven-Erik. “No fingerprints on the knife. It’s been washed and dried. But it is the murder weapon. Traces of Viktor Strandgård’s blood were found at the base of the blade close to the handle. And traces of Viktor Strandgård’s blood were also found in Sanna Strandgård’s kitchen sink.”

  Anna-Maria clicked her tongue thoughtfully.

  “And von Post is going absolutely crazy. He knew, of course,
that we were going to find absolute technical proof. He rang me at about half five, howling about motives and insisting we find the blunt instrument that was used on the back of the lad’s head.”

  “Well, he’s right,” replied Anna-Maria.

  “Do you think she did it?” asked Sven-Erik.

  “It seems very odd if she did. But then, I’m no psychologist.”

  “Von Pisspot is intending to have another go at her anyway.”

  Anna-Maria inhaled sharply through her nose.

  “What do you mean, ‘have another go’?”

  “How should I know?” replied Sven-Erik. “I presume he’s going to interview her again. And he was talking about moving her to Luleå when she’s arrested.”

  “Bloody hell,” Anna-Maria burst out. “Doesn’t he understand that frightening her won’t help at all. We ought to get somebody professional up here, somebody who can talk to her. And I’m going to talk to Sanna myself. It’s pointless just sitting in and listening to von Post interviewing her.”

  “Just be careful,” Sven-Erik warned her. “Don’t start interrogating her behind his back, or the shit really will hit the fan.”

  “I can make up some excuse. It’s better if I push the boundaries a bit than if you do.”

  “When are you coming in?” asked Sven-Erik. “You’ve got a load of faxes from Linköping to deal with as well. The office girls are running around here like lemmings. They’re wondering if everything’s supposed to be recorded officially, and they’re hacked off because the fax has been busy all morning.”

  “It’s copies of pages from Viktor’s Bible. Tell them they don’t need to make a record of them.”

  “So when are you coming in?” Sven-Erik asked again.

  “It’ll be a while,” said Anna-Maria evasively. “Robert’s got to dig the car out and so on.”

  “Okay,” said Sven-Erik. “See you when I see you.”

  He put the phone down.

  “Now, where were we?” smiled Anna-Maria, looking down at Robert.