Red Wolf_ A Novel Part 18

'Oh, I'm sorry, how silly of me, sit down, please.'

The woman fussed about a bit longer, with cups and saucers and spoons and sugar and milk and half-frozen cinnamon buns dusted with ground almonds.

'How did you meet? In the Centre Party's youth group?' Annika asked when Gunnel Sandstrom had sat down again and was pouring the coffee.

'No, oh no,' the woman said. 'Kurt was a radical in his youth, lots of our generation were in those days. He was part of the move to the countryside out here, he joined a collective in the early seventies. We met for the first time at a meeting of the road-owners' a.s.sociation. Kurt thought the payment system should be fairer. It caused a huge fuss round here.'

Annika took out her pen and notepad from her bag, noting down the details.

'So he's not from round here?'

'From Nyland. He studied biology in Uppsala, and after his finals he and a few friends moved out here to start a chemical-free farm. It wasn't called organic in those days . . .'

The woman looked out at the birds again, disappearing into the past. Annika waited for her to begin again.

'It didn't go very well,' she went on after a while. 'The members of the collective fell out. Kurt wanted to invest in a silo and a tractor, the others wanted to buy a horse and learn to turn hay. We were already seeing each other by then, so Kurt came to work here on the farm instead.'

'You must have been very young,' Annika said.

The woman looked at her.

'I grew up here,' she said. 'Kurt and I took over when we got married, in the autumn of seventy-five. My mother's still alive, lives in a home in osthammar.'

Annika nodded, suddenly aware of the monotonous ticking of the kitchen clock. She guessed that the same clock had made the same noise against the same wall for generation after generation, and for one giddy moment she could hear all those seconds ticking through the years.

'Belonging,' Annika heard herself say. 'Imagine belonging somewhere like that.'

'Kurt belonged here,' Gunnel Sandstrom said. 'He loved his life. There's no way he would have contemplated suicide even for a second, I swear to that.'

She looked at Annika and her eyes were flashing. Annika could sense the woman's utter conviction, knowing at once and without any doubt that she was right.

'Where did he die?'

'In the sitting room,' she said, getting up and walking over to the double doors beside the fireplace.

Annika walked into the large room. It was cooler than the kitchen, with a damp, enclosed feeling, and a scratchy blue-green fitted carpet covered with rag rugs. There was an old tiled stove in one corner, a television in another, two sofas facing each other at the far end of the room, a swivelling brown leather armchair beneath a standard lamp, with a small table alongside.

Gunnel Sandstrom pointed, her finger trembling.

'That's where Kurt sits,' she said. 'Always. My chair is normally on the other side of that little table. After dinner we always sit here and read, council papers, the local newspaper, journals, paperwork from the farm, we do everything in our armchairs.'

'Where's your chair now?' Annika asked, although she had a good idea.

The woman turned to her, her eyes full of tears.

'They took it away,' she said quietly. 'The police, to examine it. He was sitting in it when he died, holding the rifle in his right hand.'

'Did you find him?'

The woman stared into the s.p.a.ce left by her armchair, images chasing through her head so vividly that Annika could almost see them. Then she nodded.

'I was at the scouts' autumn bazaar on Sat.u.r.day afternoon,' she said, still staring at the empty s.p.a.ce on the carpet. 'Our daughter runs the Cubs, so I stayed to help her tidy up afterwards. When I got home . . . he was sitting there . . . in my chair.'

She turned away, the tears overflowing, and stumbled, hunched over, back towards the kitchen table. Annika followed her, rejecting an impulse to put her arm round the woman's shoulders.

'Where was he shot?' Annika asked softly, sitting down beside her.

'In the eye,' Gunnel Sandstrom whispered, her voice echoing faintly between the walls like a rattling wind, the clock ticked, salt tears ran down the woman's face, no sobbing or any other movement. Suddenly something happened to the temperature in the kitchen, Annika could feel the dead man in the next room, like a cold breath, a faint note from the angelic choir in her mind.

The woman was sitting quite still, but she raised her eyes to look into Annika's.

'If you were going to shoot yourself,' she breathed, 'why would you aim for your eye? Why would you stare down the barrel when you pulled the trigger? What would you expect to see?'

She closed her eyes.

'It doesn't make sense.' Her voice was louder now. 'He would never have done that, and certainly not in my chair. He's never sat in it, not once. He was sending me a signal that someone was forcing him to do it. It was something about that phone call.'

She opened her eyes, Annika saw her pupils suddenly widen, only to contract again.

'We had a call on Friday evening,' she said. 'Late, after nine thirty. We had just watched the news, and were about to go to bed, we have to be up early for the cows, but Kurt went out. He didn't say who it was, just got dressed and went out, and was gone for a long time. I lay awake waiting and he didn't get back until eleven o'clock, and of course I asked who he'd been to see but he said he'd tell me later because he was tired, but after the cows something else came up and we never got a chance to talk about it properly, so I went off to the scouts and when I got back he was . . .'

She slumped, putting her hands in front of her face. Annika didn't hesitate this time but put an arm across the woman's shoulders.

'Did you say this to the police?'

She collected herself at once, stretched for a napkin and wiped her nose, then nodded. Annika let her arm drop.

'I don't know if they were interested,' she said, 'but they wrote it down anyway. On Sat.u.r.day I was so upset I didn't think to say anything, but I called them yesterday and then they came and collected the armchair and looked for fingerprints on the doors and furniture.'

'And the gun?'

'They took that on Sat.u.r.day, said it was standard procedure.'

'Kurt was in the civil defence?'

Gunnel Sandstrom nodded. 'All these years,' she said. 'He did the officers' course at the Home Guard Combat School in Vallinge.'

'Where did he keep the rifle?'

'In the gun cabinet. Kurt was always meticulous about keeping it locked. Even I don't know where he kept the key.'

'So he must have taken it out himself?'

Another nod.

'Have you ever been threatened?'

She shook her head this time, slumping a little further.

'No strange phone calls before the one on Friday, no odd letters?'

The woman stiffened, tilting her head slightly.

'There was a strange letter in today's post,' she said. 'Complete nonsense, I threw it in the bin.'

'A letter? Who from?'

'Don't know, it didn't say.'

'Have you emptied the bin?'

Gunnel Sandstrom thought for a moment.

'I don't think so,' she said, getting up and going over to the cupboard under the sink. She pulled out the bin and rummaged through the crusts and potato-peelings.

She looked up at Annika. 'It's not here. I must have emptied it after all.'

'You wouldn't have thrown it somewhere else?' Annika asked.

The woman put the bin back in the cupboard.

'Why do you think it's important?' she asked.

'I don't know if it is important,' Annika said. 'What did it say?'

'Something about the peasants' movement, I don't really know. I thought it was something about the Federation of Swedish Farmers.'

'A mail-shot, a leaflet?'

'No, nothing like that. Handwritten.'

'Think for a moment. Is there anywhere else you might have put it?'

'In the fireplace, I suppose,' she said, pointing.

In two strides Annika was at the hearth. There were several crumpled b.a.l.l.s of paper in there, at least two of them coloured flyers from local shops. She took a piece of wood out of the basket and prodded them.

The woman came over to her, holding out her hand for them.

'Yes, it might be here, I do throw paper on here sometimes. It's good for getting the fire started.'

'Hang on,' Annika said. 'Have you got any gloves?'

Gunnel Sandstrom stopped and looked up at her in surprise, then disappeared into the hall. Annika leaned forward to look at the b.a.l.l.s of paper. Three were glossy adverts, one green with black text; the fifth was a sheet of lined A4.

'Get that one,' Annika said when the woman came back wearing a pair of leather gloves, pointing at the lined paper.

Gunnel Sandstrom leaned over, and with a little groan managed to get hold of it. She straightened up and smoothed it out.

'Yes,' she said. 'This is it.'

Annika moved to stand beside her as she slowly read out the anonymous text.

'The present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event,' Gunnel read in a tone of blank suspicion. 'In China's central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back.'

She lowered the letter.

'What does that mean?'

Annika shook her head. 'I don't know. Have you still got the envelope?'

They found it beneath the adverts, a simple little envelope with the 'Sverige' brand, and an ice-hockey player on the stamp. It was addressed to the Sandstrom family and postmarked in Uppsala the previous day.

'Can you lay it out on the table so I can copy it?'

Dark fear swept across Gunnel's eyes. 'Do you think it's something serious?'

Annika looked at the woman, her grey hair, her knitted cardigan, soft cheeks and bent back, and was overwhelmed by a sympathy that took her breath away.

'No,' she said, trying to smile. 'I don't think so. But I still think you should tell the police about the letter.'

Annika copied the letter on the kitchen table. The handwritting was even, soft and round, the words symmetrically placed on the page, every other line left blank to make it easier to read. She noted the torn edge, which showed that the sheet had been pulled from a pad of lined paper, and wondered if she ought to feel the quality of the paper in one corner, but decided against it.

'Are you going to write anything in the paper about Kurt?' Gunnel Sandstrom asked when she had stood up and pushed in her chair.

'I don't know,' Annika said. 'Maybe. If I do, I'll call you first to let you know.'

She took the woman's hand.

'Have you got anyone to look after you?' she asked.

Gunnel nodded. 'We've got a son and two daughters. They're coming this afternoon with their families.'

Annika felt the room spin again. There was something here, a sense of belonging that ran through the generations, a love that had lived here for centuries.

Maybe people shouldn't leave their roots, she thought. Maybe our longing for progress ruins the natural force that makes us capable of love Maybe our longing for progress ruins the natural force that makes us capable of love.

'You'll be okay,' she said, surprised that she was so certain.

Gunnel Sandstrom looked at her with eyes that Annika could see were devoid of something vital.

'I'm going to get justice as well,' she said.

Then she suddenly turned and went out into the hall, then up a creaking staircase to the floor above.

Annika quickly pulled on her outdoor clothes, and hesitated at the foot of the stairs.

'Well, thank you,' she shouted cautiously.