Until Thy Wrath Be Past Part 21

He removed snow from his shoulders, where it had formed icy clumps.

"Mmm," Martinsson said. "Soon they'll be singing 'Sweet lovers love the spring' in Stockholm."

"Yes, yes," Fjallborg said impatiently. "Then they'll get beaten up in the streets as they make their way home from the May Day celebrations."

He didn't like Martinsson comparing Stockholm and Kiruna to Stockholm's advantage. He was afraid of losing her to the metropolis again.

"Have you got a moment?" he said.

Martinsson adopted an apologetic expression and was about to explain that she had to go to work.

"I wasn't going to ask you to clear away snow or anything like that," Fjallborg said. "But there's someone you ought to meet. For your own good. Or rather, for the good of Wilma Persson and Simon Kyro."

Martinsson felt depressed the moment she and Fjallborg walked through the door of the Fjallgrden care home for the elderly. They brushed off as much snow as they could in the chicken-yellow stairwell, climbed the stairs and walked across the highly polished grey plastic floor tiles. The plush painted wallpaper and neat, practical pine furniture cried out INSt.i.tUTION.

Two residents in wheelchairs were leaning forward over their breakfast in the kitchen. One of them was propped up with cushions to make sure he did not fall sideways. The other kept repeating "Yes, yes, yes!" in an increasingly loud voice until a carer placed a calming hand on his shoulder. Fjallborg and Martinsson hurried past, trying not to look.

Please spare me this, Martinsson said to herself. Spare me from ending up in a day room with worn-out, incontinent old folk. Spare me from needing to have my bottom wiped, from sitting parked in front of a television surrounded by staff with shrill voices and bad backs.

Fjallborg led the way as fast as he could along a corridor with doors either side leading into individual rooms. He also seemed far from happy with what he was seeing.

"The man we're going to meet is called Karl-Ake Pantzare," he said quietly. "My cousin used to know him. They saw a lot of each other when they were young. I know he was a member of a resistance group during the war, and I know my cousin was a member as well but he's dead now. It wasn't something he talked about. This is Pantzare's room."

He stopped in front of a door. There was a photo of an elderly man and a nameplate that announced: "Bullet lives here".

"Just a minute," Fjallborg said, holding on to the rail running along the wall so that the old folk still able to walk had something to hang on to. "I need to pull myself together."

He rubbed his hand over his face and took a deep breath.

"It's so d.a.m.ned depressing," he said to Martinsson. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! And this is one of the better places. All the girls who work here are really friendly and caring there are homes that are much worse. But even so! Is this what we have to look forward to? Promise to shoot me before I get to this stage. Oh dear, I'm sorry . . ."

"It's O.K.," Martinsson said.

"I forget, I'm afraid. I know you had no choice but to shoot . . . Huh, it's like talking about ropes in a house where a man's hanged himself."

"You don't need to muzzle yourself. I understand."

"I get so d.a.m.ned depressed," Fjallborg said. "Please understand that I think about this even though I try hard not to. Especially with my arm and all that."

He nodded towards his dysfunctional side. The one that could not keep up. The side whose hand could not be trusted, and kept dropping things.

"As long as I can . . ." Martinsson said.

"I know, I know." Fjallborg waved a hand dismissively.

"And why must places like this always have such cheerful names?" he hissed. "Fjallgrden, Mountain Lodge, Sunshine Hill, Rose Cottage."

Martinsson could not help laughing.

"Woodland Glade," she said.

"It sounds like a tract from the Baptists. Anyway, let's go in. You should be aware that his short-term memory is pretty bad. But don't be misled if he seems a bit confused. His long-term memory is fine."

Fjallborg knocked on the door and they entered.

Karl-Ake Pantzare had white, neatly combed hair. His eyebrows and sideburns were bushy, with the stubbly, spiky hair typical of old men. He was wearing a shirt, pullover and tie. His trousers were immaculately clean and smartly pressed. It was obvious that earlier in his life he had been very good-looking. Martinsson checked his hands: his nails were clean and cut short.

Pantzare shook hands with both her and Fjallborg in a pleasant, friendly fashion. But behind his welcoming look was a trace of anxiety: had he ever met these people before? Ought he to recognize them?

Fjallborg hurried to allay his uncertainty.

"Sivving Fjallborg," he said. "From Kurravaara. When I was a lad they used to call me Erik. Arvid Fjallborg is my cousin. Or was. He's been dead for quite a few years now. And this is Rebecka Martinsson, the granddaughter of Albert and Theresia Martinsson. She's from Kurravaara as well. But you haven't met her before."

Pantzare relaxed.

"Erik Fjallborg," he said brightly. "Of course I remember you. But goodness me, you've aged a lot."

He winked to show that he was teasing.

"Huh," Fjallborg said, pretending to be offended. "I'm still a teenager."

"Of course," Pantzare said with a grin. "Teenager. That was a long time ago."

Fjallborg and Martinsson accepted the offer of a coffee, and Fjallborg reminded Pantzare of a dramatic ice-fishing session with Fjallborg's cousin and Pantzare on Jiekajaure.

"And Arvid used to tell me about how you cycled into town whenever there was a dance on a Sat.u.r.day night. He said that the 13 kilometres from Kurra to Kirra was nothing, but if you met a nice bit of skirt from Kaalasluspa, that meant you had to cycle back with her first, and it was a long way home from there. And then of course he had to be up at 6.00 the next morning to do the milking. He sometimes fell asleep on the milking stool. Uncle Algot would be furious with him."

The usual run-through of relatives they both knew followed. How a sister of Pantzare's had rented a flat in Lahenpera. Fjallborg thought it was from the Utterstroms, but Pantzare was able to inform him that it was in fact from the Holmqvists. How another of Fjallborg's cousins, a brother of Arvid's, and one of Pantzare's brothers had been promising skiers, had even competed in races in Soppero and beaten outstanding Vittangi boys. They ran through who was ill. Who had died or moved to Kiruna, and, in those cases, who had taken over the childhood home.

Eventually Fjallborg decided that Pantzare was sufficiently relaxed and that it was time to come to the point. Without beating around the bush, he said that he had heard from his cousin that both he and Pantzare had been members of the resistance organization in Norbotten. He explained that Martinsson was a prosecutor, and that two young people who had been murdered had been diving in search of a German aeroplane in Lake Vittangijarvi.

"I'll tell you straight, because I know it will go no further than these four walls, that there's reason to a.s.sume that Isak Krekula from Piilijarvi and his haulage business were mixed up in it somehow."

Pantzare's face clouded over.

"Why have you come to see me?"

"Because we need help," Fjallborg said. "I don't know anybody else who is familiar with how things were in those days."

"It's best not to talk about that," Pantzare said. "Arvid should never have told you. What can he have been thinking?"

Standing up, he took an old photograph alb.u.m from a bookshelf.

"Have a look at this," he said.

He produced a newspaper cutting that had been hidden among the pages of the alb.u.m. It was dated five years earlier.

Pensioners Robbed and Murdered, ran the headline. The article described how a ninety-six-year-old man and his wife aged eighty-two had been murdered in their home just outside Boden. Martinsson glanced through it and was disgusted to read that the woman had been found with a pillow tied over her face. She had been beaten up, choked and strangled, and "violated" after she died.

Violated, Martinsson thought. What do they mean by that?

As if he had read her thoughts, Pantzare said, "They shoved a broken bottle up her p.u.s.s.y."

Martinsson carried on reading. The man had been alive at 6.00 that morning when the district nurse had come to give his wife her insulin injection. He had been badly beaten, punched and kicked, and died later in hospital. According to the article, the police had conducted a door-to-door, but without success. As far as anybody knew, the couple had not kept significant sums of money or other valuables in their home.

"He was one of us," Pantzare said. "I knew him. And no b.l.o.o.d.y way was this a robbery, I'm absolutely certain of that. They were neo-n.a.z.is or some other gang of right-wing extremists who had discovered that he had been a member of the resistance. n.o.body's safe even though it was so long ago. Youngsters impress old n.a.z.is by doing things like that. They made the old man watch while they beat his wife to death. Why would a robber want to violate her? They wanted to torture him. They're still looking for us. And if they find us . . ."

A shake of the head completed the sentence.

Of course he's scared, Martinsson thought. It's easier to risk your life when you're young, healthy and immortal than when you're shut up in a place like this and all you can do is wait.

"We simply had to do something," Pantzare said, as if he were talking to himself. "The Germans were sending ship after ship to Lule lots of them never recorded in the port registers. Many of them left again with cargoes of iron ore, of course. And provisions and equipment and weapons and soldiers. The official line was that the soldiers were going on leave. The h.e.l.l they were! I watched S.S. units marching on and off those ships. They took trains up to Norway, or were transported to the Eastern front. We often considered sabotage, but that would have meant declaring war on our own country. After all it was Swedish customs officials and police officers and troops guarding the ports and depots, and supervising the transports. If we'd been an occupied country, the whole situation would have been different. The Germans had far more problems in occupied Norway, with the local resistance movements and the inhospitable terrain, than in comparatively flat and so-called neutral Sweden."

"So what can you tell us about Isak Krekula and his haulage company?" Fjallborg said.

"I don't know. I mean, there were so many haulage contractors. But I do know that one of the haulage firm owners up here informed for the Germans. At least one, that is. We didn't know who it was, but we were told that it was a haulier. That put the wind up us, because a large part of our work was building up and servicing Kari."

"What was that?" Martinsson said.

"The Norwegian resistance movement, X.U., had an intelligence base on Swedish territory, not far from Tornetrask. It was called Kari. The radio station there was called Brunhild. Kari pa.s.sed information from ten substations in northern Norway to London. It was powered by a wind turbine, but it was located in a hollow so you couldn't see it unless you came to within 15 metres of it."

"Are you saying that there was an intelligence base in Sweden?"

"There were several. Sepal bases on Swedish territory were run with the support of the British secret service and the American O.S.S., which eventually became the C.I.A. They specialized in intelligence, sabotage and recruitment, and training in weapons, mine-laying and explosives."

"It was thanks to those services that the British were able to sink the Terpitz," Fjallborg said to Martinsson.

"Both the radio stations and the wind turbines had to be maintained," Pantzare said, "and they needed provisions and equipment. We needed hauliers, and it was always a dodgy business initiating a new one, especially as we knew there was a haulier who was a German informer. My G.o.d, once a new driver a lad from Rne and I were on our way to Paltsa. We had a cargo of sub-machine-guns. We took a short cut via the Kilpisjarvi road, which the Germans controlled, and they stopped us at a roadblock. The driver suddenly started talking in German to the officer in charge. I thought he was informing on me: I didn't even know he could speak German, and I was about to leap out of the lorry and run for my life. But the German officer just laughed and let us through, after we'd given him a few packets of cigarettes. The lad had simply told him a joke. I gave him a telling off afterwards. He could have told me that he spoke German, after all! Although of course there were quite a few who could in those days. It was the first foreign language in Swedish schools. It had the same sort of status that English has now. Anyway, everything went well on that occasion."

Pantzare fell silent. A hunted look flitted across his face.

"Were there occasions when things didn't go so well?" Martinsson asked.

Pantzare reached for the photograph alb.u.m and opened it at a particular page.

He pointed at a photograph that looked as if it had been taken in the 1940s. It was a full-length picture of a young man. He was leaning against a pine tree. It was summer. Sunlight was reflected in his curly blond hair. He was casually dressed in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and loose-fitting trousers with the cuffs turned up untidily. He gripped his upper arm with one hand, while the other held a pipe.

"Axel Viebke," Pantzare said. "He was a member of the resistance group."

Sighing deeply, he continued.

"Three Danish prisoners of war escaped from a German cargo ship moored in Lule harbour. They ended up with us. Axel's uncle owned a hut used at haymaking time to the east of Savast. It was standing empty. He put them up there. They all died when the hut burned down. The newspapers called it an accident."

"What do you think really happened?" Fjallborg said.

"I think they were executed. The Germans discovered they were there, and killed them. We never found out who had leaked the information."

Pantzare grimaced.

Martinsson took the photograph alb.u.m and turned a page.

There was a picture of Viebke and Pantzare standing on each side of a pretty woman in a flowered dress. She was very young. A nicely trimmed lock of hair hung down over one eye.

"Here you are again," Martinsson said. "Who's the girl?"

"Oh, just a bit of skirt," Pantzare said, without looking at the photograph. "He had a weakness for the girls, did our Axel. He was always with a different one."

Martinsson turned back to the photograph of Viebke by the pine tree. That page had been opened often; the edge was well-thumbed and darker than the others. The photographer's shadow was visible.

He's a charmer, she thought. He's really posing. Lolling back against the pine trunk, pipe in hand.

"Were you the photographer?" she said.

"Yes," Pantzare said, his voice sounding hoa.r.s.e.

She looked round the room. Pantzare had no pictures of children hanging on the walls. There were no wedding photos among the framed ones on the bookshelf.

You did more than just like him, she thought, looking hard at Pantzare.

"He would have approved of you telling us about this," she said. "That you continued to be brave."

Pantzare nodded and his eyes glazed over.

"I don't know all that much," he said. "About the haulier in question, that is. The British said there was someone reporting to the Germans, and that we should watch our step. They were particularly concerned about the intelligence stations, of course. They called him the Fox. And there's no doubt that Isak Krekula was on good terms with the Germans. He made lots of shipments for them, and it has always been the money that counted as far as he was concerned."

"Pull yourself together!" Tore Krekula said.

He was standing in Hjalmar Krekula's bedroom looking at his brother, who was in bed with the covers over his head.

"I know you're awake. You're not ill! That's enough now!"

Tore opened the blinds with such force that it sounded as if the cords were going to snap. He wanted them to snap. It was snowing.

When Hjalmar had failed to turn up for work, his brother had taken the spare key and gone to his house. Not that a key was necessary. n.o.body in the village locked their doors at night.

Hjalmar did not respond. Lay under the covers like a corpse. Tore was tempted to rip them off, but something held him back. He did not dare. The person lying there was unpredictable. It was as if a voice under the covers were saying: Give me an excuse, give me an excuse.

This was not the old Hjalmar who could be kicked around however you liked.

Tore felt helpless. This was an emotion he found difficult to handle. He was not used to people not doing as they were told. First that police b.i.t.c.h. Now Hjalmar.

And what could Tore threaten his brother with? He had always threatened Hjalmar.

He made an impatient tour of the house. Piles of dirty dishes. Empty crisp and biscuit packets. The kitchen smelled of stale slops. Big empty plastic bottles. Clothes on the floor. Underpants, yellow at the front, brown at the back.

He went back to the bedroom. Still no sign of movement.

"For f.u.c.k's sake," he said. "For f.u.c.k's sake, what a mess this place is. What a pigsty. And you. You disgust me. Like a b.l.o.o.d.y big beached whale, rotting away. Ugh!"