She took out her phone and photographed it from all angles. It struck her that perhaps she had seen the badger earlier; could it be the one that was lying a bit down the road the other day, right at the edge of the ditch, swollen up with its paws in the air? Someone had picked up the badger, dragged it into her house, set it on her bed, and stuck the knife in it, releasing a loathsome stench.
After a minute or so, while her disgust and agitation had free rein, she wondered whether it was worth the trouble to call Wikman at Forensics. But she abandoned the thought; they had other, more important things to do.
In the kitchen she retrieved garbage bags and plastic gloves. She hesitated a moment before she took hold of the bed linens and rolled the badger up in them, leaving the knife where it was, and consigned the package to the garbage bag. The pillows went into another bag. The mattress was bare. Should she throw it away too? She postponed that decision. She could spend the night in the other room, where there was a bed already made.
She would never tell this to Erik, not to anyone! It was not just the stench, the whole thing was dirty, as if someone had shit on her and her cottage. The danger involved that someone so explicitly threatened her with this Sicilian action receded for the mental assault that had occurred, and she felt shame. She was the one who was ashamed! It was not just a crime, it was also an assault on her peace of mind, on her right to live undisturbed and peacefully in a little village in a backwater.
* * *
That evening she did something she’d never done before. They were sitting in the hammock, the entrecôte was consumed along with some of the vegetables she’d bought. She’d had two glasses of wine, which was the unstated daily ration when Erik was at home. Most often she could hold herself to that. Erik had made popcorn, which he was eating with rare fervor.
“When the school burned,” she started, “most people thought that someone started it.”
“An attack,” said Erik.
“You can say that,” she said, wondering about the choice of words, but found it striking.
She told him what the CSIs had unofficially concluded, that it was arson, and after that about the neighbors and their talk.
“You’ve never talked about your job,” he said. “Not even when I wanted to know.”
“I couldn’t, it was that simple. But now I’m no longer a police officer, and I can gossip as much as I want, with whomever I want.”
He observed her in that penetrating way that Ann somehow found embarrassing, as if he was searching for something unstated, while he carefully ate his popcorn. It lasted a couple of seconds, but it was enough, she recognized the expression in his young face. Then he smiled and tossed another handful of popcorn into his mouth.
“And yet it feels strange, as if I’m doing something wrong.”
“And what do you think? About the fire, I mean?”
“Attack,” said Ann.
“Wonder how it feels to murder a person.”
“One time I asked a murderer.”
“And what did he say?”
“It was a she, and she said that it felt like she’d done humanity a favor.”
“She didn’t regret it?”
Ann shook her head.
“Creepy.”
Ann did not want to mention that she could partly understand the woman, because murder must be condemned, even if the victim was a thoroughly rotten human being, and a violent rapist.
“Maybe the person who set the fire thinks that too, that he was doing humanity a favor,” said Erik, after a long moment of silence. “Someone who hates immigrants. We have a few at school, they’ve started an association, they call themselves National Swedes.”
“National Swedes,” Ann repeated, tasting the words. They didn’t say much.
“You know that the Nazis in Germany were called national socialists,” said Erik.
“Would they be able to burn down a school?”
“Some of them maybe. Sigvard is in it.”
“Sigvard from Årstagatan, your old classmate?”
Erik nodded.
“But he was so nice.”
“Not anymore. If you knew what he says about the police.”
“I don’t want to hear,” said Ann. She didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken.
“They hate everything,” Erik continued, after another load of popcorn.
“You’ll get a stomachache,” said Ann.
“How did she do it?”
It took a moment before she understood what he meant. “With a frying pan,” she said, and remembered with horror the sight that met her and Fredriksson when they stepped into the couple’s bedroom. The woman was sitting straight-backed on a chair in the kitchen, with her gaze stubbornly fixed on the counter, mute before their questions. It was only after a couple of days in jail that it all came out, and she recounted coldly and factually about a fifteen-year marriage which for her entailed mental and physical abuse.
“The strange thing was that her mother was probably an accessory, but we could never prove it. There were two frying pans, one with the mother’s fingerprints. Both she and her mother maintained that they’d been put on the handle after the murder, when her mother was going to hide them.”
“What story did they come up with, that she used both frying pans herself?”
“Just what I asked. She claimed that she struck her husband alternately with two pans, one in each hand. They were of the old model, cast iron, heavy. We have a similar one from Grandma and Grandpa. Both maintained that the mother was asleep in a guest room when the murder happened.”
“They stuck together,” Erik observed.
“That they did, and it was for the children’s sake. The couple had two boys, that the grandmother had to take care of. If she’d been convicted too, well, then there was no one for the kids.”
“How many years did she get?”
“Seven, if I remember right. There were extenuating circumstances, after all. He’d abused her for years. But murder and arson, can’t we talk about something else?”
“I’m going to Berlin, we can talk about that. I talked with Lyset and Viggo yesterday, and there’s room for me too,” Erik said, and Ann understood that this was a reason, perhaps the main one, that he had come out. He wanted to get the plan approved.
“This summer?”
“July.”
It would be the first time he had traveled abroad without her. What did she know about Berlin? Absolutely nothing. She knew that David Lys had an older brother in Berlin.
“How fun,” she said. “But do you have the money?”
“I’ve been saving,” he said with a smile, and that did not surprise her at all. Erik was careful with money, not to say stingy.
She had vacation in July herself, and it struck her that she wanted to travel somewhere. It had been a long time since she’d been abroad.
“I’ve thought about Greece this summer,” she said.
“Alone?”
“We’ll have to see,” she said evasively, unexpectedly embarrassed by the thought of a hotel room with a view of a blue sea, a made bed.
“Oh, how secretive.”
“A little heat would be nice,” she said, mostly not to feel so awkward before his grin.