Are all of them employed by the church?” Irene asked.
“We have a Christian preschool and a good youth program. The church is a large employer here in the municipality. And I’m the one who tries to find the money to pay for it all. The churches themselves also need renovations, as well as the fellowship halls, the rectories, and other properties. I’m in charge of paying all the bills and salaries, and I do the bookkeeping as well.”
Irene had never thought of the church as an employer with a large economic impact, but that’s apparently exactly what it was. And Sten Schyttelius had been in charge of it all, the commander of the parish or association or whatever it was called. She said out loud, “So you’re financially responsible, but Rector Schyttelius was the boss. What was he like as an employer?”
For the first time, Louise thought before she answered. Then she said, hesitantly, “Sten was a pleasant person, but as a boss he had certain . . . bad sides. He was actually ready for retirement, so you can understand that he was relatively old-fashioned and authoritarian. He was difficult to deal with sometimes. He had a short fuse and could get very angry. He saw women as personal assistants, not as colleagues. We had some clashes. . . . The woman who held this position before me actually quit. There was a lot of talk about harassment, but it didn’t come to anything. Not to mention his controversies with the vestrymen! The new director and Sten never got along.”
While Louise was speaking, one of the envelopes slipped from her lap and fell on the floor. The photos fell out, and Irene bent to help pick them up. She stopped at the first photo.
In the far left of the picture, Sten Schyttelius was raising a generously filled schnapps glass. Bengt Måårdh was seated in the middle, half turned away from the rector. He had one of his arms around Cantor Eva Möller’s shoulders and was leaning over to whisper something in her ear. She looked enchanting in a red dress with embroidery around its square neckline, and she was smiling at what he said. It appeared to Irene that the assistant rector was taking the opportunity to peer down the neck of Eva’s dress.
Louise Måårdh saw that Irene had examined the photo of her husband and the lovely cantor, but she didn’t say anything. She held out her hand to take the pictures Irene had gathered together. “Thank you,” she said.
“Do you know if anyone in the Schyttelius family felt threatened?” Irene asked.
Louise shook her reddish-brown hair. “No. I never heard anything like that.”
“Did Sten Schyttelius ever talk about Satanists?”
“Yes. After the summer chapel burned down; he was terribly upset.”
“Did he speak about Satanists during the last couple of months?”
“No, not that I remember. It was mostly in the months following the fire.”
“Did you hear that he was trying to trace the Satanists via the Internet?”
“Internet? No, that’s news to me,” Louise said with sincere surprise in her voice.
“Then I don’t have any more questions at the moment. Would you be so kind as to ask your husband to come in?”
BENGT MÅÅRDH’S face bore a troubled expression as he seated himself in the visitor’s chair. He folded his hands and rested his elbows on the armrests while his serious gaze focused on Irene. Again she felt that a priest was here to console her, as if she was the one who needed comforting. The feeling was absurd, yet it was there. Maybe it was evoked by his sympathetic brown eyes behind frameless glasses.
Then it struck her that she was simply being exposed to a basic tool of his profession. This was the way Bengt Måårdh had learned to act in times of grief: He displayed compassion. It probably worked with a person who actually needed it, not least with women. And who doesn’t need compassion nowadays? Our need for comfort is immeasurable.
She was pulled from her thoughts when the pastor said, in a low voice, “I am prepared to answer your questions. If there’s anything I can do to catch the person who murdered Sten and Elsa and Jacob, then I want to do everything within my power to help.” He leaned against the backrest of the chair with his hands still folded.
“Have you ever heard any of the three murder victims say that he or she felt threatened?” Irene began.