hair was lying on her shoulders in wet clumps. Her mascara had run into two black circles under her eyes. Her nose was an angry red dripping tap.
“Good morning,” she said, glaring at the two smiling women on the bunk. “Don’t ask!”
The guard disappeared and Rebecka remained standing in the doorway.
“What’s this, morning prayers?” she asked.
“We were talking about eyes being put out in the Bible,” said Sanna.
“ ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ for example,” added Anna-Maria.
“Mmm,” said Rebecka. “And then there’s that place in one of the gospels: ‘if thine eye offend thee’ and so on—where was it?”
Sanna flicked through the Bible.
“It’s in Mark,” she said. “Here it is, Mark 9:43 onward. ‘And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ ”
“Good grief!” said Anna-Maria with feeling.
“What made you start talking about this?” asked Rebecka, struggling out of her coat.
Sanna put the Bible down.
“Anna-Maria said she thought Viktor’s murder seemed so ritualistic,” she replied.
A tense silence filled the little room. Rebecka looked grimly at Anna-Maria.
“I don’t want you to talk to Sanna about the murder when I’m not present,” she said sharply.
Anna-Maria leaned forward with difficulty and picked the file up off the floor. She stood up and looked steadily at Rebecka.
“I hadn’t planned it,” she said. “It just happened. I’ll take you to a room where you can talk. Rebecka, can you ask the guard to take Sanna along to the shower when you’ve finished, then we’ll all meet in the interview room in forty minutes.”
She held the file out to Rebecka.
“Here,” she said with a conciliatory smile. “The copies of Viktor’s Bible you wanted. I really hope we can work well together.”
No points to you, thought Rebecka as Anna-Maria walked ahead of them.
When they were alone Rebecka sank down on a chair and looked resolutely at Sanna, who was standing by the window looking out at the falling snow.
“Who could have put the murder weapon in your flat?” asked Rebecka.
“I can’t think of anybody,” said Sanna. “I don’t know any more now than I did before. I was asleep. Viktor was standing by my bed. I put Lova in the sledge and took Sara by the hand and we went to the church. He was lying there.”
They fell silent. Rebecka opened the file Anna-Maria had given her. The first sheet was a copy of the back of a postcard. There was no stamp. Rebecka stared at the handwriting. A chill went though her body. It was the same writing as the message on her car. Sprawling. As if the person who had written it had been wearing gloves, or had written it with the wrong hand. She read:
What we have done is not wrong in the eyes of God. I love you.
“What is it?” asked Sanna, terrified, as she watched the color drain from Rebecka’s face.
I can’t say anything about the note on the car, thought Rebecka. She’ll go mad. She’ll be terrified something will happen to the girls.
"Nothing," she replied, “but listen to this.”
She read the postcard out loud.
“Who loved him, Sanna?” she asked.
Sanna looked down.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Loads of people.”
“You really don’t know a thing,” said Rebecka crossly.
She felt upset. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t work out what it was.
“Had you fallen out with Viktor when he died?” she asked. “Why weren’t he and your parents allowed to pick up the girls?”
"I’ve explained all that," said Sanna impatiently. "Viktor would just have given them to my parents."
Rebecka didn’t speak, she just gazed out of the window. She was thinking about Patrik Mattsson. On the video from the church service he’d grabbed at Viktor’s hands. And Viktor had snatched them away.
“I need to go for a shower now if I’m going to fit it in before the interview,”