here on different planets, trying to talk. She had that damned coat on, and her fine, expensive gloves.
“When I used to live here, you were very close,” she said.
“Yes.”
“How was he? After I left, I mean.”
Behind the curtain the watering system sprang to life with a muted hiss. Moisture sprayed from the roof and trickled down the stiff, transparent plastic.
“He was perfect. Handsome. Devoted. A gifted speaker. But he had a tough God. If he’d lived in the Middle Ages he’d have whipped himself with a scourge and walked to holy places in his bare, wounded feet.”
He picked the mushrooms from the last block of wood and spread them evenly in the box.
"In what way did he punish himself?" she asked.
Patrik Mattsson carried on rearranging the mushrooms; it was as if he was talking to them rather than to her.
“You know. Strip away anything that doesn’t come from God. No listening to anything other than Christian music, because then you’d expose yourself to the influence of evil spirits. He was really keen to get a dog once, but a dog takes up time, and that time belongs to God, so nothing came of it.”
He shook his head.
“He should have got that dog,” he said.
“But how was he?” asked Rebecka.
“I told you. Perfect. Everybody loved him.”
“And you?”
Patrik Mattsson didn’t answer her.
I didn’t come here to learn about growing mushrooms, thought Rebecka.
“I think you loved him too,” she said.
Patrik breathed in sharply through his nose, clamped his lips tightly together and gazed up at the ceiling.
“He was just a sham,” he said violently. “Nothing matters anymore. And I’m glad he’s dead.”
“What do you mean? What sort of sham?”
“Leave it,” he said. “Just leave it, Rebecka.”
“Did you write him a card telling him you loved him, and that what you were doing wasn’t wrong?”
Patrik Mattsson buried his face in his hands and shook his head.
“Did you have a relationship, or not?”
He started to cry.
“Ask Vesa Larsson,” he sniveled. “Ask him about Viktor’s sex life.”
He broke off and fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. When he didn’t find one, he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his sweater. Rebecka took a step toward him.
“Don’t touch me!” he snapped.
She froze on the spot.
"Do you know what you’re asking? You, who just ran away when things got difficult."
“Yes,” she whispered.
He lifted his hands.
“Do you understand, I can raze the whole temple to the ground! There will be nothing but ash left of The Source of All Our Strength and the movement and the school and—all of it! The town will be able to turn the Crystal Church into an ice hockey rink.”
“ ‘The truth shall set you free,’ it says.”
He fell silent.
“Free!” he spat. “Is that what you are?”
He looked around, seemed to be looking for something.
A knife—the thought went through Rebecka’s head.
He made a gesture with his hand, the fingers together, palm facing her, which seemed to indicate that he wanted her to wait. Then he disappeared through a door farther down the room. There was a heavy click as it closed behind him, then silence. Just the sound of dripping from behind the plastic curtain. The electricity humming through the light cables.
A minute passed. She thought about the man who had disappeared in the mine in the 1960s. He’d gone down, but never came up again. His car was in the parking lot, but he was gone. Without a trace. No body. Nothing. Never found.
And Virku in the car in the big parking lot, how long would she cope if Rebecka didn’t come back? Would she start barking, and be found by somebody passing by? Or just lie down and go to sleep in the snow-covered car?
She went to the door that led out to the road into the mine, and pushed it. To her relief, it wasn’t locked. She had to control herself to stop herself from running toward the workshop. As soon as she saw the people inside and heard the noise of their tools and the sound of steel being bent and shaped, her fear started to ebb away.
A man came out of the workshop. He took off his helmet and went over to one of the cars parked outside.
“Are you going up?” asked Rebecka.
“Why?” He smiled. “Want a lift?”
She drove back up with the lad from the workshop. She could feel him looking at her from the side, amused and curious. Although of course he couldn’t see much in the darkness.