she can’t stop screaming now. Curses and swear words that she’s never uttered before come pouring out of her mouth. You bastard. You hypocritical fucking bastard.
Much later, when he is certain that Maja is sleeping like the dead, Thomas picks up the telephone and makes a call.
“It’s Rebecka,” he says. “I can’t allow her to carry on like this.”
Friday, February 21
It had stopped snowing and begun to blow. A piercing, ice-cold wind raced across the forests and the roads. It swept the snow along with it, smoothing out the whole landscape with a white, even cover. The morning train to Luleå was delayed by several hours, and the neat piles of snow shoveled to one side by the owners of the villas were pushed back onto their driveways, blocking their garage doors. It whistled round the corners of the house in its quest for more snow, and found its way inside the collars of cursing paperboys.
Rebecka Martinsson was plodding over to Sivving’s house. Her shoulders were hunched against the wind, and she kept her head down like a charging animal. Snow was blowing up into her face so that she could hardly see. She was carrying Lova under one arm like a bundle, and in the other hand she was carrying the child’s pink denim rucksack
“I can walk by myself,” whined Lova.
“I know, honey,” said Rebecka. “But we haven’t got time. It’s quicker if I carry you.”
She pushed Sivving’s door open with her elbow and dropped Lova in a heap on the hall floor.
“Hello,” she called, and Bella answered at once with an excited bark.
Sivving appeared in the doorway leading down to the cellar.
“Thanks for taking her,” said Rebecka breathlessly, trying in vain to pull Lova’s shoes off without undoing them. “Useless idiots. They could at least have told me yesterday when I picked her up.”
When she had arrived at nursery with Lova, she’d been informed that the staff had a training day and that none of the children were to attend. That had been exactly one hour before the hearing about Sanna’s arrest, and now she was really pushed for time. Before long the wind would have blown so much snow up against the car that she might not be able to get out. And then she’d never make it in time.
She pulled at Lova’s shoelaces, but Sara had tied double knots when she helped her little sister get dressed.
“Let me do it,” said Sivving. “You’re in a hurry.”
He picked Lova up and sat with her on his knee on a little green wooden chair that completely disappeared under his bulk. Patiently he started to undo the knots.
Rebecka looked gratefully at him. The route march from the nursery to the car and from the car to Sivving had made her hot and sweaty. She could feel her blouse sticking to her body, but there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that she would have time to shower and change her clothes. She had half an hour.
“Now, you’re going to stay here with Sivving, and I’ll be back soon to pick you up, okay?” she said to Lova.
Lova nodded and turned her face up toward Sivving so that she was looking at the underside of his chin.
“Why are you called Sivving?” she asked. “It’s a funny name.”
“Yes, it is,” laughed Sivving. “My real name is Erik.”
Rebecka looked at him in surprise, and forgot that she was in a hurry.
“What?” she said. “Isn’t your name Sivving? Why are you called that, then?”
“Don’t you know?” Sivving smiled. “It was my mother. I was at college in Stockholm, studying to be a mining engineer. Then I moved back home, and was due to start work with LKAB, the mining company. And my mother got a bit above herself. She was proud of me, of course. And she’d had to put up with a lot of nonsense from other people in the village when she sent me away to study. It was really only posh people who sent their children away to study, and they thought there was no call for her to start getting big ideas about herself.”
The memory brought a wry smile to his lips, and he went on:
“Anyway, I rented a room on Arent Grapegatan and my mother sorted out a telephone subscription. And she wrote down my title, and it ended up in the phone book. Civ.eng, civil engineer. Well, you can imagine what they all said to start with: ‘Oh look, it’s civ.eng himself calling to see us.’ But