knew somebody in the court office. She went there after work and faxed everything over to me. Some people are easy to deal with.”
She pulled into the car park. Long rows of garages. Two-story wooden apartment blocks built in the late sixties. They got out of the car and started walking. Not a soul in sight, despite the fact that it was Friday night.
“The county court discharged him two years ago,” Anna-Maria went on. “He was still in contact with a community care unit in Gävle. Had regular shots, held down a job. But according to the records he moved to Kiruna in January last year. And according to the duty doctor at the psychiatric unit in Gällivare, he hasn’t had any contact with community care in Kiruna.”
“So…”
“So I don’t know, but presumably he hasn’t had the medication he needs for a year. And is that so odd? I mean, you’ve seen those tapes from the church. ‘Throw away your pills! God is your doctor!’ ”
They stood for a while outside the door. Two of the apartments were in darkness. Sven-Erik had his hand on the door handle. Anna-Maria lowered her voice.
“I asked the duty doctor what he thought might happen to a person who stopped their injections.”
“And…”
“And you know what they’re like… can’t comment on this particular case… varies from one individual to another… but in the end he admitted that it was perhaps possibly likely that he might get worse. Bad, even. Do you know what he said when I told him there was a church that thought people should throw away all their medication?”
Sven-Erik shook his head.
“He said: ‘Weak people are often drawn to the church. And people who want power over weak people are also drawn there.’ ”
They stood in silence for a few seconds. Anna-Maria watched as the wind filled their footprints on the porch with snow.
“Shall we go in, then?” she said.
Sven-Erik opened the door and they went into the dark stairwell. Anna-Maria switched on the light. A small plaque on the right showed that Bäckström lived on the next floor. They went up the stairs. They had both been to these apartments on many occasions in the past, when the neighbors had phoned to complain about some disturbance. There was the same smell as there always was in these places. Piss under the stairs. The acrid smell of cleaning fluid. Concrete.
They rang the bell, but no one answered. Listened at the door, but the only sound was music from the apartment opposite. There had been no light in the window. Anna-Maria opened the letter box and tried to look in. The flat was in darkness.
“We’ll have to come back,” she said.
And evening came and morning came, the sixth day
It is twenty past four in the morning. Rebecka is sitting at the small kitchen table in the cabin in Jiekajärvi. She looks toward the window and looks straight into her own great big eyes. Anybody could be standing right outside and looking in at her, and she wouldn’t be able to see them. That person would suddenly press his face against the glass and the image of his face would melt into the reflection of her own.
Stop it, she says to herself. There’s nothing out there. Who’d go out in the dark in a storm like this?
The fire is crackling in the stove and the draught in the chimney makes a long, lonely sound that is accompanied by the howling wind outside and the soft hissing of the kerosene gas lamp. She gets up and pushes in two more logs. When there’s a storm like this it’s important to keep the fire going. Otherwise the cabin will be chilled through by tomorrow morning.
The strong wind finds its way through gaps in the walls and between the door frame and the old ocher yellow mirrored door. Once upon a time, before Rebecka was born, it had been the door of the pigsty. Her grandmother had told her that. And before that it had been somewhere else. It is much too beautiful and too solid a door to have been made for the pigsty. Presumably it used to be in a house somewhere that had been pulled down. And somebody had decided to find a home for the door.
On the floor there are several layers of Grandmother’s rag rugs. They insulate the house and keep the cold out. The snow that has been blown up against the walls insulates too. And the north-facing wall has a