Until Thy Wrath Be Past by Åsa Larsson Read Free Book Online Page B

sat down beside Martinsson’s chair and placed her paw on the woman’s knee. Then she scurried back to Eriksson again.
    “Well, I’ll be damned!” Eriksson said. “Amazing! She stayed under your desk even as I was approaching. And now this. She’s giving you the highest possible marks. She’s normally very loyal to her master. This is most unusual.”
    “I like dogs,” Martinsson said.
    She looked him in the eye. Did not avert her gaze. He returned the look.
    “Lots of people like dogs,” he said. “But dogs obviously like you. Are you thinking of getting one?”
    “Perhaps,” she said. “But the dogs I have in mind are those I played with as a child. It’s difficult to find intelligent hunting dogs now. Mind you, I don’t hunt myself. I want a dog that runs loose around the village during the winter, but that’s not allowed any more. That’s how it was when I was a girl. They knew everything that was going on. And hunted mice in the stubble-fields.”
    “One like her, in other words?” he said, nodding towards Tintin. “Wouldn’t that be the right dog for you?”
    “Of course. She’s lovely.”
    Several long seconds passed. Tintin sat between them, looking first at one, then the other.
    “Anyway,” Martinsson said eventually, “you didn’t find him.”
    “No, but I knew we wouldn’t from the start.”
    “How could you know that? What do you mean?”
    Eriksson looked out of the window. Sunshine and a light blue sky, softening up the icy crust on the snow. Icicles hung in pretty rows dripping from gutters. The trees were suffering the pains of spring.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just that I sometimes get a feeling. Sometimes I know the dog is about to find something even before it starts barking. Or that we aren’t going to find anything, as on this occasion. It’s when I feel . . . how shall I put it? . . . maybe open is the right word. A human being is something special. There’s more to us than we realize. And Mother Earth is more than just a lump of dead rock. She’s also alive. If there’s a dead body lying somewhere in the countryside, you can feel it when you reach the place. The trees know, and vibrate with the knowledge. The stones know. The grass. They create an atmosphere. And we can perceive it if we just . . .”
    He shrugged as a way of finishing the sentence.
    “Like people do when they are dowsing for water,” Martinsson said, feeling that this sounded awkward. “They don’t really need a divining rod. They simply know that the water is there.”
    “Yes,” he said softly. “Something like that, perhaps.”
    He gave her a searching look, suspected that there was something she wanted to tell him.
    “What’s on your mind?” he said.
    “The girl they found,” Martinsson said. “I had a dream about her.”
    “Really?”
    “It was nothing much. Anyway, I have to go home now. Need a lift?”
    “No, but thanks all the same. A mate of mine’s coming to help me with the car. So you saw Wilma, did you?”
    “I dreamt about her.”
    “What did she want, do you think?”
    “It was a dream,” Martinsson said again. “Don’t they say that all the people in your dreams are really yourself?”
    Eriksson smiled.
    “Cheerio,” was all he said.
    And off he went, with the dog.
    Mella drove down to Piilijärvi, some 60 kilometres south-east of Kiruna. The snow had melted from the road. All that was left was an icy ridge in the middle. Mella needed to inform Anni Autio, Wilma Persson’s great-grandmother, that the girl had been found, and that she was dead. It would have been helpful to have Stålnacke with her, but that was out of the question. He could not forgive her for what had happened during the shooting in Regla.
    “And what the hell am I supposed to do about that?” Mella said aloud to herself. “He’ll be retiring soon, so he won’t have to put up with me much longer. He can stay at home with Airi and her cats.”
    But it nagged at her. She