Free Until Thy Wrath Be Past by Åsa Larsson Page B

embarrassment.
    Christmas curtains were still hanging in the windows. Rag rugs lay chaotically on the floor, one on top of the other, to keep the heat in. The floor itself was covered in crumbs.
    His eyesight can’t be all that good, Mella thought. He doesn’t see that the place could do with a good vacuuming.
    What a fascinating village, she thought. It’s just as Anni said: In a few years’ time there’ll be nobody left. At best, the houses will have become summer cottages for surviving family members. The place will be completely deserted in winter.
    “This is a big loss for poor old Anni,” Svarvare said, moving his jaw from side to side. “A tragic accident.”
    It looked as if his false teeth were a bad fit. There was a glass of water on the draining board—no doubt that was where henormally kept them. Mella suspected that he only put his teeth in when he was about to eat or expecting visitors.
    “I’m trying to find out what happened,” she said, cutting to the chase. “Various details are unclear. Did she tell you where they were going to dive?”
    “Didn’t you find her downstream from Tervaskoski?”
    “Yes . . . even so.”
    “‘Even so?’ What do you mean, are there details that are unclear?”
    Mella hesitated. She preferred not to put her cards on the table. But sometimes you had to take a gamble to get results.
    “There are indications that she didn’t drown in the river,” she said.
    Svarvare slammed his cup down on the saucer.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t mean anything at all! Really! It’s just that I need to investigate this death in a bit more detail. And then, of course, we want to find Simon Kyrö as well.”
    “She came here,” Svarvare said. “She came here . . .”
    As he spoke, he made sweeping gestures with both hands on the kitchen table.
    “We chatted. The way one does. People need to talk. I mean, the only people left in the village are us old wrecks. As a result, perhaps we talk too much.”
    “What do you mean?” Mella said.
    “What do I mean? What do I mean?” Svarvare said, lost in thought. “Do you know that just over a week before they disappeared, Isak Krekula had a heart attack? He’s back home now, but I haven’t even seen him going to his mailbox to collect the newspaper.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mella said. “But I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
    Svarvare poked at a scratch on the kitchen table with a dirty fingernail. He looked at the wall clock. It had stopped at seven. In fact it was 12:05.
    “Oh dear,” he said, sounding as if he had made up his mind. “I need to lie down. I’m an old man, you know.”
    He stood up, removed his dentures, and put them in the glass of water on the draining board. Then he lay down on the bench, his arms crossed over his chest, and closed his eyes.
    “Of course,” Mella said, feeling like an idiot. “But can’t you explain what you meant?”
    There was no response from the bench. The conversation was over. Svarvare’s chest rose and fell rapidly.
    “For fuck’s sake!” Mella said as she got into her car.
    She knew she ought to have let him talk. He had been on the way to telling her something. Stålnacke would have sat there quietly, waiting. Let Svarvare speak in his own good time. Damn that Stålnacke! And what was all that about Isak Krekula having a heart attack? How was it relevant?
    “We’d better have a word with Isak Krekula,” Mella said to herself as she turned the ignition key.
    The Krekulas’ houses formed a group of three at the far end of the village. Mella parked, got out of the car, and stood beside it. So this was where Tore and Hjalmar lived, and their parents as well. She tried to guess which house belonged to whom. All were clad in red-painted wooden panels. One of the houses was older than the other two and had a barn attached, with a roof of irregular corrugated-iron sheets. Embroidered curtains in the windows. This had to be where the