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

place on earth I’d like to live in. That’s where the Krekula brothers live.”
    “Krekula Haulers,” he says when he sees that Martinsson has not understood. “Tore and Hjalmar Krekula. They’re about the same age as my kid brother. A seasoned pair of crooks if ever there was one. It was their father who set up the hauling business, and he was just as bad when he was in his prime. He must be almost ninety now. The elder brother, Hjalmar, is the worst. He’s been charged with assault loads of times—I don’t know how many other people there are who are too scared to report him. It was the same when they were kids. That was quite a scandal. Surely you’ve heard about it? About the Krekula brothers? No? No, come to think of it, it was long before your time. Hjalmar could hardly have been nine, and his little brother must havebeen about six, maybe seven. They were out in the forest. They were taking the cows to their summer pasture. Not all that far away, in fact. Hjalmar left his kid brother behind. Came back home without him. That started a major fuss—soldiers, mountain rescue, the police. But they didn’t find him. They gave up after a week. Everyone thought he was dead. Then out of the blue the little kid turned up at the front door. It was headline news all over Sweden. Tore was interviewed on the radio, and all the papers wrote about it. The boy survived. A damn miracle, there’s no other word for it. That Hjalmar, well, he’s as cold as a dead fish. Always has been. Even in primary school the pair of ’em used to go around collecting debts—real ones and made-up ones, it was all the same to them. One of my cousins, Einar—you’ve never met him, he moved away ages ago, been dead for years. Had a heart attack. Anyway, he was at school with the Krekula brothers. And he and his friends had to pay up. If they didn’t, they’d have Hjalmar on their backs.
    “Ah well,” Fjällborg says, scraping the wasabi off the rice, “not everything was better in the old days, I guess.”

Friday, April 24
    Pathologist Lars Pohjanen telephoned Inspector Anna-Maria Mella at eleven fifteen on the night of Friday, April 24.
    “Have you got a moment?” he said.
    “Of course,” Mella said. “Marcus rented a movie; it’s supposed to be deep, profound even. But Robert fell asleep after a few minutes. He woke up just now and said, ‘Are they still sitting around blabbering? Haven’t they solved the world’s problems yet?’ Then he fell asleep again.”
    “Who is it?” Robert shouted, sounding distinctly drowsy. “I’m awake.”
    “It’s Pohjanen.”
    “This damn film is just a gang of people lounging around on a park bench talking, going on and on nonstop,” Robert yelled, loud enough for Pohjanen to hear. “It’s Friday night, for Christ’s sake! What we need is a car chase or two, a few murders, and a dollop of sex.”
    Pohjanen chuckled.
    “I apologize,” Mella. “I was drunk one night and he got me pregnant.”
    “They are not sitting on a park bench. Can you just shut up, please?” Mella’s eldest son, Marcus, said.
    “What’s the film?” Pohjanen said.
    “ The Lives of Others . It’s in German.”
    “I’ve seen that,” Pohjanen said. “It was good. It made me cry.”
    “Pohjanen says he cried when he saw it,” Mella advised Robert.
    “Tell him I’m crying my eyes out as well,” Robert yelled.
    “There you are, you see,” Mella said to Pohjanen. “The last time he cried was when Wassberg beat Juha Mieto in the 1980Olympics. Can you be quiet now so I can hear what Pohjanen wants?”
    “One hundredth of a second,” Robert said, touched by the memory of that famous skiing victory. “Fifteen kilometers, and he won by five centimeters.”
    “Can’t you all shut up so I can watch this film?” Marcus said.
    “Wilma Persson,” Pohjanen said. “I tested some water from her lungs.”
    “And?”
    “And I compared it with water from the river.”
    Her son was looking daggers at