The Black Path Read Online Free PDF Page A

so stupid that she doesn’t realize it.
    “Six months, then. To start with.”
    Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot groans.
    “No, no. She’s a lawyer; she earns more than twice as much as I do. I can’t show up with a provisional position.”
    “I don’t care whether she’s a lawyer or not. Right now we don’t even know whether she can manage to sort out fruit in the local supermarket. It’s provisional, and that’s the end of it.”
    And so the decision is made. They move on to more agreeable topics of conversation, exchanging gossip about colleagues, police officers, judges and local politicians.
     
     
    A week later, Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot is sitting with Rebecka on the steps outside the house in Kurravaara.
    The swallows slice through the air like knives. There’s a clattering noise as they hurtle in beneath the roof of the barn. Then they’re off again. You can hear their young tweeting encouragingly.
    Rebecka looks at Alf Björnfot. A man in his sixties, horrible trousers, reading glasses on a cord around his neck. He seems like a nice man. She wonders if he’s good at his job.
    They’re drinking coffee out of mugs, and she offers him a digestive biscuit straight out of the packet. He’s come to offer her a job as a special prosecutor in Kiruna.
    “I need somebody good,” he says simply. “Somebody who’ll stay.”
    As she’s replying, he sits with his eyes closed and his face turned up toward the sun. He hasn’t much hair left; you can see the age spots on the top of his head.
    “I don’t know if I can do that sort of job any longer,” says Rebecka. “I don’t trust my head.”
    “But it’s such a waste if you don’t even try,” he says without opening his eyes. “Try it for six months. If it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t work out.”
    “I went crazy, you know that?”
    “Yes, I know the police officers who found you.”
    She’s reminded of it once again. The fact that she’s a topic of conversation.
    Chief Prosecutor Björnfot still has his eyes closed. He’s thinking about what he’s just said. Should he have said something different? No, best to be straight with this girl, he senses that strongly.
    “Were they the ones who told you I’d moved back up here?” she asks.
    “That’s right, one of them has a cousin who lives here in Kurravaara.”
    Rebecka laughs. It’s a dry, joyless sound.
    “It’s only me who doesn’t know anything about anybody.”
    “It all got too much for me,” she says after a moment. “Nalle, lying there dead on the gravel. I really liked him. And his father…I thought he was going to kill me.”
    He grunts in reply. Eyes still closed. Rebecka takes the opportunity to look at him in peace. And it’s easy to talk when he’s not looking at her.
    “It’s the sort of thing you think is never going to happen to you. At first I was so scared it would happen again. And that I’d be stuck there. Living the rest of my life in a nightmare.”
    “Are you still afraid it’ll happen again?”
    “At any moment, you mean? You’re just walking across the road, and then…kapow!”
    She clenches her fist and opens it out, spreading her fingers, as if to illustrate a fireworks display of insanity.
    “No,” she goes on. “I needed the insanity just then. Reality was too heavy for me.”
    “Anyway, none of that concerns me,” says Alf Björnfot.
    And now he’s looking at her.
    “I need good prosecutors.”
    He falls silent. Then he speaks again. Much later, Rebecka will remember his words and think that he knew exactly what he was doing. How to handle her. She will discover that he really knows about people.
    “Although of course I do understand if you’re not sure about it. The position is in Kiruna, after all. So it’ll be bloody lonely. The other prosecutors are based in Gällivare and Luleå, and they only come up here when the criminal court is sitting. The idea is for you to take most of the sessions. A secretary will come up