The Blood Spilt Read Online Free PDF Page B

he replied, but Rebecka had already turned on her heel and stomped off onto the jetty.
    He dashed after her. She’d thrown her bag into the skiff and was untying the mooring rope. Måns searched around for something to say.
    “I was talking to Torsten,” he said. “He told me he was thinking of asking you to go up to Kiruna with him. But I told him he shouldn’t ask.”
    “Why?”
    “Why? I thought it was the last thing you needed.”
    Rebecka didn’t look at him as she answered.
    “Perhaps you’d allow me to decide what I need and don’t need.”
    She was beginning to become vaguely aware of the fact that people nearby were tuning in to her and Måns. They were pretending to be busy dancing and chatting, but hadn’t the general murmur of conversation dropped a little? Maybe now they’d all have something to talk about next week at work.
    Måns seemed to have noticed as well, and lowered his voice.
    “I was only thinking of you, I do apologize.”
    Rebecka jumped down into the boat.
    “Oh, you were thinking of me, were you? Is that why you’ve had me sitting in on all those criminal trials like some kind of tart?”
    “Right, that’s enough,” snapped Måns. “You said yourself that you didn’t mind. I thought it was a good way of keeping in touch with the job. Get out of that boat!”
    “As if I had a choice! You could see that if you bothered to think about it!”
    “Stop doing the bloody criminal cases, then. Get out of the boat and go upstairs and get some sleep, then we’ll talk in the morning when you’ve sobered up.”
    Rebecka took a step forward in the boat. It rocked back and forth. For a moment the thought went through Måns’ mind that she was going to clamber out onto the jetty and slap him. That would be just perfect.
    “When I’ve sobered up? You…you’re just unbelievable!”
    She placed her foot against the jetty and pushed off. Måns considered grabbing hold of the boat, but that would cause a scene as well. Hanging on to the prow till he fell in the water. The office’s very own comedy turn. The boat slipped away.
    “Go to bloody Kiruna then!” he shouted, without paying any attention to who might hear him. “You can do what you bloody well like as far as I’m concerned.”
    The boat disappeared into the darkness. He heard the oars rattling in the rowlocks and the splash as the blades slid into the water.
    But Rebecka’s voice was still close by, and had gone up a pitch.
    “Tell me what could possibly be worse than this.”
    He recognized the voice from those endless rows with Madelene. First of all Madelene’s suppressed rage. Him without the faintest idea of what the hell he’d done wrong this time. Then the row, every time the storm of the century. And afterward that voice, a little bit higher pitched and about to splinter into tears. Then it might be time for the reconciliation. If you were prepared to pay the price: being the scapegoat. With Madelene he’d always trotted out the old story: said he was just a heap of shit. Madelene in his arms, sobbing like a little girl with her head leaning on his chest.
    And Rebecka…His thoughts lumbered drunkenly through his head searching for the right words, but it was already too late. The sound of the oars was moving further and further away.
    He wasn’t bloody well going to shout after her. She could forget that.
    Suddenly Ulla Carle, one of the firm’s two female partners, was standing behind him wondering what was going on.
    “So shoot me,” he said, and walked off up toward the hotel. He headed for the outdoor bar under the garlands of colored lanterns.
    T UESDAY S EPTEMBER 5
    Inspector Sven-Erik Stålnacke was driving from Fjällnäs to Kiruna. The gravel clattered against the underside of the car and behind him the dust from the road swirled up in a great cloud. When he swung up toward Nikkavägen the massive ice blue bulk of Kebnekaise rose up against the sky on his left-hand side.
    It’s amazing how you never