Page 31 of The Living and the Dead

“Yeah.” Jakob looked helpless. “I know. They’re not home yet; they’ll be here after lunch. But we argued, you know? Me and Mikael. First the crap when we were on the sofa, and then, even worse, what happened upstairs. When the police called me yesterday, and I told them about it, I could tell it made them suspicious. If I take this to them now, they’ll ask why I didn’t tell them right away.”

People sitting nearby heard them whispering and glared. Isidor had begun to read from the Gospels.

“They only called you?” Sander whispered harshly in surprise. “They came to my house.”

“Mine too,” Killian said.

“They just called. But I could tell it made them react.” He gave a pointed look. “When I told them about the fight. And now, with this theft, what if they come arrest me or something, what the fuck am I going to say then?”

But it wasn’t all that unusual—fights happened at parties, they just didn’t typically end in someone’s death. The cops knew that. Besides, it was better for Jakob to tell them about the stolen money. They would find out eventually anyway and wonder why he’d tried to hide it, and it would—

Karl-Henrik Söderström whipped his head around as though someone had suddenly grabbed him by the hair on his nape. His face was red and puffy, his eyes shiny as he stared the guys down.

“Shut the hell up, for Christ’s sake,” he said, so loudly that Isidor fell silent up at the front.

The words ricocheted around the chapel.

Karl-Henrik’s gaze slid away, trying to find something to focus on. The two cops watched attentively from their seats.

“To all generations,” Isidor began anew, but he stopped when he saw Karl-Henrik struggling to rise from the pew.

“Can you explain it to me?” He stepped into the aisle, resting one hand on the back of the pew for support, gazing unsteadily at Madeleine and Felicia. “Huh? Everyone knows. Doesn’t it matter?” His voice was thick. “Everyone knows he was in your car.”

Up in the chancel, Isidor said, more to the police in the back than to Karl-Henrik: “Please allow me to continue.”

“Karl-Henrik, please,” Lillemor tried, trying to grab his hand, but Karl-Henrik waved it away and pointed at Felicia.

“You and Mikael,” he said, his voice losing its strength. “Right, the two of you were—”

Karl-Henrik’s eyes darted. Felicia opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Gerd had already stood up. She was standing in the centeraisle, perfectly calm, as though everyone weren’t following her every move. She rested a hand on the bereaved father’s shoulder.

“I think we should go get some air, Karl-Henrik.”

Siri came to stand on his other side, and he followed them to the exit without any fuss.

Lillemor was left behind. She put her arm around Filip, who was slumped in the pew. Afterward, everyone tried to remember if he had moved at all during his father’s outburst, but no one could say for certain; it seemed he had been completely paralyzed. Then, suddenly, Lillemor stood up and pulled Filip with her. They left the chapel, a listless son and a mother breathless, like she was trying to keep panic at bay.

Isidor cleared his throat. It was probably a moment for him to speak, but in retrospect no one could reproduce his words. The choir arranged themselves outside, dutiful but rather bewildered, and the mulled wine and gingerbread cookies were served.O, come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,they sang, their voices bright and fragile, as Sander and Killian looked around, worried that something else—what, they didn’t know—might happen.

The extent of what had happened didn’t become clear until the next day, when everyone learned that Inger Nilsson, an old newshound atHallandsposten,had managed to infiltrate and witness the whole spectacle.

24

Away,Sander thought again that Sunday. That’s the word for all this, simple as that.

In fact, maybe it had been there inside him for a long time.

When he was little, he often liked to go outside and pretend that, just as all grown-ups feared, war had come. One day he made his way out of Skavböke on the narrow forest paths, headed down to Årnilt, crossed the bridge into Oskarström. It was summer, hot outside, and the sun was high in the sky when he finally dared to emerge from the forest and approach the road. No soldiers here. The coast was clear. He looked up at the sky: no mushroom clouds either. There was still time.

And suddenly, someone was looking at Sander from across the road, a boy with a big shock of blond hair that moved gently in the breeze. He was wearing filthy clothes, with holes in the knees of his pants, and when Sander walked toward him he could tell the boy smelled a little funny.

“What are you doing?” the boy wondered, gazing uncertainly at Sander’s rifle, a smooth branch he held in both hands.

“There’s a war,” Sander said. “Didn’t you know?”

The boy’s eyes grew wide. “No. There is? Here?”

“How old are you?”