The Black Path Read Free Page A

she asked.
    Sven-Erik nodded, snapping small icicles from his moustache.
    Anna-Maria took the tape recorder out of her pocket. She fought with it for a while, because the batteries had got cold and it didn’t want to work.
    “Oh, come on,” she said, holding it close to the stove, which was doing its best to warm up the inside of the ark despite the broken window and the many gaps in the door.
    When she got it going, she put the description in first.
    “Female, blonde bob, in her forties…She’s attractive, isn’t she?”
    Sven-Erik mumbled something.
    “Well, I think she’s attractive anyway. About one meter seventy-five, slim, large breasts. No rings on her fingers. Eye color difficult to establish in the present circumstances, maybe the pathologist…Light-colored track suit top, looks windproof, stains on it which are probably blood, but we’ll find that out soon enough, matching track suit bottoms, running shoes.”
    Anna-Maria leaned over the woman.
    “And she’s wearing makeup—lipstick, eye shadow and mascara,” she continued into the tape recorder. “Isn’t that a bit odd, when you’re going out to exercise? And why hasn’t she got a hat?”
    “It’s been a lovely day, really warm, and yesterday was the same,” said Sven-Erik. “Just as long as you don’t get that wind…”
    “It’s winter! You’re the only person who never wears a hat. At any rate, her clothes don’t look cheap, and neither does she. She’s kind of elegant, somehow.”
    Anna-Maria switched off the tape recorder.
    “We’ll start knocking on doors tonight. The tourist station and the eastern side of Abisko. And we’ll ask the shop owners if it’s anybody they know. You’d think somebody would have reported her missing.”
    “I’ve got the feeling there’s something familiar about her,” said Sven-Erik thoughtfully.
    Anna-Maria nodded.
    “Maybe she lives in Kiruna, then. Think about it. Maybe you’ve seen her somewhere? Dentist? Behind the counter in a shop? In the bank?”
    Sven-Erik shook his head.
    “Leave it,” he said. “It’ll come to me if it wants to.”
    “We need to go round the other arks as well,” said Anna-Maria.
    “I know. And in this bloody storm.”
    “All the same.”
    “Right.”
    They looked at each other for a while.
    Sven-Erik looked tired, Anna-Maria thought. Tired and depressed. Dead women often had that effect on him. And the murders were usually so tragic. They lay there dead in the kitchen, the husband in floods of tears in the bedroom, and you just had to be grateful if there were no small children who’d seen it all happen.
    It never really affected her that much, unless it involved children of course. Children and animals, you never got used to that. But a murder like this one. Not that it made her happy. Or that she thought it was a good thing somebody had been murdered, nothing like that. But a murder like this…it gave you something to get your teeth into, somehow. She needed that.
    She smiled inwardly at Sven-Erik’s big wet moustache. It looked like road kill. Recently it had been more or less growing wild. She wondered how lonely he really was. His daughter lived in Luleå with her family. They probably didn’t get together very often.
    And then about eighteen months ago that cat of his had disappeared. Anna-Maria had tried to persuade him to get another one, but Sven-Erik refused. “They’re nothing but trouble,” he said. “They’re such a tie.” She knew exactly what that meant. He wanted to protect himself from the anguish. God knows he’d worried about Manne and pondered over what might have happened to him, until in the end he’d given up hope and stopped talking about him.
    It was such a shame, thought Anna-Maria. Sven-Erik was a good man. He’d make a fine husband for someone. And a good master for any animal. He and Anna-Maria got on well, but it would never occur to them to spend their leisure time together. It wasn’t just that he was much older