The Blood Spilt by Åsa Larsson

Magdalena was a close group. Don’t you exist anymore?”
    Lisa looked down at the table.
    “We do.”
    Anna-Maria waited for her to add something more, but Lisa Stöckel maintained a stubborn silence.
    “Who was close to her?” asked Anna-Maria.
    “Those of us who were on the committee of Magdalena, I suppose.”
    “Her husband?”
    A movement of the iris in the eye, Anna-Maria spotted it. There was something there.
    Lisa Stöckel, there’s something you’re not telling me, she thought.
    “Of course,” replied Lisa Stöckel.
    “Did she feel threatened or afraid?”
    “She must have had some sort of tumor or something that suppressed the part of her brain that feels fear…No, she wasn’t afraid. And threatened, no more recently than at any other time, there was always somebody who felt the need to slash her tires or smash her car windows…”
    Lisa Stöckel glared furiously at Anna-Maria.
    “She stopped reporting things to the police a long time ago. It was just a load of trouble for nothing, you can never prove anything even if you know exactly who it is.”
    “But perhaps you could give me some names,” said Anna-Maria.
    *                  *                  *                  
    Quarter of an hour later Anna-Maria Mella got into her Ford Escort and drove away.
    Why get rid of all your books? she wondered.
    Lisa Stöckel stood at the kitchen window watching Anna-Maria’s car disappear down the hill in a cloud of oily smoke. Then she sat down on the kitchen sofa next to the sleeping Labrador. She stroked the dog’s throat and chest just as a bitch licks her puppies to calm them. The dog woke up and thumped her tail affectionately a few times.
    “What’s the matter, Majken?” asked Lisa. “You don’t even get up to say hello to people anymore.”
    Her throat constricted in a painful knot. Her eyelids prickled. There were tears in there. She wasn’t going to shed them.
    She must be in terrible pain, she thought.
    She got up quickly.
    Oh God, Mildred, she thought. Forgive me. Please forgive me. I’m…trying to do the right thing, but I’m afraid.
    She had to get some air, suddenly felt ill. She made it out onto the porch and threw up a little pile of vomit.
    The dogs were there at once. If she didn’t want it, they could take care of it for her. She pushed them away with her foot.
    That bloody policewoman. She’d got right inside her head and opened it up like a picture book. Mildred on every single page. She just couldn’t look at those pictures anymore. Like that first time, six years ago. She remembered how she’d been standing by the rabbit hutches. It was feeding time. Rabbits, white, gray, black, spotted, got up on their hind legs and pushed their little noses through the chicken wire. She doled out pellets and shriveled bits of carrot and other root vegetables in little terra-cotta dishes. Felt a little bit of sorrow in her heart, because the rabbits would soon be in a stew down at the pub.
    *                  *                  *                  
    Then she’s standing behind her, the priest who’s just moved in. They haven’t met before. Lisa hadn’t heard her coming. Mildred Nilsson is a small woman, about the same age as her. Somewhere around fifty. She has a small, pale face. Her hair is long and dark brown. Lisa often hears people call her insignificant. They say “She’s not pretty, but…” Lisa will never understand it.
    Something happens inside her when she takes the slender hand that’s being held out to her. She has to tell her own hand to let go. The priest is talking. Even her mouth is small. Narrow lips. Like a little red lingonberry. And while the lingonberry mouth talks and talks, the eyes sing a beautiful song. About something else altogether.
    For the first time since—well, she can’t remember when—Lisa is afraid the truth will show on her face. She