The Glass Devil by Helene Tursten Page A

it?”
    Kristina nodded again like a small, well-disciplined girl, but it took quite a while before she started speaking in her weak voice. “His father was the one who came up with the idea. After the fire. They burned down the summer chapel. The Satanists, I mean. ...”
    She left the sentence unfinished and there was a helpless, desperate look in her gray blue eyes. For the first time, she had uttered enough syllables for Irene to be able to make out her Norrländsk dialect. How can she work as a teacher? Irene wondered. As if she had read her thoughts, Kristina said, “I’ve been on sick leave since . . . the murder . . . murders.”
    “Were you involved in the hunt for the Satanists?”
    “No. I don’t know anything about computers.”
    Her voice dropped off, and she looked down at her tightly clutched hands.
    “Did you and Jacob have any contact after the divorce?”
    “No.”
    “Did you see Sten or Elsa afterward?”
    “No.”
    It was strange to see how crushed Kristina seemed to be, even though she claimed to have had no contact with either Jacob or his parents during the last nine months.
    “When was the last time you spoke with Jacob?”
    “Last July. When everything was done . . . after. . . .”
    “And when did you hear from his parents last?”
    “Last June. His father called and was . . . upset . . . because we ... we were going to. . . .”
    She started sniffling quietly. She was incapable of saying the word “divorce.” The crucial point was getting closer, and it demanded an answer. Irene gave Kristina time to pull herself together, and then she asked, “Why did you and Jacob get divorced?”
    Kristina straightened her back and took a deep breath. “He didn’t want to have children.”
    It wasn’t the answer Irene had expected. Kristina didn’t look at her, focusing instead on a point behind Irene’s back. She bit her bottom lip hard to keep it from trembling.
    “But he was a teacher. He must have liked children,” Irene said.
    “Yes. But he didn’t want any of his own.”
    Strange. Irene’s brain went into overdrive. “He wasn’t seeing other women?” she asked vaguely, for lack of anything better.
    “No.”
    Again Kristina sat, her head bowed, looking as if she was waiting for a punishment.
    Now Irene became aware of the image in an embroidered wall hanging that was above the television. It was a Christ figure, a figure surrounded by light, raising his palms in a gesture of blessing toward the beholder. When Irene turned her head, she could see through the half-open door to the bedroom. A simple wooden cross in a light wood hung above the headboard of the bed. Otherwise, the walls were bare.
    “Did you, or your sister, embroider this beautiful wall hanging?” Irene asked.
    “I did. My sister weaves.”
    “Where in Norrland are you from?”
    “Vilhelmina. But we moved around a lot. My father was a preacher.”
    “A preacher? In the Pentecostal Movement?”
    “He . . . we were Laestadians.”
    Irene had fuzzy recollections from school religious lessons about an ecstatic congregation that had been founded in Norrland in the 1800s. Weren’t they the ones who weren’t allowed to have curtains? Kristina had beautiful white lattice-woven curtains in her windows.
    “You say ‘were’ Laestadians. You aren’t any longer?”
    “No. My older sister left the congregation and joined the Swedish church. She’s a pastor and works here in Karlstad.”
    “Is that why you moved here?”
    Kristina hesitated but then she nodded.
    “Is her name also Olsson?”
    “Yes. Kerstin Olsson. She never married.”
    “Are your parents still living in Norrland?”
    “Father is dead. Mother lives near our brother outside Vitangi.”
    “Are there any more siblings?”
    “No.”
    Irene unconsciously took a deep breath before she asked her next question. “Was it you or Jacob who wanted to get a divorce?”
    “It was me.”
    Kristina looked down at her clenched fists again.
    “Because he