Rites of Spring Anders Motte (classic children's novels txt) 📖

her lips. They were so perfect, so soft, so . . .

‘Who knows – maybe the Green Man will turn up,’ she added.

Arne tried to speak, but his mouth refused to co-operate. The sound of a car engine made Elita spin around.

‘Leo!’ she shouted, and began to run. Something in her voice made Arne feel as if a rusty knife had just been plunged into his heart.

14

‘The story behind the photograph is horrible. It’s about a dead girl, and it touched me deeply, in a way I daren’t explain to you – not yet. There’s so much you don’t know about me, Margaux. So much I haven’t told you. About the person I used to be. About the people I’ve left behind.’

They say goodbye to Kerstin Miller and drive back the way they came. Dr Andersson remains silent, as if she doesn’t know what to say – for once.

‘So the girl in the photograph is Elita Svart,’ Thea says. ‘And she was murdered in the forest.’

That’s all Kerstin was prepared to tell her. Maybe she thinks it’s up to David to fill in the rest, but Thea can’t wait that long.

The doctor drums her fingers on the wheel, as if she is engaged in some kind of internal battle.

‘What happened to Elita was very sad,’ she says eventually. ‘A family tragedy. They lived at Svartgården, deep in the marsh. There used to be a track, but it’s gone now. Elita’s father, Lasse Svart, was a farrier, but he did all kinds of other things as well. Water divining, curing sick animals, breaking in horses. There were rumours that he had other irons in the fire too . . . He went to prison more than once, and a lot of people were afraid of him.’

The doctor pauses while she negotiates a water-filled pothole in the road.

‘Lasse lived with two women, Eva-Britt and Lola. Eva-Britt was about the same age as Lasse. She took care of his business affairs, and she made and sold homeopathic medicines. Her son Leo lived at Svartgården too.’

Another pothole, another pause.

‘Lola, Elita’s mother, was a little . . . strange. She never really went anywhere, couldn’t look you in the eye. The whole family was . . .’ Dr Andersson hesitates. ‘I don’t really know what the right word is these days, but back then people like that were described as gypsies.’

Thea’s skin crawls, her upper lip twitches.

‘Right,’ she hears herself say in a surprisingly neutral tone.

‘As you can see from the photograph, Elita was a very pretty girl with a special aura. And she knew how to exploit all of that.’

‘In what way?’ Thea asks, mainly to stop her brain repeating that word.

‘Elita loved to be the centre of attention, and she could wrap boys and men around her little finger. Including her stepbrother – Leo did everything she asked him to do. Everything.’

The doctor takes a deep breath.

‘On Walpurgis Night 1986, Elita had set up a little performance. It turned out later that she’d seen the photographs in the Folk Museum and wanted to recreate the old rite of spring. And that she’d persuaded four younger children to help her.’

‘David, Nettan, Sebastian and Jan-Olof.’

‘Exactly,’ the doctor says with a sigh. ‘They gathered at the stone circle in the forest, lit a fire, then Elita and the children danced, just like in the old ritual. Then her stepbrother turned up on horseback.’

She breaks off again, searching for the right words.

‘Leo killed Elita. Laid her down on the sacrificial stone with her hands folded across her chest. The newspapers called her the Spring Sacrifice.’

Thea inhales sharply. ‘And David and his friends saw all this?’

‘More or less. It was a terrible business, as you can imagine – both for the children and their families. They were questioned by the police, then there was the trial . . . Has David really never said anything about this? Or Ingrid?’

‘Not a word.’

There is a silence as Thea tries to process what she’s just heard. With hindsight, it’s hardly surprising that David lost the thread during the TV interview, but why wouldn’t he tell her what was going on?

‘Why did the stepbrother do it? What was his motive?’

Dr Andersson shakes her head.

‘Elita had left a letter in her bedroom. She wrote that she didn’t want to grow up, along with a lot of other teenage nonsense. She’d planned the whole thing. Planned to die.’

‘And Leo agreed to kill his stepsister?’

The doctor nods slowly. ‘He confessed, and was convicted of murder – but with a reduced sentence, because the court believed that Elita had manipulated him. A terrible business, as I said.’

It’s clear that the doctor is trying to bring the conversation to an end, but Thea isn’t done yet.

‘Were you their GP?’

‘No, I was working at the hospital in Helsingborg back then, so I wasn’t involved – except that we lived in Tornaby and knew the family.’

‘So what happened to Lasse and the others?’

‘They’re long gone, all of them. The thing is, Thea . . . What happened to Elita Svart was dreadful, and we’ve put it behind us. Tornaby is so much more than . . .’ Dr Andersson fumbles for the right phrase.

‘A dead gyppo kid,’ Thea supplies before she can stop herself. The words taste of poisonous mushrooms, perhaps bitter almonds.

‘Well, yes, no, I don’t . . .’ Dr Andersson shifts uncomfortably in her seat. ‘What I mean is, people don’t want to be reminded of all that. Dragging it up isn’t going to help you fit into the village community. Do you understand?’

Thea nods, but that word is still reverberating in her head. She hasn’t heard it since she was a teenager, when other people used to spit it at her the way the residents of Tornaby no doubt did at Elita.

In another life, another time.

Gyppo, gyppo, gyppo . . .

15

Walpurgis Night 1986

Leo is my big brother, even though we’re not actually related.

Eva-Britt has an old photograph of us on her bedside table. Leo’s ten, I’m six. We’re sitting on a bench together. He’s looking at something behind the