‘What about you? Haven’t you got a life of your own?’
Rickard Skoglöf gestures towards the animals. ‘The farm and these beasts are probably more of a life than most people have.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I’ve got the gift,’ Rickard Skoglöf says.
‘So what is this gift, Rickard? In purely concrete terms?’ Börje is staring intently at the canvas-clad figure in front of them.
Rickard Skoglöf puts down the bucket of feed. When he looks up at them his face is contorted with derision. He waves the question away with his hand.
‘So the power of soothsaying gives and takes life,’ Johan says. ‘Is that why you make sacrifices?’
The look in Rickard Skoglöf’s eyes gets even more weary.
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘You think I’m the one who strung up Bengt Andersson in a tree. Not even that journalist who was here before you thought that.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘If I make sacrifices? Yes, I do. But not like you think.’
‘And what do we think?’
‘That I kill animals. And maybe people. But it’s the gesture that matters. The willingness to give. Time, labour. The unity of bodies.’
‘The unity of bodies?’
‘Yes, the act can be a sacrifice. If one is open.’
Like my wife and I do every third week? Johan thinks. Is that what you mean? Instead he asks, ‘And what were you doing on the night between Wednesday and Thursday last week?’
‘You’ll have to ask my girlfriend,’ Rickard Skoglöf says. ‘Right, the animals will be okay for a while now. They can stand a bit of cold. They’re not as feeble as other creatures.’
When they come out into the yard a young woman is standing barefoot in the snow with her arms raised away from her body. The cold doesn’t seem to bother her, she’s wearing just pants and a vest, and she has her eyes closed, her head raised to the sky, her black hair a long shadow down the white skin of her back.
‘This is Valkyria,’ Rickard Skoglöf says. ‘Valkyria Karlsson. Morning meditation.’
Johan can see Börje losing his temper.
‘Valkyria,’ he yells. ‘Valkyria. Time to stop the mumbo-jumbo. We want to talk to you.’
‘Börje, for God’s sake.’
‘Oh, shout away,’ Rickard Skoglöf says. ‘It won’t help. She’ll be done in ten minutes. There’s no point trying to disturb her. We can wait in the kitchen.’
They walk past Valkyria.
Her brown eyes are open. But they see nothing. She’s millions of miles away, Johan thinks. Then he thinks about the act, of opening yourself to someone else, something else.
Valkyria Karlsson’s skin is pink with cold, her fingers somehow crystal clear. She is holding a cup of hot tea in front of her nose, inhaling the aroma.
Rickard Skoglöf is sitting at the table, grinning happily, evidently pleased that he is making things difficult for them.
‘What were you doing yesterday evening?’ Börje asks.
‘We went to the cinema,’ Rickard Skoglöf says.
Valkyria Karlsson puts down her cup.
‘The new Harry Potter,’ she says in a soft voice. ‘Entertaining nonsense.’
‘Did either of you know Bengt Andersson?’
Valkyria shakes her head, then looks at Rickard.
‘I’d never heard of him until I read about him in the paper. I have a gift. That’s all.’
‘What about last Wednesday evening? What were you doing then?’
‘We made a sacrifice.’
‘We opened ourselves at home,’ Valkyria whispers, and Johan looks at her breasts, heavy and light at the same time, breaking the law of gravity, floating under her vest.
‘So you don’t know of anyone in your circles who could have done this?’ Börje asks. ‘For heathen reasons, so to speak.’
Rickard Skoglöf laughs. ‘I think it’s time for you to leave now.’
23
The canteen of the ICA shop is pleasantly decorated, gently lit by an orange Bumling lamp. A smell of freshly brewed coffee permeates the room, while the almond tart is sticking to their teeth in a very pleasant way.
Rebecka Stenlundh is sitting opposite Malin and Zeke, on the other side of a grey laminate table.
In this light she looks older than she is, Malin thinks. Somehow the light and shadows emphasise her age, revealing almost invisible wrinkles. But everything she has been through has to show somewhere. No one escapes unblemished from that sort of experience.
‘This isn’t my shop,’ Rebecka says. ‘If that’s what you’re thinking. But the owner lets me do what I like. We’re the most profitable shop of this size in the whole of Sweden.’
‘Retail is detail,’ Zeke says in English.
‘Exactly,’ Rebecka agrees, and Malin looks down at the table.
Then Rebecka pauses.
You’re gathering your strength, Malin thinks. You’re taking a deep breath, in it goes, helping to prepare you to talk.
Then she starts to speak again: ‘I decided to leave everything to do with Mum and Dad and my brother Bengt behind. I decided I was bigger than that. Even if I hated my father in a lot of ways, I realised eventually, just after I turned twenty-two, that he couldn’t own me, that he had no right to my life. In those days I was hanging out with the wrong guys, I smoked, drank, sniffed glue, ate too much, all the while exercising so hard that my body could hardly take it. I dare say I would have started shooting up heroin if I hadn’t made that decision. I couldn’t be angry and scared and sad any longer. It would have killed me.’
‘You decided. Just like that?’ Malin is taken aback at how the words come out, almost angry, jealous.
Rebecka starts.
‘Sorry,’ Malin says. ‘I didn’t mean to sound aggressive.’
Rebecka clenches her jaw before going on. ‘I don’t think there’s any other way of doing it. I made up my mind, Officer. If you ask me, that’s the only way.’
‘And your adoptive parents?’ Zeke wonders.
‘I stopped seeing them. They were part of my old life.’
Wherever this case takes us, Malin thinks, it will be tied up with the warped logic of emotions; the sort of logic that makes someone torture another person and hang them up in a tree in the middle of a frozen plain.
Rebecka clenches her jaw again, then her face relaxes.
‘Unfair, I know. Of course it was. There was nothing wrong with them, but this was a matter of life and death, and I had to move on.’
Just like that, Malin thinks. What was it T.S. Eliot wrote?
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
‘Do you have family?’ Right question, Malin thinks. But I’m asking it for the wrong reason.
‘A son. A long time passed before I had a child. He’s eight now, he’s the reason I’m here. Have you got children?’
Malin nods. ‘A daughter.’
‘Then you know. Whatever happens, you want to be there for their sake.’
‘And the father?’
‘We’re divorced. He hit me once, by mistake really, I think, a hand flying out one night after a crayfish party, but that was enough.’
‘Did you have any contact with Bengt?’
‘With my brother? No, none at all.’
‘Did he ever try to contact you?’
‘Yes, he phoned once. But I hung up when I realised who it was. There was a before, and a now, and I was never, ever going to let them meet. Ridiculous, isn’t it?’
‘Not really,’ Malin says.
‘A week or so after he rang I had a call from some social worker. Maria, I think her name was. She asked me to talk to Bengt, even if I wouldn’t meet him. She told me how depressed he was, how lonely; she genuinely seemed to care, you know?’
‘So?’
‘I asked her never to call me again.’
‘One question, and it’s a harsh one,’ Malin says. ‘Did your father or Bengt ever abuse you se
xually?’
Rebecka Stenlundh is remarkably calm.
‘No, nothing like that, ever. Sometimes I wonder if I’m suppressing something, but no, never.’
Then a long silence.
‘But what do I know?’
Zeke bites his lip. ‘Do you know if Bengt had any enemies, anything we ought to know?’
Rebecka Stenlundh shakes her head. ‘I saw the picture in the paper. It felt like everything printed there was about me, whether I liked it or not. You can’t escape, can you? Whatever you do, your past always catches up with you, don’t you think? It’s like you’re tethered to a post with a rope. You can move about, but you can’t get away.’
‘You seem to be managing very well,’ Malin says.
‘He was my brother. You should have heard his voice when he called. He sounded like the loneliest person on the planet. And I shut the door.’
A voice over the Tannoy: ‘Rebecka to the till, Rebecka to the till.’
‘What were you doing on Wednesday evening last week?’
‘I was with my son in Egypt. Hurghada.’
Hence the suntan, Malin thinks.
‘We got a last-minute deal. This cold drives me crazy. We got home on Friday.’
Malin finishes her coffee and stands up. ‘I think that was everything,’ she says. ‘Yes, I think so.’
24
Have I forgiven you, sister?
It didn’t start with you, and it doesn’t end with you. So what is there to forgive, really?
Arrange your apples in rows, raise your child the way we never were. Give him love. Mark your flesh with it.
I can’t watch over you. But I can drift about and see you, wherever you choose to run.
I devoured Maria Murvall’s friendliness like sandwiches made from ready-sliced loaves, like smoked sausage, like unsalted butter. I washed the way she told me to, I ironed my trousers, I listened to what she said, believed in her theories about dignity. But how dignified was what happened in the forest?
How clean?
How pure?
You ought to be drifting with me, Maria, instead of sitting where you sit.
Shouldn’t you?
Shouldn’t we all drift and glide about, like that green Volvo down there on the motorway?
Huskqvarna.
Lawnmowers and hunting rifles. Shotguns for all manner of prey and a matchstick troll looking out over Lake Vättern. The artist, John Bauer, drowned in those waters when his boat capsized. No trolls saved him. Is he resting in one of his dense forests now?
No music in the car. Malin refused. And the coughing of the engine reminds her to turn on her mobile.
It rings at once.
‘You have one new message . . .’
‘This is Ebba Nilsson. Social worker. You tried to get hold of me last night. I’m home all morning, so feel free to call me back.’
Add number. Call.
One, two, three rings.
No answer again? Ah.
‘Yes, hello. Who is this?’
A shrill voice, like a larynx compressed by fat. Malin can see Ebba Nilsson before her: a short, round woman close to retirement.
‘This is Malin Fors from Linköping Police. We keep missing each other.’
Silence.
‘And what do you want?’
‘Bengt Andersson. You were his social worker for a while.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you’ve heard about what’s happened?’
‘I haven’t been able to avoid it.’
‘Can you tell me anything about Bengt?’
‘Not much, I’m afraid,’ Ebba Nilsson says. ‘I’m sorry. While I was working in Ljungsbro he only came to see me once. He was incredibly quiet, but that wasn’t so strange. He hadn’t had things easy . . . and of course looking the way he did.’
‘There’s nothing in particular that we should know?’
‘No, I don’t think so, but the girl who came after me got on well with him, or so I heard.’
‘Maria Murvall?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ve been trying to get hold of her. But the number we’ve got has been disconnected. Do you know where she is now?’
Silence on the line.
‘Oh, dear Lord,’ Ebba Nilsson eventually says.
‘Sorry?’
Zeke takes his eyes off the road, looks at Malin.
‘You were about to say something?’
‘Maria Murvall was raped up in the woods by Lake Hultsjön a few years ago. Didn’t you know?’
Rita Santesson: ‘Nothing that I want to go into.’
Maria.
Murvall.
The name, it was familiar.
The Motala Police case. I remember now. I should have made the connection.
Maria Murvall.
Was she the only one who cared, Bengt?
Even your sister turned her back on you.
The logic of emotions.
A swirl of snow blows across the road.
Was she the only one who cared, Bengt?
And she was raped.
25
Hultsjön Forest, late autumn 2001
What are you doing in the forest all on your own?
This late, little girl?
No mushrooms at this time of year, and too late for berries.
Dusk is falling.
Tree trunks, undergrowth, branches, treetops, leaves, moss and worms. They’re all getting ready for the most intimate abuse.
Child-killers. Rapists. Is it one man? Or several? A woman, women?
They creep up on you as you walk through the forest, whistling. The eyes. They see you. But you don’t see them.
Or are they waiting further on, the eyes?
Darkness is falling fast now, but you aren’t scared, you could walk this track with your eyes blindfolded, getting your bearings by smell alone.
The snakes, spiders, everything that decays.
An elk?
A deer?
You turn round, still, silence falls over the forest.
Walk on. Your car is waiting by the road; soon you’ll see Hultsjön lazing in the last of the evening light.
Then everything gets dark.
Footsteps on the track behind you.
Someone pulling your legs from under you, pressing you down on to the damp ground, hot and sweet breath on your neck. So many hands, so much force.
It doesn’t matter what you do. Snake-fingers, spider-legs, they eat through your clothes, the black roots of the trees stifle your screams, tying you for ever to the silence of the earth.
The worms crawl up the inside of your thighs, sticking out their claws, tearing your skin, your insides.
How coarse, how hard is a tree trunk?
Flesh and skin and blood. How hard?
No.
Not like that.
No one hears your screams in the black vegetation. And if they heard your screams, would they come?
No one is listening.
There is no salvation.
Only the damp, the cold and the pain, the relentless harshness that burns in you, tearing apart everything that is you.
For ever silent.
Sleep, dream, wake.
The sweet breath in the air you are breathing in the forest night. Naked body, bleeding body, doomed to wander the edge of the forest around Hultsjön.
You must have walked a long way.
You were breathing. The night-chill fled in panic when you crept out on to the road. The car headlights.
You had walked so far.
The lights grow, blind, corrode.
Is it death that is coming? Evil?
Again?
It came yesterday, didn’t it, with quick steps it ran up, from where it lay hidden behind scarred bushes.
26
‘Maria Murvall.’
Zeke rubs his fingers against the steering-wheel.
‘I knew I’d heard the name before. Shit. Me and names. She was the girl wh
o was raped up by Hultsjön four years ago. A really nasty case.’
‘Motala Police.’
‘Right on the boundary, so they took it. They found her wandering about on a road almost ten kilometres from where it happened. Some truck-driver taking a load of shingle to a building site up in Tjällmo found her. She’d been torn to shreds, badly beaten as well.’
‘And they never caught him.’
‘No. I think it even got on to Crimewatch. They found her clothes and the place where it must have happened, but nothing else.’
Malin shuts her eyes. Listens to the sound of the engine.
A man hanging in a tree.
His concerned social worker raped four years ago. Wandering the forest.
Cornerhouse-Kalle. The debauched, mad father. A real man’s man.
And it all keeps popping up in the investigation, all mixed up, yet it still fits together, somehow.
Coincidence?
Try the theory out on Zeke.
‘Bengt Andersson. He must have come up during that investigation. If she really did care as much about him as everyone says.’
‘Must have done,’ Zeke says, pointing at a car they are overtaking. ‘I’ve been thinking about getting one of those Seats. They’re owned by Volkswagen these days.’
I know, Zeke, Malin thinks. Janne must have told me ten times or more when he got on to the subject of his cars.
‘Isn’t the car you’ve got now good enough?’
‘Murvall,’ Zeke says. ‘Isn’t that name familiar for some other reason as well?’
Malin shakes her head.
‘Me and names, Malin,’ Zeke says.
‘I’ll call Sjöman and ask him to order over the case files from Motala Police. Nordström there will get it sorted at once.’
Just as they are turning into Police Headquarters, the third social worker on the list calls, the one who took over after Maria Murvall.
‘It’s awful, what’s happened. Dreadful. Bengt Andersson was depressed, withdrawn. At one meeting he just mumbled, “What does keeping clean matter? What does keeping clean matter?” If I’m honest, I never drew any connection to the rape. But perhaps there was a link? But the rapist? Bengt Andersson? He wasn’t that sort of person. A woman can tell.’
Malin gets out of the car, her face forming an involuntary grimace as the cold hits her skin.
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