‘It’s hot there, isn’t it?’
‘At least twenty degrees,’ Malin says. ‘Like summer.’
There are apples hanging in the trees and a boy, two boys, three, four boys are running around in a verdant garden. They fall and the grass colours their knees green, and then there’s just one single boy left and he falls but gets up again and runs. He runs until he reaches the edge of the forest, then hesitates for a while before summoning his courage and heading into the darkness.
He runs between the tree trunks and the sharp branches on the ground cut his feet but he doesn’t allow himself to feel any pain, he doesn’t stop to fight the monsters roaring in the deep holes left by the roots of toppled trees.
Then the boy is standing by Malin’s bed. He presses her ribcage up and down with even movements, helping her to breathe in the yellow air of the morning.
He whispers in her sleeping, dreaming ear, What’s my name, where am I from?
53
Monday, 13 February
A sullen morning mist over the city, the fields.
The investigation practically going in circles.
A weapon to examine.
Information on a hard drive to check this morning.
No wind over a desolate snow-covered field, nothing happening, just exhausted police officers sleeping or waking. Börje Svärd in his bed, alone under washed-out blue-flowered covers, his two Alsatians let in from their run on either side of the bed, and in the room at the end of the landing two of the nightshift’s carers are turning his wife, and he makes an effort to fend off the sound of their activity.
Johan Jakobsson in his terraced house in Linghem, sitting, dozing on a sofa with his three-year-old daughter in his lap, a Lorenga & Masarin cartoon on the television, headphones over his daughter’s ears. When are you going to learn that sleeping is nice? The previous day had been spent talking to the other youngsters who had been out in the field for the animal sacrifice. They had alibis for the night that Bengt Andersson was killed, they were just confused in the way that young people so often are. It turned into yet another day of hard slog, another day when he had to leave his family to its own devices.
Zacharias Martinsson is sleeping snuggled up to his freezing wife, the window in the bedroom open a crack, a draught that promises a cold. Sven Sjöman on his back in bed out in his villa, snoring loudly and audibly, his wife in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in front of her on the table, absorbed in Svenska Dagbladet; she likes getting up before Sven sometimes, even if it doesn’t happen often.
Even Karim Akbar is asleep in bed, lying on his side, breathing in and out, then he coughs and reaches out an arm for his wife, but she isn’t there, she’s sitting on the toilet with her face in her hands, wondering how she’s going to sort everything out, what would happen if Karim knew.
Forensics expert Karin Johannison is awake, sitting astride her husband, her hair swinging back and forth, helping herself to her own body and consuming him beneath her, flesh that is more hers than his, because what else would she really want him for?
And Malin Fors is awake too. She is sitting behind the steering-wheel of her car. Focused.
The third line of inquiry in the investigation into Bengt Andersson’s murder needs pushing, needs whipping, needs to have its back flayed.
Malin is freezing.
The car never seems to be able to warm up properly on mornings like this. Through the windscreen she sees the slender stone tower of Vreta Kloster, and beyond it lies Blåsvädret, and there, alone in her kitchen, sits Rakel Murvall with a cup of boiled coffee, looking out of the window and thinking that it would be good if the boys came home soon, workshops shouldn’t stand idle.
Malin parks outside Rakel Murvall’s house. The white wooden building seems more tired than last time she was here, as if it were starting to give way, both to the cold and to the person within. The path to the house has been cleared of snow, as if a red carpet were about to be unfurled.
She’s bound to be up, Malin thinks. Surprise her. Come when she least expects it.
Just like Tove she slams the car door behind her, but she knows why: it’s all about building up a feeling of determination, aggression, superiority that will make the mother obstinate, get her to open up, tell her stories, the ones Malin knows that she has to tell.
She knocks.
Pretends that Zeke is standing beside her.
Light yet oddly heavy steps behind the door, and the mother opens, her thin grey cheeks surrounding the sharpest eyes Malin has ever seen on a human being, eyes that somehow use her up, making her flat, apathetic and scared.
She’s over seventy, what can she do to me? Malin thinks, but knows that she’s wrong: she’s capable of doing absolutely anything.
‘Inspector Fors,’ Rakel Murvall says in a welcoming tone of voice. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘You could let me in, it’s cold out here. I have a few more questions.’
‘But do you expect any more answers?’
Malin nods. ‘I think you’ve got all the answers in the world.’
Rakel Murvall steps aside and Malin goes in.
The coffee is hot and just strong enough.
‘Your boys aren’t exactly little lambs,’ Malin says, settling more comfortably on the rib-backed chair.
She sees first vanity, then anger flit across Rakel Murvall’s eyes.
‘What do you know about my boys?’
‘I’m really here to talk about your fourth boy.’
Malin pushes her coffee cup aside, looks at Rakel Murvall, fixing her with her gaze.
‘Karl,’ Malin says.
‘Who did you say?’
‘Karl.’
‘I don’t hear much from the boy.’
‘Who was his father? Not the same as the other boys. That much I do know.’
‘You’ve spoken to him, I see.’
‘I’ve spoken to him. He said his father was a sailor and that he drowned while you were pregnant.’
‘You’re right,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘Off Cape Verde, the eighteenth of August, 1961. The M/S Dorian, she went down with all hands.’
‘I think you’re lying,’ Malin says.
But Rakel Murvall merely smiles, before going on: ‘Peder Palmkvist was his name, the sailor.’
Malin stands up.
‘That was all I wanted to know for the moment,’ Malin says, and the old woman stands up too and Malin sees her eyes take command of the whole room.
‘If you come here again I’ll have you for harassment.’
‘I’m only trying to do my job, Mrs Murvall, that’s all.’
‘Boats sink,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘They sink like stones.’
Malin drives past the Murvall family’s petrol station. The Preem sign is switched off, the windows of the shop gape at her blackly, and the derelict foundry on the site is just begging to be torn down.
She passes Brunnby and Härna, doesn’t want to see the building housing Ball-Bengt’s flat. From the road only the roof can be seen, but she knows which building it is.
The landlord has probably cleared the flat by now; your things, the few that could be sold, have probably gone for auction and the money been sent on to the State Inheritance Fund. Rebecka Stenlundh, your sister by blood, if not legally, won’t inherit the little you had.
Has someone else taken over your flat, Ball-Bengt? Or are the rooms lying empty, waiting for you to come home? Maybe you’re home now, at last? Dust settling on the windowsills, taps rusting shut, slowly, slowly.
She drives under the aqueduct, past the school and picks up her mobile, thinking, I’ll have to skip the morning meeting.
‘Johan? It’s Malin.’
‘Malin?’
Johan Jakobsson’s voice over the mobile, still sleepy, probably only just arrived for the meeting.
‘Can you check something for me, before you get to work on Rickard Skoglöf’s hard drive?’
Malin asks Johan to check the loss of the s
hip, the names of the sailors.
‘It’s too old to be in the database of the National Administration for Shipping and Navigation,’ Johan says.
‘That sort of thing must be on various websites. Someone must be interested enough in it?’
‘Bound to be. The heroes of the merchant navy probably have admirers who make sure they aren’t forgotten. If not, the information should be held by the Shipping Federation.’
‘Thanks, Johan. I owe you one.’
‘Don’t make any promises until you know that I can come up with something. Then it’s time for the hard drive.’
Malin hangs up as she turns into Vretaliden care home.
Malin doesn’t make herself known at reception, but even though she walks quickly through the lobby she recognises the smell of unperfumed disinfectant, how its chemical unnaturalness makes the whole place seem depressed. In a home, Malin thinks, you use disinfectant that smells of lemons or flowers, but not here. And this is home for some people. People who really deserve a different smell than this.
She takes the lift up to ward three, and walks along the corridor towards Gottfrid Karlsson’s room.
She knocks.
‘Yes, come in.’ The voice faint but still powerful.
Malin opens the door, walks in slowly, sees the thin body under a yellow blanket in bed. Before she has time to say anything the old man opens his mouth.
‘Miss Fors. I was hoping that you would come back.’
Malin thinks that everyone waits for the truth to come and pay them a visit, that no one comes with the truth or helps it along of their own volition. But perhaps this is the nature of truth: is it not a sequence of elusive, shy occurrences rather than any one powerful supposition? That fundamentally there is only a perhaps?
Malin approaches the bed.
Gottfrid Karlsson pats the blanket next to him. ‘Come and sit here, Miss Fors, beside an old man.’
‘Thank you,’ Malin says, and sits down.
‘I’ve had the reports of your case read out to me,’ Gottfrid Karlsson says, looking at Malin with almost blind eyes. ‘Terrible things. And the Murvall brothers seem to be particularly delightful. I must have missed them just before I left. But of course I know about their mother and father.’
‘What was their mother like?’
‘She never made much fuss. But I remember her eyes, and I used to think, There goes Rakel Karlsson, and that woman is not to be messed with.’
‘Karlsson?’
‘The same surname as me. Karlsson is probably the most common name on the plain. Yes, that was her name before she married Blackie Murvall.’
‘And Blackie?’
‘A drinker and a braggart, but deep down he was probably just scared. Not like Cornerhouse-Kalle. Different mettle entirely.’
‘And her son, she had a son before her marriage to Blackie, didn’t she?’
‘I seem to remember something of the sort, although his name escapes me. I think his name was . . . Ah well. Some names disappear from memory. As if time were erasing things inside my head. But one thing I do remember: the boy’s father was shipwrecked while she was still pregnant.’
‘How was she with the boy? It must have been difficult?’
‘You never used to see the child.’
‘Never saw him?’
‘Everyone knew he existed, but you never saw him. You never saw him out and about with her.’
‘And then?’
‘He must have been two years old when she married Blackie Murvall. But, Miss Fors, there were rumours.’
‘What sort of rumours?’
‘I’m not the one to talk to about that. You should talk to Weine Andersson.’
Gottfrid Karlsson puts his old hand on Malin’s.
‘He lives in Stjärnorp care home. He was on the Dorian when she sank. He can give you a few facts straight from the horse’s mouth.’
The door of the room opens and Malin turns round.
Sister Hermansson.
Her short curly hair seems to be sticking straight up, and today, now that she must have swapped her thick glasses for contact lenses, she looks a good ten years younger.
‘Detective Inspector Fors,’ she says. ‘How dare you?’
54
‘No one, not even the police, can come and see any of my residents unannounced.’
‘But—’
‘No one, Inspector Fors, no one. And that includes you.’
Sister Hermansson dragged Malin to the little nurses’ station out in the corridor, then went on the attack.
‘The residents here can appear stronger than they are, but most are weak, and at this time of year, when the cold is at its worst, we often lose several in quick succession, and then things get very anxious for my . . .’
To start with Malin got angry. Residents? Didn’t that mean that this was their home? That they could do as they liked? But then she realised that Hermansson was right, and if she didn’t make the effort to protect the old people, who else would?
Malin apologised before she left.
‘Apology accepted,’ Hermansson said, and looked visibly pleased.
‘And you should change your disinfectant,’ Malin added.
Hermansson looked at her quizzically.
‘Well, you use unperfumed. There are hypoallergenic perfumed disinfectants that smell much nicer and probably don’t cost much more.’
Hermansson thought for a moment.
‘Good idea,’ she said, and began to look through some papers as if to underline the fact that the conversation was over.
And now Malin is heading towards her car over in the car park, when her mobile rings.
She jogs back to the lobby, and, inside the chemical-scented warmth once more, pulls out her phone.
‘We were right. The Shipping Federation had it on its database.’ Johan Jakobsson sounds very pleased with himself.
‘So an M/S Dorian sank, and there was a Palmkvist on board who drowned?’
‘Exactly. He wasn’t among the men rescued in lifeboats.’
‘So some of them did survive?’
‘Yes, it looks like it.’
‘Thanks, Johan. Now I really do owe you one.’
Ruins.
And a lake where the ice seems to have settled for good. Malin takes her eyes off the road for a few seconds to glance at Lake Roxen. Cars driving along a ploughed path over the metre-thick ice slip across in relative safety, and on the other side of the lake, far off in the distance, smoke is streaming from the chimneys of postage-stamp-sized cottages.
Stjärnorp Castle.
It burned down in the 1700s, was rebuilt, and to this day is still the residence of the Douglas family, and it still reeks of money.
The castle could hardly be more gloomy. It’s a grey-stucco two-storey stone building with shrunken windows, facing a practically featureless courtyard flanked by unadorned outhouses. The ruins of the old castle slumber alongside, like a permanent reminder of how badly things can turn out.
The old people’s home is on the edge of the estate, just beyond the bend where the road finally disentangles itself from the forest and opens up to the view of the lake.
The three-storey building is whitewashed, and Malin estimates that there can’t be more than thirty old people living here, and how quiet it must be, only a few random cars driving past.
She parks in front of the entrance.
What sort of Hermansson figure am I going to run into here?
Then she thinks of that evening, how Tove has invited Markus to dinner; she hopes she makes it back okay. She looks up at the building, thinking, Weine Andersson, there’s a chance there may be a problem with dinner.
Weine Andersson is sitting in a wheelchair by a window with a view straight out over Lake Roxen.
When Malin reported at reception the elderly nurse seemed pleased at her visit. The nurse didn’t seem bothered, and certainly not annoyed, by the fact that Malin was a police officer on duty. Instead she said
, ‘That’ll cheer Weine up. He doesn’t get many visitors.’ Then a pause: ‘And he likes young people.’
Young people? Malin thought. Do I still qualify as that? Tove’s a young person. Not me.
‘His right side is paralysed. A stroke. It hasn’t affected his speech, but he gets upset a lot.’
Malin nodded and went in.
The bald man in front of her has sailor’s tattoos on both hands. On the lame hand, supported by a sling, someone has etched an anchor, and filled in the rough outline with ink.
His face is wrinkled and the skin covered with liver-spots, one eye is blind, but the good one seems to make up for it in brightness.
‘Yes,’ he says, his eye firmly fixed on Malin. ‘I was on board that ship. I shared a cabin with Palmkvist. It would be going a bit far to say we were friends, but we came from the same parts so it was natural that we spent a lot of time together.’
‘He drowned?’
‘Off Cape Verde we got caught up in a storm. No worse than many others, but the ship was hit by a huge wave. We started to list and in just half an hour we had sunk. I swam for it and got into a lifeboat. We spent four days out in that storm before we were picked up by the M/S Francisca. We survived by drinking rainwater.’
‘Weren’t you frozen?’
‘It was never cold. Just dark. Not even the water was cold.’
‘And Palmkvist?’
‘I never saw him. I think he was caught in the galley when the first wave hit. It probably filled up with water straight away. I was on watch up on the bridge.’
Malin can see it all in front of her.
The ship lurches.
A young man wakes up with a jolt, then everything is black and the water rises, comes closer in the darkness, like a mass of octopus tentacles; she sees how the cabin door is shut tight from the pressure on the other side, how his mouth, nose, head are covered, and how he finally gives up. Inhales the water and lets himself sink into a soft mist where there is nothing but peace and a warmer darkness than the one he has just left.
‘Did Palmkvist know he was going to be a father?’
Weine Andersson can’t suppress a chuckle. ‘I heard those rumours when I got home. But I can tell you for a fact that Palmkvist wasn’t the father of Rakel Karlsson’s boy. He wasn’t interested in women in that way.’
Midwinter Sacrifice Page 28
