Child benefit.
A child that you only kept for the money. A few meagre coins. But maybe not so meagre for you. Enough to live off, almost.
And why did you hate him so? What did Cornerhouse-Kalle do to you? Did he do something to you in the forest, just like someone did to Maria? To Rebecka? Did Cornerhouse-Kalle take you by force? Was that how you got pregnant? And so you hated the child when he arrived. And maybe you wanted to have him adopted? But then you had your brilliant idea and invented the story about the sailor and got child benefit. That must have been it. That he took you by force. And the child you had as a result had to pay.
Why else would you have hated your son so? The pattern runs through modern history. Malin has read about German women, raped towards the end of the war by Russian soldiers, who rejected their children. The same thing in Bosnia. And apparently also in Sweden.
Unless you loved Cornerhouse-Kalle and he treated you just like all the rest of his women? Like nothing? And that was enough to make you hate your son.
But I’m guessing the first explanation is the right one.
Unless you were tainted with evil, Rakel?
From the start.
Does such evil exist?
And money. The desire for money like a black sun over all life on this desolate, windy road.
The boy should have been allowed to have a different family, Rakel.
Then the anger and hate might have had an end; maybe your other boys could have been different. Maybe you too.
‘What an awful fucking place,’ Zeke says as they’re standing on the drive beside the house. ‘Can you see him standing here among the apple trees in the snow as a child? Freezing?’
Malin nods. ‘If there is a hell . . .’ she says.
Half a minute later they are knocking on the door of Rakel Murvall’s house.
They can see her in the kitchen, see her disappear into the living room.
‘She’s not going to open the door,’ Malin says.
Zeke knocks again.
‘Just a moment,’ they hear from inside the house.
The door opens and Rakel Murvall smiles at them.
‘Ah, the detectives. To what do I owe this honour?’
‘We have some questions, if you don’t mind—’
Rakel Murvall interrupts Zeke. ‘Come in, detectives. If you’re worried about my complaint, forget it. Forgive an old woman’s ill temper. Coffee?’
‘No thank you,’ Malin says.
Zeke shakes his head.
‘But do sit down.’ Rakel Murvall gestures towards the kitchen table.
They sit.
‘Where’s Karl?’ Malin says.
Rakel Murvall ignores her question.
‘He isn’t in his flat, or at Collins. And he’s been fired from his job,’ Zeke says.
‘Is he mixed up in any funny business, my son?’
Her son. She hasn’t used that word of Karl before, Malin thinks.
‘You’ve read the paper,’ Malin says, putting her hand on the copy of the Correspondent on the table. ‘You can put two and two together.’
The old woman smiles, but doesn’t answer. Then she says, ‘I’ve no idea where the lad might be.’
Malin looks out of the kitchen window. Sees a little boy standing naked in the snow and the cold, screaming with cheeks red with crying, sees him fall in the snow, waving his arms and legs, a frozen angel on the snow-draped ground.
Malin clenches her teeth.
Feels like telling Rakel Murvall that she deserves to burn in hell, that there are some things that can’t be forgiven.
In the official sense, her crimes fell under the statute of limitations long ago, but in the human, social, sense? In those terms, some things are never forgiven.
Rape.
Paedophilia.
Child abuse.
Withholding love from children.
The punishment for such things is a lifetime of shame.
And love of children. That is the first sort of love.
‘What really happened between you and Cornerhouse-Kalle, Rakel?’
Rakel turns to her, stares at Malin, and the pupils of the old woman’s eyes grow large and black, as if they were trying to convey a thousand years of female experience and torment. Then Rakel blinks, closing her eyes for a few seconds before saying, ‘That was so long ago. I can’t even remember. I’ve had so many worries over the years with the boys.’
An opening, Malin thinks, for the next question.
‘Haven’t you ever worried,’ she asks, ‘that your boys might find out that Cornerhouse-Kalle was Karl’s father?’
Rakel Murvall fills her own cup with coffee. ‘The boys have that knowledge.’
‘Have they? Have they really, Rakel? Being found out telling lies can ruin any relationship,’ Malin goes on. ‘And what power does the person who had to lie possess?’
‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘You’re talking a lot of nonsense.’
‘Am I really, Rakel?’ Malin says. ‘Am I really?’
Rakel Murvall closes the front door behind them.
Sits down on the red-painted rib-backed chair in the hall, looks at the photograph on the wall, of herself surrounded by the boys in the garden when they were young, Blackie in the picture too, before the wheelchair.
Fucking little brat. You must have taken that picture.
If you disappear, disappear for good, she thinks, then maybe my secrets can remain my own.
If he disappears there will only be one or two rumours left, and I can lock those away in a dark wardrobe. He needs to go now, it’s as simple as that. Be got rid of. Anyway, I’m so tired of him existing.
She picks up the receiver.
Calls Adam.
The little lad answers, his boy’s voice high and innocent.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Tobias. This is Grandma. Is your daddy there?’
‘Hello, Grandma.’
Then the line goes quiet, before an older, gruffer voice says, ‘Mother?’
‘You need to come over, Adam. And bring your brothers with you. I’ve got something important to tell you.’
‘I’m coming, Mother. I’ll tell the others.’
I used to cycle up here.
The forest was mine.
You would go hunting near me sometimes. I could hear your shots all year long, and even then I wished that you would come to me.
Mother, why were you so angry?
What had I done? What have I done?
Images and warmth. I am an angel under an apple tree of biscuit crumbs. The fire is warm again. It’s nice here in my hole, but I’m lonely. But I’m not scared of loneliness. Because you can’t be scared of what you are, can you?
I can sleep a bit longer here in my darkness. Then you’ll come and get me, to let me in. And then I’ll become someone else, won’t I? When you let me in.
‘What do we do now?’
Zeke is driving towards Vreta Kloster, the church like an ancient fortress on top of a hill maybe a kilometre away, the stables of Heda Riding Club on one side of the road, open fields on the other.
Malin wanted to knock on the brothers’ doors, ask them if they knew whose son their brother Karl was, but Zeke told her to think about it.
‘If they don’t know, the old woman has a right to her secrets, Malin. We can’t just blunder into her past and stir things up.’
And she knew that Zeke was right, in spite of the possible consequences of not telling them. If they stopped considering other people, no matter who they were, how could they ever demand consideration from anyone else?
In answer to Zeke’s question: ‘We wait for Sjöman’s search teams. They’re getting ready to go through the forest, but it’s too cold for the dogs. They’re taking a couple with them anyway, apparently.’
Then: ‘Do you think we should get up there first?’
‘No, Malin. We didn’t find anything yesterday, so how w
ould we be able to find anything today?’
‘I don’t know,’ Malin replies. ‘We could take a look at where the body was found, and the site of the other tree. Well, where it ought to be, anyway.’
‘We’ve had a car looking since last night. We would have heard if they’d found anything.’
‘Have you got any better suggestions?’
‘None at all,’ Zeke says, and does a U-turn. They head back the same way they’ve just come, past the houses in Blåsvädret, where they see the brothers heading together towards their mother’s house.
‘How long do you think it’ll take Karin to have the results of the tests on Karl Murvall?’ Malin asks. ‘I want to know if he was the one who raped Maria Murvall.’
‘Do you think he did?’
‘No, but I want to know. I think she’s deceiving us again. I just don’t know how. But I know that she’d never have let us in if she didn’t have something to gain from it herself. She’s still directing this. And she’ll grasp at any straw to protect what she thinks of as hers.’
Malin takes a deep breath.
‘And to preserve her secrets.’
Adam, Elias and Jakob Murvall are sitting round the table in their mother’s kitchen. Sipping cups of freshly brewed coffee, eating biscuits their mother has just warmed in the oven after getting them out of the freezer.
‘How are the biscuits, boys?’
Rakel Murvall is standing by the stove, with the Correspondent in her hand.
Appreciative noises from the table, and they listen to what their mother goes on to tell them, what she didn’t want to say until they had sat down and been given some coffee.
‘Martinsson and Fors,’ she says. ‘They’ve just been here, asking after Karl. If it wasn’t him who tortured and forced himself upon that girl in the paper, the one they found by the side of the road, why would they have come out here? What with the complaint of harassment I made and everything? Why would they risk it?’
She holds up the Correspondent to the boys.
Lets them read the headline, see the picture of the road.
‘The police are looking for Karl. And it says in the paper that they found the girl with exactly the same injuries as Maria. And if you look on the computer you’ll see that the police raided his flat last night.’
‘So it was him who took Maria in the forest?’ Adam Murvall spits out the words.
‘Who else could it have been?’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘He’s missing now. It must have been him, this was done the same way. Exactly the same way.’
‘His own sister?’
‘The bastard.’
‘Monster. He’s a monster. Just like he always was.’
‘But why would he do that?’ Doubt in Elias Murvall’s voice.
‘And why do we hate him so much? Have you ever wondered about that?’ Rakel pauses, then continues in a lower voice: ‘He was a monster right from the start, never forget that. And he hated her. Because she was one of us, and he wasn’t. Because he’s mad. You know yourselves how he used to hide away in the forest. And that hole of his is only five kilometres or so from where Maria was attacked, so it must have been him. It all fits.’
‘Five kilometres is a long way in the forest, Mother,’ Elias says. ‘We may have had suspicions about him before now, but even so, Mother.’
‘It all fits, Elias. He raped your own sister in the forest as if she were nothing. He destroyed her.’
‘Mother’s right, Elias,’ Adam says calmly, then takes a sip of his coffee.
‘It makes sense,’ Jakob says. ‘It all makes sense.’
‘Now you’ll do what’s expected of you, boys. For your sister. Won’t you, Elias? Boys?’
‘But what if the police are wrong?’
‘The cops are often wrong, Elias. But not this time, not this time. Stop arguing. What’s wrong with you, are you on his side or something?’
Rakel Murvall waves the paper in the air.
‘Are you on his side? Who else could it be? The whole thing fits. You have to give your sister some peace. Maybe she could come back if only she knew that the person who hurt her is gone.’
‘They’ll catch us, Mother, they’re going to catch us,’ Elias says. ‘And there are limits to what can be done.’
‘No there aren’t, boy,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘There’s more sense in the henhouse than in that police station. And you know where he is. You’ll see, if you just do as I say. Listen . . .’
The oak on the plain where Bengt Andersson was found hanging would have looked like any other isolated tree, were it not for the broken branches.
But the oak will always be associated with what happened in that coldest of Februaries. In the spring the farmer will cut down the tree, doesn’t want to see any more flowers on the ground, any more curious visitors, any more meditating women. He will dig out all the roots he can find, not stopping until he knows for sure that no trace of the oak is left in the ground. But deep beneath the surface there will be a piece of root, and that root will grow and a new tree will spring up on the plain, a tree that will whisper the names of Ball-Bengt and Cornerhouse-Kalle and Rakel Murvall across the wide expanses of Östergötland.
Malin and Zeke are sitting in their car, staring at the tree.
The engine is running.
‘He’s not here,’ Zeke says.
‘He was here once,’ Malin replies.
The Range Rover’s interior smells of oil and engine grease, and its frame rattles as the vehicle passes through Ljungsbro at high speed, past the Vivo supermarket, the café and the Cloetta chocolate factory at the bottom of the hill, beside the bridge across the river.
Elias Murvall is sitting on his own in the back seat, twisting his hands, hears his voice say the words, even though he doesn’t want to: ‘What if she’s wrong? If he didn’t do it? Then we’ll always regret this. What fucking right have we got to—’
Adam Murvall turns round in the passenger seat up front.
‘He did it, the bastard. Raped Maria. It fits. We’re going to do this. What is it you always say, Elias? You must never show you’re weak? That’s what you say, eh? You must never show you’re weak. So don’t now. Watch yourself.’
And the vehicle lurches, sliding towards the ditch just before the Olstorp curve.
‘You’re right,’ Elias yells. ‘I’m not weak.’
‘Fuck it,’ Jakob Murvall shouts. ‘We’re doing this, no more talk. Understood?’
Elias leans back, soaking up the assurance in Jakob’s voice, in spite of his anger.
Elias breathes deeply, feeling the determination of the vehicle’s motion, as if it had been on its way to this very destination long before it was even made.
Elias turns round.
Looks down into the baggage compartment.
It holds a stained wooden box, and in the box three grenades from a break-in at a weapons store, freshly unearthed from their hiding-place under an outhouse floor; a hiding-place the police missed during their raid the other week.
‘Bloody lucky the cops didn’t find the grenades,’ Jakob said when Mother explained her plan to them back in the house.
‘You’re right there, Jakob,’ Mother said. ‘Bloody lucky.’
Malin and Zeke are wandering the plain, searching for another isolated tree.
But the trees they find show no signs of struggle. They are just lonely, windswept, frost-damaged trees.
Zeke is at the wheel as they head towards Klockrike, along a scarcely ploughed road by the edge of an apparently endless field, when Malin’s mobile rings.
Karin Johannison’s number on the display.
‘Malin here.’
‘Negative, Fors,’ Karin says. ‘Karl Murvall didn’t rape Maria Murvall.’
‘No similarities at all?’
‘He didn’t do it, that much is certain.’
‘Thanks, Karin.’
‘Was it that important, Malin? Did you really think it was him?’
‘I don’t
know what I thought. But I do now. Thanks again.’ Malin ends the call.
‘He didn’t rape Maria Murvall,’ she says to Zeke, who receives the information without taking his eyes from the road.
‘So that case still isn’t solved,’ Zeke says, his voice gruff, a statement that sets Malin thinking.
The brothers walking towards Rakel’s house just after she and Zeke had left.
Brothers who don’t know that Karl didn’t rape Maria.
Who listen to their mother. Obey her.
A mother with secrets to keep.
And only one way of keeping them.
Zeke stops the car at yet another tree.
Roots, Malin thinks. Blood that has to be eradicated. Actions that must be avenged. That’s what we do.
And so he must be eradicated. Rakel doesn’t know we got hold of Karl’s DNA, that everything is going to come out.
Or else she knows deep down, but is suppressing the knowledge, grasping at one last imaginary straw.
If you force evil into a corner, it’ll attack . . .
‘I know why she let us in earlier,’ Malin yells, just as Zeke is opening the driver’s door. ‘Get us to the cabin, as fast as you can.’
77
The houses of Vreta Kloster line the road.
A sense of wellbeing shelters behind the façades, close but still far away.
After this journey she doesn’t want to come this way again for a thousand years.
They drive across the bridge down by Kungsbro and swing up towards Olstorp, past the Montessori school in Björkö where the blue- and pink-painted buildings, with their anthroposophically angular architecture, look just as browbeaten by the cold as every other building.
Hope they raise good people in there.
Janne had once talked of Tove going to a Montessori school but Malin refused, had heard that children who go to school in protected environments like that could rarely deal with the competition outside the security of the school walls.
Cutting out dolls.
Making their own books.
Learning that the world is full of love.
How much love is there up in the forest? How much dammed-up hate?
The car slides along the slippery road surface as Zeke hits the accelerator.
‘Just drive, Zeke. It’s urgent. I promise you, he’s out there somewhere.’
Midwinter Sacrifice Page 38
