Earth Storm_The new novel from the Swedish crime-writing phenomenon_Malin Fors

by Mons Kallentoft

  ‘This is going to stir things up,’ Elin says.

  Zeke rubs one hand over his shaved head.

  ‘What more do you know?’ he asks Daniel.

  ‘He ended up being expelled from the party.’

  ‘They got rid of him?’ Elin says.

  ‘Yes, like they do with anyone who reveals their true colours. But he saw the light. Peder Åkerlund distanced himself from the party and his previous opinions. We ran a piece about it. Said he wanted to go around schools warning about the dangers of xenophobia, tell his story. About how easy it is to be led astray.’

  Conversion, Malin thinks. Deathbed conversion.

  ‘He was young,’ she says.

  ‘You mean we all say stupid things when we’re young?’ Karin asks.

  ‘No, I mean that sometimes we have to pay a high price for who we are and the mistakes we make,’ Malin says, just as Göran Möller arrives in a police car.

  Göran Möller looks focused, and it strikes Malin that he must be feeling nervous and worried about this, a case that’s bound to be linked to the reasons why he had to leave his post in Skåne.

  They’ve walked a hundred metres towards the locks, and are holding a first meeting of the investigating team at a picnic table. Johan Jakobsson arrived with Göran, and is sitting there waiting with his laptop.

  Down by the bushes Karin is still moving around the body.

  They’re waiting for the ambulance to arrive to take it to the pathology laboratory. There Karin will perform a post mortem, and give them a probable cause of death.

  Göran Möller leans across the wooden tabletop.

  ‘We’re regarding this as murder. It’s obvious he didn’t end up here by himself. In all likelihood, as Karin says, he was killed somewhere else and then brought here by car.’

  ‘What do we know about him, apart from what Daniel told us?’ Zeke asks.

  The others wait in silence as Johan taps at his keyboard.

  ‘Looks like there are plenty of people who have good reason to be angry with him,’ he says after a while. ‘First and foremost his old opponents. Left-wing activists, Muslims. And then his former party comrades. Evidently he refused to resign, and then when he eventually did, he turned against them. I see here that he’s got a website. Pretty tough reading for anyone who likes the main racist sites.’

  Johan turns the screen so they can all see it.

  In defence of the niqab!

  More immigration.

  Integrate the WHOLE of Linköping.

  Malin reads the headings on Peder Åkerlund’s website and tries to feel sympathetic towards him, towards the body lying over there, the person he was, because she knows that if she can feel something, she’ll do a better job.

  She goes on reading, but fails to feel anything. In spite of her best efforts.

  ‘The media are going to have a field day with this,’ Göran Möller says.

  Johan shows them some other sites.

  One left-wing activist, anonymous, writes that Peder Åkerlund and everyone like him deserves to die. Calls his conversion ‘pointless’. Once a racist, always a racist.

  Another site contains a video clip of a man wearing a kaftan. His face is hidden by white fabric, but he declares that Peder Åkerlund ought to be stoned. The post is dated before Peder Åkerlund changed his allegiance, when he was still on the council.

  ‘So there’s quite a bit to go on,’ Göran Möller says, his voice factual and calm. He isn’t at all anxious or upset, Malin thinks, and he smiles towards her.

  ‘We need to establish a timeline,’ he says. ‘What was Peder Åkerlund doing yesterday? Who was the last person to see him alive? And we need to inform his family. Right away, before the news gets out.’

  ‘His relatives are going to have to identify him,’ Malin says.

  Göran Möller looks at her.

  ‘I was just coming to that. They’ll need to be questioned as well.’

  A white van from TV4 arrives, and an ambulance pulls up behind it. Two paramedics get out, neither of them is Janne, thank goodness. They take out a trolley from the back.

  Karin waves at them from down in the ditch.

  You’ll soon be leaving, Peder Åkerlund, Malin thinks.

  ‘There are no serious injuries to the body,’ she says. ‘And nothing of a sexual nature either, according to Karin.’

  ‘So we can probably assume that this isn’t a sexually motivated crime,’ Göran Möller says. ‘Despite the fact that the body is naked. Violent sex offenders aren’t usually content with nothing more explicit than nakedness. But we can’t rule anything out until after the post mortem.’

  Then Göran Möller falls silent, and Malin and the others wait in vain for him to take command properly, the way Sven always did, except towards the end when exhaustion got the better of him.

  But nothing happens.

  ‘We’ll need to organise door-to-door enquiries,’ Zeke says instead.

  Göran Möller nods.

  ‘I’ll sort that out.’

  And then Elin Sand asks: ‘Should we talk to the imam at the local mosque? Radical left-wingers? Anti-Fascist Action and so on?’

  No one answers her questions, and the detectives exchange a hasty glance: they are all aware that this case is a potential minefield. Göran Möller slowly exhales used-up air.

  ‘Not yet. But Johan, try to identify the people behind the websites and the other things you’ve just shown us, and carry on digging. We need to look at Peder Åkerlund’s flat. Examine his computer. Who knows, there may even be a mobile phone there.’

  ‘Why naked?’ Malin says. ‘If there’s no sexual motive?’

  ‘To humiliate him,’ Elin says. ‘If the murderer hated Peder Åkerlund, maybe it seemed perfectly natural to expose him to the world, completely defenceless and pathetic.’

  ‘Or maybe just to remove any evidence? Make sure we couldn’t find any DNA on his clothes?’ Zeke says.

  ‘The perpetrator seems to have tried to use the grass to cover any tracks. Whilst simultaneously wanting the body to be discovered,’ Göran Möller points out. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t leave the body so exposed, surely?’

  ‘It’s as if the killer is trying to send a message,’ Malin says. ‘But without getting caught.’

  She approves of Göran Möller’s plan to feel his way forward.

  ‘What message?’ Elin Sand asks.

  ‘No idea. He was probably confused, or else he wants to confuse us.’

  ‘Or she,’ Elin adds.

  ‘Or she.’

  A sparrow lands at the end of the table, pecks at something, then flies off when it realises there’s nothing to eat. A large motor cruiser has just entered the furthest lock, a German flag fluttering from the top of its radio antenna.

  The invasion is starting, Malin thinks.

  ‘It seems to be premeditated,’ Göran Möller says. ‘If Åkerlund was drugged like Karin thinks. Anaesthetic isn’t the sort of thing you usually go around with, or keep at home.’

  ‘And who has access to anaesthetic, anyway?’ Elin says. ‘Doctors?’

  ‘Anyone,’ Göran says. ‘You can get hold of anything online.’

  Malin sees embarrassment hit Elin Sand. Her blushes. But it wasn’t a silly question. At the start of an investigation everything needs to be considered, examined from every angle, and the only thing they can be sure of is that they’re bound to miss something.

  Malin has never been involved in a faultless investigation.

  ‘His parents live in Sturefors,’ Johan says. ‘They seem to be his next of kin.’

  ‘Malin,’ Göran Möller says. ‘I want you and Zeke to inform the parents. Take a priest with you if you want.’

  Malin nods.

  Doesn’t want to go to Sturefors.

  She hates having to inform next of kin, but knows that she and Zeke do it as well as anyone can. That their factual approach can actually be a source of support at an incredibly hard time. And maybe by giving h
er this unpleasant job, Göran is keen to show that he’s in charge.

  ‘We’ll do that,’ Zeke says.

  ‘He lived in Johannelund,’ Johan says.

  ‘I’ll call Waldemar,’ Göran says. ‘Elin, you go and look at the flat with him.’

  A reporter from TV4 is heading towards them, followed by a cameraman, and now Malin can see several other vehicles pulling up over on the road. More reporters. They’re flocking around the trolley with the yellow body bag as it is pushed inside the ambulance.

  Karin gets out of the ditch. Brushes herself off. Her work here is done.

  Daniel’s car is weaving backwards between the newly-arrived vehicles.

  Go home and get some sleep, Malin thinks. Otherwise you won’t have the energy to deal with this case.

  ‘What’s the parents’ address?’ she asks.

  ‘Älgvägen 34.’

  Malin feels her heart lurch.

  Älgvägen.

  One of the roads that run parallel to the horrible road where she grew up, the only road in the whole world that she can honestly say that she hates.

  9

  I can still hear the clock ticking.

  Or am I imagining things?

  The tube is cold and disgusting in my mouth, but the water is good, my lips are so dry, my mouth a hole full of dry earth, that’s how it feels.

  I’ve worn the skin off my elbows. Splinters of wood are trying to eat their way into me. So are the worms.

  I scream at them to stop. But there’s no reply.

  Am I awake or dreaming, or am I dead?

  When does a person die?

  I hit my knees against the lid of the coffin, but the only sounds are muffled thuds.

  I’m getting air from somewhere. Someone must have fixed it so that I get air in my coffin, but it could run out at any moment.

  I couldn’t hold back any longer. I gave in, and now everything down there is sticky. At first it stank, and I screamed and cried, but now I don’t notice the smell, just the stickiness against my thighs, my behind and back.

  I have to get out now.

  Out, to breathe real air. I can’t breathe here, not the way I want to. In through one nostril, out through the other.

  Someone has to help me.

  Who buried me alive?

  10

  The apple trees will soon be in bloom.

  Malin closes her eyes as the car rolls into the villa-lined streets where she grew up. Doesn’t want to see the little brick houses, older now, and much smaller than in her memory. But you can never escape from yourself. She knows that.

  Her mum’s face.

  Those embittered expressions, and the desire to be better than other people that tainted her whole life. All their lives. Cheap imitation rugs on the floor. Prints of third-rate artists on the walls. Her insistence that Malin’s father should wear his suit at home and when he went out in the city at weekends. Malin always had to wear a pink dress.

  She remembers those dresses. She must have suppressed the memory up to now. She was never allowed to go to the playground, to prevent those pink tulle dresses getting messed up. She can still feel the shame in her whole body, the way the other children laughed at her.

  She wanted to hide away in a cupboard, and she can still feel the slap. Her mother hitting her when she tore one of the dresses.

  Malin is running barefoot across muddy ground.

  No, the dress isn’t torn. It’s muddy, and I’m six or seven years old, and she wants to make me an extra in my own life.

  Fuck you, Mum.

  ‘You’re shaking,’ Zeke says. ‘Are you feeling ill?’

  ‘No.’ But she keeps her eyes closed. Forces her body to be still.

  Malin recognises herself as a little girl. She wanted to play, that’s all, but her mother had other ambitions. Her mother wanted to be anything but what she actually was.

  Which turned her into a liar, a liar worth hating.

  And then she died.

  But Stefan’s OK now. At the new home he’s in, in Ljusdal. The people who work there have their hearts in the right place, and the home’s owners don’t put profit above everything else. They seem to understand him, even though he can’t speak, and appears unaware of the world around him.

  Her dad.

  Who abandoned Stefan. Kept her brother’s existence secret from her.

  Evidently he’s got married to his rich German woman down in Tenerife. Tove saw it on the bitch’s Facebook page.

  He didn’t tell us, and certainly didn’t invite us. He’s written us off, and we’ve done the same with him.

  Malin is holding back the shakes. Thinks that her father must be the most cowardly person in the world. He must have seen how much I hated those pink dresses. And he just left Stefan to his fate – and me too, in a way.

  Malin opens her eyes again. Sees the houses. Neatly kept flowerbeds and perfectly pruned apple trees.

  ‘Don’t go down this one,’ she says when they reach her road. ‘Go around the block instead.’

  Zeke doesn’t reply, just goes the other way, and soon they reach Älgvägen. They pull up in front of a two-storey, red-brick house.

  They get out. Her legs feel stiff as she starts to walk.

  They’re good at this, her and Zeke.

  Used to it.

  How sick is that? Malin thinks as she rings the doorbell.

  Footsteps behind the door. Then it opens.

  A man of Malin’s age holds it ajar and she can’t help thinking that he’s attractive, blond, keeps himself in shape. In the background she hears a woman’s voice: ‘Who is it, Anders?’

  Peder Åkerlund’s mother. Rebecka, according to Johan.

  ‘The police!’

  Anders Åkerlund has worked out who they are without them having to say anything, but judging by the look in his eyes he hasn’t guessed why they’re there.

  ‘Is Peder in trouble?’ he says, gesturing them into the hall. ‘He hasn’t done anything silly, has he?’

  ‘Malin Fors,’ Malin says. ‘Linköping Police. This is my colleague, Zacharias Martinsson.’

  They shake hands.

  ‘There’s no need to take your shoes off.’

  They follow Anders Åkerlund into the house, and he leads them into a living room furnished with a mixture of things from Ikea and inherited heirlooms: a large lime-washed chest of drawers dominates the room.

  In a red armchair sits a woman who could be Malin. She’s around forty, blonde hair cut in a bob with a fringe, she looks fit, but next to the armchair is a wheelchair, and the legs in the woman’s jeans look wasted.

  ‘Rebecka.’ Her handshake is firm, and she adjusts her position in the armchair. Seems to want to get out of it. It looks as if her upper body is going through the motions to stand up, but she doesn’t move.

  Anders Åkerlund is standing motionless. Something bordering on understanding has crept up on him.

  ‘It’s probably best if you sit down,’ Zeke says, and at that moment the reason why the police are there finally dawns on Peder Åkerlund’s parents, and with almost perfect synchronisation their faces contort, and Rebecka Åkerlund whispers: ‘Say it isn’t true, say it isn’t true.’

  Anders Åkerlund sinks onto the blue sofa, and Malin sits down beside him, puts an arm around him, and she hears Zeke say: ‘I’m afraid we have to inform you that your son Peder was found murdered this morning.’

  ‘How can you be sure it’s him?’ Rebecka says.

  Malin sees the resistance in her eyes. And sees it fade.

  Half an hour of exclamations, of wondering how and why, denials, tears and cursing, and then the realisation that this room, these people, this message, is here and now, this is reality, this is the start of the future.

  What does it consist of?

  Grief.

  Practical matters.

  Peder Åkerlund’s parents know their lives have changed for ever, that they have to live with a pain that will change character but never end. In
her armchair Rebecka Åkerlund rocks back and forth, clutching her paralysed legs.

  ‘Obviously we were surprised and upset about the views he held at first. We don’t think like that, not at all. We tried to talk some sense into him, but it was impossible. He refused to listen. But later on he changed his mind.’

  ‘He was persistent,’ Anders Åkerlund adds. ‘To start with, schools kept refusing to let him come and tell his story. But he persuaded them. He was supposed to be visiting a lot more schools this autumn. And you’ve probably already seen his anti-racism website?’

  ‘He’s a sensible boy,’ Rebecka Åkerlund says.

  ‘How did he get caught up in right-wing extremism?’ Malin asks.

  And Rebecka Åkerlund goes on: ‘He met a girl when he was fifteen. Nancy. He fell in love with her, and they were together for a year. But then she met a black lad. And broke up with Peder.’

  She looks at her husband.

  ‘He didn’t take it very well.’

  Her gaze slips across to Zeke. They both know not to ask questions now, to let Anders and Rebecka speak. The parents are the voices of the investigation at the moment.

  Let their words flow from their shock.

  Their vulnerability.

  ‘He started to hate all immigrants,’ Rebecka continues. ‘Said that if they weren’t here, he’d still have had Nancy.’

  ‘And then he started to get involved in politics,’ Anders interjects.

  ‘In the Sweden Democrats, their youth movement. When they needed people after the last election. And it turned out the way that it did.’

  The couple fall silent.

  Then Rebecka begins to move to her wheelchair. Shifts her body first, with a great effort, then her legs.

  You’ve done that thousands of times, Malin thinks. Does it ever feel straightforward?

  ‘Did he have any enemies in the party?’ she asks.

  Both parents shake their heads.

  ‘They weren’t pleased when he refused to resign. But enemies? I got the impression that they all stuck together,’ Rebecka says. ‘Even if they didn’t like the fact that he switched sides, I think he kept in touch with some of them. As friends.’