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

by Mons Kallentoft

  Blind, mute.

  The brain tissue looks as if it’s melted. But even so, Karin can see how far in the murderer must have pushed the needle before injecting the acid. Past the frontal lobe, deeper in, but not all the way to the base of the skull.

  The murderer stopped at Broca’s area.

  The language centre of the brain. Where we form and understand words. From where the tongue is governed.

  Mute and unable to understand language. That’s what happens to someone with severe damage to their Broca’s area.

  But Peder Åkerlund doesn’t have to worry about that.

  Any doubt as to whether this was murder is dispelled now.

  A pinprick to the eye.

  As though someone wanted to blind you.

  Acid in the Broca’s area.

  Someone wanted to make sure you would never speak again.

  15

  I stuck the syringe into his pupil.

  Pretended to gasp for breath, pretended I couldn’t get a single word out, but I never get words out, so what difference did it make?

  I stuck the syringe into one of his pupils. Straight in, then up and to the side.

  He screamed! And then he couldn’t scream any more.

  No longer two of them.

  The girl may not be screaming in her grave now, but she can breathe and drink.

  I see him walk along a street in Linköping, a random street, and I’m not the cat, and he’s not the mouse.

  That’s too banal.

  Unless perhaps I’m lying in a flat, watching a programme on television. Some hour-long documentary in which some idiot opens his heart and talks about the mistakes he’s made in life. Or about how we must try to be good people. How we need to pick ourselves up again after catastrophes. They try to explain how everything is connected.

  Where to start? I find myself thinking then. What game can I make of this?

  I shall scream at the door and it will open. Make me small again, make everything that I am start again.

  I shall wipe out everyone who says good things but does evil.

  I see you. I know what you’re doing.

  Take care, or you might die.

  16

  Axel Nydahl takes the fingerprints he found on the envelopes and letters and scans them into the computer. Then he logs into the national fingerprint database. He’s already confirmed that a number of the prints belong to the victim.

  He waits patiently while the cumbersome system loads: it was already antiquated when it came into use years ago.

  He clicks his way through the program. Sets the searches off to run concurrently, even though that takes a bit longer.

  The word appears in a separate window on the screen.

  Searching.

  For a while, back when he was a teenager, he didn’t actually like immigrants himself, and was attracted by the idea of one nation, one people, one culture. Then he spent a summer working as a cleaner in a hospital. There he met a woman from Somalia who wore a headscarf at work. She had so many stories. About violence, madness, love.

  A nuclear physicist from Iran.

  ‘What do you think they wanted me for?’

  The search continues.

  Ten per cent complete.

  Fifteen.

  He became friendly with a guy from Algeria, who fled his homeland after ending up on the government’s kill-list. During lunch breaks Axel would hear stories about human courage that he had trouble relating to, and realised that he himself had never come anywhere close to that sort of experience in his safe little life.

  He gained respect for those people.

  More than for his sluggish Swedish summer workmates.

  What did they know about anything?

  What did he himself know about the world?

  After that summer he made up his mind: Whatever I do with my life, it must have some sort of positive goal. And that put an end to his nationalist thoughts.

  Seventy-five per cent.

  And now I’ve ended up here, he thinks. Working on the investigation into the murder of a former racist, someone who might still have been a racist. Is that good? Can that be a positive goal? Shouldn’t they all just be silenced? That stuff about being ready to die for everyone’s right to express their opinions is bollocks. Some things must never be said. Thought, sure, but not said.

  Ninety per cent.

  Bloody program.

  But the last ten per cent go quickly.

  One hundred per cent.

  And a match appears.

  Followed by a name.

  Prints on all the letters.

  Belonging to one and the same person.

  A Julianna Raad.

  Her passport photograph appears on the screen a moment later. Dark-haired, beautiful, but her eyes are full of anger.

  He looks for her in the criminal records database to see why her details are in the system.

  Much quicker this time.

  She was arrested on 30 November two years ago in Kungsträdgården in Stockholm, at a counter-demonstration to the nationalist commemoration of Karl XII’s death. She assaulted a police officer with a brick, and he lost the sight in one eye. She was sentenced to six months in prison, served four, and was released last summer.

  He does a quick search for Julianna Raad on Google and soon has a pretty good picture of who she is.

  A militant left-wing activist. Member of animal rights groups and Anti-Fascist Action.

  Prepared to resort to violence.

  Gold, Axel Nydahl thinks.

  A woman on the extreme left-wing with a proven inclination to violence.

  Her name. What sort of name is that? Could she be Arabic?

  Threatening letters written by her, or someone else, and sent to a right-wing extremist.

  A right-wing extremist who has been found murdered, naked in a ditch next to a canal.

  Wait till Karin hears this.

  17

  Music is thudding from the ancient ghetto blaster. The speakers vibrate as a French singer gives voice to her pain and suffering.

  Malin sees Elin Sand pump two large dumb-bells at the other end of the cramped gym in the basement of the police station, thinking: I can manage more than that.

  Elin’s black and pink gym clothes contrast sharply with the vomit-green walls. There’s been talk of renovating the gym, and it could certainly do with it, but there’s no money.

  Elin puts the dumb-bells down. Smiles at Malin, who smiles back.

  She’s noticed that Elin Sand looks up to her, how on earth could anyone do that?

  A failed, alcoholic mother and police officer.

  A broken wreck.

  A human being who still has the capacity to feel longing, in spite of everything.

  As she carries the dumb-bells back to the rack after a set of shoulder lifts, she feels how much she wants to be with Daniel. Lie in bed beside him and feel sleep come.

  The clock in the gym says it’s a quarter to seven, and Karin is bound to be finished with the post-mortem soon. Maybe she can find something that can give them some answers, help them make progress.

  ‘Can you spot me?’ Elin calls.

  ‘Sure.’

  Malin goes over to the bench where Elin is lifting a bar laden with seventy kilos.

  She’s strong, I can only manage sixty at most. And even that makes me feel that my brain is going to explode.

  Elin shrieks and grunts.

  ‘Cunt!’

  ‘Damn, you’re pretty weak,’ Malin smiles above her.

  ‘What the fuck are you laughing at?’

  Three times twelve. Silent rest between the sets, and Malin may never have met anyone as competitive as Elin Sand. Presumably that’s what it takes to get as far as she did in volleyball, all the way to the national team.

  After the last set of reps Elin gets up from the bench.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Malin says.

  They train together almost every week. Sometimes several times,
but they rarely talk about anything personal. In the changing room they use lockers on opposite sides.

  Malin takes her clothes off, wraps a towel around her body, and heads toward the showers. The basement stinks of damp and mould. The sealed linoleum floor has come loose in the corners, and the baby-blue walls are speckled with small black stains.

  She turns the shower on and stands under the hot water with her eyes closed.

  Feels the water run down her body.

  Feels someone staring at her body.

  And she opens her eyes, and Elin Sand is standing under the shower opposite her with her back towards her.

  The water on her body.

  Perfectly formed. And with a young person’s shimmering, vibrant skin.

  Was she looking at me just now?

  She’s not allowed to fucking look at me.

  Malin soaps herself with jerky movements, rinses, turns the shower off. Wants to get out of there as quickly as possible.

  She wasn’t looking at me.

  I’m so fucking ridiculous, Malin thinks. And prejudiced.

  Elin Sand turns her own shower off and Malin hurries out to the changing room. Doesn’t want to be there when Elin turns around again.

  She throws her clothes on.

  Elin walks past with her towel wrapped around her. Her brown hair is wet, and she looks ridiculously attractive. Those cheekbones. How does anyone have cheekbones like that?

  ‘What’s up with you?’ she asks. ‘I’m not an alien.’

  Malin laughs.

  ‘I was just thinking about something. Sorry.’

  Then they hear the door to the changing room open, and they look at each other. No one else usually comes down here, and suddenly Karin Johannison is standing in front of them.

  ‘I’ve got quite a bit of new information,’ she says, looking simultaneously focused and restless.

  Julianna Raad.

  Hydrochloric acid in the Broca’s area.

  Speechless. Colliding ideologies.

  Who cares about someone renouncing their views? There can be no forgiveness.

  Karin and her colleagues have worked fast, and they’ve done good work.

  She’s left them again, and Elin and Malin are standing side by side in the changing room. Malin is the same height as Elin’s breasts.

  They’ve got an address for Julianna Raad. She lives on a small farm in the middle of the Östergötland Plain, just five kilometres from where Peder Åkerlund’s body was found.

  A militant left-wing activist.

  Her father is from Lebanon, Arabic his mother tongue, so it’s by no means out of the question that Julianna knows Arabic.

  ‘I think we should talk to Julianna Raad straight away,’ Malin says. ‘There’s no good reason to wait.’

  Elin Sand shrugs her shoulders.

  ‘I’ve got nothing better planned.’

  They fetch their service pistols from the gun cabinet in the little room next to the open-plan office on the first floor of the police station. The metal rattles as Malin hurriedly inserts the key in the lock.

  She wonders if they should inform Göran Möller before they go, if they should get his permission to question Julianna Raad, but decides not to bother. Göran Möller likes it when she shows initiative, has actively encouraged her to do so. And that’s what she’s doing. Karin is bound to call him to tell him what they’ve discovered.

  Time to act, Malin thinks, and looks at Elin, who seems to be thinking the same thing. She says: ‘Right, let’s go.’

  Within minutes Malin is sitting in the passenger seat of a white Golf, and they’re heading through the city, past the cemetery, past the National Bank building and the old fire station, on past Abisko, and then down towards Skäggetorp and Tornby. The big, out-of-town stores are shutting up shop for the day, and in the flats in Skäggetorp perhaps people are happy that Peder Åkerlund is dead. Or perhaps not. Few people are pleased when a young person dies. Probably only really militant opinion-machines, regardless of political persuasion.

  Then they’re out on the plain.

  Elin puts her foot down. Malin looks out across Lake Roxen: the slowly sinking sun makes the broad expanse of water look as if it’s made of brittle glass.

  A few boats. Fishing for char, probably.

  The car’s engine rumbles and rasps, but otherwise it’s strangely quiet. Neither of them says anything, and Malin has a sense that part of the universe has ceased to exist, a part she can’t see but which is still real, important. She feels it inside her like a fluid vacuum, a hollowness, a chasm that is in constant motion.

  At the next junction Elin turns left, at speed, and they head across the plain on an unpaved road, then turn right and carry on towards its yellow heart. In the distance Malin can see Vreta Kloster. The white tower.

  And beyond it, the place where the body was found.

  Not far from here.

  ‘It should be that house,’ Elin Sand says.

  Stranded among fields of flowering rape and others left fallow is a large yellow house flanked by two red barns. The house and barns are half hidden by birch trees that form a huge hedge, but it’s still obvious that they’re badly neglected. A rusty red Ford is parked on the road.

  This is a place that’s seriously short of money.

  What job does she do? Malin wonders.

  ‘Let’s stop here,’ she says.

  They get out.

  The field to the left of the car is rust-coloured and dry, clouds of dust lifting in the gusts of wind from the lake. It’s still light, but Malin still has to squint to see properly, as well as shield her eyes from the dust.

  What are we going to find? she asks herself.

  Julianna Raad assaulted a fellow police officer so badly that he lost the sight in one eye, so they need to be careful. Malin touches the pistol inside her shoulder holster, and can see the bulge beneath Elin’s denim jacket.

  Have we already got so far with this investigation that our murderer is inside that house over there?

  Malin feels her stomach clench. Not from nerves, fear, or anger, but something else. An indefinable new feeling that can only be met with action. She knows that: her body’s alarms can only be silenced by action or drink, and drink is out of the question for her, it would kill her.

  Why did Julianna write those letters?

  Why in Arabic?

  To direct attention towards Muslims? To frighten Peder Åkerlund, and make him think he had a group of Muslims after him?

  The letters weren’t dated. Did she write them before or after he changed his views?

  Or perhaps Julianna Raad isn’t a left-wing extremist after all, but something else? A Muslim extremist? Are we blundering into some sort of jihad now? Malin wonders. She realises that she’s turned Julianna into a monster without actually having met her.

  They start to walk towards the house, and Malin can sense Elin Sand’s fear.

  ‘We’ll take it nice and gently,’ Malin says, as a sparrow flits past them, looking at them to see if they’re edible.

  Malin can feel the approach of night in the air.

  She looks towards the dense yet fractured cluster of trees surrounding the buildings that are supposed to be Julianna Raad’s home.

  But she can’t hear anyone. The voices of the investigation aren’t whispering to her.

  The fourth letter.

  We’ll cut out your tongue. We’ll leave you mute.

  18

  The paper’s newsroom can feel like the realm of the dead. Cramped and hot and abandoned, full of people who know that their days are numbered, that soon some number-cruncher will show up and draw a line through their names in the personnel files.

  Daniel Högfeldt adds a full stop at the end of the last sentence of the third article he has written this shift.

  His eyes feel gritty. The light at his desk is far too gloomy, his screen too old and decrepit.

  Around him the others work on in silence.

  The atmosp
here in the newsroom is subdued.

  No one seems to believe in a future for the printed edition of the paper.

  For the free word in print. For the scrupulous examination of power.

  The advertisers have more and more influence, Daniel thinks. A week or so ago he was told to go and cover the local ice hockey team, the LHC’s annual sponsors’ dinner at the Cloetta Center. Sheer sycophancy on the part of the paper, giving the city’s big shots a chance to show off in the press.

  He refused.

  His boss issued a barely-concealed threat, but he stood his ground.

  Refused.

  They sent a trainee instead, and ended up with a double-page spread of local celebrities eating steak.

  LHC investing in the future, the headline said.

  No trace of critical analysis.

  Who needs the free word now, when the bearers of the free word themselves demonstrate exactly how much it is worth?

  Nothing. Not a thing.

  If he gets fired he’ll just have to find something else to do. There are PR jobs in the city. Soul-destroying, but better paid.

  He sends the article off. Feels pleased with himself.

  A strong, in-depth portrait of the murder victim, Peder Åkerlund, combined with speculation about his murder based on his background.

  He tried to get a comment from someone in the police. But his source clammed up, and he never calls Malin about work. It would drive her mad, and would put him in an extremely difficult position.

  But sometimes it would be so easy just to ask her for information.

  Has a boil of racist pus burst in the city? Has someone had enough of the Sweden Democrats and murdered one of them? Or have the racists got rid of a former supporter who has been making a nuisance of himself?

  Or is it a sexually-motivated murder? He was found naked, and the police have been tight-lipped about his injuries. No press conference until tomorrow.

  He has a bad feeling about this story. Something really awful is going on.

  Malin.

  I’m forty-one now, Daniel thinks, looking at the faint reflection on his screen, the lines on his forehead that are getting deeper and deeper.

  Malin can’t have any more children. And I don’t have any.