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

by Mons Kallentoft

  What’s going to happen to us? Are we going to end up a childless couple in Linköping? There aren’t many of those, but do I even want children? If I do feel any kind of emptiness in my life, it isn’t that sort of emptiness.

  But I’m ready to take the next step. Ready to take it with Malin. End this limbo-life of ours and at least move in together.

  He takes out his mobile.

  Feels like calling her, hear how she is, what she’s doing, tell her to be careful.

  Tell her I love her.

  Because he does. Has done for a long time now.

  My hand against your cheek, then down, down over the steep curve of your collarbone, your hair tickling my fingers, and your voice saying something, anything at all.

  He clicks to open a picture of Malin in the newspaper’s archive. By mistake he opens one where she’s being carried across a driveway on a stretcher.

  Shot.

  The shotgun pellets that hit her womb, and are still there. Tiny pellets of evil. They don’t cause her any pain, and the little round scars have grown pale, aren’t the angry red they were a year ago. He usually lets his fingers linger on them before moving further down, to where he knows she wants them, further down, and then in, and he can make her tremble with lust and desire, with longing for her lost self.

  Because that’s what sexuality is to her, she needs it to find something inside her that’s been lost, something she has to find if she’s to become whole again.

  She makes love as if it’s a matter of life or death.

  And it is. His body is merely a tool for her dreams, her survival.

  Where are you now, Malin?

  Take care.

  I couldn’t bear to lose you.

  19

  Malin and Elin are approaching the farm, step by step. The gravel crunches beneath their feet and the sky is an endless evening blue.

  No birds, Malin thinks. As if they’ve flown away from the world.

  Elin seems nervous beside her, but focused, almost as if she’s preparing for an attack and Malin is a lieutenant who’s about to blow her whistle to send them out of their trench.

  It’s far from certain that Julianna Raad has anything to do with the murder, but anything could happen here.

  There could be a trap lurking anywhere.

  Is death here? Malin wonders.

  The peculiar hedge of trees around the house. A wall of leaves.

  They walk up to the white-painted gate. Elin pushes it open, and they’re in the yard. The two barns flank either side of a weed-strewn farmyard, their roofs look ready to collapse at any moment. In front of them is the yellow-plastered farmhouse.

  An empty porch.

  Someone has taped brown cellophane over the windows, giving the house dark eyes and making the dark-grey door an open mouth. There’s a vegetable garden on one side of the house, black soil, an abandoned cultivator whose blades glint in the last rays of sunlight.

  Being watched.

  She can sense that she’s being watched, she’s felt it before. Not just by eyes, but something else, something potentially lethal, and she yells: ‘Get down, Elin, down on the ground, now!’ And as she says the last word the first shot rings out.

  Bang.

  And stones fly up beside Malin’s foot.

  A rifle? A pistol, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Elin throw herself to the ground and crawl towards an upturned garden table for cover.

  Malin is on her own in the open.

  Bang.

  Keep down, for God’s sake.

  The second bullet whistles past her head.

  She can feel adrenaline pumping now, and she throws herself sideways and snakes towards the house, but she’s completely unprotected out in the open yard.

  Which window? she wonders, and yells: ‘Fire, Elin, fire!’ And Elin fires, a shot towards the façade of the building.

  The next bullet lands in front of Malin’s face. Broken glass rains down onto the gravel, and she gathers her strength, heaves herself up onto her knees, and sets off, running in a zigzag towards the porch, towards shelter, and she expects to feel a bullet hit her, knows how it feels to get shot, knows how much it hurts, yet she’s still not frightened. Fear can come later.

  More shots from the house.

  They hit a few metres behind Malin, and she must be in the shooter’s blind spot, and she runs faster, up the steps, turns sideways on, and hits the door with her shoulder.

  Inside.

  A smell of boiled vegetables and dirt. There are shabby rag-rugs on the floor, and the furniture seems to belong to another era.

  Malin presses against one wall. The shots came from the upper floor, but there could be other people in the house. She’s not safe anywhere.

  Sweat is trickling from her hairline, down into her eyes, and it stings.

  ‘Stay there!’ she yells to Elin.

  Malin is breathing hard. She tries to take deep breaths, then realises that she’s holding her pistol in front of her with both hands.

  I need to get upstairs, she thinks.

  I ought to check the rooms down here.

  She hears another shot, glass breaking.

  She crouches down.

  If there’s anyone down here I would have seen them by now.

  The stairs. Just a few metres from her, the treads painted red.

  I need to get up there.

  She heads in that direction. Up onto the first step, the second, her pistol aimed upwards, and she’s ready to fire, afraid now. Knows she doesn’t stand a chance if there’s anyone waiting for her up there.

  She could get her head blown off.

  ‘Julianna!’ she calls out. ‘We only want to talk to you.’

  No answer.

  Just a gun, a shot from inside one of the rooms upstairs, and Malin hears a noise behind her, there’s someone there, and she spins around, movement, and as she takes aim, a black cat runs out through the front door.

  Shit.

  She turns around again, and heads up the stairs with her pistol raised, and she’s angry now, what an idiot.

  ‘Julianna!’

  We’re coming, I’m going to get you, and as Malin calls out she makes an effort to sound calm and authoritative.

  Halfway up the stairs.

  Her head almost level with the upper floor.

  Above the floor.

  A shot could ring out at any moment.

  The landing. Two closed doors.

  And Malin turns her body, lowers her pistol, no one inside on either side, and she runs up the last few steps and takes cover against a freshly-painted wall beside one of the doors.

  Everything is neat and tidy upstairs. A chest of drawers with newspapers and books piled on top of it. A new rug.

  The shots must be coming from the room at the far end, behind the red door.

  She raises her pistol again. Walks along the passageway holding it in front of her.

  No more shots.

  She hears steps on the gravel, then Elin enters the house. But Malin keeps quiet, doesn’t call out to Julianna again. Doesn’t want to give her position away.

  ‘I’m in!’ Elin shouts. ‘I’ll make sure the downstairs is clear.’

  Malin waits, hears Elin go from room to room, calling out: ‘Clear, clear, clear!’

  Then silence.

  Just the sound of the wind in the trees.

  Did one of the bullets go through the wall? Did they hit Julianna Raad? If it was actually her hiding on the other side of the red door.

  It could be someone else.

  Malin moves forward.

  Towards the red door.

  Tries to listen, but can’t hear any sound from inside the room.

  She stops beside the doorframe. Takes three quick steps back, then kicks hard. The door flies open more easily than she expected, and she stumbles in.

  Fuck.

  When she regains her balance and is about to raise her gun, she sees Julianna Raad standing at the far end of the
room, aiming a pistol at her. Wearing a flowery pink dress, she seems almost to blur into the flowery red wallpaper.

  A bewildered, hunted look in her eyes.

  ‘Don’t shoot,’ Malin says. Keeps her pistol pointing at the floor.

  Julianna Raad’s hands are shaking.

  ‘We just want to talk to you,’ Malin says, thinking: Put the bloody gun down, don’t shoot me.

  The next moment she hears noises behind her back, then Elin Sand’s voice: ‘I’ll shoot. Put the pistol down.’

  And Malin looks at Julianna Raad. Loneliness, a realisation of what she’s spent the past few minutes doing, but also fear and desperation.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’ she roars. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘We’re from the police,’ Elin says. ‘We’re investigating the murder of Peder Åkerlund, and we need to speak to you.’

  Julianna Raad looks even more bewildered, and then her expression changes again, anxiety, worry, and she says: ‘I don’t know anything about any murder.’

  ‘We don’t mean you any harm,’ Malin says.

  ‘No, you bastard cops never do.’

  You’re going to put your gun down now, Malin thinks.

  But Julianna Raad goes on aiming at her, and Malin knows that Elin Sand has her in her sights, so she darts quickly to one side. Julianna loses her concentration, gets confused, and Malin throws herself at her. She kicks the gun from her hand with a high kick that could have come from a bad Hong Kong action movie.

  Disarmed.

  And Malin hits her on the temple. Julianna slumps to the floor, her skinny body falls slowly, as if she somehow has the ability to float.

  Elin is there in a flash. Sits on top of Julianna Raad, who appears to realise that there’s no point resisting.

  Malin takes out her handcuffs. Fastens Julianna’s arms behind her back, and Julianna shrieks: ‘Fascists! You’re fucking fascists, that’s what you are!’

  20

  I can hear the badgers’ claws scratching against my coffin. There’s a scraping sound.

  Claws. I can hear them now, but no one can hear me.

  I know that.

  Yet still I scream and scream and scream.

  My joints are sore and my back aches. I try to roll over, but the coffin is too cramped.

  I raise my head and let it fall back onto the wood. Hard, hard, hard, and I do it over and over again.

  Pain is real. I’m alive.

  Who buried me like this? And I scream again: WHO BURIED ME LIKE THIS?

  What have I done? I don’t deserve this.

  Am I lying in a coffin?

  Am I out on the plain, in the forest, or in a garden, or inside a house, under the cement floor of a cellar?

  And what’s that ticking?

  A clock is ticking, and I take a sip from the tube. The water is fresher now, has someone refilled it? And I can feel that the air, my air, is running out.

  Breathing, breathing, breathing.

  Be still. I can’t do anything, so I may as well save my strength.

  The clock is ticking. Could it be attached to some sort of explosive device? That sounds mad, but this whole situation is mad.

  Mum, Dad, I don’t want to die. Not now. Not yet. I’m going to change the whole damn world.

  Mum.

  Dad.

  You have to find me.

  Even if I’ve treated you like shit, I need you now. My words bounce off the wooden walls and I barely understand them myself.

  You have to hear me.

  Why haven’t you come?

  Mum, Dad.

  Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  21

  The taxi drops them off outside the fin de siècle building on Drottninggatan, up near the corner of Trädgårdsföreningen gardens. Bror Lundin looks over towards it. In the gloom, the trees are immoveable giants, and the bushes and flowers their cowering servants.

  The building contains rented apartments, but only for the city’s most affluent citizens. They’re paying ninety thousand kronor per month for their five rooms.

  Bror Lundin and his wife Beata have been lucky in life. He set up a business developing platforms for computer games together with some friends at university, and they’ve had a number of international successes. Beata is director of finance at another successful IT company.

  They’re wealthy, but not rich. He was forced to dilute his share of the business during the early years, when the company needed capital.

  Bror helps the taxi driver unload their luggage onto the pavement. The golf bags are heavy, the clubs high quality.

  Marbella.

  A week of sun, golf, and rosé wine.

  Beata taps in the code to the door.

  He knows they’re both hoping the same thing, that their daughter Nadja will be up in the apartment. Not waiting for them, that would be too much to ask, but he wants her to be there. Today was a school day. So she might be there.

  She’s only sixteen. But oddly opinionated.

  Vegetarian, no, vegan, and an environmental activist. She objects to more or less everything about the way they live their lives. She has a blog where she writes about the environmental damage caused by the city’s industrial estates, and exposes companies and individuals, mostly celebrities, whom she considers to be living environmentally unsustainable lives.

  There used to be a lot of conflict in the home, until eventually he and Beata realised there was no point arguing with her.

  Nadja is who she is.

  And he, they, love her more than anything. Their only daughter.

  They haven’t heard from her in two days. They’ve called, but she hasn’t answered the phone, and she hasn’t called or texted or emailed them either. There are no new pictures on her Instagram, and she doesn’t use Facebook, that’s ‘for old people’.

  But that isn’t really so odd. She’s probably at their summer house in Svartmåla now. She often goes out there after school or at weekends. She does her yoga there, and grows things in the large patch of garden she’s cleared behind the house. The first harvest of vegetables she grew there did taste incredibly good.

  They’ve bundled their luggage into the lift now. They’re both tired. They missed their connection in Frankfurt, and had to wait another two hours for a flight to Stockholm instead of Gothenburg, so they’re home much later than expected.

  The lift rattles its way upward.

  There’s only just room for the two of them with all their bags and cases, and Bror Lundin looks at Beata. She’s still beautiful. After thirty years together he can still see the beauty in her face, in her soft features and little button nose, and the blonde hair that time hasn’t yet turned grey.

  But she’s worried now. He can tell from the tight little wrinkles around her lips.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘She’s probably at home. After all, her school hasn’t called to say she hasn’t been there.’

  ‘They don’t ring about things like that, you know that,’ she says tetchily. ‘We should have called them.’

  He feels irritation spread through his body.

  Miserable cow.

  But he holds back, like so many times before.

  The lift stops on the third floor, and Beata pushes her way out and puts the key in the lock.

  She disappears into the apartment.

  Bror Lundin gets their luggage out. Carries it into the circular entrance hall, and his wife comes back.

  ‘She’s not here,’ she says.

  ‘Then she’s gone to the country,’ he says.

  Beata looks sceptical, but says nothing.

  They’ve tried calling the summer house as well, but got no answer there either. Mobile reception can be unreliable out there, though, and the Internet connection is fairly erratic. That means she could be there, and would explain why she hasn’t posted anything on Instagram.

  She usually posts at least three or four times a day. Pictures of environmental problems, or of herself and her limited number
of friends. But perhaps she’s got her hands full with the garden now that spring has arrived.

  Beata turns and walks back into the apartment. To the sitting room looking out across the park.

  Bror Lundin closes the front door and goes after his wife.

  The clay-coloured Josef Frank sofas dominate the room, and there are two large oil paintings by Bengt Lindström on the walls. Grotesque faces, garish colours.

  Beata has gone over to the window. She’s gazing down at the trees.

  Dusk over Linköping now.

  And no Nadja.

  But he needs to keep a cool head.

  Should they call the police?

  No.

  He needs to check Svartmåla first.

  He goes over to Beata, puts his hands on her shoulders and whispers in her ear: ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be in Svartmåla. I’ll head out there now.’

  ‘Aren’t you tired?’ she asks. And he can hear from her voice that she’s not asking out of concern, but more as a challenge: You’re man enough to deal with this now, aren’t you? Anything else is out of the question.

  He lets go of her, and ten minutes later he’s sitting in their BMW 4×4, heading out into the forests of Östergötland.

  He’s always struck by how beautiful Svartmåla is. The lake water is almost black at this time of day. But the fir trees are still reflected on the shimmering surface.

  They bought the house when he sold some shares in the company five years ago. It was expensive, but the business has continued to attract investment, and Bror Lundin likes the fact that the house is so close to the city. In just half an hour you can be in another world.

  Most of the houses are empty and shut up, but the Anderssons are home. They live out here all year round.

  He takes two left turns and catches sight of the house, and the lake a little further on.

  He painted it moss green last summer. Sanded and patched it up, then painted it. White wooden detailing. He’s pleased with the way it turned out.

  Bror Lundin parks. Then he walks firmly towards the front door, consciously choosing not to see any signs that Nadja isn’t there.

  That would be unthinkable.

  She must be here.

  Where else would she be?

  He wants to see her beautiful face. Put his hands on her cheeks and kiss her head, tell her how nice she looks with her nose-ring, and that those fake leather shoes look good.