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

by Mons Kallentoft

  Zeke is sitting at his desk. When he sees them arrive he calls out: ‘Got your thoughts clear, Malin?’

  ‘Hardly. Unfortunately.’

  Zeke lets the matter drop. Over the years he’s got used to her going off on her own, to the fact that she sometimes does things entirely her own way.

  Malin watches Elin go off towards Johan. They start to chat, and Johan seems agitated, probably talking about something new he’s found. But then she remembers. Johan was taking his daughter to hospital today. He’s probably feeling off balance, and who wouldn’t be? He can’t have been back long.

  Elin told her about her suspicions regarding Nadja’s father. The same thought had also occurred to her.

  Could there be something in that?

  Doubtful.

  Why would he harm his own daughter? Or Peder Åkerlund? He has an alibi for the murder. No, Nadja’s dad has nothing to do with this. Even if there’s something a bit odd about a grown man making his living designing games.

  Malin switches her computer on. Opens her email.

  The usual internal memos.

  A summary of the state of the investigation from Göran Möller. Concluding that although all the lines of inquiry seem to be pointing in different directions, the connections are there somewhere, the answers, the truth.

  She scrolls down.

  Spam that’s found its way through the filter. Some new decree from the Public Prosecutors’ Office.

  Hang on, though.

  Nadja little, ever so brittle.

  The heading of an email some way down her inbox. Malin opens it.

  Her hand is shaking as the computer brings up the unknown message, far too slowly.

  This isn’t an ordinary email, and she feels that something’s about to explode, to use Elin’s phrase. While her antiquated computer slowly does its thing, the realisation hits her.

  The police aren’t in control of this investigation.

  Someone else is.

  A childish rhyme.

  A missing girl.

  Hydrochloric acid.

  Hajif.

  Malin reads the email, sent from a Gmail address that consists of an apparently random combination of letters and numbers. Untraceable, in all likelihood. Created to look as neutral as possible. She reads the message over and over again, tries to understand what it says. Both in its words, and beyond them.

  Go to Stenkullamotet, dig beneath the magical tree. What will you find?

  Then, after a gap of about ten blank lines:

  Acid against sayings leads to slayings.

  Malin feels her heart skip a couple of beats.

  The fact that acid was injected into Peder Åkerlund’s brain hasn’t appeared anywhere in the media.

  No one but us and the murderer, and any potential accomplice, knows about that.

  So: the email was probably sent by the murderer.

  Making contact.

  Issuing a challenge.

  Sending silly rhymes.

  As if this is a game. Red against blue, words against words, where nothing except silence necessarily means anything.

  Go to …

  Malin calls the others over, and soon she can feel Zeke, Johan, and Elin’s breath on the back of her neck. Calm, focused concentration.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Zeke whispers.

  ‘Are we going to find her now?’ Elin says, and Malin feels like saying ‘There’s no way of knowing,’ but stays silent.

  ‘I can try to find out what server the email was sent from,’ Johan says. ‘What IP-address is behind that Gmail account.’

  He sighs.

  ‘But it’ll be bloody difficult. And it seems to have been chosen specifically to prevent it giving us any clues.’

  ‘Has something happened?’

  Malin hears Göran Möller’s voice, and the four of them turn towards their new boss, who is standing just behind them in his blue summer suit.

  ‘Yes, something’s happened,’ Malin says.

  Göran Möller reads the message.

  ‘So we’re dealing with a game-player.’

  ‘Nadja’s father is a game designer,’ Elin says.

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ Malin says.

  ‘Do you know Stenkullamotet?’ Göran Möller asks.

  Malin nods.

  ‘It’s out on the plain, a few kilometres from Klockrike. There’s an ancient, misshapen oak tree with two trunks there that’s supposed to possess magical powers. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Then I think you and Zeke should head out there with Karin Johannison and see what you can find. Johan, see what you can find out about the email. Elin, get the reports written and take charge of our dealings with Folkunga School.’

  ‘Already on it,’ Johan says, and disappears off to his desk with Elin.

  ‘“Acid against sayings leads to slayings”,’ Göran Möller reads. ‘The bastard’s certainly not a poet.’

  34

  An email from a lunatic.

  But containing information that no one but the murderer could know. Assuming no one in the police station or in the forensics team has leaked it.

  Malin tries to stay calm in the car, but is aware that she’s never faced anything like this before.

  Playful sadism.

  The sort of rhyming riddles some Swedes put on the labels of Christmas presents. And these presents contain violence and death and grief.

  Karin Johannison’s car is in front of Malin and Zeke’s.

  Put your foot down, Malin thinks.

  But Karin sticks to the speed limit.

  They follow the rear lights of her Volvo estate as they cruise across the Östergötland Plain, through swaying yellow rape and ochre-coloured fields that have been left fallow. Blue sky again now, the rain has left the world looking greasy.

  Zeke’s hands on the wheel. There’s no more reassuring sight, Malin thinks. I’ve seen it a thousand times, and it often keeps me calm.

  How are you doing? Malin wonders.

  I know you like Tess, Karin’s adopted daughter from Vietnam. You’re a good dad, and I know you’re in a good place, the sort of place I want to be in with Daniel.

  Are we OK, Daniel? Have we got something?

  Does he want children? And Malin runs one hand over her stomach, the scars from the gunshot under her blouse. A damaged womb, and she closes her eyes, forces back the sudden flare-up of longing and thirst, digs the nails of her forefingers into her thumbs the way she has taught herself.

  Do I deserve to be in a good place?

  Daniel doesn’t really love me. That’s just something he says, words among the thousands of other meaningless words we utter to get what we want at any given moment.

  In the distance Malin can see the spires of different churches. Ljung, Klockrike, Fornåsa. They’re approaching Stenkullamotet, where three roads converge, roads that seem to curl around each other in a wide circle, linking the most remote parts of the Östergötland Plain with larger roads that lead to Linköping, Motala, and Vadstena, that metropolis for nuns and fools.

  At last, they arrive.

  Karin’s brake lights go on as her car pulls up beside the misshapen oak whose hat-shaped crown rests on two gnarled trunks, legs with no body, with a magician’s hidden head. Long branches stick out of the crown like magic wands.

  Malin and Zeke get out.

  The oak stands on a small patch of farmland twenty metres away from the point where the roads meet.

  Silence reigns.

  Why isn’t the wind in the tree audible?

  This is the sort of place where anything could happen, Malin thinks, a place where life could go in any direction at all. She can see why it’s regarded as magical.

  They walk over to Karin.

  ‘How do we proceed?’ Malin says, feeling the spring sunlight on her face, trying to burn her skin, make her sweat. ‘It said we have to dig.’

  ‘We check the ground,’ Karin says. ‘Carefully, looking for signs that the
soil might have been disturbed recently.’

  Malin nods.

  Zeke opens the boot of their car to take out the battered shovels they brought with them.

  ‘We’ll divide the area around the oak into three zones, and search one each,’ Karin says.

  ‘Sounds sensible,’ Zeke says.

  ‘Of course it’s sensible,’ Karin says irritably.

  ‘Please …’

  Karin stops. Smiles at Zeke, then Malin.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Malin is soon standing in the shadow of the oak with a spade in one hand. She inspects the ground impatiently, wondering if it could be hiding something that might lead them to Nadja. The earth is dry, sheltered by the dense crown, but her shoes are muddy from walking across the wet field.

  A car drives past, the children in the back seat stare at them.

  Who are you? What are you doing beside the magic tree with spades in your hands? Stop, Daddy! We want to dig too!

  Should we be frightened? Malin wonders. More cautious than we’re being now? Am I getting carried away? Who knows what someone who sends emails like that might be capable of?

  But she doesn’t say anything. Suppresses her anxieties. Why would there be a trap here? A bomb?

  On the other hand, why not?

  She goes on looking.

  Centimetre by centimetre she scans the ground, looking for anything unusual, a sign that the earth has been disturbed. She has a feeling that someone is watching them. She looks out across the fields, but there’s nowhere anyone could hide without being seen.

  She looks up at the crown of the oak. A wind blows through the leaves and she can hear them rustle now, and in the rustling are words she can’t make out, the mute whispers of the dead, and she gets a sense that it’s all too late. That Nadja Lundin is dead after all.

  ‘Here!’ Karin calls. ‘Look at this!’

  And Malin looks over at Karin, who is standing some thirty metres away in the field. In the fierce sunlight on the other side of the tree she is pointing at the ground with her spade.

  ‘Be careful as you approach,’ she says.

  Malin and Zeke head towards Karin, treading in her footprints.

  The patch she’s pointing at is a different colour to the surrounding ground. A more porous, darker patch of mud, flecked with grass, and she says: ‘Someone’s been digging. Before we set to work, I want to secure the ground around here.’

  Malin and Zeke wait in the shadow beneath the oak as Karin combs the ground for clues. She doesn’t seem to be finding anything, the rain must have destroyed any evidence.

  They’re sitting on the ground, each leaning against a trunk, and it occurs to Malin that it would be impossible to bury anything close to the oak. The roots must be dense, ancient, much older than her, and then she asks Zeke: ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘We’re fine. I’ve never felt happier.’

  ‘Good,’ Malin says, and Zeke asks: ‘How about you? With Daniel?’

  ‘We’re trying.’

  Then they sit in silence alongside each other, watching their colleague and Zeke’s partner do her job, and before too long she calls to them: ‘We can start digging now.’

  Spades in the ground. They dig quickly but carefully.

  All three of them are wondering what they’re going to find.

  Nadja’s body? A violated, damaged girl’s body? A different body? An unknown victim of this spring’s evil? A victim they don’t yet know about?

  They keep digging down.

  Spade by spade, at an even pace, and sweat breaks out under their clothes. The sun laughs at them, the earth too.

  Malin feels the spade in her hands, and can feel the start of blisters. Her skin isn’t used to this sort of work.

  But there’s something here. She’s sure of it.

  They’re a metre down now, and another car, a dark blue Passat, drives past, slows down, and Malin tries to see the passengers, but it’s impossible with the light against her, and then the car drives on.

  A large heap of earth is growing beside them.

  Dusty now, now that they’ve reached completely dry soil.

  No roots. A few dry, dead worms.

  Then her spade hits something solid.

  Zeke and Karin notice. They stop what they’re doing, look at each other.

  They keep digging. Scrape with their hands.

  Is it a coffin?

  No, it’s too small to be a coffin. A body? No, too hard to be a body.

  They uncover the object. It is a coffin, a tiny wooden coffin, painted white, suitable for a doll or a baby, and they lift it out from the hole and carry it over to the dry ground beneath the oak. They know they should have left it in the hole, and a thought suddenly occurs to Karin.

  ‘Dare we open it? Or should we call out the bomb squad? We have no idea what it is.’

  Malin digs her fingernails into her thumbs.

  Is there a small child in the coffin? Alive? No, it would have to be dead. Could the coffin contain part of Nadja’s body?

  ‘We open it,’ Zeke says.

  ‘You two stand back,’ Malin whispers. ‘If it does explode, there’s no point in it taking all three of us with it.’

  Zeke and Karin do as she says without protest. She waits for them to reach cover behind Karin’s car. Then she bends down and carefully unfastens the catches on the side of the coffin.

  Is it going to explode?

  Malin listens out for sounds across the fields, but can no longer hear the wind. Just an all-pervading silence, as if all the unspoken words had the power to extinguish the sun if they wanted.

  Then she opens the coffin.

  35

  Malin, Karin, and Zeke are looking down at the contents of the coffin, the piece of flesh, the oblong, greyish-red lump, the amputated tongue. And they look at each other with shared confusion.

  What’s this?

  They pull back from the coffin, away from the stench of the rotting muscle.

  ‘Is that a human tongue?’ Malin says.

  Karin looks down again.

  ‘Not impossible, it could be.’

  A vehicle pulls up behind them and Malin turns around. It’s the Correspondent’s blue car, and Daniel gets out, together with a young, female photographer. He starts to walk towards them, and she feels like fending him off, yelling at him to get lost. But most of all she’d like to fall into his arms and let him take her away from this madness. But the madness is everywhere, impossible to escape.

  Malin knows that.

  The only momentary escape is in ecstasy.

  ‘Stay up on the road,’ Zeke calls. ‘This is a crime scene.’

  Daniel and the photographer stop. How come they’re here? Nothing’s been said on police radio. But the station leaks like a sieve. Malin turns her back on Daniel, looks down at the tongue again, is that Nadja’s tongue, but could something that large really fit inside a human mouth? She realises how badly she’s sweating, and says: ‘We need to calm down.’

  The frenetic digging.

  An email. A coffin.

  A murdered former Sweden Democrat of the most extreme, right-wing variety, a missing left-wing activist, a buried tongue.

  ‘I am calm,’ Karin says.

  ‘I can’t make any sense of this,’ Zeke says, as if he could read Malin’s mind. ‘None of it makes sense.’

  ‘The tongue is controlled from the Broca’s area,’ Karin says. ‘Where the acid was injected. And now we have a tongue.’

  ‘If the motive is political,’ Malin says, ‘then the perpetrator is someone who stands to gain from firing in both directions. Left and right.’

  ‘Why would anyone do that? In Sweden? Today’s Sweden?’ Zeke says. ‘This is the work of a madman.’

  Malin doesn’t reply. She realises the limitations of the political angle. But, on the other hand, perhaps there’s someone who stands to gain from chaos? People with different goals, but who
se interests might just coincide.

  The two trunks of the oak seem to be clutching at each other now. And sucking strength from their muscles. Malin says: ‘But, as Karin says, there’s a very odd connection here. Between language and silence.’

  ‘It’s not a human tongue,’ Karin says. ‘I can see that now. It’s too big. It could be from a calf.’

  ‘Where would you get hold of a calf’s tongue?’ Zeke wonders.

  Good question, Malin thinks. Replies: ‘In any supermarket. It’s the sort of thing poor pensioners boil up to eat.’

  The click of a camera. Daniel’s voice.

  ‘What have you got in the coffin?’

  ‘None of your business,’ Malin shouts.

  Why so unfriendly?

  He’s a journalist now, and I hate them.

  Get lost.

  It’s possible to love and hate at the same time. And she wants to hug him, kiss him. Tell him she loves him.

  A fucking calf’s tongue. Karin prods at it with her tweezers.

  ‘So we know it isn’t Nadja’s,’ Malin says.

  ‘She might still be alive,’ Zeke says. ‘Is that what you mean?’

  Malin nods, wipes the sweat from her forehead. And she realises that Stenkullamotet has its own microclimate. It’s much hotter here than in the city.

  ‘Look at this,’ Karin says.

  She pulls a bloody piece of paper out of a hole in the tongue. She puts it down on the coffin lid, carefully unfolds it, and words in blue ink, neatly handwritten, stare mockingly up at them.

  We humans have freedom of speech. Most of us.

  What do we do with this speech?

  We abuse and neglect it.

  Shriek and yell without reflection.

  I know the price of words.

  I shall burn these words to secure them.

  I shall speak through murders.

  Peder, Nadja, and others.

  I shall create order in the mass of humanity.

  I am the mask burner.

  You can never silence me.

  But you can play for a while.

  Malin reads the words on the note several times, as do Karin and Zeke.

  ‘We’re obviously dealing with a madman,’ Karin says.

  ‘Or a smart madman who wants us to think he’s mad,’ Malin says, thinking: Is he trying to say that Nadja is dead?