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

by Mons Kallentoft

  Sometimes she felt like cutting the heads off her cut-out dolls. Swapping the boys’ and girls’ heads around. Changing the world.

  Maybe you’re trying to make everything better as well? Not just survive? In your own screwed-up way, you want to change your world into something more beautiful, more loving, a world that you can control completely.

  Is that how I’m going to get closer to you? Malin wonders. By assuming that you want a more beautiful world? Because you think you’ve already created it?

  She walks on.

  Past McDonald’s, where a few hungry customers are eating a revolting breakfast, then turns the corner into Drottninggatan, passing Karin Johannison’s door. She can’t help wondering if Karin and Zeke are making love up there right now, quietly so that Tess doesn’t hear them. Probably not, they must have their hands full with the morning routine.

  She walks through the Trädgårdsföreningen gardens, trying to enjoy the preened greenery and the smell of spring, but can’t summon up anything close to a gentle feeling.

  ‘Malin!’

  The call comes from behind, and she turns around, and, over by the entrance to the park from Linnégatan, she sees Elin Sand.

  She’s wearing a blue dress and black leather jacket, and from a distance she looks unbelievably cool, like something from a Hollywood film, and Malin stops to wait for her colleague. She always manages to look so young.

  When Elin catches up with her the illusion crumbles.

  She looks tired.

  ‘Sleep badly?’ Malin asks.

  ‘No.’

  They start walking towards the station in silence.

  Malin can tell that Elin wants her to ask her why she’s so tired, how she’s feeling, something like that, can tell she wants a pat on the shoulder, but Malin doesn’t say anything.

  They walk past the old entrance to the University Hospital. There’s no one sitting under the protruding green canopy.

  With each step their silence becomes more complex, and the air between them denser. Something is being teased out, aired, leaving a feeling of pure loneliness, a companionable loneliness that they can both accept.

  They walk across the large car park, cross the road, and carry on towards the old barracks where the police station is based. It’s a warm day. Almost warm enough to be summer. And they know that a lot’s going to happen today, and that they can bide their time until those events are a fact.

  They walk down the narrow tarmac road in the shade of the birch trees, still in silence.

  They reach the sliding doors of the police station. As they glide open, Malin says: ‘You don’t look as tired now, compared to the way you did back in the park.’

  Elin Sand smiles at her.

  Says nothing.

  Malin switches on her computer.

  Ten emails in her inbox.

  She freezes when she sees the third from the bottom, sent an hour ago from the same address as the email about Stenkullamotet.

  No heading in the subject line.

  A short message:

  She’s breathing and she’s screaming, can you save her?

  Malin reads the sentence over and over again. Breathes in, breathes out.

  If he or she is serious, this means Nadja is still alive.

  Nadja.

  We can still rescue you.

  Do not reply to this email, the disclaimer at the bottom says.

  The others have also arrived for work early. They’re all there now, and she’s about to call them over when she changes her mind.

  Can you save her?

  There’s nothing in the email that can help them make any progress. What am I supposed to do with this?

  Is this how you play?

  And Malin feels like smashing her computer.

  Damn.

  She calls Johan over, lets him read the email, asks if Forensics have managed to trace the email address.

  ‘No, it’s basically impossible,’ Johan says. ‘The last email was sent from a subserver in China, and God knows where it came from before that. It could just as easily have been sent from here in the station as from a mountaintop in the Himalayas.’

  Johan pauses.

  Malin asks: ‘Security cameras? I want to see if this person actually exists.’

  Johan shakes his head.

  ‘Still nothing. But we’ve got a list of cameras from the council, and have started pulling in the recordings.’

  The others have come over to them now. Börje, Elin, Waldemar, Zeke. They stare at Malin’s computer.

  ‘So she’s alive,’ Waldemar says.

  ‘Good news,’ Börje says.

  ‘Unless he’s just messing with us,’ Zeke says, and the others fall silent. Don’t want to think that thought.

  ‘What does he want from me, from us, now?’ Malin goes on.

  ‘We don’t know it’s a he,’ Elin says.

  ‘We don’t know a bloody thing,’ Malin snaps.

  Göran Möller comes over to join them.

  ‘I think she’s alive,’ he says. ‘Does anyone have any fresh ideas about this? Now that we’ve all had a chance to sleep on it?’ He goes on: ‘I should let you know that I’ve called off the dog patrols. There was no point carrying on. They’ve covered ten kilometres of forest around the house, so the search area was starting to look ridiculous. I don’t believe they would have missed anything.’

  As suddenly as the group gathered around Malin’s computer it disperses. As if the absence of any real leads, of any definite lines of inquiry had embarrassed the detectives. As if they’re ashamed at not knowing what to say or do.

  Instead they each go back to their own desk. Drink coffee. Pretend to be busy.

  Waiting for something else to happen.

  For the evil of love to show itself.

  44

  Douglas Harrysson gets up at six o’clock every morning, drives down to the ICA supermarket chain’s warehouse in Tornby, gets in his truck, and sets off on his rounds. First out to Ljungsbro, then Vreta Kloster and out onto the plain in a wide arc to the little shop in Klockrike, and on to Malmslätt.

  The stores receive deliveries every day, and he stops ten minutes, fifteen at the most, at each one. He knows the shopkeepers and their staff, but he doesn’t want them to get too close. He’s never wanted anyone to do that, except his mother.

  He’s thirty-eight years old, and likes living alone, has done so ever since his mum died, and he drives the truck five days a week, does his rounds, and at weekends he watches television when he’s not out on his motorcycle riding through the forests on his own.

  He doesn’t need anyone else, and sometimes he feels strangely proud of the fact, just as he sometimes feels proud of being really good at delivering goods to different ICA stores.

  His work seems insignificant in most people’s eyes. But not his. What would happen if the shelves were empty? If the bread and milk ran out?

  There’d be a hell of a fuss.

  He’s a good driver, too, has never even come close to causing an accident.

  Now he’s heading out towards Lambohov. The shop there is well-run, and the owner often sees him himself, tries hard to make small talk, but that doesn’t work with Douglas Harrysson.

  He takes the shortcut from Malmslätt instead of following the motorway from Ryd. He can save five minutes by taking the little-known forest road that runs behind the old airbase, the one the council want to turn into an immigration centre.

  He likes this stretch of road.

  The birches and pines grow in harmony here, none of the trees looks cramped, and on either side of the road runs a neatly dug ditch, as if the landowner genuinely cared about his land.

  Douglas never encounters any other vehicles, and the road is more than wide enough for the truck, so he puts his foot down, and the treetops are transformed into different shades of green as his speed increases, as if he were travelling along a tunnel of green light.

  He never has the radio on.

 
; Likes the silence.

  Doesn’t give a shit about what’s going on in the world, or even the local area. Other people can do as they like, and I’ll do what I like.

  He slows down again. Something is telling him to drive slowly, and he looks around at the forest, along the road ahead of him, and he has to admit to himself that the forest is beautiful at this time of year.

  He focuses his gaze.

  Something’s wrong. He can tell that at once.

  He sees something that shouldn’t be there.

  A naked body lying in the ditch five four three two one metres ahead of him, and he puts his foot on the brake and the truck stops.

  I’ll keep going, he thinks.

  Doesn’t want to get out. Doesn’t want this to happen. No one knows he comes this way, no one would know he’s seen what he can see right now.

  A male body. Contorted arms. But no head.

  He knows he ought to be afraid, but his heart isn’t racing, his pulse is calm, and Douglas Harrysson wonders what’s wrong with him. Why can’t he feel anything? Except when he goes to his mum’s grave and tries to talk to her.

  He starts the truck again.

  Drives a short way. Then he stops and turns the engine off once more. Gets out. Walks back to the ditch where the body is lying.

  Blood.

  Blood everywhere.

  The head is lying a short distance inside the forest.

  Then he feels all the strength go out of his legs and has to sit down on the edge of the road.

  Dead black eyes stare at him.

  He fumbles for his mobile. Calls 112.

  45

  Suliman Hajif’s head has been severed from his body. It’s lying fully visible on a thin layer of moss, five metres into the forest from the ditch where the body is glinting in the sun, surrounded by small, buzzing flies.

  A fairly neat cut, Malin thinks as she looks at the neck. Probably not carried out by an expert, but cutting someone’s head off isn’t actually that hard. There are instructions on how to do it on the Internet.

  She’s trying to stay cool, not react emotionally to what she can see.

  His face is thinner than when he was alive, the nose seems sharper, the cheeks more sunken, the beard more unkempt, and his dark eyes are open wide with astonishment and horror that will last for ever.

  His mouth is full of earth, as if to make all words impossible.

  Malin, Zeke, Elin, and Karin Johannison are at the scene. Three patrol cars. The uniforms have cordoned off a large area to keep reporters and the public at a distance. The white and blue tape moves hesitantly in the wind.

  Karin is inspecting the grass around the body.

  Malin walks towards her, looking at the skin. Scratched, lacerated, peeled off in several places, but there aren’t any symbols carved into it. There are holes in the shins and lower arms.

  A naked body. Mutilated, of course.

  The same murderer.

  That much is obvious. Two such similar murders don’t happen independently of each other. Anyone could reach that conclusion.

  Elin is standing just behind her, and Malin can hear that she’s hyperventilating.

  Zeke is walking up and down some way inside the forest, glancing at the head. Seems to be wondering what chain of events brought Suliman Hajif to this place.

  In one of the patrol cars Malin can make out the back of poor Douglas Harrysson’s head. He was calm when they arrived, apologised for being so calm, said he didn’t know why he wasn’t ‘as upset as you’re supposed to be’.

  There’s no standard response, Malin thinks. Then she jumps across the ditch and walks towards the car, opens one of the back doors and gets in next to Douglas Harrysson.

  He looks perfectly normal.

  Normal height, normal weight, an ordinary face. Nothing remarkable at all about him.

  She gets him to tell her, slowly and carefully, about his day. About the shortcut, and how he found the body, called the police. He talks about the previous evening, and the ones before that. He was alone at home, watching football. Pay-per-view matches. They’ll be able to check.

  Malin knows Douglas Harrysson has nothing to do with the murders. If he had, why would he have phoned them? And he doesn’t look like a serial killer, Malin thinks, before realising that no one ever does. Men like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy seemed perfectly ordinary too.

  ‘We can arrange for you to see a psychologist if you like,’ she says.

  Douglas Harrysson shakes his head.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ Malin says. ‘I don’t like talking to them either.’

  ‘Can I go now? They’re waiting for their delivery in Lambohov.’

  ‘Soon,’ Malin says. ‘In a little while.’

  She goes back to Karin Johannison, who’s crouching in the ditch and putting fragments of skin in a small bag. Malin resists the urge to turn away and forces herself to look at the dead body. At the victim on whose behalf she needs to find justice and truth.

  ‘He’s been dead four hours at the most,’ Karin says. ‘Whoever tortured him did it recently, last night.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No. Then there’d be much more dirt in the wounds. They’re clean, as if the whole thing took place in a clinical environment. And I’m almost certain those tyre tracks up by the side of the road are the same ones we’ve seen before.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I’ve only just got here, Malin.’

  At first Karin’s sour comment annoys her, but she lets it go. Karin is under just as much pressure as she and the others are. Possibly even more.

  She leaves Karin in peace. Goes and stands a few metres away from Suliman Hajif’s head.

  Tries to come to terms with the grimace on what used to be his face, thinks that perhaps there’s some sort of divine justice in this. If it was true that Hajif recruited suicide bombers, then some of their victims must have had their heads torn off in the explosions, one form of violence matching the other, perhaps just the same when it came down to it.

  The wind is moving gently through the foliage. And once again Malin feels that there’s some sort of lack inside her, a silence she can’t explain. That she’s standing here looking at the fruits of extreme violence, yet missing something.

  The Correspondent’s car in the distance.

  Daniel.

  TV4’s local news team. Aftonbladet. Expressen. They’re all here now.

  Malin wonders if they consider the fact that someone like Suliman Hajif has family. He has relatives, parents brothers sisters cousins friends, who will all be told about the death, who will all grieve, yet Malin can’t help thinking: I see justice here.

  Zeke approaches her.

  ‘First a right-wing extremist, then a missing left-wing girl, and now a suspected Islamist. What next?’

  Malin doesn’t know where the words come from, but they pop out of her mouth: ‘A television presenter? A producer for TV3? If the killer wants to silence someone responsible for some real crap.’

  Zeke doesn’t answer. He gives her a searching look as Elin Sand walks over to them.

  Malin feels Elin’s hand on her shoulder. Warm and soft, and she likes it being there.

  ‘We won’t understand this by ordinary deduction,’ Elin says.

  ‘You’re right. What are the rules of this game?’

  ‘There aren’t any rules in games except the ones you make up yourself,’ Zeke says. ‘I’ve learned that much.’

  ‘Tess?’

  ‘And all other children.’

  ‘So you’re saying we shouldn’t be looking for straightforward connections,’ Malin says. ‘That we should be looking for things that seem insignificant and irregular?’

  ‘Not look for them,’ Elin Sand says, ‘because that would be impossible. But be open to them.’

  Malin moves away along the road, towards the cordon, not in Daniel’s direction, but away from him.

  Daniel takes in the scene. He knows that the mutila
ted body lying over in the forest is Suliman Hajif. He’s found that much out from the uniforms. Karin is poking at something else in the forest now. What could that be?

  He knows more than any of his colleagues here. But he can’t write about what he knows, because Malin would go mad, and would probably dump him instantly.

  So what should he do?

  He calls the thickset uniform over to him. The one who told him the victim’s name, and said the word ‘mutilated’.

  ‘How has he been mutilated?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say, you know that as well as me, Högfeldt.’

  ‘Come on, there must be something you could let me have?’

  ‘He’s been decapitated. And his mouth is full of earth. But that’s all you’re getting.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Daniel says, thinking that Karin must be looking at the head at the moment.

  He walks over to his car, gets out his laptop, and starts writing an article, taking as his starting point the fact that the latest victim is Suliman Hajif. And that someone has filled his mouth with earth and cut his head off his body. He writes – without mentioning anything Malin told him, as if the conclusion is all his own – that the murders are probably connected. Naked bodies found out in the countryside. There must be a connection. That the perpetrator could be someone who wants to silence people who have been outspoken in their opinions. People who are making too much noise. That these murders and the disappearance are all about freedom of speech, and perhaps also about how we choose to use it. He speculates about what he knows, goes on writing.

  Divides the text in two.

  One news article, with some loose speculation, and then a more pronounced opinion piece in which he condemns the murders and the brutality, emphasising the connections he can see.

  Twenty minutes.

  Then the two articles are done.

  He reads them through quickly.

  There’s nothing that could upset Malin. He could have reached the same conclusions even without what she told him last night. He sends the articles to the newsroom and just five minutes later they’re online.

  The murderer will see his texts. Read the opinion piece in which he or she is labelled ‘calculating and sick’ and ‘an enemy of free speech’.