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

by Mons Kallentoft

  No. I can’t resist.

  This isn’t good enough. I’m through with shame. If anyone ever can be.

  But I can’t stand myself, the boring person I really am.

  Her mobile rings. Daniel.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ he says, and as he slides into the booth opposite her seven minutes later he points at the glasses.

  ‘The first ones?’

  There’s no trace of reproach in his voice, no anxiety, merely a statement of the facts.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘One beer and one tequila before you got here. And I want to drink those so fucking badly, but I’m not going to.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It won’t make anything better.’

  Daniel smiles, and in the dim light his face looks almost perfect. His features take on a sharpness that isn’t really there in daylight.

  Everything’s better with a bit of darkness, Malin thinks. And she wants to tell him that she loves him, but can’t bring herself to say the words.

  The waitress comes over.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘Nothing wrong at all,’ Daniel says, and takes a swig of the beer.

  They each order steak and eat it in silence, and Malin washes hers down with plenty of water. She’s afraid Daniel is going to ask about Tove, and he knows that. And stays silent, because when things look hopeless, soothing words are often superfluous.

  Nor does he ask about the investigation, seems to appreciate that she needs silence, that he clearly needs it as well.

  When the waitress has cleared their plates Malin says: ‘That was a good article.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You managed to manoeuvre around what I told you very neatly.’

  ‘So you thought it was OK?’

  ‘I can hardly put a muzzle on you.’

  ‘You probably can, actually.’

  They pay the bill and go out into St Larsgatan, walk down towards Hamngatan, and in the main square the pavement bars are full of people making the most of the mild May evening.

  It isn’t that long since I was sitting here with Tove, Malin thinks, and you have to come back, because otherwise I’ll have to live the rest of my life in a world of ghosts. I’d move away from here, but my world would forever be suffused with your spirit.

  Will I hear your voice? Sense it?

  She feels Daniel’s arm around her, pulls him closer to her, and he says: ‘She’ll turn up OK. I can feel it.’

  They go their separate ways up on Hamngatan. Daniel has to be at the newsroom at four o’clock in the morning and wants to sleep alone, and Malin wants to be on her own too.

  She hesitates outside the Pull & Bear. Wants to go into the pub and drink herself stupid.

  Instead she walks to the car park. Sits in her old white Golf.

  The alcohol’s out of my system, she thinks, and takes her phone out.

  Calls Janne. He answers at once.

  ‘Have you heard anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is terrible,’ Janne says.

  ‘I know. Are you going to go?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘I can help with the flight.’

  ‘You haven’t changed.’

  ‘This is driving me mad with worry.’

  ‘Do you want to meet up?’

  Malin can hear Janne’s voice at the other end of the line. His question is considerate, but he doesn’t really want to meet. And neither does she. Because what would they do? Sit and hold each other’s hands? Reflect each other’s anxiety?

  Not a chance.

  ‘Let’s talk again when there’s any news,’ she says, and ends the call.

  She starts the car and drives through the city and out onto the plain. The water of Lake Roxen has tiger stripes in the moonlight, and a flock of broad-winged birds is flying low over the muddy fields closest to the lake. The farms are all dark, and she wonders where she’s going.

  She drives up into the forests near Stjärnorp.

  Thinks about all the evil that has existed there, all the violence, thinks that it never ends. The only thing that changes is that the evil changes tone, colour, or smell, and the only thing we can do is protest against it with our words and deeds.

  If we can see it, of course.

  Evil often exists without us suspecting anything. Sometimes disguised as love, bewilderingly similar. Multifaceted, elusive, contradictory.

  You hate, she thinks. Because you want to love. Want to be loved.

  Did Nadja do something to you?

  Is she less than perfect, as her friends and mother have implied?

  Did your paths cross somewhere?

  She’s driven deep into the forest on a narrow unpaved track. Somewhere around here is where Maria Murvall wandered through the forest with her body shattered and her genitals mutilated.

  She stops the car. Switches the engine and the headlights off, and the moonlight can’t reach down to where she is.

  Everything is dark.

  She jumps across the ditch, heading into a forest that’s darker than her soul, darker than her life will ever be.

  Feels alien hands on her body.

  Trying to get inside. Wanting to destroy her. Own her.

  Take her life.

  She screams: ‘TOVE TOVE TOVE. NADJA NADJA NADJA.’

  And whispers: ‘I’m coming, I’m coming now.’

  58

  Friday, 19 May

  Göran Möller called the Karlstad Police early that morning from his flat. It was a bit of a long shot, after all, and he hesitated before phoning.

  He was told that Kenneth Johansson, lead detective on the case involving the dogs, was on holiday.

  They gave him Kenneth’s mobile number, and he’s waited until now to phone. It’s eight o’clock, and he’s sitting at his desk in his office, looking down towards the hospital on the other side of the road.

  The phone rings five times before Kenneth Johansson answers, having obviously just woken up. His voice sounds rough, with a tone only strong spirits and tobacco can create.

  ‘Kenneth.’

  ‘I don’t know if you remember me?’ Göran Möller says, and introduces himself.

  ‘I remember that dinner. A long time ago now.’

  Slowly and methodically Göran Möller explains his reason for phoning, and he hears his fellow detective sigh at the other end of the line, and wonders where he is. Mallorca? Egypt? Bulgaria? Somewhere cheap, probably, or at home in Karlstad? But Göran Möller doesn’t ask, he merely listens.

  ‘We never got anywhere with those dogs. It was a bloody horrible case … They were greyhounds, and, let me tell you, they don’t look too great when they’ve been cut up. They must have been alive when he did it, because they’d run around that clearing out in the forest. There was blood everywhere, and their coats were more red than white. Don’t ask me how it happened.’

  ‘I seem to remember you mentioning something about a tongue being cut out?’

  ‘One of the dogs was missing its tongue, that’s right.’

  ‘Was there anything special about the location?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Did it have any particular relevance to local history, were there any stories about it?’

  ‘Now you come to mention it, someone from the local history association did call us. Apparently a witch was supposed to have been burned on that site in the forest back in the seventeenth century. But what was I supposed to do with that sort of information?’

  Göran Möller gazes out of the window, down at the steady stream of people heading into the hospital at that time of the morning.

  ‘Did you identify any suspects?’

  ‘No. A few other greyhound owners got in touch. They thought they were being stalked by some bloke. They didn’t have much of a description, and it was supposed to have happened several months earlier.’

  Göran Möller takes a deep breath. His next question is
a serious long shot, given the amount of time that has elapsed.

  ‘Was there a van involved? Did a black van ever crop up in the investigation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I gather you’re on holiday. Whereabouts are you?’

  ‘Canary Islands. Playa del Inglés. My other half likes it here. I bloody don’t. But it’s my last holiday before I retire. So what the hell.’

  ‘At least you can have a drink.’

  His colleague laughs.

  ‘I’ve had one or two.’

  Malin is sitting at her desk in the open-plan office. Looking down at her beige trousers.

  That hour she spent in the forest last night feels unreal, as if it never happened, but the livid scratches on her ankles are proof of her foolishness.

  She forces herself to think of her peculiar behaviour that way.

  As temporary madness. Impulses she has to follow to stop herself giving in to the really dangerous impulses, so as not to go properly insane.

  The phone on her desk rings.

  Göran Möller, asking her to come up to his office, and a minute later she opens the door to find him sitting with his back to the sun shining through the window.

  ‘Have a seat,’ he says.

  She sits down.

  Then Göran Möller tells her about the other case he’s found out about. The dogs in Karlstad, and what Kenneth Johansson told him.

  ‘There could be a link,’ Göran Möller says. ‘Now this person has crossed the boundary, for some reason, and has started attacking other people instead of animals.’

  ‘Unless it’s just coincidence,’ Malin says, nodding thoughtfully. She goes on: ‘But we still don’t have a name, or anything, really.’

  ‘Have you got any ideas?’

  Malin thinks. She likes the fact that Göran Möller’s question indicates that he’s treating her as an equal. No father/daughter relationship here, and not boss/subordinate either. Just two police officers who are trying to make progress with an investigation.

  ‘We could issue a request to every district in the country to see if they’ve had any similar cases of animal torture. If they have, we might be able to discern a pattern. A timeline. If it’s the same person moving from place to place.’

  Göran Möller lets out a whistle.

  ‘You mean, if he’s moved from place to place, we ought to be able to track him from the population register? Get the name of anyone who was in those places around the time of the attacks?’

  ‘Yes,’ Malin says.

  ‘Is it even possible to run that sort of search?’

  ‘Johan will know,’ Malin says, and Göran goes on to give her a quick update on the old case Johan found. He’s looked into it, and things seem to have turned out OK for the boy. He’s an engineer in Uppsala these days, with a wife and three children.

  ‘I’ll send out the request to the other districts,’ Malin says. ‘We can start with that.’

  ‘Your interviews with the families of the young men who went to Syria, did they provide anything useful?’ Göran asks.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘And Nadja?’

  ‘We’re doing everything we can,’ Malin says. ‘We’re in the murderer’s hands here. She could be anywhere, and we’ve got nothing to go on. He’ll contact us again, though, don’t you think?’

  ‘He will,’ Göran Möller says, sounding mostly as if he’s trying to convince himself.

  59

  I’m so thirsty. I’m shrinking. My muscles need water.

  This is my grave.

  I’m going to die here, dissolve into the earth, eaten by worms.

  There’s no hope for me.

  I’m giving up now. It hurts too much.

  I shall stop breathing.

  Damn you all.

  You’re all going to die.

  All of you.

  I’m no longer in your world.

  But the clock is ticking, and in my mind’s eye I see a bomb, close by in the ground next to the coffin.

  I don’t want to be blown to pieces.

  So hurry up.

  60

  Malin composes an email and sends it to every police district in the country.

  Asks about cases of abused, lacerated animals, dogs, perhaps a case in which one of their tongues has been cut out. She could do her own search of the shared database, but the digitised records are still less than comprehensive. There could be cases where details have been missed from the official reports, or incidents the police are aware of, but which never led to an official investigation.

  She knows the email will be forwarded to every police station in the various districts.

  The whole country will see it, and if anyone can help, they will.

  She leans back in her chair.

  She might get an answer immediately, or it might take time. Or she might not get any response at all.

  Nothing happens for the first ten minutes.

  She stands up. Fetches a cup of coffee.

  Then she looks over towards the entrance. Karim’s face. He’s let his beard grow since she last saw him, it’s now perfect hipster-length. He’s pushing a pram ahead of him through the office, and the members of the investigative team gather around the pram to look inside it.

  The pram is decorated with Burberry fabric this time. Genuine, no doubt, Malin thinks, and can’t help smiling. She remembers Tove’s pram. A battered old Brio.

  Tove.

  No.

  Karim. There you are.

  Impeccably dressed, as always. A patterned brown tie that looks as if it could cope with a few baby-food stains.

  Malin goes over to join the others. Looks down into the pram at the sleeping child, and feels invisible hands clutch at her ribcage, feels her eyes grow moist. She can’t escape this grief over what never was and never will be, but she holds it back.

  ‘He’s beautiful,’ she says to Karim. ‘Just like you, apart from the beard.’

  Karim laughs.

  ‘He takes after his mum, thank goodness.’

  Malin realises that she’s missed Karim. He always does his bit when they have a difficult case, and the station feels poorer without his elegant presence. A colourless prosecutor is standing in as chief of police, and hardly ever shows his face.

  ‘When are you coming back?’ she asks.

  ‘In two months,’ Karim says.

  ‘Are you looking forward to it?’

  He nods, looks down at the pram, and says: ‘He’s wonderful. Fun to play with.’

  By the time Malin gets back to her computer she’s received two new emails.

  One from Umeå, one from Örebro.

  In Örebro they had a case in which two cats were found in a park. They’d been cut using a knife, the police officer writing the email is sure of that. But there was no investigation because their boss thought the cats could have inflicted the wounds on each other with their claws.

  ‘But they were obviously knife wounds. And one of the cats had had its tongue lacerated.’

  The case in Umeå was just one year ago. A greyhound had been found, alive, down by the river. At first there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. Then the vet at the kennels where the police had taken it called to say that someone had severed the dog’s larynx.

  There was no investigation that time either.

  After all, it was only a dog.

  Malin writes back to thank the senders. Thinks that none of the incidents has coincided. They’ve taken place in different places at different times, forming an arc that stretches across ten years.

  She goes over to Johan, hoping that he might be able to make something of this.

  ‘It ought to be possible to conduct a search,’ Johan says without looking up from his computer.

  He seems brighter today than he has for a long time.

  He must have got a good night’s sleep. Perhaps because his daughter wasn’t in pain? Or did his wife decide to give him a treat last night? Either way, some sort of bu
rden has lifted from his heart.

  Malin pulls over a chair and sits down, crosses her legs, and leans forward towards Johan.

  ‘It won’t be a particularly exact search. But by defining the parameters I ought to be able to get a rough list of people currently living in Linköping who’ve lived in Karlstad, Umeå, and Örebro during the past ten years.’

  ‘All of those places?’ Malin asks.

  ‘At least one,’ Johan says. ‘Sometimes two or three.’

  ‘That’s going to be a lot of names. People move to Linköping all the time. The university.’

  ‘And work,’ Johan says. ‘There are a lot of companies here that act as a useful rung for people on the career ladder.’

  ‘Can you give it a try, then?’ Malin says. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘Give me an hour or so,’ Johan says.

  ‘You can’t do it any faster?’

  Johan looks up from the screen. Stares at her as if she is an idiot.

  ‘You know me, Malin. I take great pride in working as slowly as possible.’

  61

  A thousand names. Give or take.

  A thousand men aged between eighteen and sixty-five, any one of whom could be the man they’re looking for. Johan has printed out the list, and it lies like a snake across the table in the meeting room.

  The preschool children are out playing.

  She goes and opens a window. Lets in their laughter and cries and all the emotions carried by their voices, all their expectations of life, moment by moment.

  Johan pins the list up on the wall, and Malin, Zeke, Elin, and Göran take their seats. So many names, and so little time.

  ‘Can you refine the search so we only get the ones aged between thirty and forty-five now?’ Göran Möller asks. ‘The likely age of our murderer, in other words.’

  Johan shakes his head.

  ‘This is as close as I could get. Between voting age and retirement. We’ll have to do the rest manually.’

  They stand up, pens at the ready, and divide the names between them. They cross out anyone whose age doesn’t match what Viveca deemed plausible.

  That leaves them with four hundred names.

  ‘Still far too many,’ Malin says. ‘How can we narrow it down further?’