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

by Mons Kallentoft

  I’m doing this for your sake.

  This is the end. Daniel sees the man as if through an unfocused pair of binoculars with red lenses.

  He’s got a knife in his hand, or is it a syringe? It makes a noise. A blowtorch?

  The man takes his hand. Gently. Why gently? Then he lets go of it.

  It’s hot now.

  The sound.

  The blowtorch.

  The pain. It forces through all the walls his body has built up, and he screams, even though he can’t.

  72

  Malin, Zeke, Göran Möller, and Andreas Gran are moving through the dense Östergötland forest.

  The undergrowth crunches and snaps as their shoes break through the vegetation, as if the earth were protesting against their arrival in this forgotten place.

  They’re going as fast as they can.

  Stumbling. Feel the lingering smells of the previous autumn’s decay. Last year’s dead plants try to cling to their legs and drag them down to the ground.

  Stop them.

  They’re cursing.

  And Malin feels the undergrowth scratch at her ankles.

  Daniel.

  I’m on my way.

  I’m coming as fast as I can.

  They left their car over by the old barracks. There was a white Skoda parked there already. A hire car. The windows of the old buildings are covered with plywood on which someone has drawn stylised screaming faces.

  Jonas Ahl, or someone else.

  The way Zeke was driving it’s a wonder we got here at all, Malin thinks. Then tries not to think at all.

  The bomb shelter is supposed to be four hundred metres to the north, straight through the forest, with no approach road so that the enemy wouldn’t be able to find it. Blasted out of the ancient bedrock.

  ‘It should be here,’ Göran Möller says after they’ve been running for a while.

  ‘We’re close,’ Andreas says.

  He’s out of breath, as is Zeke. None of them has anything like Malin’s stamina.

  Andreas stumbles.

  Malin doesn’t wait. But he soon catches up with her.

  They look around. The forest seems to live its own life here, and only a few stray rays of light pierce the canopy of trees.

  A little further on the ground starts to rise, it looks fairly natural, but there’s still some sort of elevation ahead.

  They move forward, weapons drawn.

  ‘We’re standing on top of something now,’ Zeke says, and Malin wonders what might be going on below them.

  ‘Don’t you want me to do it, Mum?’

  The man turns his back on Daniel as he turns the blowtorch up to maximum.

  ‘Don’t say that. I want to do this. It’s so nice. Please, Mum.’

  Daniel looks at him. Tries to move his hands, but it’s hopeless.

  He’s held tight.

  The man hadn’t started to burn him. He paused, apparently unable to make up his mind, then started babbling one nursery rhyme after the other, and now he seems to be talking to his mother.

  What about my mother? Daniel thinks.

  She died fifteen years ago. I buried her, and I haven’t really thought about her much since then.

  ‘So I can do it, then?’

  The blowtorch.

  It’s howling. Its blue flame looks even bluer in the red light.

  ‘I’m going to do it.’

  Daniel sees him come closer and closer.

  Goodbye, Malin. I hope you can hear this. I love you.

  ‘Over here! There’s a hatch.’

  Göran Möller is standing ten metres away, pointing at the ground with his pistol. Malin and Zeke run over to him, and Malin grabs hold of the handle of the hatch, pulls it towards her, and Göran Möller seems to want to object, but stops himself.

  ‘He must have closed it after him,’ Göran Möller says. ‘Unless there’s another way down.’

  ‘There must be,’ Andreas Gran says. ‘To get all the essentials and equipment in.’

  ‘We haven’t got time to look for it now.’

  ‘You stay up here,’ Malin says to Andreas. ‘Unless you know your way around down there?’

  A fixed ladder leads downwards.

  Down into unknown darkness.

  Malin takes the lead and they start to descend. The walls of the tunnel shimmer with damp, and the stench of mould makes it hard to breathe. The rungs are rusty and sharp, yet simultaneously slippery with some sort of algal growth.

  Am I going to fall? Malin thinks. What if one of the rungs gives way?

  Down, down.

  Into the darkness. They can’t switch on the lights of their mobiles because they need to hold on to the ladder with both hands.

  The air feels stuffier with each rung.

  Her heart is pounding in her chest. Sweat is running down her cheeks from her scalp.

  Hurry.

  Daniel.

  You can’t die.

  I might only have a few minutes.

  If that.

  Ten rungs, twenty, fifty, seventy-three.

  Malin counts them all, and once she is down in the passageway she switches on the torch on her mobile and looks around her.

  The tunnel reaches off in two directions, like an endless catacomb. She listens for sounds in the rock. Can’t hear anything. She moves to make space for Zeke and Göran, and soon the three of them are standing there together.

  ‘Right or left?’ Zeke asks.

  ‘We’re not splitting up,’ Göran Möller says. ‘We stick together.’

  ‘Is he here?’ Malin asks. ‘Are they here?’

  And she sees Daniel in her mind’s eye, alone with the evil, and she walks off to the right, quickly, holding her pistol out in front of her in one hand, and her illuminated mobile in the other.

  Then she hears a scream. Unless it’s just her imagination?

  ‘He’s here,’ Göran Möller says. ‘Somewhere.’

  Did I just hear something? Is someone coming?

  Did she manage to rescue the frightened girl? The one with the big ego?

  The one I saw hounding the staff at the library? The one who asked me to fetch a book from the archive, and then laughed and said she didn’t need it?

  That’s what she was like.

  But she’s learned her lesson.

  And I’ve been able to play, Mum, you’ve watched me play from up in heaven.

  I’m going to burn him now.

  But first I remove the earth from his mouth.

  LISTEN TO HIM SCREAM.

  HA HA.

  It’s great fun, isn’t it?

  Malin hears the scream.

  She’s sure now.

  Recognises Daniel’s voice somewhere inside it.

  Where’s the scream coming from? Further on? Or behind them?

  She runs, hears the others’ footsteps behind her, and Daniel screams again.

  Closer now.

  The others must have heard it too, and with every step they get closer to his screams.

  Another junction. Straight on, right or left?

  Which is life, which is death?

  Where’s the big room? The heart of the shelter?

  They carry straight on. Reach an opening blocked by two black, rusting doors.

  Screaming.

  Daniel.

  I’m here.

  Close.

  What’s he doing to you?

  Göran and Zeke each drag one side of the door open.

  A huge room comes into view, a church hall of a space, with a tarmac floor, but no windows or benches. Fifty metres by thirty, and at least twenty metres up to the gently arched stone roof. Water drips down onto the floor, trickling down the walls and out through tiny drainage holes.

  The rock is weeping, Malin thinks. The earth.

  But the room is empty, and she hears more screaming.

  Sorry, Daniel, I haven’t reached you yet.

  It can’t be too late.

  The heat on his chest is
unbearable. He wishes he would pass out, but his consciousness refuses to loosen its grip.

  His entire being is heat, and in that heat is the smell of his burning hair, skin, and flesh, and he screams as his nipple burns to charcoal. As if from a distance he can hear the laughter of evil and insanity.

  The heat cuts into his bone.

  Then the world finally disappears from Daniel Högfeldt.

  They run on, and now they’re standing in front of another iron door, the door that seemed to conceal the scream that’s just fallen silent.

  Red light is seeping out beneath it.

  There is a barely audible sound, roaring and hissing in turn.

  We have to get in, Malin thinks.

  She imagines she can hear more screaming.

  Even louder.

  Howls of pain.

  All three of them grab hold of the handle, try to pull the door open, but it’s locked.

  ‘Fuck!’ Malin screams, knowing that the man inside can hear her.

  They’re coming to rescue you now.

  So absurd.

  Nothing can save you.

  They’ll never be able to force the lock, and I am holding the blowtorch like a pistol.

  I can make out your ribs now.

  Soon I’ll uncover your lungs. And will see to it that they never give air to your ramblings again.

  You lasted a long time. Your consciousness didn’t want to release you from the pain.

  ‘What do you say, Mum? Shall I let them in?’

  ‘Never, never.’

  I turn around. Ready to go on.

  Göran Möller has inserted his lock-pick into the door, and is moving it frantically up and down.

  ‘The keyhole’s too rusty,’ he says.

  ‘Keep going,’ Zeke hisses.

  Malin is stamping her feet, eager to get inside the room, Daniel could still be alive. Must be, I couldn’t bear it if you died.

  I want our love.

  There’s a click and the door opens, and they’re struck by bright red light. Through her blurred vision Malin can make out a spotlight, then Daniel, naked and strung up, and in front of him a man who must be Jonas Ahl.

  Or is it someone else?

  A blowtorch.

  He is pointing it at Daniel’s heart, and Malin raises her pistol, takes aim at the black outline of the man’s back, and shoots him.

  Hands steady. Not frightened of hitting her beloved.

  She shoots the man first in the heart, then in the spine, up towards his neck, and he collapses onto the concrete floor.

  The blowtorch falls from his hand and rolls towards the spotlight, towards what appears to be advanced broadcasting equipment, where it goes on hissing angrily.

  The air reeks of charred human flesh and blood.

  Daniel.

  His chest is an open wound, and she can see several ribs. His body is hanging limply from the nails.

  Blood is trickling onto the floor.

  She takes his head in her hands. Strokes his cheeks. Sees her fingers turn red.

  ‘I’m here now. Hold on. You’re going to make it. I’ve saved you. Tell me I’ve saved you, Daniel.’

  You’re coming home, she thinks. To our home. The one we’re going to make together.

  Far away from all suffering.

  A place of safety, one that feels impregnable.

  Free from this fake red light.

  There’s no such thing as safety. I know that.

  Maybe not even when our ashes are deposited in the earth.

  Daniel coughs. Spits up blood.

  They’re trying to get him down, but are having to be careful. The nails through his arms and legs are fixed firmly enough to hold his weight.

  ‘Malin?’

  She puts her face close to his.

  ‘I’m here.’

  He spits out more blood. A thin stream is trickling from his chest, colouring Malin’s blouse red. She puts her finger on it, trying to stem the flow.

  What sort of world is this? she thinks.

  ‘Malin.’

  ‘I can hear you, Daniel.’

  And somewhere close to her a thousand voices are singing again. Peder Åkerlund, Suliman Hajif, and Jonas Ahl, whose lifeless face is staring up at Göran Möller.

  They’re singing from hell. From a realm deep below the earth.

  Where is your voice coming from, Daniel?

  ‘I love you,’ she says.

  We’re going to carry on breathing, together, you and I.

  We shall breathe together for ever.

  Epilogue

  We are the dead.

  Hear us.

  Wherever our voices are coming from.

  We’re in the earth, we’re in the air you breathe, in fire. Perhaps we’re in fire most of all.

  For me and Peder and Suliman there is no forgiveness.

  For Nadja Lundin there are no longer any words.

  She is sitting mute and silent in a hospital on the shore of Lake Vättern, refusing to acknowledge that the world exists.

  For the three of us there is nothing but pain and loneliness. And perhaps we deserve that. But what does this world really do to us? We just tried to make sense of it in our words and deeds.

  The clear light of early summer is streaming in through a closed window.

  Malin is sitting beside Daniel’s hospital bed.

  He’s being kept sedated to stop the pain from overwhelming him. He’s going to make it, as long as he doesn’t suffer any severe infections, without any long-term damage beyond the scars that will never fade.

  Börje Svärd is lying in a different department. By his side sits a woman who barely knows him, but who still insists on being there.

  He too is going to be all right. The doctors managed to stop the internal bleeding, and his face didn’t suffer any burns because he had already lowered his head when the explosion happened.

  She squeezes Daniel’s hand and thinks about Tove, about love. How it exists everywhere and can take so many forms, and how confusing and scary it can seem. Because at the heart of all violence is a love that has taken the wrong path.

  Malin leans her head against the white sheet.

  Falls asleep.

  And she dreams about Tove.

  In her dream Tove is running across a burning field. Flames the height of a man are chasing her, driving her on and consuming everything in their path.

  But Tove isn’t frightened.

  There’s happiness in her face.

  She’s running ahead of the fire, singing and dancing, and Malin hears her words: ‘See me run across the earth, see me vanquish fire.’