Savage Spring

by KALLENTOFT MONS

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Also by Mons Kallentoft in the Malin Fors series

  Prologue

  Part 1: Avaricious Love

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part 2: Out of the black, into the white

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part 3: The Children

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Mons Kallentoft in the Malin Fors series

  Midwinter Sacrifice

  Summertime Death

  Autumn Killing

  SAVAGE SPRING

  Mons Kallentoft

  Translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Originally published in Swedish in 2010 as Vårlik by Natur och Kultur

  Copyright © Hard Boiled Company Limited 2013

  English translation © Neil Smith 2013

  The right of Mons Kallentoft to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  eBook ISBN 978 1 444 72169 0

  Book ISBN 978 1 444 72167 6

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Prologue

  May 2010

  In the chamber of darkness

  Where are you, Daddy?

  You’re supposed to be here with me.

  Where have you gone? Daddy, Daddy, you need to come now.

  Little brother’s crying.

  He’s so little. He’s lying on the floor, crying, and there’s pee on the floor, Daddy. There are spiders here, and can the snakes get in? The lizards, the great big lizards with yellow teeth, is that what’s making that scratching noise? It’s your fault if we die, Daddy.

  He says it’s nasty, nasty.

  Like in the pool at home, Daddy. He never dared to jump in, not even with armbands on. I dare. I’m brave. I’m braver than him, because I’m six and he’s only three, nearly four.

  I’m sweating and it’s too hot. But only sometimes. I’ve taken my top off, am I allowed to? Now there’s that noise again and I can hear the men coming, Daddy, the light under the door disappears, there’s a ticking sound and everything goes completely dark, and now little brother has to keep really quiet, otherwise they might hit us, and I get scared and I shout:

  ‘Don’t hit me, don’t hit me,’ and then the light under the door is back and the men go away, I can hear it, but they’ll be back soon, and will I be dead then? Are they going to kill us, Daddy?

  We’re locked in, and I want them to let us out. They bring us food, we’ve got a potty, and we’ve been given crayons so we can draw things on the walls and floor. We can’t see what we’re drawing, but we carry on anyway.

  I’m frightened. Little brother’s even more frightened.

  What’s that ticking sound? Where are those horrid lizards? They shimmer in the dark.

  It’s horrid being frightened. I give little brother a hug and he’s all warm and he’s crying, and this is the nightmare I never wanted to talk about. Is that why this is happening now, Daddy, because I never talked about it?

  If you’re kind, then everyone is kind back.

  Like you, Daddy, you’re kind, aren’t you, you must be kind, and I let go of him and bang on the locked door, shouting:

  ‘Don’t come back. I don’t want to be dead. We don’t want to be dead.’

  Hurry up and get here.

  Six Years Earlier

  My body is screaming to feel unconditional love and forgetfulness bubbling through its veins, that’s all it wants.

  This feeling of feelings is my only desire, the only thing I want.

  You have been taken from me.

  That’s the way I want it, no one knows about you. I will leave you with what I hope are nice people.

  You weren’t even supposed to exist, and then there were two of you, and I look around the hospital room, and see how the pale, dead light of the Stockholm spring X-rays its way across the speckled linoleum floor, trying to drive me away from here.

  I shall leave you now, forever, I shall give you up, and you will never have any memory of me, and who your father is doesn’t matter. Maybe I was raped, lying unconscious in some emergency hostel, or in the steel-blue light of one of the toilets in the central underground station, or perhaps someone decided to help themselves in one of the unknown underground chambers where I fell asleep in the wonderful afterglow.

  But one day you were inside me. And now you’re in the next room, about to meet your new mother and father, and I feel like screaming, but it has to happen, I want to be somewhere else, love has no place for me and you shall be my great, overpowering secret.

  You father could be anyone.

  So never ask that question.

  Now the door to my room is opening, I see you and you are the only beautiful thing on the planet, never forget that. Now you’re crying, is the light too harsh? And you lie in my arms, I get you to sleep, take the time you need, the midwife says, take what you need, and then she takes you again and I cling onto the bed and weep, but it’s best this way, best this way. And you’re gone, but you should know that Mummy loves you.

  The Karolinska University Hospital smells of death and bacteria that no antibiotics can touch, and I tip myself out of bed, pull on the clothes hanging in the cupboard, then shuffle off down the corridor towards the lift, making sure that none of the hospital peopl
e see me, because they’d try to stop me. But no one sees, because I know how to make myself invisible.

  I don’t feel any guilt, or shame.

  Do I? There’s no point thinking about it.

  I miss you so much. And I can’t resist, don’t want to.

  Soon I’m sitting in a taxi, it drops me at Sergels torg in the middle of the city, and, with a crumpled thousand-kronor note in my hand, I pay a visit to a black man I recognise, I know how to make my way down into one of the central underground station’s most distant tunnels, I borrow the necessary equipment from one of my peers: a flame and a needle later, and the world becomes what it always ought to be, an open embrace free of jagged emotions.

  An hour later I’m standing in Hötorget in the suffocating afternoon light. Surveillance cameras everywhere. Watching me.

  I see two girls, maybe seven years old, running across the black-and-white paving towards the windows of Kulturhuset, I see their reflections in the glass but I can’t make out their faces. I turn around. Clusters of people, some of them nodding in my direction, as if to say: ‘So, you’re back.’

  I nod.

  Turn around again.

  The girls are gone.

  Swallowed up by their own reflections.

  PART 1

  Avaricious Love

  1

  Linköping, Monday, 10 May

  It’s almost possible to see your reflection in the sky, it’s so explosively radiant and blue.

  It’s the same colour as the very core of a welding flame, the mother thinks as she walks across the cobbles of the main square, so closely packed together, fused by thousands and thousands of human footsteps, people wandering back and forth in pursuit of what they want out of life.

  The sun is low in the sky, its rays piercing the atmosphere like shining, sharp, steel spears before burning the faces of the people sitting under the huge awnings stretched out above the terrace cafés of Mörners Inn and the Central Hotel. A meagre warmth, with the chill of winter still encapsulated deep in its heart.

  The mother looks over at the building containing the estate agent, and can just make out the desperate adverts in the windows. She notes that there’s no queue at the cashpoint, and she looks up at the clock beneath the eaves, the steel hands look as if they’ve been fixed into position, but she knows they can move.

  Quarter past ten.

  Empty shop windows on all sides of the square. Boutiques and cafés that have had to close in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The signs announcing slashed prices and clearance sales remain, and seem to plead for people’s attention through the fine pollen dancing in the air.

  There are surprisingly few people about, she thinks, no market stalls today, no farmers in from the plain trying to sell organic vegetables grown under glass, no immigrants trying to sell fruit for cash, no second-hand stalls trying to charge ridiculous prices for knick-knacks that should have gone to the dump years ago.

  But the hotdog-seller at the corner is there. He’s huddled under his orange, yellow and red parasol, waiting for hungry passersby to stop for a morning snack and fill their stomachs with the low-price alternative he can offer.

  Ten kronor for a hotdog. And the flowerstall is there, selling tulips in shades of pink, yellow, red, and orange.

  The children, the twins, the girls, are six years old now, running ahead of her, over towards the SEB bank, towards the cashpoint where she usually takes out money before they do whatever chores need doing. Matching pink jackets, matching jeans, white trainers with four red stripes on each side.

  There are two of them, but they live, act, and talk as one, in all things they are one and the same. Often strangers can’t tell the difference between them, and are astonished at the liveliness, gaiety, and beauty that the girls radiate, as if their whole existence were a hymn of praise to the fact that the world exists and they themselves are allowed to be part of it.

  Their blonde hair is ruffled by the wind, their bodies move fluidly, yet simultaneously jerky and slightly awkward, a sign that there is still an endless amount to discover, both in their own bodies and in the whole of the universe, which at this moment, in this square, in this provincial city, belongs to them.

  The mother breathes in the spring air.

  She can smell the newly opened tulips, a desperate smell, as if the flowers are whispering to her: Why are our lives so short when yours, all of yours, are so long?

  You take the present for granted, the mother thinks as she looks at her girls. Her thoughts run on: I don’t take anything for granted, I know that everything can be lost.

  A man in a black hooded jacket, with the hood up, parks a bicycle next to the cashpoint machine. He doesn’t lock the bike, and carefully adjusts a rucksack on the parcel rack with his gloved hands.

  The man leaves the rucksack, but doesn’t stop to withdraw any money, and carries on across the square towards Bokhållaregatan.

  The mother doesn’t wonder who the man is. Why he has his hood up in the spring sunshine, why he leaves the bicycle and rucksack.

  The girls have reached the cashpoint now. They turn to face her and smile, and she feels like rushing over to them, picking them up, one in each arm, and kissing and hugging them, and making them understand all the love she feels, the love she hopes will make them feel safe and free in the world.

  Then they catch sight of the hotdog stand. And habit and hunger make them run past her over to the man under the parasol with his steaming cauldrons and photographs of hotdogs.

  They jump up and down in front of the man, and she hurries after them.

  Have I got enough change?

  There ought to be two ten-kronor coins in her bag. She hunts for her purse, and the man with the black beard has already given the girls a hotdog each by the time she arrives, and he nods to her in recognition.

  And drinks, they like the pear flavour, don’t they?

  Pear. Or apple.

  The man has a strong foreign accent. She hunts through the bottom of her black leather handbag and there they are, just as she thought, the coins, cold against her fingers. She hands them to the man behind the hotdog stand, who thanks her, bows his head slightly, and says he hopes to see them again soon.

  The girls trot off towards the bollards by the cycle racks outside the Central Hotel, the ones that look like sugarlumps, next to the canvas sail of the pavement café.

  The girls’ shadows lengthen and their mother hurries after them, calling to them to take care not to spill ketchup on their new jackets, then she remembers and walks back towards the hotdog stand, and the man is standing with his arm outstretched, holding some napkins out to her.

  She shakes her head at her own absent-mindedness, and then she is sitting in the cool sunlight on a sugarlump beside her girls, watching them eat, watching them pull their lips back and chew their way through the fatty sausages with practised movements.

  The sun strokes their cheeks, making the blood rise to the surface as if to warm itself.

  The people at the pavement café.

  Who are you? the mother wonders. Trying to keep her mind from things she can’t bear to think about or feel. A neatly dressed pensioner in a blue blazer, beige wool trousers and with water-combed hair. Did he used to be an engineer in Saab’s aeronautical division? A professor at the university? Or perhaps a consultant in neurosurgery, or the burns unit at the University Hospital? Or is he just an ordinary old man, a worker in the traditional mould, who enjoys adding a bit of sparkle to old age by dressing smartly? Elevating his own existence in order to cope with the death that is inexorably creeping closer.

  She chides herself for her thoughts.

  At a table on Mörners’ terrace four middle-aged immigrants are playing dice. There are matchsticks on the table, and she assumes they’re playing for money. Some high-school kids playing truant are sitting at another table, they must be skipping school, unless they’ve got a free period? There are people of all ages at the other tables, probably unemployed,
having lost their jobs in the thousands of lay-offs that have swept the region’s businesses. Resignation in their eyes, anxiety, will I ever get another job? Am I finished, will I be able to support my family, give my children a decent start in life?

  A young, heavily made-up woman in a white coat is smoking.

  I recognise her, the mother thinks, she works in the beauty parlour down on St Larsgatan.

  Three men in dark suits go past Mörners, possibly solicitors from one of the city’s four law firms. Or financial wannabees. There are still a few of those, even in Linköping. They adjust their ties, shining in the sun in the cheap way that poor-quality, machine-woven silk does. Maybe they’re photocopier or mobile phone salesmen, or work in one of the banks here in the square, or at the provincial insurance office.

  Some stereotypical university students are clustered around a table at the Central Hotel; science students, to judge by their awkward yet intelligent appearance. Jeans and knitted sweaters, and very clean trainers. Presumably they have their laptops in their little briefcases. Cups of regular coffee on the table, nothing fancy.

  What do I know about the people in this city? the mother thinks as she leans towards her girls and wipes their mouths, the hotdogs are all gone and now her beloved darlings are taking it in turns to slurp up the green, artificial-tasting juice that they’re so fond of.

  I don’t know anything, really, she goes on to think, except that we all live side by side, all of us so different, and we manage to get on simply because we’ve decided to tolerate each other. And we’re all bound together, no matter how much money we have in our bank accounts, or where we come from, or what we do, by the fact that we share the same basic dream of happiness.

  But sometimes we bite each other. Just not now. Not here. Nothing bad can happen on a wonderful spring day like this. At times like this, Linköping is the safest of all safe cocoons for human life.

  One of the local bus company’s red and orange buses stops beside the statue of Folke Filbyter, the progenitor of Sweden’s first royal dynasty. A few people get on before the bus heads off towards the castle. A beggar, a middle-aged woman with greasy hair, sits outside the shopping centre with her hand outstretched.