What next?
Then an indescribable anger wells up. A sense of having been betrayed. Robbed of something important. Something that has made her feel like half a person all her life.
Then the desire for revenge.
‘So, Stefan Malmå lives in our care home. He’s thirty-one years old, and he’s severely handicapped, both physically and mentally. He’s spent his whole life with us, since he was just a few weeks old. I’m here to represent his interests when his mother’s will is read.’
The solicitor clears his throat, stretches his neck and looks less hungover now, but his attempt to look authoritative fails, and he just ends up looking rather foolish.
Britta Ekholm falls silent as Johan Strandkvist goes on: ‘While I was working on the will, a second child appeared in the records. It turns out, Malin, that your mother had a son for whom she surrendered responsibility shortly after birth, and who is now entitled to a share of the inheritance. This will not be applicable until after your father’s death, but in purely legal terms this needs to be taken into account, and the rights of a child of a different union protected. I should point out that this came as a surprise to me, and that I was the person who found the information.’
Dad.
You must have known.
Malin shuts her eyes, is taking short, shallow breaths, then she says: ‘So this Stefan Malmå is my brother?’
‘He’s your brother,’ Britta Ekholm says.
A face, a faceless face, a mask turning into a person’s face.
‘Your half-brother,’ Britta Ekholm clarifies.
‘So I’ve got a little brother?’
Dad. Malin can’t see the look in his eyes, is it apologetic? Is he sad? Ashamed? He’s slumped deeper into the armchair, his shoulders look weighed down by some invisible force.
‘In all these years your mother didn’t want any form of contact with us. I called her several times, but she got angry and upset each time, and told us to leave her family alone.’
Mum?
Dad? What about you?
It’s as if you’re not really here in the room. That both the solicitor and the woman from the care home have decided to despise you.
A brother? A half-brother? So, Dad, you’re not his father? And me, why was I never told of his existence? Surely that ought to have been my fucking choice, and she gets up, looks at her dad, then turns to the woman and yells: ‘Why the hell didn’t you contact me? If he’s been there in the home all my life, surely you could have contacted me? I might have wanted to meet my brother.’
She knows her anger ought to be directed at her dad instead, but she can’t bring herself to force him up against the wall and demand an explanation.
‘We were under the impression that the whole family wanted to be left alone. Your mother stressed that point, time and time again. Our duty was to look after Stefan as well as we could.’
Official records, Malin thinks, sitting down on her chair again. If only I’d ever looked up our family in the records, just once, I’d have found out about this long ago.
Clarity.
And unreality, and she sees a skinny little boy lying alone under a yellow health-service blanket on a hospital bed pushed into the corner of a dark, featureless sickroom, marked out by the fact that none of his own flesh and blood care about him at all.
A room without love.
She gets up and shouts: ‘So you, you’re not his father?’
The woman said half-brother.
Her dad is staring down at the floor.
And the solicitor says, in a voice that sounds as if he is summarising a boardroom decision: ‘Your father isn’t the boy’s father. His father was a travelling salesman dealing in office supplies, she met him while she was working at Saab.’
Dad nods slowly, as if to confirm the story.
‘She spent one night with this man at the Central Hotel. He, Stefan Malmå’s father, died just a few months later in a car accident. When your mother realised she was pregnant it was too late for an abortion. She refused to acknowledge her condition for a long time. Then she left you and your father to conceal her pregnancy from everyone.
‘She gave birth to the child in Hälsingland and was planning to have it adopted. As I understand it, she didn’t want to cause a scandal or disturb her marriage with an illegitimate child. But when the child turned out to be severely handicapped, that was no longer even an option. Social Services stepped in and arranged a place in the care home, with Britta Ekholm here as his legal guardian.’
‘And the years passed,’ Britta Ekholm says.
She holds back what she was about to go on to say, breathing calmly and looking at Malin, as if to calm her as well.
Malin’s thoughts are spinning. Was it you, Dad, who refused to accept the child? Or was it her? It must have been Mum, so worried about protecting her precious fucking reputation at all costs.
‘I can tell you that Stefan is a very special young man. You should meet him. He’d probably love to meet you,’ and there isn’t an ounce of criticism in the woman’s voice, no reproach, just hope for something new, perhaps an end to loneliness, and Malin feels her eyes filling up, then she takes two steps towards her dad and starts slapping him hard about the head and face, over and over again, but she doesn’t shout, she just goes on hitting him, and he makes no attempt to defend himself and just accepts her blows. Then Malin feels arms around her, the solicitor and the woman from the care home, and she realises that this is all true and she has no idea what to do next, how to get out of this situation, and she thinks that she has to visit him, now, now, now.
I have to see my brother, I have to hold him, let him know I exist before it’s too late, because who knows what this wretched world might come up with, what it wants with us?
She spins towards the door.
Wriggles out of their snake-like grip.
Wants to strike out again.
But her body has no more blows in it, not at the moment.
‘Bastard,’ she says to her dad.
His head bowed.
‘You fucking bastard. You knew all along, didn’t you? You hid the truth from me, you’re nothing but a fucking coward and I hate you. Did you refuse to accept him? Maybe it was you who forced Mum to give him up? Who are you? Don’t you ever come near us again!’ she yells. ‘If you so much as phone me or Tove or anyone else who has any damn thing to do with us, I’ll kill you. Got that?’
‘Malin, I—’
‘Shut up!’
‘Malin—’
‘Shut up!’
And she opens the door, wants the woman to tell her to stay, that there’s so much she doesn’t know yet, needs to know.
‘You bastard!’ she shouts at her dad. ‘You didn’t even say a word about this to the solicitor? Did you? Did you think it was just going to disappear?’
She wants to go to Hälsingland now.
To the care home. Can’t the woman ask her to go with her? To the darkest of forests, to a room waiting for some light.
But no one asks her anything. The three people in the solicitor’s office sit in silence, have nothing more to add, and Malin can see that the woman is embarrassed, can see her looking with derision at Malin’s dad, who is sitting there without saying anything, as if shame has sewn his lips together.
She slams the door shut.
A short, pointless bang.
Breathes.
Wondering: What the fuck happens now?
31
Malin, Malin.
You’re rushing across Trädgårdstorget. You need something to cling onto, don’t you?
Where are you going, Malin? Where do you want to go? Do you think you can escape?
Concentrate on us instead, Malin, us, the blown-up girls who are like you in so many more ways than you can imagine. So are the other children, locked up as they are in a room without love, with no chance of escape.
Malin stops in the middle of the square.
Leans forward.
<
br /> Puts her hands on her thighs and fights an urge to throw up, as she feels her heartbeat thundering beneath her ribs.
She inhales her own anger and feels the chill in the spring air, then she stretches.
The terrace cafés on the square are half full of people drinking coffee and beer in the spring sunshine, maybe the fear of another bomb is starting to subside. But I wouldn’t be so sure, she thinks.
That bloody solicitor.
And the woman. What was her name again? Have to talk more with her. She tries to ignore the image of her dad with his head bowed.
Tove.
Mum’s got a little brother.
You’ve got an uncle.
Shall we go and see him? Shall we go together, into the heart of the forest, and meet him?
We won’t be seeing Grandad again. He doesn’t exist.
No.
I say no.
I do not accept this, and she feels that she has to put everything, absolutely everything, to one side and focus on not going mad, but how the hell is she supposed to do that?
They’ll be expecting me back at the station soon, but how can I bear to go back there? Hamlet’s open, the bar is probably empty at this time of day, I could sit there and drink myself far away from everything, I could drink for a long, long time, and never come back to this.
I need something.
Daniel Högfeldt.
Maybe he’s at home now? His flat’s only a three-minute walk from here, and I could go there, I’m going there now, I need something, and she starts to walk across the square, and there are people, industrious Linköping citizens, all around her, black shapes with glittering stars for eyes, and it seems to her that the beams from their eyes are hitting her, making her unsteady somehow, in a way she has never been unsteady before.
The boy. Or the man, the one who’s my little brother. In his bed. Handicapped. Abandoned, can he talk? He has no face, can he even learn my name, can he even understand that I exist? Does he know that I exist?
Malin stumbles across Drottninggatan and tries to find her bearings in the afternoon light.
The clock above McDonald’s says a quarter past three.
She heads towards Linnégatan.
Daniel lives at number 2, and she still remembers the code for the door, taps it in and the door unlocks.
He lives on the third floor of four, and she is out of breath by the time she rings the bell after running up the three flights of stairs. She can tell from the smell of disinfectant that someone’s just mopped the entire stairwell, as if to make it nice and clean for her arrival.
She can hear something behind the door.
Voices.
Daniel’s voice.
She feels all her desire, all her hunger for clarity gathering in her crotch and in a longing to rest in his arms, and she rings again, wants him to open the door so she can drag him into his bedroom, and that’s the security chain, she can hear it being undone, then he opens up.
Naked. He has a blue shirt in his hand that he’s holding in front of his crotch.
‘Malin,’ he says. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was just passing,’ she says. ‘It’s been a while.’
Then she hears a voice, a female voice, and it sounds familiar, she recognises the voice, hears it regularly, and the person sounds recently fucked, happy and irritable and self-assured all at the same time.
‘Daniel, who the hell is it? Shut the door and get back here.’
And she knows whose voice it is.
The radio presenter. Her friend.
Helen Aneman. Are they fucking? How the hell could she? I’ll kill her.
Easy now, calm down.
Daniel smiles at Malin.
And she gathers all the saliva in her mouth and spits it at him, and it hits him right in the eye and he looks surprised and innocent, as if he really is? As if the cunt he’s got in there is innocent?
‘What the hell are you doing, Malin? Have you gone totally fucking mad?’
And she spits again and he yells: ‘You never gave a damn about me, and I can’t even remember how fucking long it’s been since you last showed up to use me as your flesh-and-blood dildo, so you can fuck right off!’
Helen appears behind Daniel.
Her blonde hair is tousled. She looks at Malin as if it’s the first time she’s ever seen another person.
‘Just fuck off, Malin,’ Daniel says, and Helen takes his arm, but doesn’t try to calm him down.
And the words hit Malin like powerful gusts of wind, driving her down the stairs, away from there and out into the street again.
The sun has disappeared behind the trees of the Horticultural Society Park, and she rushes over there and finds a bench under a Japanese cherry tree in full bloom, thinking that the stupid little pink flowers are mocking her, then she calls directory enquiries.
‘Can I have the number of a Peter Hamse in Linköping, please.’
‘I’ve got a mobile number here, would you like me to connect you or send you a text?’
‘Both,’ and Malin holds the mobile in front of her, watching the call to him get connected, the embodiment of her physical desires, and her life raft.
Then she feels terrified.
Terrified of everyone.
She never wants to have to talk to another person again, and she clicks to cancel the call. She puts the mobile in her jacket pocket and heads off towards her car, parked at the old bus station.
Just as she is opening the gate to leave the park, her mobile rings.
Must be him. He saw I called, and she wants to take the call, presses answer without checking the caller’s identity.
‘Malin.’
‘This is Britta Ekholm. We met a little while ago.’
No.
No energy. But I have a thousand questions.
‘I was thinking that you might want to know a bit more about your brother? I can quite understand you getting upset.’
She goes through the black metal gate, heading towards the heavy traffic on Drottninggatan, can just make out her car in the furthest row in the car park.
‘Do I want to know?’ she asks.
‘He’s seriously handicapped,’ Britta Ekholm says. ‘He’s almost completely blind, and he has learning difficulties. But it’s possible to have a conversation with him, he has his own language, and he’s very loving.’
Her rational brain clicks in, in the same instinctive way that she just lashed out at her father.
‘Can he walk?’
‘No, his motor functions were severely damaged at birth. But you’ll like him, I’m sure of that.’
Britta Ekholm goes on to tell her about Sjöplogen, the village where the care home is, and in her mind’s eye Malin can see a large white castle, with lunatics sticking their heads out of the windows and shouting happy hellos to everyone walking past. Not scary lunatics, just happy crazy people.
‘I want to apologise,’ Britta Ekholm says. ‘For never getting in touch with you. I was relying on what your mother said, that none of you wanted any form of contact with Stefan.’
‘You probably did the right thing. Your duty was to his welfare, and why would you insist on him seeing people who said they didn’t want anything to do with him?’
‘Yes, but I saw you in the paper once,’ Britta Ekholm says. ‘I thought about calling you then, because I got the impression that you were the sort of person who could deal with this sort of responsibility.’
‘What sort of responsibility?’
‘The responsibility to love,’ Britta Ekholm says.
Malin puts the key in the ignition and pulls out of the car park. She drives out of the city and soon the car is crossing the fertile fields of the Östgöta plain, and on the cloudy horizon dark trees are swaying towards a half hidden sun. She lets her hands relax on the wheel, and she is on her way towards Hälsingland and the village of Sjöplogen.
So much loneliness.
So little time.
&nbs
p; So many miles to cover, and then a light spring rain starts to fall on the windscreen, and she looks off to the side, sees the plain open up to the raindrops, accept the moisture like an invaluable gift, a possibility.
The drops of rain like diamonds.
She shuts her eyes for a moment, not looking at the cars coming towards her, and hopes nothing happens, and there’s a voice there, she recognises it but doesn’t want to listen to it, feels like telling it that she has to deal with her own concerns now, that she doesn’t have time to rescue anyone else, so try to understand that, leave me alone, let me do what I have to do, now, now, now.
She opens her eyes.
Carries on.
Malin, listen to us now.
This isn’t just about us, in a way there’s no hope for us now.
You’re the one who can give us back our parents. We’re too little for this loneliness, too little to be abandoned by Mummy and Daddy. Just like the boy and girl are too little, but it isn’t too late for them yet.
So listen now, Malin.
Stop the car.
Turn around.
You have to get to the captive children. We’re jealous of them, more than anything we want what they’ve got, and we can never have that.
But no one should be as scared as they are. No one in the world.
The lizards in the long white buildings want to gnaw the flesh from their bones.
You can’t leave now, Malin.
Not where you’re heading. Your brother needs you. But the captive children need you more. He’s alone, but they’re alone and scared. And at least he isn’t scared, Malin.
32
Something was whispering in the car, she thought she heard someone say: Don’t go, don’t go now. That must wait. First the girls’ killer has to be found.
She turned back after a hundred kilometres, and now, as she pulls up outside the police station, it’s early evening, and some thin, high veils of cloud have drifted in from the north, bringing with them a new type of cold in the air.
The warmth of spring is unreliable. Treacherous. Like the whole season, this event in the city’s history.
She breathes.
Prepares herself.
Forces aside all thoughts of what happened today. Instead she needs to focus all of her attention on this damn investigation, on the work she is employed to do, she will use work as a fucking huge glass of tequila, downing it time after time, and not let anything else touch her.
Savage Spring Page 22
