Savage Spring

by KALLENTOFT MONS

It smells of death here, Malin thinks. I’ve never smelled it so strongly.

  And loneliness. The same loneliness that surrounds Maria Murvall. The sort that surrounds people who have rejected the world.

  ‘Mr Kurtzon is very ill,’ the nurse says. ‘But he wanted to see you. If you kneel beside the bed he’ll talk to you.’

  The nurse glides silently out of the room. Closes the door behind her.

  The man’s eyes are open. They’re staring up at the ceiling, as if it were full of spiders and snakes and prehistoric flesh-eating lizards, all watching the scene from above and waiting to attack the two intruders.

  They walk over to the bed and fall to their knees beside the head of the bed, so they’re on the same level as the man’s face.

  Who is he? Malin wonders.

  Where is he from?

  From the depths of Congo’s jungles? Treblinka? St Petersburg? Sundsvall? Is this what the übermensch I heard about earlier looks like?

  What world shaped him? Mine? The world we share?

  Josef Kurtzon moves his mouth, his voice is weak, and he doesn’t turn to look at them, but evidently knows that they’re there.

  ‘You can’t ask any questions,’ he whispers. ‘I don’t want any questions.’

  And Malin feels like saying that she’ll ask whatever fucking questions she feels like asking, but she suppresses the impulse, looks at the sickbed, the man in it, and she thinks of her brother, alone in another sickbed in another lonely room, and then Josef Kurtzon starts to talk.

  ‘I’ve disinherited my sons,’ he says. ‘They’re not getting anything from me. I’ve put everything in a foundation that leaves them with nothing as things stand. Josefina is to be given control of the foundation, not them. I know she doesn’t want it, that she might be dead, that she changed her name, as if that could make any difference, but when you have both lungs and your entire lymphatic system riddled with cancer like I have, you don’t care about such things.

  ‘Oh, the boys have money, I’ve given them enough money so they can manage, but they’re not as rich as they would have wanted, and I tried, I tried having them in the business, but what were they good for? Nothing. In spite of my efforts to mould them. They were defective. It was as if they weren’t mine. And what’s a father to do then? Tell me that! I even tried various things on them when they were small, to make them more suitable, efficient, but unfortunately my method of upbringing didn’t quite work.’

  And Malin wants to interrupt.

  Ask what Josef Kurtzon is talking about, why he’s telling them this, and what sort of method of upbringing?

  ‘No questions.’

  And the weak voice is full of an icy chill and an authority that makes all questions unthinkable. This man is the opposite of my own father, Malin thinks. Yet they’re somehow the same. Men who on some level take what they want.

  ‘They came to see me. I told them about the foundation. That I had basically disinherited them. And that in principle they would never gain control of most of the money. They begged and pleaded, it was pathetic, and after that I was quite convinced, they aren’t what we are. Out with you, I said, I don’t want you anywhere near me again. I know it will hurt them when they find out that Josefina will get control of the money once the cancer finally finishes me off. Josefina is her own person. She’s uncomplicated. We’re the same, she and I.’

  Thoughts are racing through Malin’s head.

  A multi-billion inheritance.

  A daughter who’s a heroin addict. A pair of sons whom the father seems to regard as defective.

  What does all this mean? And how does it fit together with the bomb in the main square in Linköping, and the Vigerö family?

  She opens her mind to the darkness of the room.

  The lizard seems to be snapping its jaws. Staring at Malin with its artificial eyes.

  So the real reason why you’re handing control of your estate to Josefina Marlöw is to spite your sons, Malin thinks. Even though you must be aware that she’s turned her back on you. Hates you, all of you. Because that’s what I saw in McDonald’s at Slussen: hatred and fear and loathing and hopelessness.

  ‘Where—’

  ‘No questions.’

  Malin couldn’t help herself. Wants to ask: Where are your sons? Where can we talk to them? Needs to make progress in this darkness, dissolve it, listen to its voices and save what good there is, or at least that’s what it feels like even if she can’t explain why. And the man before her slips into sleep, and she wants to shake him out of it, and says: ‘Did you know about the girls? Her girls?’

  And Josef Kurtzon turns towards her, and now she sees that his eyes are ruined by cataracts, that he must have been blind for years, and he waves his hand.

  ‘My sons each have an apartment in the next building, towards the Djurgården bridge. You can try looking for Henry and Leopold there.’

  Josef Kurtzon turns his face away from Malin and Zeke.

  Malin senses that all of this fits together: the Kurtzon family, the Vigerö family, the twin girls, the bomb, but she can’t work out how, she doesn’t know enough to tie the threads of the case together. She realises that Kurtzon is only telling them exactly what he wants to tell them, and that he’s telling them for one reason alone, and he’s playing with her, with them, in spite of his age and fragility. Malin realised that much from what she had read about the man on the Internet: he may well be one of the sharpest minds this country has ever produced, a sort of Ingvar Kamprad of self-interest and finance, with an equally murky past, and Malin can’t help it any longer, she hurls her questions at the man in the bed, and she can hear how shrill her voice sounds, but can’t control it: ‘Why did Josefina turn her back on you all?’

  ‘What did you do to your sons?’

  ‘Why are you telling us this?’

  ‘Did you know Josefina gave birth to twins and gave them up for adoption? Did you know they died in the bombing in Linköping?’

  She looks around the big, muggy room, and notices a whirring sound, and only then does she notice the large humidifiers lining the walls, and assumes they’re there to make breathing easier for Josef Kurtzon’s decaying lungs.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t know anything about any girls.’

  Then Josef Kurtzon loses his breath and gasps for air, and Malin is sure: he didn’t know about the girls.

  The nurse comes back.

  She pulls an oxygen mask out from under the bed. Puts it over Josef Kurtzon’s face, but he raises his hand and brushes the mask aside with remarkable force, before snarling: ‘Terror. Terror at what people can do to each other. Leave a child alone with its terror and its shortcomings. And then every individual will be shaped with terror as their servant. To become as ruthless as necessary. That’s what I wanted for my sons.

  ‘What about you, Malin Fors? Is terror your servant?’

  Then Malin hears a ringing sound.

  A sound similar to the one in the main square after the explosion, when they thought there was another bomb in a rucksack outside the Central Hotel.

  45

  ‘What was all that, then?’

  Zeke’s voice full of uncertainty as he stands next to Malin outside the door of the building on Strandvägen. They can hear the cars in the street as if for the first time, as if their ears had previously been blocked with cotton wool.

  It feels like I’ve just emerged from a dream, Malin thinks. The ringing in her ears is gone, it was just Josef Kurtzon’s heart monitor starting to bleep for no reason.

  ‘I don’t know what it was,’ Malin says.

  ‘It feels like that didn’t really just happen,’ Zeke says.

  The avenue of trees rustles from a gust of wind.

  ‘How the hell does this all fit together?’ Zeke goes on. ‘I got the feeling the old man was in complete control of what he was telling us, and why he was doing it. Like he was somehow playing with us, and knew we were going to turn up. It was as if he was expecting us.’

&nb
sp; ‘But how does this connect to the Vigerö family? The bombing? I’m quite sure he didn’t know about the twins,’ Malin says.

  ‘Maybe we should start with the brothers,’ Zeke says, gesturing along the road.

  ‘Let’s see if they’re home,’ Malin says.

  The brothers Henry and Leopold Kurtzon not only live in the same building, but on the same floor, but there’s no answer from either of the flats when they ring. No camera on the door either, and for a moment Malin thinks they ought to break into the building, then into the brothers’ flats, just to see what they can find, but the path that has led them here is vague, so vague, a thin trace of human scent, a tiny hint, and they haven’t got a shred of evidence linking the brothers to their investigation.

  ‘We can’t break in, Malin,’ Zeke says, as though he could read her thoughts.

  ‘No, you’re right. What time is it? It’s got weirdly dark, don’t you think?’

  ‘Quarter past eleven.’

  ‘But it was only a quarter to ten when we went in to see Kurtzon. We weren’t there that long. Were we?’

  Zeke looks out across Nybroviken.

  The water is black, and looks bottomless, and the sounds of the city are a gentle, sleepy rumble. The stars, thousands of them, seem to be burning in a sky where darkness is trying to take control.

  ‘Don’t think about it, Malin. Don’t think about it.’

  If she, Josefina, is our real mummy, then Leopold and Henry are our uncles. Aren’t they?

  Josef is our grandad.

  Have our uncles got anything to do with this? Have they got anything to do with the captive children? Is that how those children are connected to us?

  What do you think, Malin?

  We can feel our space getting darker and darker, getting warmer, damper, narrower, and more cramped, and it’s growing a roof of fear and screaming, which no person, alive or dead, should have to listen to.

  You’re walking down that smart street at night and you need to listen to the voices, Malin, you have to listen to them, you have to save them, just like you saved Tove.

  Who is this man who’s our grandad? Can a person be reduced to the acquisition, preservation, and expansion of assets? And where does the rest of the person go?

  And when the good gets lost, where is the evil then? That’s what you need to find out, Malin.

  That’s the mystery you need to solve.

  Who’s killing prostitutes in New York?

  Tove is sitting beside Janne watching a television programme upstairs in the house in Malmslätt, she’s got a pink and purple blanket over her legs, and her back is resting against a soft down pillow.

  This film is shit, she thinks.

  It’s old and boring, but Dad seems to like it. Earlier in the evening she told him about Lundsberg, and he was pleased, not at all worried and angry the way Mum had been at first.

  Dad just seemed proud of her.

  As if he knew how prestigious, and how expensive, it was to go there. There are people living in places like Strandvägen in Stockholm who go there, and even Dad knew that.

  She’d wanted to ask him about what Mum had told her, the woman she’d seen him with. Tove’s curious, Mum had said she was very young, and it seemed to send her a bit mad, and Tove presumes it’s made her feel old and abandoned and a failure.

  Those are the feelings she’s best at in the whole world.

  Does Dad know about Mum’s younger brother? Mum will have to tell him that herself, and she can’t have said anything, because when would she have found the time? Besides, she’s probably still mad with Dad because of the other woman.

  Even so. I think she’s going to be OK. That something good is going to come out of all this.

  ‘Dad,’ Tove says after a while, ‘Mum said she saw you with someone else in the city. One evening. Outside Teddy’s sandwich bar.’

  Janne turns away from the film and looks at Tove, and the look in his eyes is tired, as if he’d rather not have this conversation now.

  ‘She said that? Someone else? It sounds as if your mother’s having trouble understanding that it’s over between us.’

  ‘She didn’t put it quite like that, I can’t remember.’

  ‘Well, it’s true though. There is a girl I’ve been seeing,’ he says. ‘She works at the hospital, she’s a nurse in the X-ray department. You’ll like her.’

  ‘So you mean I’ll have to meet her?’

  ‘If you want, but it’ll probably be hard to avoid, because I really do like her.’

  ‘And you think I’ll like her?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  On television a bearded man puts a noose around a woman’s neck in a narrow alley. They watch the end of the scene before her dad asks: ‘You’re not upset that I’m seeing someone?’

  ‘No. Not if it’s what you want. I think it’s a good thing. Then I know that you won’t be alone.’

  Her dad puts his arm around her and pulls her towards him.

  ‘What have I done to deserve such a kind, considerate daughter?’

  ‘I did think I might be jealous if either of you met someone, but it actually feels good. For your sake. I wish Mum could meet someone as well.’

  ‘You know I’ll always put you first.’

  And Tove frowns, lets out a little laugh, then says: ‘Sure, Dad. Same as ever,’ and Janne knows he hasn’t got a good response to Tove’s quip.

  They’ve never truly put her first, and she knows it, and is having to live with it like an adult, and it’s all wrong, so wrong.

  ‘How old is she?’ Tove asks.

  ‘She’s twenty-four.’

  ‘But Dad, I’m almost twenty-four.’

  Janne sits there without saying anything, feeling Tove’s eyes on him.

  ‘You know enough about love to know that you don’t get to decide everything yourself,’ he finally says.

  The woman on the screen slips out of the noose onto the rain-drenched tarmac of the dark alley, and the man runs off towards the nearest subway station.

  ‘What is it that you like about her?’

  ‘Please, Tove, I’m trying to watch the film, I’m a grown-up, and grown-ups want someone to live with, to be with.’

  ‘I realise that, but why her in particular?’

  Her dad’s reply comes in a flash.

  Blows like a harsh wind through a wide-open teenage soul.

  ‘Because she’s the complete opposite of your mum.’

  Malin.

  Will you ever be able to forgive me.

  Ever?

  Åke Fors can’t sleep, and the bedroom of the flat in Barnhemsgatan feels cramped and hot, the bed hard and lonely, and he thinks that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, and then he thinks what he has thought so many times before: Do I have a responsibility for the boy? Did I ever, right from the start?

  No.

  No, no, he wasn’t mine, and I didn’t want anything to do with him, but of course Malin had a right to know. And Margaretha had a choice, didn’t she?

  The flat in Tenerife.

  Maybe it would be best just to leave, start something new, God knows, there are plenty of widows who would be only too happy to open their arms to him.

  But this is where life is now.

  Here and now, with Malin and Tove. This battle can’t be avoided.

  But there’s something wrong.

  And you know it, he thinks.

  But time still passes, year after year after year, without you ever gathering your strength and doing anything about the mistake.

  What does that say about us as people?

  I ended up feeling scared of myself. Of what I’d become, of my own weakness. Are you scared of the same thing, Malin, and is it inside that fear that we’re going to have to meet?

  I was there when you tried to make sense of the world when you were small. I lifted you out of your despair, your shame when you’d done something stupid, comforted you when you were sad.

  Together, Malin, we c
an put an end to each other’s fear.

  Like father and daughter should.

  What could possibly have happened within the Kurtzon family? Malin wonders.

  She and Zeke are in the car, on the way back to the Hotel Tegnérlunden.

  Zeke behind the wheel, as usual, even though she could perfectly well drive now that she’s always sober.

  ‘So he disinherited his sons,’ Zeke says. ‘And told them. And probably also told them that Josefina Marlöw would end up in control of some sort of trust.’

  Malin can feel how tired she is, she’s having trouble thinking clearly.

  ‘The brothers are the key to this,’ she says. ‘I can feel it. Why was Ottilia Stenlund so scared? I think she’s scared of the family, of the brothers. Their father seems harmless enough in his current state, he could have been like that for years, he might have been blind for a long time. But, on the other hand, who knows how far his power stretches?’

  ‘We don’t even know who the brothers are,’ Zeke says. ‘Johan didn’t mention them when he told us about Kurtzon, did he? And we’ve even less idea of where they might be.’

  ‘And we don’t even know if the Vigerö girls’ background has anything to do with the bombing, or Hanna Vigerö’s murder. Josef Kurtzon really didn’t seem to know about them.’

  ‘There has to be a connection,’ Zeke says. ‘We just need to work out what it is.’

  As they drive past the NK department store, Malin thinks about how many of Stockholm’s very richest inhabitants lend legitimacy to their ruthless capitalism by getting involved in the running of the City Mission and other charities.

  But Kurtzon doesn’t appear to give a damn about legitimacy, and for that reason money had always loved him.

  She goes on to think about evil.

  How she is sometimes inclined to think that it doesn’t exist, because she can’t feel its presence. Like when winter makes its last offensive against the spring, and one day the temperature plummets below zero and there’s more snow and your whole body screams: ‘Spring is an illusion. It doesn’t exist!’

  But at the same time Malin is sure: evil does exist, it’s alive and flourishing wherever there are people, often where you’d least expect it, behind a thicket of goodness in a human soul.