Summertime Death

by Mons Kallentoft

  I’ve been feeling my way.

  Fumbling in the darkness for the light.

  You’re sleeping again, my summer angel.

  You’re a long way down now, deep down in the darkness of dreams.

  You’re hanging in the bathroom, sister.

  I’m the one to find you, shake you, cry over you.

  I’m the one who’s going to put everything right.

  And then we can ride our bikes together, we can go skinny-dipping together in water that no one else knows about.

  Rabbits, splayed open, nailed to the walls, their claws pulled out, red trickles of blood dripping from the paws, some of the animals still alive, their little lungs rising and falling frenetically, whimpering, then others that have been hanging for a long time, the shreds of their rotting bodies slipping down towards the polished pine floor.

  A bed in one corner, discarded white surgical gloves, a bunk in the middle of the floor, and then rows of bottles of chemicals along the walls, pots of paint that must have been used to paint the flowers on the walls. Splashes of blood on the floor, bloody scalpels and a stench that is making Zeke giddy, he lowers his gun and goes over to the window, undoes the catch and opens it wide onto the leafy inner courtyard, and breathes, breathes, breathes.

  He turns back to the room.

  Bloody hell.

  Like a picture by what’s-his-name, Francis Bacon.

  But no Vera Folkman.

  No Tove.

  Janne fell fast asleep just after Zeke called them. Malin could see how he was trying to stay awake on the short drive from the Abisko roundabout to Sturegatan, but his body’s need of sleep got the better of him.

  He’s asleep down in the car now.

  His head leaning against the window.

  What are you dreaming about now, Janne?

  About when we were young?

  When Tove came to us?

  We’re a family. Why have we never been able to see it?

  Instead we’ve rushed off in different directions. Yet still not far from each other.

  They’re standing in the stairwell outside the flat, drinking coffee Per Sundsten picked up at the Statoil petrol station in Stångebro. Karin Johannison inside, searching for evidence, securing material.

  Sven Sjöman’s breathing is heavy, his face furrowed with tiredness, Per and Waldemar Ekenberg are quiet, watchful, sleepy too. Karim Akbar is in the background, scratching his cheek.

  It’s already three o’clock.

  Soon dawn will be stroking Linköping’s rooftops, whispering: a new day is here, wake up people, come out into the heat.

  Zeke tired, but still alert and keen. He is explaining for the third time: ‘I broke in. The smell was so awful that I suspected some sort of criminal activity had taken place in the flat.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Zeke,’ Sven repeats once more. ‘It’s fine. Those pool chemicals in there. We’re dealing with one and the same person.’

  ‘Now we just have to find Vera Folkman,’ Per says, and no one in the group of detectives wants to give voice to the obvious subtext: we have to find Vera Folkman, because then we’ll find Tove, Tove, our colleague Malin’s only daughter.

  ‘Any ideas?’

  Malin shakes her head, not a no, but to shake off her drowsiness and she looks at the others, sees in their eyes how they’re screaming for rest, that none of them can think clearly, that they might miss the most obvious things, that they can’t let it all become too late just because of tiredness.

  ‘Anyone who wants to can get some sleep,’ Sven says. ‘We’re not being terribly constructive here.’

  No one replies.

  They slowly drink their coffee. Feeling valuable time slip by.

  ‘Fuck!’ Malin says, and Sven puts his arm around her shoulder.

  ‘We’ll sort this, Malin. It’s going to be OK,’ and at that moment Karin appears from inside the flat, holding up one of the chemical containers in one hand, and pointing at a label with the other.

  ‘This can, and several of the others, were delivered by Torsson’s DIY down on Tanneforsvägen. Maybe you should have a word with them? They might know something?’

  I’m dreaming now.

  Processions of people dressed in colourful clothes, gifts in their hands, they’re on the way to the temple to honour the dead. The incense is thick and they’re singing, and their song is full of sun and light.

  I dream about you, Mum.

  That you’ll be there when I wake up.

  That you and Dad will be there.

  Now I’m running across an open field, then through a forest and I can sense that there’s something you haven’t told me, Mum, and it’s something you should say now.

  The room around me from when I was last awake is in the dream.

  It isn’t a nice room.

  Shutters, concrete walls, cages, walls painted with flowers and fear and I want to run through a forest now, a burning forest, and the vegetation is chasing me, wants to tear me to pieces, Mum, and I want to wake up, but something’s keeping me in the dream, a tickly smell is pushing me down into dreamlessness, Mum.

  The home number of the owner of the DIY store is listed by directory inquiries.

  Sometimes you get lucky, Malin thinks.

  Her colleagues are staring at her, the stairwell fading around them and everything is focused on Malin and her conversation.

  A sleepy, thick voice on the other end.

  ‘Yes, Palle Torsson?’

  ‘This is Malin Fors from Linköping Police.’

  ‘Say again?’

  Malin repeats her name.

  ‘Has the shop been broken into?’

  ‘No, we need some information about a customer. Linköping Water Technicians. You’ve delivered supplies to them on Sturegatan.’

  The sleepiness is gone from the voice now.

  ‘The pool girl,’ Palle Torsson says. ‘You don’t get many words out of her. But she always pays cash.’

  ‘Do you know anything about her? Have you ever delivered supplies anywhere apart from Sturegatan?’

  ‘Not that I know of. I can check the computer in the store tomorrow.’

  ‘Now,’ Malin says. ‘I’ll meet you at the shop and check. If you’re not there in ten minutes I’ll personally shove a paintbrush up your arse.’

  Janne wakes up as they pull up outside the store.

  The clock on the dashboard says 03.20 and daylight is starting to flicker, the hint of relief from the heat offered by night has gone and it must already be thirty degrees outside the car.

  ‘Where are we?’ Janne asks.

  ‘Wait here,’ Malin says.

  ‘I’m not waiting anywhere.’

  The DIY store is a single-storey purpose-built construction, with a loading bay beside the entrance. Malin imagines that most of its customers must be other businesses.

  No owner in sight, no Palle Torsson.

  ‘We’re doing this together,’ Janne says and Malin looks at him, then tells him what’s happened, what they found in Vera Folkman’s flat.

  ‘Here he comes,’ Janne says once Malin has finished, and she sees a black Toyota SUV stop in front of them and a small, thickset man in shorts and a light-blue T-shirt jumps out.

  Malin and Janne get out of the Volvo and walk up to the man who must be Palle Torsson.

  Zeke joins them from his own car.

  They’ve split up once more. Sundsten and Ekenberg are carrying on the search, driving around to see what they can find, Sven and Karim on their way back to the station ‘to do some thinking’.

  Malin holds out her hand to Palle Torsson. He takes it, but looks cross.

  ‘Can I ask what the hell this is about?’

  His round cheeks are bouncing with irritation.

  ‘You can,’ Zeke says. ‘We’re hunting the murderer you must have read about in the paper. And now the trail has led us here.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The computer,’ Malin says. ‘We need to look at it n
ow.’

  I put you on the bunk, you’ve been lying there for a long time now, my white van is outside, and we’re going to go to heaven on earth.

  Do you believe in the Father?

  Or is there only one father for each person?

  Faith.

  Is that with the Father?

  Can you suck the faith out of someone?

  You’re clean now. I’ve scrubbed you and you’re clean, so clean.

  The blue nothing.

  Are you heavier now? I’ll soon find out. I’m going to carry you again.

  The computer screen flickers before Malin’s eyes.

  She and Zeke and Janne are leaning over Palle Torsson’s shoulders. Accommodating now, as he clicks his way through a sales database.

  The little office is behind the counter and the walls are covered with bookcases full of files. The yellow linoleum is peeling away from the floor by the walls.

  ‘Let’s see,’ Palle Torsson says. ‘Vera Folkman, Linköping Water Technicians. Seventeen Sturegatan. As far as I can see, there’s no other delivery address.’

  ‘Any phone number?’ Zeke asks.

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘Try under Elisabeth Folkman,’ Malin says.

  Palle Torsson taps at the keyboard.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Just Elisabeth.’

  More tapping.

  ‘Bingo,’ Palle Torsson says quietly. ‘An Elisabeth Folkedotter has ordered supplies for Linköping Pool Maintenance. The address is out in Tornby, number 11 Fabriksvägen. There are loads of industrial units out there.’

  Linköping Pool Maintenance.

  No company registered under that name.

  Seconds.

  Minutes.

  Hours.

  How much time do we have?

  Is it already too late?

  Tove.

  I don’t want to become one of the living dead, Malin thinks, and runs for the car.

  66

  There you lie.

  We’re getting closer. I can hear you rocking to and fro, don’t be worried, it’s not far now.

  Theresa.

  I saw her by the pool in the garden, she was like you, sister, and I felt it might work.

  I followed her.

  Rang on the door, said I was there to check the water in the pool. Then it went the way it went, she struggled and I chased her and she screamed but no one heard her, and I hit her over the head with a metal case and she calmed down.

  Then I took her to the warehouse. Made some careful cuts with a scalpel, trimmed her wounds, so carefully and neatly, wanted to do a good job, and I washed her with bleach and she woke up, Theresa, and I didn’t have my mask on and she stared straight at me and she shouldn’t have seen me, because if she was going to be transformed then she would have to start from a state of facelessness, wouldn’t she?

  But I still pushed the blue nothing into her and I had my cold white spiders’ legs to help me, thin as they are, and I thought: I’m hugging you to me, and I wrapped my hands around her neck, but she didn’t become you.

  I wrapped her in plastic.

  Buried her by a fairly isolated patch of water. Maybe her clean, unblemished body could turn into you down there in the ground, sister?

  But that animal, the dog, found her before that happened.

  God, how I miss you.

  My beloved.

  I’m coming to you now.

  You’re coming to me now.

  You shall die.

  You shall be reborn.

  All available cars are on their way to Tornby.

  Janne beside Malin, this is a police operation but she can’t push him away again. None of her colleagues has probably given it a moment’s thought.

  Janne.

  All the things we haven’t done together, and now we’re sharing this.

  The Berg roundabout.

  The sun painting the roofs of Skäggetorp with newly woken rays, the white blocks of flats almost beautiful in their hot, abandoned stillness.

  They drive down the hill.

  One hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty kilometres an hour.

  Zeke behind them, but Malin can’t see any other cars.

  We’re first. Janne is breathing hard but says nothing, the adrenalin must be pumping through him just like it is in me, but he’s used to it, who knows how many times he’s been in the vicinity of death while he was serving abroad? Maybe even in the forest up by Hultsjön as well? At the fires?

  They turn into the Tornby industrial estate. Drive past the bloated retail boxes: Ikea, the Ikano Group, ASKO, Willy’s budget hypermarket, the Plantagen garden centre, and on into the estate, past the Vansito wholesale warehouse.

  They turn off and number 11 Fabriksvägen is a single-storey red-brick warehouse, maybe thirty metres long, with four separate entrances along a worn concrete loading bay.

  They stop, jump out of the car, run.

  Which door?

  They run from door to door, listening, looking for signs, but all the doors are unmarked.

  The heat and the sharp light no longer exist, only sweat and the exhaustion that is slowly forcing its way through the adrenalin.

  Sounds from inside one of the storerooms.

  A scratching sound, dripping.

  The sound of sirens approaching.

  A closed metal shutter, locked. The sun has pressed its way upwards and the loading bay is bathed in light. Malin kneels beside the lock, tries to twist it open, but her hands are shaking.

  ‘Hang on,’ Zeke shouts, rushing up to Malin with his pistol drawn. ‘Stand back,’ and Zeke aims the gun at the lock and fires.

  A bang, I can hear a bang, Tove thinks, and a dull rumbling sound. Where am I? And her head is throbbing and she can’t move her body, but it’s there.

  Am I paralysed?

  I can’t move.

  Mum, is that you coming? Dad? To rescue me from this nightmare?

  Something’s approaching again.

  A sliver of light, is that a door opening? Am I being rescued?

  Malin and Janne and Zeke have taken hold of the bottom of the shutter and are forcing it up, there’s no second door behind it and the sirens are close now, they shut off and Malin can hear police officers shouting to each other, calling out orders, Ekenberg and Sven Sjöman’s voices? Karim’s?

  And the shutter is up.

  Janne holds it up and Malin goes into the room with her weapon drawn, sees the empty bunk, the containers, Tove’s red top on the floor, sliced open, a book, her sunglasses and then the rabbit cages along the walls, the pots of paint, a box of white surgical gloves, boxes of chemicals everywhere, empty bleach bottles, scalpels, a dripping tap. The floor is stained with blood, the blood long since dried up, and thin strips of rotting, stinking flesh, the whole room smells of torture decay death.

  Fuck, Malin thinks. Fuck.

  You were here.

  And she sees Janne slump to his knees, holding up the tattered remains of Tove’s top, holding it up to her, saying: ‘I bought her this.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Malin screams, before she sinks to the floor and starts to cry, with exhaustion, and despair as well, and Janne crawls towards her, wraps his arms around her and they breathe together, preparing themselves for whatever will come.

  All around them uniformed officers, Sven and Karim talking to Zeke, who sees Waldemar’s car just arriving. Only Per Sundsten is missing, but perhaps he’s having a nap somewhere, gone home to Motala?

  Malin gets up.

  Janne behind her.

  The other warehouse doors are open, evidently nothing inside that need concern them.

  ‘We got here too late,’ Sven says. ‘What the fuck do we do now?’

  The bang.

  It must be a rifle shot from the forest, some poacher out early.

  But it could also be from you, my summer angel.

  And you’d woken up.

  We’ve left the fires behind us and I’ve sedated you again.
>
  Now you can sleep peacefully in the van until we get there, until we reach the final room.

  It’s not far now, I promise.

  And there’s no need for you to be frightened.

  You’re going to die, but only for a little while, and then you’ll be the most beautiful person ever.

  Malin, Malin!

  We’re shouting in chorus now, Sofia and me.

  Think!

  Think!

  Sitting there, dejected and despairing on the tarmac outside the warehouse in Tornby.

  Don’t listen to the others.

  There’s still time to rescue her.

  There’s still time to stop her becoming one of us.

  Just think, and make us less scared, rescue Tove and grant us peace.

  Let us rest soon, Malin.

  You know where Tove is going, where Vera Folkman is going.

  They’re on their way to the final room, they’re very nearly there, the white van is close now.

  67

  You need to be awake now.

  I’m going to tie you up and you will see what I’m doing, if you can see it happen then you’ll dare to come back, because there’ll be no more fear, will there?

  Beloved sister.

  I’m parking the car outside the monster now.

  He must be asleep.

  It smells of summer out here, a summer’s morning, and on this day a summertime dream can start, my little summer angel.

  I open the back doors.

  You’re groaning, don’t wake up too soon now. You might as well see my face, what difference does it make, soon you will cease to exist, and I don’t think faces matter any more.

  Tove squints.

  The light is back again. Am I alive? Do I still exist, Mum? I think I’m alive, because my whole body aches. And someone’s pulling me, but it doesn’t hurt, it just gets hot hot hot when my body comes out in the sun.

  Buildings all around.

  Grey, concrete buildings, yellowing plants, 1950s buildings that I don’t recognise as I look at them upside down.

  I have to run.