Summertime Death mf-2

by Mons Kallentoft

  Neither of them mention this as they drive across the desiccated, tormented plain and the dust flies up across the road in thick veils.

  Instead Zeke put on his beloved German choral music, deep chanting from some choir that has put new words to a Wagner opera.

  High volume.

  Dystopian, Malin thinks. Perfect for a bad horror film.

  The noise is only turned down when she calls Sundsten and asks him to follow up on Behzad Karami.

  ‘We’ll sort it. We’ve finished the door-to-door around the Railway Park and Frimis. No one saw anything. But most people are asleep at that time of day.’

  Then she calls Sven Sjöman and tells him about the new connection.

  ‘Good. At last.’

  Then they are approaching the fire, veils of smoke drifting over the car, the once blue sky now grey and angry, and they can feel the heat gradually rising inside the car, a heat that makes them want to turn back and flee before their skin starts to scorch, boil, char, as their brains picture catastrophic scenarios for their bodies. The smell is getting stronger and stronger, a charred world, the stench of flesh burned alive and the plaints of trees being consumed by greedy flames.

  They turn off onto the gravel road they’re now driving down, as that is where the bright red fire engine they are following turns off. Above them a helicopter is circling with a water scoop, and then it heads in over the fire, disappearing from view. People with soot-stained faces, their eyes hidden behind goggles, walking along the road.

  ‘What sort of car has she got?’ Zeke says, his hands firm on the wheel, the car heading slowly towards the core of the fire, burned-out trees around them, dust and ash swirling through the air.

  ‘A Fiat van, according to the registration office, white.’

  ‘Haven’t seen one like that yet.’

  An ambulance parked in a small sidetrack, two firemen standing beside it, inhaling what must be oxygen from large yellow canisters.

  And this is the inferno you can’t wait to get back to, Janne.

  People with blankets in their hands. Beating them on the ground where the smoke is rising. Further ahead they can make out flames through the trees.

  ‘There’ve never been fires like this in Östergötland before,’ Zeke says. ‘They’re battling to stop it coming back to life again. Did you know, a fire blazing at its worst can jump more than fifty metres from treetop to treetop? Almost like an explosion, and that’s when it gets really dangerous. That’s when firemen get trapped, circled by the fire.’

  So far no one has been killed, no firemen, and no volunteers.

  Just let it stay that way, with only the creatures of the forest losing their lives.

  They meet a fire engine, one of the smaller ones, and Malin recognises two of Janne’s colleagues in the front seat but can’t remember their names. They recognise her and nod.

  ‘Tough guys,’ Zeke says.

  ‘I guess so,’ Malin says.

  The line of parked cars breaks up, fewer volunteers here, firemen from five districts running to and fro in the forest, moving in and out of the burned vegetation. And then they see it, the white Fiat.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Zeke says.

  ‘The number matches,’ Malin says.

  And they park close to the Fiat, open the doors of the Volvo and the roar and the heat from the inferno, almost invisible ahead of them in the forest, hits them, the air full of a prickling smell of sulphur and burned meat, the noise of the fire a dark whistling, as if God himself were trying to sound the alarm.

  The heat almost unbearable.

  Summer plus fire equals sauna.

  ‘Not even a Finn could put up with this,’ Zeke says, as if he could read Malin’s mind.

  ‘Fuck, no. It must be at least forty-five degrees up here.’

  Cries and shouting from the fire, two low banks of smoke separating, and a woman, the same height as Malin, with soot-blackened clothes and a filthy smeared face emerges between two charred maples.

  ‘Slavenca Visnic, I presume,’ Zeke says.

  ‘At your disposal, I guess,’ the woman says.

  36

  Slavenca Visnic, Sarajevo and district, January 1994

  They rarely come at night, the explosions, but occasionally they do, ripping the children from sleep, and I have to hold Miro’s little three-year-old body close to mine, Kranska in her dad’s arms, her frightened eyes staring at me, as if I could save her if the will of God directed the Serbs’ grenades at our flat, our house.

  Distant explosions, getting closer.

  Making the floorboards creak.

  My son’s warm skin against mine under the blanket, I can feel it though his pyjamas, just like I can hear his heart racing, and the rhythm reminds me of my own inadequacy, because he knows that not even his mum can cure real fear. All four of us are sitting in bed together, sleep is impossible, but we’re breathing together, our breath mingling and becoming one, and even though the war raging out there is merciless, elevated to the status of a religion, we still believe that nothing can touch us, that we’re safe in our cocoon, spun of love and dreams, our home.

  One day at the market.

  The rifles on Snipers Alley missed me on the way home.

  But an incendiary grenade had struck the roof of the building, burrowing down two floors and exploding in the flat below ours, and the flames must have consumed you quickly from beneath and the whole building was a blazing torch when I returned. People held me, their hot hands hard against my body and I wanted to go in, in to you, because I knew you were burning in there, and I wanted to burn with you.

  Not even the slightest trace of you was left.

  Nothing.

  The phosphorous fire of an incendiary grenade really is that mercilessly hot. I slept on the charred remains of our love and our dreams, I slept there one night, trying to remember your smells, your sounds, faces and voices, the way your skin felt, but all I could feel was the stinging smell of fire and ash, all I could hear was the sound of rifle fire and howitzers as they continued their mournful song.

  I woke the next morning with cold rain beating against my bare neck. I walked right into the forest, not caring if I got shot or caught up in the front line, and the clouds hung over the hills and they captured me after a few kilometres.

  Their touch, the men’s touch, didn’t exist, no matter what they did to me, and what they planted inside me was a monster, nothing more.

  I lay on a floor and everything that wasn’t light was dark, the world yellow-black, yet still completely colourless.

  I wanted them to kill me.

  But how could they do that? I was already dead. And in my dreams your faces, your voices would come.

  Go, Mum, go. Your path isn’t finished yet. And I loved and hated you because I was alive, because you came from your new place just to tell me that.

  I wanted to be with you, weave a new cocoon of impenetrable, everlasting love. I wanted to weave warm threads of love around your three hearts, to bring them back, to make them beat for ever.

  37

  ‘Who’d live in a fucking dump like this?’

  As Waldemar Ekenberg says this he yanks open the door of a block of flats in Ekholmen.

  In the car on the way there: ‘So how are we going to play this?’

  Per Sundsten can hear the influence of English on his Swedish, hates the way his language is tainted by American cop shows.

  Waldemar’s voice smoother now, focused.

  ‘There’s no point pussyfooting around with Pakis like them. They’ve got a low pain threshold, so we just apply pressure.’

  ‘Apply pressure?’

  ‘Yeah, you know.’

  Per knew. His older colleague’s racist vocabulary, his generalisations about the people they were on their way to see, all of this upset him, but he said nothing, this wasn’t the time to worry about that sort of thing, the crimes so serious that everything else could wait, and sometimes they were obliged to step onto the wron
g side of the law to uphold it, it’s been like that in every culture, in all ages, ever since Hammurabi inscribed his eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

  I’m not naïve, Per thinks, just not as cynical as the man he had realised that Waldemar was during the course of the day.

  In itself, there was nothing wrong with cynicism.

  But the prejudices. You could get by fine without them. Everybody has a dirty streak, as Per likes to put it, no one’s entirely blameless, no matter what their background or skin colour.

  The block of flats in Ekholmen where Behzad Karami’s parents live.

  Graffiti on the walls, badly sprayed tags on peeling paint.

  And this was where Behzad Karami is supposed to have been at a party on the night that Josefin Davidsson was attacked. His parents live on the first floor, no lift.

  Sundsten and Ekenberg ring the doorbell.

  A pause.

  A chain on the door.

  A woman’s face through the gap.

  Waldemar is panting beside Per, out of breath from the stairs, says ‘POLICE!’ as he holds up his ID.

  ‘Let us in,’ he says, and his voice leaves no room for doubt, and the door closes and then opens again.

  ‘I bet you’re growing potatoes in the living room,’ Waldemar says, and laughs. ‘Either that or cannabis, eh?’

  In the living room there’s a large, black leather sofa along one wall, heavy curtains, deep-red velvet, hanging by the windows, garish paintings of ?Tehran on the patterned brown wallpaper.

  ‘Looks like a brothel,’ Waldemar says to the dark-skinned man sitting on the sofa. Per thinks that the man looks ready to be bullied, must know why they’re there, but also that he’s been lying, trying to deceive them. Per can see the lies in the tension in his face, the look in his eyes, not anxious, just restless, the way a liar’s eyes look. He has a pleasant face, his features serene in spite of his large nose and what look like acne scars on his cheeks. He isn’t a large man, and the home gives the impression of being well-kept, cherished, and Per imagines that Ekenberg has noticed the same thing, and that that’s where he’s going to focus his violence.

  ‘Sit down, why don’t you?’ Waldemar says to Karami’s wife in a thick Östergötland accent, and she sinks down, and her thin body, swathed in shiny dark cloth, seems to disappear into the sofa.

  ‘Well, then,’ and without further ado Waldemar picks up a vase from the top of the television and throws it at the wall, sending shards of porcelain across the room, over the faces and clothes of the Karamis.

  The woman cries something unintelligible in Arabic or Persian or whatever it is.

  The man: ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  And Waldemar picks up a family photograph, drops it on the floor and crushes it with the heel of his heavy shoes.

  ‘Shut up!’ he shouts. ‘You don’t get away unpunished if you lie to the police.’

  ‘Am I supposed to have lied to you?’

  Per is standing silently in the doorway, wants to intervene, tell Waldemar that that’s enough, to pull himself together, this isn’t how we do things, but he can see from Karami that he’s close to breaking, that he’s fond of his possessions.

  ‘Your son,’ Waldemar yells. ‘He wasn’t here the night Josefin Davidsson was raped, as you claimed! I bet there wasn’t even a family party going on at all. So where was he? What was he doing? NOW!’

  A samovar flies into the radiator under the window onto the balcony, a clanking sound as the thin metal breaks.

  ‘Do you think I’d betray my son? He was here. We had a party.’

  And Waldemar overturns the coffee table with a force that shocks Per, then he’s in front of Arash Karami, striking him across the nose and causing little trickles of blood to pour from both nostrils.

  ‘Do you really imagine I haven’t had to deal with worse than this? Well? This is nothing.’

  Karami’s words are scornful when he’s collected himself again. He spits at Waldemar, his eyes full of deep loathing.

  And Waldemar strikes again, then again, and Per is about to jump in and stop him when the wife starts yelling on the sofa, in heavily accented Swedish.

  ‘He wasn’t here. We had a party, but he never came. We don’t know what he does, but he never comes here any more. Find him, and tell him to come home more often.’

  Waldemar calms down, stopping just before dealing a fourth blow.

  ‘So you don’t know what he gets up to?’

  The Karamis sit in silence, Arash Karami’s left hand pressing the bridge of his nose, trying to stem the flow of blood.

  Neither of them answers Waldemar’s question.

  ‘Do you know what? I believe you. You haven’t the faintest idea what your Paki son does, because he does some completely fucked up stuff. Doesn’t he? Christ, you can’t even raise your own kids properly.’

  Waldemar heads towards the door, Per takes a step back, says in a calm voice: ‘You realise there’s no point reporting this. There are two of us who can confirm that Arash put up a struggle when we tried to take him to the station for questioning.’

  The wife is sitting in tears on the sofa, and Arash Karami doesn’t even deign to look at them.

  ‘Fucking towel-heads,’ Waldemar says. ‘Lying to the police.’

  Outside the building, in the relentless heat from a sun that seems to have gone mad, Waldemar says to Per: ‘That went well, you playing good cop, me bad cop. And we didn’t even plan it in advance.’

  Really bloody well, Per thinks, suddenly feeling sick.

  But.

  They got what they wanted.

  Per feels his face getting hot, the same feeling as when his mother found out he’d been stealing from her purse when he was little.

  Brutality.

  In the course of his few short years as a police officer he’s seen it all too often.

  38

  How does anyone survive what Slavenca Visnic has been through without losing their mind?

  Abuse running like a poisonous thread through history. Does violence stem from abuse? Is time really a sort of volcanic ground that regularly erupts into violence? Huge explosions, with smaller intermittent sighs.

  Maybe, Malin thinks, as she watches Slavenca Visnic’s Fiat van disappear among the cars along the gravel road through the ash-covered forest.

  Slavenca Visnic hadn’t been surprised to see her and Zeke appear in the forest, and had been completely open with them, as if she had nothing to hide, as if the fact that one of the victims had been found near her kiosk in Stavsätter and another victim had worked for her was in no way compromising.

  Once Slavenca Visnic had said hello to them she washed herself with water from a greyish white container that she had brought with her, scrubbing the soot from her face with strongly scented detergent as Malin and Zeke waited. Slavenca Visnic was demonstrating with her actions that she worked to her own agenda, and neither Malin nor Zeke protested. Malin coughed as the smoke irritated her eyes and nose. Once the dirt was gone from Slavenca Visnic’s face you could see that she must once have been beautiful, but that was long ago now, as experience and work had aged her prematurely.

  ‘I realised that you’d want to talk to me,’ Slavenca Visnic said once she’d finished washing and had put on a clean T-shirt. Firefighters and volunteers were running past them, dragging hoses and steaming blankets. Helicopters were still circling overhead, and the relentless sound of the rotors made them raise their voices.

  ‘You know,’ Slavenca Visnic said, ‘it’s like the fire comes from under the ground, like the flames and embers are bubbling up from the centre of the earth.’

  Malin noted that she spoke almost without any trace of an accent, thinking: You must have fought really hard for that.

  Slavenca Visnic took a drink of water from the tap of her water tank.

  ‘Thirsty?’

  ‘No,’ Zeke said, before going on: ‘You know why we’re here?’

  ‘I see the papers and the internet, I
listen to the news. I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Theresa Eckeved was found buried at the beach where you’ve got one of your kiosks. Josefin Davidsson, who was found raped in the Horticultural Society Park, worked for you at the start of July.’

  ‘I can understand why the connection would interest you,’ Slavenca Visnic said, wiping some beads of sweat from her forehead. ‘But there’s nothing behind the connection. Nothing at all.’

  ‘Have you got alibis for the night between Thursday and Friday last week, and the night between Saturday and Sunday?’

  Malin wanted to see if a direct question would rouse any reaction.

  Slavenca Visnic laughed.

  ‘No, I’m always alone in the evenings, but I got home late from the fires, so someone can prove where I was then, but not during the night. You can’t think I had anything to do with this?’

  Fresh laughter.

  Almost mocking, as if Zeke and Malin knew pathetically little of the evil that Slavenca Visnic had encountered in excess.

  ‘What about last night?’

  ‘I was at home, sleeping. I’ve shut the kiosks for the time being. I want to help fight the fires. And it’s impossible to get staff. No teenager wants to spend the summer standing in a kiosk selling ice cream. They’re spoiled, the whole lot of them. Just look at Josefin Davidsson, she gave up after just three days, and that left me without anyone for Glyttinge.’

  ‘Did it annoy you when she gave up?’

  Zeke’s voice practically neutral.

  ‘Stupid question. Everyone can do as they like. Can’t they?’

  ‘Within the bounds of the law,’ Zeke replied.

  ‘I heard about the latest murder on the radio,’ Slavenca Visnic said. ‘And I can tell you straight that you won’t find any connection with that girl.’

  ‘You like fire? Is that why you want to help out here?’

  Malin’s turn to be provocative.

  ‘I hate fire. I want to eradicate it.’

  Flattery, Malin. That makes them talk.

  Another of Sven’s mantras.

  ‘I know what you’ve been through,’ Malin said. ‘And I admire the fact that you’re standing here now. That you’ve built up your own business.’