Midwinter Sacrifice (47 page)

The alarm clock on the bedside table rings.

A harsh, loud, digital noise.

The time is 7.35.

After an hour and a half, the time of dreams is over.

The
Correspondent
is lying on the hall floor.

They’re behind on developments for once, but probably only because of the inevitable delay caused by the printing process.

They’ve got everything on Rebecka Stenlundh, that she’s the sister of the murdered Bengt Andersson, but nothing about Karl Murvall, or that they carried out a raid on his flat last night.

The paper must have gone to press by then. But they’re bound to have it on the net. I can’t be bothered to look right now, and what could they have that I don’t already know?

Daniel Högfeldt has written several of the articles in the paper. As usual.

Was I too abrupt with him earlier? Maybe I ought to give him an honest chance to show who he is.

The water in the shower is warm against her skin, and Malin feels herself waking up. She gets dressed, stands by the draining-board to drink a cup of Nescafé made with water heated in the microwave.

Please, let us find Karl Murvall today, Malin thinks. Dead or alive.

Might he have killed himself?

Anything is possible now as far as he is concerned.

Might he commit another murder?

Did he rape Maria Murvall? Karin would soon have the results, some time today.

Malin sighs and looks out of the window at St Lars Church and the trees. The branches haven’t given in to the cold, they’re still sticking out defiantly in all directions. Just like the people at this latitude, Malin thinks, as she catches sight of the posters in the travel agent’s windows. This place really isn’t habitable, but we’ve managed to create a home for ourselves here nonetheless.

In the bedroom Malin pulls on her holster and pistol.

She opens the door to Tove’s room.

Most beautiful in all the world.

Lets her sleep.

Karim Akbar is holding tight on to his son’s hand, feeling the eight-year-old fingers through the glove.

They are walking along a gritted path towards the school. The blocks of flats in Lambohov, three and four storeys high, look like moon-bases, randomly scattered across a desolate plain.

Usually his wife walks their son to school, but today she said she had a headache, couldn’t possibly get up.

The case is cracked. They just have to catch him. Then, surely, this will all be over?

Malin has delivered. Zeke, Johan and Börje. Sven: their rock. What would I do without them? My role is to encourage them, keep them happy, and how feeble it is compared to what they do. Compared to the way they deal with people.

Malin. In many ways she’s the ideal detective. Instinctive, driven and, not least, a bit manic. Intelligent? Certainly. But in a good way. She finds short cuts, dares to take chances. But not rashly. Not often, at least.

‘What are you going to do at school today?’

‘I don’t know. Normal stuff.’

And they walk on together in silence, Karim and his son. When they reach the low, white-brick school building Karim holds the door open for him and his son disappears inside, swallowed up by the dimly lit corridor.

The
Correspondent
is in the postbox by the road.

Rakel Murvall opens her front door and steps on to the porch, notes that the cold is damp today, the sort that gives her aches. But she is accustomed to that sort of physical pain, thinking, When I die I shall fall down dead on the spot. I’m not going to hang around in some hospital, rambling and unable to keep control of my own shit.

She walks carefully through the snow, worried about her hip-joints.

The postbox seems a long way off, but it’s getting closer with every step.

The boys are still sleeping; soon they’ll be awake, but she wants to read the paper now, not wait for them to bring it in to her, or read the latest news on the screen in the living room.

She opens the lid, and there it is, on top of some half-covered dead earwigs.

Back inside she pours a cup of fresh coffee and sits down at the kitchen table to read.

She reads the articles about the murder of Bengt Andersson and the attack over and over again.

Rebecka?

I understand what has happened.

I’m not that stupid.

Secrets. Shadows from the past. My lies, now they’re seeping out of their leaking holes.

His father was a sailor.

As I always said to the boys.

Was everything a lie, Mother?

Questions that lead to other questions.

Was Cornerhouse-Kalle his father? Have you been lying to us all these years? What else don’t we know? Why did you and Dad get us to torment him? To hate him? Our own brother?

Maybe even more.

How did Dad fall down the stairs? Did you push him, did you lie about what happened that day as well?

Truths need to be stifled. No doubts must be sown. It isn’t too late. I can see a chance.

She, Rebecka, was found wandering the fields, naked, like Maria.

‘Well done, Malin.’

Karim Akbar applauds her as she walks into Police Headquarters.

Malin smiles. Thinks, Well done? What do you mean, well done? This isn’t over yet.

She sits down at her desk. Checks the
Correspondent
’s website.

They have a short piece about the raid at Karl Murvall’s flat, and the fact that a national alert has gone out. They don’t draw any conclusions, but mention the connections to the ongoing murder investigation, and the fact that his mother has complained about police harassment.

‘Great work, Malin.’

Karim stops beside her. Malin looks up.

‘Not quite according to the rulebook. But, between the two of us: it’s results that count, and if we’re ever going to get anywhere, we have to apply our own rules sometimes.’

‘We have to find him,’ Malin says.

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to harass Rakel Murvall.’

Karim stares at Malin, who looks back into the police chief’s eyes with all the seriousness she can muster.

‘Go,’ he says. ‘I’ll take responsibility for any repercussions. But take Zeke with you.’

Malin looks across the office. Sven Sjöman hasn’t come in yet. But Zeke is hovering restlessly over at his desk.

76

Silence in the car.

Zeke hasn’t said he wants music, and Malin likes hearing the monotonous sound of the engine.

The city outside the car windows is the same as it was two weeks ago, just as greedy as ever: Skäggetorp full of rigid life, the retail boxes at Tornby just as blunt, the snow-covered Lake Roxen just as compact, and the houses on the slopes of Vreta Kloster just as inviting with their radiant sense of wellbeing.

Nothing has changed, Malin thinks. Not even the weather. But then it occurs to her that Tove has probably changed. Tove and Markus. A new note has emerged from Tove, less contrary and inward, more outward and open, confident. It suits you, Tove, Malin thinks, you’re going to make a really great grown-up.

And maybe I should give Daniel Högfeldt the chance to prove that he’s more than just a shag-machine.

There are lights on in the houses of Blåsvädret. The brothers’ families are at home in their respective houses. Rakel Murvall’s white wooden home looms at the end of the road, isolated at the point where the road stops.

Clouds of snow are drifting to and fro around the house, and behind the pale veils of winter there are still secrets hidden, Malin thinks. You’d do anything to protect your secrets, wouldn’t you, Rakel?

Child benefit.

A child that you only kept for the money. A few meagre coins. But maybe not so meagre for you. Enough to live off, almost.

And why did you hate him so? What did Cornerhouse-Kalle do to you? Did he do something to you in the forest, just like someone did to Maria? To Rebecka? Did Cornerhouse-Kalle take you by force? Was that how you got pregnant? And so you hated the child when he arrived. And maybe you wanted to have him adopted? But then you had your brilliant idea and invented the story about the sailor and got child benefit. That must have been it. That he took you by force. And the child you had as a result had to pay.

Why else would you have hated your son so? The pattern runs through modern history. Malin has read about German women, raped towards the end of the war by Russian soldiers, who rejected their children. The same thing in Bosnia. And apparently also in Sweden.

Unless you loved Cornerhouse-Kalle and he treated you just like all the rest of his women? Like nothing? And that was enough to make you hate your son.

But I’m guessing the first explanation is the right one.

Unless you were tainted with evil, Rakel?

From the start.

Does such evil exist?

And money. The desire for money like a black sun over all life on this desolate, windy road.

The boy should have been allowed to have a different family, Rakel.

Then the anger and hate might have had an end; maybe your other boys could have been different. Maybe you too.

‘What an awful fucking place,’ Zeke says as they’re standing on the drive beside the house. ‘Can you see him standing here among the apple trees in the snow as a child? Freezing?’

Malin nods. ‘If there is a hell . . .’ she says.

Half a minute later they are knocking on the door of Rakel Murvall’s house.

They can see her in the kitchen, see her disappear into the living room.

‘She’s not going to open the door,’ Malin says.

Zeke knocks again.

‘Just a moment,’ they hear from inside the house.

The door opens and Rakel Murvall smiles at them.

‘Ah, the detectives. To what do I owe this honour?’

‘We have some questions, if you don’t mind—’

Rakel Murvall interrupts Zeke. ‘Come in, detectives. If you’re worried about my complaint, forget it. Forgive an old woman’s ill temper. Coffee?’

‘No thank you,’ Malin says.

Zeke shakes his head.

‘But do sit down.’ Rakel Murvall gestures towards the kitchen table.

They sit.

‘Where’s Karl?’ Malin says.

Rakel Murvall ignores her question.

‘He isn’t in his flat, or at Collins. And he’s been fired from his job,’ Zeke says.

‘Is he mixed up in any funny business, my son?’

Her son. She hasn’t used that word of Karl before, Malin thinks.

‘You’ve read the paper,’ Malin says, putting her hand on the copy of the
Correspondent
on the table. ‘You can put two and two together.’

The old woman smiles, but doesn’t answer. Then she says, ‘I’ve no idea where the lad might be.’

Malin looks out of the kitchen window. Sees a little boy standing naked in the snow and the cold, screaming with cheeks red with crying, sees him fall in the snow, waving his arms and legs, a frozen angel on the snow-draped ground.

Malin clenches her teeth.

Feels like telling Rakel Murvall that she deserves to burn in hell, that there are some things that can’t be forgiven.

In the official sense, her crimes fell under the statute of limitations long ago, but in the human, social, sense? In those terms, some things are never forgiven.

Rape.

Paedophilia.

Child abuse.

Withholding love from children.

The punishment for such things is a lifetime of shame.

And love of children. That is the first sort of love.

‘What really happened between you and Cornerhouse-Kalle, Rakel?’

Rakel turns to her, stares at Malin, and the pupils of the old woman’s eyes grow large and black, as if they were trying to convey a thousand years of female experience and torment. Then Rakel blinks, closing her eyes for a few seconds before saying, ‘That was so long ago. I can’t even remember. I’ve had so many worries over the years with the boys.’

An opening, Malin thinks, for the next question.

‘Haven’t you ever worried,’ she asks, ‘that your boys might find out that Cornerhouse-Kalle was Karl’s father?’

Rakel Murvall fills her own cup with coffee. ‘The boys have that knowledge.’

‘Have they? Have they really, Rakel? Being found out telling lies can ruin any relationship,’ Malin goes on. ‘And what power does the person who had to lie possess?’

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘You’re talking a lot of nonsense.’

‘Am I really, Rakel?’ Malin says. ‘Am I really?’

Rakel Murvall closes the front door behind them.

Sits down on the red-painted rib-backed chair in the hall, looks at the photograph on the wall, of herself surrounded by the boys in the garden when they were young, Blackie in the picture too, before the wheelchair.

Fucking little brat. You must have taken that picture.

If you disappear, disappear for good, she thinks, then maybe my secrets can remain my own.

If he disappears there will only be one or two rumours left, and I can lock those away in a dark wardrobe. He needs to go now, it’s as simple as that. Be got rid of. Anyway, I’m so tired of him existing.

She picks up the receiver.

Calls Adam.

The little lad answers, his boy’s voice high and innocent.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello, Tobias. This is Grandma. Is your daddy there?’

‘Hello, Grandma.’

Then the line goes quiet, before an older, gruffer voice says, ‘Mother?’

‘You need to come over, Adam. And bring your brothers with you. I’ve got something important to tell you.’

‘I’m coming, Mother. I’ll tell the others.’

I used to cycle up here.

The forest was mine.

You would go hunting near me sometimes. I could hear your shots all year long, and even then I wished that you would come to me.

Mother, why were you so angry?

What had I done? What have I done?

Images and warmth. I am an angel under an apple tree of biscuit crumbs. The fire is warm again. It’s nice here in my hole, but I’m lonely. But I’m not scared of loneliness. Because you can’t be scared of what you are, can you?

I can sleep a bit longer here in my darkness. Then you’ll come and get me, to let me in. And then I’ll become someone else, won’t I? When you let me in.