Midwinter Sacrifice (50 page)
Read Midwinter Sacrifice Online
Authors: Mons Kallentoft
Elias gets up first.
Then Jakob. And finally Adam.
‘You lied, Mother. The articles in the paper. He was our . . .’
‘You knew.’
‘He was still our brother.’
‘You lied . . . you made us kill our . . .’
One by one they leave the kitchen.
The front door closes.
Rakel Murvall pushes back her long white hair.
‘Come back,’ she whispers. ‘Come back.’
How did it happen?
Malin is sure, as she hunts through the racks of clothes in H&M in the Mobilia shopping centre just outside Mantorp.
They threw the grenades into the hole, and their mother had tricked them into doing it.
But the brothers’ stories match; it’s impossible to prove that Karl Murvall himself didn’t pull out the pins of grenades that he somehow acquired. The brothers will get a month in Skänninge in the summer for poaching and possession of illegal weapons, that’s all.
Tove holds up a red flowery spring dress. Questioning, smiling.
Malin shakes her head.
The case of the murder of Bengt Andersson is regarded as solved, along with the kidnap and assault of Rebecka Stenlundh. The perpetrator in both cases was the victims’ own half-brother, who blew himself into thousands upon thousands of pieces in a hole in the ground that was the closest he ever got to a home on this earth.
This is the official truth: ‘He couldn’t live with what he’d done.’
Jakob Murvall reported Malin for excessive use of force in connection with the event, but Zeke supported her version. ‘Nothing like that happened. He must have been wounded in the explosion,’ and that was the end of it.
One question remains: Who raped Maria Murvall?
Malin fingers a light blue pair of overalls.
Do all questions have to be answered?
Outside the cold has eased, even if the snow is still there. The white skin gets thinner every day, and beneath the ground the first snowdrops are preparing to break through the darkness. They are moving through the soil, soon ready to greet the sun.
Table of Contents
Part One: This last sort of love