Savage Spring (21 page)

A minute later Sven’s voice comes back on the line.

‘The man’s been identified.’

Sven says a name.

‘He’s registered in Linköping,’ he goes on. ‘See you at the station as soon as you can get there. I’ll call Zeke in as well.’

22

No journalists outside the police station.

Just an empty car park where the cones of light from the street lamps are trying to shut out an unwelcome darkness.

The time is twenty-five to ten.

Almost pitchblack now.

Malin had rushed in to see Tove, sat down on the edge of her bed and spoken to the back of her head as she sat at her desk.

‘Something’s happened. I’ve got to go into work.’

Without turning around or looking up from her maths books Tove had replied: ‘Go ahead. I’ve got plenty to do here. You know I can look after myself.’

‘Sure?’

‘Go.’

Malin had almost felt that Tove wanted to get rid of her, but realised that that was a way of rationalising what she felt about leaving her daughter alone yet again, and yet again putting work first. And Malin had felt ashamed as she left the flat, but now she’s here anyway with Zeke and Sven Sjöman in the lobby of the police station, listening as Sven says: ‘It was his mum who called. From Gränna. She’s sure it was her son she saw in those pictures.’

‘Why did she call us?’ Zeke asks, and he looks tired, as if he’d already gone to bed when Sven called him in.

‘She didn’t seem to have thought about it, or else she just didn’t manage to write down the Security Police number.’

‘And who is he?’

Malin hears how impatient she sounds, how the words are launched clumsily into the air.

‘If this is right, his name’s Jonathan Ludvigsson. According to his mum, they haven’t had any contact for the past five, six years, because she thought his opinions were getting too extreme, about everything from food to the economy and the environment. But particularly about the social effects of the economy. His dad was evidently laid off from a factory that ran into problems when a firm of venture capitalists loaded it with too much debt.’

‘A vegan,’ Zeke says, unable to conceal his distaste, ‘frustrated about the economy.’

Sven nods.

‘So where is he now? Did she know?’

‘She thinks he lives up in Umeå.’

The wrinkles around Sven’s eyes seem to deepen, and he lets out a deep breath, making his big stomach even bigger, and Malin knows there’s something he’s not saying.

This Ludvigsson was supposed to be registered in Linköping, after all.

‘Out with it,’ she says.

‘We’ve done a quick check,’ Sven says. ‘And you know what, he lived in Umeå until six months ago, then he moved down here to Linköping.’

‘And?’

‘What else?’ Zeke says.

‘He’s registered at the flat of a certain Sofia Karlsson. And of course we all know who she is.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Malin says.

‘No shit,’ Zeke exclaims.

‘Let’s get over there before the Security Police march in.’

‘If they aren’t already there,’ Sven says.

‘Are we going in mob-handed?’ Zeke asks.

‘We’ll take back-up,’ Sven says. ‘But we’ll go in nice and calmly, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. If we go in too heavy, anything could happen,’ Zeke says.

‘Boom,’ Malin says quietly to herself.

The stairwell in Ryd stinks of piss.

Worse this time than before.

And there’s a smell of spilled wine.

Malin feels the urge, tries to suppress it, but it chimes within her like a never-ending note.

Sven Sjöman, Zeke, and Malin are wearing bulletproof vests. Malin’s holster is tight under her white jacket, she’s left her jacket undone and is ready to draw her pistol in a second if she has to.

Two police vans are parked just out of sight of the flat, ten uniformed officers in protective gear positioned around the building and nearby, in this late spring evening that doesn’t seem able to decide whether to be warm or cold.

Malin is breathing heavily, and she can hear Zeke’s light footsteps behind her on the stairs, then Sven’s strained panting, and she prays that his heart can cope with this, that he doesn’t collapse onto the cold concrete.

No Security Police.

Maybe no one called them.

Maybe they’re all snoring peacefully in their comfortable rooms in the Central Hotel.

Bastards.

Is he, Jonathan Ludvigsson, in there, behind the door that looms in front of Malin for the second time in two days? She managed to maintain her façade last time, Sofia Karlsson, but Malin can more or less remember what she said: ‘The banks need to burn. And then there’ll be casualties.’

Are these youngsters – because that’s how she wants to see them – really cold-hearted terrorists, a sort of new Swedish Baader–Meinhof gang? And if they are, how could Jonathan Ludvigsson be so careless that he didn’t think about the security camera up in the City Terminal? But maybe he didn’t think his email could be traced?

The Economic Liberation Front.

Is the flat booby-trapped? Should they be more careful? Call for reinforcements? There were lights in the flat, the flicker of a television, and maybe, if Jonathan Ludvigsson saw himself on the news, they’re in there panicking.

They breathe out, catch their breath. The door has no security peephole, and Sven and Zeke draw their pistols and stand behind Malin. She rings the bell, and the sound it makes becomes a slowly burning fuse, and she hears steps approach the door, slow, tired, alone.

The door opens.

The rings in her nose.

The dreadlocks.

Tiredness in her eyes, fog, and Malin can smell hash, strong and unmistakeable.

‘You?’ Sofia Karlsson says. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I think you know.’

‘What?’

She looks genuinely surprised, Malin thinks, then she pushes Sofia Karlsson aside and steps into the hash-haze of the flat.

She doesn’t even seem bothered that we’re here, even though she must have smoked a whole damn cake of hash in here.

Sven and Zeke glide past Sofia Karlsson, pistols drawn, she doesn’t even seem to notice them, then she hears them call: ‘Clear.’

‘Clear.’

‘The whole flat’s clear.’

‘Take it easy, hey? Just take it easy,’ Sofia Karlsson says.

Sofia Karlsson is sitting on her bed, on the rasta-coloured throw, trying to keep her eyes open, evidently making an effort to absorb what they’re telling her about Jonathan Ludvigsson, her lodger. She clearly hasn’t seen the item on the news.

They tell her everything, and she frowns exaggeratedly, but she’s so high that she’s hardly in a fit state to lie, Malin thinks.

‘Is Jonathan supposed to have something to do with the bomb? Mind you, I can just about believe that, but I don’t know anything about it, no word of a lie. But good for Jonathan. Cool.’

Cool?

Are you mad?

Two six-year-old girls died.

Malin clenches her fists, sees Zeke do the same, but Sven raises his hand in warning to calm them down, then gestures towards himself as if to say: ‘I’ll deal with this.’

‘We don’t think you had anything to do with this,’ Sven says. ‘But you’ll have to come down to the station with us and sleep off the drugs, and we’ll have to take your computer.’

‘He hasn’t touched my computer.’

‘Does he still live here?’

‘What?’

‘Does he live here?’

‘He’s just registered here. His post gets delivered here.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘You mean was I fucking him?’

Sofia Karlsson looks up at the ceiling and puts her hand over her crotch.

‘I’d never do anything like that with him. I only like black men.’

Push her now, Sven, keep going, Malin thinks.

‘So he’s never actually lived here?’

‘No. I’m pretty sure he lives in a caravan out on the plain, somewhere outside Vadstena. I’ve never been there, but he lives there with a few other people.’

‘Outside Vadstena?’

‘No, Klockrike, I mean. Near the old Pentecostal church. I’ve been there.’

‘So you have been there?’

Sofia Karlsson puts her hands over her mouth, then makes a gesture to indicate smoking a joint.

‘I see,’ Sven says. ‘Do you know if they have any weapons out there?’

The bluntness of his question makes Sofia Karlsson jerk, open her eyes wide, and for a second her eyes clear and Malin thinks she’s about to protest, switch back to her activist persona, but then the hash-haze descends again and she becomes amenable, telling them what they need to know.

‘Of course they’ve got weapons. Pistols. A few hand grenades. And that fucking AK4 that Jonathan bought.’

‘As many as that?’ Sven says, without sounding particularly surprised or upset.

Sofia Karlsson nods, then her eyelids sink and she says: ‘You’re going to have to go now, I need to sleep.’

Then Malin goes over and gives Sofia Karlsson two hard slaps on the cheek.

‘Like fuck you do. You’re going to show us the way to Klockrike.’

23

‘Down there. Behind that big house. The one that looks like it’s got black eyes.’

Sofia Karlsson points from where she is sitting between Malin and Zeke in the back of the police car.

She’s less high now, the veils have lifted from her brain, and now just the tiredness and thirst are left, and she hasn’t had the energy to cause them any trouble, and has led them in the right direction. And Malin feels like asking why, why betray your friends, but something must have happened between them, Jonathan Ludvigsson can’t be an easy man to deal with.

‘Have they got explosives?’

Sven’s final question in the flat, and Sofia Karlsson replied that she didn’t know, then she had asked Malin for another joint, without seeming the least bit concerned about being slapped.

The big, dark building – presumably the church meeting house – lies there dimly lit up in the moonlight on a sidestreet in Klockrike, a small village cast out in the middle of the Östgöta plain, painfully exposed to wind and cold and summer heat.

Beyond the back of beyond. Maybe three hundred inhabitants, who probably like their simple life in the countryside. But the church looks abandoned, now that idiotic television programmes, online games, and surfing for porn have taken over people’s souls.

Inside the houses, most of them in darkness, people probably still play Bingolotto whenever they get the chance.

The meeting house that the caravans are supposed to lie behind sits in splendid isolation on a small hill on the edge of a forest, and seems to keep watch over the little community, saying to the inhabitants: We’re watching you.

‘How many of them might there be?’ Malin had asked when they were halfway to Ljungsbro on the motorway.

‘Maybe just him. Four at most,’ Sofia Karlsson had replied.

Karim Akbar, who had come with them, grunted from the passenger seat beside Sven, then said: ‘We’ll let the uniforms take care of this.’

Malin had wanted to protest, then she thought about Tove at home in bed. She stayed quiet. Instead Zeke spoke up.

‘Malin and I are going in. That’s obvious. We’ve got vests on.’

‘Out of the question,’ Karim said, in a voice that didn’t allow for any discussion, and the subject had been dropped in the darkness of the car as its headlights eagerly swallowed up metre after metre of the road that was going to lead them to the people who might be responsible for one of the worst crimes in the city’s history.

Sven isn’t using the radio. Doesn’t want to risk being overheard. He uses his mobile, with the speaker on, as he gives orders to the officers from the police van that followed them there. An officer by the name of Sundblom, who has a Finnish–Swedish accent and is new to Linköping, is in charge of the group of ten uniformed officers in full gear, reporting over his headset as they approach the meeting house.

‘No sign of any caravans yet.’

Malin can just make out the police officers up by the building. They’re maybe five metres apart as they move at a crouch around the end of the building, dividing into pairs, then they get swallowed up by the darkness.

‘We have visual on the caravans. There are lights on.’

‘Execute,’ Sven says, and there is a muffled crash, probably a door flying open, Malin thinks, then shouting but no shots, then more shouting, voices yelling: ‘Calm down, get on the floor, lie still, we’ve got you now you bastards,’ and now Malin can see a dark figure rushing past the end of the building, and just has time to think, That can’t be a police officer, before she sees the figure disappear down towards the street and off across a dark field that seems to roll like a calm sea under the light of the moon.

‘Shit,’ she says, then she’s out of the car.

She runs down the street, out into the field, rushing after the figure, which is moving like a shadow up ahead of her.

Whoever it is, they’re trying to escape capture.

Her heart is pounding in her chest.

Don’t draw your pistol. Get closer, then pounce, let all those hours in the gym in the basement of the station over this past sober year do their work, the countless kilometres on the treadmill, all the physical pain she has imposed upon herself to help her forget the urge to drink, to conquer the body’s greedy explosions. Her heart is pounding but her body can cope, she can feel it, and the figure ahead of her has slowed down, maybe running out of energy, is it Jonathan Ludvigsson?

Impossible to tell in the darkness.

And the passport photograph they got hold of was ten years old.

Can he hear me?

He’s walking now.

Another hundred steps or so and I’ve got him.

And she runs towards her prey, runs towards the moon, and two wingless girls with white faces and white hair drift in the light, encouraging her onwards.

Run, Malin, run.

Whatever that is ahead of you in the field in the darkness, it’s something you need to chase, isn’t it?

Bring it down.

Is it an animal?

It’s exciting, Malin, watching you chase him, but it isn’t the nastiest thing that might happen tonight.