‘Now you’ll do what’s expected of you, boys. For your sister. Won’t you, Elias? Boys?’
‘But what if the police are wrong?’
‘The cops are often wrong, Elias. But not this time, not this time. Stop arguing. What’s wrong with you, are you on his side or something?’
Rakel Murvall waves the paper in the air.
‘Are you on his side? Who else could it be? The whole thing fits. You have to give your sister some peace. Maybe she could come back if only she knew that the person who hurt her is gone.’
‘They’ll catch us, Mother, they’re going to catch us,’ Elias says. ‘And there are limits to what can be done.’
‘No there aren’t, boy,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘There’s more sense in the henhouse than in that police station. And you know where he is. You’ll see, if you just do as I say. Listen…’
The oak on the plain where Bengt Andersson was found hanging would have looked like any other isolated tree, were it not for the broken branches.
But the oak will always be associated with what happened in that coldest of Februaries. In the spring the farmer will cut down the tree, doesn’t want to see any more flowers on the ground, any more curious visitors, any more meditating women. He will dig out all the roots he can find, not stopping until he knows for sure that no trace of the oak is left in the ground. But deep beneath the surface there will be a piece of root, and that root will grow and a new tree will spring up on the plain, a tree that will whisper the names of Ball-Bengt and Cornerhouse-Kalle and Rakel Murvall across the wide expanses of Ostergotland.
Malin and Zeke are sitting in their car, staring at the tree.
The engine is running.
‘He’s not here,’ Zeke says.
‘He was here once,’ Malin replies.
The Range Rover’s interior smells of oil and engine grease, and its frame rattles as the vehicle passes through Ljungsbro at high speed, past the Vivo supermarket, the cafe and the Cloetta chocolate factory at the bottom of the hill, beside the bridge across the river.
Elias Murvall is sitting on his own in the back seat, twisting his hands, hears his voice say the words, even though he doesn’t want to: ‘What if she’s wrong? If he didn’t do it? Then we’ll always regret this. What fucking right have we got to-’
Adam Murvall turns round in the passenger seat up front.
‘He did it, the bastard. Raped Maria. It fits. We’re going to do this. What is it you always say, Elias? You must never show you’re weak? That’s what you say, eh? You must never show you’re weak. So don’t now. Watch yourself.’
And the vehicle lurches, sliding towards the ditch just before the Olstorp curve.
‘You’re right,’ Elias yells. ‘I’m not weak.’
‘Fuck it,’ Jakob Murvall shouts. ‘We’re doing this, no more talk. Understood?’
Elias leans back, soaking up the assurance in Jakob’s voice, in spite of his anger.
Elias breathes deeply, feeling the determination of the vehicle’s motion, as if it had been on its way to this very destination long before it was even made.
Elias turns round.
Looks down into the baggage compartment.
It holds a stained wooden box, and in the box three grenades from a break-in at a weapons store, freshly unearthed from their hiding-place under an outhouse floor; a hiding-place the police missed during their raid the other week.
‘Bloody lucky the cops didn’t find the grenades,’ Jakob said when Mother explained her plan to them back in the house.
‘You’re right there, Jakob,’ Mother said. ‘Bloody lucky.’
Malin and Zeke are wandering the plain, searching for another isolated tree.
But the trees they find show no signs of struggle. They are just lonely, windswept, frost-damaged trees.
Zeke is at the wheel as they head towards Klockrike, along a scarcely ploughed road by the edge of an apparently endless field, when Malin’s mobile rings.
Karin Johannison’s number on the display.
‘Malin here.’
‘Negative, Fors,’ Karin says. ‘Karl Murvall didn’t rape Maria Murvall.’
‘No similarities at all?’
‘He didn’t do it, that much is certain.’
‘Thanks, Karin.’
‘Was it that important, Malin? Did you really think it was him?’
‘I don’t know what I thought. But I do now. Thanks again.’ Malin ends the call.
‘He didn’t rape Maria Murvall,’ she says to Zeke, who receives the information without taking his eyes from the road.
‘So that case still isn’t solved,’ Zeke says, his voice gruff, a statement that sets Malin thinking.
The brothers walking towards Rakel’s house just after she and Zeke had left.
Brothers who don’t know that Karl didn’t rape Maria.
Who listen to their mother. Obey her.
A mother with secrets to keep.
And only one way of keeping them.
Zeke stops the car at yet another tree.
Roots, Malin thinks. Blood that has to be eradicated. Actions that must be avenged. That’s what we do.
And so he must be eradicated. Rakel doesn’t know we got hold of Karl’s DNA, that everything is going to come out.
Or else she knows deep down, but is suppressing the knowledge, grasping at one last imaginary straw.
‘I know why she let us in earlier,’ Malin yells, just as Zeke is opening the driver’s door. ‘Get us to the cabin, as fast as you can.’
77
The houses of Vreta Kloster line the road.
A sense of wellbeing shelters behind the facades, close but still far away.
After this journey she doesn’t want to come this way again for a thousand years.
They drive across the bridge down by Kungsbro and swing up towards Olstorp, past the Montessori school in Bjorko where the blue- and pink-painted buildings, with their anthroposophically angular architecture, look just as browbeaten by the cold as every other building.
Hope they raise good people in there.
Janne had once talked of Tove going to a Montessori school but Malin refused, had heard that children who go to school in protected environments like that could rarely deal with the competition outside the security of the school walls.
Cutting out dolls.
Making their own books.
Learning that the world is full of love.
How much love is there up in the forest? How much dammed-up hate?
The car slides along the slippery road surface as Zeke hits the accelerator.
‘Just drive, Zeke. It’s urgent. I promise you, he’s out there somewhere.’
Zeke doesn’t ask, just concentrates on the car and the road, as they pass the turning to Olstorp and head on towards Lake Hultsjon.
They drive past the golf course, the flags still flying, and Malin imagines the flags as the brothers’ bodies blowing in the wind, the breeze their mother’s breath with the power to send them whichever way she
