Midwinter Sacrifice aka Midwinter Blood

Just like an animal.

Tell me what you know, Maria. Use those words.

A black beast of prey in the forest. The same man as on a snow-clad, windswept plain?

Maybe?

No.

Unless?

Instead this: ‘Why do you think someone would want to hang Bengt Andersson in a tree in the middle of the Ostgota plain in the coldest winter in living memory?

‘Why, Maria? Didn’t he have enough to put up with as it was?

‘And who shot through his window?’

Maria shuts her eyes, opens them again. She breathes, resigned, as if breathing or not breathing had long ago lost their meaning. As if all that makes no difference at all.

Are you trying to comfort me?

What can you see that no one else sees, Maria? What can you hear?

‘Nice posters,’ Malin says before leaving the room.

In the corridor Malin stops the care assistant who is passing with a pile of orange handtowels in her arms.

‘Those posters on her walls, they don’t seem to belong here. Did her brothers put them up?’

‘Yes. I suppose they think they’ll remind her of home.’

‘Are her brothers here often?’

‘Just one of them. The youngest one, Adam. He comes every now and then, seems to feel guilty somehow that she’s here.’

‘Dr Niima said that more than one brother comes.’

‘No, just one. I’m sure.’

‘Did they get on particularly well?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe, seeing as he’s the one who visits. There was another one here once, but he couldn’t handle going into her room. He said it was too claustrophobic, that he couldn’t do it. He said it was just like a wardrobe, those were his exact words. Then he left.’

28

‘Are you there, Bengt?’

‘I’m here, Maria. Can you see me?’

‘No, I can’t see you, but I can hear you drifting.’

‘And there was me thinking that my drifting was silent.’

‘It is. But you know, I hear things others can’t hear.’

‘Were you scared?’

‘Were you?’

‘I think so, but after a while you realise that fear is pointless, and then it fades away. That’s what it’s like, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘It isn’t too late for you, Maria. Not in the same way it is for me.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It all fits together.’

‘It smells of loneliness here. Is that you or me?’

‘You mean the smell of apples? It’s neither of us. That’s someone else.’

‘Who?’

‘Them, him, her, all of us.’

‘The one who shot at your window?’

‘I remember getting home and seeing the holes, late, so late. I knew they were bullet- holes.’

‘But who shot them?’

‘I think they all shot at me.’

‘Are there more of them?’

‘If we all stick together then there are always more of us, aren’t there, Maria?’

Zeke is standing three metres behind Karin Johannison in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room of Bengt Andersson’s flat. His jacket is done up; the heat has been turned down to the minimum by the landlord, just enough to stop the water freezing and the pipes bursting. That’s happened in several places around the city this winter, peaking over Christmas when the smart folk disappeared to Thailand and wherever else they went, and their boilers slowed down, and bang! Water damage as a result.

I suppose my insurance premium will go up now, Zeke thinks.

Karin is kneeling on the floor, leaning over the sofa, picking at a hole in the stuffing with a pair of tweezers.

Zeke can’t help it, but when she leans forward like that, seen from the back, she looks quite acceptable, not to say desirable. Well proportioned. No question.

They drove out in silence. With his whole body he left her in no doubt that he would prefer not to have any small talk. And Karin concentrated on the road, but still seemed to want to talk, as if she had been waiting for a chance to be alone with him.

The hole that Karin is digging in is in a direct line from the window. But the hole could have been made by anything.

Then Karin twists and pulls her hand, saying, ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ and then triumphantly pulls out the tweezers.

She turns round, holding the tweezers towards him, and says, ‘If I look a bit longer, I promise I’m going to find a couple more of these little beauties.’

Malin is standing in the kitchen of her flat. She tries to shake off the image of Maria Murvall on her bed in that gloomy room.

‘You and Zeke carry on looking into the Murvall angle. But if the ?sir line suddenly needs more work, we’ll shift our focus on to that.’

Karim Akbar’s voice earlier at the run-through, sounding like the whole chain leading to Maria Murvall had been his idea. Nice to be able to concentrate on one thing, though.

Sven Sjoman: ‘We’ll have to pull out the Murvall brothers’ police records. And you and Borje, Johan, you carry on with the ?sir angle. Don’t leave any rune-stone unturned. And we’ll have to talk to Bengt Andersson’s neighbours again, check if they saw or heard anything unusual, now that we know the window was fired at.’

Rubber bullets.

Karin and Zeke had found three green bullets in the sofa. Presumably one for each hole. The right size to fit a small-calibre weapon, most likely a small-bore rifle.

Rubber bullets.

Too serious to be lads messing around. But maybe not completely serious either. Probably meant to cause pain. Torment. Just as you were tormented, Bengt.

Rubber bullets.

Impossible to say what sort of weapon the bullets were fired from, according to Karin: ‘You don’t get enough of an imprint from the barrel. Rubber’s more flexible than metal.’

Malin pours a splash of red wine into the stew bubbling in front of her.

Johan Jakobsson: ‘We questioned a few ?sir fanatics in the Kinda area today. As far as we could make out, they were just harmless, shall we say historically minded individuals. That professor at the university, he must be one of the biggest media-tarts I’ve ever come across. And he looks pretty clean. His boyfriend, a Magnus Djupholm, confirms the story about the cat.’

Media-tart.