Jakob Murvall leans languidly across the tabletop, takes a cigarette from a packet of Blend and lights it. A baby in one of the women’s laps whimpers.
‘We don’t know anything about that,’ the woman says. ‘Do we, lads?’
The brothers round the table shake their heads.
‘Nothing.’ Elias grins. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Your sister was raped. And someone who was questioned during the investigation has been found dead,’ Zeke says.
‘What were you all doing on the night between Wednesday and Thursday last week?’ Malin asks.
‘We don’t have to tell you a fucking thing,’ Elias says, and Malin thinks that he says the words in an exaggeratedly tough voice, as if he doesn’t want to look weak in front of the others.
‘Well, yes you do, actually,’ Zeke says. ‘Your sister-’
Adam Murvall heaves himself up, throws out his arms and shouts across the table, ‘That bastard could very well have raped Maria. And now he’s dead, and that’s a fucking good thing.’
The colour of his eyes shifts from blue to black as he spits out the words.
‘Maybe she can get some peace now.’
‘Boy, sit down.’ The mother’s voice from the stove.
Now several of the babies are crying, and the women try to comfort them, and Elias Murvall pulls his brother down on to his chair.
‘That’s better,’ their mother says when silence has fallen once again. ‘I think the bake is ready now. And the potatoes.’
‘The old ?sir beliefs,’ Malin says. ‘Do you follow them?’
Scattered laughter from the adults round the table.
‘We’re proper men,’ Jakob Murvall says. ‘Not Vikings.’
‘Do you have guns in the house?’ Malin asks.
‘We’ve all got hunting rifles,’ Elias Murvall says.
‘How did you get licences for them, with your records?’
‘What, the sins of our youth? That’s a long time ago.’
‘Have you got a small-bore rifle?’
‘What guns we’ve got is none of your business.’
‘So you didn’t use a short-bore rifle to fire through the window of Bengt Andersson’s flat?’ Malin asks.
‘Has someone fired through his window?’ Elias Murvall says. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be too bothered about that now, will he?’
‘We’d like to see your gun cabinet,’ Zeke says. ‘You do keep your guns in one, I presume? And we’ve got a lot of questions. We’d like to talk to you one by one. Either here and now, or down at the station. Your decision.’
The women are all looking at me, Malin thinks. Their eyes are trying to work out what I want, as if I might try to take something away from them that deep down they don’t really want anyway, but which they would defend to the death.
‘You can call my boys in for questioning. And if you want to see the gun cabinet you’ll have to come back with a warrant,’ the old woman says. ‘But right now, the Murvall boys are going to eat, so you can leave now.’
‘We’ll be wanting to talk to you as well, Mrs Murvall,’ Zeke says.
Rakel Murvall lifts her nose towards the ceiling. ‘Elias, show the police officers out.’
Malin and Zeke are standing in the cold outside the house, looking back at the facade, and the shapes behind the ever more fogged windows. Malin thinks how nice it is to have her shoes back on again.
‘That there are still people living like that in Sweden today,’ she says. ‘Completely shut off from everything. It’s anachronistic in an almost bizarre way.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Zeke says. Then he reaches for the first explanation that seems to come into his mind. ‘It’s benefits,’ he says. ‘It’s all because of bloody benefits. I bet the whole lot of them are getting unemployment benefit, social support and everything else too. And the child support for a horde of kids like that must amount to a small fortune every month.’
‘I’m not so sure about benefits,’ Malin says. ‘Maybe they don’t get anything. But anyway. This is the twenty- first century. In Sweden. And here’s a family that seems to live entirely according to its own rules.’
‘They muck about with engines and hunt and fish while we work our backsides off. Do you expect me to feel any sympathy for them?’
‘Maybe for the children. Who knows what their lives are like?’
Zeke stands still, evidently thinking.
‘Living outside society isn’t that unusual, Malin. In fact it isn’t even anachronistic. Look at those people in Borlange, Knutby, Sheike, and half of sodding Norrland. They’re all around us, and as long as they don’t upset the consensus too much, no one cares. Let them live their miserable lives in peace, and everyone else can live a normal life. The poor, the mad, the immigrants, the handicapped. No one cares, Malin. Except to get validation of the normality of their own lives. And who are we anyway to have opinions about how other people choose to live? It might be more fun than we think.’
‘I don’t want to think that,’ Malin says. ‘At any rate, as far as Bengt Andersson is concerned, they’ve got a motive.’
They head off towards the car.
‘Nice sort of people, anyway, the Murvalls,’ Zeke says as he turns the key in the ignition.
‘You could see the fury in Adam Murvall’s eyes,’ Malin says.
‘There are several of them, they could have done it together. And shooting at his window with rubber bullets? No problem for gentlemen like them. We’ll have to get a warrant so we can check their guns. But they may have more without licences. I dare say they’ve got the contacts to get hold of weapons and ammunition.’
‘Do you really think we’ve got enough evidence to get a warrant? There’s not really anything concrete, in legal terms, to suggest that they might be involved.’
‘Maybe not. We’ll have to see what Sjoman says.’
‘He was so incredibly angry. Adam Murvall.’
‘Imagine it was your sister, Malin, wouldn’t that make you angry?’
‘I haven’t got any brothers or sisters,’ Malin says. Then she adds, ‘I would have been livid.’
31
From a distance, and seen from above like this, Lake Roxen looks like a flattened greyish-white eiderdown. The trees and shrubs, almost tremulous, are pressed down along the edge of the lake, and the fields in front of it, cropped, wind-blasted, wait for a warmth that it is hard to believe will ever come.
White bricks and brown woodwork, stacked boxes in the best tradition of the 1970s, four privileged dwellings gathered together on a hillside above a steep slope.
They have knocked on the door with the lion’s head, polished jaws gaping open.
The first time they spoke to Fredrik Unning, Malin was convinced he had something to say that he was frightened to come out with, and now she’s certain, and with every step she takes towards the house expectation grows within her.
What is hidden in here?
They will have to be careful. Zeke beside her is restless, his breath misting from his mouth, his head bare, open for the cold to dig its stubby, infected claws into.
Rattling behind the door.
A crack that widens to an opening with Fredrik Unning’s thirteen-year-old face behind it, his slightly pudgy, unexercised body in a light blue Carhartt T-shirt and grey army-style trainers.
‘You’ve been ages,’ he says. ‘I thought you were coming straight away.’
If only you knew, Malin thinks, how well you’ve just summarised what a lot of people think about the police, Fredrik.
‘Can we come in?’ Zeke asks.
