Midwinter Sacrifice aka Midwinter Blood

Then a male body collapsing, muscles losing all their strength.

‘She looked after him. She’s the gentlest, warmest person God ever blessed this fucking planet with. She was only looking after him a bit, can’t you understand that, you fucking pig? That’s what she’s like. No one can stop her. And if he thanked her by doing that in the forest, he deserved to die, and to go straight back down to hell.’

‘But you didn’t do it?’

‘What do you think, pig? What do you think?’

37

An army on the retreat, Malin thinks.

The Murvall clan is evacuating the foyer of Police Headquarters, taking their places in their vehicles, shivering in the cold.

Elias and Jakob help their mother up into the front seat of the minibus, but surely the old woman could manage on her own?

A minute ago she was standing in the entrance, a shawl round her head, eyes open so wide they threatened to fly out of their sockets.

She was shouting at Karim Akbar.

‘I’m taking my son Adam home with me.’

‘The officer in charge of the preliminary investigation-’

Karim was nonplussed by the old woman’s outburst, as sudden as it was taboo. He had been brought up to respect the elderly.

‘He’s coming home. Now.’

The rest of the family like a wall behind her, Adam’s wife at the front, the children around her, snuffling.

‘But-’

‘Well, I want to see him, at least.’

‘Mrs Murvall, your son can’t have any visitors. The officer in charge of the preliminary investigation, Sven Sjoman-’

‘The officer in charge of the preliminary investigation can go to hell. I’m seeing my boy. And that’s that.’

Then a smile that quickly became a grimace, her false teeth unnaturally white.

Defiance as theatre, as a game.

‘I’ll see what I can-’

‘You can’t do a thing, can you?’ And with that Rakel Murvall turned, raised one arm in the air and the retreat began.

The clock on the foyer wall says 14.50.

The meeting room. Too cold to open a window to remove the residual stink of menthol cigarettes.

‘Lisbeth Murvall is providing an alibi for her husband, Elias,’ Malin says.

‘They’re all giving alibis to each other,’ Zeke says. ‘One way or another.’

Johan Jakobsson: ‘And they don’t seem to have any connection to Bengt Andersson other than the fact that he was their sister’s client and figured in the investigation into her rape.’

‘We still ought to organise a search warrant for Blasvadret,’ Sven Sjoman says. ‘I want to know what they’ve got in those houses.’

‘Have we got enough for that?’ Karim Akbar, hesitant. ‘A motive, a few suspicions. That’s all we’ve got.’

‘I know what we have and haven’t got. But it’s enough.’

‘We’re only going to take a look,’ Borje Svard says. ‘It won’t be too bad. Will it?’

Only your world turned upside down, Malin thinks. Otherwise not too bad. Says, ‘Sort out the warrants.’

‘Okay,’ Karim says.

‘I want to talk to Joakim Svensson’s and Jimmy Kalmvik’s parents,’ Malin says. ‘Someone has to confirm what they were doing on Wednesday evening, and maybe we can find out more about how they used to torment Bengt Andersson.’

‘The shots,’ Zeke says. ‘We still don’t know who fired those shots.’

‘Okay, this is what we do,’ Sven says. ‘First the search of Blasvadret. Then you can talk to the boys’ parents.’

Malin nods, thinking that they’re going to need as much manpower as possible out in Blasvadret. Who knows what those nutters might do.

Then she hears Fredrik Unning’s frightened voice: ‘This will stay between us…’ and she thinks back to her wretched responsibility to push that line of investigation as far as she can.

‘Well, off to Blasvadret,’ Johan says, getting up.

‘If you dredge the shit properly, something always comes up,’ Borje says.

Shit? You know quite a bit about that, don’t you, Borje?

You’ve been in the shit when you lie awake next to your wife, listening to how hard it is for her to breathe, when her withering diaphragm can hardly lift her lungs.

You’ve felt it cover you, the suction pipe between your fingers at night in a dimly lit bedroom when she wants you to take care of her, not one of the nameless carers.

Yes, you know a whole lot about shit, Borje, but you also know that there are other things besides that.

In your own way you’ve been waiting for balls to fly over the fence so you can throw them back. But no one has ever laughed at you.

You’ve never had to be really, really hungry, Borje. Really lonely. Dangerously lonely. So lonely that you smash a freshly sharpened axe into your father’s head.

I drift across the plain, getting closer to Blasvadret. From up here the little cluster of houses looks like tiny black spots on an endless white canvas, the tree where I hung a smudge of ash ten kilometres or so to the west. I sink lower, see the cars, the freezing police officers, how the Murvalls have gathered together in the kitchen in Rakel’s house, hear their curses, ill-contained anger. Do you understand the principle of the pressure-cooker, the uncooled reactor that explodes? Violence can only be contained for so long, and you are treading on that fault-line. Do you imagine that four uniformed officers outside their door can hold violence in?

In the workshop, the largest, the big white-brick building.

Malin and Zacharias, that’s his name, open the door to one of the inner rooms. It’s cold in there, just ten degrees, but you can still smell the smell.

Vanity has driven you here.

Or curiosity?

Or perhaps absolution, Malin?

You will wonder why the Murvalls didn’t clean up better, and your wondering will sow seeds of doubt within you. What is this? What animal doesn’t buckle in the end?

You will see the chains hanging from the ceiling, the pulleys that help people lift heavier weights than they could otherwise lift to the roof, to the sky.

You will see clotted remnants.

Feel the smell.

And then you will start to realise.

‘Do you see that, Zeke?’

‘I see it. And I’m getting the smell as well.’

The stench of engine oil that dominated the first big room of the workshop seems to have been blown away in this inner room.

‘Light, we need more light.’

The huge sliding iron doors separating the rooms have only just slid apart, easily and well-lubricated. You don’t feel their weight, Malin thought, noting the wheel marks leading right up to the doors.

The realm of ease: a well-lubricated sliding door.

And then the windowless room. The concrete floor stained, the chains hanging motionless from the beams in