impossible to shift: Maria Murvall on her bed in her room in the hospital, Maria Murvall among dark tree trunks one raw, damp night.
The car headlights illuminate the forest road, the trees like frozen figures from a horror film around them, deserted summer cottages turned to black outlines, stiff dreams of good days by the water; frozen now like a light grey smudge in the pale moonlight filtering through the gaps in the veils of cloud.
The directions Elias Murvall gave them earlier in his mother’s house: ‘Hultsjon, then after Ljungsbro head towards Olstorp, past the golf course and on to the Tjallmo road. After ten kilometres you’ll get to the lake; the road to the other cottages is kept cleared, then you’ll have to walk. The path is marked out. But you won’t find anything there.’
Before that Jakob Murvall, suddenly talkative, as if his mother had pressed the play button. He went on about their organised hunting expeditions, about the sale of meat, about deer-traps, about how Russian millionaires were crazy about deer-traps.
‘We’ll head out there tonight. Now. Sjoman will have to sort out a warrant.’
Zeke hesitant. ‘Can’t it wait till tomorrow? The brothers are being taken into custody, they can’t do anything.’
‘No.’
‘But I’ve got choir practice tonight, Fors.’
‘What?’
‘Okay, okay, Malin. But we’ll deal with Joakim Svensson’s and Jimmy Kalmvik’s parents first,’ and this time the hoarseness of his voice betrayed his awareness that she would tease him for months if he let choir practice with Da Capo take precedence over an entirely new lead.
The warrant went through, Sven Sjoman called to confirm.
And now Zeke has one hand on the wheel as some choir led by Kjell Lonna is blasting through ‘Swing it, Magistern!’ Choral music: the non-negotiable condition for them driving out to the cabin. Zeke is dealing with the ice, pushing the car on by accelerating, braking, accelerating. The ditches alongside the road like a white-edged abyss beside them. Malin peers out in search of animals’ glowing eyes: deer, elk, a stag that might decide to cross the road just as they approach. Few people can drive like Zeke, not with the uncompromising self-confidence of the professional driver, but with careful concentration on the goal: getting there.
They skirt round the lake, but get an idea of the frozen water continuing into the forest, narrowing to something like a river, leading right into the heart of darkness and night.
The clock on the dashboard reads 22.34. An ungodly hour for work like this.
Tove at home, never made it to Markus’s: ‘I heated up the rest of the stew. I’m fine, Mum.’
‘As soon as things calm down at work we’ll do something fun.’
Fun? Malin thinks as she sees the pile of snow ahead of them at the end of the road, how someone had forced a gap through the heap, and how reflecting patches fastened to the trees shine like stars in a line off into the distance.
What do you think is fun, Tove? It was easier when you were younger. We used to go to the swimming pool. And you’d rather go to the cinema with other people. You like shopping, but you’re not as crazy about it as other girls your age. Maybe we could go to a concert in Stockholm, you’d like that. We’ve talked about doing that before but never managed it. Or maybe go to the book fair in Gothenburg? But that’s in the autumn, isn’t it?
‘This must be the right place,’ Zeke says, switching off the engine. ‘I hope it’s not too far to walk. Fuck, it feels even colder tonight.’
The geography of evil.
What does it look like? What sort of topography?
It wasn’t far from here that traces of the attack on Maria Murvall were found, five kilometres to the west. None of her brothers knew what she was doing in the forest, no one mentioned the cabin then, the property they’ve got on loan free of charge from farmer Kvarnstrom for reasons no one wants to go into.
‘We look after it, simple as that.’
Maria in the forest.
Cut up from inside.
A chill autumn night.
Damp-dripping world.
Ball-Bengt in the tree.
The cold of the plain.
Branches like snakes, leaves and rotting mushrooms like spiders, and then the worms under your feet, sharp thorns that cut into the soles of your feet. Who’s that hanging there in the tree? Bats, owls, some fresh evil?
Is the geography of evil small outcrops of rock and shallow hollows? Half-grown forest, a woman with the tatters of black clothing hanging from her body, dragging herself along a deserted forest road at dawn.
Is the beast here in the forest?
Malin has time to think all this as she and Zeke pad through the snow towards the Murvall brothers’ cabin. They light up the trees with their pocket torches, the reflecting patches shine, making the black trees tremble in the utterly silent night, making the snow crystals on the ground twinkle like countless watchful lemmings’ eyes, little beacons for navigating through the unknown.
‘How far, Fors? It’s got to be at least minus fifteen and I’m still dripping with sweat.’
Zeke is walking ahead, heaving his way through the snow; no one has been this way since the last fall of snow, even if there are still earlier tracks to follow. Snowmobile tracks alongside.
The animals, Malin thinks. That must be how they get them out, by snowmobile.
‘Pretty tough going,’ Malin says, trying to instil a bit of courage in Zeke by showing that she shares his pain. ‘We must have trudged a good kilometre by now.’
‘How far was it supposed to be?’
‘They wouldn’t say.’
They stop next to each other, breathing out silently.
‘Maybe we should have waited?’ Malin says.
‘Let’s go on,’ Zeke says.
After thirty minutes of struggling against the snow and the cold the forest opens out into a small clearing in front of them, and at its centre stands a small house, probably several hundred years old, with drifts of snow up to the eaves.
They train their torches on the cabin; long shadows fall from the beams of light and the trees in the forest become a curtain of dark nuances behind the snow-covered roof.
‘Okay, let’s go in,’ Zeke says.
The key is hanging where the brothers said, on a hook under the soffit. The lock creaks in the cold.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any electricity,’ Zeke says as the door opens. ‘No point looking for a light switch.’
Cones of light dance across a single, frozen room. Neat, Malin thinks. Rag rugs on the floor, a gas stove on a simple wooden worktop, a camping table in the middle of the room, four chairs, candles, no lamps, and three double beds along the windowless end walls.
Malin goes over to the table.
Its top is stained with light oil.
‘Gun grease,’ she says, and Zeke mutters in agreement.
On a dresser beside the kitchen worktop stand tins of pea soup and ravioli and meatballs, and in a box alongside are bottles of spirits.
‘It reminds me somehow of a changing room,’ Zeke says.
‘Yes, it’s very neutral. No feeling.’
‘What were you expecting, Fors? They let us come out here precisely because we wouldn’t find anything.’
‘I don’t know. Just a feeling.’
A room without feelings. What is there beyond that?
If you have wicked hearts, deep down inside, you Murvalls, then what sort of damage have you done?
Then Zeke hushes her and Malin turns round, sees him put a glove to his lips and then point out through the door as they simultaneously put their hands over the beams of their torches.
The resulting darkness is unshakable.
