companies, Kakmastaren.
He’s probably out seeing customers, Malin thinks. And has his mobile switched off.
She left a message on the answering service.
‘Hello, this is Malin Fors of Linkoping Police. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Please call me on 070- 3142022 as soon as you hear this.’
On her way back to the city Malin listens to P1 on the radio.
The television personality Agneta Sjodin has written another book, about a guru in India who meant a great deal to her.
‘In his company,’ Agneta Sjodin says, ‘I became a whole person. Meeting him was like opening a door and finding myself.’
The reporter, an aggressive alpha male to judge by his voice, makes fun of Agneta without her realising.
‘And who did you find in the incense-filled room, Agneta? A life coach, maybe, India’s answer to Runar?’
Then music.
In front of her Linkoping seems to be resisting the early fall of darkness, shimmering warm lights on the horizon promising security, a safe place to raise children.
And there are worse places, worse cities, Malin thinks. It’s small enough to be as safe as you could ask for, while still being big enough, developed enough to give a scent of the outside world.
I felt that scent. Was going to stay in Stockholm. That would probably have been the right size for me in the long run. But a single mother in the police living in Stockholm? With no parents, with my daughter’s father and his parents two hundred kilometres away, no real friends?
The retail outlets clustered beside Ikea. Babyland, Car-World, BR Toys. The sign to Skaggetorp. Lights taking hold of me, lights that are reluctantly forming themselves into a sense of home.
Malin and Zeke ring on Karl Murvall’s door just after seven o’clock. Up at the station she told Johan Jakobsson and Borje Svard about her visit to the crime-scene, and how Valkyria Karlsson had been there meditating in the cold.
Then she called Tove: ‘I’m going to be late again tonight.’
‘Can Markus come over?’
‘Sure, if he’d like to.’
I don’t want to be standing here at this door, Malin thinks. I want to go home and meet my daughter’s boyfriend. Will he even dare to turn up? All he’s seen of me was in Mum and Dad’s apartment, and how friendly was I then? And maybe he’s heard Janne’s version of my personality. But what would that be like?
It’s still quiet inside the flat. No mobile number on the net to call, not even an answer-phone on his home line.
Sven Sjoman on his questioning: ‘It’s like they’re denying his existence. Whatever’s at the bottom of it, it brings out the very worst in the Murvalls. I mean, it takes a lot for a mother to deny her son. It goes against nature, doesn’t it?’
‘He could be anywhere,’ Zeke says, as they stand in the stairwell facing the door.
‘On holiday?’
Zeke throws out his arms.
They turn and are just about to go down the stairs when they hear a car slow up and stop outside the front door.
Malin leans over and peers down at the car through one of the windows in the stairwell: a dark green Volvo estate, with a roof-box for skis that looks improbably pink in the light of the streetlamp. A thin-haired man in a black jacket opens the door, gets out and hurries into the building.
‘Karl Murvall,’ Zeke says, holding up his ID. ‘We’re from the police, and we’d like a word with you if that’s all right.’
The man stops. Smiles.
‘Yes, I’m Karl Murvall,’ he repeats. ‘Sure, come on in.’
Karl Murvall has the same strong nose as his half-brothers, only his is sharper.
He is short, with the beginnings of a pot-belly, and his whole appearance gives the impression that he’d like to sink through the floor, yet at the same time he exudes a peculiar, primitive power.
Karl Murvall puts his key in the lock, opens the door. ‘I read in the paper about my brothers,’ he says. ‘I realised that you’d want to talk to me sooner or later.’
‘You didn’t think of contacting us yourself?’ Zeke says, but Karl Murvall doesn’t seem bothered by his words.
‘Hang on, and I’ll let you in,’ he says instead, with a smile.
44
Karl Murvall’s flat.
Two rooms.
Improbably tidy. Sparsely furnished.
It looks like Bengt Andersson’s home, Malin thinks. Just as functional, with a bookcase, sofa, a desk by the window.
No ornaments, no plants, no decoration, nothing to disturb the simplicity, or rather the emptiness, apart from a bowl of fragrant yellow and red winter apples on the desk.
Books about computer programming, maths, Stephen King. An engineer’s bookcase.
‘Coffee?’ Karl Murvall asks, and it strikes Malin that his voice is lighter than his brothers’, and that he makes a milder, but nonetheless harder impression somehow. Like someone who has been through a lot, who has seen and heard a great deal. A bit like Janne, the way he looks when someone talks about the hardships they’ve endured on their walking holiday in the mountains, that mixture of derision and sympathy, and a hint of ‘just be glad you don’t know what you’re talking about’.
‘Too late in the day for me,’ Zeke says. ‘But Detective Inspector Fors here would probably like a cup.’
‘Please.’
‘Sit yourselves down in the meantime.’
Karl Murvall gestures towards the sofa and they sit down, hear him busying himself in the kitchen, and after five minutes or so he’s back with a tray of steaming cups.
‘I brought a third anyway, just in case,’ Karl Murvall says, putting the tray on the coffee table before sitting down on the office chair by the desk.
‘Nice flat,’ Malin says.
‘Well, how can I help you?’
‘Have you been at work all day?’
Karl Murvall nods. ‘Did you try to get me earlier?’
‘Yes,’ Malin says.
‘I work a lot. I’m IT manager out at the Collins factory in Vikingstad. Three hundred and fifty employees, and increasing amounts of computerisation.’
‘A good job.’
‘Yes. I did computer engineering at university, and it’s paid off.’
‘You could afford something bigger,’ Malin says.
‘Material things don’t really interest me. Property just means responsibilities. I don’t need anything bigger than this.’
Karl Murvall takes a sip of coffee before going on: ‘But that’s not why you’re here.’
‘Bengt Andersson,’ Zeke says.
‘The man in the tree,’ Karl Murvall says quietly. ‘Awful.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘I’ve known who he was ever since my childhood in Ljungsbro. The whole family knew of him.’
‘But no more than that?’
