easier for you.’
Then the boy looks at Malin. She tries to calm him with her eyes, persuade him that everything will all be all right, and maybe he believes her, maybe he decides that none of it matters.
He starts to talk.
About how they read in the paper about midwinter sacrifices, and how cool it sounded, and how he had been at home with his mum when the murder must have been committed, how they didn’t have anything to do with that, that was murder, after all, and how he had been so tired of his flatulent dog and how his friend Sara Hamberg had said they could get some pigs from hers, and that their friend Henrik Andersson had an old EPA tractor with a flatbed trailer that they could use, and how he had found a site on the net all about sacrifices, and that Rickard Skoglof, who they had read about in the paper, was the man behind the site. And that he was some sort of ?sir wizard and had encouraged them in several odd emails and one thing had led to another, it had become sort of unstoppable, as if some weird force was driving them to do it.
‘We drank some cans, got hold of some knives. I didn’t think there’d be so much sodding blood. It was like, wow, so much blood. It was pretty cool. But God it was cold.’
His mum begins to cry again.
His dad looks like he’d like to apply some corporal punishment.
The night is black behind the hospital window.
‘Was Rickard Skoglof with you?’
The boy shakes his head. ‘No. Only those weird emails.’
‘And Valkyria Karlsson?’
‘Who?’
‘Why did you run?’ Malin asks. ‘And why did you take aim at Detective Inspector Svard?’
‘I don’t know,’ the boy replies. ‘I didn’t want to get caught. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?’
‘Someone ought to drop a bomb on Hollywood,’ Zeke mutters.
‘What did you say?’ The boy suddenly interested.
‘Nothing. Just thinking out loud.’
‘One more question,’ Malin says. ‘Jimmy Kalmvik and Joakim Svensson, do you know them?’
‘Know them? Jocke and Jimmy? No, but of course I know who they are. Bastards, both of them.’
‘Did they have anything to do with this?’
‘Not a thing. I’d never have anything to do with them if I could help it.’
On the way down in the lift Malin asks Zeke, ‘Shall we bring in Skoglof?’
‘What for? Incitement to animal cruelty?’
‘You’re right. We’ll leave him be for the moment. But we should probably have another talk with him and Valkyria Karlsson. Who knows what they might have got other people to do?’
‘Yes, and Johan can talk to the other kids who were out in the field.’
‘Okay. But we’ve only got one more thing to do today,’ Malin says.
‘What’s that?’
‘We’re going to see Borje.’
The white-painted kitchen cupboards shine, newly polished, and the table is covered with an orange and black Marimekko tablecloth. Above it hangs a PH designer lamp.
The whole kitchen of Borje Svard’s house exudes calm, and the room has an aesthetic quality far beyond anything Malin imagines she might ever achieve. The entire house is the same: considered, restful, beautiful.
Borje is sitting at the end of the table. Beside him his wife, Anne, seems to be almost clinging to an armchair- like blue wheelchair, the features of her face somehow rigid. Her laboured breathing fills the room, tormented, obstinate.
‘What the hell was I supposed to do?’ Borje says.
‘You did the right thing,’ Zeke says.
‘Absolutely,’ Malin agrees.
‘So you say he’ll be okay, no lasting damage?’
‘Completely, Borje, the bullet hit him exactly where it should have.’
‘Bloody awful, though,’ Borje says. ‘Attacking animals like that.’
Malin shakes her head. ‘Madness.’
‘I suppose I’ll be off a couple of weeks,’ Borje says. ‘It usually takes a while.’
A gurgling sound, followed by some lighter noises from the wheelchair.
Language?
‘She says,’ Borje explains, ‘that it’s time we put a stop to these awful things.’
‘Yes, it really is high time,’ Malin says.
‘What happened at work today, Mum?’ Tove asks. ‘You seem tired?’
Tove reaches for the pan of mashed potato on the kitchen table.
‘Yes, what did happen? Some youngsters, not much older than you, who’d done a load of stupid things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Really, really stupid things, Tove.’
Then Malin eats a large forkful of potato before going on: ‘Promise me you’ll never do anything stupid, Tove.’
Tove nods. ‘What’s going to happen to them now?’
‘They’ll be called in for questioning, then social services will probably have to take care of them somehow.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know, Tove. Just take care of them, I suppose.’
50
