He runs between the tree trunks and the sharp branches on the ground cut his feet but he doesn’t allow himself to feel any pain, he doesn’t stop to fight the monsters roaring in the deep holes left by the roots of toppled trees.
Then the boy is standing by Malin’s bed. He presses her ribcage up and down with even movements, helping her to breathe in the yellow air of the morning.
He whispers in her sleeping, dreaming ear,
53
A sullen morning mist over the city, the fields.
The investigation practically going in circles.
A weapon to examine.
Information on a hard drive to check this morning.
No wind over a desolate snow-covered field, nothing happening, just exhausted police officers sleeping or waking. Borje Svard in his bed, alone under washed-out blue-flowered covers, his two Alsatians let in from their run on either side of the bed, and in the room at the end of the landing two of the nightshift’s carers are turning his wife, and he makes an effort to fend off the sound of their activity.
Johan Jakobsson in his terraced house in Linghem, sitting, dozing on a sofa with his three-year-old daughter in his lap, a Lorenga & Masarin cartoon on the television, headphones over his daughter’s ears. When are you going to learn that sleeping is nice? The previous day had been spent talking to the other youngsters who had been out in the field for the animal sacrifice. They had alibis for the night that Bengt Andersson was killed, they were just confused in the way that young people so often are. It turned into yet another day of hard slog, another day when he had to leave his family to its own devices.
Zacharias Martinsson is sleeping snuggled up to his freezing wife, the window in the bedroom open a crack, a draught that promises a cold. Sven Sjoman on his back in bed out in his villa, snoring loudly and audibly, his wife in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in front of her on the table, absorbed in
Even Karim Akbar is asleep in bed, lying on his side, breathing in and out, then he coughs and reaches out an arm for his wife, but she isn’t there, she’s sitting on the toilet with her face in her hands, wondering how she’s going to sort everything out, what would happen if Karim knew.
Forensics expert Karin Johannison is awake, sitting astride her husband, her hair swinging back and forth, helping herself to her own body and consuming him beneath her, flesh that is more hers than his, because what else would she really want him for?
And Malin Fors is awake too. She is sitting behind the steering-wheel of her car. Focused.
The third line of inquiry in the investigation into Bengt Andersson’s murder needs pushing, needs whipping, needs to have its back flayed.
Malin is freezing.
The car never seems to be able to warm up properly on mornings like this. Through the windscreen she sees the slender stone tower of Vreta Kloster, and beyond it lies Blasvadret, and there, alone in her kitchen, sits Rakel Murvall with a cup of boiled coffee, looking out of the window and thinking that it would be good if the boys came home soon, workshops shouldn’t stand idle.
Malin parks outside Rakel Murvall’s house. The white wooden building seems more tired than last time she was here, as if it were starting to give way, both to the cold and to the person within. The path to the house has been cleared of snow, as if a red carpet were about to be unfurled.
She’s bound to be up, Malin thinks. Surprise her. Come when she least expects it.
Just like Tove she slams the car door behind her, but she knows why: it’s all about building up a feeling of determination, aggression, superiority that will make the mother obstinate, get her to open up, tell her stories, the ones Malin knows that she has to tell.
She knocks.
Pretends that Zeke is standing beside her.
Light yet oddly heavy steps behind the door, and the mother opens, her thin grey cheeks surrounding the sharpest eyes Malin has ever seen on a human being, eyes that somehow use her up, making her flat, apathetic and scared.
She’s over seventy, what can she do to me? Malin thinks, but knows that she’s wrong: she’s capable of doing absolutely anything.
‘Inspector Fors,’ Rakel Murvall says in a welcoming tone of voice. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘You could let me in, it’s cold out here. I have a few more questions.’
‘But do you expect any more answers?’
Malin nods. ‘I think you’ve got all the answers in the world.’
Rakel Murvall steps aside and Malin goes in.
The coffee is hot and just strong enough.
‘Your boys aren’t exactly little lambs,’ Malin says, settling more comfortably on the rib-backed chair.
She sees first vanity, then anger flit across Rakel Murvall’s eyes.
‘What do you know about my boys?’
‘I’m really here to talk about your fourth boy.’
Malin pushes her coffee cup aside, looks at Rakel Murvall, fixing her with her gaze.
‘Karl,’ Malin says.
‘Who did you say?’
‘Karl.’
‘I don’t hear much from the boy.’
‘Who was his father? Not the same as the other boys. That much I do know.’
‘You’ve spoken to him, I see.’
‘I’ve spoken to him. He said his father was a sailor and that he drowned while you were pregnant.’
‘You’re right,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘Off Cape Verde, the eighteenth of August, 1961. The M/S
‘I think you’re lying,’ Malin says.
But Rakel Murvall merely smiles, before going on: ‘Peder Palmkvist was his name, the sailor.’
Malin stands up.
‘That was all I wanted to know for the moment,’ Malin says, and the old woman stands up too and Malin sees her eyes take command of the whole room.
‘If you come here again I’ll have you for harassment.’
‘I’m only trying to do my job, Mrs Murvall, that’s all.’
‘Boats sink,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘They sink like stones.’
Malin drives past the Murvall family’s petrol station. The Preem sign is switched off, the windows of the shop gape at her blackly, and the derelict foundry on the site is just begging to be torn down.
She passes Brunnby and Harna, doesn’t want to see the building housing Ball-Bengt’s flat. From the road only the roof can be seen, but she knows which building it is.
The landlord has probably cleared the flat by now; your things, the few that could be sold, have probably gone for auction and the money been sent on to the State Inheritance Fund. Rebecka Stenlundh, your sister by blood, if not legally, won’t inherit the little you had.
Has someone else taken over your flat, Ball-Bengt? Or are the rooms lying empty, waiting for you to come home? Maybe you’re home now, at last? Dust settling on the windowsills, taps rusting shut, slowly, slowly.
She drives under the aqueduct, past the school and picks up her mobile, thinking, I’ll have to skip the morning meeting.
‘Johan? It’s Malin.’
‘Malin?’
