reeks of money.
The castle could hardly be more gloomy. It’s a grey-stucco two-storey stone building with shrunken windows, facing a practically featureless courtyard flanked by unadorned outhouses. The ruins of the old castle slumber alongside, like a permanent reminder of how badly things can turn out.
The old people’s home is on the edge of the estate, just beyond the bend where the road finally disentangles itself from the forest and opens up to the view of the lake.
The three-storey building is whitewashed, and Malin estimates that there can’t be more than thirty old people living here, and how quiet it must be, only a few random cars driving past.
She parks in front of the entrance.
What sort of Hermansson figure am I going to run into here?
Then she thinks of that evening, how Tove has invited Markus to dinner; she hopes she makes it back okay. She looks up at the building, thinking, Weine Andersson, there’s a chance there may be a problem with dinner.
Weine Andersson is sitting in a wheelchair by a window with a view straight out over Lake Roxen.
When Malin reported at reception the elderly nurse seemed pleased at her visit. The nurse didn’t seem bothered, and certainly not annoyed, by the fact that Malin was a police officer on duty. Instead she said, ‘That’ll cheer Weine up. He doesn’t get many visitors.’ Then a pause: ‘And he likes young people.’
Young people? Malin thought. Do I still qualify as that? Tove’s a young person. Not me.
‘His right side is paralysed. A stroke. It hasn’t affected his speech, but he gets upset a lot.’
Malin nodded and went in.
The bald man in front of her has sailor’s tattoos on both hands. On the lame hand, supported by a sling, someone has etched an anchor, and filled in the rough outline with ink.
His face is wrinkled and the skin covered with liver-spots, one eye is blind, but the good one seems to make up for it in brightness.
‘Yes,’ he says, his eye firmly fixed on Malin. ‘I was on board that ship. I shared a cabin with Palmkvist. It would be going a bit far to say we were friends, but we came from the same parts so it was natural that we spent a lot of time together.’
‘He drowned?’
‘Off Cape Verde we got caught up in a storm. No worse than many others, but the ship was hit by a huge wave. We started to list and in just half an hour we had sunk. I swam for it and got into a lifeboat. We spent four days out in that storm before we were picked up by the M/S
‘Weren’t you frozen?’
‘It was never cold. Just dark. Not even the water was cold.’
‘And Palmkvist?’
‘I never saw him. I think he was caught in the galley when the first wave hit. It probably filled up with water straight away. I was on watch up on the bridge.’
Malin can see it all in front of her.
The ship lurches.
A young man wakes up with a jolt, then everything is black and the water rises, comes closer in the darkness, like a mass of octopus tentacles; she sees how the cabin door is shut tight from the pressure on the other side, how his mouth, nose, head are covered, and how he finally gives up. Inhales the water and lets himself sink into a soft mist where there is nothing but peace and a warmer darkness than the one he has just left.
‘Did Palmkvist know he was going to be a father?’
Weine Andersson can’t suppress a chuckle. ‘I heard those rumours when I got home. But I can tell you for a fact that Palmkvist wasn’t the father of Rakel Karlsson’s boy. He wasn’t interested in women in that way.’
‘He didn’t want children?’
‘Sailors, Inspector Fors. What sort of men used to become sailors in the old days?’
Malin nods, pauses for a moment before going on. ‘So who was the boy’s father if it wasn’t Palmkvist?’
‘I made it ashore afterwards. The third night in the storm, just when we thought it was easing, it started up again. I tried to hold on to Juan but he slid out of my grasp. It was night and it was dark and the wind was blowing like the worst night of winter. The sea was opening up for us, roaring out its hunger, it had us in its grip, it wanted to devour us, and even though…’
Weine Andersson’s voice cracks. He raises his healthy arm to his face, bows his head and sobs.
‘… even though I was holding on as hard as I could, he slid out of my arms. I could see the terror in his eyes, as he vanished down into the blackness… there was nothing I could do…’
Malin waits.
Lets Weine Andersson collect himself, but just when she thinks he’s ready for the next question, the old man in front of her starts to cry again.
‘I lived on,’ he says, ‘… alone after that, there was no other choice for me… I don’t think.’
Malin waits.
She watches the sadness draining out of Weine Andersson.
Then, without her having to ask, he says, ‘Palmkvist was concerned about the rumour about Rakel Karlsson. It started before we even set off. But I knew, and a lot of other people knew who fathered the child she was expecting.’
‘Who? Who was it?’
‘Have you ever heard of a man called Cornerhouse-Kalle? He was the father of her boy, and they say he was the one who beat Blackie so he ended up in the wheelchair.’
Malin feels a warm glow course through her body. A warmth that is icy cold.
55
See the way he moves.
Tense muscles, dark eyes.
How the others shy away, how they steer their bodies aside instinctively when he comes with her, her and her or her.
How unending he is, Kalle.
How the sweet smells of the summer evening mingle with the sweat of the dancers’ bodies, weekly toil being driven out, the expectations of the flesh, the blood coursing through the body, making it tender with longing.
He’s seen me.
But he’s waiting.
Warming up his dancing so that he’s ready. Stand up straight, Rakel, stand up straight.
The band on the stage, the smell of sausages and vodka and lust. One, two, three… most of the others fat with the chocolate they eat from the conveyor belt, but not you, Rakel, not you. You’re plump in all the right places, so stand up straight, stick out your breasts just for him as he dances past with her or her.
He’s the beast.
Raw lust.
He’s violence. The directionless, original blow, the one who doesn’t know what flight is, the one who stands firm, obstinate, the one who has no voice or place in chocolate-land.
And tonight Kalle will dance with you, Rakel. Imagine, dancing with Kalle… Tonight it will be Rakel dancing the last dance with Kalle, the one who gets to smell the sweat on his shirt.
Then there is a break. The human mice stream into the evening; coloured lanterns and queues for sausages, quarter-bottles emptied, motorcycles over near the entrance, the almost tough guys and their broads, and Kalle walking past the queue, licking the mustard from the sausage and swallowing; the chocolate-fat girl by his side sways and now he sees me, breaks free from her and walks towards me but not yet, not yet. I turn round, head for the toilets, force my way into the Ladies and all the while I feel his steps, his eager, dark breathing behind me.
Not yet, Kalle.
