Then she changes her mind.
Lifts me back into the darkness again.
I ring the doorbell.
And ring.
And ring.
Wait, wait, and you open, see me, try to close the door, but I’m stronger now, stronger, and I put my foot in the gap and you yell as I shove you into the flat, press you down on the sofa, tie you up and your cold white spiders’ fingers. I throw a blanket over you and you’re old now, but the meanness, the transparency in your grey eyes can never, ever disappear, Dad.
Wait.
I’ll go and get her.
From the van.
She needs to be watching when you die.
Your eyes are glaring wide-open in terror from your skull, it’s as if your eyelids have lost the ability to blink and the whole of your lair stinks of drink and piss and unwashed old man, but I know all about cleaning, Dad.
Wait here.
She’s heavy as I carry her over my shoulder and I had to put a rag in her mouth to stop her screaming and waking the whole block.
No one can see me now.
Finspang’s morning eyes are dead.
I close the door.
How long have I been sitting here now? Malin thinks. Far too long.
Her body is a single emotion moulded of many: anxiety, anger, exhaustion, despair, resignation, fury and heat. An overheated brain is worthless as an instrument of thought, as a rescuer in this hour of need.
The tarmac warm beneath her buttocks.
Malin hasn’t bothered to move into the shade, the sun is merciless even just before half past four in the morning.
Janne and Zeke are sitting in the shade, leaning against the wall of the warehouse next to each other, and Malin can see that they’re gathering their strength, recharging before the next act.
The final act?
Sven Sjoman crouching beside her.
‘Malin, have you got any ideas?’
His breath smells of coffee.
And Malin straightens up, certainty like a sudden strong jolt through her body and she flies up, shouting over to Janne and Zeke: ‘Come on, I know where she is!’
Sven steps back, letting Malin past as she races to the car.
‘Come on, for fuck’s sake!’
All around them officers have stopped what they were doing, as if the desperation in her voice has frozen time at that second and given them all a glimpse of eternity.
Sven called after them: ‘Where are you going, Malin?’
But she didn’t answer, didn’t want a whole fucking army to show up and set off something stupid if it wasn’t already too late. She didn’t want Sven to call the cretins in the Finspang station, who knew what sort of mess they could make of things.
No.
Now it’s me against you.
I know where you are now, Vera Folkman, and I know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
It’s a tragic madness, your madness. Two sisters, alone in the world together; they love each other endlessly. Do you think you can recreate your sister? your love for one another? It’s a beautiful madness, your madness. But it’s my task to destroy it, obliterate it.
It’s Janne’s task.
Zeke’s.
But most of all ours, Janne. We have a child, and we owe her a life.
Malin is sitting in the back seat of the car, Janne leaning on her shoulder. They’re forcing themselves to stay awake, saying things about the landscape as they pass through it to make sure that Zeke doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel.
‘The Roxen looks so inviting in the morning light.’
‘Vreta Kloster really is beautiful.’
‘We’re going to stop that bitch.’
At the start of the drive Malin explained that Vera Folkman must have taken Tove with her back to see her father, Sture Folkman, to conclude a dance of death that had been going on for far too long, which had created a summer that no one in the area would ever forget.
One hundred and fifty kilometres an hour as they pass the golf course in Vreta Kloster, after driving through a deserted early-morning Ljungsbro.
They pass the fires, the lines of cars, and they meet fire engines on their way back from there, their cabs full of exhausted men with soot-smeared faces, resignation in their eyes as if the fire and the heat were too strong for them, as if they had no choice but to capitulate to the flames and let the fire transform all the forests of Ostergotland into a no-man’s-land.
‘Do you wish you were still there?’ Malin asks Janne, but he doesn’t answer.
Dark, burgundy-coloured wallpaper. A creaking wooden floor.
Him rendered immobile. You soon here on the floor.
I have everything in place now, sister.
So that you can be resurrected.
So that our innocence can be reborn in a radiant whiteness.
I am in the final room.
68
In the final room
I, Sture Folkman, was seventeen years old the first time I gave in to my lust.
Down by the factory in Angelholm there was a kiosk where she, she was eleven or twelve, used to buy cigarettes for her mother.
Her white dress.
It covered no more than her thighs and it was a hot day, almost as hot as some days have been this summer.
She was walking along the path behind the factory and there were azaleas, the most beautiful I had ever seen, in bloom there.
I caught up with her.
Brought her down.
And she was hairless and I knew this was the first step of many for me, it couldn’t be stopped, I could see in her frightened eyes that deep down she loved it, loved me, just like all my girls came to, even if some of them got ideas in their heads later on. I kept rabbits in cages to make them happy. Girls love rabbits.
That white dress ended up spotted with blood.
