‘So there we have it,’ Sven says. ‘We know who fired the shots through Bengt Andersson’s window. Now Malin and Zeke can put some real pressure on our little tough guys and see if they’re hiding anything else. Get hold of them as soon as you can. They ought to be at school at this time of day.’
Then Malin tells them what she’s found out about the Murvall line of inquiry.
She can sense Karim Akbar’s scepticism as she explains the connection between Cornerhouse-Kalle and the family. So what if he was Karl Murvall’s father, what does that matter? What does it give us that we don’t already have? That we don’t already know?
‘Murvall’s a dead-end. We’ve got new paths to explore. We need more to go on with the ?sir angle; there must be something on the hard drive. Johan, how are you getting on with that? I see, you’ve got past the password, and found a load of protected files.’
But Malin persists: ‘It makes Karl Murvall Bengt Andersson’s brother. Something that presumably even he doesn’t know.’
‘If the old boy in Stjarnorp is telling the truth,’ Karim says.
‘We can easily check. We’ve got Bengt’s DNA, and we can take a sample from Karl Murvall, and then we’ll know.’
‘Steady on,’ Karim says. ‘We can’t just run round taking a load of integrity-compromising samples just because of what one man says. Especially if its significance for the investigation is, to put it mildly, questionable.’
After they had eaten last night she had called Sven and told him what Weine Andersson had revealed.
Sven had listened intently, and she didn’t know if he was pleased or irritated that she was working on her own angle on a Sunday. But then he said, ‘Good, Fors, we aren’t done with that line of inquiry yet. And the Murvall brothers are still in custody, under arrest for the other offences.’
And perhaps that’s why he now says, ‘Malin, you and Zeke can go and talk to Karl Murvall again, see what else he knows. He has an alibi for the night of the murder, but try to find out if he knows anything about this. He may have been lying about how much he knew last time you spoke to him. Start with that, and then go and put some pressure on Kalmvik and Svensson.’
‘And the DNA test?’
‘One thing at a time, Malin. Pay him a call. See what you get. And the rest of you, look under every single stone, try to find angles and corners in this case that we haven’t considered so far. Time is passing and you all know that the more time passes, the less chance there is of us catching the perpetrator.’
Zeke comes up to her desk.
He’s angry, the pupils of his eyes are small and sharp.
Now he’s annoyed that I went off without him yesterday. Isn’t he ever going to get used to it?
‘You could have called me, Malin. Do you think Karl Murvall knows about this? About Cornerhouse-Kalle?’
‘I’ve been wondering about that. He might know, but not properly, if you get what I mean.’
‘You’re too deep for me, Fors. Okay, let’s get out to Collins and have a chat with him. It’s Tuesday, he ought to be there.’
57
Collins Mechanics AB, outside Vikingstad.
The tarmac car park stretches about a hundred metres from the edge of a dense forest to a security lodge and the heavy boom blocking the only opening in a ten-metre-high fence crowned with perfect coils of barbed wire.
The company supplies components to Saab General Motors. One of the few successful companies on the plain, three hundred people work on the automated construction of car parts. Just a few years ago there were seven hundred, but it is impossible to compete with China.
Ericsson, NAF, Saab, BT-Trucks, Printcom: they have all cut back or disappeared completely. Malin has noticed the changes that happen to areas when manufacturing industry is shut down: violent crime increases, as does domestic abuse. Despair is, contrary to what many politicians might say, a close neighbour of the fist.
But after a while everything reverts in a peculiar way to how it was before. Some people get new jobs. Others are put on training courses or forced or persuaded to take early retirement. They become either artificially necessary, or finished, and end up on a fault-line, on the edges of the society that the Murvall family wants no part in, at any cost. Other than on their own terms.
The realisation that one is used up, Malin thinks. I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to be faced with that conclusion. Being unwanted, unneeded.
Beyond the impenetrable fence lie windowless, hangar-like white factory buildings.
It looks like a prison, Malin thinks.
The guard in the lodge is dressed in a blue Falck uniform, and his face lacks any distinct boundary between cheeks, chin and neck. In the middle of all that skin, creation deigned to introduce a couple of grey, watery eyes that stare sceptically at Malin as she holds up her police ID.
‘We’re looking for a Karl Murvall. I gather he’s IT manager here.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘It doesn’t matter what purpose,’ Zeke says.
‘You have to state—’
‘Police business,’ Malin says, and the watery-eyed man looks away, makes a call, nods a couple of times before hanging up.
