Turk.
And I kicked.
Kicked.
Kicked.
His parents didn’t even report it to the cops.
They moved just a few weeks after that. At school they said they’d gone back to Turkey, but I don’t believe that. They were that other sort, Kurds. Like fuck would they have gone back.
On the way home from the canal I was sitting behind Elias on his Puch Dakota. I was holding on to his waist and the whole of his big body was vibrating, and Jakob was riding his moped next to us.
He smiled at me. I could feel warmth from Elias.
We were, we are, brothers.
One and the same.
Nothing odd about that.
73
It’s warm here. No one will find me.
The earth roof above me is a heavenly vault of its own. There are biscuit crumbs on the ground.
Is she hanging?
If not, I shall have to try again and again and again. Because if I get rid of the blood you’ll have to let me in. If I sacrifice it to you, you’ll let me in.
It was easier with him, Bengt. He was heavy, but not too heavy, and I drugged him by the car park up in Harna when he was walking past. I had my other car, the one I bought with a normal boot. Then the same as with her, brought out here by sledge.
But he died too soon.
The pulleys came from the factory. I’d disconnected the sensors in the server room before I cut a hole in the fence. Not easy. A coat on a hanger was me through the frosted glass when the guards walked past.
That night, in the forest, I took him. I drove out the blood, took away the blood, so you would let me in. I made it clean.
The chains, the noose. The sacrifice.
I had made a sacrifice for you.
But what happened with her?
I remember waking up in the field and she was gone. I snaked back to the car, crept in and managed to start it. I made my way back here.
But was she hanging in the tree?
Or was she somewhere else?
She must have been hanging. I drove out what was wrong, I made the sacrifice.
So you’ll soon be here to open the door.
You’ll be coming with love, won’t you?
What’s happened? What’s been done?
It smells of apples in my hole. Apples, biscuits and smoke.
The Philadelphia Church sign is illuminated in the middle of the day, as if to advertise: God is here! You just have to step inside and meet Him. The church building is right next to McDonald’s on the other side of Drottninggatan, and it has a faithful and well-heeled congregation. She remembers Free Church people from her sixth-form days. They were polite, wore fairly trendy clothes, but they were still geeks, or at least that was how she saw them. As if there were something missing. As if there were a remarkable hardness in all that fluff and softness. Like candy-floss with sharp tacks in.
Malin peers up the street.
Where’s Zeke?
She’s just called him, told him to pick her up outside the church, that they were going out to Collins to bring in Karl Murvall.
There’s the Volvo.
He pulls in, and before he has completely stopped the car Malin has opened the door and jumped into the passenger seat.
Zeke eager: ‘What did the psychologist say?’
‘I promised not to say.’
‘Malin,’ Zeke sighed.
‘But it was Karl Murvall who murdered Bengt Andersson and tried to murder Rebecka Stenlundh. There’s absolutely no doubt at all.’
