The boy should have been allowed to have a different family, Rakel.
Then the anger and hate might have had an end; maybe your other boys could have been different. Maybe you too.
‘What an awful fucking place,’ Zeke says as they’re standing on the drive beside the house. ‘Can you see him standing here among the apple trees in the snow as a child? Freezing?’
Malin nods. ‘If there is a hell . . .’ she says.
Half a minute later they are knocking on the door of Rakel Murvall’s house.
They can see her in the kitchen, see her disappear into the living room.
‘She’s not going to open the door,’ Malin says.
Zeke knocks again.
‘Just a moment,’ they hear from inside the house.
The door opens and Rakel Murvall smiles at them.
‘Ah, the detectives. To what do I owe this honour?’
‘We have some questions, if you don’t mind—’
Rakel Murvall interrupts Zeke. ‘Come in, detectives. If you’re worried about my complaint, forget it. Forgive an old woman’s ill temper. Coffee?’
‘No thank you,’ Malin says.
Zeke shakes his head.
‘But do sit down.’ Rakel Murvall gestures towards the kitchen table.
They sit.
‘Where’s Karl?’ Malin says.
Rakel Murvall ignores her question.
‘He isn’t in his flat, or at Collins. And he’s been fired from his job,’ Zeke says.
‘Is he mixed up in any funny business, my son?’
Her son. She hasn’t used that word of Karl before, Malin thinks.
‘You’ve read the paper,’ Malin says, putting her hand on the copy of the
The old woman smiles, but doesn’t answer. Then she says, ‘I’ve no idea where the lad might be.’
Malin looks out of the kitchen window. Sees a little boy standing naked in the snow and the cold, screaming with cheeks red with crying, sees him fall in the snow, waving his arms and legs, a frozen angel on the snow-draped ground.
Malin clenches her teeth.
Feels like telling Rakel Murvall that she deserves to burn in hell, that there are some things that can’t be forgiven.
In the official sense, her crimes fell under the statute of limitations long ago, but in the human, social, sense? In those terms, some things are never forgiven.
Rape.
Paedophilia.
Child abuse.
Withholding love from children.
The punishment for such things is a lifetime of shame.
And love of children. That is the first sort of love.
‘What really happened between you and Cornerhouse-Kalle, Rakel?’
Rakel turns to her, stares at Malin, and the pupils of the old woman’s eyes grow large and black, as if they were trying to convey a thousand years of female experience and torment. Then Rakel blinks, closing her eyes for a few seconds before saying, ‘That was so long ago. I can’t even remember. I’ve had so many worries over the years with the boys.’
An opening, Malin thinks, for the next question.
‘Haven’t you ever worried,’ she asks, ‘that your boys might find out that Cornerhouse-Kalle was Karl’s father?’
Rakel Murvall fills her own cup with coffee. ‘The boys have that knowledge.’
‘Have they? Have they really, Rakel? Being found out telling lies can ruin any relationship,’ Malin goes on. ‘And what power does the person who had to lie possess?’
‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘You’re talking a lot of nonsense.’
‘Am I really, Rakel?’ Malin says. ‘Am I really?’
Rakel Murvall closes the front door behind them.
