Midwinter Sacrifice

feel special. But who am I to blame them?

The Ostgota Correspondent can today reveal the identity of the man who . . .

The letters form themselves into burning arrows firing into her brain.

Bengt Andersson, 46, was known as ‘Ball-Bengt’. He lived in Ljungsbro, where he was regarded as something of an eccentric, a loner. He lived alone in a flat in the Harna district and had been on social security benefits for several years, unable to work because of mental health problems. Bengt Andersson got his nickname from the fact that he would go to Ljungsbro IF’s home games and stand on Cloettavagen, behind the fence at the end of the Cloettavallen pitch, and wait for the ball to be kicked over the fence.

Balls, Malin thinks. Balls in my head now.

I can kick, Dad, I can kick all the way to the apple tree! Mum’s voice: No balls in the garden, Malin, you might hit the roses.

Tove wasn’t interested in football.

A woman who wants to remain anonymous has told the

Correspondent:

‘

He was the sort of person everyone recognised, but no one really knew.

There’s someone like him in every community.

’

Bengt Andersson was found on Friday . . .

Direct quotes, not reported speech: Daniel’s special trick for added immediacy.

Duplications. Repetitions.

When will we leave the dead alone?

Malin walks out of the door of the building. It is just as cold today. The wall of the church is a mirage, far, far away.

But today the cold is welcome, throwing its weight over her thoughts, wrapping her in a muffling fog.

The car isn’t where it is supposed to be.

Stolen. Her first thought.

Then she remembers. Her parents’ apartment.

‘You’ll water the plants, won’t you?’

Hamlet.

Can I have another beer? Anonymous there, an older crowd, and me.

Taxi? No, too expensive. It’ll take ten minutes to the police station if I hurry.

Malin starts walking. The walk will do me good, she thinks. The grit on the snowploughed pavement crunches under her feet. She can see bugs in front of her eyes. The gravel chips are bugs, an invasion that she has to crush with her Caterpillar boots.

She thinks about the fact that the man in the tree now has a name. That their work will be able to get started properly, and that they have to approach this with caution. What they came across out on the plain was no ordinary violence. It was something different, something worth being afraid of.

The cold was sharp against her eyes.

Sharp, cutting.

Have I got grasshoppers dancing in front of my eyes? she thinks. Unless the cold is forming crystals on the surface of my eyes. Just like yours, Ball-Bengt. Whoever you were.

11

What does this world do to a person, Tove?

I was twenty.

And we were happy, your dad and I. We were young and happy and we loved each other. The love of young people, pure and uncomplicated, clear and physical, and then there was you, our ray of sun to beat all rays of sun.

There was nothing beyond the three of us.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, apart from love the two of you. I could ignore his cars, how methodical he was, how different we were. It was like I had been given love, Tove; there was no doubt, no waiting, even though that was what everyone said, wait, take it slowly, don’t tie yourselves down, live a little first, but I had got a scent of life, from my love for you, for Janne, for our life. I was vain enough to want more of it, and I thought it would last for ever. Because do you know what, Tove? I believed in love and I still do, which is something of a miracle. But back then I believed in love in its purest, simplest form, what we could maybe call family love, cave love, where we simply warm one another because we are human beings together. The first sort of love.

We argued, of course. I longed for other things, of course. And of course we had no idea what to do with all our time. And of course I understood when he said he felt as if he were trapped in a hole in the ground, even if it was in paradise.