Midwinter Sacrifice

Unless?

Instead this: ‘Why do you think someone would want to hang Bengt Andersson in a tree in the middle of the Ostgota plain in the coldest winter in living memory?

‘Why, Maria? Didn’t he have enough to put up with as it was?

‘And who shot through his window?’

Maria shuts her eyes, opens them again. She breathes, resigned, as if breathing or not breathing had long ago lost their meaning. As if all that makes no difference at all.

Are you trying to comfort me?

What can you see that no one else sees, Maria? What can you hear?

‘Nice posters,’ Malin says before leaving the room.

In the corridor Malin stops the care assistant who is passing with a pile of orange handtowels in her arms.

‘Those posters on her walls, they don’t seem to belong here. Did her brothers put them up?’

‘Yes. I suppose they think they’ll remind her of home.’

‘Are her brothers here often?’

‘Just one of them. The youngest one, Adam. He comes every now and then, seems to feel guilty somehow that she’s here.’

‘Dr Niima said that more than one brother comes.’

‘No, just one. I’m sure.’

‘Did they get on particularly well?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe, seeing as he’s the one who visits. There was another one here once, but he couldn’t handle going into her room. He said it was too claustrophobic, that he couldn’t do it. He said it was just like a wardrobe, those were his exact words. Then he left.’

28

‘Are you there, Bengt?’

‘I’m here, Maria. Can you see me?’

‘No, I can’t see you, but I can hear you drifting.’

‘And there was me thinking that my drifting was silent.’

‘It is. But you know, I hear things others can’t hear.’

‘Were you scared?’

‘Were you?’

‘I think so, but after a while you realise that fear is pointless, and then it fades away. That’s what it’s like, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘It isn’t too late for you, Maria. Not in the same way it is for me.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It all fits together.’

‘It smells of loneliness here. Is that you or me?’

‘You mean the smell of apples? It’s neither of us. That’s someone else.’

‘Who?’

‘Them, him, her, all of us.’

‘The one who shot at your window?’

‘I remember getting home and seeing the holes, late, so late. I knew they were bullet- holes.’

‘But who shot them?’

‘I think they all shot at me.’

‘Are there more of them?’

‘If we all stick together then there are always more of us, aren’t there, Maria?’

Zeke is standing three metres behind Karin Johannison in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room of Bengt Andersson’s flat. His jacket is done up; the heat has been turned down to the minimum by the landlord, just enough to stop the water freezing and the pipes bursting. That’s happened in several places around the city this winter, peaking over Christmas when the smart folk disappeared to Thailand and wherever else they went, and their boilers slowed down, and bang! Water damage as a result.

I suppose my insurance premium will go up now, Zeke thinks.

Karin is kneeling on the floor, leaning over the sofa, picking at a hole in the stuffing with a pair of tweezers.