Two more men in the room, one with a neatly trimmed beard, the other clean-shaven. They’re dressed in the same sort of overalls as Elias who let them in, and they have the same powerful appearance. The clean-shaven one, who looks youngest, must be Adam. He is knocking a napkin on the table as if the tabletop were a door, his eyes such a dark blue that they are almost black like his mother’s. The middle brother, Jakob, thinning hair, sitting in front of the stove, his gut showing through his overalls, looks at them with hazy eyes, as if he’s encountered thousands of police officers who wanted something from him, all of whom he’s told to go to hell.
The mother is standing by the stove. The short, thin old woman is dressed in a red skirt and grey cardigan. She turns towards Malin.
‘On Wednesdays my family gets cabbage bake.’
‘Nice,’ Zeke says.
‘What do you know about that?’ the mother says. ‘Have you ever tasted my cabbage bake?’
At the same time she points with one hand at Elias, gesturing as if to say, Sit down at the table. Now!
Several of the children lose patience, jump down from their chairs and run out of the kitchen into the living room, then up the stairs.
‘Well?’ The old woman stares at Malin, then at Zeke.
Zeke doesn’t hesitate, in fact he even smiles slightly as he tosses the words into the room: ‘We’re here on account of the murder of a Bengt Andersson. He was one of the people questioned in connection with the rape of your daughter, Maria Murvall.’
And Malin, in spite of the incident the words refer to, feels a glow inside. This is what it should be like. Zeke is entirely unbowed, heads straight to the heart of the hornets’ nest. Commands respect. I forget sometimes, but I know why I admire him.
No one round the table moves.
Jakob Murvall leans languidly across the tabletop, takes a cigarette from a packet of Blend and lights it. A baby in one of the women’s laps whimpers.
‘We don’t know anything about that,’ the woman says. ‘Do we, lads?’
The brothers round the table shake their heads.
‘Nothing.’ Elias grins. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Your sister was raped. And someone who was questioned during the investigation has been found dead,’ Zeke says.
‘What were you all doing on the night between Wednesday and Thursday last week?’ Malin asks.
‘We don’t have to tell you a fucking thing,’ Elias says, and Malin thinks that he says the words in an exaggeratedly tough voice, as if he doesn’t want to look weak in front of the others.
‘Well, yes you do, actually,’ Zeke says. ‘Your sister—’
Adam Murvall heaves himself up, throws out his arms and shouts across the table, ‘That bastard could very well have raped Maria. And now he’s dead, and that’s a fucking good thing.’
The colour of his eyes shifts from blue to black as he spits out the words.
‘Maybe she can get some peace now.’
‘Boy, sit down.’ The mother’s voice from the stove.
Now several of the babies are crying, and the women try to comfort them, and Elias Murvall pulls his brother down on to his chair.
‘That’s better,’ their mother says when silence has fallen once again. ‘I think the bake is ready now. And the potatoes.’
‘The old ?sir beliefs,’ Malin says. ‘Do you follow them?’
Scattered laughter from the adults round the table.
‘We’re proper men,’ Jakob Murvall says. ‘Not Vikings.’
‘Do you have guns in the house?’ Malin asks.
‘We’ve all got hunting rifles,’ Elias Murvall says.
‘How did you get licences for them, with your records?’
‘What, the sins of our youth? That’s a long time ago.’
‘Have you got a small-bore rifle?’
‘What guns we’ve got is none of your business.’
‘So you didn’t use a short-bore rifle to fire through the window of Bengt Andersson’s flat?’ Malin asks.
‘Has someone fired through his window?’ Elias Murvall says. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be too bothered about that now, will he?’
‘We’d like to see your gun cabinet,’ Zeke says. ‘You do keep your guns in one, I presume? And we’ve got a lot of questions. We’d like to talk to you one by one. Either here and now, or down at the station. Your decision.’
The women are all looking at me, Malin thinks. Their eyes are trying to work out what I want, as if I might try to take something away from them that deep down they don’t really want anyway, but which they would defend to the death.
‘You can call my boys in for questioning. And if you want to see the gun cabinet you’ll have to come back with a warrant,’ the old woman says. ‘But right now, the Murvall boys are going to eat, so you can leave now.’
