Borje Svard: ‘Okay, what do you say about the rumours that you threatened anyone making an offer on houses for sale in Blasvadret, that you threatened the estate agents?’
‘Rumours. That’s our stamping ground, and if we put in the highest bid, we get to buy, don’t we?’
‘The night between Wednesday and Thursday? I was in bed asleep next to my wife. Well, I wasn’t asleep all night, but I was there in bed, with my wife.’
‘Maria. You don’t even have the right to say her name. Got that, you fucking pig? Bengt Andersson . . . Maria . . . Ball-Bengt, that fucking abortion, she should have stayed away from him . . .’
Jakob Murvall stands up forcefully.
Then a male body collapsing, muscles losing all their strength.
‘She looked after him. She’s the gentlest, warmest person God ever blessed this fucking planet with. She was only looking after him a bit, can’t you understand that, you fucking pig? That’s what she’s like. No one can stop her. And if he thanked her by doing that in the forest, he deserved to die, and to go straight back down to hell.’
‘But you didn’t do it?’
‘What do you think, pig? What do you think?’
37
An army on the retreat, Malin thinks.
The Murvall clan is evacuating the foyer of Police Headquarters, taking their places in their vehicles, shivering in the cold.
Elias and Jakob help their mother up into the front seat of the minibus, but surely the old woman could manage on her own?
A minute ago she was standing in the entrance, a shawl round her head, eyes open so wide they threatened to fly out of their sockets.
She was shouting at Karim Akbar.
‘I’m taking my son Adam home with me.’
‘The officer in charge of the preliminary investigation—’
Karim was nonplussed by the old woman’s outburst, as sudden as it was taboo. He had been brought up to respect the elderly.
‘He’s coming home. Now.’
The rest of the family like a wall behind her, Adam’s wife at the front, the children around her, snuffling.
‘But—’
‘Well, I want to see him, at least.’
‘Mrs Murvall, your son can’t have any visitors. The officer in charge of the preliminary investigation, Sven Sjoman—’
‘The officer in charge of the preliminary investigation can go to hell. I’m seeing my boy. And that’s that.’
Then a smile that quickly became a grimace, her false teeth unnaturally white.
Defiance as theatre, as a game.
‘I’ll see what I can—’
‘You can’t do a thing, can you?’ And with that Rakel Murvall turned, raised one arm in the air and the retreat began.
The clock on the foyer wall says 14.50.
The meeting room. Too cold to open a window to remove the residual stink of menthol cigarettes.
‘Lisbeth Murvall is providing an alibi for her husband, Elias,’ Malin says.
‘They’re all giving alibis to each other,’ Zeke says. ‘One way or another.’
Johan Jakobsson: ‘And they don’t seem to have any connection to Bengt Andersson other than the fact that he was their sister’s client and figured in the investigation into her rape.’
‘We still ought to organise a search warrant for Blasvadret,’ Sven Sjoman says. ‘I want to know what they’ve got in those houses.’
‘Have we got enough for that?’ Karim Akbar, hesitant. ‘A motive, a few suspicions. That’s all we’ve got.’
‘I know what we have and haven’t got. But it’s enough.’
‘We’re only going to take a look,’ Borje Svard says. ‘It won’t be too bad. Will it?’
Only your world turned upside down, Malin thinks. Otherwise not too bad. Says, ‘Sort out the warrants.’
‘Okay,’ Karim says.
‘I want to talk to Joakim Svensson’s and Jimmy Kalmvik’s parents,’ Malin says. ‘Someone has to confirm what they were doing on Wednesday evening, and maybe we can find out more about how they used to torment Bengt Andersson.’
‘The shots,’ Zeke says. ‘We still don’t know who fired those shots.’
