‘Okay, this is what we do,’ Sven says. ‘First the search of Blasvadret. Then you can talk to the boys’ parents.’
Malin nods, thinking that they’re going to need as much manpower as possible out in Blasvadret. Who knows what those nutters might do.
Then she hears Fredrik Unning’s frightened voice: ‘This will stay between us . . .’ and she thinks back to her wretched responsibility to push that line of investigation as far as she can.
‘Well, off to Blasvadret,’ Johan says, getting up.
‘If you dredge the shit properly, something always comes up,’ Borje says.
Shit? You know quite a bit about that, don’t you, Borje?
You’ve been in the shit when you lie awake next to your wife, listening to how hard it is for her to breathe, when her withering diaphragm can hardly lift her lungs.
You’ve felt it cover you, the suction pipe between your fingers at night in a dimly lit bedroom when she wants you to take care of her, not one of the nameless carers.
Yes, you know a whole lot about shit, Borje, but you also know that there are other things besides that.
In your own way you’ve been waiting for balls to fly over the fence so you can throw them back. But no one has ever laughed at you.
You’ve never had to be really, really hungry, Borje. Really lonely. Dangerously lonely. So lonely that you smash a freshly sharpened axe into your father’s head.
I drift across the plain, getting closer to Blasvadret. From up here the little cluster of houses looks like tiny black spots on an endless white canvas, the tree where I hung a smudge of ash ten kilometres or so to the west. I sink lower, see the cars, the freezing police officers, how the Murvalls have gathered together in the kitchen in Rakel’s house, hear their curses, ill-contained anger. Do you understand the principle of the pressure-cooker, the uncooled reactor that explodes? Violence can only be contained for so long, and you are treading on that fault-line. Do you imagine that four uniformed officers outside their door can hold violence in?
In the workshop, the largest, the big white-brick building.
Malin and Zacharias, that’s his name, open the door to one of the inner rooms. It’s cold in there, just ten degrees, but you can still smell the smell.
Vanity has driven you here.
Or curiosity?
Or perhaps absolution, Malin?
You will wonder why the Murvalls didn’t clean up better, and your wondering will sow seeds of doubt within you. What is this? What animal doesn’t buckle in the end?
You will see the chains hanging from the ceiling, the pulleys that help people lift heavier weights than they could otherwise lift to the roof, to the sky.
You will see clotted remnants.
Feel the smell.
And then you will start to realise.
‘Do you see that, Zeke?’
‘I see it. And I’m getting the smell as well.’
The stench of engine oil that dominated the first big room of the workshop seems to have been blown away in this inner room.
‘Light, we need more light.’
The huge sliding iron doors separating the rooms have only just slid apart, easily and well-lubricated. You don’t feel their weight, Malin thought, noting the wheel marks leading right up to the doors.
The realm of ease: a well-lubricated sliding door.
And then the windowless room. The concrete floor stained, the chains hanging motionless from the beams in the roof, but which still sound like rattlesnakes, the pulleys, neat little planets right up in the roof. Steel worktops along all the walls, shining faintly in the darkness, and then the stench, of death and blood.
‘There.’
Zeke is pointing at the wall, at the circuit-breaker.
Seconds later the room is bathed in light. Zeke and Malin see the congealed blood on the floor, on the chains, the neat rows of knives placed on the polished steel worktops.
‘Fucking hell.’
‘Get forensics in here.’
‘Okay, we’re going to back out of here very carefully.’
Malin, Zeke and Johan Jakobsson are standing by the sink in the kitchen of Adam Murvall’s house. Uniformed police officers are emptying out the contents of the drawers in the living room, the floor of which is covered with newspapers, photos, placemats and cutlery.
‘So the whole inside room of the workshop looks like a slaughterhouse? They could have done it there?’ Johan asks.
Zeke nods.
