time off on his own.’
‘Is it Saturday he’s due home?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’ll be hard to get hold of him before that. Do you think Henrietta’s lying? That she’s only pretending not to know anything? Trying to protect him and their son?’
‘It didn’t look like it,’ Malin says. ‘I’d say not.’
‘Okay, let’s drop Kalmvik for now, Fors. Let’s brave the cold and darkness and go and take a look at the Murvalls’ cabin in the forest. It would be just as well to get a bit further with all this.’
Just as well, Malin thinks, closing her eyes and relaxing and letting the images in her head come and go as they like.
Tove on the sofa at home in the flat.
Daniel Hogfeldt, bare-chested.
Janne’s picture beside the bed.
And then the image that forces all the others aside, that expands and burns into her consciousness, an image impossible to shift: Maria Murvall on her bed in her room in the hospital, Maria Murvall among dark tree trunks one raw, damp night.
The car headlights illuminate the forest road, the trees like frozen figures from a horror film around them, deserted summer cottages turned to black outlines, stiff dreams of good days by the water; frozen now like a light grey smudge in the pale moonlight filtering through the gaps in the veils of cloud.
The directions Elias Murvall gave them earlier in his mother’s house: ‘Hultsjon, then after Ljungsbro head towards Olstorp, past the golf course and on to the Tjallmo road. After ten kilometres you’ll get to the lake; the road to the other cottages is kept cleared, then you’ll have to walk. The path is marked out. But you won’t find anything there.’
Before that Jakob Murvall, suddenly talkative, as if his mother had pressed the play button. He went on about their organised hunting expeditions, about the sale of meat, about deer-traps, about how Russian millionaires were crazy about deer-traps.
‘We’ll head out there tonight. Now. Sjoman will have to sort out a warrant.’
Zeke hesitant. ‘Can’t it wait till tomorrow? The brothers are being taken into custody, they can’t do anything.’
‘No.’
‘But I’ve got choir practice tonight, Fors.’
‘What?’
‘Okay, okay, Malin. But we’ll deal with Joakim Svensson’s and Jimmy Kalmvik’s parents first,’ and this time the hoarseness of his voice betrayed his awareness that she would tease him for months if he let choir practice with Da Capo take precedence over an entirely new lead.
The warrant went through, Sven Sjoman called to confirm.
And now Zeke has one hand on the wheel as some choir led by Kjell Lonna is blasting through ‘Swing it, Magistern!’ Choral music: the non-negotiable condition for them driving out to the cabin. Zeke is dealing with the ice, pushing the car on by accelerating, braking, accelerating. The ditches alongside the road like a white-edged abyss beside them. Malin peers out in search of animals’ glowing eyes: deer, elk, a stag that might decide to cross the road just as they approach. Few people can drive like Zeke, not with the uncompromising self-confidence of the professional driver, but with careful concentration on the goal: getting there.
They skirt round the lake, but get an idea of the frozen water continuing into the forest, narrowing to something like a river, leading right into the heart of darkness and night.
The clock on the dashboard reads 22.34. An ungodly hour for work like this.
Tove at home, never made it to Markus’s: ‘I heated up the rest of the stew. I’m fine, Mum.’
‘As soon as things calm down at work we’ll do something fun.’
Fun? Malin thinks as she sees the pile of snow ahead of them at the end of the road, how someone had forced a gap through the heap, and how reflecting patches fastened to the trees shine like stars in a line off into the distance.
What do you think is fun, Tove? It was easier when you were younger. We used to go to the swimming pool. And you’d rather go to the cinema with other people. You like shopping, but you’re not as crazy about it as other girls your age. Maybe we could go to a concert in Stockholm, you’d like that. We’ve talked about doing that before but never managed it. Or maybe go to the book fair in Gothenburg? But that’s in the autumn, isn’t it?
‘This must be the right place,’ Zeke says, switching off the engine. ‘I hope it’s not too far to walk. Fuck, it feels even colder tonight.’
The geography of evil.
What does it look like? What sort of topography?
It wasn’t far from here that traces of the attack on Maria Murvall were found, five kilometres to the west. None of her brothers knew what she was doing in the forest, no one mentioned the cabin then, the property they’ve got on loan free of charge from farmer Kvarnstrom for reasons no one wants to go into.
‘We look after it, simple as that.’
Maria in the forest.
Cut up from inside.
