Closer, closer, and soon she is only a few metres from the woman, who stands with her eyes closed, breathing, holding her arms out. Her face is quite calm, and her hair, raven-black, is hanging down her back in a plait.
The plain around her.
It’s only just over a week since they found Ball-Bengt, but the police cordon has been pulled down and the snow that has fallen since then hasn’t managed to hide the evidence left by curious visitors: cigarette ends, bottles, sweet wrappers, hamburger boxes.
‘Hello!’ Malin calls.
No reaction.
‘Hello!’
Silence.
And Malin tires of the game, she knows who she has in front of her, remembers what Borje Svard said after he and Johan Jakobsson went to see Rickard Skoglof.
But what is she doing here?
Malin takes off her thick glove and taps the woman on the nose. Hard, twice, and the woman twitches, leaping back before yelling, ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Valkyria? Malin Fors from Linkoping Police. What are you doing out here?’
‘Meditating. And now you’ve disturbed me before I was finished. Do you have any idea how fucking irritating that is?’
It’s as if Valkyria Karlsson is suddenly aware of the cold. She walks round Malin and heads towards her car. Malin follows her.
‘Why here, of all places, Valkyria?’
‘Because this is where he was found murdered. Because this place has its own special energy. You must be able to feel it too.’
‘It’s still a bit odd, don’t you think, Valkyria, you have to admit that?’
‘No, it’s not odd at all,’ Valkyria Karlsson says, getting into the green estate, a Peugeot, and wrapping a long sheepskin coat around her naked body.
‘Did you and your partner have anything to do with this?’ Stupid question, Malin thinks. But stupid questions can provoke good answers.
‘If we did, I’d hardly tell you, would I?’
Valkyria Karlsson closes the car door, and soon Malin is watching the smoke from the exhaust slowly rise into the sky as the car disappears towards the horizon.
Malin turns towards the tree.
Thirty-five metres away.
She forces the image of the naked Valkyria out of her mind, will deal with her later; now she is going to do what she came here for.
Are you here, Bengt?
And she sees the body, swollen and blue, beaten to a pulp, alone, swaying in the wind.
What did all the curious sightseers who have been out here expect to see?
A drifting spirit?
A corpse? To feel the stench of violence, of death, the way it looks in their worst nightmares?
Tourists in a chamber of horrors.
Malin carefully approaches the tree again, lets her heart-rate slow, shutting out all sound, letting the day disappear and be replaced by what happened here, trying to fix the scene in her mind: a faceless person struggling with a sleigh, chains round the body, feet, pulleys like black moons against the starry sky.
Malin is standing right where the branch broke, where Valkyria Karlsson has just been meditating.
Someone has laid a bunch of flowers on the ground, a card inside a plastic sleeve fastened to the bouquet.
Malin picks up the flowers, grey with frost, and reads: ‘What are we going to do now, with no one to fetch our balls?’ Ljungsbro IF football team.
Now you miss him.
In death comes thanks, and after thanks, fire.
Malin closes her eyes.
What happened, Bengt, where did you die? Why did you die? Who had so much hatred? If it was even hatred?
