Midwinter Sacrifice (25 page)

Börje Svärd: ‘Okay, what do you say about the rumours that you threatened anyone making an offer on houses for sale in Blåsvädret, 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 Sjöman—’

‘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 Blåsvädret,’ Sven Sjöman 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,’ Börje Svärd 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.’

‘Okay, this is what we do,’ Sven says. ‘First the search of Blåsvädret. Then you can talk to the boys’ parents.’

Malin nods, thinking that they’re going to need as much manpower as possible out in Blåsvädret. 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 Blåsvädret,’ Johan says, getting up.

‘If you dredge the shit properly, something always comes up,’ Börje says.

Shit? You know quite a bit about that, don’t you, Börje?

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, Börje, 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, Börje. 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 Blåsvädret. 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.

‘And what have you found?’ Malin asks.

‘The entire cellar is full of meat. Big white freezers. Bags marked with the year and what cut it is: mince 2001, steak 2004, deer 2005. Same thing in all three houses. And presumably in the mother’s as well.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Only a lot of rubbish. Not much paperwork. They don’t seem the sort to keep that kind of documentation.’

They are interrupted by a cry from the four-car garage belonging to Elias Murvall’s house.

‘We’ve got something here.’

The happy voices of the new recruits. Did my voice sound like that nine years ago? Malin wonders. When I had just graduated from Police Academy and was doing my first shifts on patrol, back in my home town?
Back for good?

Malin, Zeke and Johan rush out of Adam Murvall’s kitchen, sprint across the yard and out into the road, then over to the garage.

‘Here,’ one of the young uniformed officers calls, waving them over. His eyes are shining with excitement as he points to the flatbed of the Skoda pick-up.

‘The back of this looks like it’s been swimming with blood,’ he says. ‘Incredible.’

Hardly, Malin thinks, before she says, ‘Don’t touch anything.’

She doesn’t notice how the young man’s face goes from an expression of pride and happiness to the sort of itchy anger that only the arrogance of a superior officer can cause.

Börje Svärd walks with his stomach muscles clenched, feeling how their power spreads throughout his whole body.

The petrol pumps are well-maintained, he has to give these idiots that much. Nothing funny in the shop, nothing in the workshop. Well-managed and with an aura of competence. He would have been happy to leave his own car here.

Behind the shop is a small office, a few files on a shelf, a fax machine. And another door. Two strong padlocks, but not strong enough.

In the workshop Börje finds a heavy iron bar. Back to the office, where he pushes the bar behind the locks and presses down with all his weight. He hears the locks protest, and then, when he presses even harder with his chest, the metal gives way.

He looks inside the room. First he picks up the familiar smell of gun grease. Then he sees the rifles lined up against the walls.

Bloody hell, he thinks. Then it strikes him that petrol stations are always getting broken into. And if you keep weapons in your petrol station, you’re not particularly worried about that happening. Otherwise you’d keep them somewhere else.

He grins.

He can imagine the talk among the petty crooks: ‘Whatever you do, don’t touch the garage in Blåsvädret. The Murvall brothers are crazy as fuck, so watch out.’

Darkness is starting to fall over on the horizon, as a whirl of activity surrounds Malin. Uniforms, plain-clothes officers, blood, weapons, frozen meat. The family is gathered in Adam Murvall’s kitchen now that they are searching the old woman’s house.

Malin is thinking that there is something missing. But what? Then she realises. Daniel Högfeldt. He
ought
to be here.

But instead there is some other reporter whose name she doesn’t know. But the photographer is here, nose-ring and all.

Malin finds herself wanting to ask about Daniel, but that would be impossible. What reason would she have for asking?

Her mobile rings.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Tove, darling, I’ll be home soon. Some serious stuff’s happening at work today.’

‘Aren’t you going to ask if I had a good time at Dad’s last night?’

‘Of course, did you—’

‘YES!’

‘Are you at home now?’

‘Yes. I thought I might catch the bus out to Markus’s.’

Through the hubbub she hears Johan: ‘Börje’s found a load of guns down at the petrol station.’

Malin takes a deep, cold breath. ‘To Markus’s? Good . . . do you think you could get something to eat there?’

38

Karin Johannison’s cheeks seem to absorb the glow from the floodlights and the brown nuances of her skin are emphasised by the wine-red fabric of her glamorous padded jacket. Not the same one she was wearing out at the tree, a different one.

Burgundy, Malin thinks, that’s how Karin would describe the colour.

Karin shakes her head as she approaches Malin, who is standing waiting by the entrance to the workshop.

‘As far as we can tell, it’s just animal blood, but it’ll take us several days to check every square centimetre. If you ask me, I think they slaughter animals in there.’

‘Recently?’

‘Most recently just a few days ago.’

‘It isn’t the season for hunting much right now.’

‘I don’t know about that sort of thing,’ Karin says.

‘But that’s never stopped some people hunting everything throughout the year.’

‘Poaching?’ Karin frowns, as if the very thought of padding about in the forest in minus thirty degrees with a rifle on her shoulder is seriously off-putting.

‘Not impossible,’ Malin says. ‘There’s money in it. When I lived in Stockholm I always used to wonder how there was so much fresh elk meat in the markets all year round.’

Karin glides away, her eyes fixed on the garage. ‘It looks like the same thing with the pick-up. But we don’t know yet.’

‘Animal blood?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks, Karin,’ Malin says, and smiles without really knowing why.

Karin takes offence.

She adjusts her cap so that her earlobes peep out, little concave earrings with three inlaid diamonds shimmering in each one.

‘Okay,’ Karin says, ‘when did we start thanking each other for just doing our jobs?’

The weapons are lined up in black bin-bags on the floor of the petrol-station shop.