Midwinter Sacrifice (28 page)

A woman?

A teenage boy? Two teenage boys?

‘Stop!’ Zeke shouts. ‘Stop!’

Malin runs after it, following the black shape, but as she runs her boots cut through the crust of the snow and she stumbles, gets up again, runs, falls, gets up, hunting, calling, ‘Stop! Stop! Come back here!’

Zeke’s voice behind her, deadly serious: ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’

Malin turns round. She sees Zeke standing on the porch in front of the cabin, holding his pistol out, taking aim at the empty darkness.

‘Hopeless,’ Malin says. ‘Whatever it was, it’s long gone now.’

Zeke lowers his weapon. Nods.

‘And it came on skis,’ he says, pointing with his torch at the narrow tracks through the snow.

41

Friday, 10 February

Tove in Malin’s arms.

How much do you weigh now?

Forty-five kilos?

A good job Mum sometimes goes to the gym, isn’t it?

Her legs ache, but at least the warmth has started to return to her feet.

They followed the tracks for two kilometres. In the meantime a storm blew up over the forests around Hultsjön and by the time they reached the end of the trail it was as good as hidden by white powder. The tracks ended at a forest road, and it was impossible to tell if there had been a vehicle parked there waiting. There was no oil on the ground. And any tyre tracks had been obliterated by the snow.

‘Swallowed up by the forest,’ Zeke said, then he made a note of their position from his mobile.

‘It’s only five kilometres. It’ll be quicker to walk back to our car than wait for the station to send one.’

Tove was asleep on the sofa when Malin got home. The television was flickering and Malin’s first thought was to wake Tove, get her to put herself to bed.

But then, as she saw the figure stretched out on the sofa, tall and slim for her age, her fine blonde hair over the cushion and her closed eyes, peaceful mouth, she wanted to feel her daughter’s weight, the burden of living love.

She had to summon all her strength to move her, and was sure Tove would wake up, but eventually she was standing there in the silent, dark living room with Tove in her arms, and now she is staggering through the hall, pushing the door to Tove’s room open with her foot.

And then down on to the bed. But Malin loses her balance because of the uneven weight, she feels its warmth glide away from her and the body tumbles on to the mattress with a soft thud.

Tove opens her eyes. ‘Mum?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I just carried you in here to bed.’

‘Oh.’ Then Tove closes her eyes and falls asleep again.

Malin goes out into the kitchen. She stops by the sink and looks at the fridge. It is rumbling in the dark, the cooler-unit dripping tiredly.

What was it you weighed, Tove?

Three thousand, two hundred and fifty-four grams.

Four kilos, five, and so on, and for every kilo of body, less dependent, less a child, more adult.

Maybe the last time I carry her like that, Malin thinks, closing her eyes and listening to the sounds of the night.

Is the phone ringing in a dream? Or in the room outside the dream?

Either way, it’s ringing, and Malin reaches out a hand to the bedside table, to where the receiver ought to be, on the other side of the vacuum where she is now, the border between sleep and waking, where everything can happen, where for a few moments nothing can be taken for granted.

‘Malin Fors.’

She manages to sound firm, but her voice is hoarse, so hoarse.

Their nocturnal walk must have found its way into her lungs, but she feels fine otherwise, her body is where it should be, her head as well.

‘Did I wake you, Malin?’

She recognises the voice, but can’t quite place it at first. Who? I hear this voice a lot, but not over the phone.

‘Malin, are you there? I’m calling between two tracks and I haven’t got long.’

The radio. Helen.

‘I’m here. Still a bit sleepy, that’s all.’

‘Then I’ll get straight to the point. Do you remember you called me about the Murvall brothers? There’s something I forgot to tell you, something you might want to know. I read in this morning’s paper that you’re holding the three brothers, but it’s not clear whether it’s in connection with the murder or not, but then I remembered: there’s a fourth brother, their half-brother. He was a bit older, a real loner; his dad was some sailor who drowned, I think. Whatever. I remember the others used to stick together, but not him.’

A fourth brother, a half-brother.

Silence like a wall.

‘Do you know what his name was?’

‘No idea. He was a little older. That’s probably why I never really think of him as belonging with the others. You never used to see him much. It was a long time ago. Maybe none of this is right. I might be mixing things up.’

‘That’s a great help,’ Malin says. ‘What would I do without you? Time to meet up over a beer soon?’

‘That would be great, but when? We both seem to work too much.’

They hang up. Malin can hear Tove out in the kitchen, and gets out of bed, feeling a sudden longing for her daughter.

Tove at the kitchen table, eating breakfast, reading the
Correspondent
.

‘Those brothers, Mum, they seem really weird,’ she says with a frown. ‘Did they do it?’

Black or white, Malin thinks.

Done or not done.

In a way Tove’s right, it’s simple, yet still so incredibly more complicated, unclear and ambiguous.

‘We don’t know.’

‘Oh well. I suppose they’ll be locked up for the guns and poaching? And the blood, was it just animal blood, as that woman doctor says here?’

‘We don’t know yet. They’re working on it in the lab.’

‘And it says you’ve questioned two teenage boys. Who are they?’

‘I can’t say, Tove. Did you have a good time at Dad’s the other night, by the way?’

‘Yes, I said I did over the phone, don’t you remember?’

‘What did you do?’

‘Markus and Dad and I had something to eat, then we watched television until we went to bed.’

Malin feels her stomach clench.

‘Markus was there?’

‘Yes, he stayed the night.’

‘STAYED THE NIGHT?’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t like we slept in the same bed or anything. You didn’t think that, did you?’

Both Tove and Janne spoke to her that afternoon. Neither of them mentioned Markus. Not that he would be staying over, not that he would be eating with them, not even that Janne was aware of his existence.

‘I didn’t even know your dad knew about Markus.’

‘Why wouldn’t he?’

‘You said he didn’t know anything.’

‘But he does now.’

‘Why hasn’t anyone told me any of this? Why didn’t you say?’

Malin can hear how ridiculous her words sound.

‘You only had to ask,’ Tove says.

Malin shakes her head.

‘Mum,’ Tove says. ‘Sometimes you’re incredibly childish.’

42

‘There’s another brother.’

From his desk, Johan Jakobsson waves a sheet of paper when he sees Malin walk into the open-plan office in Police Headquarters. Her mobile conversation with Janne is still running through her head.

‘You could have said he was going to stay over.’

Janne had only just woken up, late getting to sleep after working the nightshift. But still clear and focused.

‘What happens in my home, Malin, is my business, and if you if aren’t keeping a close enough eye on Tove that she can keep things like this secret from you, maybe you need to have a bit of a think about your priorities in life.’

‘Are you preaching morals to me?’

‘I’m going to hang up now, okay.’

‘So you mean it’s Tove’s responsibility and not yours?’

‘No, Malin. YOUR responsibility, and you’re trying to push it off on to Tove. Goodbye. Call when you’ve calmed down.’

‘National registration records,’ Johan calls. ‘I got their file from the national registration office and it says there that Rakel Murvall has four sons; her eldest is called Karl Murvall. Must be a half-brother, because it says father unknown in the register. He’s in the phone book, lives down on Tanneforsvägen.’

‘I know about him,’ Malin says. ‘We need to talk to him as soon as possible.’

‘Meeting in three minutes,’ Johan says, pointing to the door to the meeting room.

Malin wonders if the children will be outside today. Let’s hope so; isn’t it a degree or so milder today?

There are no children playing outside the nursery, instead deserted swings, climbing-frames, sandpits and slides.

Karim Akbar has joined them for the meeting, dressed in a stern grey suit, sitting next to Sven Sjöman at the head of the table.

‘So far they’ve only found blood from elk and deer,’ Sven says. ‘But they’re hard at work in the lab. Until we’re done we need to keep all our options open as far as the Murvall brothers are concerned. If nothing else, at least we’ve dug up a bit of shit.’

‘Machine guns and hand grenades are more than a bit of shit,’ Börje Svärd says.

‘Speaking of weapons,’ Sven says. ‘According to the weapons experts at the National Laboratory of Forensic Science, none of the weapons we found at the Murvalls’ could have been used to shoot rubber bullets into Bengt Andersson’s flat.’

‘Machine guns and hand grenades aren’t shit. But they’re not what we should be focusing on,’ Karim says. ‘Crime can deal with that.’

‘The question is, who did you see out in the forest?’ Sven says.

‘We don’t know,’ Malin says.

‘Whoever it was, they’ve got something to do with this,’ Zeke says.

‘Johan, tell us about the fourth brother,’ Sven says.

When Johan has told them what they know, silence settles over the table.

Questions hang in the air, until Zeke says, ‘None of the Murvalls has ever, not one single time, mentioned a half-brother. Did he grow up with them?’

‘Looks like it,’ Malin says. ‘Helen seemed to think so.’

‘Maybe he broke away,’ Johan says.

‘Some people might prefer a different sort of life to the one they offer,’ Börje adds.

‘Do we know anything else about this Karl Murvall?’ Karim wonders. ‘Do we know where he works, for instance?’

‘Not yet,’ Malin says. ‘But we’ll know by the end of the day.’

‘And we can always ask the Murvall brothers, and their charming mother,’ Zeke grins.

‘I can try,’ Sven says, and laughs.

‘What about the Æsir angle?’ Karim looks round the team expectantly. ‘Considering the crime-scene, we can’t just let that go.’

‘In all honesty,’ Johan says, ‘we’ve been busy elsewhere. But we’re definitely going to look more closely into that.’

‘Carry on as much as you can now,’ Sven says. ‘Malin and Zeke, how did you get on talking to the parents of Joakim Svensson and Jimmy Kalmvik?’

‘To their mothers,’ Malin says. ‘Joakim Svensson’s father is dead, and Göran Kalmvik works on an oil rig. We didn’t get anything new, really. It still isn’t clear if the boys have an alibi for Wednesday evening. There’s also some confusion about where Kalmvik’s father actually is.’

‘Confusion?’ Sven asks. ‘You know what I think about that.’

So Malin explains why the boys’ alibi is doubtful, that they were alone in Joakim’s flat, and that Göran Kalmvik is away, but that his wife thinks he’s still on an oil rig out in the North Sea.

‘But he’ll be home tomorrow. Early. We thought we’d try to catch him then.’

‘And Margaretha Svensson’s lover? Might he have something to say about what her son gets up to? If he’s been trying to build up a relationship?’

‘We’re going to talk to Niklas Nyrén today. We prioritised the Murvalls’ cabin last night.’

‘Good. But make the fourth Murvall brother the priority for now. I’ll talk to the family.’

‘What, Karl? He moved away to the city.’ Rakel Murvall’s voice over the phone.

Moved away to the city? It’s only ten kilometres or so, but she makes it sound like the other side of the world, Sven Sjöman thinks.

‘Nothing worth talking about,’ Rakel Murvall says and hangs up.

‘Here it is,’ Zeke says, parking the car outside the white three-storey building on Tanneforsvägen, close to the Saab factory complex. The building was probably constructed in the forties, when Saab was expanding and they were building fighter planes in their hundreds in the city. A pizzeria on the ground floor promises a Capricciosa for thirty-nine kronor, and the ICA supermarket opposite has a special offer on Classic brand coffee. The pizzeria’s yellow sign is peeling, and Malin can hardly read the name: Conya.

They dash through the chill across the broad pavement, tugging open the unlocked door into the stairwell. On the noticeboard: third floor, Andersson, Rydgren, Murvall.

No lift.

At the landing of the second floor Malin can hear her heart beat faster, and she is starting to pant, and by the time they reach the third floor she is almost having trouble catching her breath. Zeke is panting alongside her.

‘It’s always such a shock,’ he says. ‘How bloody awful stairs are.’

‘Yes, the snow yesterday was nothing compared to this.’

Murvall.

They ring the bell, hear it ring behind the door. Silence from what seems to be an empty flat. They ring again, but there’s no answer.

‘Must be at work,’ Zeke says.

‘Shall we try the neighbours?’

Rydgren.

After two rings the door is opened by an elderly man with an outsized nose and deep-set eyes, and he looks at them suspiciously.

‘I’m not interested,’ he says.

Malin holds out her police ID.

‘We’re looking for Karl Murvall. He isn’t at home. Do you happen to know where he works?’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

The man is wary.

‘Do you know—’

‘No.’

The man slams the door shut.

The only other person who happens to be at home is an elderly lady who thinks they are from meals on wheels and have brought her lunch.

One by one the brothers are brought out of their cells, taken into the interview room, and answer Sven Sjöman’s questions.