Midwinter Sacrifice (40 page)

She opens the new email from Karin. ‘Can you come over?’

Answer: ‘I’ll be at the lab in ten minutes.’

Karin Johannison’s office at the National Laboratory of Forensic Science has no windows, apart from a glass partition on to the corridor. The walls are covered from floor to ceiling with simple bookcases, and on the desk are stacks of files. The yellow linoleum floor is covered with a thick, red, high-quality carpet that Malin knows Karin has brought in herself. The carpet makes the whole room noble and pleasant, in spite of all the mess.

Karin is sitting behind the desk, as impossibly fresh as ever.

She invites Malin to sit down, and she settles on to the small stool by the door.

‘I’ve had the results from Birmingham,’ Karin says. ‘And I’ve compared the results with Bengt Andersson’s profile. They don’t match. It wasn’t him who raped his Maria Murvall in the forest.’

‘Was it a man or a woman?’

‘We can’t tell. But we can tell that it wasn’t him. Did you think it was?’

Malin shakes her head. ‘No, but now we know.’

‘Now we know,’ Karin says. ‘And the Murvall brothers can be told. Do you think one of them killed Bengt Andersson? And would maybe want to confess if they found out they got it wrong?’

Malin smiles.

‘Why are you smiling?’

‘You’re good at chemistry, Karin,’ Malin says. ‘But you’re not quite so good at people.’

The two women sit in silence.

‘Why couldn’t you have told me this over the phone?’ Malin asks.

‘I just wanted to tell you in person,’ Karin replies. ‘It seemed better somehow.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re so shut off sometimes, Malin, tense. And we keep bumping into each other in the course of our work. It’s no bad thing to meet like this, in a calmer setting occasionally. Don’t you think?’

As she is walking out of the lab, Malin’s mobile rings.

Malin talks as she crosses the car park, past a garage with its doors closed, towards the parking spaces over by the bushes where her Volvo is parked next to Karin’s grey, shiny Lexus.

Tove.

‘Hello, darling.’

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Are you at school?’

‘On a break between maths and English. Mum, you remember that Markus’s parents want to have you over for dinner?’

‘I remember.’

‘Can you do tonight? They’d like to do it this evening.’

Smart doctors.

They’d like to.

The same evening.

Don’t they know that other people have busy lives?

‘Okay, Tove. I can manage that. But not before seven o’clock. Tell Markus I’m looking forward to it.’

They hang up.

As Malin opens the car door she thinks, What happens when you lie to your children? When you do your children harm? Does a star go out in the sky?

62

‘Are there stones left unturned?’ Zeke asks.

‘I don’t know,’ Malin says. ‘I can’t see the whole thing properly right now. All the pieces, they don’t seem to fit together.’

The clock on the brick wall is slowly ticking towards twelve.

The office at the station is almost deserted. Zeke is sitting behind his desk, Malin on a chair next to it.

Desperate? Us?

Not desperate, but fumbling.

When Malin got back from the forensics lab they had an endless meeting where they went through the state of the investigation.

First the bad news.

The disappointment in Johan Jakobsson’s voice from his seat along one side of the table: ‘The penultimate folder on Rickard Skoglöf’s computer only contained a load of average porn,
Hustler
-style stuff. Fairly hardcore, but nothing remarkable. We’ve got one folder left with some sort of ingenious password mechanism, but we’re working on it.’

‘Let’s hope there are some secrets in there,’ Zeke said, and Malin could hear that his voice concealed the fervent wish that this whole thing would soon be over.

Then they stumbled about together. Tried to find the investigation’s voice, the common, cohesive thread. But no matter how they tried, they kept coming back to the start: the man in the tree and the people around him, the Murvalls, Maria, Rakel, Rebecka; the ritual, the heathen faith, Valkyria Karlsson, Rickard Skoglöf; and the vanishingly small chance that Jimmy Kalmvik and Joakim Svensson might have done something really stupid during the few hours when only they could provide alibis for each other.

‘We know all that,’ Sven Sjöman said. ‘The question is, can we do much more with any of it? Are there any other paths that might be more productive? Can we see any other paths?’

Silence in the room, a long, painful silence.

Then Malin said, ‘Maybe we could tell the brothers that Bengt Andersson wasn’t the person who raped their sister? Maybe they’d have something else to say if they knew that?’

‘Doubtful, Malin. Do you think they would?’ Sven said.

Malin shrugged.

‘And they’ve been released,’ Karim Akbar said. ‘We can’t bring them in again just for that, and if we go out and talk to them now without anything more concrete, they’d doubtless make allegations that we’re harassing the whole family. The last thing we need is more bad publicity.’

‘No new tip-offs from the public?’ Johan tried.

‘Nothing,’ Sven said. ‘Total silence.’

‘We could make a new request,’ Johan said. ‘Someone must know something.’

‘The media are chewing us up already,’ Karim said. ‘We’ll have to manage without another request for information at the moment. It would only lead to more bad press.’

‘The National Criminal Investigation Department?’ Sven suggested. ‘Maybe it’s time to call them in. We have to admit that we’re not making any progress.’

‘Not yet, not yet.’ Karim sounding self-confident, in spite of everything.

They had left the meeting room with a general feeling that they were all waiting for something to happen, that they could really only follow developments, wait for whoever had hung Bengt Andersson in the tree somehow to make themselves visible again.

But what if he, she or they remained invisible? If the whole thing was a one-off?

Then they were stuck.

All the voices of the investigation had fallen silent.

But Malin remembered how she had felt out by the tree: that there was something left unfinished, that something was in motion out in the forests and the snow-swept plain.

And now the clock on the brick wall is almost at twelve. As it hits, Malin says, ‘Lunch?’

‘No,’ Zeke says. ‘I’ve got choir practice.’

‘You have? At lunchtime?’

‘Yes, we’ve got a concert in the cathedral in a few weeks’ time, so we’re squeezing in some extra practice.’

‘A concert? You haven’t mentioned it. Extra practice? You sound like a hockey player.’

‘God forbid,’ Zeke says.

‘Can I tag along?’

‘To choir practice?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sure,’ Zeke says, nonplussed. ‘Sure, Malin.’

The assembly hall of the city museum smells musty, but the members of the choir seem happy enough in the large space. There are twenty-two of them today. Malin has counted them, thirteen women, nine men. Most of them are over fifty and they’re all well dressed and well ironed in typical provincial style. Coloured shirts and blouses, jackets and skirts.

The members have crowded together, standing in three rows on the stage. Behind them hangs a large tapestry with embroidered birds that seem to want to take off and drift around the room, up to the vaulted ceiling.

Malin is sitting in the back row, by the oak panelling, listening to the members tune up, giggle, chatter and laugh. Zeke is talking animatedly to a woman the same age as him, tall, with blonde hair and wearing a blue dress.

Nice, Malin thinks. Both her and the dress.

Then one woman raises her voice and says, ‘Okay, then, let’s get to work. We’ll start with “People Get Ready”.’

As if on command the members line up neatly, clear their throats one last time, and adopt the same look of concentration.

‘One, two, three.’

And then the singing, a harmonious sound, fills the hall and Malin is surprised at its gentle strength, and how beautiful it sounds when the twenty-two voices sing together as one single voice: ‘. . . you don’t need no ticket, you just get on board . . .’

Malin leans back in her chair. Closes her eyes, letting herself be embraced by the music, and when she looks up the next song has started and she can see that Zeke and the others really enjoy being up on stage, that they’re somehow united in their singing, in its simplicity.

And suddenly Malin feels an oppressive loneliness. She isn’t part of this, and she feels that this loneliness means something, that the sense of being an outsider somehow has a meaning beyond this room.

Over there is a door.

An opening into a closed room.

Intuition, Malin. Voices. What are they trying to tell me?

63

Bad deeds.

When do they start, Malin? When do they end? Do they go in circles? Are there more of them over time, or is the practice of evil constant? Is it diluted or enriched whenever a new person is born?

I can think about all this as I move over the landscape.

I look at the oak where I hung.

A lonely place. Perhaps the tree liked my company? The balls. I fetched the balls and threw them back, and they came back again and again and again.

Maria?

Did you know?

Was that the reason for your friendliness? The connection between us? Does it matter? I don’t think so.

Air beneath and above me, I reside in my own vacuum. All the dead around me whisper, Carry on, Malin, carry on.

It isn’t over yet.

I’m scared again.

Is there a way out?

There has to be.

Just ask the woman down there. The woman that black-clad person is approaching from behind, hidden behind a row of bushes.

The early evening is silent and cold and dark. The garage door refuses to open, creaking and squealing, and the sound seems to catch on the frozen air. She presses the button on the wall again; the key is where it should be and the power is on, that much is sure.

Behind her the buildings, the deep-frozen vegetation, lights in most of the windows. Almost everyone is home from work. The garage door won’t move. She’ll have to open it by hand. She’s done it once before. It’s heavy but not impossible, and she’s in a hurry.

Rustling in the bushes behind her. Maybe a bird. At this time of year? Maybe a cat? But don’t they stay indoors in this sort of cold?

She turns round and that’s when she sees it, the black shadow racing towards her, taking one two three four steps before it is on her and she flails with her arms, screaming but nothing comes out; something that tastes chemical pressed into her mouth and she tears and hits but the gloves on her hands turn her blows into caresses.

Look out of your windows.

Look at what’s happening.

He – because it must be a he? – is wearing a black balaclava and she sees the dark brown eyes, the rage and pain in his gaze, and the chemical smell is in her brain now, it’s soft and clear yet it still makes her disappear, her muscles relax and she can no longer feel her body.

She can see. But she is seeing double.

She sees the person, people standing over her. Are there several of you?

No, stop it, not like this.

But there’s no point fighting. As if everything has already happened. As if she is defeated.

The eyes.

His, hers, theirs?

They aren’t here, she thinks. The eyes are somewhere else, far away.

Sweet breath, warm, and it ought to be unfamiliar, but it isn’t.

Soon the chemical feeling reaches her eyes, then her ears. And pictures and sound are gone, the world is gone and she doesn’t know if she’s falling asleep or dying.

Not yet, she thinks. I’ve been drugged, haven’t I? His face there at home, my face.

Not yet, yet, yet, yet . . .

She is awake.

She knows that. Because her eyelids are open and her head is aching, even if it is completely dark. Or is she sleeping? Confused thoughts.

Am I dead?

Is this my grave?

I don’t want to be here. I want to go home, to my loved ones. But I’m not scared. Why aren’t I scared?

That sound must be an engine. A well-maintained engine that does its job with joy in spite of the cold. Her wrists and feet ache. It’s impossible to move them, but she can kick, tense her body in a bow and kick against the four walls of the space.

Shall I scream?

Of course. But someone, him, her, them, has taped her mouth shut, a rag between her teeth. What does it taste of? Biscuits? Apples? Oil? Dry, drier, driest.

I can fight.

Like I’ve always done.

I’m not dead. I’m in the boot of a car and I’m freezing and kicking, protesting.

Thump, thump, thump.

Can anyone hear me? Do I exist?

I hear you.

I am your friend. But I can’t do anything. At least not much.

Perhaps we can meet afterwards, when all this is over. We can drift side by side. We can like each other. Run round, round the scented apple trees in a season that is perhaps one eternal long summer.

But first: a car feeling its way forward, your body in the boot; the car stops in a deserted lay-by and you are drugged again, your kicks were too much; the car drives across the field and up into the very closest darkness.

64

Ramshäll.

The very brightest side of Linköping.

Perhaps the very finest part of the city, to which the door is closed to most people, where the most remarkable people live.

Maybe it’s the case, Malin thinks, that everyone, consciously or unconsciously, assumes the guise of importance if the opportunity arises, whether large- or small-scale.

Look, we live here!

We can afford it, we’re the kings of the 013 area-code.