Midwinter Sacrifice (42 page)

‘Why? I’ve got things I want to say.’

‘But you’re saying such stupid things.’

‘Why haven’t you mentioned Åre?’

‘Oh Mum, you know why. When was I supposed to tell you? You’re hardly ever at home. You’re always working.’

No, Malin feels like shouting at Tove. No, you’re wrong, but she stops and thinks. Is it really as bad as that?

They walk on in silence, past Tinnis and the Hotel Ekoxen.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything, Mum?’ Tove asks as they pass the City Mission’s charity shop.

‘They were nice,’ Malin says. ‘Not at all what I imagined.’

‘You imagine so much about people all the time, Mum.’

67

I’m bleeding.

Something is lifting me up, away from the post and down on to a soft, hairy bed.

I’m alive.

My heart is beating.

And the black thing is everywhere, laying cloth, wool on my body and it’s warm and the black thing’s voice, voices, say, ‘He died too soon. But you, you’re going to hang the way it’s supposed to be.’

Then the trees above me, I’m moving through the forest. Am I lying on a sledge? Can I hear the sound of runners over the crust of snow? I’m tired, so tired, and it’s warm.

It’s a real warmth.

It’s in my dream and in wakefulness.

But away from the warmth.

It kills.

And I don’t want to die.

The engine sound again. I’m in a car now.

In the sound of the engine, in its persistent running is a suspicion. That my body has one more chance, that it isn’t yet too late.

I breathe.

Welcome the pain from every battered and smashed body part, the tearing of my bleeding innards.

It is in pain that I exist now. And it will help me survive.

I am drifting here.

The field lies open. Between Maspelösa, Fornåsa and Bankeberg, at the end of an unploughed road covered by just a thin layer of snow, stands a lone tree, like the one I was hanging in.

The car with the woman in the boot stops there.

I wish I could help her now.

But she must do that herself.

The black thing has to open up. It has to help me out. Then I shall be an engine. I shall explode, I shall get away, I shall live.

The black thing opens the boot, heaves my body over the edge and down on to the snow by the exhaust.

It leaves me lying there.

A tree trunk, thick, ten metres away.

The stone is covered by snow, but I still see it. Is it my hands that are free, is it my hand, that swollen red lump I see to my left?

The black thing at my side now. Whispering about blood. About sacrifice.

If I twist to the left and then grab the stone and strike at what must be its head, it might work. That could get me away.

I am an engine and I am turning the key.

Now I ignite.

I exist again and I grip the stone, and the whispering stops; now I strike, I am going to get away and I strike myself away from here. Don’t try to fend me off, I strike, I want more, my will is what sits deep, deep down, it’s brighter than the darkness can manage to blacken.

Don’t try.

I strike at the blackness, and we roll around in the snow, and cold does not exist and it gets a tight grip on me, but I explode once more and then I strike. The stone against its skull and the blackness goes limp, glides off me, on to the snow.

I crawl up on to my knees.

Open field in all directions.

I get up.

In the darkness. I have been there.

I stagger towards the horizon.

I am on my way, away.

I drift beside you as you stumble on across the plain. You will arrive somewhere, and wherever you go, I will be there to meet you.

68

Thursday, 16 February

Johnny Axelsson puts both hands on the steering-wheel, feels the vibrations of the vehicle, how the cold is making the engine run unevenly.

Early morning.

Clouds of snow are drifting in across the road from the fields and farms, in shifting, almost blinding veils.

It takes nearly fifty minutes to get from Motala to Linköping, and at this time of year it can be dangerous as well, with the uncertain state of the roads, ice that comes and goes, no matter how much they salt them.

No, best to take it cautiously. He always goes via Fornåsa, much prefers that road to the main road through Borensberg.

And you never know what’s going to come out of the forest. He’s come close to hitting deer and elk before now.

But at least the roads are straight, built as they were to be able to function as runways in case of war.

But how likely is it that war will ever come?

Unless it’s already here.

Motala. Junkie capital of Sweden.

Few if any jobs, unless you want to work in the public sector.

But Johnny Axelsson grew up in Motala, and that’s where he wants to live. So what if he has to spend a couple of hours commuting? That’s a price he’s willing to pay to live somewhere he feels at home. When the job advert from Ikea appeared in the paper he didn’t hesitate. And he didn’t when he was offered the job either. Don’t be a burden. Contribute. Do the right thing. How many of his old friends are living off benefits? Still claiming unemployment even though their jobs disappeared ten years ago. God, we’re thirty-five, how can they even bear to think about it?

Go fishing. Out hunting. Play the pools. Watch trotting races. Do a bit of carpentry on the sly.

Johnny Axelsson drives past a red farmhouse. It’s close to the road and inside he can see an elderly couple. They’re eating breakfast, and in the light of the kitchen their skin looks golden, like two fish in an aquarium, safe and sound in the middle of the plain.

Keep looking ahead, Johnny thinks, the road, that’s what you should be concentrating on.

Malin goes straight to the coffee room when she gets to the station. The coffee in the pump-action flask is fresh.

She sits on a chair at the table by the window facing the inner courtyard. Only a white mass of snow at this time of year, a little paved area with a few dubious flower-beds in the spring, summer and autumn.

There’s a magazine on the table next to her. She reaches for it.
Amelia
. An old issue.

Headline:
YOU’RE GREAT THE WAY YOU ARE
! Headline on the next page:
AMELIA’S LIPOSUCTION SPECIAL
!

Malin closes the magazine, gets up and walks off to her desk.

There’s a yellow Post-it note on top of it, like an exclamation mark among the mess of paper.

From Ebba in reception:

Malin.

Call this number. She said it was important. 013-173928.

Nothing else.

Malin takes the note and walks out to reception, but Ebba isn’t there. Sofia is sitting on her own behind the counter.

‘Have you seen Ebba?’

‘She’s in the kitchen. She went to get coffee.’

Malin finds Ebba in the kitchen, sitting at one of the round tables, leafing through a magazine.

Malin holds up the note. ‘What’s this?’

‘There was a woman who rang.’

‘I can see that from the note.’

Ebba wrinkles her nose. ‘Well, she didn’t want to say why she was calling. But it was important, I understood that much.’

‘When did she call?’

‘Just before you got in.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Yes,’ Ebba says. ‘She sounded scared. And hesitant. She was sort of whispering.’

Malin tries to identify the number through Yellow Pages.

Nothing.

It must be ex-directory, and not even they could get round that without a load of time-consuming paperwork.

She calls.

No answer, not even an answer-machine.

But a minute later her phone rings.

She picks up the receiver. Says, ‘Yes, this is Malin Fors.’

‘Daniel here. Have you got anything new for me about the Andersson investigation?’

She gets cross, then strangely calm, as if she had been wanting to hear his voice, but pushes the thought aside.

‘No.’

‘The harassment accusation, any comment?’

‘Have you suddenly turned stupid, Daniel?’

‘I’ve been away a few days. Aren’t you going to ask where?’

‘No.’ Wants to ask, doesn’t want to ask.

‘I was in Stockholm. At
Expressen
, they were after me. But I turned them down.’

‘Why?’ The question pops out of her mouth.

‘So you do care after all? Never do what they expect you to, Malin. Never.’

‘Goodbye, Daniel.’

She hangs up, then the phone rings again. Daniel? No. Unknown number on the display, silence at the other end of the line.

‘Fors here. Who is this?’

Breathing, hesitation. Maybe fear. Then a soft but anxious female voice, as if it knows it’s speaking words that are forbidden.

‘Well,’ the woman says, and Malin waits.

‘My name is Viveka Crafoord.’

‘Viveka, I—’

‘I work as a psychoanalyst here in Linköping. It’s about one of my patients.’

Malin instinctively wants to tell the woman to stop, not to say anything else; she isn’t allowed to hear confidential information about a patient, just as this woman who calls herself Viveka Crafoord isn’t allowed to reveal it.

‘I’ve been reading,’ the woman says. ‘About the case you seem to be working on, the murder of Bengt Andersson.’

‘You mentioned—’

‘I think one of my patients . . . well, there’s something you need to know.’

‘Which patient?’

‘You’ll appreciate that I can’t say.’

‘But perhaps we can talk anyway?’

‘Not like this. But come to my practice at eleven o’clock today. It’s on Drottninggatan, number 3, opposite McDonald’s. The door-code is 9490.’

Viveka Crafoord hangs up.

Malin looks at the time on her computer screen: 7.44. Three and a quarter hours.

Martini and wine and cognac. She feels bloated.

Gets up and heads towards the stairs leading down to the gym.

How long have I been walking now?

Dawn has broken but it still isn’t day. I’m moving across the fields, but I’ve got no idea where I am.

I am an open wound, but the cold means that I can’t feel my body. I put one foot in front of the other, can’t get far enough away. Am I being hunted? Has the blackness woken up? Is it close to me?

Is that a colour, the blackness coming with its car? Is that the engine of darkness?

Turn off the light.

It’s blinding me. Be careful of my eyes.

They might be the only thing that’s left of me intact.

Eyes on the road, Johnny Axelsson thinks.

Eyes. Use them carefully and you’ll arrive safely.

Out in the patches of forest now.

The open fields are nice, but the cold and wind are making the visibility worse than usual, as if the earth were breathing and its air is turning to mist when it meets the chill atmosphere.

Eyes.

A deer?

No.

But.

But what the hell is that?

Johnny Axelsson changes down the gears and slows down, flashing his lights to scare the deer away from the verge, but hell, it isn’t a deer, it’s, it’s a . . .

What is it?

The car seems stuck to the road.

A what?

A person? A naked person? Oh fuck, fuck, what does she look like?

And what’s she doing here?

Out on the plain? Like this? In the morning?

Johnny Axelsson rolls past, stops, and in his rear-view mirror he sees the woman stagger past, how she doesn’t take any notice of the car, just carries on.

Wait, he thinks.

He’s in a hurry to get to work in the Ikea warehouse, but she can’t just carry on walking like that. It’s completely wrong.

He opens the car door, his body remembers how cold it is, and he hesitates, then runs after the woman.

He puts his arm on her shoulder and she stops, turns round and her cheeks, has she burned them or is it the cold, the skin on her stomach, where is it, and how can she walk on feet like that, they’re black, as black as the currants in his garden at home?

She looks past him.

Then into his eyes.

She smiles.

Light in her eyes.

And she falls into his arms.

The twelve-kilo dumbbell doesn’t want to leave the floor no matter how hard Malin tries to lift it.

Damn, that’s heavy, and I ought to manage at least ten reps.

Johan Jakobsson beside her, came down just after her and now he is driving her on, as if he wants them to drive out the bad news together.

Johan had managed to get into the last folder in Rickard Skoglöf’s hard drive last night at home, once the children had gone to bed. The only thing in the folder had been more pictures, of Rickard Skoglöf himself and Valkyria Karlsson in various sexual positions on a large animal skin, their bodies painted with patterns resembling tribal tattoos.

‘Come on, Malin!’

She raises the dumbbell, pushes it upwards.

‘Come on, damn it!’

But it won’t work. She lets the weight fall to the floor.

A dull rattle.

‘I’m going to do a bit of running,’ she tells Johan.

The sweat is pouring from her brow. The alcohol from dinner last night is being forced out, step by step, on the treadmill.

Malin looks at herself in the mirror as she runs, the sweat dripping down her brow; how pale she is even if the exercise is making her cheeks red. Her face. The face of a thirty-three-year-old. Lips that look plumper than usual because of the workout.

In recent years her face seems to have found itself, as if the skin has settled into its proper place over her cheekbones at last. The girlish quality she used to have has gone for good, no trace of it left after the exertion of the past few weeks. She looks at the clock on the wall: 9.24.

Johan has just gone.

Time for her to shower and then head off to Viveka Crafoord.

The internal phone rings.