Midwinter Sacrifice (49 page)

The box under his arm. He holds it tight. Doesn’t know what might happen if he drops it.

He’s short of breath. Sees his brothers ahead of him, feels the cold and remembers that time by the canal when the two of them took care of that Turkish fucker for him, when they showed that no bastard could get one over on us, we stick together; that means you too, Maria, and that’s why we have to do this.

Kicking, kicking, kicking.

Much more than that.

We’re grown-ups. And we have to behave like grown-ups.

Elias only ten metres or so ahead of him. Adam can still feel his body, the wind in his hair. He is still sitting behind him on a Puch Dakota moped, will always be sitting there.

There’s the vehicle.

The Murvall brothers’ Range Rover has been driven right into the bank of snow, and Zeke parks close behind, taking care to block it in.

They’ve called in, a helicopter is on its way. Malin to Sven Sjöman: ‘Trust me on this, Sven.’

But it takes time to get a helicopter in the air in this sort of cold, so they have to rely on themselves, on their legs. The dog-patrols have just left the station.

They scramble over the bank of snow, following the Murvall brothers’ tracks, head in among the trees, running, landing so hard on their feet that they break the crust of the snow, stumble, run again. Their hearts are pounding in their chests, their lungs are working overtime, overdosing on the cold white air, their bodies straining forward, forward, but not even adrenalin lasts for ever and soon they are stumbling more than running, as they listen to the forest, for the brothers, for signs of activity, of life, but neither of them can hear anything.

‘Shit,’ Zeke pants. ‘How far in do you think they are?’

‘A long way,’ Malin says. ‘We’ve got to go on.’

And Malin starts running into the forest, but the crust can’t take her hard, heavy footsteps and she falls, gets up, rushes on.

Her vision narrows to a tunnel.

‘He wasn’t the one who raped your sister,’ she wants to shout through the forest.

‘Don’t believe your mother. He didn’t rape her, he’s done some repulsive things, but not that. Let all this end now, it isn’t too late, whatever you think, whatever she’s beaten into you. He’s still your brother. Do you hear? Do you hear? He’s your own brother. And he didn’t rape your sister, we know that for certain.’

The tunnel closes.

I’ve got to get there, Malin thinks.

Screams, ‘He didn’t rape your sister,’ but she’s so short of breath that she can barely hear her own voice.

Never show your weakness, never show your weakness, never . . .

Elias mutters the words to himself like a mantra, thinking of all the times he’s showed his strength, how he smashed his fist into that teacher Brogren’s face when he called him a filthy brat from Blåsvädret.

Sometimes he wonders why everything’s turned out the way it has, why they’re on the outside, and the only answer he can find is that it was like that from the start. There were all the people with jobs, with proper lives, decent houses, and it was never, ever us, and the world let us know that.

Adam behind him.

Elias stops, turns round. Thinks how well he’s carrying the weight, his brother, and how his forehead glows pink in the winter light and the cold, how his skin seems healthier.

‘Keep hold of the box, Adam.’

‘I’ve got it,’ he replies, his voice tight.

Jakob walks silently ahead of him.

His steps are determined, his shoulders are drooping in his jacket, angled to the ground.

‘Fuck,’ Adam swears. ‘This snow’s really dodgy.’

He’s gone through yet again.

‘Let’s speed up,’ he says. ‘Get this over with.’

Elias says nothing.

There’s nothing more to talk about. Just one thing to get done.

They walk past the cabin.

Pass it without stopping, carry on across the clearing into the forest, even darker, even thicker than on the other side, and there the crust of the snow is thicker, more stable, but still it gives way every now and then.

‘He’s hiding over there,’ Elias says. ‘I know he is.’

‘I can smell smoke from the stove,’ Adam says.

Adam’s fingers holding the box are starting to cramp, shaking uncontrollably against the wood. He switches arms, flexes his fingers to get rid of the cramp.

‘A fucking hole in the ground. He’s no better than an animal,’ Jakob whispers.

Then he says out loud, ‘Now it’s Maria’s turn.’

He shouts the words into the forest, but the sound dies out against the tree trunks, the forest absorbing his voice.

Go on, Malin, go on. It isn’t too late yet. The helicopter has left the airfield at Malmslätt, it’s whirling its way towards you across the plain, the dogs in the patrols are scrabbling, barking, their numbed senses searching in vain.

Like you, Malin, I think enough is enough.

But even so.

I want Karl here beside me.

I want to drift beside him.

Take him away from here with me.

How is it possible to feel so tired?

Malin’s body is full of lactic acid and, even though the brothers’ tracks lead further into the forest, the two of them have to sit down and rest on the front steps of the cabin.

The whistling of the wind.

A whisper, above the noise of their bodies.

Their heads seem to be boiling, in spite of the cold. Breath rising like smoke from a dying fire out of Zeke’s mouth.

‘Fuck, fuck,’ Zeke says, as he catches his breath. ‘If only I was as fit as Martin.’

‘We have to go on,’ Malin pants.

They get up.

Chase off, deeper into the forest.

78

Are you coming?

Are you coming to let me in?

Don’t hit me.

Is it you? Or the dead?

Whoever’s out there, tell me you’re coming in friendship. Tell me you’re coming with love.

Promise me that.

Promise me that much.

Promise.

I hear you. You aren’t here yet, but you’ll be here soon. I lie on the floor, hearing your words out there as muffled cries.

‘We’ll let him in now,’ you cry. ‘Now he can be one of us. Now he can come in.’

It feels good.

I’ve done so much. There’s none of that other blood left. Surely we can ignore the bit that’s flowing through my veins?

You’re closer now.

You’re coming with her love.

You’re coming to let me in.

The door to my hole isn’t locked.

Elias Murvall sees the smoke rising from the little pipe above the bulge in the snow. Sees in his mind’s eye how Karl is cowering in there, scared, pointless.

He must have done it.

Doubt is a weakness.

We’re going to bite him, kick him, all that.

What Mother said must be right: that he was a monster from the very start, that all three of us felt it, that he raped Maria.

Karl found this hideaway himself, when he was ten and cycled up to the forest and the cabin without telling anyone, then he had proudly showed it to them, as if they were likely to be impressed by some ruddy hole in the ground. Blackie used to lock him inside, leave him there for days with nothing but water when they were at the cabin. It made no difference what time of year. Karl protested to start with; they had to drag him there, the old man and the brothers, but then he seemed to get used to it and even made himself at home in there, turning it into his own little hovel. It was no fun shutting him in there if he was happy with it, and for a while they considered filling it in, but no one could be bothered to go to that much effort.

‘Let the little bastard keep his grave, then,’ their old man bellowed from his wheelchair, and no one protested. They knew he was still using the hole; they would sometimes see the tracks of his skis leading to the cabin. Sometimes there were no tracks, so they assumed he came from the other direction.

Elias and Jakob get closer.

The bastard. Get rid of him.

The green-painted box in Adam’s hands is heavy and he follows their footsteps steadily through the white and black landscape.

‘Do you hear that, Zeke?’

‘What?’

‘Aren’t those voices up ahead?’

‘I don’t hear any voices.’

‘But there’s someone talking, I can hear it.’

‘Don’t be daft, Fors. On we go.’

What are you saying?

You’re talking about opening the door, that much I can understand. Opening and letting in.

‘You open, and I’ll let it go.’ This from Elias.

So it’s true. I’ve succeeded. I’ve done it, something is finally being put right.

But what are you waiting for?

‘First,’ he says, ‘you chuck one in, then the others, and last of all the box.’

Malin is racing, hearing voices now, but more like whispers whose meaning is impossible to determine from the sound waves moving through the trees.

Muttering.

Millennia of history and injustice summoned down into this moment.

Is the forest really opening up? Zeke isn’t keeping up with her pace. He’s hanging back, he’s panting, she thinks he’s about to fall. Then she pushes a bit harder, running between the trees, and the snow seems to disappear beneath her feet, proximity to the truth making her drift along.

Elias Murvall takes the first grenade out of the box. He sees Jakob standing by the door of the earth cellar, the smoke from the chimney like a veil behind him, the forest standing to attention, all the trunks goading him on: Do it, do it, do it.

Kill your own brother.

He destroyed your sister.

He isn’t a human being.

But Elias hesitates.

‘For fuck’s sake, Elias,’ Jakob yells. ‘Let’s do it. Chuck them in. Chuck them in! What the fuck are we waiting for?’

Elias, whispering, ‘Yes, what the hell are we waiting for?’

‘Chuck them in. Chuck them in.’ Adam’s voice.

And as Elias pulls the pin from the first grenade Jakob opens the metre-high wooden door to the hole.

You’re opening up, I can see the light. I’m one of you now.

At last.

You’re so kind.

First an apple, because you know I like them. It rolls towards me, green in the soft grey light.

I pick up the apple, it’s cold and green, then two more apples roll across my earthen floor, together with a square box.

So kind.

I pick up another apple, it’s cool and hard with the cold.

You’re here now.

Then the door closes again and the light vanishes. Why?

You said you were going to let me in.

I wonder when the light will return? Where does all the crashing light come from?

Zeke has fallen somewhere behind her.

What can she see up ahead? Her field of vision is like a shaky hand-held camera, the image lurches back and forth and what is it she sees?

Three brothers?

What are they doing?

They’re throwing themselves down in the snow.

And then a bang, and another and another, and a flash of fire shooting out from a bulge in the snow, and she throws herself to the ground, feels the cold force its way into each of her bones.

Weapons from a weapons store.

Hand grenades.

Fuck.

He’s gone now, Elias Murvall thinks. He no longer exists. I didn’t show any weakness.

Elias gets up on all fours, the noise from the explosion ringing in his ears, his whole head full of noise, and he sees Adam and Jakob getting up, and how the door of the hideaway has been blown off, and how the snow that covered its roof has become an impossibly white dust in the air.

Whatever must it look like inside?

Let a firecracker go off in a clenched fist . . .

Stick one up the arse of some fucking cat . . .

Bloodstained snow.

The stink of sweat, burned flesh. Of blood.

Who’s that screaming? A woman?

He turns round.

Sees a woman holding a pistol approach from the edge of the forest.

Her? How the fuck did she get here so quickly?

Malin has got up, is walking, pistol drawn, towards the three men who are all clambering to their knees, getting up, putting their hands above their heads.

‘You’ve killed your own brother,’ she yells. ‘You’ve killed your own brother. You think he raped your sister but he had nothing to do with it, you bastards,’ she yells. ‘You’ve killed your own brother.’

Then Jakob Murvall walks towards her.

He yells, ‘We haven’t killed anyone. We were coming to get him, we knew you were looking for him and when we got close to the hideaway it exploded.’

Jakob Murvall smiles.

‘He didn’t rape your sister,’ Malin yells.

The smile vanishes from Jakob Murvall’s lips; now he looks offended, misled, and Malin takes a swing with the pistol, allowing it to cleave the air as fast as it can before the barrel connects with his nose.

The blood pours from Jakob Murvall’s nostrils as he staggers forward, colouring the snow dark red, and Malin sinks to her knees and screams up into the air, she screams again and again but no one hears her cries, slowly turning into a howl just as a helicopter glides in above the clearing and stifles the sound coming from her lungs. The despair and pain and the fragments of human lives that the drowned-out howl contains will echo through the forests around Hultsjön for ever.

Can you hear the rumble?

The unquiet muttering.

The rustling from the moss.

That’s the dead whispering, the stories will say. The dead, and the dead who are yet living.

Epilogue

Mantorp, Wednesday, 2 March

‘
I’m not scared any more.
’

‘
Me neither.
’

There’s no rancour. No despair, no injustice to forgive.

Here there is only a scent of apples and balls flying weightlessly through a space that never ends.

We are drifting side by side, me and Karl, the way brothers should. We don’t see the earth any more, instead we see almost everything, and we’re fine.

Rakel Murvall is sitting at the head of her kitchen table, her back to the stove, where a cabbage bake is almost done, spreading a sweet smell over the room.