Midwinter Sacrifice (29 page)

‘I haven’t got a brother called Karl,’ Adam Murvall says, rubbing his forehead. ‘You can say we’re family if you like, and from your way of looking at it that’s probably right, but not the way I see it. He chose his own path, and we chose ours.’

‘Do you know where he works?’

‘I don’t have to answer that, do I?’

‘What do you think, Malin? Shall we wait in the pizzeria over lunch, see if he comes home to eat?’ They’re standing by the car, and Zeke is fumbling with the keys as he talks. ‘And it’s been a bloody age since I had pizza.’

‘Fine with me. Who knows, they may even know where he works.’

Inside the Conya pizzeria there is a smell of dried oregano and yeast. Not the usual woven wallpaper, but pink and green fabric and Bauhaus chairs around polished oak tables. A swarthy man with improbably clean hands takes their order.

I wonder if he’s the owner? Malin thinks. It’s no myth that immigrants have to start their own businesses if they want to make a living. What would Karim say about you? He’d probably call you a good example. Someone who hasn’t given up your responsibility for earning a living to other people, but actively trying to look after yourself.

The virtuous circle we all have to hope in. Your sons, Malin thinks, if you have any, will doubtless be among the best on their courses out at the university. Hope so.

‘What would you like to drink? It’s included in the price of lunch.’

‘Cola,’ Malin says.

‘Same here,’ Zeke says, and when he gets out his wallet to pay he pulls out his police ID.

‘Do you happen know a Karl Murvall who lives in one of the flats upstairs?’

‘No,’ the restaurant-owner says. ‘No one I know. Has he done something stupid?’

‘Not as far as we know,’ Zeke says. ‘We just want to talk to him.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Is this your place?’ Malin asks.

‘Yes, why do you ask?’

‘I just wondered.’

They sit down at a table with a view of the entrance to the flats. Five minutes later the man places two pizzas in front of them, the cheese has melted and the fat is floating in pools over the tomato sauce, ham and mushrooms.

‘Bon appétit,’ he says.

‘Great,’ Zeke says.

They eat, looking out at Tanneforsvägen, at the cars driving past, at the angry grey-white exhaust fumes falling heavily to the ground.

What would cause such a breach between people who share the same blood? Sven Sjöman wonders.

He has just finished questioning Jakob Murvall. His words have stuck in his head.

‘He lives his life. We live ours.’

‘But you’re still brothers.’

‘Brothers aren’t always brothers, are they?’

What makes people who ought to make each other happy, who ought to help each other, turn their backs on each other? Become something like enemies instead? People can fall out over any number of things: money, love, beliefs, pretty much anything. But family? Within a family? If we can’t even hold things together on a small scale, how on earth are we going to manage on a larger one?

It is half past one.

The pizza is sitting like sluggish concrete in their stomachs and they lean back against the flexible wicker backrests.

‘He’s not coming,’ Malin says. ‘We’ll have to come back tonight.’

Zeke nods. ‘I thought I might go back to the station. Write up the report from yesterday,’ he says. ‘Do you mind going out to Ljungsbro on your own to talk to Niklas Nyrén?’

‘Okay, I’ve got a few other things I want to check out,’ Malin says.

‘Do you need any help?’

‘I’m happy to go alone.’

Zeke nods. ‘Like you did with Gottfrid Karlsson in the home?’

‘Hmm.’

They wave in thanks at the restaurant-owner as they leave.

‘Pretty good pizza,’ Zeke says.

Karl Murvall is a human being, but he is at best uninteresting in the eyes of his family, that much is clear.

‘Karl?’

Elias Murvall looks at Sven Sjöman blankly.

‘Don’t talk about that jumped-up cry-baby.’

‘What did he do?’

Elias Murvall seems to consider this, to soften slightly. Then he says, ‘He’s always been different, he’s not like us.’

43

Malin’s vision clears as she gets closer to the tree in the field.

Doesn’t want to believe what her eyes are telling her.

The lonely tree in the field is no longer so alone. A green estate car with a roof-box is parked on the road, and on the snow, right where Bengt Andersson’s body must have fallen, stands a woman wearing a white sheet, no, she isn’t wearing anything, and she’s holding her arms out from her body, her eyes closed.

She doesn’t open her eyes even as Malin’s car approaches.

Not a single muscle of the woman’s face moves, and her skin is whiter than the snow, her pubic hair improbably black, and Malin stops the car and there is still no reaction from the woman.

Frozen to ice?

Dead?

Standing upright, but then Malin sees her ribcage moving gently in and out, and she seems to be swaying slightly in the wind.

Malin feels the midwinter open its door wide as she gets out of the car, how the season takes command of her senses, as if it were resetting her body and condensing the distance between impressions, thoughts and deeds. A naked woman in a field. This just gets madder and madder.

The car door slams shut, but it’s as if the noise was nothing to do with any effort she herself made.

The woman must be freezing, and Malin approaches in silence.

Closer, closer, and soon she is only a few metres from the woman, who stands with her eyes closed, breathing, holding her arms out. Her face is quite calm, and her hair, raven-black, is hanging down her back in a plait.

The plain around her.

It’s only just over a week since they found Ball-Bengt, but the police cordon has been pulled down and the snow that has fallen since then hasn’t managed to hide the evidence left by curious visitors: cigarette ends, bottles, sweet wrappers, hamburger boxes.

‘Hello!’ Malin calls.

No reaction.

‘Hello!’

Silence.

And Malin tires of the game, she knows who she has in front of her, remembers what Börje Svärd said after he and Johan Jakobsson went to see Rickard Skoglöf.

But what is she doing here?

Malin takes off her thick glove and taps the woman on the nose. Hard, twice, and the woman twitches, leaping back before yelling, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘Valkyria? Malin Fors from Linköping Police. What are you doing out here?’

‘Meditating. And now you’ve disturbed me before I was finished. Do you have any idea how fucking irritating that is?’

It’s as if Valkyria Karlsson is suddenly aware of the cold. She walks round Malin and heads towards her car. Malin follows her.

‘Why here, of all places, Valkyria?’

‘Because this is where he was found murdered. Because this place has its own special energy. You must be able to feel it too.’

‘It’s still a bit odd, don’t you think, Valkyria, you have to admit that?’

‘No, it’s not odd at all,’ Valkyria Karlsson says, getting into the green estate, a Peugeot, and wrapping a long sheepskin coat around her naked body.

‘Did you and your partner have anything to do with this?’ Stupid question, Malin thinks. But stupid questions can provoke good answers.

‘If we did, I’d hardly tell you, would I?’

Valkyria Karlsson closes the car door, and soon Malin is watching the smoke from the exhaust slowly rise into the sky as the car disappears towards the horizon.

Malin turns towards the tree.

Thirty-five metres away.

She forces the image of the naked Valkyria out of her mind, will deal with her later; now she is going to do what she came here for.

Are you here, Bengt?

And she sees the body, swollen and blue, beaten to a pulp, alone, swaying in the wind.

What did all the curious sightseers who have been out here expect to see?

A drifting spirit?

A corpse? To feel the stench of violence, of death, the way it looks in their worst nightmares?

Tourists in a chamber of horrors.

Malin carefully approaches the tree again, lets her heart-rate slow, shutting out all sound, letting the day disappear and be replaced by what happened here, trying to fix the scene in her mind: a faceless person struggling with a sleigh, chains round the body, feet, pulleys like black moons against the starry sky.

Malin is standing right where the branch broke, where Valkyria Karlsson has just been meditating.

Someone has laid a bunch of flowers on the ground, a card inside a plastic sleeve fastened to the bouquet.

Malin picks up the flowers, grey with frost, and reads: ‘What are we going to do now, with no one to fetch our balls?’ Ljungsbro IF football team.

Now you miss him.

In death comes thanks, and after thanks, fire.

Malin closes her eyes.

What happened, Bengt, where did you die? Why did you die? Who had so much hatred? If it was even hatred?

However much I shout you can’t hear me, so I’m not even going to try, Malin Fors. But I am standing here beside you, listening to your words, and I’m grateful for all your efforts, all your trouble. But is it really that important?

Is this really the best thing that you could be spending your time doing?

Her naked white body.

She can make herself immune to the cold. I could never do that.

I know who had so much hatred.

But was it hatred?

Your question is justified.

Perhaps it was despair? Loneliness? Or anger? Or curiosity? A victim? A mistake?

Or perhaps something else, something much worse.

Can I make my words reach you? One single little word? In that case I would like it to be this word.

Darkness.

The darkness that arises when the soul never gets to see the light in another person, when it withers and eventually tries to save itself.

Malin sways with the wind, reaching for the broken branch, the part that is still attached to the tree, but she can’t reach, and in the gap, the space between what she wants and what she is capable of, it becomes clear to her.

This isn’t over for you, is it?

You want something, you want to have something, and this is how you show it.

What is it you want?

What can you get out of a naked body in a tree in a field tormented by winter?

What is it that is worth such longing?

Opposite the imposing yellow-brick façade of the Cloetta chocolate paradise, on the other side of a small park, is a row of houses built in the thirties, detached houses mixed with small blocks of flats, each flat with its own front door and staircase.

Niklas Nyrén lives in the block at the end of the street, in the middle flat of three.

Malin rings once, twice, three times, but no one answers.

In the car on the way back from the tree she called him on both his mobile and home numbers; no answer, but she still wanted to try.

But it’s pointless. Not at home.

Margaretha Svensson said he worked as a travelling salesman, selling biscuits, for one of Cloetta’s subsidiary companies, Kakmästaren.

He’s probably out seeing customers, Malin thinks. And has his mobile switched off.

She left a message on the answering service.

‘Hello, this is Malin Fors of Linköping Police. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Please call me on 070-3142022 as soon as you hear this.’

On her way back to the city Malin listens to P1 on the radio.

The television personality Agneta Sjödin has written another book, about a guru in India who meant a great deal to her.

‘In his company,’ Agneta Sjödin says, ‘I became a whole person. Meeting him was like opening a door and finding myself.’

The reporter, an aggressive alpha male to judge by his voice, makes fun of Agneta without her realising.

‘And who did you find in the incense-filled room, Agneta? A life coach, maybe, India’s answer to Runar?’

Then music.

In front of her Linköping seems to be resisting the early fall of darkness, shimmering warm lights on the horizon promising security, a safe place to raise children.

And there are worse places, worse cities, Malin thinks. It’s small enough to be as safe as you could ask for, while still being big enough, developed enough to give a scent of the outside world.

I felt that scent. Was going to stay in Stockholm. That would probably have been the right size for me in the long run. But a single mother in the police living in Stockholm? With no parents, with my daughter’s father and his parents two hundred kilometres away, no real friends?

The retail outlets clustered beside Ikea. Babyland, Car-World, BR Toys. The sign to Skäggetorp. Lights taking hold of me, lights that are reluctantly forming themselves into a sense of home.

Malin and Zeke ring on Karl Murvall’s door just after seven o’clock. Up at the station she told Johan Jakobsson and Börje Svärd about her visit to the crime-scene, and how Valkyria Karlsson had been there meditating in the cold.

Then she called Tove: ‘I’m going to be late again tonight.’

‘Can Markus come over?’

‘Sure, if he’d like to.’

I don’t want to be standing here at this door, Malin thinks. I want to go home and meet my daughter’s boyfriend. Will he even dare to turn up? All he’s seen of me was in Mum and Dad’s apartment, and how friendly was I then? And maybe he’s heard Janne’s version of my personality. But what would that be like?

It’s still quiet inside the flat. No mobile number on the net to call, not even an answer-phone on his home line.

Sven Sjöman on his questioning: ‘It’s like they’re denying his existence. Whatever’s at the bottom of it, it brings out the very worst in the Murvalls. I mean, it takes a lot for a mother to deny her son. It goes against nature, doesn’t it?’

‘He could be anywhere,’ Zeke says, as they stand in the stairwell facing the door.

‘On holiday?’

Zeke throws out his arms.