Midwinter Sacrifice (38 page)

The boom across the entrance opens and they walk out.

Farewell, prison, Malin thinks.

Duty.

How miserable it can make a place.

Karl Murvall is also Rebecka Stenlundh’s half-brother, she his half-sister.

But that isn’t my duty, Malin thinks. They’ll have to discover that for themselves, if they don’t already know. Rebecka Stenlundh would probably rather be left in peace.

58

‘Do you think Maria Murvall knew that Bengt Andersson and her half-brother had the same father? That that was why she took him on?’ Zeke’s voice is muffled by the food they are eating.

Malin takes a bite of her chorizo.

The fast-food joint at the Valla roundabout. Best sausage in the city.

The car is idling with the heater on, and behind them sit the yellow-brick council blocks and student accommodation of Ryd, quiet, as if aware of their position on the housing hierarchy; here live only people who don’t have enough dosh, short-term, or for life, unless they win the lottery.

In the other direction is the motorway, and on the far side of some thin clumps of trees the buildings of the university. How scornful they must seem to a lot of the people living in Ryd, Malin thinks. There they sit every day like images of unattainable dreams, missed opportunities, bad choices, limitations. The architecture of bitterness, perhaps.

But not for everyone. Far from everyone.

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘I don’t know,’ Malin replies. ‘Maybe she felt there was a connection. Instinctively. Or else she knew.’

‘Female intuition?’ Zeke is chuckling.

‘Well, we can’t exactly ask her,’ Malin says.

Play with a scorpion and it will sting you. Stick your hand in an earth and the badger will bite you. Tease a rattlesnake and it will bite. The same with darkness: force darkness into a corner and it will attack.

But the truth.

Which is it?

She whispers the word to herself as she and Zeke cross the yard to Rakel Murvall’s house. Behind them the sun is sinking towards the horizon; the transition between light and dark is swift and cold.

They knock.

The mother has doubtless seen them coming, thinking, Not again.

But she opens.

‘You two?’

‘We’d like to come in,’ Zeke says.

‘Surely you’ve been here quite enough already.’

Rakel Murvall moves her thin body, backs up and stops in the hall with her arms by her sides, yet still oddly dismissive. Thus far, but no further.

‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ Malin says. ‘Cornerhouse-Kalle. He was the father of your son Karl.’

Her eyes turn black, keener. ‘Where have you heard that?’

‘There are tests,’ Malin says. ‘We know.’

‘That makes Karl the half-brother of the murder victim,’ Zeke says.

‘What do you want to know? That I invented the entire story of that sodomite sailor when his ship sank? That I gave myself to Cornerhouse-Kalle in the park one night? I wasn’t the only one who did that.’

Rakel Murvall looks at Zeke with calm derision in her eyes, then she turns round. Goes into the living room and they follow her and the words crack from her mouth like the end of a whip.

‘He never knew, Kalle, that he was the boy’s father. But Karl, I had him called that so that I’d never forget where he came from.’

You, Malin thinks, you never let him forget. In your own way.

Her eyes full of coldness now. ‘What do you think it was like for me to have the boy here on my own? The sailor’s boy, he’s the sailor’s boy, they swallowed that, the chocolate hags round here.’

‘How did Karl find out?’ Zeke asks. ‘Did the boys and Blackie treat him badly?’

‘He came and sat out here with some posh necklace for my seventieth birthday. He thought he was really something, so I told him how it was, that your father, he was Cornerhouse-Kalle, that’s what I said to him. The computer expert! Pah! He was standing right where you are now.’

The old woman backs away. Raises a hand towards Malin and Zeke, waving, as if to say, Shoo, shoo, shoo.

‘If you say anything about this to the boys I’ll haunt you till you wish you’d never been born.’

She isn’t afraid of threatening the police, Malin notes. Ghosts that have to be fended off at all costs. And you’re still the one steering developments, Rakel. What does that mean?

Through her kitchen window Rakel Murvall watches the two police officers go back to their car. Sees them stepping in their own footprints. She feels her anger subside, her aggression become serious reflection. Then she goes out into the hall and picks up the phone on the little table.

59

Britta Svedlund has stood up, her eyes fixed on Joakim Svensson and Jimmy Kalmvik, who are just entering her office at Ljungsbro school. The room is vibrating with her anger and there is a thick smell of coffee and nicotine.

She must smoke in here sometimes, Malin thought when she came in a few minutes before.

When the boys first caught sight of Malin and Zeke they backed away, wanting to run, but the head’s sharp stare held them where they were, is still holding them.

Earlier, when they were waiting for Joakim and Jimmy to come to her office from their English lesson, Britta Svedlund explained the philosophy behind her teaching.

‘You have to understand that it’s impossible to help everyone. I’ve always focused on the ones, not necessarily the most talented, but the ones who really want to learn. You can make pupils want more than they imagine, but some are hopeless and I’ve stopped wasting energy on them.’

You haven’t given up on Joakim and Jimmy yet, Malin thinks as she watches Britta Svedlund take command of the boys with her look. Even though they’re leaving this spring? Even though they’re old enough to take responsibility for what they do?

‘Sit down,’ Britta says, and the two boys sink on to a couple of chairs, cowering under her voice. ‘I’ve tried my best to protect you. And look what you’ve done.’

Malin moves so the boys can see her eyes. ‘Look at me,’ she says in an ice-cold voice. ‘Enough lies. We know you fired those shots through the window of Bengt Andersson’s flat.’

‘We haven’t—’

Britta Svedlund’s voice from the other side of the table: ‘HAVE SOME MANNERS,’ and then Jimmy Kalmvik starts talking, his voice shrill, anxious, as if it has been dragged out of adolescence and shifted back to a more innocent age.

‘Yes, we used that rifle to shoot at his flat. But he wasn’t at home. We took the rifle and cycled there and then we fired the shots. It was dark and he wasn’t at home. I swear. We scarpered at once. It was really creepy.’

‘It’s true,’ Joakim Svensson says calmly. ‘And we’ve got nothing to do with all that mad shit that happened to Ball-Bengt afterwards.’

‘And when did you fire the shots?’ Malin asks.

‘Just before Christmas, a Thursday.’

‘Will we go to prison now? We’re only fifteen.’

Britta Svedlund shakes her head wearily.

‘That depends on whether you co-operate or not,’ Zeke says. ‘Tell us anything you think could be of interest to us, and I mean everything.’

‘But we don’t know anything else.’

‘We don’t know shit.’

‘So you didn’t torment Bengt after that? Things didn’t get out of hand one evening? Well?’

‘Tell us what happened,’ Malin says. ‘We need to know.’

‘But we didn’t do anything else.’

‘And the night between Wednesday and Thursday the week before last? Before Ball-Bengt was found?’

‘We’ve already told you, we were watching
Lords of Dogtown
. It’s true!’ Desperation in Joakim Svensson’s voice.

‘You can go,’ Zeke says, and Malin nods in agreement.

‘Does that mean we’re free?’ Jimmy Kalmvik’s voice, naïve.

‘It means,’ Zeke says, ‘that you’ll be hearing from us again in due course. You don’t fire shots through someone’s window without there being consequences.’

Britta Svedlund looks tired, seems to be longing for whisky and a cigarette, seems happy that the boys have left her office.

‘God knows, I’ve really tried with those two.’

‘Maybe they can learn from this,’ Malin says.

‘Let’s hope so. Are you close to arresting anyone for the murder?’

Zeke shakes his head.

‘We’re following several lines of inquiry,’ Malin says. ‘We have to look into every possibility, every little chance, however improbable it might be.’

Britta Svedlund looks out through the window. ‘What’s going to happen to the boys now?’

‘They’ll receive letters calling them in for questioning, if the lead detective thinks it worth while.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Britta Svedlund says. ‘They have to be made to realise that what they did was wrong.’

Back at Police Headquarters Karim Akbar meets them in reception.

Irritation like a cloud over his head.

‘What have you two been up to?’

‘We’ve—’

‘I know. You’ve been out to see Rakel Murvall and bullied her with questions about who she had sex with forty-five years ago.’

‘We didn’t bully anyone,’ Zeke says.

‘According to her you did. She called and made a formal complaint. And she’s going to ring “the paper”, as she put it.’

‘She’s no—’

‘Fors, how do you think this is going to look? She’ll come across as a defenceless little old lady, and we’ll be monsters.’

‘But—’

‘No buts. We’ve got nothing to go on there. We have to leave the Murvalls alone. If you, both of you, don’t stop, Jakobsson will have to take over.’

‘Shit,’ Malin whispers.

Karim moves closer to her. ‘One day of peace and quiet, Fors, that’s all I ask.’

‘Shit.’

‘Suspicions, Fors, aren’t good enough any more. Almost two weeks have passed now. We need something concrete. Not a load of crap about who is whose brother and the fact that we’re bullying an old woman in the absence of anything better.’

The door to the open-plan office opens. Sven Sjöman. Resigned look.

‘The evidence isn’t strong enough to hold the Murvall brothers for the break-in at the weapons store in Kvarn. We have to let them go.’

‘For God’s sake, they had hand grenades from there. Hand grenades!’

‘Yes, but who’s to say they didn’t buy them from someone in the underworld? Poaching and possession of illegal firearms isn’t enough for the court to issue formal arrest warrants. And they’ve confessed.’

Then a voice from behind the reception desk. ‘Call for you, Malin.’

She takes the call at her desk, the phone cold and heavy in her hand.

‘Fors here.’

‘This is Karin Johannison.’

‘Hi, Karin.’

‘I’ve just got an email from Birmingham. They haven’t managed to get anything from that sample of Maria Murvall’s clothes, it was evidently too messed up, but they’re running another test. Something completely new.’

‘Nothing? What can we hope to get from the new test?’

‘You sound tired. Did what we came up with from the small-bore rifle help at all?’

‘Yes, it pretty much means we can shut down that line of inquiry.’

‘And?’

‘Well, what can I say, Karin. Kids, or rather teenagers, left to their own devices. That’s never a good idea.’

60

‘Mum, Mum.’

Malin hears Tove calling her from the kitchen, presumes she’s finished with her maths homework. Mathematics, yuk. Mathematics must be the language of things, seeing as it has never been mine.

‘Mum, come here.’

The teenager.

The child.

The almost adult.

The adult.

All four in one person, with a desire to define her place in the world, a world that doesn’t wait for you, and only reluctantly lets you have standing room. Even if you get a good education, Tove, it isn’t certain you’ll get a job. Become a doctor, a teacher, something secure. But is there anything secure? Follow your heart. Become whatever you like, as long as it’s what you really want. Your response so far: I don’t know. Maybe write books. So anachronistic. Write scripts for computer games instead, Tove. Do anything, just don’t be in too much of a rush, see the world, wait a while before having children.

But somehow you already know all that. You’re more sensible than I ever was.

‘What is it, Tove?’

Malin settles on the sofa, turns down the television and the newsreader moves his lips without making a sound.

‘Did you call Grandad?’

Shit. ‘No, didn’t we say you were going to call?’

‘I thought you were going to call?’

‘I don’t know, but either way we have to do it now.’

‘I’ll call him,’ echoes Tove’s voice from the kitchen, and Malin hears her pick up the phone, dial the number and wait before saying, ‘Grandad, it’s Tove . . . yes, that sounds great . . . tickes . . . when? . . . the twenty-sixth? . . . well, there’s something. You see, I’ve got a boyfriend . . . Markus . . . two years older . . . and I . . . thought maybe he could come too . . . yes, to stay with you . . . to Tenerife, his parents are okay about it . . . oh, I see . . . maybe you should talk to Mum . . . MUM, MUM, GRANDAD WANTS TO TALK TO YOU.’

Malin gets up and goes out to the kitchen. The smell of tonight’s dinner is still in the air.

She takes the receiver from Tove’s hand, puts it to her ear.

‘Malin, is that you?’

He sounds upset, his voice almost falsetto.

‘What do you mean by this? That some Markus should come too? Is this your idea? You always have to abuse the slightest little bit of faith anyone shows in you. Don’t you realise that you’ve spoiled everything now, when all we wanted was to give Tove the chance to come to Tenerife . . .’

Malin holds the receiver away from her. Waits. Tove is standing beside her, expectant, but Malin shakes her head, has to prepare her for the inevitable. She sees disappointment settle over Tove’s body, her shoulders drooping.

When she puts the phone to her ear again it has gone quiet.

‘Dad, are you there? Have you finished?’

‘Malin, whatever makes you put this sort of idea in Tove’s head?’

‘Dad. She’s thirteen. Thirteen-year-old girls have boyfriends that they want to spend their free time with.’