Midwinter Sacrifice

26

‘Maria Murvall.’

Zeke rubs his fingers against the steering-wheel.

‘I knew I’d heard the name before. Shit. Me and names. She was the girl who was raped up by Hultsjön four years ago. A really nasty case.’

‘Motala Police.’

‘Right on the boundary, so they took it. They found her wandering about on a road almost ten kilometres from where it happened. Some truck-driver taking a load of shingle to a building site up in Tjällmo found her. She’d been torn to shreds, badly beaten as well.’

‘And they never caught him.’

‘No. I think it even got on to Crimewatch. They found her clothes and the place where it must have happened, but nothing else.’

Malin shuts her eyes. Listens to the sound of the engine.

A man hanging in a tree.

His concerned social worker raped four years ago. Wandering the forest.

Cornerhouse-Kalle. The debauched, mad father. A real man’s man.

And it all keeps popping up in the investigation, all mixed up, yet it still fits together, somehow.

Coincidence?

Try the theory out on Zeke.

‘Bengt Andersson. He must have come up during that investigation. If she really did care as much about him as everyone says.’

‘Must have done,’ Zeke says, pointing at a car they are overtaking. ‘I’ve been thinking about getting one of those Seats. They’re owned by Volkswagen these days.’

I know, Zeke, Malin thinks. Janne must have told me ten times or more when he got on to the subject of his cars.

‘Isn’t the car you’ve got now good enough?’

‘Murvall,’ Zeke says. ‘Isn’t that name familiar for some other reason as well?’

Malin shakes her head.

‘Me and names, Malin,’ Zeke says.

‘I’ll call Sjöman and ask him to order over the case files from Motala Police. Nordström there will get it sorted at once.’

Just as they are turning into Police Headquarters, the third social worker on the list calls, the one who took over after Maria Murvall.

‘It’s awful, what’s happened. Dreadful. Bengt Andersson was depressed, withdrawn. At one meeting he just mumbled, “What does keeping clean matter? What does keeping clean matter?” If I’m honest, I never drew any connection to the rape. But perhaps there was a link? But the rapist? Bengt Andersson? He wasn’t that sort of person. A woman can tell.’

Malin gets out of the car, her face forming an involuntary grimace as the cold hits her skin.

‘At any rate, I never got as close to him as Maria Murvall. She evidently cared about him outside her work as well, she got him to pull himself together. Almost like a big sister, as I understand it.’

They walk into the station.

Sjöman is standing at Malin’s desk, waving a bundle of fax paper in the air.

Their colleague in Motala evidently hadn’t needed to be asked twice.

Sven Sjöman is talking in a strained voice. Malin and Zeke are standing beside him. Malin wants to tell him to calm down, to think of his heart.

‘Bengt Andersson was one of the people the Motala force interviewed in connection with the rape of Maria Murvall. He had no alibi for that night, but none of the evidence found at the scene, nor anything else, ever pointed to him. He was just one of twenty-five of Maria’s clients who were questioned.

‘It’s pretty grim reading,’ Sjöman says, handing the papers to Zeke.

‘Reality is always worse than fiction,’ Zeke says.

‘She was, or rather is, the sister of the Murvall brothers,’ Sjöman goes on. ‘A gang of nutters out on the plain who were always causing trouble. Even if that was a long time ago now.’

‘The Murvalls! I knew it,’ Zeke says.

‘Must have been before my time,’ Malin says.

‘Tough bastards,’ Zeke says. ‘Really nasty.’

‘Evidently they found clothes in the forest with traces of DNA on them, but not enough to put together a profile.’

‘And on her body?’

‘It was raining that night,’ Sjöman says. ‘Everything got washed away, and evidently she was raped with a rough branch. She was scratched to hell, badly cut internally, it says here. They never worked out if she was penetrated any other way as well. There was no means of confirming it.’

Malin can almost feel the pain.

She raises her palms towards Sven. Thinks, That’s enough.

Maria Murvall. The angel of the lonely. What a lovers’ tryst you ended up having.

Malin can hear the words inside her. Wants to beat herself up, not be cynical now. Fors, don’t be cynical, never be cynical . . . Maybe I am already? Cynical?

‘She was never the same again,’ Sjöman continues. ‘According to the last notes, before the files were archived, she ended up in some sort of psychotic state. Apparently she’s in the secure unit at Vadstena Hospital. That’s the address given here, anyway.’

‘Have we checked?’ Malin asks.

‘Not yet, but that’s easily done,’ Zeke says.

‘Tell them it’s urgent police business if some doctor starts making a fuss.’

‘And we’ve had a message from Karin,’ Sven says. ‘She should have something for us later this afternoon about the holes in the glass.’

‘Good. I’m sure she’ll call when she’s done. What about the Old Norse angle?’ Malin asks.

‘Börje and Johan are working on it. They spoke to a Rickard Skoglöf and his girlfriend Valkyria Karlsson while you were down in Jönköping. They’re still following that angle.’

‘Did they get anything from those two?’

‘You never know,’ Sjöman says. ‘If you listen carefully, people may well say more than they think they are. We’re taking a closer look at them now.’

A woman doctor’s voice on the other end of the line.

‘Yes, we’ve got a Maria Murvall here. Yes, you can see her, but preferably no men, and as few people as possible. Oh, you’ll be coming in person, that sounds good.’

Then a long pause.

‘Just don’t expect Maria to say anything.’