Midwinter Sacrifice

28

‘Are you there, Bengt?’

‘I’m here, Maria. Can you see me?’

‘No, I can’t see you, but I can hear you drifting.’

‘And there was me thinking that my drifting was silent.’

‘It is. But you know, I hear things others can’t hear.’

‘Were you scared?’

‘Were you?’

‘I think so, but after a while you realise that fear is pointless, and then it fades away. That’s what it’s like, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘It isn’t too late for you, Maria. Not in the same way it is for me.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It all fits together.’

‘It smells of loneliness here. Is that you or me?’

‘You mean the smell of apples? It’s neither of us. That’s someone else.’

‘Who?’

‘Them, him, her, all of us.’

‘The one who shot at your window?’

‘I remember getting home and seeing the holes, late, so late. I knew they were bullet-holes.’

‘But who shot them?’

‘I think they all shot at me.’

‘Are there more of them?’

‘If we all stick together then there are always more of us, aren’t there, Maria?’

Zeke is standing three metres behind Karin Johannison in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room of Bengt Andersson’s flat. His jacket is done up; the heat has been turned down to the minimum by the landlord, just enough to stop the water freezing and the pipes bursting. That’s happened in several places around the city this winter, peaking over Christmas when the smart folk disappeared to Thailand and wherever else they went, and their boilers slowed down, and bang! Water damage as a result.

I suppose my insurance premium will go up now, Zeke thinks.

Karin is kneeling on the floor, leaning over the sofa, picking at a hole in the stuffing with a pair of tweezers.

Zeke can’t help it, but when she leans forward like that, seen from the back, she looks quite acceptable, not to say desirable. Well proportioned. No question.

They drove out in silence. With his whole body he left her in no doubt that he would prefer not to have any small talk. And Karin concentrated on the road, but still seemed to want to talk, as if she had been waiting for a chance to be alone with him.

The hole that Karin is digging in is in a direct line from the window. But the hole could have been made by anything.

Then Karin twists and pulls her hand, saying, ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ and then triumphantly pulls out the tweezers.

She turns round, holding the tweezers towards him, and says, ‘If I look a bit longer, I promise I’m going to find a couple more of these little beauties.’

Malin is standing in the kitchen of her flat. She tries to shake off the image of Maria Murvall on her bed in that gloomy room.

‘You and Zeke carry on looking into the Murvall angle. But if the Æsir line suddenly needs more work, we’ll shift our focus on to that.’

Karim Akbar’s voice earlier at the run-through, sounding like the whole chain leading to Maria Murvall had been his idea. Nice to be able to concentrate on one thing, though.

Sven Sjöman: ‘We’ll have to pull out the Murvall brothers’ police records. And you and Börje, Johan, you carry on with the Æsir angle. Don’t leave any rune-stone unturned. And we’ll have to talk to Bengt Andersson’s neighbours again, check if they saw or heard anything unusual, now that we know the window was fired at.’

Rubber bullets.

Karin and Zeke had found three green bullets in the sofa. Presumably one for each hole. The right size to fit a small-calibre weapon, most likely a small-bore rifle.

Rubber bullets.

Too serious to be lads messing around. But maybe not completely serious either. Probably meant to cause pain. Torment. Just as you were tormented, Bengt.

Rubber bullets.

Impossible to say what sort of weapon the bullets were fired from, according to Karin: ‘You don’t get enough of an imprint from the barrel. Rubber’s more flexible than metal.’

Malin pours a splash of red wine into the stew bubbling in front of her.

Johan Jakobsson: ‘We questioned a few Æsir fanatics in the Kinda area today. As far as we could make out, they were just harmless, shall we say historically minded individuals. That professor at the university, he must be one of the biggest media-tarts I’ve ever come across. And he looks pretty clean. His boyfriend, a Magnus Djupholm, confirms the story about the cat.’

Media-tart.

The words made Karim prick up his ears, as if he had suddenly become aware of an ailment.

And they made Malin laugh to herself.

Johan had brought copies of the national evening tabloids, Aftonbladet and Expressen, to the meeting. Nothing on the front. But whole pages devoted to the professor, big pictures, ‘authority on Old Norse rituals’, describing how a midwinter sacrifice would take place, and implying that he thought it could happen again.

Sven was silent for almost the whole meeting.

Malin stirs the stew on the stove, inhaling the smell of white pepper and bay leaves.

Their murder is disappearing from the public consciousness. New murders, new scandals involving people on television, political manoeuvres.

What’s a hanging body in a tree worth when it’s no longer ‘new’? Ball-Bengt, you’re not news any more.

The front door opening into the hall.

Tove.

‘Mum, are you home?’

‘I’m in the kitchen.’

‘You’ve made dinner? I’m starving.’

‘Beef stew.’

Tove’s cheeks rosy, beautiful, the most beautiful cheeks in the world.

‘I saw Markus. We had coffee round his.’

A big white doctors’ villa in Ramshäll. Dad a surgeon, one of the ones in white and green, his mum a doctor in the ENT clinic. Two doctors: a common combination in this city.

The phone rings.

‘Can you get that?’ Malin says.

‘No, you get it.’

Malin picks up the phone from the wall where it’s attached.

‘Malin, Dad here. How are things?’

‘Good. But cold. I’ve been watering the plants.’

‘That’s not why I’m calling. Is everything all right?’

‘I just said it was. Everything’s fine.’

‘So it’s cold up there, isn’t it? We saw on TVSverige that there are radiators bursting in Stockholm.’

‘That’s been happening here too.’

He’s got something on his mind, Malin thinks. I wonder if he’ll manage to get it out. ‘Did you want anything in particular?’

‘Well, just that I . . . No, we can talk about it another time.’

Can’t be bothered to wheedle it out of him, can’t be bothered.

‘Whatever you like, Dad.’

‘Is Tove there?’

‘She just went into the bathroom.’

‘Well, it wasn’t important. Talk to you soon, bye for now.’

Malin is left standing with the phone in her left hand. No one can end a conversation as abruptly as her father. He’s there, then he’s gone.

Tove comes back into the kitchen.

‘Who was that?’

‘Grandad. He sounded a bit odd.’

Tove sits down at the table, looks out of the window. ‘All the clothes people have to wear at this time of year make them look ugly,’ she says. ‘They all look fat.’

‘Do you know what,’ Malin says. ‘There’s enough here for Janne as well. Shall we call and ask if he wants to come over?’

A sudden desire to see him. To touch something. Feel him. Just a whim.

Tove brightens up.

‘You call him,’ Malin says, and Tove’s smile vanishes as quickly as it arrived.

‘You’ll have to do that for yourself, Mum.’

One, two, three, four, five rings. No answer.

Maybe he’s on duty at the fire station.

At the station the operator says, ‘He’s off today.’

His mobile.

Janne’s mobile, straight to the answering service: ‘Hi, you’ve reached Janne. Leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you.’

No message.

‘Couldn’t you get hold of him?’

‘No.’

‘Just the two of us, then, Mum.’

Tove is asleep in bed.

It is just after half past eleven. Malin is wide awake on the sofa.

She gets up, looks into Tove’s room, at the perfect girl’s body under the covers, the chest rising and falling.

Brothers aren’t men.

An overflow of life.

Warm, warm blood circulating. Another body in another bed.

Janne, Janne, where are you? Come here. Come back. There’s meat stew on the stove.

Can’t. I’m driving sacks of flour over a mountain in Bosnia, the road’s been mined. They need my help, here.

We need you.

Malin goes into her bedroom. Is sitting quietly on the edge of the bed when her mobile rings.

She rushes out into the hall and finds her mobile in her jacket pocket.

‘Daniel Högfeldt here.’

First anger, then resignation, then hope.

‘Have you got anything for me?’

‘No, nothing new. What do you think?’

‘I think you’d be welcome to come round, if you’d like to.’

‘Are you home?’

‘Yes. Are you coming?’

Malin looks at herself in the hall mirror, sees how the contours of her face seem to get weaker the more she looks at it.

Why resist?

She whispers down the phone, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming.’

She drinks a large glass of tequila before leaving the flat. Leaves a note on the hall floor.

Tove

They called from work. I’ve got my mobile

Mum