Midwinter Sacrifice

38

Karin Johannison’s cheeks seem to absorb the glow from the floodlights and the brown nuances of her skin are emphasised by the wine-red fabric of her glamorous padded jacket. Not the same one she was wearing out at the tree, a different one.

Burgundy, Malin thinks, that’s how Karin would describe the colour.

Karin shakes her head as she approaches Malin, who is standing waiting by the entrance to the workshop.

‘As far as we can tell, it’s just animal blood, but it’ll take us several days to check every square centimetre. If you ask me, I think they slaughter animals in there.’

‘Recently?’

‘Most recently just a few days ago.’

‘It isn’t the season for hunting much right now.’

‘I don’t know about that sort of thing,’ Karin says.

‘But that’s never stopped some people hunting everything throughout the year.’

‘Poaching?’ Karin frowns, as if the very thought of padding about in the forest in minus thirty degrees with a rifle on her shoulder is seriously off-putting.

‘Not impossible,’ Malin says. ‘There’s money in it. When I lived in Stockholm I always used to wonder how there was so much fresh elk meat in the markets all year round.’

Karin glides away, her eyes fixed on the garage. ‘It looks like the same thing with the pick-up. But we don’t know yet.’

‘Animal blood?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks, Karin,’ Malin says, and smiles without really knowing why.

Karin takes offence.

She adjusts her cap so that her earlobes peep out, little concave earrings with three inlaid diamonds shimmering in each one.

‘Okay,’ Karin says, ‘when did we start thanking each other for just doing our jobs?’

The weapons are lined up in black bin-bags on the floor of the petrol-station shop.

Not the usual sort of shop, with hotdogs and groceries, but a hardcore garage, Malin thinks. A few dutiful chocolate bars and a rusty old cold-drinks cabinet rattling away in a corner are the only concessions made to a culture beyond engine oil, spare parts and motoring accessories.

Janne would like it.

Sporting rifles from Husqvarna.

Engravings of deer and elk, of men waiting in forest glades, flowers.

Shotguns from Smith & Wesson.

Pistols: Lugers, Colt and a SigSauer P225, standard issue for the police.

No Mausers. No air-rifles. No guns that could have been used to fire through Bengt Andersson’s window, Malin can see that much. In the gun cabinets up in the houses there were just shotguns and sporting rifles. Could the brothers have a stash somewhere else? Unless, in spite of all these weapons, they don’t actually have anything to do with the shots through the window? As they claim.

Most remarkable of all: two machine guns and a hand grenade.

It looks like an apple, Malin thinks, a misshapen apple in a mutated green colour.

‘I bet you those machine guns and the hand grenade come from the break-in at the weapons store up at Kvarn five years ago,’ Börje says. ‘Ten machine guns were stolen, and a box of grenades. I bet you anything that’s where they’re from.’

He coughs, and walks up and down the room.

‘They could start a war with all this lot,’ Zeke says.

‘Maybe they’ve already started one,’ Börje says. ‘When they strung Bengt Andersson up in that tree.’

Jakob and Elias Murvall are sitting on either side of their mother in the kitchen of her house, against a backdrop of drawers pulled open, crockery stacked up on the rag rugs.

The brothers are focused, as if they’re waiting for orders that have to be carried out, come what may. As if they’re at war, Malin thinks, just like Börje said, as if they’re about to clamber out of their trench and rush at the enemy’s lines. Rakel Murvall, their mother, like a matriarch between them, her jaw thrust forward slightly, her neck tilted back.

‘Malin and Zeke, you take it,’ Sven Sjöman had said. ‘Put them under pressure, drop a few threats.’

Uniformed officers in the hall outside, in the living room: ‘In case anything happens.’

Zeke beside Malin, opposite the trio. They agreed beforehand, the oldest trick in the book, good cop, bad cop. Zeke’s eyes, the wolf on the plain with the scent of frozen winter blood.

‘I’ll be bad cop.’

‘Okay. You’re okay with that?’

‘With you by my side, I’ll be rock-solid.’

Malin leans over the table, looking first at Jakob, then Elias, and then at their mother. ‘You’re in a great deal of trouble.’

None of them reacts, they just breathe heavily and in time, as if their lungs and hearts had the same rhythm.

Zeke goes on: ‘Five years each. Minimum. Breaking and entering, theft of weapons, possession of illegal firearms, poaching, and if we find traces of human blood then you’ll be charged with murder as well. If we find his blood.’

‘Breaking and entering? What breaking and entering?’ Elias Murvall says.

His mother: ‘Shh, not a word.’

‘You don’t think we can get you on the machine guns?’

‘Never,’ Elias whispers. ‘Never.’

Malin can see how something in Elias Murvall’s tone of voice pushes Zeke over the edge; she’s seen it before, how his floodgates seem to open and his entire being turns to action, a mix of muscles, adrenalin and the here and now. He flies round the table in a single movement. Grabs Elias Murvall by the neck and forces his head down on to the wooden tabletop, pressing so hard that his cheek turns white.

‘You fucking primitive,’ Zeke whispers. ‘I’m going to pluck the feathers from your arse and shove them right down your throat.’

‘Keep calm, Jakob,’ the mother says. ‘Keep calm.’

‘Did you kill him, you bastard, did you do it? Out there in the workshop? Like some fucking dog, then you strung him up in the tree for all to see, to show the whole of this fucking plain what happens if you mess with the Murvall family, is that how it was?’

‘Let go of me,’ Elias Murvall snarls, and Zeke presses harder. ‘Let go of me,’ he whimpers, and Zeke lets go, pulls his arms away.

That iron core, Malin thinks. You’d take the brothers on one by one or together if need be, wouldn’t you?

‘I understand,’ Malin says calmly when Zeke has returned to their side of the table. ‘If you couldn’t let go of the thought that Bengt might have raped your sister, if you wanted to do something about it, just because. People will understand.’

‘What do we care what people think?’ Jakob Murvall says.

Their mother leans back in her chair, folds her arms over her chest.

‘Not at all, Mother,’ Elias Murvall says.

‘Hasn’t it gone far enough now?’ Zeke says. ‘We’re bound to find Bengt’s blood in the pick-up and then we’ll have enough to charge you.’

‘You won’t find any of his blood there.’

‘You must have been so angry. Did you give in to it last Thursday? Was it time for revenge?’ Malin says in her gentlest voice, with her most sympathetic look in her eyes.

‘Take the boys for poaching and possession of firearms,’ the mother suddenly says. ‘But they don’t know anything about the rest of it.’

But you know, don’t you? Malin thinks.

‘But you know, don’t you?’

‘Me? I don’t know anything. But tell her about the hunting, boys, about the cabin by the lake, tell her so we can put an end to this nonsense.’