Midwinter Sacrifice

74

Friday, 17 February

Linköping at midnight, on the night between Thursday and Friday, in the depths of February. The illuminated signs on the buildings in the centre struggle to match the streetlamps and lend a bit of apparent warmth to the streets where the thirsty and the lonely and the pleasure-seekers hurry between different restaurants and bars, clumsy polar explorers hunting for company.

No queues anywhere.

Too cold for that.

Malin’s hands on the wheel.

The city beyond the car windows.

The red and orange buses are idling in Trädgårdstorget; inside them sit teenagers on their way home, tired, but with expectation still in their eyes.

She turns the wheel and swings into Drottninggatan, towards the river, past the windows of the Swedish Real-Estate Agency.

The dream of a home.

Of views to wake up to.

There are dreams in this city, no matter how cold it gets. No matter what happens.

What do I dream of? Malin thinks.

Of Tove. Of Janne. Daniel.

My body can dream of him.

But what do I expect of myself? What longings do I share with those teenage girls on the bus?

The door to the block of flats opens; it isn’t even locked at night.

Malin goes cautiously up the stairs, silently, not wanting to announce her presence to anyone.

She stops outside Karl Murvall’s door.

Listens.

But the night is silent, and behind the door the floor is still covered by untouched newspapers.

She knocks.

Waits.

Then she sticks the skeleton key in the lock. Twists and turns and the lock opens with a soft click.

A stale smell, musty, but warm, the radiators turned up to stop them freezing. The conscientiousness of the engineer, the defiance of a certainty that must exist somewhere inside Karl Murvall: I’ll never live here again, so what does it matter if the radiators freeze?

But he could be here. There’s a very slight chance.

Malin stands still.

Listens.

Should I draw my pistol?

No.

Put on the lights?

I have to put on the lights.

Malin presses the switch by the bathroom door and the hall lights up. Jackets and coats hanging in a neat row under the hat-rack.

Listens.

Nothing but silence.

She goes quickly from room to room, then back to the hall.

All clear, she thinks.

She looks round the hall, pulls out the drawers of the chest. Gloves, a hat, some papers.

A wage-slip.

Fifty-seven thousand kronor.

The computer fantasy. But what does a bit of money mean?

Malin goes into the kitchen. Rifles through drawers, checks the walls, empty apart from a cuckoo-clock.

The clock says almost one. Don’t be startled if the clock chimes. Which it will do in a few minutes. The living room. Drawers full of more papers: bank statements, saved adverts, nothing that could be regarded as out of the ordinary.

Then it hits Malin: there are no wardrobes, no cupboards anywhere. Not in the hall, where they usually are in a flat like this.

Malin goes back out into the hall.

Only the painted-over signs of where they had once stood.

. . . she locked him in . . .

Malin goes into the bedroom. Flicks the switch but the room stays dark. There is a table-lamp on a desk by the window. The room faces the rear courtyard, and the light from a lamp outside casts a weak grey glow over the walls.

She turns on the table-lamp.

A dim cone of light on to a desktop covered with knife marks.

She turns round.

The sound of a car stopping in front of the building. A car door closing. She feels with her hand for her holster. The pistol, she usually hates it, but now she loves it. The front door of the building closing out in the stairwell. Malin creeps into the hall, listening to the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Then a key in a door on the floor below.

A door being closed carefully.

Malin breathes out.

Goes back to the bedroom and there she sees it, the wardrobe. It is at the foot of the bed. She switches on the wall-mounted lamp above the bed to get more light, and realises it has been set up to shine directly at the wardrobe.

A padlock on the handle.

Something locked in.

An animal?

With a practised hand Malin applies the skeleton key to the lock. It has a tricky mechanism and after three minutes of trying she feels herself breaking into a sweat.

But eventually the lock lets out a click and slips open. She carefully pulls the door towards her and looks inside.

I see you, Malin. Is it the truth you see? Does what you’re looking at make you feel safe or scared? Will you sleep better at night?

Look at him, look at me, at Rebecka, or Lotta, as she will always be to me. We are lonely.

Can your truth cure our loneliness, Malin?

Malin looks at the inside of the wardrobe, covered with wallpaper whose pattern represents a stylised tree full of green apples. On the bottom, beside a packet of plain biscuits, are various books about Æsir beliefs and psychoanalysis, a Bible, and a copy of the Koran. A black notebook.

Malin leafs through the book.

Diary entries.

Neat handwriting, letters so small that it’s hard to read.

About work at Collins.

Visits to Viveka Crafoord.

Further on in the book it’s as if something inside the writer has capsized, as if another hand is holding the pen. The writing becomes shaky, there are no dates any more, and the style is fragmented.

. . . in February it is midwinter . . .

. . . now I know, I know who has to be sacrificed . . .

And in various different places: Let me in.

At the back of the book is a detailed map. Blåsvädret, a field with a tree marked on it, close to the site where Ball-Bengt was found, and then a site in the forest, close to where the Murvalls’ cabin must be.

He sat here talking to us.

With this book behind him, with everything inside him.

The whole world, at its very worst, was right here in front of us, and it managed to maintain its mask, it managed to cling to reality as we know it.

Malin can hear all his voices roaring. Out of the wardrobe, into the room, and on, into herself. A chill passes through her, a chill far worse than anything below zero outside the window.

Fault-lines.

Within and without.

The fantasy world.

The real world.

They meet. And right up to the end his consciousness knows what is required. Plays the game. I’ll escape: the last remnant for his mind to cling to before awareness and instinct become one.

Another map.

Another tree.

That’s where Rebecka was going to be hanged, isn’t it?

Don’t lose heart, Malin. It isn’t over yet.

I see Rebecka in her bed. She’s sleeping. The operation to transplant skin to her cheeks and stomach went well; maybe she won’t be as beautiful as she was before, but she’s long since abandoned vanity anyway. She isn’t in pain. Her son is sleeping on a bunk beside her bed, and new blood is pumping through her veins.

Karl isn’t doing so well.

I know. I ought to be angry with him, because of what he did to me. But he’s lying there in his cold earthen cellar, wrapped in blankets in front of a stove where the fire is fading and I can’t see anything but that he is the loneliest person on the planet. He doesn’t even have himself, and I always had that, even when I was at my most despairing and cut off Dad’s ear.

So I can’t be angry with such loneliness, because that would mean being angry with humanity, and that, if it isn’t impossible, is no consolation whatever. Fundamentally, we’re all basically good, we mean well, don’t we?

The wind is getting cold again.

Malin.

You have to go on.

I won’t get any peace until that wind has dropped.

Malin puts the book back.

She curses herself for leaving her fingerprints on it, but it doesn’t really matter now.

Who shall I call?

Zeke?

Sven Sjöman?

Malin pulls out her mobile, calls a number. It takes four rings before anyone answers.

Karin Johannison’s voice, full of sleep.

‘Yes, this is Karin.’

‘Malin here. Sorry to disturb you.’

‘No problem, Malin. I’m a light sleeper anyway.’

‘Can you come out to a flat at 34 Tanneforsvägen? Top floor.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

Malin examines Karl Murvall’s clothes.

Finds several strands of hair.

She puts them in a freezer-bag she finds in the kitchen.

She hears another car pull up in front of the building. A door closing.

She whispers down into the stairwell, ‘Karin, up here.’

‘I’m coming.’

Malin shows Karin round the flat.

Back in the hall Karin says, ‘We’ll have to examine the wardrobe, then the rest of the flat.’

‘That’s not why I wanted to get you here first. It’s because of these. I want DNA tests on them.’

Malin holds up the bag containing the strands of hair.

‘Right away. And compare the results with the profile of Maria Murvall’s attacker.’

‘Are they Karl Murvall’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘If I head off to the lab now, the results will be ready first thing tomorrow.’

‘Thanks, Karin. As quick as that?’

‘It’s easy with perfect samples like this. We’re not completely useless, you know. Why is it so important?’

‘I don’t know, Karin. But somehow it’s definitely important.’

‘What about all this?’ Karin gestures at the rest of the flat.

‘You’ve got colleagues, haven’t you?’ Malin says. ‘Even if they’re not as sharp as you?’

As Karin pulls away from the pavement Malin calls Sven Sjöman. Passes it on. Sets in motion things that need to be set in motion.