Mons Kallentoft - Midwinter Sacrifice aka Midwinter Blood

‘That’ll do,’ Malin says. She doesn’t feel up to asking about the night of the murder and the fence. Somehow Karl Murvall managed to get out that night.

‘Can’t we put out an alert for him?’ Malin asks Zeke as they are heading away from Collins’ car park towards the main road. They pass a lorry whose trailer is weaving alarmingly on the road.

‘No. You have to have something concrete to go on.’

‘I have.’

‘Which you can’t reveal.’

‘It’s him.’

‘You’ve got to come up with something else, Fors. You can always take him in for questioning.’

They pull out on to the main road, swerving to avoid a black BMW patrol car driving at least forty kilometres an hour too fast.

‘But we have to find him.’

‘Do you think he’ll be at home?’

‘We can always give it a try.’

‘Is it okay if I put on some music?’

‘Whatever you want, Zeke.’

Seconds later the car is filled with a hundred German voices.

‘Ein bisschen Frieden, ein bisschen Sonne…’

‘Eurovision classic as a choral work,’ Zeke shouts. ‘Always cheers you up, doesn’t it?’

It’s half past three by the time they ring on the door of Karl Murvall’s flat on Tanneforsvägen. The varnish on the door is peeling and for the first time Malin notices that the whole stairwell could do with some work; no one seems to look after the communal areas.

No one opens.

Malin looks in through the letterbox. Newspapers and post untouched on the floor.

‘We can’t ask for a sodding search warrant either,’ Malin says. ‘I can’t refer to what Viveka Crafoord told me, and just because Rebecka Stenlundh has been attacked doesn’t mean we can march in here.’

‘Where can he be?’ Zeke wonders in a loud voice.

‘Rebecka Stenlundh mentioned a forest and a hole.’

‘You don’t mean we have to go out in the forest again?’

‘Who else could we have seen that night? It must have been him.’

‘Do you think he’s staying in the hunting cabin?’

‘Hardly. But there’s something in the forest. I just know there is.’

‘No point waiting, then,’ Zeke says.

The world shrinks in the snow. Collapses into a dark space that contains everything under the atmosphere. Packed together into a sluggish black hole.

You’re hiding secrets, Malin thinks. You dark old Östgöta forest. The snow is harder than last time, the crust is bearing my weight. Maybe the cold has slowly turned the snow into ice? An ice age created in just a few months, forever changing the vegetation, the landscape, the tone of the forest. The trees around them are rough, abandoned ancient pillars.

One foot in front of the other.

Of all the children whom no one sees, who are abandoned, whose fathers and mothers don’t care about them, who are forsaken by the world, some will always fall out, go mad, and the world that deserted them will have to take the consequences.

In Karin’s Thailand.

In Janne’s Bosnia and Rwanda.

In Stockholm.

In Linköping.

In Ljungsbro, Blåsvädret.

It’s no more complicated than that, Malin thinks. Look after those who are small, those who are weak. Show them love. There is no innate evil. Evil is created. But I still believe that there is such a thing as innate goodness. But not now, not in this forest; goodness fled from here long ago. Here there is only survival.

Aching fingers in gloves that can’t be made thick enough.

‘Fuck, it’s cold,’ Zeke says, and it feels as if Malin’s heard him say that a thousand times in the past month.

Her legs are becoming less and less willing the more darkness descends, the more the cold seeps into her body. Her toes have vanished, as well as her fingers. Not even pain is left.

The Murvall cabin lies cold and deserted. The snowfall has erased any trace of ski tracks.

Malin and Zeke stand still in front of the cabin.

Listening, but there is nothing to hear, only an odourless, silent winter forest around them.

But I feel it, I feel it, you’re close now.

I must have nodded off, the stove is cold, no burning lumps of wood. I’m freezing, have to get the fire going again, so it’s warm when they come to let me in.

My hole is my home.

Has always been my only home. The flat on Tanneforsvägen was never home. It was just rooms where I slept and thought and tried to understand.

I get the wood ready, light a match, but my fingers slip.

I’m freezing.

But it has to be warm when they come to let me in, when I’m to receive her love.

‘There’s nothing here, Fors. Listen to me.’

The clearing in front of the cabin: a completely soundless place, encircled by trees, by the forest, and an impenetrable darkness.

‘You’re wrong, Zeke.’

There’s something here. Something moving. Is it evil? The devil? I can smell something.

‘It’s going to be completely dark in five minutes. I’m going back now.’

‘Just a bit further,’ Malin says, and starts walking.

They walk perhaps four hundred metres into the dense forest before Zeke says, ‘Okay, we’re going back.’

‘Just a bit further.’

‘No.’

And Malin turns round, walks back, never sees the clump of trees fifty metres further on, where grey smoke is starting to seep out of a narrow chimney in the roof of an earthen cellar.

The engine roars as the car gets going properly, just as they are passing the golf course at Vreta Kloster.

Peculiar, Malin thinks. They leave the flags out over the winter. I’ve never noticed them before. It’s like they’ve hung them out in someone’s honour.

Then she says, ‘Let’s go and see Rakel Murvall. She knows where he is.’

‘You’re mad, Malin. You’re not going within five hundred metres of the old woman. I’ll make sure of that.’

‘She knows where he is.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘No. She’s reported you for harassment. Turning up there now would be career suicide.’

‘Shit.’ Malin bangs the dashboard. ‘Take me back to my car. It’s in the multistorey near McDonald’s.’

‘You look energetic, Mum,’ Tove says from her place on the sofa, looking up from the paperback she’s reading.

‘What are you reading?’

‘ The Wild Duck . Ibsen. A play.’

‘Isn’t it a bit odd, reading a play? Aren’t you supposed to watch them?’

‘It works if you’ve got a bit of imagination, Mum.’

The television is on: Jeopardy! Adam Alsing fat and over-familiar in a yellow suit.

How can Tove read proper literature with that on in the background?

‘Have you been out, Mum?’

‘Yep, in the forest, actually.’

‘Why?’

‘Zeke and I were looking for something.’

Tove nods, not worried about whether they found what they were looking for, and returns to her book.

He murdered Bengt Andersson. Tried to murder Rebecka Stenlundh.

Who is Karl Murvall? Where is he?

Damn Rakel Murvall.

Her sons.

A social science book is open on the table in front of Tove. The section heading is ‘The Constitution’, and it is illustrated with pictures of Göran Persson and an imam Malin has never seen before. People can be turned into anything at all. That’s it.

‘Tove. Grandad called today. You’d both be welcome to go. You and Markus, to Tenerife.’

Tove looks away from the television.

‘I don’t really want to go any more,’ she says. ‘And it would be hard to explain to Grandad that he has to play along with our lie that they were supposed to have other guests.’

‘Good grief,’ Malin says. ‘How can something so simple get so complicated?’