Mons Kallentoft - Midwinter Sacrifice aka Midwinter Blood

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.

The bedroom of the flat is lit up by the arc lights brought in by the forensics team.

Sven Sjöman and Zeke look tired as they search the wardrobe. Earlier, over the phone, Sjöman had asked her why she had gone to the flat and how she had got in. ‘Just a feeling. And the door was open,’ she had said, and Sven had left it at that.

Zeke pulls on a pair of plastic gloves and reaches for the notebook again, leafs through it, reads, then puts it down once more.

Malin showed Sven and Zeke the book with its writing and maps as soon as they arrived, explained and drew connections, told them what she’d done, that Karin had already been there, gave them an outline of what must have happened, of the events leading up to this point. She noticed them getting even more tired from what she told them, that the fact that they had only just woken up was getting in the way of her words, and that they weren’t really absorbing what she was saying, even if Sven was nodding as if to agree that this must be the truth.

‘Bloody hell,’ Zeke says, turning to Malin. She’s sitting on the chair by the desk, longing for a cup of coffee.

‘Where do you think he is now?’

‘I think he’s in the forest. Somewhere out near the hunting cabin.’

‘We didn’t find him.’

‘He could be anywhere.’

‘He’s wounded. We know that. Rebecka Stenlundh said she hit him.’

A wounded animal.

‘We’ve put out a national alert,’ Sven says. ‘There’s also the possibility that he’s killed himself.’

‘Are we going to send dog-teams into the forest?’ Malin asks.

‘We’ll hold off until first thing in the morning. It’s too dark now. But the dogs can’t pick up scent in this cold, so maybe it isn’t such a great idea. The dog-handlers will know,’ Sven says. ‘We’ve got all our cars looking for him. And the only thing that suggests he’s in the forest are the marks on the maps in that notebook.’

‘That’s quite a lot,’ Malin says.

‘He wasn’t in the cabin late yesterday afternoon. If he’s injured he would have found his way somewhere at once where he can lie low. Which means that it’s highly unlikely that he’s in the cabin now.’

‘But he could be nearby.’

‘It will have to wait, Fors.’

‘Malin,’ Zeke says, ‘I agree with Sven. It’s five in the morning, and he wasn’t in the cottage as recently as early yesterday evening.’

‘Fors,’ Sven says, ‘go home and get some sleep. It would be best for everyone if you got some rest before tomorrow, and then we’ll take a thorough look at where he might be then.’

‘No, I-’

‘Malin,’ Sven says. ‘You’ve already gone too far, you have to get some rest.’

‘We’ve got to find him. I think…’

Malin lets the sentence die; they wouldn’t understand the way she’s thinking.

Instead she gets up and leaves the room.

On her way downstairs Malin bumps into Daniel Högfeldt.

‘Is Karl Murvall suspected of murdering Bengt Andersson and attacking Rebecka Stenlundh?’ As if nothing had happened.

Malin doesn’t answer.

Pushes past him down the stairs.

She’s tired and stressed, Daniel thinks, as he climbs the last steps up to the flat where two uniformed officers are on guard outside the front door.

Might be tricky getting in. But if you don’t try…

Malin didn’t seem bothered that I turned down Expressen .

But was I expecting her to be? We’re nothing more than fuck-buddies, are we? Something for the body, not the soul.

But you looked beautiful just now, Malin, when you pushed past me. So fucking beautiful and tired and exhausted.

The last step.

Daniel smiles at the uniformed officers.

‘Not a chance in hell, Högfeldt,’ the taller one says with a smile.

Sometimes when Malin thinks that sleep will be elusive it comes to her in just a minute or two.

The bed is warm beneath her in her dream.

The bed is the soft floor of a white room with transparent walls that are swaying in a warm breeze.

Outside the walls she sees them all as naked shadows: Mum, Dad, Tove, Janne. Zeke is there, and Sven Sjöman and Johan Jakobsson, Karim Akbar and Karin Johannison and Börje Svärd and his wife Anna. The Murvall brothers, Rebecka and Maria, and a fat figure lumbering with a football in his hands. Markus pops up, and Biggan and Hasse and the security guard at Collins, and Gottfrid Karlsson, Weine Andersson and Sister Hermansson, and the Ljungsbro bullies, Margaretha Svensson, Göran Kalmvik and Niklas Nyrén and lots, lots more; they’re all in the dream, like fuel for her memories, as navigation points for her consciousness. The people in the events of recent weeks are buoys anchored in an illuminated space that could be anything. And in the middle of that space beams Rakel Murvall, a black light radiating from her shadow.