Mons Kallentoft - Midwinter Sacrifice aka Midwinter Blood

Why else would you have hated your son so? The pattern runs through modern history. Malin has read about German women, raped towards the end of the war by Russian soldiers, who rejected their children. The same thing in Bosnia. And apparently also in Sweden.

Unless you loved Cornerhouse-Kalle and he treated you just like all the rest of his women? Like nothing? And that was enough to make you hate your son.

But I’m guessing the first explanation is the right one.

Unless you were tainted with evil, Rakel?

From the start.

Does such evil exist?

And money. The desire for money like a black sun over all life on this desolate, windy road.

The boy should have been allowed to have a different family, Rakel.

Then the anger and hate might have had an end; maybe your other boys could have been different. Maybe you too.

‘What an awful fucking place,’ Zeke says as they’re standing on the drive beside the house. ‘Can you see him standing here among the apple trees in the snow as a child? Freezing?’

Malin nods. ‘If there is a hell…’ she says.

Half a minute later they are knocking on the door of Rakel Murvall’s house.

They can see her in the kitchen, see her disappear into the living room.

‘She’s not going to open the door,’ Malin says.

Zeke knocks again.

‘Just a moment,’ they hear from inside the house.

The door opens and Rakel Murvall smiles at them.

‘Ah, the detectives. To what do I owe this honour?’

‘We have some questions, if you don’t mind-’

Rakel Murvall interrupts Zeke. ‘Come in, detectives. If you’re worried about my complaint, forget it. Forgive an old woman’s ill temper. Coffee?’

‘No thank you,’ Malin says.

Zeke shakes his head.

‘But do sit down.’ Rakel Murvall gestures towards the kitchen table.

They sit.

‘Where’s Karl?’ Malin says.

Rakel Murvall ignores her question.

‘He isn’t in his flat, or at Collins. And he’s been fired from his job,’ Zeke says.

‘Is he mixed up in any funny business, my son?’

Her son. She hasn’t used that word of Karl before, Malin thinks.

‘You’ve read the paper,’ Malin says, putting her hand on the copy of the Correspondent on the table. ‘You can put two and two together.’

The old woman smiles, but doesn’t answer. Then she says, ‘I’ve no idea where the lad might be.’

Malin looks out of the kitchen window. Sees a little boy standing naked in the snow and the cold, screaming with cheeks red with crying, sees him fall in the snow, waving his arms and legs, a frozen angel on the snow-draped ground.

Malin clenches her teeth.

Feels like telling Rakel Murvall that she deserves to burn in hell, that there are some things that can’t be forgiven.

In the official sense, her crimes fell under the statute of limitations long ago, but in the human, social, sense? In those terms, some things are never forgiven.

Rape.

Paedophilia.

Child abuse.

Withholding love from children.

The punishment for such things is a lifetime of shame.

And love of children. That is the first sort of love.

‘What really happened between you and Cornerhouse-Kalle, Rakel?’

Rakel turns to her, stares at Malin, and the pupils of the old woman’s eyes grow large and black, as if they were trying to convey a thousand years of female experience and torment. Then Rakel blinks, closing her eyes for a few seconds before saying, ‘That was so long ago. I can’t even remember. I’ve had so many worries over the years with the boys.’

An opening, Malin thinks, for the next question.

‘Haven’t you ever worried,’ she asks, ‘that your boys might find out that Cornerhouse-Kalle was Karl’s father?’

Rakel Murvall fills her own cup with coffee. ‘The boys have that knowledge.’

‘Have they? Have they really, Rakel? Being found out telling lies can ruin any relationship,’ Malin goes on. ‘And what power does the person who had to lie possess?’

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘You’re talking a lot of nonsense.’

‘Am I really, Rakel?’ Malin says. ‘Am I really?’

Rakel Murvall closes the front door behind them.

Sits down on the red-painted rib-backed chair in the hall, looks at the photograph on the wall, of herself surrounded by the boys in the garden when they were young, Blackie in the picture too, before the wheelchair.

Fucking little brat. You must have taken that picture.

If you disappear, disappear for good, she thinks, then maybe my secrets can remain my own.

If he disappears there will only be one or two rumours left, and I can lock those away in a dark wardrobe. He needs to go now, it’s as simple as that. Be got rid of. Anyway, I’m so tired of him existing.

She picks up the receiver.

Calls Adam.

The little lad answers, his boy’s voice high and innocent.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello, Tobias. This is Grandma. Is your daddy there?’

‘Hello, Grandma.’

Then the line goes quiet, before an older, gruffer voice says, ‘Mother?’

‘You need to come over, Adam. And bring your brothers with you. I’ve got something important to tell you.’

‘I’m coming, Mother. I’ll tell the others.’

I used to cycle up here.

The forest was mine.

You would go hunting near me sometimes. I could hear your shots all year long, and even then I wished that you would come to me.

Mother, why were you so angry?

What had I done? What have I done?

Images and warmth. I am an angel under an apple tree of biscuit crumbs. The fire is warm again. It’s nice here in my hole, but I’m lonely. But I’m not scared of loneliness. Because you can’t be scared of what you are, can you?

I can sleep a bit longer here in my darkness. Then you’ll come and get me, to let me in. And then I’ll become someone else, won’t I? When you let me in.

‘What do we do now?’

Zeke is driving towards Vreta Kloster, the church like an ancient fortress on top of a hill maybe a kilometre away, the stables of Heda Riding Club on one side of the road, open fields on the other.

Malin wanted to knock on the brothers’ doors, ask them if they knew whose son their brother Karl was, but Zeke told her to think about it.

‘If they don’t know, the old woman has a right to her secrets, Malin. We can’t just blunder into her past and stir things up.’

And she knew that Zeke was right, in spite of the possible consequences of not telling them. If they stopped considering other people, no matter who they were, how could they ever demand consideration from anyone else?

In answer to Zeke’s question: ‘We wait for Sjöman’s search teams. They’re getting ready to go through the forest, but it’s too cold for the dogs. They’re taking a couple with them anyway, apparently.’

Then: ‘Do you think we should get up there first?’

‘No, Malin. We didn’t find anything yesterday, so how would we be able to find anything today?’

‘I don’t know,’ Malin replies. ‘We could take a look at where the body was found, and the site of the other tree. Well, where it ought to be, anyway.’

‘We’ve had a car looking since last night. We would have heard if they’d found anything.’

‘Have you got any better suggestions?’

‘None at all,’ Zeke says, and does a U-turn. They head back the same way they’ve just come, past the houses in Blåsvädret, where they see the brothers heading together towards their mother’s house.

‘How long do you think it’ll take Karin to have the results of the tests on Karl Murvall?’ Malin asks. ‘I want to know if he was the one who raped Maria Murvall.’