Mons Kallentoft: Midwinter Sacrifice aka Midwinter Blood

‘Do you think he did?’

‘No, but I want to know. I think she’s deceiving us again. I just don’t know how. But I know that she’d never have let us in if she didn’t have something to gain from it herself. She’s still directing this. And she’ll grasp at any straw to protect what she thinks of as hers.’

Malin takes a deep breath.

‘And to preserve her secrets.’

Adam, Elias and Jakob Murvall are sitting round the table in their mother’s kitchen. Sipping cups of freshly brewed coffee, eating biscuits their mother has just warmed in the oven after getting them out of the freezer.

‘How are the biscuits, boys?’

Rakel Murvall is standing by the stove, with the Correspondent in her hand.

Appreciative noises from the table, and they listen to what their mother goes on to tell them, what she didn’t want to say until they had sat down and been given some coffee.

‘Martinsson and Fors,’ she says. ‘They’ve just been here, asking after Karl. If it wasn’t him who tortured and forced himself upon that girl in the paper, the one they found by the side of the road, why would they have come out here? What with the complaint of harassment I made and everything? Why would they risk it?’

She holds up the Correspondent to the boys.

Lets them read the headline, see the picture of the road.

‘The police are looking for Karl. And it says in the paper that they found the girl with exactly the same injuries as Maria. And if you look on the computer you’ll see that the police raided his flat last night.’

‘So it was him who took Maria in the forest?’ Adam Murvall spits out the words.

‘Who else could it have been?’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘He’s missing now. It must have been him, this was done the same way. Exactly the same way.’

‘His own sister?’

‘The bastard.’

‘Monster. He’s a monster. Just like he always was.’

‘But why would he do that?’ Doubt in Elias Murvall’s voice.

‘And why do we hate him so much? Have you ever wondered about that?’ Rakel pauses, then continues in a lower voice: ‘He was a monster right from the start, never forget that. And he hated her. Because she was one of us, and he wasn’t. Because he’s mad. You know yourselves how he used to hide away in the forest. And that hole of his is only five kilometres or so from where Maria was attacked, so it must have been him. It all fits.’

‘Five kilometres is a long way in the forest, Mother,’ Elias says. ‘We may have had suspicions about him before now, but even so, Mother.’

‘It all fits, Elias. He raped your own sister in the forest as if she were nothing. He destroyed her.’

‘Mother’s right, Elias,’ Adam says calmly, then takes a sip of his coffee.

‘It makes sense,’ Jakob says. ‘It all makes sense.’

‘Now you’ll do what’s expected of you, boys. For your sister. Won’t you, Elias? Boys?’

‘But what if the police are wrong?’

‘The cops are often wrong, Elias. But not this time, not this time. Stop arguing. What’s wrong with you, are you on his side or something?’

Rakel Murvall waves the paper in the air.

‘Are you on his side? Who else could it be? The whole thing fits. You have to give your sister some peace. Maybe she could come back if only she knew that the person who hurt her is gone.’

‘They’ll catch us, Mother, they’re going to catch us,’ Elias says. ‘And there are limits to what can be done.’

‘No there aren’t, boy,’ Rakel Murvall says. ‘There’s more sense in the henhouse than in that police station. And you know where he is. You’ll see, if you just do as I say. Listen…’

The oak on the plain where Bengt Andersson was found hanging would have looked like any other isolated tree, were it not for the broken branches.

But the oak will always be associated with what happened in that coldest of Februaries. In the spring the farmer will cut down the tree, doesn’t want to see any more flowers on the ground, any more curious visitors, any more meditating women. He will dig out all the roots he can find, not stopping until he knows for sure that no trace of the oak is left in the ground. But deep beneath the surface there will be a piece of root, and that root will grow and a new tree will spring up on the plain, a tree that will whisper the names of Ball-Bengt and Cornerhouse-Kalle and Rakel Murvall across the wide expanses of Östergötland.

Malin and Zeke are sitting in their car, staring at the tree.

The engine is running.

‘He’s not here,’ Zeke says.

‘He was here once,’ Malin replies.

The Range Rover’s interior smells of oil and engine grease, and its frame rattles as the vehicle passes through Ljungsbro at high speed, past the Vivo supermarket, the café and the Cloetta chocolate factory at the bottom of the hill, beside the bridge across the river.

Elias Murvall is sitting on his own in the back seat, twisting his hands, hears his voice say the words, even though he doesn’t want to: ‘What if she’s wrong? If he didn’t do it? Then we’ll always regret this. What fucking right have we got to-’

Adam Murvall turns round in the passenger seat up front.

‘He did it, the bastard. Raped Maria. It fits. We’re going to do this. What is it you always say, Elias? You must never show you’re weak? That’s what you say, eh? You must never show you’re weak. So don’t now. Watch yourself.’

And the vehicle lurches, sliding towards the ditch just before the Olstorp curve.

‘You’re right,’ Elias yells. ‘I’m not weak.’

‘Fuck it,’ Jakob Murvall shouts. ‘We’re doing this, no more talk. Understood?’

Elias leans back, soaking up the assurance in Jakob’s voice, in spite of his anger.

Elias breathes deeply, feeling the determination of the vehicle’s motion, as if it had been on its way to this very destination long before it was even made.

Elias turns round.

Looks down into the baggage compartment.

It holds a stained wooden box, and in the box three grenades from a break-in at a weapons store, freshly unearthed from their hiding-place under an outhouse floor; a hiding-place the police missed during their raid the other week.

‘Bloody lucky the cops didn’t find the grenades,’ Jakob said when Mother explained her plan to them back in the house.

‘You’re right there, Jakob,’ Mother said. ‘Bloody lucky.’

Malin and Zeke are wandering the plain, searching for another isolated tree.

But the trees they find show no signs of struggle. They are just lonely, windswept, frost-damaged trees.

Zeke is at the wheel as they head towards Klockrike, along a scarcely ploughed road by the edge of an apparently endless field, when Malin’s mobile rings.

Karin Johannison’s number on the display.

‘Malin here.’

‘Negative, Fors,’ Karin says. ‘Karl Murvall didn’t rape Maria Murvall.’

‘No similarities at all?’

‘He didn’t do it, that much is certain.’

‘Thanks, Karin.’

‘Was it that important, Malin? Did you really think it was him?’

‘I don’t know what I thought. But I do now. Thanks again.’ Malin ends the call.

‘He didn’t rape Maria Murvall,’ she says to Zeke, who receives the information without taking his eyes from the road.

‘So that case still isn’t solved,’ Zeke says, his voice gruff, a statement that sets Malin thinking.

The brothers walking towards Rakel’s house just after she and Zeke had left.

Brothers who don’t know that Karl didn’t rape Maria.

Who listen to their mother. Obey her.

A mother with secrets to keep.

And only one way of keeping them.

Zeke stops the car at yet another tree.