Souls of Air (Malin Fors 7)

by Mons Kallentoft

  She wants to nudge Tove in the right direction. But knows that would only achieve the opposite result. Knows that she has zero credibility on the subject, so instead she asks another question. A work question.

  ‘Did you ever talk to Konrad’s granddaughter, Gabriella?’

  ‘Not much. Mostly just hello. She was very quiet.’

  ‘But you knew him pretty well, didn’t you? You were friends, weren’t you?’

  Tove nods.

  ‘It’s OK to feel sad.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Just don’t try to soften the pain with this.’

  Malin points at the beer. And quickly realises her mistake.

  ‘That’s rich, coming from you, Mum.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about himself?’

  ‘He talked about his wife. She died of cancer. He tried to encourage me to make the most of life.’

  ‘Did he talk about his children?’

  ‘He didn’t like talking about them.’

  Malin would like to ask why, but can see that Tove is upset. Grief is in her eyes, and Malin feels like hugging her but can’t bring herself to do it.

  ‘We mostly talked about books. Most recently Kerouac. He liked the book, the freedom it expressed, even though he could barely move.’

  Malin sees Tove snap, as her eyes fill with tears, and she leans forward and holds her.

  ‘It’s OK, Mum. But he was a bit like Granddad. I mean, I haven’t …’

  ‘I’m sorry your grandfather’s an idiot. You know that.’

  ‘He was such a good listener. Wise.’

  Tove pulls away. Wipes her tears with one hand.

  ‘I thought we could drive up and see Stefan tomorrow,’ Malin says, and Tove brightens up.

  ‘You’re off tomorrow, aren’t you?’ Malin says.

  Tove nods.

  And Malin can see thoughts swirling through Tove’s head, presumably she had other plans, but she smiles and says: ‘Yes, let’s go and see him.’

  Then Tove takes a deep gulp of beer, absorbing the drink as if it were a natural part of her.

  Hans Morelia is standing on his terrace, looking out at his garden. Over towards the dense confusion of trees and shrubs. Lova is asleep, Madeleine watching television.

  He’s drunk half a bottle of Bourgogne, and perhaps that’s why he thinks he can see someone over there. Among the trees.

  ‘Is there someone there?’ he calls. Then he calls again. No answer, no movement among the trees.

  I’m imagining things, he thinks, and goes into the house. He pours himself another glass of wine.

  Malin and Tove are walking home.

  They pass the bars and dives along the upper part of Ågatan, almost have to push their way through the throng of people outside. Even though it’s only Tuesday evening, everyone wants to be out, make the most of such a fine summer’s night.

  They go past the sports bar that was the scene of a drive-by shooting just a few months ago. Two rival gangs of Syrians are still fighting for control of the street.

  There.

  A familiar face.

  No.

  And Malin ducks, turns her head away, but it’s too late. He’s already seen her, and now she hears his voice.

  ‘Malin … Malin!’

  ‘Daniel.’

  It must be two years since she last saw him, but he’s the same as ever, his chiselled jawline leading to a soft chin, below a mouth with a perfectly full upper lip.

  She’s already heard that Daniel is no longer together with Helen Aneman, the radio presenter, an old friend of hers with whom she has completely lost touch.

  Is he single now?

  Pull yourself together, Malin. But the thought cheers her up. So I’ve still got it in me.

  ‘How are things? It’s been a while.’

  He leans forward and gives her a hug.

  She stiffens and feels like pushing him away, definitely doesn’t want to return the hug, and she hears Tove snigger.

  ‘Relax, Mum.’

  And then Malin wants to keep hold of him, feel his warmth, but she still pulls free, leaving Daniel with a hurt expression.

  The pink light of the sign outside the bar.

  The touts trying to entice customers into the kebab restaurant, Hakepi.

  The warm air rolling down the hill from the cathedral, its green tower lit up against the sky, the gold cross at the top.

  I used to love having him inside me.

  And Malin digs her fingernails into the palms of her hands.

  ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Good, I’m back at the Correspondent.’

  Tove’s stopped sniggering now, and Daniel Högfeldt holds out his hand and they shake hands. It occurs to Malin that they never met back then, when she and Daniel were fucking each other’s brains out. Because that was all we did, wasn’t it?

  His brown eyes.

  I’d forgotten your brown eyes. Your soft, warm hands.

  And Malin says: ‘It’s good to see you. But we’ve got to be up early tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m off to see a few colleagues in Stora torget. A standard hacks’ piss-up.’

  They part as quickly as they met, disappearing from each other once again. Then Malin hears Daniel’s voice: ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about the old man at the Cherub?’

  That is what he shouts, isn’t it?

  Ever the journalist.

  But what does he know about Konrad Karlsson, and why is he interested in a suicide? Does he want to get at Morelia, Merapi? Can he smell scandal?

  Tove doesn’t seem to have heard the question. She’s still walking. Malin stops, feels like saying something caustic to Daniel, tell him to stick it up his journalist’s arse and fuck off.

  But he’s gone, swallowed up by Stora torget. And with him goes his question, if it ever existed.

  Daniel Högfeldt stops outside the Central Hotel. Looks for his friends on the outdoor terraces.

  She looks older, he thinks. But not tired or worn out, healthier, actually, as if she were no longer drinking. At the same time she seemed distant, though. Not really there.

  He wonders if he should call her.

  Have I even got her number any more? I can always get hold of her at the station.

  Malin.

  Again.

  After the madness with Helen.

  Why am I drawn to crazy women? he thinks, as his eyes search among the tables.

  There they are. He waves to his friends.

  She’s still hot, Daniel Högfeldt thinks, permitting himself that thought.

  She can’t hurt me any more.

  The stench is hanging heavy inside the flat when Malin and Tove get home. They forgot to leave the windows open.

  ‘Shit,’ Malin hisses, and Tove holds her nose.

  ‘Where the hell’s it coming from?’ Malin says as she opens the kitchen window.

  When they’ve opened all the windows in the flat, they lean out of the living-room window, looking at the grey-white façade of St Lars Church.

  Breathing in the clean, fresh air.

  ‘I’ll give Anticimex a call, they can come while we’re out tomorrow. We’ve got to put a stop to this.’

  ‘Yes, we really have,’ Tove says.

  17

  I walk past you. All of you sitting on the pavement terraces drinking beer. I’ve had a few myself, but I can’t sit with you, nor do I want to.

  None of you notice me, and why should you? Nothing special about me, nothing worth bothering about or noticing. I am the same colour as the hotel, as the pavements, as the night sky. I sound like the mumble your voices merge into.

  You can sit there together and try to reduce me to nothing. You might even succeed, but when you least suspect it I’ll pop up again. And when that happens, you really should steer clear. Your smiles will freeze, your mumbling will turn to screams.

  The pistol is in its hiding place. Glistening with oil, and not l
ong ago I was standing in a garden, looking in through big windows.

  At happiness.

  Wealth.

  All the things I will never have.

  But perhaps I could take the most valuable thing someone else has?

  18

  Wednesday, 11 August

  Malin had to wake Tove up an hour ago. The three beers Tove drank last night meant that she was tired when her alarm went off, but not hungover. Now she’s asleep, with the passenger seat folded back. Malin takes her eyes off the road and looks at her daughter, her perfect skin, the thin veins on her exposed neck.

  She avoided asking Tove about the autumn last night. About what her plans were. She wants to let Tove raise the subject herself. Not that Malin is worried about Tove, apart from those beers – she recognised that sort of thirst all too well.

  She doesn’t want to think about how happily and naturally Tove gulped down the forbidden liquid, because if you don’t think about something, it isn’t happening. Tove’s just sad about Konrad Karlsson. There’s nothing wrong with a beer or two after something like that. Just not too many.

  Everything is tranquil around them.

  The forest – birches, pines, firs – edging the road is beautiful, almost inviting at this time of year.

  No problem getting the day off. Sven said: ‘Sure, things are quiet here, after all.’

  It takes five hours to drive up to Sjöplogen, to Stefan, and Malin hopes they’ve got everything sorted out now, and that Stefan will be in a better state than last time. Things could hardly have got any worse.

  He won’t recognise Tove or her this time either. But perhaps he’ll give her one of his smiles, might give a little sigh of pleasure like he sometimes does.

  Malin keeps trying, she wants to feel attached to him as the brother he is, the person he is, but it’s hard when there’s no intellectual response. Or at least none that she recognises.

  But I want to, she thinks.

  I know it’s right, I want to find pure compassion, and the wheel vibrates in her hands. She looks away from the road towards Tove again, still sleeping. Her soft cheek is speckled with the light coming through the side window, the shadows of the foliage.

  Almost there.

  Hope he’s OK.

  Hope so.

  They park in front of the beautiful old building. The plaster is worn and the grass in the garden could do with cutting, the trees with pruning. They don’t see any patients out in the garden, even though the sun is high in the clear sky and the temperature is a very pleasant twenty degrees.

  It’s cooler this much further north.

  They go inside the home, pressing the button to open the door automatically, trying not to worry about the fact that there’s no sign of any staff, that no one has noticed their arrival.

  Malin and Tove are trying hard to stay positive, even though they manage to get up to the second floor, where Stefan’s room is, without being noticed, and try to feel happy as they open the door. But when they walk in and the stench of excrement hits them, far worse than the stench in the flat, when they see the figure lying in bed, curled up against the wall, they are initially disgusted, then angry. Stefan blinks as he scratches at his backside with his fingers. His fingernails are torn and there’s a filthy incontinence pad, heavy with piss, lying at the head of the bed.

  ‘Bastards,’ Malin whispers. ‘We’ll sort this out, Stefan, don’t you worry.’ She strokes his thinning blond hair, and he doesn’t react, just scratches and blinks. It’s like being in a room full of nothing but shame, a crime scene.

  This is wrong.

  Fundamentally wrong.

  I’m ashamed of being human.

  ‘BASTARDS!’ Malin shouts, and Tove takes hold of her arm.

  ‘Calm down, that won’t help anyone. He’ll get frightened, won’t you, Stefan?’

  The door opens behind them and a young man and an even younger girl in white coats peer in, and Malin yells at them: ‘What the hell’s going on here? Why is he lying in his own shit? Have you got any idea what’s going on here?’

  ‘Who are you?’ the young man asks calmly.

  ‘His relatives. Get out of here.’

  The pair slip out as quickly as they arrived, and Tove doesn’t try to calm her down any more, and says simply: ‘I need stuff to wash him with. And fresh clothes and sheets. He needs to have a shower. I wonder where the storeroom is. And the bathroom. I can shower him while you make the bed and sort out some clean clothes. But first I’ll try to get rid of the worst of it, so we don’t get shit on our clothes. Can you pass me one of those plastic aprons over by the basin?’

  Malin hands Tove an apron, watches her put it on.

  The stench.

  If humiliation has a smell, this is it.

  A slightly older man with a goatee beard puts his head inside the room, he’s the new manager, and when he sees what’s happened, and that Malin is there, the woman who tore a strip off him last time she was visiting, he quickly retreats.

  But Malin leaps towards the door and yanks it open, and outside stands the man, the boss, the manager. The man who lets things like this happen.

  I’m going to kill you, she feels like saying, but she just shakes her head, and Kurt – was that his name? – looks scared. She takes several deep breaths through her mouth.

  ‘How can something like this happen?’ she finally says.

  And Kurt says: ‘Perhaps it’s time to see things more realistically. Some patients pull their pads off, that’s all.’

  Malin wants to hit him, could hit him, and she might go to pieces at any moment. She clenches her teeth. Imagines a tumbler of shimmering, amber, oak-aged tequila. Inside her she drains the glass in an unfamiliar bar, a bar she has never been in.

  Tove has found Stefan’s washbowl in the wardrobe. There’s soap and washcloths by the basin, and Stefan is quiet and still now, seems to be enjoying the warm water on his skin. His weak chin is relaxed and he’s no longer scratching.

  She rolls the sheets away. Drops the dirty laundry on the floor. Carries on washing Stefan.

  Through the door Tove can hear her mother’s raised voice, cold and controlled, but she can no longer hear any excuses, just slippery acceptance: ‘Yes, of course it’s unacceptable. But I’m afraid this sort of thing does happen … Cutting the staff budget means that we don’t have time …’

  Don’t have time to do what? Tove thinks. Treat people like you, Stefan, decently?

  And she knows how hard it is to find the time, how tired and stressed everyone is.

  ‘It might be some consolation,’ the man named Kurt goes on, ‘that Stefan probably isn’t aware of this unfortunate incident. He lives in a world of his own.’

  A world of his own? He’s got feelings. A sense of smell.

  Get it? Tove thinks.

  He’s just as much of a person as you.

  Stefan offers no resistance when she sits him in his wheelchair naked and covers him with a clean yellow blanket she found in the wardrobe.

  She pushes the wheelchair towards the door, opens it, and there stand her mum and Kurt the manager, silent, wary, as if their discussion had suddenly come to an end, to the surprise of them both.

  ‘Where’s the shower?’ Tove asks.

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ Kurt smiles. ‘You don’t have to do that. I’ll get—’

  ‘Are you stupid, or something?’ Tove hisses. ‘Do you think I’m going to let any of you come anywhere near Stefan right now?’

  The garden of the care home is flooded with light. Stefan is asleep. The anxiety he showed when they pushed him out of the back of the building and down the ramp has gone now, vanished as the sunlight hit his cheeks and the smell of excrement and chemicals was replaced by slowly maturing apples.

  The bench they are sitting on is hard beneath Malin’s buttocks, and the branches of the apple tree above their heads loll heavily towards the ground.

  They’re alone in the garden, and Malin wonders what to think about th
e manager’s explanations and fresh promises, assurances that Stefan hadn’t been lying like that for long. But he obviously had been, the shit had dried in, he could have been lying there since yesterday.

  ‘We’ve got to get him out of here,’ Tove says.

  ‘I know,’ Malin says. ‘But where to?’

  ‘We’ll take him home. I can look after him.’

  ‘You know that won’t work.’

  ‘So what do we do, then? Drive him to the nearest hospital?’

  ‘Not a bad idea,’ Malin whispers, and she looks at her brother, the thin body inside the clean clothes, his withered legs beneath the cotton fabric. He’s sleeping soundly now, and his chin is resting on his chest in an unnatural position that somehow manages to look strangely comfortable.

  ‘We’re going to have to leave him here, Tove. I’ll find out if he can be moved. But we can’t take him with us. And we can’t just take him to hospital.’

  ‘Never,’ Tove whispers. ‘I’m not leaving here without him.’

  19

  The windows are close to the ceiling, and there are clouds in the sky beyond them, moving fast, and Karin thinks that it must be very windy up there, a thousand metres up. Turbulence shaking planes on their way from somewhere, towards unknown destinations. She used to like travelling, but now, after everything that has happened, she’d rather stay at home. Be with Tess, Zeke. Try to be a family.

  She’s often wished that the pathology lab was above ground, but somehow that wouldn’t feel right.

  You can just about tell that it’s summer out there, but inside the lab the world consists of loneliness, surgical spirit and bodies that life has left behind.

  It’s almost five o’clock. Konrad Karlsson arrived yesterday, but this is the first chance she’s had to conduct the post-mortem, she’s been teaching on a university summer course all day. The man’s two adult children have been to see the body.

  Karin is still waiting for the results of the blood samples she took down at the care home. It takes longer during the summer because of holidays, but the results ought to come through any time now.