Souls of Air (Malin Fors 7)

by Mons Kallentoft

  Konrad Karlsson’s dissected body is lying on the post-mortem table in the middle of the room, covered by a white plastic sheet.

  There’s something that’s not right.

  The marks on the man’s neck are indistinct, even for an old man who’d had a stroke and was bound to have poor circulation. They may have been made after death. Perhaps they should be larger, if they were inflicted while blood was still flowing through his veins. A noose, hands. Something else. Impossible to tell.

  But on closer examination his eyes showed signs of strangulation. Tiny, almost microscopic drops of blood on the lining of the eyelids, which she was only able to see with a magnifying glass, and strong, direct light.

  When she removed his nightshirt she saw bruises under his arms on both sides, as if someone had struggled to lift him up.

  But they weren’t that pronounced either.

  He could have been dead when they occurred.

  Conclusion: Konrad Karlsson could have been helped into the noose after death.

  Which points to two different scenarios.

  Someone murdered him and then tried to make it look like suicide. Or he wanted to make his own suicide look more dramatic than it was, and asked someone to help him. In that case the blood tests might well indicate an overdose of some sort.

  Murder.

  It doesn’t scare her, no more than the body in front of her does. She’s taught herself to be detached. She even has to do that with Tess sometimes. About the secret. And how it ought best to be handled when the child is older.

  It’s time to call Malin now. Or someone else in the crime unit.

  The body is otherwise undamaged inside, no noticeable bleeding around any of the tissues. His organs looked like a typical old person’s, and in his stomach she found the remains of a cheese sandwich and a Dime bar.

  His brain is undamaged, apart from the dead tissue where the stroke hit him.

  He was unlucky with the stroke.

  The damage to his brain was in the parts that govern motor function, and to a certain extent the taste centre. But his intellectual capacity would have been unimpaired.

  Lucky?

  Konrad Karlsson’s shoulder joints were badly worn, particularly on his healthy side, which must have caused him great pain.

  The phone rings over on the desk.

  Must be the lab.

  They always call the landline when they know she’s down here working and waiting for results. They know the mobile signal is hopeless.

  ‘Karin here.’

  ‘This is Veronica. We’ve got the preliminary results for you. His blood contained high quantities of the sleeping medication Xanor. Enough to knock out a bull, a fatally high dose.’

  ‘Xanor, you said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  One of the most common sleep-inducing drugs used in the health service.

  Thoughts are whirling through her head.

  Someone could have tricked him into taking it, or he could have taken the lethal dose himself. And then been lifted up into the noose.

  I can’t make any sense of this, she thinks, and hears Veronica’s voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘Are you there, Karin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A dose like that would have knocked him out pretty quickly.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Karin says. ‘Let me know if you find anything else.’

  She hangs up, goes back to the table and stands next to Konrad Karlsson.

  Can Xanor be administered intravenously?

  She quickly checks on the computer.

  Yes.

  Need to look for puncture wounds, more closely than I already have.

  Karin pulls the sheet back. She examines his skin, centimetre by centimetre, pretending that she’s inspecting a lawn or a rug, that she isn’t working on a human body. But there’s no sign of any hole left by a needle, other than the one in his jugular vein that she made when she took the samples.

  She covers him with the sheet again.

  So you must have taken tablets. Or taken them dissolved in liquid.

  You weren’t alone. Someone must have made it look like you hanged yourself. That much I do know. Karin can feel thoughts and facts chasing each other around inside her head.

  There’s nothing more logical than death, nothing more illogical.

  Maybe the murderer wanted to make absolutely certain that you would die, didn’t know if the dose of Xanor was fatal? Or perhaps didn’t expect us to be able to find it in his blood?

  Malin, she thinks. You’ll be able to make more sense of this than me.

  There’s too much that doesn’t make sense.

  The fact that you seemed to enjoy life, Konrad.

  The absence of a suicide note. Unless it’s on your laptop?

  The fact that someone must have hung you up in the noose after your death.

  The overdose.

  Something happened here. This isn’t an ordinary suicide, and in all likelihood it wasn’t even suicide.

  Too messy to be a case of euthanasia.

  Someone meant to harm this man.

  You were murdered, Konrad Karlsson.

  You were murdered.

  Murdered.

  I was murdered.

  So who was I? What was the life that has now come to an end actually like?

  A very long time ago I caught the bus from Borensberg in to Linköping, to vocational college. There was no question of me going to high school, not even with my grades. I was allowed to become an intellectual manual labourer, started work as an electrician to pay off the last of the debts from the farm, the debts Mother was so ashamed of.

  She said: ‘You’ve got to.’

  So I did.

  It was just her and me.

  I was sixteen when I ran my first cable, connected my first box, screwed up my first armature. And it filled me with emptiness. The hateful emptiness of work that keeps us alive.

  In death I want to see the people who were taken from me.

  My father.

  A daughter, my wife.

  But they’re still hiding.

  Come out, come out, I feel like whispering. I’m with you now.

  20

  Wednesday, 11 August, Thursday, 12 August

  Malin waves her hand above Stefan’s face. She’s trying to fan him, because the room feels strangely warm.

  They’ve put him to bed, after speaking to the manager and several of the staff, and everyone has reassured them: ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘Has it happened before?’

  ‘Oh, no. Definitely not.’

  Now Malin and Tove are standing by Stefan’s bed. He’s awake, and his blue eyes are staring at the window, possibly through it, at the evening sky with its lingering veils of cloud. There’s an emptiness in his eyes, but hopefully also a calmness. Tove puts her hand on his shoulder, and Malin finds herself thinking: Can you feel that hand? Do you even know that you have a shoulder? Do you know that we’re actually here?

  ‘Goodbye,’ Malin says. ‘I’m going to sort this out, they’re going to look after you from now on.’

  ‘We can’t leave, Mum.’

  ‘We’ve got to.’

  Tove looks at her.

  ‘How can you be so bloody emotionless? It’s like nothing gets through to you any more.’

  Malin turns her back on her daughter and walks towards the door.

  ‘Say goodbye, Tove. It’s time to go, we’ve got to drive home.’

  ‘I’m staying here.’

  Malin opens the door, shuts it behind her. Stands and waits in the corridor.

  Five minutes. Ten.

  Then Tove comes out. Her face contorted into an angry grimace.

  ‘I hate it when you force me to be like you.’

  They’re halfway back to Linköping, and darkness is slowly falling as Malin and Tove stand in the car park of a Statoil petrol station. Tove is still angry, and isn’t talking.

  ‘Are you still thinking about
Konrad Karlsson?’ Malin asks.

  Tove shakes her head.

  ‘I’m trying not to. Right now I’m thinking about Stefan.’

  Malin doesn’t answer, just takes another bite of her hotdog, thinking how impossible it is to take care of anyone else, how it throws up an unwillingness to renounce anything in her own life. Anything at all.

  I’ve left Stefan there.

  In spite of what happened.

  I’m no better than Morelia, Malin thinks. Then her phone rings.

  Karin.

  ‘Malin here.’

  Is Karin still at work? Shouldn’t she be at home with Zeke and Tess? But then Malin can usually hear Tess or the television in the background.

  Malin listens as Karin tells her what she’s discovered, and curses herself for not paying more attention to what she now realises was a crime scene. She hears Karin outline what she thinks happened to Konrad Karlsson, that he was probably murdered and that there’s definitely a crime of some sort behind his death.

  She throws the last of the hotdog away.

  Sees Tove shuffling impatiently.

  Feels the forbidden excitement that wells up whenever she’s confronted with a crime, and then uncontrollable anger. Who the hell would kill a defenceless old man? And why?

  She can’t help feeling surprised, even though she did already have her suspicions.

  Her mind is racing now.

  Catching up with yours, Karin.

  ‘Are you still there?’ she hears Karin ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve informed Sven,’ Karin says. ‘We agreed that I should call you.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘We also agreed to lie low until tomorrow, until you get back. I’ve made sure that room seven is sealed off, but unfortunately it’s already been cleaned up. We’ll get going tomorrow, and we’ll have to inform the family. It feels a bit unnecessary to upset them until we know more.’

  Assuming they weren’t involved, Malin thinks.

  ‘Give Tess a hug from me,’ Malin says, and ends the call.

  Malin puts her phone away and turns towards Tove, who snaps: ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Looks like you were right. Your friend Konrad didn’t commit suicide. He was probably murdered. Or was at least helped to kill himself.’

  Tove’s pupils dilate, black holes of surprise.

  You’re scared now as well, Malin thinks.

  ‘I knew it,’ Tove says. ‘He’d never have committed suicide. And you can forget the idea that he asked someone to help him. He must have been murdered.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so. Why would he ask for help with something he didn’t want to do?’

  Malin goes on to explain what Karin’s just told her, initiating her daughter into the mysteries of death. They talk, and Tove swears that her lips are sealed. The complicity of mother and daughter drowns out the sounds of the petrol station.

  Malin’s phone buzzes as she’s walking across the deserted Trädgårdstorget, long after midnight.

  Meeting 7.30 tomorrow morning.

  Sven’s message has been sent to the entire investigative team.

  This part of Linköping is quiet, but she can hear the noise of people drinking over at Stora torget and Ågatan.

  The newsagent’s on the corner is advertising betting on the horses: ‘Your best chance of winning!’

  Malin thinks of all the people who spend their lives hoping that chance will grant them a big win.

  It’s an absurd dream, but for many people it’s the only one available.

  Tove is lying asleep on the sofa.

  She had seemed more reassured than upset by the news that Konrad Karlsson had been murdered. As if some kind of order had been restored.

  There’s a sort of no-man’s-land between life and death, Malin thinks as she crosses Drottninggatan. A place where no rules apply, where anything can happen.

  Assisted suicide, or murder?

  It doesn’t make any difference.

  Until they establish what happened they have to regard this as murder, given that it’s a distinct possibility, but they also have to remain open to the alternative.

  No-man’s-land.

  But death is still death. No one can avoid it, and, even if it is final, it never ends.

  A last breath. A few litres of air. Full of oxygen, then drained of oxygen.

  Death is scentless, yet it still smells, and she walks through the Horticultural Society Park and the night smells of death, of dampness, life.

  The door to the Cherub old people’s home is unlocked, and there is no one at the reception desk. She creeps up the stairs.

  Carries on towards room seven. Past the tape.

  A hospital bed against a wall.

  Otherwise the room is completely empty, clinically clean, and she looks out at the park, at the motionless, black trees, the starry sky above them.

  Soon a new client will fall into Merapi’s embrace.

  To be treated like you, Stefan? Like you, Konrad? But at least you had a voice, Malin thinks, and makes a note to read the letters he sent to the press.

  She goes over to the bed – the same bed? – and tries to raise the top end. It rises with a low hum, and she lets go of the button.

  The bed has been repaired.

  She feels an irresistible urge to lie down, and moments later is lying flat on the bed, imagining that she can’t move.

  What must it be like to lie like this for eleven years?

  You’d have to cultivate an incredible calmness just to put up with it. Summon up hitherto unknown powers of resilience.

  It occurs to her that she might well be the most restless person in the world, and she wants to sympathise with Konrad Karlsson, with Stefan, find some sort of sympathy beyond her anger, but there’s nothing there.

  She lies there on the bed, trying to imagine.

  What’s happening to me? Malin thinks.

  Who am I becoming?

  Who have I become?

  Malin gets up and walks over to the window.

  Outside the darkness lies dense among the trees, and across the paths and lawns.

  Then she focuses her gaze.

  Is there a man standing down there among the trees? Looking this way? What’s he doing there?

  The murderer, waiting for an opportunity to take another life?

  She turns and runs out of the room, down the stairs and out into the car park. She feels her heart pound as she goes around the building and rushes into the park, towards the trees where the figure was standing.

  But he’s gone now.

  Was he ever there?

  That night Malin dreams of white bats shrieking as they hang from the rafters of a derelict house.

  They screech, flap their wings, bare their teeth, but seem unwilling to let go of the wooden beams they’re clinging to.

  As if they’re waiting for something that never happens.

  And in the room beyond the bats she can see Konrad Karlsson’s face, at different stages of his life.

  Outside lies the city, surrounded by flat countryside and forest, and a lake where burning waves suffocate all life.

  Tove dreams of all the friends she’s left behind.

  People from school in Linköping, her former boyfriend, Markus, and Josefin, and then Tom at Lundsberg, who dumped her, and whom she probably wanted to be dumped by. In her dream that feeling is unambiguous, the feeling of not wanting to belong to Tom’s world, of never being able to fit into it, of being stuck between worlds with no firm foothold in either one.

  She dreams of posh girls and ordinary girls, and in the dream her remaining friends have no names. She enjoys the loneliness, because she has chosen it and it belongs to no one but her.

  And she dreams of Konrad Karlsson.

  Of his blue face, his head in the noose.

  Of sitting on his bed, absorbing his wisdom, enjoying more time in his stimulating company.

  And every so often an agitated
alarm would blare out.

  A lamp blinking out into the atmosphere, and into a lonely, silent room.

  Karim Akbar is exhausted, so he lets himself orgasm, ignoring the fact that Vivianne is nowhere close to coming yet. The bedroom in their villa in Lambohov is messy, but neither of them ever has the energy to tidy up.

  He rolls off Vivianne, but she doesn’t look disappointed, more relieved that he’s finished – when did they start making love out of habit? When she got pregnant?

  When his book became a success?

  When he started to get more and more lecture bookings?

  Or when the Trades Union Congress called to invite him to an interview for a managerial position?

  Stockholm.

  Why not? He’s tired of Linköping, and Vivianne wouldn’t have any trouble getting a job with the Public Prosecution Service there, not with her contacts. After her maternity leave.

  He’s had enough of his job.

  Of all the problems.

  Of the staff.

  Of Malin.

  She seems to have repressed all her emotions, and now works like an automaton. But she still has her old intuition, and she’s not drinking. In which case, everything is fine.

  Sven.

  He called a short while ago, to say that they were probably dealing with a murder.

  A pus-filled boil.

  Perhaps the murder of the old man is a boil bursting? Perhaps there’ll be a huge fuss, seeing as the care home is run by Merapi? Perhaps that was the point?

  He thinks about his father, who committed suicide. Karim found him in the bathroom where he had hanged himself. Weak and cowardly. He thinks that he’s going to be a good father this time. Much better than he was with his son.

  So the old man in Merapi’s care home didn’t kill himself.

  Lots of media tomorrow. No question about that.

  Can I bear to hold a press conference? Do I have to?

  He lets his body rest heavily on the mattress, feels Vivianne’s hand on his arm, feeling for his hand, then moves it between her legs.

  OK. For your sake.

  Johan Jakobsson is sitting in the dark in his basement, in front of his computer. The screen flickers blue, and he feels how dry his face is after a blustery day out on the lake.