Souls of Air (Malin Fors 7)

by Mons Kallentoft

  His family is asleep.

  The new house.

  He’s got an office in the basement now, he can work in peace without disturbing anyone upstairs.

  But they’re sleeping now, his wife and children. He woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Might as well get some work done.

  Tokyo almost finished him. It was all but impossible to make sense of the city. Life was reduced to an endless series of misunderstandings the moment he set foot outside the hotel or lecture halls.

  What can I find out about Konrad Karlsson?

  Anything?

  There’s always something to find out about everyone.

  And he taps his way through the night.

  Börje Svärd is lying alone in bed in his house in Tornhagen.

  The bed feels big, which is nice, there’s plenty of room for him, and no one is demanding his attention, no one wants anything from him.

  The dogs out in the garden are quiet. The older one is taking care of the new one, barely more than a puppy. Other single people would keep the dogs indoors. Maybe even on the bed, heaven forbid.

  Börje keeps them in a pen.

  They’d make a hell of a racket if anyone were to come into the garden.

  What sort of world, what sort of city, is this? he wonders. Where a disabled pensioner can be murdered in his bed?

  It must be about money. One way or another. About greed, anger, joy and despair, all the things that come with money.

  After Anna died, a life insurance policy that she had taken out before she got MS paid out. It wasn’t a lot of money, but their two children got to know about it and wanted a share.

  Their own children, buzzing around like flies.

  He gave the entire amount, three hundred thousand kronor, to a muscular sclerosis charity. If the money prevented just one single person from suffering like Anna did, it was worth it.

  The murder victim.

  Waldemar called earlier, he’d spoken to Elin Sand, who in turn had spoken to Sven.

  Konrad Karlsson had evidently spent a very long time living in care.

  Anna. You were younger, and ill for longer, but at least you were able to live at home. In the home you created as a reflection of your beautiful soul.

  I shall never meet a soul like yours again, but the woman I’m meeting tomorrow has a body that will do.

  I can pretend she’s you, Anna. I hope you don’t mind that?

  You know how lonely I am.

  Waldemar Ekenberg is asleep.

  His wife isn’t working tonight, and she’s having trouble sleeping. Not because of Waldemar’s snoring, but because she can never get used to the chaos her irregular shifts cause to her body clock.

  She’s lying beside him, but not touching.

  He snores and snores.

  Coughs.

  He smokes too much. Filling his lungs with toxic fumes.

  His attempts to give up have been embarrassingly pathetic, and she knows he enjoys smoking, feeling the thick, aromatic air in his lungs.

  After all, she smokes as well. So she knows.

  He’s got calmer as the years have passed, and even if she suspects that he can be a bit crazy at work, he’s meek as a lamb at home.

  Almost.

  He received a call this evening. Didn’t want to talk about it.

  As usual.

  But they don’t need words. Silence is good enough.

  Elin Sand is looking at pictures on her computer. She sitting on the sofa in the living room, and she can hear sporadic cars using the Abisko roundabout below.

  The volleyball team.

  She misses those days. She sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and gets up to look at pictures of their matches, their camaraderie.

  She has something of that at work, as well as with her friends.

  But it’s never quite the same.

  She longs to have someone next to her, the woman she met a few months ago, the woman she recognised in the aisles at Ikea, the woman who came up to her and said: ‘Hi, do you remember me?’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to forget,’ she had replied, and that broke the ice, and made everything somehow obvious. She loves the softness she can feel in herself now, the way she’s in touch with her feelings. Malin Fors could do with a bit of that.

  Sometimes she takes her own crap out on me, Elin thinks. Most recently in the gym, when it became abundantly clear that Malin didn’t want her anywhere near her.

  I suppose I’m just going to have to put up with that. There’s only one way to stop it, and that’s by getting a better job.

  That would show her, and the rest of them.

  21

  It all has to go somewhere.

  The anger I feel.

  Sometimes I follow the girl. I don’t know why. I’ve sat in the car in the car park outside that tall building. Seen his drones come and go. Their eyes firmly fixed on the money.

  I’m lying in bed now, looking up at the ceiling. There are spiders’ webs in the corners, but I can’t see any spiders.

  Could I take aim at another human being, and pull the trigger? Abduct someone?

  The girl.

  Living grief is the worst of all. Anger. Feeling shut in.

  I’ll wake up tomorrow, and maybe tomorrow will be the day when everything happens. The day when I finally find the right way to go about it. Finally find the courage.

  There’s no order to anything. Dirt, bills, thoughts. I can’t bear anyone else telling me what to do, but I still can’t make any decisions myself.

  I’ve got the pistol.

  I know how to do it.

  The girl.

  She’s the solution.

  22

  Sven Sjöman is standing in the hall of his house in Ånestad, putting on the tie his wife gave him for his birthday. He doesn’t often wear a tie, but today it feels right. They’re going to be having a morning meeting to set up the investigation into Konrad Karlsson’s murder.

  What happened?

  They’ll have to find out if the old boy had any money.

  If he’d upset anyone. If he had any enemies.

  The idea that a sick old man might have had enemies might sound ridiculous, Sven thinks, but he’s experienced far stranger things in the course of his career.

  Seventy-nine years old.

  He suffered a stroke when he wasn’t much older than I am now. I only just managed to survive prostate cancer. That’s how it felt, anyway.

  I shall retire next year, and I want Malin to succeed me.

  So what state are you in now? You seem to have calmed down, you’re back in control of your feelings, your impulses.

  You’re playing at being in control.

  You think you can suppress everything instead of dealing with it.

  You’re deceiving yourself.

  I know.

  Nothing can ever be swept under the carpet, everything ends up out in the open at some point, and can cause all sorts of trouble.

  The tie feels tight around his neck, it’s a warm morning.

  He’s going to miss mornings like this, full of conflicted anticipation about the day ahead.

  The whole of the violent crime unit is gathered in the conference room in the police station, seated around the table.

  Waldemar Ekenberg is leaning back in his chair, dressed in a short-sleeved nylon shirt. Johan Jakobsson looks hollow-eyed, he’s probably spent half the night working, Malin thinks, digging out anything he could find about Konrad Karlsson.

  Karim isn’t there, but Börje Svärd is, he looks like he’s lost some weight, probably keeping himself in shape during the swimming season, and his associated escapades with the ladies.

  Zeke is sitting next to her.

  And, at the end of the table, Elin Sand, wearing a white cotton dress that’s a little too figure-hugging.

  Those cheekbones.

  Perfectly formed, Malin thinks.

  She wishes she could treat Elin better as part of the team, but sh
e hasn’t felt capable of that, even if they’d probably enjoy each other’s company, what with them both being fitness fanatics.

  As a detective she’s still a bit like a puppy. Unless I just can’t help seeing her as competition?

  So what?

  Sven Sjöman is wearing a tie, and it seems like he’s got a bit more energy now that he’s made up his mind that this will be his last year. Even so, he’s still more sluggish than he ought to be at times.

  He writes Konrad Karlsson’s name on the whiteboard, and outside the windows, in the garden of the preschool, the children are running about, playing in the sun, secret games that no grown-up could understand.

  There are fewer children during the holidays, but the preschool is still open, and Malin watches the wind ruffle a little blond boy’s hair.

  ‘So what do we know?’ Sven says, then goes on to outline what they’ve got.

  The time: that Konrad Karlsson probably died some time between two and three o’clock in the morning.

  That he somehow received an overdose of the sleep medication, Xanor, although exactly how is as yet unclear.

  ‘Was he given that often?’ Zeke asks.

  ‘We need to speak to his doctor at the Cherub,’ Börje says.

  ‘Or the manager, Hilda Jansson,’ Malin adds. ‘She’s bound to know.’

  Sven explains about the marks Karin found on Karlsson’s neck and under his arms, suggesting that he was already dead before he was put in the noose.

  ‘She forgot to cordon off the room,’ Waldemar says. ‘Bloody sloppy.’

  The room falls silent, and everyone turns to look at Zeke, who remains impassive.

  ‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ Sven says. ‘Just look at the Palme investigation.’

  The detectives laugh, then, once they’ve quietened down, Sven points out the lack of a suicide note, and goes on to say that Konrad Karlsson was, reportedly, a happy man: ‘This whole thing stinks. We treat it as murder. Why would anyone who helped him to commit suicide make it more complicated for themselves? The pills on their own would have been enough.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Johan says.

  The group falls silent, waiting for Johan to go on.

  ‘Konrad Karlsson had written several letters to the papers, about what he believed to be poor care. He was certainly a thorn in the side of Merapi, the company that runs the home, to put it mildly. And now Merapi is about to be sold to an American venture capital company, Nexxon. There’s an article about the deal on the Dagens Industri website.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Malin says. ‘That Merapi might have something to do with this? That they wanted to shut him up and stop him writing more letters that could jeopardise the sale of the company? It seems a bit far-fetched to suggest that such a large-scale deal could be affected by something like that, Johan. Even if he didn’t exactly mince his words.’

  Malin looks at Johan.

  Aware that he’s thinking more than that, and hoping to provoke him into saying more.

  She thought the same thing herself earlier that morning.

  Johan goes on: ‘What if Konrad Karlsson staged his suicide in a way that would get as much attention as possible? Took enough sleeping pills to drift off, having given his accomplice instructions to make it look like a brutal hanging. In order to focus media attention on the circumstances inside the company’s care homes. Stick a spoke in the wheel.’

  ‘One final sacrifice,’ Malin says, noticing the sceptical look on Sven’s face.

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ he asks, and Malin notices the way the other detectives smell: smoke, sweat, soap, toothpaste, aftershave.

  ‘We need to keep an open mind,’ Johan says. ‘That’s all I mean,’ and Malin realises that there’s far too much scope here for wild speculation.

  ‘We’ll hold back from talking to anyone at Merapi,’ Sven says. ‘We haven’t got a good enough reason yet. But it might turn out to be necessary later on.’

  ‘Did he have any money?’ Waldemar asks, to no one in particular. ‘Did his kids stand to inherit much?’

  Johan says: ‘I haven’t got that far yet.’

  ‘We’ll have to file information requests with his bank and the Tax Office,’ Sven says.

  It feels like the conversation is drifting, and Malin wants to tell Sven to get a grip on things, to create some sort of structure.

  ‘We need to start by trying to find out what happened in the care home that night,’ she said. ‘Establish a timeline.’

  Sven picks up the theme: ‘Maybe there are surveillance cameras in the area? Inside the Cherub, or the entrance, at least? We need to talk to people living nearby who might have seen something, but primarily the night staff. Even if they said they didn’t notice anything unusual when we spoke to them on Tuesday. And the day shift. One of them could have been involved.’

  Sven pauses, looks at Malin.

  Who looks away.

  The day shift. Tove.

  Sven goes on quickly: ‘And we talk to any residents who can actually be questioned. As well as Konrad Karlsson’s family. Children and grandchildren.’

  ‘Have they been informed of the latest developments?’ Waldemar asks.

  ‘No,’ Sven says. ‘We’ll do that when we speak to them.’

  ‘Did he have a computer?’ Johan asks. ‘He should have done.’

  Malin remembers the computer from her first visit. His mobile. And that Gabriella had wanted to take them with her, and that she had let her. She curses that decision now.

  ‘Yes, he did. And a mobile. His granddaughter, Gabriella, has them. We’ll have to get them back,’ Malin says. ‘There might even be a suicide note on the computer, although that seems highly unlikely.’

  Johan nods.

  And Börje leans across the grey surface of the table and says: ‘What’s the situation with mercy killings these days? There’ve been a couple of cases of people helping old people in homes to die, as acts of mercy.’

  Börje raises his hands to indicate quotation marks around the last word.

  Silence in the room once more.

  And Malin finds herself thinking of his wife, Anna.

  Realises that Börje must have given a great deal of thought to the whole concept of mercy.

  ‘I’ll get that checked out,’ Sven says. ‘In case some nutter’s just got out after serving their sentence.’

  ‘Could other old folk be in danger, then?’ Börje asks. ‘Do you think we could even be dealing with a proper lunatic here?’

  ‘The uniforms can call around to other homes and see if anyone has noticed anything suspicious.’

  Elin Sand has been sitting silently throughout the meeting, but now she says: ‘Maybe this is a case of assisted suicide after all. Whoever helped him die could have just got scared and panicked. Who wouldn’t? He or she probably isn’t a professional, and the noose was a clumsy attempt to make it look like an ordinary suicide. Make it look like Konrad Karlsson did it himself. Whoever helped him would have cared about him a very great deal, so they’d now be both very upset, and very frightened.’

  None of the other detectives says anything.

  Don’t really want to consider what she’s just said.

  But Elin Sand could be right.

  ‘You’ve just said what I was going to suggest,’ Malin says. ‘Well, if we keep an open mind, the answers will come. Sven, do you want to share out the work? Who’s going to interview whom? Johan, you keep digging. Anywhere you can.’

  What am I doing? Malin wonders.

  She looks at Sven, who smiles before carrying on. He meets her gaze, as if to say: See? You’re already leading the team. Whether you like it or not.

  Elin Sand is sitting at the end of the table, looking unhappy.

  ‘Let’s get going,’ Malin says.

  23

  The crooked apple trees look like Snow White’s dwarfs, Malin thinks. They’re a good match for the tiny cottage in whose garden they stand.

  The faded ru
st-red wooden house lies a few kilometres outside Klockrike, and the broad expanse of the Östgöta Plain stretches out in all directions; golden fields of rape sway back and forth beneath a sky that is getting bluer and bluer.

  A rusty black Mercedes, an old model, is parked next to the house. This must be a terrible place in the winter, when the cold bites at your soul and icy storms rage unchecked.

  Yngve Karlsson.

  So this is where you live. As Malin and Zeke get out of the car they see a man working in a vegetable garden behind some ragged gooseberry bushes.

  He’s tall and lanky, his clothes hang from his body, and he seems relaxed, even if Malin can’t help sensing that he’d like nothing more than to turn and run off across the plain.

  He’s clearing one of the beds, jerkily tossing the weeds behind him, and is evidently content to let her and Zeke go to him rather than the other way around. He takes a quick glance at them and seems to conclude that they’re OK.

  They walk through the garden towards the vegetable patch, and Yngve Karlsson straightens up and holds his hand out towards them.

  ‘You’re police, aren’t you? I heard about Dad on the local news a little while ago. They’re saying you think he was murdered.’

  Shit, Malin thinks. How the hell has it got out so quickly? Someone at the station must have leaked the news, and then the reporter didn’t bother to find out if the victim’s family already knew.

  There’s no visible emotion on Yngve Karlsson’s thin face as he mentions his father’s fate, and the look in his soft blue eyes is one of resignation.

  Malin shakes his hand, then her mobile starts to ring.

  She recognises the number.

  Gabriella Karlsson.

  Malin excuses herself, gestures to Zeke, then clicks to take the call as she moves away through the garden.

  A voice at the other end, thick with crying.

  ‘So he was murdered? Who could have wanted to do that? I just read it on the Correspondent’s website. Why wasn’t I told before them? Surely I had a right to know first?’

  What can I say? Malin thinks.

  ‘It’s true that we suspect that your grandfather was murdered,’ she says.