Souls of Air (Malin Fors 7)

by Mons Kallentoft

  Should she let Tove read it?

  No. For the time being it’s evidence.

  So far Johan hasn’t found anything else of interest on the laptop. There’s no obvious suicide note, but he’s still looking through Konrad Karlsson’s digital correspondence. There was nothing unexpected on his mobile phone. Calls to Gabriella, to Strandkvist, his solicitor.

  She’s just heard the weather forecast. There’s going to be one more fine day, then a storm is supposed to sweep in from the Baltic, a big one, apparently, class three, which – according to the woman on the radio – is extremely unusual for this time of year.

  The last time it happened was in 1934.

  The year Konrad Karlsson was born.

  Before the weather forecast Malin heard some PR person from Merapi give a statement about the investigation. ‘We’re doing all we can to assist the police. We’re dedicated to playing a positive role in society.’

  Done.

  She puts the plate in the sink. Aware that someone will get cross because she didn’t put it in the dishwasher.

  She leaves the kitchen and looks out across the open-plan office. It’s already past six o’clock, but several of her colleagues are still there. Johan, Börje, and Waldemar. They look tired, from both the heat and their work.

  Zeke is picking Tess up from preschool. He does that a lot.

  There’s no sign of Sven either. He must be in his room. Probably listening to the voices of the investigation.

  Ping. Sven’s inbox bleeps, an email from the probation service shouting for his attention.

  Who’s been released recently? What have they dug out for me?

  Sven glances out of the window towards the hospital, towards the protruding green canopy above the entrance, and thinks of the people inside, the healthcare workers, the patients.

  Just let me die quickly, he thinks.

  No fuss.

  Don’t let me end up bed-bound.

  Then he opens the email. Clicks, reads, thinks: Bloody hell.

  Zeke sees Tess come running towards him down the preschool corridor. How delighted she is to see him.

  He thinks about what he said to Malin. About wanting to devote his attention to Tess and Karin now.

  Is that true? Is that really what I want?

  Don’t I want to work, just take care of myself? Do I want a family again? What the fuck? Doing the pick-up from preschool several times a week?

  Then she jumps up into his arms. The beautiful little miracle from the other side of the world. She smells good, she is soft and warm and love. And Karin is love.

  But she’s too bossy, she’s too smart for me, she wins every discussion, albeit in a sensitive way. Sometimes I almost miss Gunilla’s passive aggression.

  Tess pulls free of the hug. Looks up at him with her big brown eyes.

  ‘Can we go for drink and cake? Please?’

  He doesn’t answer immediately.

  ‘Please, Daddy!’ Tess says.

  Hans Morelia is watching his nine-year-old daughter riding. She is sitting straight-backed on the white Arab, which is almost one hundred and sixty centimetres tall at its withers, and she’s controlling the horse perfectly, as if her body were one with the animal. Strands of blond hair stick out from beneath her helmet, fluttering around her face. There’s a smile of concentration, and he can see how much his daughter is enjoying all this: the horse, her own skill, and just being alive.

  The paddock is in a woodland glade on the Bergfors estate, some thirty kilometres west of Linköping. That’s where he has his horses stabled. He doesn’t ride, but Lova loves it, and, just because he could, he bought her three horses. The Arab, King, is her favourite.

  The riding instructor clicks his tongue and shouts encouragement, and when the lesson is over Hans Morelia and Lova walk slowly back to the car together. The summer evening is mild, but he has to be back in the office soon, there are thousands of pages to be looked over in advance of the deal, due diligence to be conducted on both sides. Nexxus won’t find any details missing. His kaizen-inspired thinking is going to impress them.

  Hans Morelia puts an arm around his daughter and breathes in the smell of her clothes. The sharp, earthy smell of horse combined with the green scent of the forest, and he pulls Lova closer to him, and says: ‘How do you think it went today?’

  ‘Well, I think …?’

  ‘Did you have fun?’

  ‘I always have fun.’

  ‘What sort of fun?’

  ‘Stop nagging, Daddy.’

  And he holds her tightly as they walk towards the car, through the early evening.

  He looks over at the edge of the forest. Is that someone standing there among the trees, staring at them?

  He looks away, doesn’t want to see, and when he looks again the figure is gone.

  It was a figure, wasn’t it? Someone standing there?

  They carry on towards the car.

  ‘Have you noticed anything different lately?’ he asks.

  ‘Like what?’

  He can’t mention the figure he’s seen in the garden, because that would frighten her.

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ he says. ‘So nothing’s changed?’

  ‘No.’

  As far as Lova is concerned, there’s no need for any kaizen, Hans Morelia thinks. She’s perfect. And he says: ‘You know I love you, don’t you? That all this business with my work, the money and all that, none of that really means anything. The only thing that matters is you, and our family. And you mustn’t worry about what they write about me in the papers. Never. That will never have any effect on you.’

  Lova says nothing. Just hugs him back.

  Nothing bad must ever happen to you, he thinks.

  And he can feel the life rushing through her body, life that in many ways is his own.

  Elin Sand went home when they were finished at Merapi. She’s taken off her trousers and is now sitting on the sofa in just her briefs and T-shirt.

  Waiting.

  Waiting until she hears footsteps in the stairwell, the outside door slamming shut, the ring on her own door.

  ‘You’re the one who should be ashamed.’

  Did she really say that, Rebecka Koss, or did she say ‘ones’?

  You’re the ones who should be ashamed.

  Incredibly cheeky, and demonstrating a total lack of empathy.

  We.

  Do you hear, you stuck-up PR bitch?

  WE.

  We should all be ashamed, and then she hears Rebecka Koss’s parting words, ‘make society safe’.

  Astonishingly naïve. Society is never safe, no matter how much money you’ve got. No matter what a man like Hans Morelia might like to think.

  Elin Sand closes her eyes.

  She feels black inside, and she knows she needs to keep a tight grip on the cynicism that’s creeping up on her. She has to believe in the force of good. Because if she doesn’t, why should anyone else?

  Malin. She’s almost lost her faith entirely.

  Waldemar lost his a long time ago. And just look at the pair of them, how often they behave in self-destructive ways. I need to act according to my convictions. That’s my only chance.

  Why do I care so much about what Malin thinks? Elin wonders.

  Partly because she’s my idol, in a lot of ways. I want to be as good a detective as she is, as courageous. I want to make the same contribution to investigations. Waldemar would never dare call her ‘Poppet’ or ridicule her contributions.

  Elin knows it’s pointless to be angry. Actions alone will raise her status with Malin, Waldemar and the others. Maybe …

  She hears the outside door close.

  Knows who it is.

  Her whole body is longing now, and she runs one hand over the scar on her left buttock, the one she got on a call-out when a frightened child stabbed her in the backside with a scalpel.

  She is the wonderful woman who sewed her back together.

  Steps in the stairwell.

/>   A ring on the doorbell.

  Elin Sand stands up. Adjusts her briefs.

  Bloody hell, Sven Sjöman thinks again.

  A Vincent Edlund was released one year ago after spending the previous twenty years in Karsudden Hospital, and now Sven remembers him. A nursing assistant who gave two residents in an old people’s home overdoses of morphine because he felt sorry for them, wanted to put an end to their suffering. That was what he was convicted of, anyway. He claimed he was entirely innocent, that the old people wanted to die, and that he was only helping them to commit suicide. The way he presented it, his actions were a practical political act in favour of euthanasia.

  The method used in their current case was different, the murder of Konrad Karlsson was more brutal, but serial killers can get more brutal with time.

  And now this Vincent Edlund is free.

  We need to check you out, Sven thinks.

  But if they let you out, you must be better now?

  He smiles wryly.

  Then clicks to open a black-and-white picture of a man in his forties. Or is he over fifty?

  Vincent Edlund.

  Long hair, half his face covered by an unkempt beard. But his eyes are tranquil. Could you have drugged Konrad Karlsson somehow? He could hardly have known you, wouldn’t have trusted you.

  But could you be our man? Sven wonders.

  Did you want to show Konrad Karlsson a bit of mercy?

  37

  The eyes of Yngve Karlsson’s house are lit up in the shimmering evening. The plain stretches out, dark yellow, in all directions, and to the north they can see the tower of Klockrike Church.

  As Malin and Zeke slowly drive closer all the lights in the windows go out. They’re in a different car this time, a dark blue Audi that, according to Zeke, is ‘incredible to drive’.

  Why has he turned the lights off? Malin wonders.

  Does he want us to think he isn’t home? Does he really think we didn’t see that the lights were on?

  This case seems to be completely devoid of rationality.

  They drive towards the house.

  No movement in the windows. Outside the shadows of a flock of magpies are chasing each other, to no avail.

  Music is blaring inside the car. Zeke wanted it on, it’s from his mobile, he said he was feeling tired. And Malin agreed, but only if he drove, so she’s having to endure a squadron of Valkyries, Wagner’s ominous waves of sound.

  Zeke loves it. He says he’s been thinking of taking up choral singing again, but don’t do it, Zeke. Concentrate on Karin and Tess instead.

  They pull up.

  Zeke switches off the music, then the engine.

  ‘Do we need to be careful?’ he asks, and Malin thinks back to how she felt when they were here earlier today, the unpleasant sense that someone was watching them.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ she says. ‘We could be on to something important here, and he could well be desperate.’

  ‘Or else he thinks we’re a couple of loan sharks who’ve come to call in his gambling debts.’

  Yngve Karlsson saw the car approach; it could only be coming to see him, and who could be inside it? The car is dark, the detectives were in a white one this morning, and the windows are tinted so he can’t see who’s inside. Has Dragan sent one of his thugs to beat the shit out of me?

  It’s going to hurt. A lot. He hit me once, how much more has he got in him? He’ll kill me if I don’t pay.

  That much is very clear.

  He sees his hands shaking.

  Calm down, Yngve, calm down.

  Turn the lights out, get your rifle.

  They’re not going to get me.

  A different car, but it’s those cops again. They’re walking towards the door, they know I lied to them, they know what Strandkvist the solicitor told me, and I haven’t got an alibi. And as the two police officers approach the door Yngve raises the rifle, then lowers it again.

  Why would Dad want to give his money away? Yngve wonders. He knew about my debts, the threats I’d received, why couldn’t he just have given me the money? And a thought strikes Yngve Karlsson: maybe Dragan and his crew killed Dad so I’d inherit the money and be able to pay my debts.

  Can he say that to the detectives?

  That could be what happened.

  And Yngve Karlsson feels his head raging as his thoughts collide, and he pulls his finger towards him, wants to send the shot flying through the air towards the two figures as they approach the veranda.

  One step.

  Two steps.

  Slowly, cautiously, because he’s in there, Malin thinks.

  She goes up the porch steps. Knocks.

  No answer.

  Calls out: ‘Yngve! YNGVE! We just want to talk to you, open up!’

  And Malin hears the back door open, and yells: ‘Shit, he’s running!’

  She draws her pistol and runs around the house, the dry grass crunching underfoot, and there’s a smell of roses even though she can’t see any flowers.

  Zeke is right behind her, but she knows he can’t keep up with her for long, and Yngve Karlsson is older than her, and didn’t seem to be in great shape, and there!

  There he is.

  With a rifle in his hand.

  He’s running into a field of rape, and we’ve got to get him, Malin thinks, we’ve got to get him. But the rape is taller than it looks, and soon Yngve Karlsson has been swallowed up by the dark yellow, and insects swarm across the field, and Malin rushes on, rushing straight into it.

  Zeke shouts: ‘Careful, Malin, he’s armed!’

  Mum, Tove thinks, what are you doing now?

  Where are you?

  Tove is standing by the open living-room window, trying to ventilate the room and breathe in some fresh air.

  The city is buzzing beneath her; the outside terrace of the Pull & Bear pub is packed.

  She’s been thinking about it for ages, how to tell her mum what she’s planning to do in the autumn. She’s made up her mind now. That last year at Lundsberg was more than enough for her. Enough to make her thoroughly sick of superficiality, of so many students being mean to each other, almost brutal in the viciousness of their power games.

  She made it through.

  Because of Tom, whom all the others respected, and probably because she was sending out signals that she wasn’t going to take any shit off anyone.

  She’s given away almost all of her designer clothes now. Apart from the designer scarf Tom gave her to soften the blow when he thought he was the one dumping her. She’s given the jacket he bought her to her mum, but only after she’d removed the label: Mum would never wear anything from Dior.

  But Tom wasn’t the one who dumped her. She ended it. Almost, at any rate, and the scarf was a sick gift that proved how sick the world is.

  No fucking Business College.

  Never end up like Hans Morelia.

  Someone who makes old people’s lives a misery. Konrad’s.

  Her eyes fill with tears again.

  Damn.

  She feels like doing something completely different. She’s heard her dad’s stories about Rwanda. Stories from a world where things aren’t all about money, and that’s why she’s applied to do overseas service there. She’s been accepted, they called today, they thought her application letter was great.

  And they liked the fact that she’d been at Lundsberg.

  Mum’s going to go mad.

  Dad might be proud of her, because he was in Bosnia during the war there as well. But I don’t feel up to calling him, he can find out later.

  Like a yellow jungle where death is waiting for you.

  Malin’s heart is pounding in her chest and she gasps for breath, feeling the rape plants tear at the fabric of her trousers. She can hear Yngve Karlsson some way ahead of her. His footsteps, his breathing.

  Or is he behind her?

  Have I overtaken him?

  And she cries: ‘Stop, Yngve! We only want to talk to you.’

 
But the sounds continue and it feels like they’re coming from all directions at once.

  Breathing, footsteps, hissing, then all of a sudden she’s out in the open. She tumbles into a ditch, rolls over, gets wet, realises she’s dropped her pistol and screams: ‘FUCK!’

  But no sound comes out, because she’s underwater and she can feel dirty, tepid water in her mouth, it tastes of soil and minerals, and she throws her head back and that’s when she sees him, standing a few metres away, a wild look in his eyes. He’s got his rifle aimed at her. His finger is turning white on the trigger, and she thinks: Am I going to die now?

  Is this how it ends?

  No.

  Not yet.

  I’m finding my way back; I’m finding a way forward.

  Even if I can’t see it right now.

  38

  Why am I thinking about Mum now?

  Tove is walking across Stora torget. She sees the people on the pavement terraces. Hears them talking and laughing. The world is tugging at her and she feels like stopping. She looks across the square to see if she can spot anyone she knows, but no familiar faces pop up. Three years at Lundsberg have turned most people into strangers; most of her old friends no doubt think she’s too stuck-up for them now.

  But this isn’t an evening for being stuck-up.

  It’s been a rough day at work.

  Relatives getting in touch, wondering what’s been going on, turning up and watching every step they take with suspicion. That makes the residents anxious, and the anxiety produces a peculiar atmosphere that seems to affect the very weakest particularly badly.

  They die in threes, as Berit Andersson always says, and today Svea Persson has weakened. As if the heat and events of the summer are sucking the life out of her.

  And Werner.

  His stomach won’t settle, and Tove can still smell it in her nose, wants to get rid of the smell, but how do you do that?

  But worst of all is Konrad’s absence. The feeling in her stomach is refusing to let go. Anxiety. The awareness that something has gone horribly wrong. That nothing will ever be right again.

  She would have liked to spend much more time with him. Talking about Ivar Lo-Johansson’s books with him. And about Gatsby.

  So she takes a seat at the bar on the terrace outside Stora Hotellet. Orders a beer. She sips the cold liquid, and after just a few mouthfuls her anxiety and the smell in her nose seem to fade and the people around her look friendly. She studies the bottles of whisky behind the bartender. Likes the strong warm feeling she gets from it.