Souls of Air (Malin Fors 7)

by Mons Kallentoft

  Christ, she’s brilliant.

  Malin comes out of the interview room. Looks at him, says: ‘Nice suit, Karim. Are you going to a party tonight?’

  ‘Just being here is like being at a party, it’s such a spectacle,’ he calls after her, thinking that he might miss this after all, and then wishing he was at home with Vivianne. And the child that’s growing inside her.

  Lights. Sounds.

  The world has no directions, her body is the needle of a compass, spinning around, around, and Tove feels sick, wants to get rid of the whisky and beer, and she stumbles along Ågatan, and oops, I just walked into a chair, and what’s happening, what’s going on? The ground vanishes and she falls slowly, yet strangely quickly to the right left right, hits something hard, no, soft, and feels something sharp against her cheek. My face stings, but I need to keep going, crawling now, and my stomach contracts and there’s a bitter taste in my mouth, and now I’m on all fours, throwing up, in the midst of all these people, completely alone, and what’s going on? I’m only a hundred metres from home, but how am I going to make it that far?

  The world is like a thousand-piece jigsaw.

  Every piece the whole world.

  I’m a piece, all the pieces, and Tove tries to stand up but stumbles again, tunnel vision, widescreen, tunnel vision, widescreen.

  Mum.

  Where are you?

  Help me home.

  You always found your way home when you were like this.

  41

  Friday, 13 August, Saturday, 14 August

  Malin is standing outside the station, having turned down offers of lifts from Zeke and Sven. She needs a walk, needs something else, needs to confirm something to herself.

  It’s dark now. The cones of light from the street lamps embrace her, the hot air of the day is mild now, and she slowly fills her lungs.

  Thinks about Stefan.

  How he is right now.

  She meant to call the care home today, keep up the pressure. But she hasn’t had time, and she wonders about calling now, and takes her mobile out, leafing through the numbers in her contacts, but then she stops.

  No one at the home will answer at this time of night.

  The car park is deserted. As if everyone has fled the world.

  Daniel.

  His face the other evening.

  He’s single again.

  As lonely as me?

  And as Malin sets off towards the city centre she calls Daniel’s number. She has no idea where he is, what he’s doing, where he is in his life, but perhaps they could cheer each other up.

  ‘Malin?’

  He answers on the third ring, as she’s marching quickly down the path that runs through the patch of woodland towards the hospital car park. She can’t see any shadows in the dark.

  ‘Hi,’ Malin says. ‘What are you up to? We didn’t get much time the last time we met. I just wanted to say it was good to see you again.’

  ‘It was good to see you too. But I’ve just gone to bed. Like most people at this time of night.’

  ‘I’m on my way home from work.’

  Silence.

  The sort that follows a pointless remark.

  ‘Anything new in the Konrad Karlsson case?’ Daniel eventually asks.

  Now he’s being a journalist again, Malin thinks, laughs and says: ‘I thought you were in bed? You’re not supposed to be working.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  She realises that his remark was intended as an attempt to keep the conversation going.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is everything OK, Malin?’

  She laughs again.

  ‘Sure, everything’s just the same as usual.’

  Everything and nothing, she thinks.

  ‘How about you? Same as usual?’

  Silence at the other end of the line, and Malin has reached the hospital car park now, is walking through the rows of parked cars.

  ‘Helen and I broke up. I don’t know why, but we broke up.’

  ‘We should meet,’ Malin says.

  ‘Maybe we should,’ Daniel says. ‘Any suggestions as to when?’

  ‘How about now? Soon. This evening. Tonight.’

  Daniel considers this.

  ‘Not tonight, Malin. But coffee would be good. How about Espresso House on Trädgårdstorget in half an hour? They’re open late.’

  Coffee.

  No.

  ‘No work talk,’ he says.

  Right.

  Not at all what I wanted, but: ‘OK.’

  Daniel is wearing a freshly ironed shirt, and looks like he’s had a shower, and he makes Malin feel grubby.

  But he’s looking at her fondly.

  They’re sitting in the back room of the café, the one with a big skylight in the roof, surrounded by young people who are more lying than sitting on the big red sofas. She doesn’t recognise a single one of them. None of Tove’s old friends. They’re younger than her.

  He half closes his eyes. Takes a sip of his latte and smiles, and she wonders why he’s smiling, she hasn’t said anything funny.

  ‘It’s nice, sitting here with you like this,’ he says.

  What am I supposed to say to that?

  This wasn’t a good idea. But it was me who called him.

  ‘I’m happy to be back at the paper,’ he says. ‘I missed journalism.’

  She takes a sip of her tea.

  Nods.

  His brown eyes don’t look tired, and he’s kept himself in good shape. She can tell.

  ‘But the paper’s haemorrhaging money. Don’t know how long it’s got left.’

  ‘No job talk, we said,’ Malin says.

  Daniel raises his eyebrows.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So you broke up with Helen?’

  Daniel looks at her, and she regrets asking when she sees how sad he looks.

  ‘We didn’t work well together. How about you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Been seeing anyone?’

  ‘I was seeing a doctor for a while.’

  ‘But you didn’t work well together?’

  ‘I didn’t work well for him.’

  Now it’s Daniel’s turn to regret his question. Maybe he can see sadness in my eyes?

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Malin says, and then asks: ‘Are you running much these days?’

  They get lost in a conversation about apps, intervals, shoes, training programmes, and then they talk about some television show Daniel likes. They talk about the world, places they’d like to visit but will probably never get to, and Daniel asks about Tove, and Malin replies that Tove’s doing well. And without them noticing, an hour passes, and they’re left sitting alone in the big, brightly lit room.

  ‘We’re closing now,’ a woman’s voice calls from over by the entrance.

  A couple of minutes later they’re standing facing each other in Trädgårdstorget, about to go in different directions, and she sees the way his body moves beneath his shirt, sees him looking at her, and asks: ‘Shall we go back to yours?’

  Daniel smiles. Shakes his head.

  ‘No?’ Malin says. ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘I mean no,’ Daniel says. ‘But I’d like to see you again.’

  She feels a shiver run through her body, then something inside her collapses with disappointment.

  Give me what I need, for fuck’s sake.

  He reaches forward, strokes her cheek.

  She feels like batting his hand away. Wants a longer, more intense touch.

  Then he removes his hand. Looks at her.

  ‘See you,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Malin says.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Daniel says, then leaves her in the deepening Linköping night.

  42

  I move through the garden towards the house. Creep down the basement steps, try the door.

  It’s open. The
girl must have forgotten to lock it.

  Fear and doubt are quivering inside me, but I open the door nonetheless, go into the blackness and feel my way through the dark cellar, towards the sound I can hear.

  I see light.

  A recreation room. With big, dark paintings on the walls.

  I go up the stairs, slowly, and the sound of the television drowns out any creaking. Such rooms! The opposite of mine. Shiny and expensive. Metal and gold, leather, oil paintings.

  I head towards the room with the television. The big glass doors.

  In my hand is a pistol.

  I’m shaking. I can do this, and there, around the corner, there they sit, his wife and daughter. They’ve no idea that I’m here. That I even exist.

  She’s lying on her mother’s arm, asleep.

  I can do this. I can take their daughter away from them.

  I hear something else now.

  A car stopping on the drive, a door slamming shut.

  I have to get out.

  And my courage deserts me and I go down the stairs far too quickly, my pistol lowered, and I feel my way through the darkness, towards the basement door, I make sure I shut it behind me, then up the steps and through the garden, away to my car.

  I drive away.

  Cursing my own cowardice.

  43

  There’s something lying next to the front door. Something far too big.

  A body.

  A threat?

  Me?

  The self-preservation instinct kicks in before concern.

  A fraction of an instant of shame.

  Malin knows what it is that she’s looking at now, doesn’t want to see, she’s tired and she can see the vomit surrounding Tove’s body.

  But you are breathing, aren’t you, darling Tove?

  What have you done, what have I done, what is this world doing to us? For fuck’s sake, Tove.

  You’re asleep, aren’t you? You’re just asleep, and Malin races the last few steps towards Tove. Yes, she’s breathing. Malin crouches down beside her, putting one foot in the vomit, feels it squish beneath the sole of her sandal.

  She puts one hand on Tove’s back.

  Her chest is moving, up and down, up and down, and then she notices that she’s lying in the recovery position. Did she put herself in that position, or has one of the neighbours been a Good Samaritan? Not that it really matters, and Malin nudges Tove to one side, hears her body drag on the ground. She opens the door and tries to pick Tove up, her limp, sleeping body. Any tiredness is gone now, and Malin is grateful to all those brain-dead hours in the gym and the fifty-metre pool at Tinnerbäck for the fact that she can actually lift her daughter and carry her into the flat, can lay her on the bed in what was once a little girl’s room but is now something else.

  What? Malin wonders.

  A cocoon, a chrysalis, a waiting room. You shouldn’t be here, Tove. Not lying here like this.

  I shouldn’t have to help you like this.

  She undresses Tove. Tove doesn’t wake up; she’s far away in a strange, dreamless land. Malin throws the stinking clothes in the laundry basket, then puts Tove back in the recovery position, and her daughter has no awareness of what’s going on. She could be anywhere at all, and anyone could be doing absolutely anything to her.

  Malin pulls the covers over Tove’s body.

  Goes to the cleaning cupboard. Gets out a bucket, a mop, and a rag, fills the bucket with warm water and disinfectant, then goes out to clean the front step, feels the cold stone beneath her bare knees.

  She scrubs.

  Removes all traces.

  And when she’s finished she goes to bed, thinking about Daniel Högfeldt’s ‘no’. Then she falls asleep, before she even has time to think about falling asleep.

  Johan Jakobsson is awake, sitting at his computer at home in Linghem.

  His family are asleep, and in their sleep they become mysteries that can never be solved.

  That’s why I love being a police officer, Johan thinks.

  Because the mysteries get solved. Because there’s always another mystery waiting to be solved.

  He’s been looking for information about mercy-killer Vincent Edlund, who has recently been released after serving his sentence for murdering two elderly patients. Sven wanted him checked out, and Johan Jakobsson can’t help wondering: Why has he been released at all?

  He’s never shown any remorse or expressed the slightest regret, according to documents Johan has received from Karsudden Hospital.

  Vincent Edlund was sentenced to secure psychiatric care for the murders of two men in the Stintan old people’s home in Hallsberg. The case attracted a lot of publicity, but was quickly forgotten, the way crimes against the elderly tend to be.

  And now he’s out.

  Released just a week before the case that resembles theirs, in which an old man hanged himself with the cord of his alarm button.

  And now another alarm button.

  Too many of them for coincidence?

  Johan feels his way through cyberspace. For the first six months after his release Vincent Edlund lived in Brotjärn, one hundred kilometres from the care home in Hälsingland. But Johan has looked into what happened there, and there seems little doubt that it was suicide.

  Where does Vincent Edlund live now? Where is he registered?

  Nowhere.

  Johan checks the vehicle registration database.

  One hit.

  A campervan registered to Vincent Edlund.

  Where could he have bought that? Johan looks up the registration number in the database of vehicle sales.

  Stavén’s Cars in Linköping, out in Tornby.

  Well, well, well.

  Johan knows they have a reputation for good service. He dials the number of Stavén’s Cars, even though it’s the middle of the night. The answerphone clicks in, referring callers to a mobile number.

  He calls the mobile.

  Even though it’s the middle of the night.

  A man answers after the sixth ring.

  ‘Stavén’s Cars. I mean, Peter Stavén.’

  The man sounds so sleepy that his statement sounds like a question.

  Johan gives the man a few seconds to wake up before apologising for phoning so late and explaining why he’s called.

  ‘Do you know where Vincent Edlund took the campervan?’

  ‘I do, as it happens,’ Peter Stavén says, apparently unsurprised by the question. ‘He’s got it parked up at the campsite out in Glyttinge. He came back a few days ago, wanted to get the fuel line replaced. He mentioned it then.’

  ‘So he’s in Linköping?’

  The man who killed old people.

  Our man?

  ‘As far as I know,’ Peter Stavén replies.

  ‘What sort of impression did you get of him?’

  ‘He seemed a bit eccentric. Paid cash for the vehicle. Said it had taken him a long time to save up for it.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Look, it’s the middle of the night. I should be asleep, and so should you.’

  A head in a noose.

  Someone gasping for air.

  A final breath that becomes a mystery.

  Have we got you now? Johan thinks, clicking to end the call.

  PART 3

  Despairing love

  [The wind]

  Where is the wind now, the whetted-knife exhalation?

  It’s still sweeping across Linköping. Making the city’s flags and weathervanes tremble anxiously in the night. The lights of the buildings go on and off; the city’s inhabitants are getting ready for a new day.

  Hurry up, Malin. You’re close now, so close.

  No one wants to see themselves in a cracked mirror. After one mystery comes another.

  Grief comes to everyone. Death, followed by more death.

  A stranglehold, a bullet from a pistol.

  They’re working themselves to death, someone cries.

  That money’s mine, s
omeone else shouts.

  A third whispers: they’re so alone that they’d rather die.

  What’s the price? whispers the wind.

  What’s the price you have to pay for treating those who’ve gone before you as garbage?

  Weakness, whispers the wind.

  I shall tear its throat out, in your name.

  44

  Saturday, 14 August

  Tove, at the kitchen table. Awake, with watery eyes and green-tinged skin, a mug of black coffee. She grimaces, and Malin knows only too well how bad she’s feeling, knows all about the jack-hammer throbbing inside her head.

  Her towelling dressing gown is both rough and soft against her body. The kitchen window is wide open, in spite of the chill in the air outside.

  Tove raises her head, a resigned look in her eyes, but not quite as tired as Malin had been expecting.

  ‘I don’t feel up to going to work today.’

  Malin smiles, says: ‘Queen of the night, queen of the day. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘You don’t even believe that yourself, do you?’

  Malin remembers the few times she pulled a sickie because she was hungover. That’s just how Tove feels now, and maybe she could do with a day off; it’s been a tough week for her, what with Konrad Karlsson’s death and the trip to see Stefan.

  ‘I can call for you, if you like,’ Malin says, and the next minute she’s speaking to Hilda Jansson.

  ‘This is Malin Fors, Tove’s mum. I’m not calling on police business this time. I’m afraid Tove isn’t well, she’s got a stomach bug.’

  ‘OK, thanks for letting us know. When do you think she’ll be back?’

  Malin takes a gulp of coffee and looks at Tove again.

  ‘Tomorrow, with a bit of luck. How are you getting on?’

  Hilda Jansson sighs.

  ‘It’s been hot, and the atmosphere has been tense. Not the best conditions for our residents, but we’re struggling on.’

  As she’s talking to Hilda Jansson, Malin is simultaneously reading an article in the Correspondent in which they try to make a big deal out of the fact that the door to the Cherub was left unlocked at night. Rebecka Koss has fallen back on ‘ongoing restructuring’, as well as health and safety legislation: in case of fire, the doors need to be easy to open.