Souls of Air (Malin Fors 7)

by Mons Kallentoft

  Alexandra’s gone into the city. Was going to have a few beers with an old friend. He’s not happy about it, but knows he shouldn’t try to stop her. He needs to loosen the leash sometimes, otherwise she’ll get fed up with him, because what is he really but a dodgy old bloke?

  Ha.

  He laughs silently to himself.

  He’s not an old man yet. I’ve still got plenty of energy, he thinks. He still hates weakness. The day he feels weak he knows what he’s going to do. He’s planning to jump in front of a train.

  Or put his head in a noose.

  It will be a relief.

  He knows that.

  Like morphine.

  Now there’s a knock at the door, hard, continuous, and he gets to his feet, but leaves the television on. Gary Sinise is doing his best to look tough on some New York street, and almost succeeds.

  Vincent Edlund composes his features.

  Opens the door.

  On the other side, just a metre away in the rain, stands a man dressed in crumpled, scruffy clothes. He stinks of smoke and looks tired, but Vincent Edlund recognises his strength, and feels instinctively that this isn’t a man to be trifled with, underestimated.

  ‘Waldemar Ekenberg,’ the man says. ‘Linköping Police.’

  Elin Sand is leaning back in the cinema seat. Huge faces with massive mouths in front of her.

  She’s on her own.

  She likes going to the cinema alone. Imagining other stories, different to the ones playing out before her eyes. But tonight the stories don’t grab her.

  She’s angry.

  Fed up with not being taken seriously.

  Now she’s looking at an alpine landscape.

  An aeroplane.

  She can smell popcorn, and thinks: I’ll show you what I’m capable of. Just you wait.

  Malin is standing by the kitchen worktop, eating heated-up meat stew from the freezer.

  Trying not to notice the stench.

  Anticimex are going to come again. When was it? Tomorrow? Thank goodness they work weekends.

  She picks at the food, not hungry in spite of the weight-training and running, but she knows she’s got to eat, keep her strength up.

  There’s no buzz of voices outside the window. No one’s going anywhere tonight, not even to get away from something. It occurs to her that she’s got stuck in no-man’s-land, somewhere between towards and away from, but that there’s no movement in her life at all. She can’t even look for that in her relationship with Tove. Her daughter is already gone, only home temporarily for the summer, and then she’ll rush away, off to whatever her life is going to be.

  Daniel.

  I’m really only after a body, after physical contact. Not some fucking hand on my cheek.

  Unless I felt something else? And am still feeling it?

  And she sees a calm sea within her, knows that she isn’t that sea at all. She’s waves lashing against a breakwater, over and over again, before finally moving on towards uncharted territory.

  She wants a drink.

  She always wants a drink, will always want one, and there’s something indescribably wearisome in that, in the predictability of desire. What have I really got to look forward to? I’m not even forty yet, but I’m stuck on my own in my squalid, stinking flat, picking at a tragic little dish of meat stew.

  Bloody hell.

  Then she thinks about work.

  Maybe I should move back to Stockholm? There’s nothing tying me to this dump any more.

  Sees herself in Sven’s chair, in his office. Malin Fors, the boss. But that isn’t her. She never wants to sit in that chair, bear that kind of responsibility.

  I’ve got enough of that already.

  Konrad Karlsson.

  No one’s life should end the way yours did. No one can claim to have the right to strangle another person.

  Tove, Stefan, and me. We’re responsible for each other.

  That has to be it.

  How else could I bear it?

  Waldemar is standing still inside the campervan, struck by how tidy it is: there are worse places to live.

  He says nothing, and sees the man in there with him get nervous, disgustingly scared, as scared as the old men he murdered must have been. Vincent Edlund can’t seem to decide whether to sit or stand, and Waldemar measures his physical strength with his eyes, his strength, agility, and the weaknesses in the other man’s body probably outweigh its strengths. He takes two steps towards the man and takes a swing at him, and before Vincent Edlund, killer of old men, has time to react, Waldemar’s fist connects with his cheekbone and he collapses on the floor of the van, lying at Waldemar’s feet, spitting, hissing and groaning. Then he turns his bearded face towards Waldemar and whispers: ‘What the hell was that all about? Are you mad?’

  And Waldemar kicks him in the stomach, then kicks again, in his ribs, but not too hard. Vincent Edlund gasps for breath, and Waldemar lets him recover, kneels down beside the prone body, breathes, lets his smoke-poisoned breath hit the man in the face, then sticks two fingers in Vincent Edlund’s nostrils and pulls him towards the bench.

  ‘You need to get one thing seriously fucking clear in your head,’ he hisses. ‘I’m the one who asks the questions here, OK?’

  Cowering, Vincent Edlund nods.

  He looks drained, Waldemar thinks. Just as he should.

  ‘Your alibi for the night of Konrad Karlsson’s murder is fake. Isn’t it? You weren’t with that Alexandra at all. What the fuck would she be doing with an old man like you?’

  ‘I was with her. Ask her again.’

  Waldemar hits Vincent Edlund again. A slap across the cheek this time.

  ‘You’re lying. Tell me about the old man in Hälsingland. You strangled him, didn’t you? Then you came down here and strangled Konrad Karlsson. It turns you on, doesn’t it? Watching them die. Their weakness makes you feel strong, doesn’t it?’

  Waldemar feels like smashing his fist into the face on the bench. The tough guy is sobbing now, shaking his head, saying: ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘I had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, you sack of shit.’

  And he hears a car stop outside the campervan, a door slamming.

  ‘Alexandra,’ Vincent Edlund whispers.

  ‘You’re not fooling anyone,’ Waldemar says.

  He’s applied pressure, and just about everyone would have talked by now. He knows he can put the fear of God into people, and he turns away and leaves the sobbing figure.

  On his way out of the van he meets a young and surprisingly beautiful woman.

  He stares at her.

  ‘You need to sort out that sack of shit on the bench in there.’

  He walks towards his car.

  Stops.

  Runs back into the campervan, where Alexandra is now sitting next to Vincent Edlund. Waldemar stands right in front of them, and looks darkly at them.

  ‘Get out,’ the woman yells. ‘Get out!’

  ‘Shhh,’ Waldemar whispers.

  She calms down.

  ‘You’re not lying to me, are you?’

  She tries to spit in his face, and Waldemar dodges to one side. He leaves the van, thinking: Have I gone too far this time? Can you ever go too far in the search for the truth?

  Then he gets into his car and drives home to his wife in Mjölby.

  50

  Sunday, 15 August

  Karim Akbar lowers three eggs into the boiling water. One of them cracks, and he swears:

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘It’s only an egg,’ he hears Vivianne say behind him.

  ‘Yes, but still,’ he says, without turning around.

  ‘He’s kicking now. Come and feel.’

  Karim turns around. There she sits. In a luxurious dressing gown, and she looks impossibly beautiful this morning. Someone he wants to get to know, not just look at. Someone he wants to listen to. Touch.

  He goes over
to her, opens the dressing gown, puts his hand on her warm belly, and feels the kicks.

  The miracle.

  Maybe he wants to stay here after all, in this moment, in this city, in this life, for ever. Maybe there’s nothing better anywhere else.

  The stench in the flat.

  Malin and Tove don’t notice it as they sit and share an early breakfast together. One good thing about smells is that you tend not to notice them after a while, although the memory of them lingers.

  Someone else from Anticimex is coming today. An emergency call-out. With a camera that’s supposed to be able to see into the smallest cracks.

  Half past three.

  Malin will have to remember to be home to let him in.

  The window facing St Lars Church is open. The oncoming storm is now predicted to be even stronger, but for the moment the rain has stopped, as if forces are gathering for a frontal attack.

  Tove leans across the table.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, Mum.’

  ‘What about? Have you changed your mind about the care homes in Ljusdal? Was the other one better, the one by the river, or was it the other way around?’

  She sees Tove’s weary eyes darken.

  ‘You really don’t care about Stefan at all.’

  She says it as a statement, and Malin wants to protest, refute the accusation, but knows that Tove is right, at least in part.

  Then Tove repeats: ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  A pregnant pause, and Malin feels like getting up, heading off to the station, to work.

  ‘He really ought to be with us. In a home here, in Linköping. So we can visit him more often. So it doesn’t have to be such a big deal every time.’

  Malin picks up her sandwich, takes a bite, chews, is about to swallow before saying anything, but she can’t stop herself: ‘And how the hell do you think that would work? Do you imagine social services here would welcome Stefan with open arms? They’d refuse to find him a place.’

  Crumbs flying.

  Tove bites her bottom lip.

  ‘People still have the right to move, even if they do have special needs, Mum. You know that.’

  ‘Do you really think it’s that simple? That you can just do what you like?’

  ‘You don’t want him here,’ Tove snaps. ‘It suits you much better to keep him as a distant idea that you can project your pathetic theories of loneliness on to. Take some responsibility, Mum. He’s your brother.’

  ‘Don’t lecture me about responsibility.’

  Tove leans back and laughs.

  ‘You panic whenever there’s a glimpse of responsibility that isn’t connected to your work. Because that involves emotions, and you’re terrified of any sort of emotion. And you know that perfectly bloody well.’

  What can I say to that? Malin thinks.

  My daughter is sitting in front of me, analysing my emotional life.

  Well, fuck her.

  ‘Be quiet, Tove. You don’t talk to your mother like that. You keep saying he ought to be near us. Near us? You’re home for the summer, then you’ll be off again, God knows where, to Lund, Stockholm, wherever. You’re hardly likely to go to university in Linköping, so we’re basically talking about me here, not us.’

  ‘We’re talking about Stefan. Your brother.’

  ‘But I don’t want him here.’

  There, it’s said.

  I confess.

  I want to keep my disabled brother at a distance. I want him to have a good life, but not here.

  I need to live my life in peace. Why is that so fucking hard to understand?

  Tove goes to stand up.

  ‘You’re pathetically selfish. Just like Grandma and Granddad.’

  ‘Don’t mention me in the same breath as them. And never take the car again without asking for permission. Never. And certainly not when you’ve got a hangover.’

  ‘I wasn’t hungover.’

  Malin turns her head away. Snorts.

  ‘And how could you tell them you were me? That’s against the law, Tove.’

  ‘What was I supposed to do? You don’t give a damn about Stefan, after all. So what are you going to do about it? Report me?’

  ‘It’s not right.’

  Tove gets to her feet. Glances out of the window.

  ‘Right? Really, Mum. Are you nineteen again, or what?’

  And Malin looks at her daughter. For her it seems so obvious that the boundary between right and wrong is fluid, something you decide as and when situations arise. Principles mean nothing, actions everything.

  Tove walks out of the kitchen. Shouts from the hall: ‘I hope I never end up like you, Mum.’

  Malin walks through a Linköping that’s tormented by rain once again. It’s gushing from the skies now, and the wind is getting stronger and stronger. She has to lean into the headwind, and the wind tears at her raincoat, trying to get at her skin.

  The gale can’t disguise the stench from the bins on Trädgårdstorget, where the market traders dumped the last of their produce yesterday.

  Damn.

  Tove. She’s right, even though she’s wrong, and Malin isn’t about to back down on this one, she needs to trust her instincts, and she knows how she feels.

  Why don’t I want to have Stefan here?

  Because he’s a reminder of Mum and Dad’s betrayal?

  Why did Yngve and Margaretha Karlsson hardly ever visit their father in his care home?

  Because he reminded them of loss, of betrayal, and the opposite applied to Gabriella, who did use to visit him. For her he was a link to her dead mother, and Malin can’t help finding the idea rather touching. And she thinks about Berit and Ronny Andersson, their disappointments, and how a man like Ronny could find any number of strange ways to vent his frustrations.

  She walks past the tobacconist’s on Trädgårdsgatan with its advertisements for lottery scratch cards – now, apparently, with an increased chance of winning. Four cards for one hundred kronor.

  Lottery tickets.

  My only hope of getting rich, Malin thinks. Scratch cards, live on TV4! So many people in the same situation, tragically.

  But she never buys lottery tickets. Doesn’t believe that unrealistic dreams can actually come true.

  I don’t believe in luck, she thinks, and feels a warm gust of air as a bus drives past, and the world suddenly feels like a good place.

  I have no idea what I do actually believe in.

  Waldemar Ekenberg pulls up outside Börje Svärd’s house. Blows the horn, and hears the dogs start barking in the garden.

  Then he sees the gate open, and there’s Börje, out in the rain. His smile seems wider without the moustache to drag his cheeks down.

  Waldemar decided not to smoke as he drove over, and aired the car as best he could in such awful weather, doesn’t want Börje to have to endure the stench of stale smoke. He does this several times a week, picking Börje up in Valla on his way to the station.

  ‘All right?’ Waldemar asks.

  Börje smiles.

  ‘I had that red-head here last night.’

  Another lover, Waldemar thinks, with a pang of envy.

  ‘So you’re happy, then!’

  He starts the car and they head out on to the main road in silence.

  ‘I paid a visit to Vincent Edlund last night.’ Waldemar clutches the steering wheel, and notices Börje looking at his swollen knuckles.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Zeke’s idea.’

  ‘Really?’

  A tiny, fleeting change in Börje’s expression. As if he were briefly entertaining doubts about the morality of what might have happened inside the campervan.

  Then his face resumes its usual calm expression.

  ‘How did it go?’ he asks.

  Waldemar shakes his head.

  ‘No?’

  He shakes his head again, as they drive past the main cemetery, with all its long-dead and forgotten occupants.

  ‘I get fed up with myself sometimes
,’ Waldemar says. ‘Fed up of what I can’t stop enjoying.’

  ‘So learn to enjoy something else instead.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s too late?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Börje says.

  51

  Malin walks into the station, says hello to the other members of the team.

  Sunday working for everyone today.

  Only Börje and Waldemar are missing.

  Johan Jakobsson is crouched over his computer. He’s rubbing his elbow, and Malin knows it’s been troubling him. In the end he’ll have to have an operation. He’s had four cortisone injections, each one stronger than the last, but they haven’t stopped the inflammation.

  But his eyes look brighter. Who knows what he might be able to unearth for them?

  Something else about the American purchase of Merapi? Something that could be linked to Konrad Karlsson? It wouldn’t be the first time that the big, bad business world attacked its smaller, more human counterpart.

  But Malin has a feeling that this could all be about that smaller, yet paradoxically larger, world.

  Is this about Vincent Edlund’s dreams? His longings, desires?

  She doesn’t know.

  Zeke waves at her, and she waves back. He waves again, beckoning her over, and she walks across to him.

  ‘Waldemar went to see Edlund last night.’

  ‘I know. He sent me a text.’

  ‘Maybe it was a stupid idea for him to go.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Malin says. ‘But sometimes we need him.’

  Elin Sand is sitting at her desk. Her long legs are tucked under her desk, and her hand almost covers the mouse. She’s got her back to Malin, and is scrolling through something. Perhaps Johan has discovered something new about Yngve and Margaretha Karlsson’s finances that he wants her to look through. Or something about Konrad Karlsson’s own finances. Unless he’s found something in Konrad’s manuscript, something Malin hasn’t noticed.

  What a piece of work.

  She read it last night, before falling asleep.

  Who’d want to get old?

  ‘No meeting today,’ Zeke says. ‘Sven’s at the hospital, having his prostate X-rayed. Just a check-up. And we all know what we’re supposed to be doing.’