Souls of Air (Malin Fors 7)

by Mons Kallentoft

  Do we? Malin thinks. Having an X-ray on a Sunday? Has Sven suffered a relapse?

  Her stomach clenches. Not again.

  Sven. His prostate operation.

  He couldn’t piss normally for six months.

  Who’d want to get old?

  Not me, Malin thinks as she walks out to the kitchen.

  On the way she passes Zeke. He’s talking on the phone, snapping: ‘No, I’ve got to work today. You’ll have to do it. Not up for discussion.’

  Malin gets herself a cup of coffee, then has a sudden idea. She calls across the open-plan office: ‘Elin, have you got a few minutes?’

  She wants to test Elin’s already proven ability to tease out hints of the truth from people who may not even be aware that they possess them.

  Elin stands up, a little too quickly. A little too readily. A bit like an eager puppy.

  She wants to take Elin down into the basement, to the cell in which Yngve Karlsson is languishing. Just to see what happens.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Malin tells Elin. ‘I just want your help with something.’

  Hans Morelia is sitting in his Maserati. He’s put the roof up, and is waiting for the garage door to open. From the low-slung driver’s seat all he can see is the increasingly dark sky and the roof of the neighbour’s house.

  The deal will soon be complete.

  The gang from Stege Solicitors, led by the desperately unfashionable Robert Wernegren in his green jacket, have made their way down to Linköping from Stockholm on a Sunday, and he’s about to meet them in a conference room that’s been booked at the Hotel Ekoxen. They’re going to spend the day going through the documents to do with the transaction. Line by line, letter by letter. They could have done that in the office out in Tornby, but he prefers neutral territory.

  It’s not far to the Ekoxen, but the weather’s so awful that he’d rather take the car.

  Besides, people will be impressed when he shows up in the Maserati. The black leather seats, the dashboard in black Tibetan mahogany, and the shimmering paint with real silver in the pigment is practically made for a day like this.

  He starts the engine.

  Listens to it purr.

  It sounds like a perfect piece of human engineering, and he loves that sound, forgets how much when he’s not driving the car, the way the sound waves seem to cut the air like a knife.

  In just a few days’ time he’ll be a billionaire. His family’s finances secure for generations to come.

  For all of Lova’s life.

  He puts the car in gear and drives out of the garage. Turns left, down towards the city.

  Briefly notices the old black car parked some way down the street, but not the fact that it pulls out and follows him.

  Yngve Karlsson is asleep when the custody officer, a young man with tattoos of snakes on his lower arms, knocks on the cell door and opens it.

  What am I hoping he might say? Malin wonders, but Elin seems to be in no doubt.

  Even so, she asked a few moments ago, in her inimitable, dark voice: ‘What do you want from this, Malin? Just tell me, and I’ll do my best.’

  Malin could hardly say that she didn’t know, so replied instead with Sven’s mantra.

  ‘We need to listen to the voices of the investigation. In a few years’ time you’ll understand what I mean. But for now, just do as I say.’

  Elin Sand nodded. Didn’t seem to be annoyed.

  ‘We need to hear what Yngve Karlsson’s voice can add to the investigation,’ Malin added. ‘Trust me. I know what I’m doing.’

  Now he’s sitting, not quite awake, on the bunk in front of them, looking like he doesn’t understand why he’s been woken up. But then he looks at Malin and Elin and his face hardens.

  ‘Good morning,’ Elin says, and introduces herself.

  Yngve Karlsson doesn’t answer.

  ‘I need to ask you a few more questions,’ Elin Sand says.

  Yngve Karlsson nods, and Malin can’t help thinking that he must miss the whining winds of the Östgöta Plain, that a big storm must be truly dramatic out there. But now he’s locked up in this cramped cell, and she wonders once again why he ran from them, why he threatened her with the rifle. Perhaps some people are simply always running, all their lives, until one day they get fed up of running, to find themselves standing in an isolated field, pointing a loaded gun at a police officer.

  ‘Ask away,’ Yngve Karlsson says.

  ‘Have you thought of anything else we ought to know about your dad?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Christ, how many more times do I have to tell you?’

  Then Elin Sand asks if they’ve made any decisions about the funeral. Says that she knows they won’t have access to their father’s body until the investigation is finished, but perhaps they’ve already given the matter some thought?

  And Malin feels like stopping her.

  Too personal.

  Straying from the point.

  But Yngve Karlsson lights up, says: ‘I spoke to Gabriella the other day. She’s the one in charge. She had a suggestion about a coffin, a very plain one, which strikes me as a very good idea. Just a bit of simple carving by Gunnar Kanevad.’

  Kanevad.

  Linköping’s favourite. A woodcarver.

  What does his work cost?

  I’d have to win the bloody lottery to be able to afford something like that, Malin thinks.

  And she looks at Yngve Karlsson. Who had no contact with his father, yet wants to spend money on woodcarvings for his coffin. Even though he might not even be allowed to attend the funeral.

  She thinks of his house, and how it will deteriorate still further if he’s sent to prison for what he’s done. She thinks how weary he looks, done in, somehow, and he says: ‘I still can’t believe that Dad was going to give his money away. That he didn’t realise what it would mean to me. Will mean. I’ll be able to repair the house. Go travelling. See more of the world than that bloody plain.

  ‘And I’ll be able to pay off my debts, and all the interest. That’s the first thing I’m going to do.’

  When you get out, Malin thinks.

  Elin Sand follows Malin up the stairs to the office. Feels like asking what the interview was all about. If she did her job well.

  The voices of the investigation.

  What a load of bollocks.

  I’m sick of being treated like someone who’s a bit backward, she thinks. Or am I just being over-sensitive?

  At least Malin wanted me with her when she went to see Yngve Karlsson.

  That must mean something.

  Does she understand anything about me?

  52

  Gabriella Karlsson has just spoken to Gunnar Kanevad over the phone.

  He’s happy to help carve the coffin, he’d read Konrad’s letters and seen him on television, thought he’d made a significant contribution, had been courageous, ‘so awful, what’s happened’, and ‘sorry for your loss’.

  She looks around her living room.

  The books.

  The few items of furniture.

  The surfeit of loneliness.

  He agreed to do the work cheaply. She only haggled to prove to herself that she could, to show Granddad that she wasn’t wasting his money.

  But Granddad is gone now.

  Gone.

  At last, she thinks, it’s time for me to move on. As long as they find a murderer, I can move on.

  Do they suspect me?

  When they find a perpetrator I shall be free.

  At long last.

  The world belongs to me now, Hans Morelia thinks as he parks his Maserati outside the Hotel Ekoxen. He enjoys playing with that thought. The stupidity of the megalomania, the self-satisfaction he considers he can allow himself.

  The world is his, and he knows what he’s going to do with it.

  They’re going to travel.

  The Taj Mahal.

  The pyramids.

  Tokyo
.

  Borobudur.

  Machu Picchu.

  The Grand Canyon and New York and the Eiffel Tower and the whole fucking world.

  I shall show Lova the world, everything that belongs to her.

  He looks at the time.

  Just past eleven, he’s fashionably late, and he gets out of the car, happy that the suits from Stege are having to wait, and what’s that? Isn’t that the car that was parked along the street just now, the black, nondescript old banger? Has it followed me here? He curses himself for not taking the advice of the security consultants.

  It is the black car, and there’s someone sitting in the front seat.

  Hans Morelia feels his stomach clench. He wants to get inside the hotel, but something happens, the car’s headlights, they’re flashing, barely visible in the rain, but they definitely flashed. Now they’re doing it again, three long, three short, three long.

  SOS.

  He tries to read the number plate, but the car’s registration has been taped over.

  He can’t see the person sitting inside. The windows are obscured by the rain.

  For a moment Hans Morelia considers going over to the car, but he doesn’t dare. Instead he flees into the hotel, crouching in the rain, feels like going up to the reception desk to say that he’s being followed, but is he really? Does he know for certain? He’d like to ask them to call the police.

  But something makes him walk past the reception desk to the lift, then up to the conference room on the third floor where they’re waiting for him, his head of finance, Kim, the departmental bosses, Gerd and Roger, and then the army of made-to-measure suits that make up the Stege team, their incredibly expensive advisors, but he can afford it.

  Am I still scared? he wonders as he greets the visitors, looking forward to when all this is over. It will take until late into the evening to go through all the paperwork, and before he sits down he goes over to one of the windows and looks out.

  The black car is still parked out there in the street. A hand with a cigarette between its fingers is hanging out of the window in spite of the rain.

  When they break for lunch a couple of hours later he goes over to the window again.

  The car is still there.

  It’s raining more heavily now.

  Hans Morelia hurries to the bathroom, locks the door and fumbles with his phone.

  Digs out the number of the police. Börje Svärd, that was the officer’s name. He seemed to listen to me last time, to respect me.

  Börje Svärd stands up in the office. Calls to Malin: ‘I’ve got a call. You’ll have to take this one, I don’t want it.’

  ‘Don’t want it?’

  ‘No, you’ll have to take it.’

  Börje must have forwarded the call to her mobile, because a moment later Malin feels her phone vibrate in her jacket pocket. Might as well answer. She’s been staring at her computer for several fruitless hours.

  There’s a pattern in this case.

  She can sense it, just can’t see it.

  She clicks to take the call.

  Someone breathing.

  A voice that sounds like it’s coming from a small, enclosed space.

  Panicky words blurted out.

  ‘I think I’m being followed. By a man in a black car with concealed number plates. I think it might be Ronny Andersson.’

  Malin recognises the voice now.

  Hans Morelia.

  And she feels like hanging up on him, leaving him to his fate. Maybe it isn’t poor Ronny Andersson at all, but some murderer who’s after him, so why not let him get shot, then? But she doesn’t hang up, perfectly aware that this may be important to their case, so she says calmly: ‘Where are you, Hans? And who’s following you? Are you sure it’s Ronny Andersson? Are you in immediate danger?’

  Silence at the other end of the line.

  Hans Morelia seems to catch his breath, then takes an age considering something. Malin can’t help wondering what.

  ‘Not immediate, no, I don’t think so. I’m at the Hotel Ekoxen. There’s a man sitting in a black car outside. I haven’t been able to see exactly who it is, but he signalled to me with his headlights, and he’s been there for ages, he was parked outside my house when I set off this morning.’

  ‘The Ekoxen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re on our way,’ Malin says.

  ‘Good. But you’ll have to be discreet. I’m in the middle of a very important business meeting.’

  Elin Sand has stopped at a fast-food kiosk in Borensberg. She’s on her way to Motala, but suddenly felt hungry.

  Her pistol is tucked by her side, underneath her open raincoat.

  She takes a bite of her hamburger as the rain hammers on the roof above her, and there seems to be a reasonable chance that one of the maples growing near the kiosk will fall on top of her.

  If Yngve Karlsson owes money to Dragan Zyber, then Dragan could have murdered Konrad, or ordered his murder, in order to secure the inheritance. The others aren’t taking that possibility seriously enough.

  Stranger things have happened.

  Through her contacts she knows that Dragan Zyber hangs out at a pizzeria down by the river, not far from the centre of Motala. It’s more a front than a serious business, but that’s where he runs his pathetic little empire from.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have set out alone.

  But she’s not frightened of anyone. She’s no rookie, not by a long shot.

  She wants to gain Malin Fors’s respect, once and for all.

  A bastard like Dragan shouldn’t be allowed to frighten anyone. And certainly shouldn’t attack an old man. And if there’s even a microscopic chance that he did that, he ought to be checked out.

  She just needs to finish her hamburger first. And maybe have a hotdog as well.

  53

  You’ll have to be discreet.

  Who the fuck does Hans Morelia think he is?

  King of the whole world.

  He’s as arrogant as the rest of his breed. Or is he genuinely unaware of the way he treats other people?

  Malin lets Zeke drive.

  They head past the hospital.

  Zeke is driving calmly, sensibly, and Malin has space for her thoughts.

  Hans Morelia’s arrogance is the arrogance of money. Money itself is enough, takes precedence over everything else.

  He exploits weakness and illness and our shared assets in order to enrich himself. How shameless would you have to be to do something like that? Perhaps you actually have to love the shame of it, Malin thinks, take pleasure from it.

  Morelia loves money. The power it gives him, the image of himself. The possibilities. He won’t stay in Linköping once those billions have landed in his account.

  He’s no philosopher, no great thinker; his arrogance is the arrogance of action. He sees an opportunity and he grabs it, without the slightest thought of the consequences it might have for other people.

  Twelve hours in a shitty sanitary pad.

  Bed sores oozing with pus.

  Depression that leads to suffering and premature death.

  Someone like Hans Morelia has a lot of lives on his conscience.

  Who knows how many people get sucked under in a harsh society where people like him make the rules?

  Malin feels sick as they head down the slope to the Hotel Ekoxen, and tries to stay calm by staring at the rain streaming down the windscreen. The tall white brick building seems to scrape the undersides of the clouds. Beside it sits the green expanse of the Horticultural Society Park. The oaks rise up towards the sky like huge balls of chlorophyll, ready to be torn to shreds by the storm.

  Not a soul on the streets.

  They’ve all taken cover.

  A man like Hans Morelia would never think that way, about the fact that he has caused people’s deaths, and will go on doing so. Malin knows he doesn’t think like that, he’d find the very notion absurd.

  Money is always right.

 
The movement of the markets is the template for the universe.

  They turn the corner and, sure enough, find a black car with taped-over number plates, and Malin wonders whose car it is: who’s following Hans Morelia, if indeed anyone is? Ronny Andersson? He seemed harmless enough, according to Börje.

  A silhouette behind the tinted windscreen.

  One man stalking another?

  The whole thing could also be a mistake, the paranoia of an insecure and cowardly man.

  They tug the collars of their raincoats up, and the rain is hard, hungry now.

  A woman in a red dress cycles past, utterly soaked, as they walk up to the car.

  There are cigarette butts in a puddle of water on the driver’s side, and Zeke taps on the window. It opens slowly and Malin sees who’s sitting inside, recognises him from the description Börje gave them, and Malin thinks that it makes sense, it works, the way everything somehow fits together. The car is a mess, the glove compartment closed, but the lock looks broken.

  ‘Ronny Andersson,’ Malin says. ‘Can you get out of the car?’

  She makes her voice sound friendly, and inside the car she sees Ronny Andersson’s eyes shimmer and turn almost black.

  He opens the door. Gets out.

  Doesn’t seem bothered by the rain.

  ‘We’ve had a report about this car,’ Zeke says. ‘About the fact that it appears to be following someone. Would you know anything about that?’

  Ronny Andersson leans against the car, tall and rangy, and his acne-scarred skin looks pale in the terrible weather.

  He takes a deep breath.

  ‘I like sitting here,’ Ronny Andersson says, and Malin sighs before saying: ‘Give over. We know you followed Hans Morelia here. Why did you do that?’

  ‘It’s a free world. He’s imagining it.’

  ‘You don’t like the fact that he’s about to make an awful lot of money,’ Zeke says. ‘You know what he’s doing in there today, the papers he’s about to sign, and you don’t like it.’

  Ronny Andersson stretches his back, somehow manages to light a cigarette, spits on the wet tarmac, and says: ‘He’s a bastard. And my mum has to pay the price for that. Do you know, she’s got a shabby little summer house outside Hackefors that she inherited from her dad. It’s falling apart. She wouldn’t need much, small change to someone like Morelia, to repair and maintain it. But now she’s losing it. Granddad’s house. Where’s the justice in that? Mum works for Merapi. But does she get a share of the profits?’