Souls of Air (Malin Fors 7)

by Mons Kallentoft

  Malin says nothing.

  ‘Stalking someone is against the law,’ Zeke says.

  And Ronny Andersson starts to laugh.

  He laughs loudly in the rain, and the gusting wind distorts the sound of his laughter. It becomes the sound of a madman, and Malin catches herself smiling, and forces herself to stop.

  When he stops laughing Ronny Andersson says: ‘I just wanted him to know that I existed. Throw a bit of grit into the machinery, maybe have a word with him. Since when has it been a crime to talk to someone?’

  ‘Don’t do it again,’ Malin says.

  ‘Because if you do, we’ll take you in,’ Zeke adds.

  ‘Now get out of here,’ Malin says. ‘And take that tape off your number plates.’

  Ronny Andersson does as he’s told. Drenched by the rain, he gets into his car and drives off, down towards Hamngatan.

  Are we doing the right thing? Malin wonders. Letting him go?

  Is he as harmless as we think he is?

  A classic malcontent.

  Could he have anything to do with the murder? To focus attention on Hans Morelia and his own mother, albeit in a very warped way? The thought won’t go away.

  But he’s got an alibi.

  He isn’t the type to kill.

  But who is? I’ve never found a particular type. Just people with problems, people who’ve ended up in impossible situations, people who’ve fallen in love with money and power.

  He’s harmless, Malin thinks. Then she hears a familiar voice behind her.

  Hans Morelia is standing beneath one of the hotel’s white umbrellas, and he’s angry.

  ‘You should have arrested him. He’s a lunatic.’

  Malin can see the fear in Hans Morelia’s eyes.

  She finds herself feeling oddly warm inside at the sight of how frightened he is, and neither she nor Zeke says anything.

  ‘I’m in the middle of an extremely important business meeting inside the hotel. It can’t be right that an unemployed layabout can stalk me and ruin my concentration. It can’t be right.’

  ‘What he’s done so far isn’t enough to warrant an intervention,’ Zeke says. ‘In our considered opinion he hasn’t actually committed any offence against you. It isn’t even possible to say for certain that he did actually follow you here. And you haven’t documented any of the previous occasions.’

  Hans Morelia swallows. Searches for words, but remains silent.

  ‘Everything has its price,’ Malin says. ‘You should know that. See if you can do anything about his mother’s situation. I’m sure that would get rid of him. He’s just frustrated that people like you make billions while his mother struggles to put food on the table.’

  Don’t try any of that socialist crap on me, she expects him to say. But instead he says: ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘That sounds good.’

  ‘If you’re worried,’ Zeke says, ‘I’d suggest that you to talk to your security advisors. They may suggest a bodyguard. You’d be able to afford one, after all.’

  ‘They have suggested that.’

  Then Malin and Zeke get back in the car. Drive away.

  And in the rear-view mirror Malin watches as Hans Morelia walks back into the hotel. His umbrella gets caught by the wind and turns inside out, turning into a white mushroom showering rain on the man it’s supposed to protect.

  Back to his money.

  His beloved money.

  54

  Bloody rain.

  It’s ruined the summer, Elin Sand thinks as she runs at a crouch towards the pizzeria where Dragan Zyber is supposed to hang out.

  The pizzeria is in a detached wooden building by the river, on the edge of the centre of Motala. The little building is surrounded by tall birch trees, and in the gravel car park stands a single, shiny BMW. She parks alongside it.

  Lucky Pizza.

  She takes hold of the handle of the crooked door and pulls it towards her, then pushes, but nothing happens. The door is locked and the room inside is dark, but Dragan Zyber must be here, the BMW in the car park can hardly belong to anyone else.

  She peers in through a window. Battered cane furniture, a dormant pizza oven.

  A back door in the rear of the building.

  Unlocked. A messy storeroom, a rumbling freezer. Male voices beyond another door.

  She steps inside, feels the weight of her pistol, the pulse of adrenalin through her body. She opens the second door, and finds herself looking into a smoke-filled room. Four dark-haired men, their lower arms covered in tattoos. They’re playing cards, and their conversation stops abruptly at the stranger’s arrival.

  They look up at Elin, who sees the surprise on their faces.

  Then the man she recognises as Dragan Zyber smiles. His lips are thin, and his black eyes flash with amused intelligence.

  ‘And who the fuck are you?’ he says, standing up.

  Zeke stops at a red light by the entrance to the hospital, and Malin reads a banner that’s been hung up outside the medical school.

  We’re creating the future.

  How can anyone create a future?

  Men like Hans Morelia are the ones who are creating the world to come. A world in which the only certainty is the law of the jungle: be in no doubt that I’ll eat you alive if you show the slightest sign of weakness, if you leave your throat unguarded.

  They’ve checked Ronny Andersson’s registration number. The car belongs to him, nothing odd about it, and they decided back at the hotel to ignore the fact that he’d covered his plates.

  A tacit agreement between two experienced detectives.

  ‘So what happens now?’ Zeke asks. His voice is unexpectedly soft, and Malin is bemused by the number of different tones of voice Zeke has, hundreds of different voices and emotions in one and the same larynx.

  We’re creating the future, and the light switches to green. Malin sees room number seven at the Cherub in her mind’s eye, and thinks that nothing but the past was created there. Then she realises that she’s wrong, the future is being created there.

  Hans Morelia’s future.

  Anyone else’s?

  And she thinks about Ronny Andersson. The despair beneath his cockiness, the anger that is barely concealed behind a tragic façade of coolness, and she says: ‘I need to check an address. There’s someone we need to go and see.’

  The clock on the dashboard says half past two, and it can’t be too early, can it, if she was working last night? Malin wonders.

  Elin Sand is still standing in the doorway to the inner room of the pizzeria, and she can feel Dragan Zyber’s breath in front of her. He’s a big man, taller than she is, and even more muscular.

  She presses one arm against the pistol beneath her raincoat.

  She’s asked Dragan what he was doing on the night between Monday and Tuesday. The other men around the table gave him an alibi, and he asked: ‘Am I supposed to know something about the murder of an old man? Women, children, and the elderly are off limits. You’ve got a very vivid imagination.’

  She took a chance and threw her theory in Dragan Zyber’s face, unwilling to show any fear or weakness to these men, and Dragan Zyber just laughed, as if the whole idea were absurd.

  ‘Yngve Karlsson owes me forty thousand. Would I have someone killed for that sort of money? I’ve never had anyone killed, and you lot know that.’

  And now Dragan Zyber is laughing scornfully again.

  ‘Do your colleagues know you’re here? Are you trying to play the hero?’

  Elin Sand answers, and realises immediately that her answer comes too quickly: ‘They know I’m here,’ and she realises that Dragan Zyber knows she’s lying. He snaps his fingers and in a matter of seconds the men have grabbed her and pushed her down on the card table, and she’s strong, but together they’re much stronger.

  Dragan Zyber fumbles for her pistol. Gets hold of it, and one of the men holds her in a headlock. She feels the barrel of the pistol in her nostril.

&nbs
p; ‘You should be happy you’re not getting this in your cunt,’ he hisses.

  And just as suddenly as the men grabbed her, they let her go.

  Dragan Zyber takes the bullets out of the gun, then tosses it towards Elin as she gets to her feet.

  ‘There’s pizza through there,’ he says, pointing towards another door. ‘On the house. But perhaps you’re not hungry?’

  Malin and Zeke use the police code to get into the building where Berit Andersson lives.

  Her flat in Johannelund is on the ground floor, and outside what must be her bedroom is a flowerbed that no one has shown any love for many years. It looks even more pathetic now that it’s utterly waterlogged.

  Rubbish and cigarette butts and a dead shrub floating in muddy water.

  They walk over to the door with the name Andersson on it. Graffiti on the walls of the stairwell.

  Malin rings the bell, hears the angry sound on the other side of the door.

  She rings four times, and realises that they’re waking Berit Andersson up, that she’s still sleeping after her shift last night.

  Slow footsteps.

  The door opens.

  And there stands Berit Andersson in a green towelling dressing gown, much like Malin’s. Her face is puffy with sleep, and when she sees Malin it assumes a peculiar expression, surprise and fear, but also shame.

  Shame, Malin thinks. Shame at the way your life has turned out.

  Is that the way you feel, every day?

  ‘Police, again,’ Berit Andersson says. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Sorry if we woke you,’ Zeke says. ‘But we need to ask a few questions. Can we come in?’

  Berit Andersson nods wearily.

  ‘I’ll put some coffee on.’

  They sit in the kitchen.

  Three ladder-backed chairs around a pine table.

  Red cupboards.

  The coffee is good and strong, and Berit Andersson looks more alert now, smoking a cigarette after first asking if they minded.

  ‘I know Ronny’s angry,’ she says. ‘Angry about most things, really. Angry because he thinks I’m wearing myself out for nothing. He’s got a bit obsessed about that, but what good does that do me?’

  ‘Do you know if he’s been stalking Hans Morelia?’

  Berit Andersson shakes her head.

  ‘No. But I can imagine he’s got a few things he’d like to say to him.’

  ‘Has your son ever shown any sign of a violent temperament?’ Zeke asks.

  ‘No, never. He’s a good boy. Always very considerate. He’s just lost. Hasn’t found his way in life yet.’

  He hasn’t got a criminal record, Malin thinks.

  ‘Have you found your way in life?’ Malin asks, and is taken aback by her own question, how personal and almost poetic it sounds, and how badly it suits this run-down kitchen.

  ‘I look after other people,’ Berit Andersson replies, and stubs out her cigarette. ‘I enjoy it, caring for others. I like the old people. I really do. A lot. They have so much to give, even though they’re ill and exhausted. I used to like staying a bit longer with Konrad Karlsson. Listening to his thoughts about different things. I always tried to be nice to him.’

  Malin looks at Berit Andersson as she says this.

  Are you telling the truth? she wonders.

  I’m sure you are. But have you got the energy to live up to your own truth, night after night, injustice after injustice, one meagre wage packet after the other?

  ‘Your son told us about your summer house. That you’ve got to sell it.’

  Berit Andersson raises her eyebrows before taking a sip of coffee.

  ‘He told you that? Well, it certainly needs to be repaired, and it costs me money pretty much every month. But things aren’t so bad yet that I’ve got to sell it.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ Zeke says.

  ‘I go out to the cottage as often as I can. I was thinking of going today. I can cycle there in half an hour. But in this weather it will have to be the bus.’

  Then she lights another cigarette.

  ‘That place means a great deal to me.’

  Malin stands up.

  ‘If your son happens to mention Hans Morelia in a way that strikes you as odd, could you let us know?’

  Berit nods.

  But the look in her eyes says something different.

  ‘Shit,’ Malin yells when they get out into the rain.

  Zeke stops.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Shit. What time is it? What the fuck’s the time?’

  Zeke looks at Malin.

  Thinks quietly to himself that she’s never going to feel at home in the world.

  55

  Mum rang, in a panic. She’d forgotten about Anticimex, and wasn’t going to be able to get back to the flat in time to let them in. Unless she didn’t actually want to. Tove persuaded Hilda Jansson to let her have half an hour off, things were relatively quiet at the Cherub today, as if the storm were making the residents unusually tired.

  ‘Half an hour, no more,’ and now Tove is standing in the kitchen, watching a tall, skinny man in his fifties slither about on the floor, sticking a tiny, snake-like camera into any holes he can find under the kitchen cupboards.

  ‘I can actually film with this,’ he said before he started, proudly holding up the snake in front of Tove.

  The stench is worse now, in the damp air of the flat, and Tove hopes he finds something, a dead rat, a mouse, anything, as long as it means they get rid of the smell.

  ‘I’ll go down into the pipes as well,’ the man says, getting to his feet. He leans over the sink and pushes the snake into the plughole, it seems to be almost infinitely extendable, then he does the same thing in the bathroom.

  He sniffs his way through the flat.

  Tove looks at the time.

  Half an hour has passed now.

  Mum didn’t mention their row this morning when she called, didn’t mention Stefan. And she knows her mum is right about one thing: she won’t be staying in Linköping when autumn arrives.

  Rwanda. Voluntary work. Maybe? Yes.

  You need training to be able to do any real good. But there’s time for that. One thing she does know is that she doesn’t want to hit fifty and find herself sniffing around a flat to try to work out where a really disgusting smell is coming from.

  She applied to study literature in Lund. Just because. And she wrote a few short stories and sent them to the creative writing course in Gothenburg.

  But being an author … It’s impossible to make a living that way, and slowly, slowly, the scent of that as a career is fading from her mind. She looks out of the window at St Lars Church, shrouded in rain, and all of a sudden Linköping feels even more claustrophobic than usual, more insular, and she knows she has to get away.

  The lump in her stomach is smaller now.

  Konrad is probably fine, wherever he is now.

  And what right have I got to dump Stefan on Mum? I understand her, Tove thinks. Even if I don’t want to. We, none of us, want to surrender any of our precious freedoms. It’s better to keep Stefan at a distance, so we don’t have to take responsibility for him.

  The way a lot of people seem to feel about their parents.

  He can move into the better of the two homes in Ljusdal, the one by the river, Tove thinks. He’ll be fine there. The staff seemed good.

  Mum and I both love him. Of course we do.

  But he’ll be better off there than with us.

  Elin Sand keeps both hands on the wheel.

  They’re shaking.

  She’s trying to concentrate, keep her eyes on the road, on the forest, in case any unnerved animals decide to dash out on to the road.

  Cascades of rain on the windscreen. A thunder of noise inside the car.

  How the hell could I be so stupid? she thinks. Risking my life like that?

  What was I hoping for?

  I wanted to be a hero. No. To be like Malin Fors, Waldemar Ekenberg. Gain
their respect, stop them patronising me.

  They’re just going to think I’m mad. She just couldn’t stop herself; she felt she had to go to Motala.

  To surprise herself, to make something happen, see where the ball ended up.

  Mad.

  And then she feels laughter bubbling up in her stomach, and soon the car is filled with the sound of her giggling. At least we know that Dragan Zyber didn’t have anything to do with this, she thinks. I’m certain of that now.

  ‘He didn’t find anything,’ Tove says. ‘He filmed it all with a fancy camera, but he didn’t find a thing. Just said the smell was a total mystery.’

  Malin looks at Tove, sitting opposite her at a table in one of the medieval-themed wooden booths in the Hamlet restaurant.

  Ceasefire.

  When she got home from the station Malin apologised for being insensitive, and Tove said sorry in turn. As they embraced in the hall Malin became aware of the stink in the flat, and said: ‘Let’s go and have steak at the Hamlet. To celebrate the truce,’ and now mother and daughter are sitting there, they’ve talked about Stefan, and, without actually saying why they don’t think he should be moved to Linköping, they’ve agreed that he should move to the care home by the river.

  Tove is sipping a cold beer.

  Just one tonight, Tove, no more, Malin thinks, but is unwilling to say so out loud. The beer looks insanely tempting, the condensation on the glass, but then she remembers all the times she’s been disgustingly drunk in the bar of the Hamlet, when she used to be one of the alcoholics they can hear laughing and shouting in there now, like they always are.

  The steak is good, the Béarnaise sauce too, and they eat in silence until Tove asks: ‘Are you getting anywhere with Konrad’s murder?’

  Malin would like to say yes, but are they making any real progress?

  ‘We’re doing our best.’

  There’s less sadness in Tove’s eyes tonight. She isn’t drinking as fast.

  The investigation.

  In principle, they’ve written off Konrad’s children and grandchild as suspects. There’s nothing to suggest that anyone at Merapi tried to silence an elderly troublemaker in advance of the sale of the business, and Vincent Edlund appears to be innocent, in spite of his record for murdering old men. Even so, Malin can’t help feeling that they have made progress, and that she’s being carried towards the truth.