Midwinter Sacrifice

by Mons Kallentoft

All the plants watered. Now they will live a bit longer.

  Malin sits down on her parents’ bed.

  It’s a Dux. They’ve had it for years, but would they be able to sleep in it if they knew what had happened in this bed, that this was where she lost, or rather made sure she got rid of, her virginity?

  Not Janne.

  Someone else.

  Earlier. She was fourteen and alone at home while her parents were at a party, staying the night with friends in Torshälla.

  Whatever. No matter what had happened in this bed, it wasn’t hers. She can’t walk through this apartment, alone or with other people, without a sense of loss. She gets up from the bed, forcing herself through the thick veils of longing that seem to hang in the air. What’s missing?

  Her parents in pictures without frames.

  In sun-loungers at the house on Tenerife. Three years since they bought it, but she and Tove have never been there.

  ‘You’re doing the watering?’

  Of course I’m watering.

  She has lived with these people, she comes from them, but even so the people in the pictures are strangers. Mum, mostly.

  She empties the watering can in the kitchen sink.

  There are secrets hidden in those drops, behind the green doors of the kitchen cupboards, in the freezer, rumbling away, full of last year’s chanterelles.

  Shall I take a bag?

  No.

  The last thing she sees before she closes the door of her parents’ apartment behind her are the thick wool rugs on the floor of the sitting room. She sees them through the open double doors from the hall, average quality. They’re not as good as Mum always pretends they are. The whole room, the whole home is full of things that aren’t what they seem, veneers concealing a different veneer.

  There’s a feeling here, Malin thinks, of never being quite good enough, of nothing ever being quite right. That we aren’t, that I’m not, good enough.

  To this day she has difficulty with anything that’s truly good enough, with people who are supposed to be genuinely good enough. Not just rich like Karin Johannison, but doctors, the upper classes, lawyers, that sort of good. Faced with people like that, she sometimes senses her prejudices and feelings of inferiority rise to the surface. She decides in advance that people like that always look down on people like her, and she adopts a defensive posture.

  Why?

  To avoid being disappointed?

  It’s better at work, but it can be stressful in her private life.

  Thoughts are flying round Malin’s head as she jogs downstairs and out into the early, wretched, Friday evening.

  10

  Friday evening; Saturday, 4 February

  Just a little one, one little beer: I deserve that, I want to watch drops of condensation almost freezing to ice on a chilled glass. I can leave the car here. I can pick it up tomorrow.

  Malin hates that voice. She usually tells herself, as if to drown it out: There’s nothing worse than being hung over.

  It’s easiest that way.

  But sometimes she has to give in.

  Just a little one, a little . . .

  I want to wring myself out like a rag. And that’s when alcohol is useful.

  The Hamlet restaurant is open. How far away is that? God, it’s cold. Three minutes if I jog.

  Malin opens the door to the bar. Noise and steam hit her. There is a smell of grilled meat. But most of all it smells of promise, of calm.

  The telephone rings.

  Or does it?

  Is it something else? Is it the television? Is it the church bell? The wind? Help me. My head. There is something in the front of my head and now it’s ringing again, and my mouth, I’m supposed to talk with it, but it’s so dry, where am I?

  Then it stops ringing.

  Thank God.

  But then it starts again.

  Sufficiently awake now to recognise the mobile phone. The hall floor. The rag rug. How did I get here? My jacket is lying next to me, unless it’s my scarf? The letterbox from below. Jacket. Pocket. Mobile. Sandpaper mouth. My pulse, a pulsating cyst, an electronic globe spinning in the front of my head. Malin digs in the pocket. There, there it is. She holds her head with the other hand, fumbling blindly, puts the phone to her ear, scarcely audible: ‘Fors, Malin Fors.’

  ‘This is Sjöman. We know who he is.’

  Who he is? Tove, Janne. The man in the tree. Missed by no one.

  ‘Malin, are you there?’

  Yes. Probably. But I don’t know if I want to be.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  No, not okay. I gave in yesterday.

  ‘I’m here, Sven, I’m here. I’ve only just woken up, that’s all. Hang on a moment.’ She hears some more words as she shifts from lying to sitting: ‘. . . have you got a hangover, ah . . .’ Her head upright, black fog settles in front of her eyes, lifts, reappears as a vibrating pressure against her forehead.

  ‘A hangover? A small one. The sort people have on Sunday mornings.’

  ‘Saturday, Malin. And we know who he is.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Half seven.’

  ‘Shit. Sven. Oh shit. Well?’

  ‘They got the picture sorted yesterday. That funeral bloke, Skoglund, he did a good job. We sent it to the Correspondent and the news agencies, and the Correspondent put it up on their website at eleven and someone called straight away, and we’ve had more calls this morning. They all say the same name, so it should check out. His name’s Bengt. Surname Andersson. But, and this is the funny thing, they all call him by his nickname; only one person knew his real name.’

  Her head. Pulse. Don’t put any lights on, no matter what. Focus on someone else’s pain instead of your own; it’s supposed to help. Group therapy. Or what was it someone said? The pain is always new, always different. Personal?

  ‘Ball-Bengt. They called him Ball-Bengt. From what people have said so far, his life seems to have been as miserable as his death. Can you be here in half an hour?’

  ‘Give me forty-five minutes,’ Malin says.

  Quarter of an hour later, just out of the shower, in fresh clothes, the rumble of painkillers in her stomach, Malin switches on her computer. She leaves the blinds closed even if it is still dark outside. The computer is on the desk in her bedroom, the keyboard hidden in a tangle of dirty underwear and vests, bills, paid and unpaid, mocking payslips. She waits, types in her password, waits, opens her browser, then the Correspondent’s website.

  The light from the screen makes her head throb.

  Daniel Högfeldt has done a good job.

  The man in the tree. His face blown up in the most prominent part of the site. He looks like a human being, the swellings and bruises just shades of grey on the black and white photograph, like blemishes covered by make-up rather than traces of a fatal attack. Skoglund, whoever he is, is almost able to bring the dead back to life. The amount of fat makes this man, Bengt ‘Ball-Bengt’ Andersson’s face shapeless. His chin, cheeks and brow hang together in a soft, round lump over his bones, making one big, plump mass. His eyes are closed, the mouth a small line, his upper lip full, but not the lower lip. Only the nose sticks out, hard, straight, noble, Ball-Bengt’s only stroke of luck in the genetic lottery.

  Can I manage to read?

  Daniel Högfeldt’s language.

  Jaunty. Nothing for someone feeling sick and with a headache.

  He probably knows more than we do. People call the papers first. To get the reward for a tip-off. So they can feel special. But who am I to blame them?

  The Östgöta Correspondent can today reveal the identity of the man who . . .

  The letters form themselves into burning arrows firing into her brain.

  Bengt Andersson, 46, was known as ‘Ball-Bengt’. He lived in Ljungsbro, where he was regarded as something of an eccentric, a loner. He lived alone in a flat in the Härna district and had been on social security benefits for several years, unable to work because of mental health p
roblems. Bengt Andersson got his nickname from the fact that he would go to Ljungsbro IF’s home games and stand on Cloettavägen, behind the fence at the end of the Cloettavallen pitch, and wait for the ball to be kicked over the fence.

  Balls, Malin thinks. Balls in my head now.

  I can kick, Dad, I can kick all the way to the apple tree! Mum’s voice: No balls in the garden, Malin, you might hit the roses.

  Tove wasn’t interested in football.

  A woman who wants to remain anonymous has told the Correspondent:

  ‘He was the sort of person everyone recognised, but no one really knew.

  There’s someone like him in every community.’

  Bengt Andersson was found on Friday . . .

  Direct quotes, not reported speech: Daniel’s special trick for added immediacy.

  Duplications. Repetitions.

  When will we leave the dead alone?

  Malin walks out of the door of the building. It is just as cold today. The wall of the church is a mirage, far, far away.

  But today the cold is welcome, throwing its weight over her thoughts, wrapping her in a muffling fog.

  The car isn’t where it is supposed to be.

  Stolen. Her first thought.

  Then she remembers. Her parents’ apartment.

  ‘You’ll water the plants, won’t you?’

  Hamlet.

  Can I have another beer? Anonymous there, an older crowd, and me.

  Taxi? No, too expensive. It’ll take ten minutes to the police station if I hurry.

  Malin starts walking. The walk will do me good, she thinks. The grit on the snowploughed pavement crunches under her feet. She can see bugs in front of her eyes. The gravel chips are bugs, an invasion that she has to crush with her Caterpillar boots.

  She thinks about the fact that the man in the tree now has a name. That their work will be able to get started properly, and that they have to approach this with caution. What they came across out on the plain was no ordinary violence. It was something different, something worth being afraid of.

  The cold was sharp against her eyes.

  Sharp, cutting.

  Have I got grasshoppers dancing in front of my eyes? she thinks. Unless the cold is forming crystals on the surface of my eyes. Just like yours, Ball-Bengt. Whoever you were.

  11

  What does this world do to a person, Tove?

  I was twenty.

  And we were happy, your dad and I. We were young and happy and we loved each other. The love of young people, pure and uncomplicated, clear and physical, and then there was you, our ray of sun to beat all rays of sun.

  There was nothing beyond the three of us.

  I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, apart from love the two of you. I could ignore his cars, how methodical he was, how different we were. It was like I had been given love, Tove; there was no doubt, no waiting, even though that was what everyone said, wait, take it slowly, don’t tie yourselves down, live a little first, but I had got a scent of life, from my love for you, for Janne, for our life. I was vain enough to want more of it, and I thought it would last for ever. Because do you know what, Tove? I believed in love and I still do, which is something of a miracle. But back then I believed in love in its purest, simplest form, what we could maybe call family love, cave love, where we simply warm one another because we are human beings together. The first sort of love.

  We argued, of course. I longed for other things, of course. And of course we had no idea what to do with all our time. And of course I understood when he said he felt as if he were trapped in a hole in the ground, even if it was in paradise.

  Then he came home one day with a letter from the Rescue Services Agency, saying that he had to report to Arlanda Airport the next day for a flight to Sarajevo.

  I was so angry with him, your dad. I told him that if he went, then we wouldn’t be there when he got back. I said that you don’t abandon your family for anything.

  So, my question to you, Tove: Can you understand why your father and I couldn’t manage back then?

  We knew too much and too little at the same time.

  12

  No children in the nursery on a Saturday.

  Empty swings. No sledges, no balls. The lights through the windows turned off. No games today.

  ‘Are you okay with this, Malin? You look worn out.’

  Stop going on, Sven. I’m at work, aren’t I?

  Zeke pulls a face from where he is sitting opposite her. Börje Svärd and Johan Jakobsson don’t look exactly happy, but then you’re not supposed to if you’re at work just after eight on a Saturday morning.

  ‘I’m okay. Just a bit of a party last night, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I got to party with cheese puffs, crisps and a Pippi Longstocking DVD,’ Johan says.

  Börje doesn’t say anything.

  ‘I’ve got a list here,’ Sven says, waving a sheet of paper in the air. He isn’t standing at the end of the table today. He’s sitting down. ‘These are the people who phoned to identify Bengt Andersson, Ball-Bengt. We can start by questioning them. See what they have to say about him. There are nine names on the list, all in Ljungsbro or close by. Börje and Johan, you take the first five. Malin and Zeke can take the other four.’

  ‘And the flat? His flat?’

  ‘Forensics are already there. As far as we could make out, none of the violence happened there. They’ll be done some time this afternoon. You can take a look after that if you like. Not before. When you’re finished with the names on the list, try his neighbours. He was on benefits, so there must be a social worker somewhere who knows about his case. But we probably won’t be able to get hold of them until Monday.’

  ‘Can’t we get it sorted any quicker?’ Zeke’s voice, impatient.

  ‘Bengt Andersson hasn’t been declared dead, or even officially identified yet,’ Sven says. ‘And until those two things happen, we have no authority to get access to any registers and databases containing the names of his doctor or social worker. But all the formalities ought to be sorted out on Monday.’

  ‘Okay, let’s get going,’ Johan says, standing up.

  I want to sleep, Malin thinks. Sleep as deep as is humanly possible.

  My room is black, closed. But I can still see everything.

  It’s cold in here, but not as cold as in the tree out on the plain. But what do I care about the cold? And there is no wind here, no storm, no snow. I might miss the wind and snow, but I prefer the clarity that comes with a condition like mine. How much I know, how much I can do. Like finding words in a way that I never used to be able to.

  And isn’t it funny that everyone is suddenly concerned about me? How they all see my face and want to demonstrate that they knew me? Before they would turn away when I showed my face in public, they would cross the street to avoid my gaze, to avoid coming close to my body, my – as they thought – dirty clothes, which they thought stank of sweat, of urine.

  Depressing and repulsive.

  And the kids who would never leave me alone. Who would plague me, tease me, bully me. Their mums and dads truly had let a thousand evil flowers bloom in their children.

  I was hardly even good enough to laugh at. Even when I was alive I was a tragedy.

  The chimney of the Cloetta chocolate factory.

  You can’t see it from the roundabout beside the ancient abbey of Vreta Kloster, but you can see the smoke, whiter than white, as it climbs into a pretend-blue sky. The low morning clouds have drifted away and winter is getting bluer, the mercury sinks still further, the price you have to pay for the light.

  ‘Do we turn off here?’

  There are signs to Ljungsbro in both directions.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Malin says.

  ‘Okay, we’re turning,’ Zeke says, twisting the wheel. ‘We’ll have to check the GPS when we get closer.’

  Malin and Zeke drive through Vreta Kloster. Past the dormant sluice-gates and empty locks. Bars closed for win
ter. Villas with people moving behind the windows, trees that have been left to grow in peace. An ICA supermarket. There’s no music in the car. Zeke didn’t insist and Malin appreciates the relative silence.

  They pass a bus stop and the village spreads out to their left, the houses disappearing down a slope, and in the distance Lake Roxen opens out. The car heads down past a piece of woodland, then a field opens up on their right and a few hundred metres on more houses cling to the side of a steep incline.

  ‘Millionaires’ row,’ Zeke says. ‘Doctors’ houses.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Kungsbro on another sign, Stjärnorp, Ljungsbro.

  They turn off by a red-painted stable and a stone-built cowshed, no horses in sight. Only a few teenage girls in thermal clothes and moonboots carrying bales of hay between two outhouses.

  They approach the houses along millionaires’ row.

  When they reach the top of another hill they catch a glimpse of the Cloetta chimney.

  ‘You know,’ Zeke says, ‘I swear I can smell chocolate in the air today. From the factory.’

  ‘I’d better put the GPS on, so we can find where we’re going. The first name on the list.’

  She didn’t want to let them in.

  Pamela Karlsson, thirty-six years old, blonde pageboy cut, single, sales assistant at H&M. She lived in a council block just behind the hideous white Hemköp supermarket. Only four flats in the grey-painted wooden building. She spoke to them with the safety chain on, freezing in white vest and pants, evidently woken by them knocking at the door.

  ‘Do you have to come in? It’s such a mess.’

  ‘It’s cold out here in the stairwell,’ Malin said, thinking, A man has been found murdered, hanging in a tree, and she’s worried about a bit of mess. Oh well. At least she phoned.

  ‘I had a party yesterday.’

  ‘Another one,’ Zeke said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Malin said. ‘It really doesn’t matter to us if it’s a bit messy. It won’t take long.’