Earth Storm_The new novel from the Swedish crime-writing phenomenon_Malin Fors

by Mons Kallentoft

  He’s dragged Max Friman into the living room, and has given the cry-baby a towel to staunch his nosebleed. He chose a white one so the blood would show up nicely. Feeble bastards like Max Friman can never handle the sight of their own blood.

  ‘Did you know that Peder Åkerlund’s opinions never really changed?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘That you did.’

  Max Friman nods.

  Smirks.

  ‘This is serious,’ Waldemar yells. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are? Huh? A man gets killed and you tweet about it like it’s a good thing. And you know what? That makes us think you know something. That you might have some idea of who could have killed him.’

  Max Friman looks up from the sofa with a stubborn expression on his face.

  Maybe he’s not so feeble after all.

  ‘Why would I know that? Suliman Hajif was just a fucking Islamist moron when it came down to it. They’ve got no business being in our country, and that’s what I wrote. Everyone knew he wasn’t remotely moderate.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  Max Friman doesn’t answer.

  ‘You wrote that the world isn’t a poorer place.’

  Max Friman looks down at the floor, appears to think, then turns his head towards Waldemar.

  ‘And I don’t think it is, either.’

  Hatred in his eyes now.

  He definitely isn’t the joker I thought he was, Waldemar thinks. There’s more to him than fear and cowardice.

  ‘What were you doing last night?’

  ‘My girlfriend was here. You can ask her. But watch out. What she’ll tell you will make you doubt your own masculinity.’

  Waldemar laughs.

  What a little shit.

  ‘I will,’ he says.

  ‘You don’t imagine I’ve got anything to do with the murder?’

  Waldemar ignores the question.

  Maybe you killed Hajif, but aren’t guilty of the other crimes. Maybe you knew enough to mislead us?

  No, that’s hardly likely.

  Waldemar’s own confusion starts to make him angry.

  I want to get something out of you, anything at all. Let’s see how cocky you really are.

  So he takes a few steps towards the sofa and raises his fist once again towards Max Friman, who jerks back instinctively.

  ‘I’ll report you, you bastard!’ he yells.

  Waldemar sticks his fingers in his nostrils and jerks him to his feet, then stares deep into his eyes. Breathing coffee breath on him.

  ‘Do that and you can join your friend Peder in hell.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something if you let me go,’ Max Friman whimpers.

  Waldemar lets him fall back to the sofa, and watches him take several deep breaths before he starts to talk.

  Malin and Zeke are standing outside the mosque. Zeke has the mosque’s laptop under his arm. The sky is clear, and the sun’s rays are reflecting off the windows of the block of flats behind them.

  They look at each other.

  The note they were given by Samid Samudra. They’ll look into it, but their intuition is telling them to pause here.

  ‘Where do you think he went after he left here last night?’ Malin says.

  ‘Probably down to those houses, then off towards the road.’

  ‘Or else he went through the woods and headed home that way. That’s the shortest route.’

  ‘It must have been dark.’

  ‘He might have had a light on his mobile. I’m going to take a look.’

  She heads up into the trees. The ground is dry as she scans it. She sees nothing, and after a hundred metres or so she reaches a narrow paved footpath.

  She closes her eyes.

  Tries to hear something, feel something, anything at all. But nothing happens.

  She goes back to Zeke. The neutral expression on his face can’t hide his uncertainty.

  ‘How does this all fit together?’ he says.

  A name on a piece of paper. An address in Ryd.

  ‘Peder used the party’s money to pay Suliman Hajif,’ Max Friman whispers. ‘He paid for plane tickets for six guys from Ryd who wanted to go to Syria. He thought it was a good way to get rid of the bastards. The end justified the means. He said it didn’t matter who blew who up down there. At least we’d be shot of them up here.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ Waldemar asks, tapping his fingers together.

  ‘Easy. He transferred the money to an account at a Saudi bank. And from there the plane tickets were paid for via a travel agent in Germany, I think.’

  Pragmatic. Sophisticated, Waldemar thinks. Like some latter-day ruddy CIA.

  ‘So you’re saying Suliman and Peder were allies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they joined forces to send fighters and suicide bombers to Syria?’

  ‘Yes.’

  All of a sudden they have a wealth of new suspects who can be connected to the two murders. Relatives of the six Linköping boys who went off to war and may have blown themselves to pieces. Relatives of their victims in Syria who happen to be living in Sweden.

  But where does Nadja Lundin fit into the picture?

  Is she a smokescreen? What if she actually has nothing to do with this? Was that little coffin containing the tongue merely a game designed to confuse us? And, if so, is the game over now?

  You can play for a while.

  ‘Did anyone apart from you know that Peder was mixed up in this?’

  ‘No, not as far as I know.’

  ‘Sorry about your nose,’ Waldemar says, and turns to leave. Before he opens the front door he says: ‘But you’d probably agree that it was necessary?’

  49

  The yellow brick buildings seem to be sagging under the invisible weight of the blue sky. The white panelled balconies are stained with rust, laundry jostling for space with all manner of clutter.

  Malin pulls open the door to the block of flats on Rydsvägen, hears Zeke’s breathing behind her.

  The imam gave them this address, gave them the name Mehmet Khoni.

  Waldemar has just phoned to tell them the results of his interrogation of Max Friman.

  We’re definitely going to have to ask this Khoni guy about that, Malin thinks as she climbs the speckled stone steps to the first floor.

  She rings the bell.

  No response.

  Silence inside the flat.

  Where are you, Mehmet? Are you lying somewhere with your tongue cut out?

  ‘He’s not here,’ Zeke says. ‘Let’s go back to the station.’

  It’s already half past eight in the evening by the time they all gather in the meeting room. Göran Möller has written the murder victims’ names on the whiteboard in large letters:

  Peder Åkerlund

  Suliman Hajif

  Mutual interests. Both liars.

  A bit further down, Nadja Lundin’s name, followed by a question mark.

  Göran Möller is sitting at the end of the table. He looks around at the detectives he’s been put in charge of. Waldemar Ekenberg seems to have perked up, but Börje Svärd looks like he mostly just wants to get away. Johan is alert, Elin Sand looks tired, lets out a big yawn, and in both Malin and Zeke he detects a deep frustration, as if they’re both wearing blinkers that they’re trying to pull off.

  Malin. He doesn’t know if she’s heard any more about Tove.

  But he can’t think about that now. She’s chosen to work, even though the worry must be driving her mad. She seems to be focused, she’s looking at me as if she wants me to help her. But how? I can only be her boss. Nothing else. Whatever Sven Sjöman meant to her, I’m neither willing nor capable of filling that role.

  Malin’s phone rings. She yanks it out and clicks to take the call, gets quickly to her feet and says: ‘It’s OK, it’s fine, I can talk now,’ and leaves the room.

  Malin hears the voice at the other end of the line. Some civil servant at the Foreign Office, a Ke
nt Persson, who’s apologising for calling so late. He asks her to hear him out.

  I don’t have any other choice, Malin thinks, looking off towards the end of the brown-painted corridor. She asks: ‘Has she been found?’

  Kent Persson says: ‘No. We haven’t yet been able to localise our missing citizens.’

  ‘So what are you doing, then? In order to localise them?’

  ‘We’re deploying our resources as best we can.’

  ‘What resources?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t reveal that. I understand your anxiety, but the most important thing right now is that this doesn’t get out, that it’s withheld from the media so that we can get on with our work undisturbed.’

  ‘Do you know what’s happened?’

  ‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Kent Persson says. ‘We don’t have any idea. Their truck was found abandoned three hours ago. Unfortunately there was no sign of our missing citizens by the vehicle.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got?’

  Silence on the line. Kent Persson, a young man, judging by his voice, has no answer.

  Malin feels like screaming at him, but knows that anger would do nothing but harm at this point. And then there’s Janne, the idiot, who wants to go down there. Has he set off? But not even he would do something like that. He ought to go. Should I call him?

  ‘Let me know if anything changes,’ she says, and ends the call.

  She stands motionless in the corridor outside the meeting room. Doesn’t feel up to calling Janne.

  Tries to hear what they’re talking about in there now.

  Can’t hear anything.

  So she puts her ear to the door and hears her colleagues’ voices as if from a great distance.

  ‘Can we get hold of the names of the victims of any suicide bombers?’

  ‘Impossible. That would take months.’

  ‘What does the link between Hajif and Åkerlund really mean?’

  ‘It makes it less likely that the murders are the result of any disagreement between them. Seeing as they were using each other.’

  ‘That could have gone bad.’

  Johan: ‘We need to check out the parents and relatives of the men who’ve gone to Syria, either to blow themselves to pieces or get killed by jihadists. They had plenty of reasons to hate both Hajif and Åkerlund if they knew about the way they were working together.’

  ‘I’ll get hold of the names,’ Göran Möller says, and Malin knows why she was looking at him a few minutes ago. For the paternal look Sven used to give her when things were rough. She’ll never have anything like that from Göran Möller, but that’s fine.

  ‘The fact that they both presented a particular public image of themselves whilst thinking and acting in a completely contradictory way – what does that mean?’ Göran Möller throws the question out into the room.

  ‘That the murderer doesn’t like hypocrites,’ Johan Jakobsson says. ‘He wrote about masks, after all.’

  Then silence.

  Who likes hypocrites? Malin thinks. Again.

  ‘What about Nadja Lundin, then?’ Göran asks.

  Silence inside the room.

  Even more silent within Malin.

  Is this about vengeance? she wonders.

  It could be. But what sort? The sort of vengeance I can recognise and understand, or some other sort of vengeance?

  The calf’s tongue with the message, the amputated tongue, acid in the Broca’s area. The emails. If a relative wanted to avenge the death of a son or other family member, why all these crazy theatricals?

  Vengeance and love belong together. Both are coloured red.

  If Tove doesn’t turn up, I shall search for her to the ends of the earth, and I’ll rip the heart out of anyone who’s harmed her.

  Voices. Quiet, only just audible: ‘The recordings from the security cameras are on their way.’

  ‘We didn’t get anything from Peder Åkerlund’s call history. And Forensics have looked at Max Friman’s computer now – nothing there either.’

  ‘Suliman Hajif’s mobile?’ Waldemar wonders.

  ‘He didn’t make any calls from his mobile at all yesterday,’ Göran Möller says. ‘We already know that much. And evidently he didn’t have a computer of his own. But Forensics are going to examine the mosque’s computer as soon as they have time.’

  ‘Any ideas where Mehmet Khoni might be? What could he know?’

  ‘We’re knocking on doors in the area around the mosque. There aren’t any doors to knock on close to where the body was found.’

  ‘The man in the hoodie?’

  ‘Damn it! We need to make some progress. Nadja could still be alive.’

  Malin opens the door.

  ‘They haven’t found Tove,’ she says, and sits down at her place, and looks out at the pre-school’s empty playground, the little playhouse where the children love to hide, before coming out after a while as apparently completely different people.

  50

  Mehmet Khoni pulls up his jeans, adjusts his Metallica T-shirt, then walks into the police station, goes up to the reception desk, and gives his name.

  Samudra called him. Said the police would be paying him a visit, that they wanted to talk to him, told him what had happened to Suliman.

  Madness, he thought then. Madness, he thinks now. It feels good to be inside the station, he kept looking over his shoulder the whole way here, wondering what was going on behind him.

  At first he thought about leaving town, going to stay with relatives in Malmö, but then he realised it made more sense to talk to the police. He hasn’t done anything illegal, and if he can help them catch Suliman’s killer, so much the better.

  The woman in reception smiles at him.

  ‘I’ll call Malin Fors.’

  He knows who she is. Has read about her in the paper.

  Mehmet Khoni turns around.

  Looks out across the car park. The reporters hanging about outside look bored. The light from the street lamps makes the cars shimmer in the twilight. White, red, and silver, and the darkest, sparkling black.

  So he came, Malin thinks as she walks towards the entrance through the open-plan office. She’d had a feeling he might, had been hoping he would. She knows he must be feeling frightened if he didn’t have anything to do with the murders.

  She’s expecting a replica of Suliman Hajif, a long beard and a kaftan. Instead she finds a handsome young man in perfectly ordinary clothes.

  He’s smiling at me. And what a fucking smile.

  Doesn’t look like he’s carrying a weapon.

  ‘Mehmet Khoni?’

  Khoni nods.

  ‘Malin Fors.’

  She holds out her hand and he shakes it.

  Should I search him?

  No.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me?’

  ‘Yes. Let’s go and sit down,’ Malin says, and leads him through the office and into one of the small interview rooms at the back of the building.

  They sit down, and Malin tells him what they know about the link between Hajif and Åkerlund, about the payments and plane tickets. Mehmet Khoni leans back.

  ‘I helped with recruitment,’ he says. ‘Organised their travel, made sure the money transfers worked.’

  ‘I don’t even know if that’s illegal,’ Malin says, ‘what you did.’

  ‘It isn’t. People are free to travel wherever they like. I had nothing to do with the purpose of the trips. And what they got up to once they got there doesn’t come under Swedish jurisdiction, does it?’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Money. No other reason. I’ve got an aunt back home in Lebanon who needs an expensive operation.’

  He seems likeable, Malin thinks. Charming, even, and that charm has driven young men to their deaths.

  ‘How did they come into contact with each other, Hajif and Åkerlund?’

  ‘Åkerlund had received some threatening letters that he thought had come from Suliman, but they hadn’t. He sugge
sted that we work together instead of fighting. We all wanted to get these guys down to Syria. And he had the money.’

  Smart, Malin thinks. Creative, in an extremely warped way.

  ‘I can give you a list,’ Mehmet Khoni says. ‘Of the people we sent. I don’t know what’s happened to them, but they’re unlikely to be coming back. Maybe you ought to talk to their families?’

  Malin pushes a sheet of paper across the table.

  Mehmet Khoni writes down six names.

  How much death and destruction can these people have spread? Mehmet Khoni’s actions? Suliman’s? Peder Åkerlund’s confused contribution?

  All the same: while Hajif made me absolutely furious, I’m being charmed by Khoni. He’s using all his techniques on me, I know that, but even so, I can’t resist.

  She asks him about his alibis for the nights of the murders, and whether he knows Nadja Lundin. He has alibis, says he was at home with his uncle, gives her the number, encourages her to check. He had never heard of Nadja before seeing her in the paper over the past few days.

  ‘Did Suliman ever receive any threats from anyone related to the men you sent to Syria?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Did any of them know about the connection between you and Åkerlund?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone knew apart from us and him. You can appreciate how sensitive it is.’

  ‘The imam?’

  Mehmet smiles but doesn’t answer.

  ‘What did you think about the fact that he was presenting an entirely different public image?’

  ‘He was smart. That’s all. I think he genuinely thought it made sense to become integrated here. And then shift society onto a more Muslim direction from within.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Mehmet thinks. Then he says: ‘He said he’d seen a black van. He thought it was following him. I remembered that when I heard he was dead.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Six months ago, maybe. He never mentioned it again after that.’

  ‘What make of van was it?’

  ‘No idea.’

  The tyre tracks Karin found were probably left by a van. We ought to check out everyone in Linköping who owns a black van. But the database doesn’t allow you to search by colour. Which means we’ll end up with a list of thousands of van owners.