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

by Mons Kallentoft

Elin doesn’t know why, but she changes position, goes to stand beside Börje instead of right behind him. She feels her heart start to thud in her chest, feels fear and nervousness propel adrenaline out into her body.

  The lock clicks twice in quick succession.

  ‘That’s got it,’ Börje says.

  He puts the pick back in his jacket pocket, and Elin sees him push the handle down, the door opens outwards, then all she is aware of is a sudden intense burst of light and a sense of the world being compressed, of someone pressing her eardrums and eyes deep into her brain.

  Then heat.

  A heat that can destroy everything in its path.

  ‘I’ve sent Elin and Börje to his flat,’ Göran Möller says, as Zeke and Malin are passing the Konsert & Kongress entertainment venue. ‘I didn’t want to wait.’

  Zeke at the wheel, Malin sitting back in the passenger seat.

  ‘What did they find?’ Malin asks. She would rather have got there first, and Göran Möller knows it.

  ‘They’ve probably only just got there.’

  ‘OK. We’re on our way.’

  ‘I didn’t want to wait because of what Johan found out from Social Services in Växjö, where Jonas Ahl grew up.’

  ‘He was in their records?’

  ‘It made me feel sick when I heard,’ Göran Möller says.

  ‘For God’s sake, just tell me, then!’

  Malin puts her phone on speaker, and Göran Möller’s words fill the car, oozing like yellow-brown pus, dripping from the roof.

  ‘Jonas’s father killed his mother when Jonas was nine years old. He’s supposed to have filled her mouth with soil, then left his son alone in the flat with her. They were found by relatives four days later. Jonas Ahl, just a young lad at the time, was sitting beside his mother’s body picking at the soil in her mouth. He didn’t say a word for several years after that. He lived with various foster families, but none of them seemed able to cope with his silence.’

  Can a child be lonelier than that?

  The loneliest in the whole world.

  ‘His dad was a popular local politician. A high-profile Social Democrat who specialised in legal matters. He was very active in the fight for disabled rights. Jonas’s mother kept a diary that showed that he had abused both her and their son. He was extremely strict and controlling, whilst simultaneously working publically for a gentler society.’

  ‘A domestic devil.’

  ‘Yes, like that police chief who was convicted of multiple rapes despite campaigning for gender equality.’

  It all fits.

  With Suliman and Peder. Their loud professions of goodness hiding terrible attitudes and behaviour. You’re killing your father, aren’t you, Jonas?

  What about Nadja, though? Why her? She must have done something that made you think she had a dual personality as well.

  ‘Hang on!’ Göran Möller suddenly yells. ‘Just hold on, for God’s sake. We’ve just had an emergency call. An explosion, on Piongatan. Shit!’

  ‘We’re already on our way,’ Malin says.

  ‘Christ. I told them to be careful.’

  Elin.

  Börje.

  She ends the call. Feels Zeke put his foot down on the accelerator as her mobile buzzes.

  A text.

  Can you save what I can’t?

  You bastard, Malin thinks. But Nadja is alive, that’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?

  Or are you trying to tell me something else?

  64

  After a long shift in the newsroom, Daniel Högfeldt feels exhausted as he hurries the five hundred metres between the paper’s office and his flat, eager to get home as quickly as possible.

  He heard an explosion a short while ago, in the distance, and assumed that the noise came from Saab, and that they were testing one of the many weapons systems they manufacture.

  He puts his key in the door to his flat. He slept badly last night, wished Malin had been with him, but she wasn’t there, and the bed felt way too big, cold and lonely in a way that it had never been before.

  He wanted to call her just now, but knows she’s busy.

  His trousers come off, then his top.

  Down with the venetian blind, then the roller blind, and now the white room is dark enough. He wonders if he ought to dig out the sleep mask he bought for a trip to New York that never actually happened. But he’s tired enough to fall asleep without it.

  He curls up and pulls the covers over him, and detects his own smell on the cotton, Malin hasn’t slept here since he changed the sheets.

  He closes his eyes. Breathes out and in, trying not to think of anything, but his mind wanders to the comments left beneath his opinion piece, particularly one that the editor deleted.

  The one written by someone using the alias Mandela, in which he expressed his hatred of Daniel for having an opinion about the murders, and said he ought to shut up if he didn’t want to end up like Hajif and Åkerlund.

  Lunatics.

  The Internet’s full of them.

  It’s far too easy to press send.

  And people are only too happy to do so.

  He doesn’t remember the other comments, and instead loses himself in images of Malin, and Tove, and he sees her in his mind’s eye in the Congo, somewhere in the jungle, in good health, and with that image in mind, Daniel Högfeldt falls asleep.

  He doesn’t notice the door of the flat being opened five minutes later, or the man creeping towards his bed holding a large, damp rag in his hand before he presses it against Daniel’s nose and mouth.

  His sleep changes, becomes dreamless, and deeper than ever before.

  A pale darkness with red edges.

  From inside it he fails to notice the man wresting his body into a large bag and leaving the flat. And the bag being placed in the back of a van. A van that then drives off towards an unknown destination.

  65

  What’s happening? Malin throws herself out of the car and runs towards the ambulance parked on the street outside the ochre-coloured fin de siècle building.

  Who are they lifting into the ambulance on a stretcher?

  Who is it?

  Börje. That’s Börje’s soot-smeared red face under the oxygen mask.

  She recognises one of the paramedics.

  How bad? she asks with her eyes.

  The man shakes his head, and she looks over towards the door and the fire engine, as firemen rush into the stairwell, and uniformed police officers try to keep curious onlookers back.

  She just manages to take hold of Börje’s hand and squeeze it before the ambulance doors close and the vehicle drives off.

  She turns around.

  Elin Sand is sitting on the grass outside the building, wrapped in a yellow blanket. Her face is black with soot, but she seems unharmed. Malin goes over to her, kneels down, and puts one hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Elin Sand looks at her, then points at her ears.

  ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  And Malin repeats, this time articulating clearly: ‘Are you OK?’

  Elin nods.

  ‘We were about to enter the flat. Börje had picked the lock, and that’s when it went off.’

  ‘Was Jonas Ahl there?’

  ‘It was empty, as far as I know.’

  Malin strokes Elin’s cheek before getting to her feet. She sees Göran Möller, Zeke, and Waldemar standing under a tree, staring at their mobiles.

  Perhaps they’re reading the text message? She forwarded it to all of them.

  Can you save what I can’t?

  Göran and Zeke’s expressions are full of fear, fear that stems from a realisation that you don’t have control of anything. That life is a never-ending earthquake.

  They’re trying to work out what’s happening, but can’t, and Malin has the feeling that the ground Linköping stands on, perfectly stable until very recently, is in the process of being ripped open and destroyed, and that one man
– his rage and confusion and hatred and love – is capable of bringing down a whole city.

  Then her mobile buzzes once more.

  Two precise coordinates, down to the last decimetre.

  She rushes over to Zeke, Göran, and Waldemar at the same time as she calls Johan. She gives him the coordinates. She could probably work out the location on her phone, but how the hell do you do that?

  ‘I’ve had another text. Nothing but coordinates.’

  ‘He may have set another trap,’ Göran Möller says. ‘From now on we have to be even more careful.’

  ‘Is there enough time for that?’

  ‘There has to be.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Waldemar coughs.

  ‘The girl’s still alive,’ Malin says.

  In her mind’s eye she can see a helicopter hovering above dense jungle. Tove, standing on a rock in a clearing, waving.

  Her phone rings.

  Johan, calling back.

  ‘It’s an abandoned lot in Ljungsbro, in an old residential area. If the coordinates are accurate, they lead to a well behind a derelict house.’

  He gives her the address, and Malin grabs Zeke’s arm.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Where the hell are you going?’ Göran Möller says, trying to stop them.

  ‘Where he wants us to go. What do you think?’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere without the bomb squad.’

  ‘They’re too slow,’ Malin says. ‘It could be too late by then.’

  She looks over at the gathering of reporters. Daniel isn’t there. He must be at home sleeping, she thinks.

  Her phone buzzes once more:

  Hurry, hurry, the clock is ticking.

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ Malin says, then turns and hurries to the car. She wonders if Zeke is following her, and as she opens the driver’s door she hears his voice right behind her: ‘That’s my seat.’

  She runs around to the passenger side, looks over at Göran Möller, and Waldemar, who are waving them off, saying: ‘Go, go, go!’ without actually saying it.

  The mass-housing project of Skäggetorp, Ikea’s even more depressing retail barn, the fertile land of the plain, the brown ploughed fields. The water of Lake Roxen looks dull beneath the sunlight from a hazy sky, and the little red soldiers’ cottages that are now modest summer houses seem to vanish into the evening, swallowed up by an invisible giant.

  The spire of Vreta Kloster.

  They drive past the first crime scene, from the road they can make out the locks and the tall trees surrounding them.

  Peder Åkerlund’s corroded brain.

  Suliman Hajif’s amputated tongue.

  Jonas Ahl’s mother’s mouth, full of earth.

  They drive into Ljungsbro, under the viaduct, past the former site of Wester’s fruit farm, and into the district of Källhemmet. They turn into Bohagsvägen and pull up outside number 57.

  The old house is falling down.

  The garden overgrown.

  They stop.

  Get out.

  Am I going to be blown up? Malin thinks. Is there another bomb here?

  She looks at Zeke. He radiates concentration. Nothing else. It is in situations like this when he shows his true self. He won’t back down one millimetre.

  They go around to the back of the house. The garden is protected by a tall, dense hedge. Jonas Ahl could do anything he wanted here without fear of being seen.

  The stone wall of the well is covered by grey-green moss.

  A well, Malin thinks. Deep in the ground. Just like the coffins.

  They look down into the darkness, and Malin wonders: Are you down there, Nadja?

  She drops a stone in.

  There’s no splash, just a gentle thud. Three seconds. Something like ten metres to the bottom.

  This must be where he was leading us.

  ‘Have we got any rope in the car?’

  ‘We have,’ Zeke replies, and runs off.

  Malin stands alone by the well. Calls down into it: ‘Nadja, Nadja, we’re coming. Don’t give up.’

  I’m going down there, Malin thinks. Down into the darkness to get you. Maybe we’ll both be blown up?

  Zeke comes back with the rope. They fasten it to a sturdy apple tree, and Zeke takes hold of it, saying: ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘Never,’ Malin says. ‘You’ve got Tess, she’s only little. Tove’s older. She’d manage.’

  Malin doesn’t let herself think further than that. She grabs the rope from Zeke and goes over to the well, climbs over the edge and starts to bounce her way down the dry, brick-lined walls.

  Zeke shines his torch down.

  Can you see us now?

  Malin can hear sirens. Police cars arriving. Fellow officers who can’t help her. She has to do this on her own. The walls of the well squeeze her like the muscles of a boa constrictor, and she wants to get out, but knows she has to carry on.

  Damn, it’s deep.

  Zeke’s torch can’t reach all the way down here.

  She bounces her way down in the darkness, feels spiders’ webs catch in her hair, as tentacles seem to feel their way across her cheeks.

  Am I ever going to get back out again?

  Then she feels firm ground beneath her feet.

  She’s there.

  Completely dark now. But the walls have widened into a small cave. She takes out her mobile, switches the little torch on, and looks up. The sky is a circle, as if in another world. She shines the torch around her, turns around and around.

  What can I see?

  There. There, behind a rock, something is sticking out.

  A white-painted corner, and she kneels down and crawls over to the rock and drags it aside.

  A small coffin.

  But big enough for human remains.

  And a ticking sound.

  A note on the coffin:

  Dare you open it, because it might save her?

  Tove, Nadja.

  I’m going to save them, Malin thinks. That’s all I’m good for. And that’s what I’m doing. Yet even so her hands tremble as she reaches for the little coffin with the ticking sound. She tries to hold them still, but they refuse to obey her, and she swears, curses this dark hole, brushes a spider from her hair, feels more of them crawling up her ankles, and she hates the arachnids as much as she hates this moment, and that hatred makes her hands steady, and they approach the coffin, and she knows she has to open it, even if it might lead to her death.

  She takes hold of the lid, hesitates for a second, hears Zeke’s voice: ‘How’s it going down there?’

  She doesn’t reply, just yells: ‘Get away from the opening!’ and then lifts the lid of the coffin straight up, feeling herself breathe hard as sweat breaks out right across her scalp.

  The feeling of being in her own grave.

  The lid in one hand.

  No explosion.

  Malin looks down into the coffin. A clock, an old-fashioned stopwatch. Counting down. Twenty-nine minutes left.

  What happens then?

  In twenty-nine minutes?

  A note beside the stopwatch.

  New coordinates.

  A short message.

  Ha, ha, boom, boom.

  You sadist.

  But you reap what you sow.

  She grabs the note and the timer, puts them and her mobile in her pockets. She fumbles for the rope in the darkness, ties it around her waist, and takes a firm grip of it with both hands.

  She calls up: ‘Pull me up, now!’

  And she is drawn towards the light.

  Slowly, slowly.

  The light. Close now.

  And she sees their faces.

  Zeke, Nadja, Tove.

  They’re all there.

  Daniel.

  Did I get blown up after all?

  She’s up.

  Clambers over the edge. The light must have been playing tricks on her, on her eyes, the feeling of seeing her deathbed.

  Zeke’s there. S
ome muscular uniforms. None of the people she loves most.

  And no Nadja.

  But we’re coming now, we’re going to make it.

  The clock is counting down.

  Twenty-six minutes and twenty seconds left.

  66

  Save me. I can’t breathe any more.

  The air has run out completely, one breath is like a hundredth of a breath, and I try to hold my breath, counting. Slowly, slowly, slower than the seconds.

  One hundred and ninety-nine, two hundred, two hundred and one …

  The ticking stops, and then I hear a whistling sound, a mad whistle that makes my whole body shake, and I shake with cramp from the whistle, my body hits the wood on all sides and the whistling goes on and on until suddenly it stops.

  I become still.

  And the ticking is back.

  Louder and louder and LOUDER.

  It’s too late.

  You can’t save me.

  Mum, Dad, all the rest of you.

  You won’t be in time.

  67

  They throw themselves into the car once more.

  Zeke starts the engine, looks at Malin.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Head out towards the plain, it ought to be in that direction,’ and soon they’re racing through the sleepy residential area at over a hundred kilometres an hour.

  A risk in itself.

  A danger to others.

  Malin calls Johan, gives him the new coordinates, and this time she waits as she hears him tap frantically at a keyboard.

  ‘It’s in the middle of the plain. Towards Klockrike. A few kilometres from Stenkullamotet.’

  Johan is talking calmly, and Malin knows he doesn’t want to stress her.

  The game goes on, she thinks as she ends the call.

  Here is there.

  Here is there, wherever they aren’t.

  You probably killed her long ago.

  She takes out the stopwatch.

  Eighteen minutes left.

  A message arrives. Johan has sent a picture of the location, and road directions.

  She reads them out to Zeke.

  ‘Drive as fast as you can.’

  ‘Can we get there in time?’

  ‘Yes. We can get to the location, anyway. What happens when we get there is another matter.’

  She closes her eyes, feels the car accelerate, hears the engine roar with joy at the chance to unleash its potential. If they went off the road now, or hit another car, it would mean certain death.