One hundred and fifty kilometres an hour as they pass the golf course in Vreta Kloster, after driving through a deserted early-morning Ljungsbro.
They pass the fires, the lines of cars, and they meet fire engines on their way back from there, their cabs full of exhausted men with soot-smeared faces, resignation in their eyes as if the fire and the heat were too strong for them, as if they had no choice but to capitulate to the flames and let the fire transform all the forests of Östergötland into a no-man’s-land.
‘Do you wish you were still there?’ Malin asks Janne, but he doesn’t answer.
Dark, burgundy-coloured wallpaper. A creaking wooden floor.
Him rendered immobile. You soon here on the floor.
I have everything in place now, sister.
So that you can be resurrected.
So that our innocence can be reborn in a radiant whiteness.
I am in the final room.
68
In the final room
I, Sture Folkman, was seventeen years old the first time I gave in to my lust.
Down by the factory in Ängelholm there was a kiosk where she, she was eleven or twelve, used to buy cigarettes for her mother.
Her white dress.
It covered no more than her thighs and it was a hot day, almost as hot as some days have been this summer.
She was walking along the path behind the factory and there were azaleas, the most beautiful I had ever seen, in bloom there.
I caught up with her.
Brought her down.
And she was hairless and I knew this was the first step of many for me, it couldn’t be stopped, I could see in her frightened eyes that deep down she loved it, loved me, just like all my girls came to, even if some of them got ideas in their heads later on. I kept rabbits in cages to make them happy. Girls love rabbits.
That white dress ended up spotted with blood.
I whispered in her ear as I held her by the throat.
Keep quiet about this, girl, or the devil will get you.
Shame comes before love.
Over the years other people’s shame has been my best ally. It was easiest and nicest when I had the girls in the house, God knows how excited I got, hearing my creaking footsteps at night when I was on the way to their room.
They were always full of anticipation.
Lying awake, waiting for me, for my lovely, long, dextrous fingers, for my wonderful presence.
I was always careful.
Pulling the covers from their bodies.
Caressing their young white glassy skin.
My own flesh and blood or someone else’s, it never mattered. I gave my love to all the girls who came my way.
You’re awake now, little girl, my beautiful summer angel.
We’re here now, in the final room, and she shall see me do this first.
I’ve hammered four big nails into the floor and tied you to them. And you can see in my direction now.
I’m sitting beside my dad on his sofa.
I’ve got my mask on, so my face lacks definition, I’m wearing my white spiders’ legs, holding the necklace of rabbit claws to his cheeks and I’m scratching and he’s screaming, the old man, but there isn’t really much life in him.
You’re looking away.
LOOK FOR FUCK’S SAKE.
And you look.
She’s naked and the mask is on again.
Her head is aching, but Tove can see the scene clearly, understands that she’s in a grotty flat, God knows where, and that a woman, naked, is sitting next to her dad and hurting him.
Why?
And she screams at me to look, but I don’t want to see this and she scratches his face again and he screams.
She gets up.
Her thin white surgical gloves are glowing in the weak light.
I can’t get up.
There’s a smell of bleach, the sort Mum uses to get rid of stains.
Mum, Dad. You have to hurry.
I can hear her in another room, drawers being opened, she’s looking for something, and the man tries to scream, but she’s put a rag in his mouth, just like mine.
Neither of us can move.
Neither of us can escape.
The knife.
The old kitchen knife that Elisabeth and I fantasised about stabbing him with, he’s still got it, the rough knife with the Bakelite handle.
I pull it from the block on the worktop.
Hold it. Think what a shame it was about Sofia Fredén. I saw her when she was working in the café at Tinnis last summer, and she used to move the same way you used to, Elisabeth, and with her I thought that if I do everything quickly and in one place then maybe I can achieve what I want through speed and shock tactics, like an explosion or a powerful chemical reaction. I scratched and cut her with the claws, the first one I did that to, but it didn’t mean anything. Rabbits are only animals, their love is meaningless.
I scrubbed her in the park. Worked fast.
But she just went limp in my arms when I pressed my hands around her neck.
She died without you coming back.
But, dear sister, you should know that I have never doubted. I know what I have to do now.
Just watch while you’re waiting.
Then come to me with love. You should know that I miss you.
She has a knife in her hand.
Tove sees the blade glint and she screams NOW LOOK as she sits down next to the man on the sofa that Tove thinks must be her father.
She holds the knife in the air.
Screams.
THIS IS NOTHING.
Then she stabs the knife into the man’s chest and stomach over and over again and his irises disappear into his head, his eyes go white and his whole body shakes and she stabs the knife into him over and over again and the blood sort of seeps out from the gap between his brown top and grey trousers.
He’s still now.
And I’m terrified, but I couldn’t be more present.
She takes one of his hands, Mum.
And then the knife again, she saws and cuts and the fingers fall off onto the floor, one by one by one, the blood, Mum, the blood.
Fingerless hands on the fabric of the sofa.
She’s done now.
Turns towards me, Mum.
I yank strain scream cry.
But nothing happens.
If you’re on your way, you need to hurry now.
69
Finspång.
The time is now a quarter past six, and the streets of the industrial community are still empty, Zeke takes a short cut the wrong way around a roundabout and comes close to running over a bleary-eyed paperboy.
The centre.
Grey buildings, a hotdog kiosk, trees shrinking away from the sun, the flowerbeds not as well tended here as in Linköping, but there’s still a feeling of summer idyll, as if the industrial town had come to terms with its transformation into a sleepwalker’s hideaway.
But something is happening.
‘Turn here,’ Malin shouts and her mobile rings, she knows it’s Sven Sjöman again, he’s called her mobile ten times, and tried them over the radio, but we’re doing this on our own.
‘Stop.’
And Zeke brakes hard and they throw the doors open and pour out of the car. Malin runs towards the building where Sture Folkman lives, pulling her pistol from the holster under her jacket, Zeke hot on her heels with his gun in his hand, Janne shadowing them, crouching, as if he were expecting enemy fire from the windows of the white block of flats.
They creep up the stairs.
Press close to the wall.
Malin puts her ear to the door, making a hushing sign, finger to her mouth, listening for any sounds from inside the flat.
Groaning noises.
A woman’s voice saying, there, there.
How to play this?
She’s put a blue thing around her waist, she’s cut open my trousers and pants with a knife and I’m naked now.
This isn’t happening.
Tell me this isn’t happening.
The fingers all around me, in a circle, like worms, like eyeless baby snakes.
I try to close my eyes and cry, but she holds my eyelids open the whole time, it’s like I have to see everything and my skin stings as if she’s rubbed it with something that burns.
Standing up, she rattles a necklace made of animal claws over me.
‘Do you see the fingers?’
Her face is covered by a mask, her hands wearing white rubber gloves and blood of the man on the sofa is oozing towards me now, it will soon reach me and it stinks of guts and iron and I don’t want it to touch me, away, away with the blood.
And what’s she doing now?
Talking, wondering.
‘What would be best?’
A curious, expectant voice.
‘The nothing, or spider-fingers around your neck?’
She looks up at the ceiling, as if she were seeking an answer.
It’s happening now.
I’m going to kill you and you will be resurrected.
The fingers are gone now.
Then we shall cycle with the wind in our hair to a water where love is eternal, where we can lie next to each other and believe that this world, this life wishes us well.
I shall put everything right.
There now, don’t be frightened.
I shall start by squeezing the life out of you, then I shall fill something with nothing one last time, and then you will look at him, at yourself, at the world, lying safe and open ahead of us.
You’ll see that I’ve put everything right.
Together we shall fly through the countryside like loving summer angels.
Malin!
Don’t wait any longer.
Go in!
It isn’t too late for Tove yet, the way it is for us. The truth, you’ve reached its front yard, and it’s behind that door.
The sight behind it is terrible to behold.
But you can do it, both of you, because your lives can be saved behind there, in the darkness.
See to it that this comes to an end.
Wipe out our fear and help us enjoy our insight, our freedom. Give our mums and dads the solace to be gained from putting a name, a face, to evil.
Open the door, Malin.
Do it now.
It’s high time.
My hands around your neck.
Stop wriggling.
It won’t take long and I understand that you’re scared, that it hurts, but you can come back as pure love, as the most beautiful person in the world.
Your skin is warm, so warm, and I press harder now.
Give up, give up, that’s right.
They hesitate.
Whisper soundlessly: ‘How are we going to play this?’
‘Burst in.’
‘But . . .’
No buts, no alternatives, and Malin takes a step back, kicks in the door with all her strength and four metres inside the flat she can see a bloody human beast standing crouched over a clean-scrubbed body on the floor, human fingers all around, the human beast’s hands around the neck of the body, the human beast like black organic magma, its veins filled with glowing worms and Tove on the floor and Malin screams:
‘LET GO! STOP!’
And holds the gun in front of her, takes aim and the human beast moves, looks at Malin, stares into her eyes, then turns towards Tove again.
Because that is you, isn’t it, Tove?
She looks into my eyes and I vanish, everything goes white and I seem to be drifting, Mum, is that you shouting, Dad, is that you I can hear?
Your eyes, you’re disappearing into them and something new arises.
They’re your eyes, sister, and you’re back, I look into your pupils and feel an endless love.
So the nothing wasn’t needed.
I squeeze and then I explode into sound.
Malin squeezes the trigger.
No time to fight, to lose, just reply to the volcano in kind, become part of the volcano.
Pulling the trigger again and again.
Zeke pulls his trigger.
Over and over again and the smell of blood merges with the smell of gunpowder and Janne screams: ‘Tove, Tove, stop firing!’ as he rushes into the living room, almost slipping on the blood on the floor, kicks, pushing aside the lifeless body that has collapsed on top of Tove before feeling her neck with two fingers, screaming ‘Fuck!’, and then he presses his mouth to Tove’s, forcing air into her lungs.
Malin and Zeke beside him.
The mutilated corpse on the sofa, its hands bloody stumps, face white, bloodless, the naked body next to Tove perforated by dozens of bullets, blood pumping out in gushes over the amputated fingers arranged in a circle, then Janne’s order: ‘Don’t just stand there, cut her loose!’
And without thinking Malin grabs a large knife with a black handle and cuts Tove free from the floor, rope by rope, Zeke swearing in the background: ‘This is the worst, the fucking worst thing I’ve ever seen.’
And Janne pumps in air, counts, pauses, pumps and Malin sits down beside him, stroking Tove’s forehead, pleading out loud: ‘Please, please, please, this can’t be happening,’ but nothing helps.
Janne breathing into her.
Lifeless.
Tove.
Where are you?
‘Come back, Tove,’ Malin whispers into her ear.
I’m here, Mum, I can see you, but I don’t know how to wake up.
I can see two girls drifting around your body and their mouths are forming words that I can’t hear, but I understand that they don’t want me with them, that they want me to go back.
Go back where?
Follow the voice, they say.
And I listen to you, Mum, come back, come back, come back, and I feel the air fill my lungs, images return to my eyes and I see you now, you and Dad, how the fear and grief in your eyes turns to joy and love, to life.
Malin and Janne sitting on either side of Tove.
She’s breathing, looking at them with conscious eyes.
They’re holding each other, holding Tove, in a soft embrace that all three of them promise themselves will never end, the blood moving beneath them, holding them together, forcing violence back, deep into the holes it emerged from.
Zeke has opened the blinds.
The final room is bathed in light.
Someone listening carefully can hear the song of the summer angels; a wordless song, an ancient murmur about unity and love and belonging, a song people have long forgotten, and therefore never expect to hear again.
But the song exists within the three people on the floor of the room.
The three people hugging each other.
Epilogue
On the outskirts of Linköping, Monday, 16 August
We are together up here, down here, everywhere, in all the spaces that are ours.
It’s good enough.
We are the eternally young girls, Linköping’s summer angels, and have forgotten the terror.
Our mums and dads are still sad, and not even time can offer any balm for their grief.
But they know what happened.
You know what happened now, Dad. And there is no blame.
And that will have to do.
We, we have each other.
We share everything.
Just the way it was planned.
We can be together now, Elisabeth.
And we can see him, how he suffers, suffers and suffers, where he is now.
Can we help him?
No.
Instead we drift along the banks of the canal, pretending to feel the wind in our hair, pretending to bathe, pretending and playing, and we are sisters, you and I.
And we always shall be.
Malin is lying in a hammock at the back of Janne’s house, watching him and Tove rake leaves that have fallen far too early. The scaffolding around the house is gone.
It’s a nice day, perhaps twenty degrees in the shade, the light mild, and up in the forests the fires are finally under control.
Karin Johannison has compared DNA samples from everyone involved in the case to those of Maria Murvall’s attacker, but there were no matches.
The same evil, but a different incarnation.
Why did it happen now? Why did Vera Folkman cross the line this hot summer?
Malin hasn’t found an answer to those questions. Lying awake at night she has thought: history contracted, volcanic ground fractured, and out flooded a concentrate of evil, tired of being held fettered and silent in a hidden darkness.
She called Josefin Davidsson. Josefin said she felt calmer after the hypnosis. They still don’t know who called in about her, no one ever came forward.
Malin bumped into Slavenca Visnic in the city. She said that she’d sold the kiosks and was going to move back to Sarajevo.
‘The time has come,’ she said.
Malin’s flat by St Lars’ Church has been rented out to a student for the autumn and winter. Tove and Malin’s things are still in boxes in the living room of Janne’s house.
Tove and Janne are moving through the garden, across grass that heavy rain has made green with life.
Flowers in a myriad colours have ventured forth, trusting that the heat has gone. Their petals are blowing in a gentle wind, confirming that this present is all that really exists.
Tove and Janne.
You’re my people, Malin thinks.
We’re each other’s people.
We belong together.
And that’s a gift that we’ll have to learn to live with.
Have you read
MIDWINTER SACRIFICE
Malin Fors’ first case?
Early one morning in the coldest winter in Swedish memory, police detective Malin Fors is called away from the warm flat she shares with her teenage daughter. The naked body of a man has been found hanging from a tree on the deserted, frozen plain outside the small university town of Linköping.
Summertime Death mf-2 Page 38