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.
From the outset Malin is confronted with a host of unanswered questions: Who is the dead man? How did he end up in a tree? And where did the strange wounds on his body come from?
Malin and her team must search for the truth in a community that seems determined to keep its secrets, and follow in the frigid wake of a killer to the darkest corners of the human heart.
Out now in paperback and as an eBook
About the Author
Mons Kallentoft grew up in the provincial town of Linköping, Sweden, where the Malin Fors series is set. The series is a massive European bestseller and has been translated into over twenty languages. Before becoming a novelist, Mons worked in journalism; he is also a renowned food critic. His debut novel, Pesetas, was awarded the Swedish equivalent of the COSTA First Novel Award.
Mons has been married to Karolina for over twenty years, and they live in Stockholm with their daughter and son.