Her computer is on in the bedroom.
Click, click, click.
The Correspondent’s website.
A photograph of Ali Shakbari and Behzad Karami standing outside the blocks of flats in Berga.
Headline: No Evidence: Police Harassing Immigrants.
The caption to the picture: We had nothing to do with the rape in the Horticultural Society Park, but the police are hassling us just because we’re immigrants.
Daniel’s tabloid angle: The Correspondent has tried to obtain a statement from representatives of the Linköping Police today, but no one was available.
A blatant lie to fit the story.
And you’ve been in my bed?
And doubtless will be again.
‘Are you still there, Malin?’
There must have been a two-minute silence on the line, quite unlike Karim.
‘I’m here, Karim. It was just an idea, one of many leads, you can see that, can’t you?’
‘I can see that.’
‘And they were the suspects in the Lovisa Hjelmstedt case.’
‘I know, Malin, but surely you can see how bad this looks?’
‘Enjoy the attention,’ Malin says.
Karim laughs, but his laughter is hollow and tired.
14
The phone on the table in front of Malin.
It’s glowing.
Who the hell does Karim Akbar think he is, sticking his nose into their work?
It is not the job of a police chief to micro-manage an investigation, but Karim has never really been able to stick to the boundaries, and an unspoken pact has developed among the detectives in the Crime Unit: let Karim do what he likes, and we’ll get on with our work. Because Karim isn’t short of good qualities, and he actually has complete confidence in his officers. And he’s good for the police in Linköping, his fondness for the media has focused attention on the work of the police in the city, and this attention has been rewarded with an increased budget from higher up.
Everything, Malin thinks, lying back on the sofa, absolutely everything can be traced back to this bloody mediatocracy, celebrity culture, the rapturous elevation of the mediocre, the uninteresting into a form of religion. Our souls have no peace, Malin thinks, so we take an interest in Nothing.
Hair colours.
Skirt length.
Who’s fucking who.
Celebrity weddings, divorces, collagen injections, sex scandals . . .
Well, thank God Tove doesn’t care.
Karim.
Friends with the Minister for Integration. They share the same view of immigrants: make demands, be tough, but woe betide anyone else, any non-immigrant, if they should happen to say something negative – then the air grows thick with verbal detonations.
Malin takes a deep breath of the air in the flat, the smell of a long hot summer where evil has started to make its move.
Sometimes she imagines evil as a shapeless black beast moving through the undergrowth and city alike. Who the beast is waiting for, who it might be, are as yet unknown.
She switches off the television.
Gets up.
Goes out of the flat.
Vague ideas of what she wants.
The pub downstairs is open, the clattering air conditioning audible out in the street.
Call Daniel? Shout at him? Fuck him? Make use of his damn cock. Drink herself senseless. But there’s nothing worse than having to work with a hangover, and they have to work tomorrow, even though it’s Saturday.
Call Zeke and see if he fancies going for a beer?
Call Helen from the local radio station; it’s been ages since they met up.
In the sky above her a third of the moon is glowing against a thousand pale stars, and she can see them stretching out their hands to each other without ever quite reaching.
‘Zeke here.’
He answers on the third ring.
His voice gruff, as if he’s just woken up.
‘It’s me, I was just wondering if you fancy a beer and a chat about the case. I can’t relax, what do you think?’
Thinks: I sound manic.
Lonely?
No question.
Just as I am.
‘Malin, it’s half past nine, you ought to be in bed getting your strength back for tomorrow. We’ve got a lot to do. I was on my way to bed, so no beer for me. We have to work tomorrow, you know that.’
‘Did you say half past nine?’
‘Exactly, Fors.’
Silence on the line.
‘But you can come out here if you like. We can have a chat. Gunilla can make us some tea and sandwiches, we’ve got Kinda gherkins.’
Zeke’s wife.
Niceness and normality personified.
A pharmacist at the chemist’s on the main square.
Too nice.
‘Thanks, but no thanks, Zeke. I don’t want to intrude. See you first thing in the morning.’
‘Good night, Malin.’
She’s left standing on the pavement with her phone in her hand.
Shall I go into the pub?
In again and up to the flat?
Call Tove, Janne?
Her skin is crawling, and not because of the heat.
Damn this thirst. This urge. I know it doesn’t do a bloody bit of good.
Then in her mind’s eye she sees Josefin Davidsson in her hospital bed. Her face contorted with nightmares, with suppressed memories.
Shortly afterwards Malin is walking across Trädgårdstorget, perfectly aware of where she’s going. The evening is slipping slowly into night and the square’s only open-air terrace is empty, a dark-skinned waiter is collecting the ashtrays, there are no glasses to clear on any of the tables.
She walks along Drottninggatan, past the imposing residential blocks. Cars pass: a green Volvo, a white pick-up.
The black iron gate of the Horticultural Society Park beneath her hand, still warm from the day’s scorching sun, but not hot enough to burn.
Malin opens the gate and steps into the park, quite alone now, presumably no one dares to come here at this time of day now, after what’s happened.
Naked.
Raped.
Preschool kids approaching.
I don’t remember anything.
The beast, it could be here, Malin thinks as she moves slowly deeper and deeper into the park, past the well-tended flowerbeds and the fountain, the greenhouses along the fence, and then the summerhouse, the playground, the almost silent stream, a slight trickle of water, insignificant yet still full of voices, of hidden memories.
She can see the balconies on Djurgårdsgatan.
The thankless door-to-door inquiries.
No trace of the red bicycle, even though the uniforms have been down every possible route she could have taken into town.
Not many people left in the city, but even so, she must have screamed. Someone ought to have woken up. Did they move you here, Josefin? And, if so: where were you before then? Where were you taken?
Malin skirts around the summerhouse, fingering the tape of the cordon that has already been pulled down, and closes her eyes, seeing someone chasing a naked, wounded, scrubbed-clean young girl back and forth across the grass, how she’s tied up, gagged, how someone pushes a piece of blue plastic in and out of her, and how her memories close ranks, saying: Stop, no admittance! Grass beneath her body, hardly any dew in the heat, his, her, their bodies over you, muscles pressing you down with full force, the grass a bed you’ll never, ever be able to leave, ever be able to get up from.
Was that it?
Josefin Davidsson.
Maria Murvall.
Theresa Eckeved missing.
A connection?
Josefin.
You wandered about until you were found, but you’re still here with us.