‘Slow down, Fors,’ Sven says. ‘We’ve got no evidence at all against Shakbari and Karami.’
Karim must have spoken to him, but Sven would never hold back a line of inquiry just because Karim put pressure on him. Or the press.
‘Have we got enough people?’ Malin asks again. ‘Can we bring in anyone from Motala? Mjölby?’
The holidays were sacred, otherwise none of them would ever get any time off.
‘We can spare a couple of uniforms,’ Sven says. ‘They can check his alibi.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Jonfeldt and Bulow.’
Good blokes, Malin thinks. Young, single, but not gym-bunnies, not the riot-squad type. More like future detectives.
‘Do you really think they’re involved in this?’
Zeke sounds dubious.
‘Who knows?’ Malin says.
Thinks: I’ve heard their voices in this case, remembering Sven’s words: Listen, Malin. Listen to the voices of the investigation. Recently he’s elaborated on this: You have to listen if you’re going to learn anything, and if you learn something, you can get close to the truth. So close that you can touch it.
‘No news about Theresa either,’ Malin says. ‘Assuming nothing new came in last night? Unless Peter Sköld or Nathalie Falck has volunteered any new information?’
‘Complete silence. On all fronts,’ Sven says. ‘She could have been missing a week now.’
Then Sven changes tack.
‘What about the lesbian angle?’
Zeke no longer hesitant. Malin dubious now, though.
‘Just because we suspect that a dildo might have been used doesn’t mean that we have to track the movements of every lesbian in the city, does it? Because there’s some hint of a lesbian relationship on Facebook?’
‘No one’s suggesting that,’ Zeke says. ‘But it’s a line of inquiry that’s worth following up.’
‘In that case I’d like to talk to Nathalie Falck again,’ Malin says. ‘Alone.’
Zeke nods.
‘Makes sense,’ he says. ‘She didn’t seem to like blokes like me much.’
Sven mutters ‘yes’ before adjusting the belt of his linen trousers and saying: ‘Nothing new from Andersson in Forensics. Presumably he hasn’t found anything else, and he can’t have heard back from Facebook or Yahoo yet.’
Then Sven takes a deep breath before going on.
‘I checked where local lesbians hang out these days. There’s evidently some sort of club in Norrköping, Déjà Vu Delight. According to my sources, they haven’t got a club in Linköping.’
‘I suppose the market’s too small,’ Zeke says. ‘All the dykes probably run off to Stockholm as soon as they get the chance.’
‘Or even further than that,’ Malin adds.
‘What about the National Federation for Gay and Lesbian Rights? Is it worth contacting them?’ Zeke says.
‘They don’t have an office in the area,’ Sven says. ‘You’ll have to check out that club, Malin. Take a look, see what you can find out.’
‘You mean, go and ask if there’s anyone who uses dildos and has ever exhibited any violent tendencies?’
Sven doesn’t answer.
‘Surely this is taking it too far, considering what we’ve actually got?’ Malin says. ‘Can’t we leave them alone in their own club? I might have a contact I can chase up.’
Sven stays silent.
‘You’re right, Malin. Check your contact,’ he says eventually, then clears his throat and says: ‘So what other theories have we got? Ah yes, whether or not anyone has lost his penis? That sort of thing is confidential, and a bit of a long shot.’
He says this without sentimentality, Malin thinks. As if it were just a nuisance to anyone who’s had this happen to them.
‘I’ll check a few of my contacts anyway,’ Malin says, and she can see a frown develop on Sven’s forehead.
‘Don’t try taking any illegal shortcuts now, Malin.’
She doesn’t answer.
Thinks: would we ever get anywhere if we didn’t take the occasional dodgy shortcut?
And Theresa? Where are you?
Am I under water? Is that green brown black wet stuff around me algae, water lilies? Are those pike teeth nibbling at my legs?
What does this dream want with me? Or am I really awake?
But if I am, then surely everything shouldn’t be black?
Am I blind?
Have my eyes burned out, but they can’t have done, because they don’t hurt. They’re intact, yet somehow not, and I try to blink but nothing happens, and why, Dad, why haven’t you come to shut my eyelids for me? Or are they shut? Or is just one of them open?
I want to close my eyes now. Get away from this place, all of this, and all the sounds, words I can’t understand, they’re like the devil’s language, the backwards speech on some worn-out heavy-metal record.
Turn off the voices.
Let go of my arms.
Let me move my arms and legs and feet and eyelids.
What do the voices want? The ones I can hear beneath me, no, above me, my hearing a space rising through the dream.
I’m stuck.
In this green, brown, black.
In damp plastic.
I don’t want to be blind.
No burning ants are going to crawl inside my open eyelids.
Why? Tell me why you haven’t come to take me home, Dad?
I want to wake up now. I’ve never had this sort of dream before.
I want to wake up, Mum. Dad.
I want to.
Not be blind.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
But how?
Tell me, how can I wake up?
16
Soporific paperwork and unresolved discussions about the case after the morning meeting. Malin didn’t have time to call her contacts.
They’ve come into the city-centre and now the oxygen seems to be abandoning the air altogether under the parasols covering the tables outside the Gyllenfiket café, but at least the light is bearable in the shade.
There are two customers apart from Malin and Zeke, an elderly couple drinking coffee and eating slices from a whole loaf of coffee-bread. It is almost half past four and the heat has culminated in needle-sharp sunlight, and the scented particles from the forest fires have found their way across the city once more.
Iced coffee.
Con hielo.
They sip in silence, taking it in turns, and over by the windows of the Gränden shopping arcade a pigeon struts to and fro in front of a branch of Intersport. Inside the windows the beach balls and blow-up mattresses look more and more deflated by the second.
‘Can you smell it?’ Zeke wonders.
‘Yes,’ Malin says.
‘Do you think they can stop it?’
‘They’re bound to.’
Zeke nods.
‘Take a look around, Malin. You could almost imagine we were on our own in the city. Just us and our prey.’
‘My head feels like it weighs a couple of thousand kilos in this heat,’ Malin says. ‘It just doesn’t seem to want to think.’
‘Does your head ever want to?’
‘Very funny, Zeke.’
‘I saw a documentary on television last night,’ Zeke says. ‘Some wildlife programme. About some bloody spider that mates with its own offspring.’