Dad’s mantra over the phone.
These rooms do something to me, Malin thinks, even though they’ve never been mine, they’re closed and open at the same time.
Is there a secret? Or is that just what I feel?
Never just a feeling.
Watering the plants.
The watering can has been Malin’s lot since her parents moved four years ago. She and Tove haven’t been to visit them, and they’ve only been back three times.
‘We won’t be home this summer, Malin.’
‘OK.’
‘You’ll do the watering, won’t you?’
She’s had that question a thousand times from her father, and a thousand times she’s said yes.
But most of the plants are dead now.
She’s put the survivors in boxes on the floor beside a shady wall in the living room, trying to spare them from the sun and the worst of the heat, even though the flat must produce a terrible static heat during the day, which turns chlorophyll pale.
Big pots.
Dry soil, dampened by the watering can.
She can feel her parents’ love in the flat, not their love for her, but for each other. Love as a deal, a sensible arrangement, a way to shut out the world.
Why? Malin thinks. Why do I feel such loss among these things?
She didn’t call Janne and Tove yesterday, and they didn’t call her.
She’s sitting on one of the worn wooden benches on the hill leading down from her parents’ building, fingering her mobile.
The fire brigade. Lesbians. The alien world of teenagers. Thousands of years between each generation.
Janne.
She fingers the keys as an unbearable ray of sunlight breaks through the foliage of the trees and she edges closer to the building.
Smoke in the air, just a hint, the fire is evidently spreading towards Lake Roxen. Is Lake Hultsjön going to burn? Really? Can a lake evaporate?
‘Janne here.’
He sounds lively. Restaurant noises in the background.
‘Is that you, Malin?’
‘It’s me. How are you both?’
‘Good, we’re having lunch. There’s a bloke who grills fish for you. Tove loves it.’
Fish.
She doesn’t usually love fish.
‘And you, how are you getting on?’
‘We’re struggling with that rape case I mentioned. That’s one of the reasons I’m calling.’
Silence on the line.
‘So how can I help?’
Malin gives a brief outline of the case, about the dildo and the lesbian line of inquiry.
‘So you want to know if I know anyone in the fire brigade who might be able to talk to you and tell you a bit about the lesbian community in Östergötland?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘No prejudices there, then. What about your own ranks?’
‘Sensitive, Janne. But what the hell are we supposed to do, there’s a fucking rapist on the loose, a really vicious one at that. And another girl’s gone missing. God knows where she is.’
She explains briefly about Theresa Eckeved, and how they really haven’t managed to come up with anything at all.
Another silence.
‘Janne, it could have been Tove.’
He says nothing at first, then: ‘Talk to Solhage down at the station. I’ll talk to her, she’s OK, and she’s working the whole of July.’
‘Thanks, Jan. Can I talk to Tove?’
‘She’s just gone up to the room, can you call back a bit later?’
When Malin has ended the call she turns her face to the sun, hoping to get some colour in her tired features, let the rays wipe out those horrible wrinkles, but after just a few seconds the heat is too much for her and she gets up from the bench, thinking: No one can control the passage of time, not me, and not you out there somewhere, whoever or whatever you are.
Malin walks up to the police station, careful to stay on the shady side of the street. Her legs are dragging behind her body, her sandals heavy on the tarmac, which feels almost sticky under their soles.
Thinking, as her feet move forward in turn: Exclusion leads to hate, and hate leads to violence.
Sexual exclusion, not chosen voluntarily.
It’s mostly young people who choose to stand aside, or believe that they’re choosing exclusion. No truly adult person chooses to stand on the sidelines, or at least very few. The passage of time brings with it the realisation that belonging is everything. You, me, we.
What do I belong to?
The divorce was the biggest mistake of my life, Malin thinks. How could we, Janne? In spite of everything, everything, everything.
Five hundred metres away Daniel Högfeldt is sitting at his desk, and has just printed out thirty, maybe forty, articles from the past twenty years about rapes in the city and the surrounding area, the results of a search in the paper’s digital archive.
He’s laid the articles out on his desk, they cover the whole surface, and side by side they make a frightening sight, the city seems to contain an active volcano of sexual violence against women, most of it within the family, but also cases that for some reason seem worse; of insane, starving men attacking women in the city’s parks, and occasionally men too, come to that, there’s one case of male rape down in the park by the railway station. Most of the cases seem to have been solved, but some must still rankle with the police: Maria Murvall, the case Malin is so hung up on, and the well-documented case of the woman who was raped and murdered outside the Blue Heaven nightclub. And more besides.
Shall I write an exposé about the unsolved cases? Daniel thinks. Shall I poke about a bit, read up on them all and write a gruesome series about Linköping’s recent history of rape, some diverting summer reading?
Something will come out of it.
But what?
In terms of statistics, Linköping is no worse than anywhere else, but it’s no better either, which is a fact that would give its inhabitants’ very well-developed sense of self-worth a serious kick.
One thing is certain.
There is violence and sexual hunger to write about. Violence and hunger to match this infernal heat.
Then Daniel closes his eyes for a few short seconds, the word heat makes him think of Malin, and he wonders what she’s doing at that moment. But no clear image resolves itself and he opens his eyes and thinks: I’ll drop these unsolved cases, but one day I’ll go even further back and see what hellish stories this dump is trying to hide.
But for the time being I have to concentrate on what’s happening here and now.
Malin’s white blouse is stained grey with sweat, she thinks that she must have another one in her locker in the changing room, otherwise she’s stuffed.
The police station up on the hill, the solid stone buildings around it, ochre-coloured cubes tormented by the sun, tired of the dust rising from the parched, bitter ground. Behind her the University Hospital, one of the few places in the city that’s still a hive of activity.
Solhage.
She was one of the stars of Linköping FC’s women’s team until they got serious and started buying players from all around the country. After that she couldn’t even get a place in the squad.
Must have been a bitter blow.
Best to give Janne a bit of time to call her before I get in touch.
But if you can handle being a woman in the pathetically macho world of the fire service, you can probably deal with being left out of a football team.
Not long till the morning meeting.
Once we’ve been through the state of the investigation I’ll give Solhage a ring.
19
‘It was actually quite a relief to give up football.’
‘So you weren’t bitter?’
‘Not in the slightest, I was tired of all that kicking, and it was all starting to get pretentious. I mean, commentators on television analysing the game and drawing little lines to show how someone runs. I mean, analysis is supposed to be saved for world affairs, isn’t it?’