Mutt?
A cartoon word.
‘One question, about the kiosk,’ Malin says. ‘Is it usually open? Do you come swimming here often?’
She hates it when this happens, when the questions fall out of her in the wrong order, but often it leads to decent answers, there’s something disarming in the uncertainty revealed by clumsily posed questions.
‘We come swimming here every so often,’ the man says. ‘The only problem is that the kiosk is normally shut, apparently because the woman who runs it has several others and can’t get the staff.’
‘The woman?’
‘Yes. I think her name’s Slavenca, from Bosnia or somewhere like that. She can be pretty unpleasant when she feels like it, almost like she doesn’t want any customers. She was here earlier, she disappeared just before you lot showed up.’
‘Thanks,’ Malin says.
Down by the body Karin Johannison is working against the clock, trying to get finished before darkness falls, but there are still several hours’ work ahead of her and her recently arrived assistant. Malin knows that they have a floodlight in their Volvo. But maybe they won’t have to set it up tonight. The summer night will smile on them, a gentle smile that will make their work easier, their careful search for details and clues on the body and in the vegetation around it that could lead them all closer to the truth.
Karin looks up at Malin.
Waves.
And her eyes are tired, they’ve lost a little of their obvious sparkle, maybe they’re already in Bali, those eyes.
Bali.
Island of beauty and violence.
A place where rebirth is possible.
23
The house where I grew up.
The bricks seem to be dripping off the façade in the heat, uncovering memories, intimations.
And lies.
But which lies?
Zeke at the wheel, focused.
They aren’t going faster than the prescribed thirty, and the hedge around Malin’s childhood home is drooping more than before, as though it’s made up its mind to give up in the heat of summer.
No one at home in the house.
Who lives there now? What are their memories?
I circle around those memories, Malin thinks. They’re still inside me, like electrical will-o’-the-wisps, timeless flares in my consciousness, in all that is me, my actions and somehow my future as well.
What am I so scared of?
I’m both trapped by and running from everything that once was, refusing to let go because I think that those days can explain something to me today.
Air it all out.
Throw out all those old clothes. They aren’t coming back.
Mum and Dad in Tenerife.
With every passing day Malin is more and more convinced that her parents are hiding something, and now, now, in this moment as they drive past her childhood home in Sturefors to notify a couple of unsuspecting parents of a death, she feels it more clearly than ever. Her past conceals something, and without finding out what that secret is she will never be whole.
And then the house is gone from view. Withdrawn into memory.
The Polaroid picture of the dead Theresa Eckeved is in her pocket.
It’s her, Malin is certain of it.
Zeke before they got in the car: ‘You’ll have to show them the picture, Malin, I’m not doing it.’
She’s no older than Tove, and even though Malin tries to force away the image of her daughter, even though she keeps her eyes open, Tove’s face keeps taking the place of the dead girl’s in the picture.
Go away, away, Malin thinks, but to no avail.
You are all girls.
You are the only girl.
I’m going to get the bastard who did this. I’m going to understand.
Her finger on the doorbell, sweat on her brow, Zeke a step behind her, his sunglasses in his hand now, his eyes ready to show sympathy.
Tove, there once more.
Sounds behind the door.
What sounds?
The heavy steps of someone who has realised that the ultimate disaster is approaching? The point where life stiffens and changes into a sluggish, bitter-tasting mess where happiness is nothing more than an intellectual exercise.
I’m happy. I can do this.
And the door opens.
The man in front of her fully aware of the situation. The woman behind him, her mouth slightly open, her frightened blue eyes almost blistered by an evident lack of sleep.
There you are again, Tove, even though all of my attention ought to be focused on these two people in front of me. If I have one task in the world, it is to look after you. That’s the only one that seems obvious to me. And now, now that you’re a stubborn teenager, it’s clear that you don’t want me to look after you, apart from taking care of the practical details.
I will never stop looking after you, Tove.
I can’t.
Sigvard Eckeved opens the door wide, steps aside and his shoulders slump and his wife vanishes in the direction of the conservatory in a vain attempt to flee the truth, because it is the truth, their truth, which has come to their home, and they both know it.
‘Come in,’ Theresa’s father says. ‘Have you made any progress, got some more questions? Do you want coffee? Agneta,’ he calls into the house, ‘can you put some coffee on? We’re bound to have some ice, so we can get you both iced coffee. You can’t help wondering if this heat is ever going to let up.’
Malin lets him talk.
She and Zeke sit down on the chairs to one side of the white sofa in the living room. The pool sits invitingly behind them. And Agneta and Sigvard Eckeved understand what Malin and Zeke’s positioning means and sit down on the sofa, not leaning back, leaning forward instead in an almost exaggerated show of interest, as if this exaggeration could hold the nightmare at bay.
‘We’ve found a young girl out at the beach at Stavsätter,’ Malin says.
‘It can’t be Theresa,’ Agneta says. ‘She’d never go swimming there, the pool . . . but I suppose she did used to cycle out there sometimes . . .’
‘The girl was murdered, and I’m very sorry to have to tell you that I think she’s your daughter.’
Theresa’s parents, the people in front of them, sink back into the sofa, the air somehow sucked out of them, and the woman whimpers when Malin takes the photograph out of the pocket of her blouse and puts it on the dark, polished, oak tabletop. Outside in the garden a crow is cawing anxiously, and a leaf falls from a bush, rippling the still surface of the pool.
‘Can you tell me if this is Theresa?’
She can feel how Zeke is forcing himself to stay in his seat, how he wants to rush out of the house, out into the garden and run away from the summer-still roads of this little villa community.
But he stays seated.
Confronting the present.
All the nameless emotions drift through the room like dark spirits and coalesce into just two words: grief. Pain.
Agneta Eckeved turns her head away; if she doesn’t look at the picture then it doesn’t exist, and everything it represents doesn’t exist either, and Sigvard Eckeved leans forward, sees his daughter, her closed eyes and her pale-yellow skin transparent from the absence of oxygen. She isn’t asleep, he’ll never stroke his daughter on the cheek as she sleeps and quietly whisper I’ll be here when you wake up, I’ll be here for you no matter what, no matter what pain this world throws at me, I’ll be here for you.
Instead just this photograph on the table.
Death.
The end.
‘It’s Theresa,’ he says and Agneta Eckeved turns her head even further away from the photograph and Malin can just see tears trickling down her cheeks, large, clear, justified tears.
‘It’s her,’ Sigvard Eckeved says.
Malin nods.