‘OK, now we know for sure,’ Zeke says.
Malin takes the picture from the table, holding it in her hand, somehow it doesn’t feel right to put it back in her pocket, just like that. Just putting away the picture of the dead girl, out of sight of her parents.
Then Agneta Eckeved says: ‘Put it away, the picture, will you? Just do it.’
Malin puts the picture away.
Sigvard Eckeved stands up.
Says: ‘I’ll see if the coffee’s ready.’
Then he stops and his body starts to shake.
The childhood home.
The white bricks.
The sound of cars.
‘What happens now?’
Sigvard Eckeved’s question, once he’s composed himself.
Malin knew what he meant, but chose instead to tell them about the formalities, that the coroner would have to examine the body before they could release it for burial, that they could see her if they wanted to, but that it wasn’t essential for them to go through any further formal identification.
Sigvard Eckeved listened to her until she had finished.
‘You misunderstood me,’ he said then. ‘I mean with us, what’s going to happen to us now?’
24
Mum, Dad.
I can see you in the house and you’re sad. But I can’t hear what you’re saying, why are you so sad? What’s happened? If you’re worried about me, don’t be, in a way it’s like I’ve just popped out for a bit.
But I think I might be ill.
That I’m asleep.
That I’ll come home when I wake up.
Mum’s lying on the bed, and you, Dad, you’re walking up and down in the conservatory, it must be hot in the sun.
You had a visit just now, I saw the woman, she was here with me a little while ago, looking at me so strangely, why? She put a photograph on the table at home, but I didn’t want to look at it.
Someone took a picture of me. I heard the sound of the camera.
I’m in an ambulance.
Am I ill?
I’m in a plastic bag, but it doesn’t feel as claustrophobic as before. I’m in the back, the bit where they put people who aren’t well. I can see myself lying there, how is that possible? I’m drifting, Mum, Dad, I can be in several places at once in this dream.
I’m alone, and I must be very ill, because how else could I be having this sort of dream?
Mum, Dad.
I’m alone and scared.
You, or someone else, must come and help me.
But don’t be sad.
I miss you so much, and that longing will never end, wherever you or I end up.
‘That was that.’
Zeke doesn’t look up from Brokindsleden, and she knows him, knows he wants to do something now, something active, wants to get on with something concrete so that he doesn’t go ‘crazy as a mad dog’, as he usually puts it.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Malin asks.
‘Let’s go and see Louise Svensson. Where does she live? You had it on a note.’
From the front pocket of her jeans Malin pulls out the piece of paper Viktoria Solhage gave her.
‘Viktoria Solhage said she liked to play rough.’
‘Let’s go. Where does she live?’
‘I think the address is some farm outside Rimforsa.’
‘Good, we’ll head out there now, before Sjöman has time to call a first meeting about the case.’
She wants to say: ‘But Zeke, is this right, we’ve got nothing on her, wouldn’t it be better to leave her in peace?’
But she doesn’t say those words.
‘Let’s get to grips with this bull-dyke,’ Zeke says.
His shaved head beside her, hard, impenetrable, like the look in his grey-green eyes when someone’s upset him.
‘What about Peter Sköld and Nathalie Falck? Do you think they’ll be upset when they hear what’s happened?’
‘I’m sure they will be,’ Malin says. ‘Maybe now Nathalie Falck will tell us what I think she knows.’
‘What do you think she knows?’
‘Something.’
‘It’s not easy to know what,’ Zeke says, and Malin thinks of Peter Sköld, his father, and what seemed to be a shared silence between them.
Zeke has turned up the volume of the choral music.
The forest, pines and firs embracing them, the road a path through darkness, only opening up after several kilometres, when they emerge into a clearing that contains an empty, scorched yellow meadow where the grass has grown tall before withering in the heat and collapsing back onto the soil. Beyond the meadow the road disappears into the forest again, then opens out once more onto a rough, unploughed field. Beyond the field is a red-painted, two-storey farmhouse flanked by two barns whose wooden façades are worn and dusty and should have been painted years ago.
The whole of the world’s longing for rain seems to be concentrated on this place.
They park on the gravel in front of the farmhouse.
Three Alsatians rush up to the car, their barks loud when the music shuts off abruptly, the dogs jumping up at the windows, baring their teeth, and Malin can see the saliva running as they protect their territory.
Then a voice, a gruff woman’s voice through the noise of the dogs.
‘Easy now, easy.’
And the dogs obey the command in the voice, backing away and Malin sees the woman, maybe one metre eighty tall, dressed in dirty green overalls and a little cap from the farmers’ union that hardly covers her cropped hair.
Her eyes are black.
Angry.
How old is she? Forty-five? Fifty?
As Malin opens the car door she thinks, life has really fucked with you, hasn’t it? And now you’re getting your own back.
The woman in front of them in the farmyard seems to grow in the harsh light.
Louise ‘Lollo’ Svensson, farmer, living alone out in the middle of the Rimforsa forests at Skogalund Farm, with just her dogs, a few pigs and some caged rabbits in one of the outhouses for company.
Malin and Zeke show their ID. The dogs growl over by the porch steps, ready to attack at any moment.
‘And what do you want?’
‘Your name,’ Malin says, ‘has cropped up in an investigation and we’d like to ask you some questions.’
Lollo Svensson steps closer to them.
The dogs show their teeth.
‘What fucking investigation?’
‘The one concerning the girl who was found raped in the Horticultural Society Park. And this morning a girl was found murdered at the beach at Stavsätter.’
‘So one of my sisters has been talking, then? Talking crap about me? Doesn’t surprise me. Most cunts are no better than your average fucking dick.’
‘I’m not at liberty to say . . .’
‘I get that, dear lady constable. So what do you want to ask?’
‘What were you doing on the night between last Thursday and Friday?’
‘I was here at home.’
‘On your own?’
‘No, I had them with me.’
Lollo Svensson gestures towards the Alsatians. ‘But they can’t tell you what we were doing, can they?’
‘There’s no one else who can confirm that you were at home?’
Lollo grins at them.
‘Do you know Theresa Eckeved?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know a Nathalie Falck?’
‘Not her either. Never heard the name before.’
‘Lovelygirl? Does the name Lovelygirl mean anything to you?’
No noticeable reaction.
‘Lovelygirl? I don’t know any Lovelygirl.’