‘So you like to play rough,’ Zeke says. ‘What does that mean? Playing rough with young girls? Is that it?’
For God’s sake, Zeke, Malin thinks, but she knows what he’s doing, lets him get on with it.
But Lollo Svensson doesn’t let herself be provoked.
‘I haven’t got anything to do with any of that.’
‘Do you like tying people up, maybe cut them a bit, whip them? Is that the sort of thing you like, Louise?’
‘You should probably leave now if you haven’t got any more questions.’
‘And you brought a young girl back here and things went a bit wrong with the dildo, was that it? Or else she ran off when you were done, is that what happened?’
‘You should probably . . .’
Lollo Svensson takes three steps back, as if to mark her withdrawal, as if to say: ‘I’ve said what I’ve got to say, now you’re on your own.’
‘I’ve got to see to the pigs,’ she says. ‘The pigs can’t look after themselves, they’re weak, really weak, really pathetic, actually.’
‘Can we take a look around the barns? Inside the house?’
Malin waits for an answer.
‘You’re crazy, Inspector Fors. Like I’d let you in without a warrant? What a fucking joke.’
‘Do you know a girl called Josefin Davidsson? Or a Theresa Eckeved?’
Malin’s voice dry and sharp. Her blouse is sticking to her body, and God knows how hot Lollo Svensson must be in those overalls, and suddenly her large, solid frame slumps before their eyes.
‘I . . .’
‘So you had a bit of rough sex with them out here,’ Zeke says. ‘After you’d brought them out here, lured them out here. What with? Drink? The dogs? Horse riding? Have you got horses?’
No answer.
‘Do you normally use dildos on your girls?’
And when Malin hears Zeke say the word dildo she is filled with a sense that they are missing something obvious in the way they’ve been thinking about the dildo.
But what?
Lollo Svensson turns around and takes the dogs with her into the farmhouse, and Malin and Zeke are left standing beside the Volvo in the farmyard, inhaling the smell of summer forest and silence, of a loneliness so obvious that it makes the summer seem cool.
25
The car bumps unhappily along the gravel road.
‘What do you think?’
Zeke’s voice calmer now, not theatrically agitated or provocative any more.
The forest is closing in on the car, hundreds of pained shades of yellowish green, begging for rain.
‘I don’t know,’ Malin says. ‘I never cease to be amazed at what the forests around this city contain.’
She recalls last winter’s excursions, in connection with the case of Bengt Andersson and the Murvall brothers, and she can still feel the debilitating cold, how it sucked the air from her lungs as she forced her way through the trees towards the sound of death and evil deep within the forests around Hultsjön.
‘No, they’re full of surprises.’
‘Have we got enough for a search warrant?’
‘Probably; we won’t need much considering what’s happened. It might even be enough that she refused to let us in.’
‘I’m curious to see what’s inside that house,’ Malin says.
Young girls.
Their bodies, dead and alive, floating like unfettered manatees in endlessly bubbling water.
Get us up, help us, move us on.
Tove far away on the other side of the world, in paradise, but one with a snake – the Islamic extremists and their violence.
Away with the image, don’t think about her now.
Janne.
Running along a beach with his heart thumping in his body. Always leaving.
‘I want to know what’s hidden inside that house,’ Malin says.
‘Me too,’ Zeke says. At that moment Malin’s mobile rings.
Karin Johannison’s name on the display.
On the floor of Karin Johannison’s room a humidifier is fighting for decibel supremacy against a portable air-conditioning unit. The humidity is fighting an uneven battle against the cold, but together the two machines make Karin’s room the most bearable that Malin has been in for ages, even though there are no windows, and in spite of the mess of books and reports and files and journals all over the desk, the shelves and the floor.
Malin and Zeke are sitting on the two ladder-backed chairs Karin has for visitors, while she leans back in a futuristic black designer office chair, which she almost certainly bought herself with her own money, just like the humidifier and the air conditioner.
‘Nice chair,’ Malin says.
‘Thanks,’ Karin says. ‘It’s an Oscar Niemeyer, I got it off the internet from South America, some site in Brazil.’
‘Did you buy those contraptions there as well?’ Zeke asks. ‘They sound like they come from the Third World.’
Karin ignores Zeke’s insult and moves on to what they’ve come for, switching to her professional persona: ‘Theresa Eckeved had been penetrated, subjected to sexual violence. I couldn’t find any sperm, just traces of the same paint that was found inside Josefin Davidsson. In all likelihood, we’re talking about the same perpetrator.’
‘But it’s good to support the poor, isn’t it?’
Zeke couldn’t stop the words once they were on their way out of his mouth, and Malin can see in his eyes that he regrets them and is feeling foolish, and Karin continues to ignore Zeke, pretending that he hasn’t spoken.
She goes on: ‘She’s been carefully washed, and if she was scrubbed clean it was done thoroughly. I’ve found traces of bleach on her skin. Just like Josefin Davidsson.
‘The wounds have been cleaned, maybe with surgical spirit, maybe bleach, and the perpetrator has tidied up the edges with an extremely sharp implement, possibly a scalpel, but it’s impossible to say for sure.’
‘Like Josefin Davidsson’s wounds?’ Zeke asked.
What had been used, Malin wondered. A rough knife? A large spike? Or something brutal, like an animal’s tooth? If not these, then what?
‘Those were just cleaned,’ Karin says. ‘These have been trimmed at the edges.’
‘Trimmed?’
‘Yes, trimmed. The wound to her head wasn’t fatal. Nor any of the wounds to her body. She was strangled. The soil under her fingernails was identical with the soil on the beach, which suggests that she was murdered there.’
‘So she wasn’t moved there?’
‘Probably not.’
‘So she could have gone there with the perpetrator?’
‘What do I know, Malin?’
‘Her mum mentioned that she used to cycle up there sometimes,’ Zeke says. ‘Maybe Theresa was just taking an evening swim?’
‘How long was she in the ground?’ Malin asks.
‘A week, I’d say. Maybe a few days more. It’s impossible to say for certain.’
What were you doing out there? Malin thinks. It must have been late, and you were alone.
Evil is on the loose.
God help us.
God help all the girls who are still in Linköping this summer.
‘Do you know where the traces of paint came from?’
Zeke clear and focused now, his antipathy towards Karin set aside, stashed away somewhere inside himself.
‘No idea, but it’s the same object, no doubt about that. But I haven’t been able to identify the source of the paint. It’s not one of the more common ones used in Sweden. But you’re chasing the same perpetrator, you can be sure of that.’
‘Forensics have started looking at different makes of dildo.’
‘Good,’ Karin says. ‘There are any number of them. As far as I’m aware.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No traces of sperm, no hair, no skin, no strands of fabric, nothing, nothing, nothing,’ Karin says, unable to hide her dissatisfaction and annoyance that she can’t give them anything more, anything concrete to go on, anything to latch onto in their hunt for whatever is on the move out in the city.