Zeke at his desk a few metres away, by the window looking out onto the car park. Cars shining in the light.
‘I don’t think it is, Malin. Because even if Lollo Svensson only mentioned them in passing when we searched her house, we still have to check it out, just to make sure. And Viktoria Solhage used to play football, so the team has cropped up more than once in this investigation.’
‘Sure, but it was still just something Lollo Svensson said in passing.’
‘Everybody knows that dykes play football.’
‘Can you hear what you sound like, Zeke? You sound completely bloody mad.’
‘But am I wrong?’
‘You call, Zeke. The number’s 140160.’
The phone rings three, four times before someone answers Zeke’s call.
His face is tense, and Malin is curious to hear how he’s going to approach Pia Rasmefog with his questions. She’s read interviews with the Dane in the Correspondent, and from what she’s read, she’s a tough nut who doesn’t let anyone get the better of her.
‘Yes, hello,’ Zeke says, and Malin can hear that his voice is hoarser than usual, the tone is higher and he’s nervous, unsure of how to approach Rasmefog.
‘This is Detective Inspector Zacharias Martinsson from the Linköping Police. I’d like to ask you a few questions, is now a good time?’
His choice of words milder than usual.
‘Great. Well, you see, the women’s football team has cropped up in the investigation into the murder of Theresa Eckeved . . . How it’s cropped up? . . . Well, I’m afraid I can’t reveal . . . no, no particular player, just in general . . . yes, perhaps . . . but . . . yes, of course, it might seem prejudiced, but please, calm down . . . this is actually a very serious crime that we’re investigating,’ and then, suddenly, Zeke takes charge of the conversation, and Pia Rasmefog appears to understand that they have to ask, seeing as ‘the women’s football team’ has cropped up in the investigation, albeit only on the periphery.
‘Is there any player that you believe could have a tendency towards violence? More than anyone else. No? Anyone who’s been behaving differently over the last few days? Not that either? Nothing that you think could be of interest to us?’
Zeke takes the phone from his ear, the conversation is evidently over.
‘Fucking furious. She didn’t even answer the last question.’
Karim Akbar absorbs the light from the photographers’ flashes, as the cameras’ clicking lenses call out: ‘You exist! You’re special!’
Sullen and angry journalists in rows in front of him, dressed lightly in the summer heat, yet still in that typical, scruffy, bohemian journalist style that Karim hates.
He hasn’t given them much, and Daniel Högfeldt and that hot-tempered woman from Aftonbladet in particular are critical of the silence.
‘So you can’t answer that question?’ Daniel Högfeldt almost shouted. ‘Because you don’t want to jeopardise the investigation? Don’t you think the general public in this city has a right to know as much as possible seeing as there’s a murderer on the loose? People are frightened, that much is obvious, so what right do you have to withhold information?’
‘There’s no suggestion that we’re withholding information.’
‘Are the cases connected?’
The woman from Aftonbladet.
‘I can’t answer that.’
‘But is that one of your theories?’
‘It’s one of a number of possibilities.’
‘So what’s your theory?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t answer that.’
‘Is Louise Svensson a suspect in either case?’
‘No, not at the moment.’
‘So the search warrant wasn’t called for?’
Karim closes his eyes. Waits a couple of seconds, then hears a new voice: ‘But you must have something to go on?’
He opens his eyes just as one of the journalists says: ‘According to our information, she’s a lesbian. Do you suspect a sexual connection of that kind?’
‘No comment.’
Worse than usual today, more excitable than ever before. Suddenly he wants to get away from the podium, back to the jetty of the house in Västervik. He has to give them something just to get them to shut up.
So he says the words, and the moment they leave his mouth he knows it was a mistake.
‘Our investigation has led us to look into the LFC women’s football team.’
‘Why?’
‘Do you suspect a lesbian connection?’
‘I can’t . . .’
‘Is it just prejudice within the police force that has led you to turn your attention to the women’s team?’
‘Any particular player?’
‘How do you think this will affect the general attitude towards women’s football?’
Questions flying at him like bullets, like jagged shrapnel from something exploding.
Shit, Karim thinks. Then he shuts his eyes for a moment again, thinking about his family, his eight-year-old son, who learned to swim just last week.
The kiosk at the beach outside Sturefors is closed.
The tape of the cordon around the oak where they dug up Theresa Eckeved’s body as recently as yesterday is still taut, and there are very few bathers; one family with two small children. They’re sitting on a blanket down by the water, apparently unaffected by what has happened, by what to Malin seems to control and own this entire place, its air, its sounds.
Slavenca Visnic.
The owner of this kiosk, another one at the beach in Hjulsbro, and one outside the pool at Glyttinge: the county council provided them with that information. She runs all three as a trading company. But today the kiosk is closed, and Malin can understand why.
‘I wouldn’t have opened up either,’ she says to Zeke as they pace uneasily up and down in the morning heat in front of the kiosk, taking care to stay in the shade of the trees, sweaty enough already. Zeke’s white shirt is stuck to his body, and her beige blouse is faring no better.
‘No, people are staying away.’
‘Let’s go to Hjulsbro. She might be there.’
There was a mobile number on the licence documents. But no answer when they rang.
‘You go back to the car,’ Malin says, and Zeke looks at her, nods, then heads up the slope towards the meadow, where the heat seems to be creating a new sort of stillness, natural yet somehow frightening, as if the heat were making every living creature go into hibernation.
Malin goes down to the tree, bends over and steps under the tape of the cordon.
The hole in the ground.
No glowing worms, but still a feeling that the ground could open up at any moment, spewing out destructive masses of livid, liquid fire.
Theresa.
She isn’t here, but Malin can still see her face.
One eye open, the other closed. The strangulation marks around her neck. Her cleanly scrubbed white body and the dark wounds like lost planets in a shimmering, irregular cosmos.
And Malin wonders: How did you get here? Who would want to do this to you? Don’t be scared. I never, ever give up.
Promise me that, Malin Fors, promise that you’ll never give up trying to find the person who committed this ultimate act of abuse.
I’m trying to touch your warm, blonde hair, but my fingers, my hands don’t exist where you are, even if I can see you quite clearly from where I’m drifting in the sky just above you.
The girls.
Me. Nathalie.
Peter. You know so well what we had together. But you don’t realise what it means, not yet. Dad never understood, didn’t want to see, perhaps, what I was, am.