The same thing for you, Malin, with your dad, yet not quite. You blame your mum, thinking that she was in the way, muddying and diminishing his concern for you.
Maybe.
But it could be something else. Couldn’t it?
You’re far below me, Malin.
But still near.
But you’re a long way from one thing, Malin: certainty.
So don’t give up.
Because even if I know what happened, only you can convey the story to Mum and Dad, and show them the truth.
Maybe the truth could help them?
It doesn’t really make much difference to me any more.
Maybe I am the truth now. The only pure, clear truth that a person needs.
The wind is blowing through the leaves of the oak, rustling them. It’s a warm wind. But where are the connections, the threads twining together that can lead me, us, in the right direction?
The water of the lake almost seems to bubble in the heat. Boiling and stagnant, deadly poisonous yet still endlessly tempting: Jump in, and I’ll drag you down to the bottom of the lake.
What were you doing out here?
Not an intrinsically evil place, not really.
Malin sinks to her knees beside the hole, the former grave.
She touches the ground with her hand.
It turns her fingers brown. And the sun reflects off the water of the lake, which looks unnaturally clean in the cutting heat. The reflections are like lightning in her eyes, like sharpened knives in her retinas, but she doesn’t want to put on her Ray-Bans, wants to see reality just as it is.
Her blouse is sticking to her back.
‘Hello!’ A man’s voice. ‘You probably shouldn’t be in there.’
The man over on the blanket.
Law-abiding.
But he’s showing you respect, Theresa.
Malin stands up.
Pulls out her wallet from the front pocket of her denim skirt.
Holds up her ID.
‘Malin Fors. Police.’
‘I hope you get the bastard,’ the man says in her direction, his eyes staring somewhere up towards the pale green of the meadow.
31
The kiosk by the beach in Hjulsbro is closed as well. Even though it would surely have been possible to rake in some serious money on a day like this. There must be at least a hundred people lying on the slope down towards the river and the fast-flowing, grey-black water. The noise from the power station further downstream cuts the air, the turbines running on full, sending out a faint metallic smell into the air.
A summer for swimming.
Small children paddling in the enclosed safe area this side of the jetty. Over-confident teenage boys diving far out into the flow and struggling to get back; their gangly, unfinished bodies scare Malin, they reek of potency.
‘That looks good,’ Zeke says, as he crouches at the top of the slope in the shade of a fir tree.
‘I wonder if it really cools you down. It must be thirty degrees in the water.’
‘Yes, and how clean is it?’
‘All this sweating makes you obsessed with cleanliness,’ Malin says, as she rubs a small leaf between her fingers, soft and almost cool on one side, rough and warm on the other.
The kiosk outside the Glyttinge pool turns out to be closed as well. The privately owned pool is a very successful investment during a summer like this one, and behind the fence Malin and Zeke can hear the noise of the bathers, their shouts and yelps, their happy laughter.
Behind them Skäggetorp, and Ryd not far away.
It’s not so strange that the pool is busy. In those areas, where the poor and the immigrants live, people are spending the summer in their flats.
‘We’ll try Slavenca Visnic at home. Maybe she isn’t well?’
‘It’s still odd,’ Malin says. ‘All three kiosks are closed. This is the time of year when they make their money. And if she isn’t going to be there herself, she ought to have employees, don’t you think?’
‘The same thought did occur to me, Malin.’
‘There’s something weird about it.’
‘What’s weird is this heat, Malin. Shall we take a dip? To clear our heads?’
‘Have you got anything to wear?’
‘Skinny dipping’s good enough.’
‘I can see the headline in the Correspondent: Naked detectives in Glyttinge pool.’
‘Mr Högfeldt would like that,’ Zeke says.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘What do I mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t mean anything, Malin. Relax.’
Slavenca Visnic’s flat on the ground floor of Gamlegården 3B in Skäggetorp is deserted as well.
The smell of the forest fires is very noticeable here, closer to the blaze, and the smoke seems to have filtered between the low, white-brick blocks of flats.
No one answered when they knocked on the door in the stairwell. No sounds from inside the flat, and now they’re standing in the little garden looking through the blinds into a gloomy room where only the furniture stands out: a sofa, a table, a couple of armchairs, and an almost empty bookcase, set out on what looks like oak parquet flooring.
‘Does this woman actually exist?’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Zeke replies.
‘Maybe she’s gone away. Abroad. Or just for the day.’
‘Yes, but now, and with three kiosks?’
‘We’ll have to check her background. The Immigration Agency ought to know something. I’ll get one of the uniforms onto it,’ Malin says.
Then her mobile rings.
Sven Sjöman.
‘A woman who was out running on the jogging track in Ryd yesterday evening has called. Said she felt as if she was being watched, that someone was lying in wait, stalking her. If you’ve got time, go and talk to her.’
‘Sure. We’re done here.’
A name.
An address down on Konsistoriegatan, in the centre of the city.
Linda Karlå offers them chilled apple juice in the kitchen of her tastefully furnished two-room apartment. The flat is in a building dating from the thirties: beige stucco, well-kept, one of the oldest housing cooperatives in the city, with astronomical prices to match.
They sit with their drinks around the kitchen table, and Linda Karlå apologises for taking up their time. Zeke explains that they’re interested in anything that could be connected to the murder and the other attack.
‘I was out running,’ Linda Karlå says. ‘I run a lot. Not all that often in the forest in Ryd, and I don’t know why, but I suddenly got the feeling that someone was watching me, waiting for me deeper in the woods. I didn’t see anyone, but there was someone there. It could have been a man. Or a woman. I know I was being watched, and when I ran there was someone following me. There was a sort of snaking sound, at least that’s what I thought at the time. But I’m fast, so I made it to the car park.’
‘You didn’t see anything?’ Malin asks.
She makes sure that her voice sounds interested.
‘No. But there was someone there. I just thought maybe you’d like to know. Maybe he, whoever did it, lives in Ryd?’
‘Maybe. If it is a he. And if it was him.’
‘Well, it terrified me, anyway.’
‘Best to stay away from the forest in Ryd for a while,’ Zeke says. ‘Go running on open streets until we’ve sorted this out.’
Linda Karlå looks relieved.
Almost surprised that they’re taking her fears seriously.
‘It’s really much nicer to go swimming at this time of year,’ she says. ‘There are so many good pools in the city.’