Outside the building, on the way back to the car, Zeke asks: ‘So what do you make of that?’
‘Yes, what the hell do I make of that?’ Malin says.
It’s just after two o’clock when they get back to the station. They grabbed lunch out at Ikea in Tornby, the warehouse full of people trying to escape the heat and pick up some summer bargains from the great Ingvar, purveyor of fine design to the masses.
Karim Akbar is standing, looking wretched, in front of the computer at the desk he’s had set up for him in the open-air office, in addition to the large office he has upstairs.
‘What’s up with him?’ Zeke says as he wipes the sweat from his brow and pulls his shirt away from his chest.
‘God knows,’ Malin says. ‘Do you think it’s got a bit cooler in here? They must have got the air conditioning going again.’
‘Perfect,’ Zeke says. ‘Can’t be more than twenty degrees.’
Karim waves them over to him.
Two windows open on the huge computer screen.
Aftonbladet and the Correspondent.
They’ve both put the football angle on their front pages.
Lesbian Killer? is Aftonbladet’s headline, above a picture of the team. The article starts: According to Police Chief Karim Akbar, the investigation is now focused on Linköping’s top-flight women’s football team . . .
The Correspondent: Crime and Prejudice? . . . what has led the police to turn their attention to the team is as yet unclear . . .
Both sites include quotes from Pia Rasmefog.
She’s furious that the team is the focus of this sort of attention without any concrete evidence being presented, that it seems to be because the crime appears to have a lesbian angle, and that one of the most widespread prejudices in society right now is that women’s football teams are always full of lesbian players. Still worse, according to Pia Rasmefog, is the suggestion that lesbian players would be extra violent, which is an insulting but widely held misapprehension.
‘This just shows how rigid the police are in their thinking, on a number of different levels,’ she tells Aftonbladet.
‘Holy shit,’ Zeke mutters. ‘How did you manage that, Karim?’
‘We made one call,’ Malin says. ‘As a result of someone mentioning the team in the course of our inquiries. But we aren’t focusing on them at all. What on earth did you say at the press conference?’
Malin turns towards Karim, expecting him to look embarrassed and angry, ashamed at his obvious mistake, but instead he just looks defiant.
‘I said that the team had cropped up in the investigation.’
‘Why did you say that?’
‘They were pressurising me and I wanted to give them something, and stupidly that was what came out. But on the other hand: maybe something will come of all this fuss.’
Sven Sjöman comes over to them.
He can’t suppress his smile when he sees the screen.
‘We could issue a retraction?’ he says.
‘No damn retractions,’ Karim says. ‘Just let it go.’
Karim’s skill at manipulating the media has always impressed Malin in the past, his ability to find just the right place under the spotlight.
But this . . .
What a ridiculous blunder.
It makes us look like something from the Stone Age.
Like the riot squad hitting gays over the head. I think you’re going to, you think I’m going to, I believe you’re going to do it, you do it, then I do it too . . .
The things we ruin with our words. Prejudices laid bare, confirming and empowering evil.
This heat is making all our brains overheat, Malin thinks as she walks back to her desk. Our brains are boiling so hard that they don’t work any more.
She looks at Karim from a distance.
His trim frame, clad in his linen suit, huddled on his office chair, radiating a new sort of tiredness that she’s never seen before, as if he’s fed up with this whole media game, with the ridiculous little exchanges of information and opinion, as if he’s just longing for clarity, for black and white.
Good luck, Karim, Malin thinks. It’s millions of years since the world was black and white, now it consists of millions of colours, most of them hideous and scary, but many of them heart-breakingly beautiful, reasons to feel gratitude for every new day on the planet.
Then her phone rings.
‘Fors.’
‘This is Viktoria Solhage. I’ve just seen on the internet. You can imagine how disappointed I am. Can’t you?’
‘Viktoria. I . . .’
‘There’s already more than enough prejudice, Malin Fors. I trusted you.’
‘Viktoria . . .’
Click.
Silence. Nothing more.
Just the thought that everything was going to hell.
32
The air conditioning doesn’t reach all the way down here, not even the ventilation seems to be working and the small windows out onto the yard may be open but the air they’re letting in is so hot that it doesn’t seem to contain any oxygen.
The gym in the basement of the police station.
One of Malin’s favourite places in the world.
Has to come down in spite of the heat.
Has to come down, even on a day like today when the gym is reminiscent of one of the outer circles of hell, and the freshly painted yellow walls are turning fiery orange because the salt of her sweat is clouding her sight.
Ten minutes on the treadmill just now.
Her white vest soaked through.
She thought she was going to faint.
Thinks about Nathalie Falck. Wants to talk to her again, but what could she say that wasn’t said last time? Time must be allowed to do its work. Time they don’t have.
One dumbbell in each hand, fifteen kilos, up and down, up and down, fifteen reps, then rest.
The muscles in her upper arms are long and sinuous and stronger than they look.
I’m so exhausted in this heat that I feel like throwing up, almost. She’s done it before, thrown up in the vomit-green bin by the door of the gym.
Usually alone down here.
Most of the others use gyms down in the city.
But Malin likes the sense of being underground. Sometimes Johan Jakobsson keeps her company when he has time between school-runs and feeling guilty about anything and everything. She can see how family life is draining him, how he’s starting to get wrinkles in his once so boyishly smooth forehead.
Tove.
I’m thirty-four.
I wouldn’t mind, I ought to have more wrinkles in my forehead. Even if I don’t like the ones I’ve got.
Shit.
I’m going to exercise away all the crap that this summer has brought with it.
Tove.
Home soon.
Janne. How can I miss you so, when it’s more than ten years since we last lived together?
I see you from a distance.
Your shortcomings pale, have paled over the years, haven’t they? Away from each other, we’ve grown together. Can love work like that?
Her lie about not being able to drive them to the airport. Skavsta, Ryanair to London, then a direct flight to Bali with some British charter airline.
Their farewell in the hall back home in the flat twelve days ago is like a scene in a film now, soundless, scentless. She and Janne reserved towards each other, all three of them oddly quiet, as if years of longing and loss suddenly became apparent there in the hall and the looming distance between them.
What could have been.
She hugged and kissed Tove, Janne, then the usual farewell phrases, the feeling that new ones were called for, a sort that people had never said before.