His soft teenage cheeks move up and down.
‘She was always busy with the dishes. Used to say she wished she’d taken the job in the café at Tinnis instead, where she worked last summer.’
Tinnis.
What wouldn’t I give to go swimming right now?
‘I didn’t really know her. Sure, I thought she was pretty. But like I said, I was on my way to work and just happened to go past on my bike.’
Sofia, Malin thinks.
Just on her way home from work.
Did she just happen to walk past the perpetrator?
‘Do you know where Sofia lived?’
‘In Mjölby. She must have been on her way to catch the train.’
‘Mjölby?’
Malin closes her eyes.
We’re way behind, she thinks.
34
It’s the sort of day when she feels like drinking one, two, three, four beers for lunch, then carrying on drinking all afternoon with the help of a large bottle of tequila. But it never happens, because she never gives in to that sort of impulse. Instead: delayed morning meeting at the station.
An intent Karim Akbar at the head of the table, the whiteboard behind him giving off a dull glow, lit up by the daylight seeping in through the gaps in the lowered, tilted Venetian blinds.
Sven Sjöman is sitting to the left of Karim, bags under his eyes, his bulging stomach tight under a washed-out yellow cotton shirt and Malin knows he’s suffering in the heat, knows it’s much harder for him than other people to get through days like this. She noticed him getting more and more tired during the spring, but didn’t want to ask why, didn’t want to vocalise what was obvious, not wanting to think the thought of what would happen if he went off on sick-leave or if his heart somehow packed up.
Mentor.
You’ve been my mentor, Sven.
His mantra: Listen to the voices of an investigation, Malin. Hear what they’re trying to tell you. Which she has gradually, over the days, weeks, months and years, translated into: See the images, feel the clues, notice the patterns.
Zeke opposite Sven.
Ready to pounce again, his back straight, ready to deal with whatever shit gets thrown at him. Nothing can break me! A hungry look in his eyes, nothing to hide, an unveiled human being.
Their colleagues from Motala and Mjölby are taking part in the group meeting for the first time.
Sundsten. Per.
A younger, child-free version of Johan Jakobsson, slim and sinewy, sitting there with an open face beneath flaxen hair, wearing a crumpled white linen suit. A guileless but watchful look in his eyes, a sharp nose curving slightly towards his thin lips. He looks intelligent, Malin thinks.
Waldemar Ekenberg.
Long and faithful service.
A time-twisted police officer with an infamous weakness for excessive force. Cigarettes have left deep lines in his face and he’s thin, looks older than his fifty years. His hair is a lifeless grey, but the look in his grey-green eyes is still strangely vibrant: We’re going to get this bastard.
Karim begins: ‘Karin Johannison has confirmed that the traces of paint match the other victims. We’ll be getting a more detailed forensic report later today, tomorrow at the latest. So, we’re dealing with the same perpetrator. Or perpetrators.’
‘Well,’ Waldemar Ekenberg says, and his voice is thin and rattling. ‘We can hardly expect to find the perpetrator among her close acquaintances. There don’t seem to be any natural connections between the girls, do there?’
‘Hardly,’ Zeke interjects.
‘I’ve had time to get a good look at the case now,’ Per Sundsten says. ‘It’s like we’re dealing with some sort of shadow. Someone who exists, yet somehow doesn’t.’
Sven nods.
‘What do you think, Malin?’
The expectation that she’s going to say something wise, something that takes them a bit further.
‘There’s a pattern here. I just can’t see it yet. Have Sofia Fredén’s parents been told?’
Theresa Eckeved’s mother sinking to the hall floor, screaming.
Her father, some of his wits still about him, his whole being radiating the realisation: I’m only at the start of this nightmare.
‘Persson and Björk in Mjölby have taken care of that,’ Waldemar Ekenberg says. ‘They’re good, they’ll do it as well as anyone could. It’s an impossible task. And they’ll be questioning Sofia’s parents about her as well. Just the essentials.’
Task.
Malin tastes the word, twists and turns it, the way it creates a professional distance in an attempt to make this most human encounter bearable.
Then a quick overview of the situation from Per Sundsten.
The latest door-to-door inquiries around the villas of Sturefors had turned up nothing, and the convicted sex offenders that he and Ekenberg had had time to check out all had watertight alibis. Ten people on the list, five checked. ‘We’ll carry on with the others today. But I don’t really expect it to give us anything.’
‘We haven’t got hold of the owner of the kiosk yet,’ Malin says. ‘Seems to be away. All three kiosks are shut, in the middle of high season.’
‘The fuss with the football team has died down,’ Karim says. ‘That’s one advantage when things move so fast, no one has time to linger over things that don’t matter. But it was clumsy of me.’
A team-building confession, a bit of rhetoric for the officers on the case. One tiny little mistake, but you’ll forgive me, respect me again. Won’t you?
I respect you, Karim. You’re a better police chief than most.
Sven speaks up.
‘Still nothing from Yahoo! or Facebook. Evidently they’re very restrictive when it comes to giving out information. Yahoo! claim they need an American court order. Facebook haven’t even replied. And Louise Svensson’s computer was completely clean. She could have cleared it out, seeing as she was expecting us to turn up.’
Sven takes a deep breath.
‘We’re still trying to identify possible manufacturers of the dildo, but so far we’ve haven’t got anything definite.’
Then he rubs a hand over his head.
‘How do you suggest we proceed?’
Sven is head of the preliminary investigation, but it feels as if responsibility for the case is fluid, snaking to and fro across the room like hot, hot tar, so hot that no one wants to burn their fingers on it.
The air-conditioning unit groans.
Shudders.
And falls silent.
‘Shit! Just when it had started working at last! Things are going to heat up again,’ Zeke says.
And they all wait for Sven to make a proposal, lead them further, and he starts to speak.
‘Sundsten and Ekenberg. You take the door-to-door around Frimis, and talk to Sofia Fredén’s colleagues at the hotel. Malin and Zeke, get hold of the kiosk owner, and maybe you could check if Josefin Davidsson has remembered anything by now? Just some quick questions? And we’ll have to hope that a witness turns up, someone who saw or heard something, or that they come up with something about Sofia Fredén in Mjölby that can move us on. Otherwise we’ll just have to wait for Forensics to give us something. Well, those are the lines I see ahead of us. Anyone else?’
Silence around the table.
‘Right then,’ Karim says. ‘Let’s get to work.’
‘A shadow.’
Zeke standing beside Malin’s desk. Trying out the word.
‘Something like that,’ Malin says. ‘A shadow of a person. Or a person driven towards utter transparency.’
‘Or a lack of transparency,’ Zeke says.
‘Then there are the different sorts of wounds that were inflicted on the girls,’ Malin says.
‘Seems almost like a sort of curiosity about violence,’ Zeke says.
‘Cleanliness. All that scrubbing.’