‘As if the killer wanted to purify them.’
‘Is Josefin Davidsson still in hospital?’
‘We’ll have to check. Otherwise she’s probably at home.’
Zeke waits by Malin’s desk as she rings.
Waits until she hangs up and says: ‘She’s at home.’
‘Do you think she’ll be able to remember anything now?’
‘No,’ Malin says. ‘But we’ll give it a try.’
Malin thinks of Maria Murvall, who must be able to remember being attacked in the forest, but who has squeezed her whole being into a corner, letting her consciousness act as the basis for a life that’s been stripped down, a life that’s really no better than most animals’.
Is that what evil can do to a person?
Apparently.
Then Malin’s phone rings.
Ebba in reception.
‘There’s someone who wants to talk to you, Malin. Says he wants to be anonymous, he’s got a very strong accent. Says it’s about the girls.’
‘Put him through.’
The voice, the accent, the prejudices that arise at once. He sounds, even though Malin doesn’t want to think it, stupid, speaking in scarcely intelligible Swedish: ‘You know that fucker Behzad Karami, he hasn’t got a fucking alibi, his family are just lying, he was somewhere that night, and last night too, I know. You have to check him again, they’re lying to you. He often does strange things at night, he just disappears.’
How can you know that? Malin thinks, and says: ‘What’s your name?’
No number on the display, the man, or rather the youth, is probably ringing from a public phone.
‘I don’t have a name.’
‘Hang on . . .’
Click.
Malin turns towards Zeke. A questioning look in his eyes.
‘Behzad Karami just reappeared in the case. We should check him out again.’
‘OK, but where do we start? With Behzad Karami, Slavenca Visnic or Josefin Davidsson?’
Malin throws up her hands.
‘Which one do you think would have air conditioning at home?’
‘Let’s start with Josefin,’ Zeke replies. ‘Besides, Visnic is proving rather difficult to get hold of, to put it mildly.’
35
‘Doesn’t Karim live out this way?’ Zeke asks, wiping the little beads of sweat from his upper lip. They look like tiny, burned blisters.
‘Yes, they’ve got a villa here somewhere,’ Malin replies, thinking that Josefin Davidsson was incredibly lucky to get away with her life.
They park by the school. Josefin Davidsson lives with her parents in one of the terraced houses in Lambohov.
The red-painted wooden houses are small, unassuming family dreams, clinging together in rows, with neatly tended front gardens and hedges that have grown tall over the years since the houses were built.
‘I think Karim’s son goes to school there,’ Malin says as they walk slowly towards the houses. They stop outside number twelve, go into the little garden and ring the bell, but hear nothing from inside. So Malin takes hold of the ring hanging from the mouth of the gilded lion adorning the green front door instead, and just as she knocks the door opens and Josefin peeps out through the gap.
‘Hello. Oh, it’s you. What do you want?’
‘We’d like to ask you some questions,’ Malin says. ‘We want to see what you remember. Or if you can remember anything else?’
‘Come in.’
Josefin opens the door.
She’s wearing a loose, pale-pink dress that hangs limply about her body, her hair wet after what Malin assumes must have been a shower. The bandages on her arms and legs are dry and clean.
She walks into the house ahead of them, leading them past a kitchen with white cupboards and on into a living room where two burgundy-coloured Chesterfield sofas sit facing one another. Outside there’s a patio with a hammock and plastic garden furniture. The room is hot and smells faintly of smoke and sweat and freshly made caramel.
Malin and Zeke sit down beside each other and Josefin settles down opposite them. You look older here at home, Malin thinks, as if the ornate furniture and cheap Wilton rugs are stealing life from you.
‘I can’t remember anything,’ Josefin says. ‘And, really, why would I want to?’
She knits her hands in her lap, they go white and she turns away to look at the garden.
‘Are your mum and dad out?’ Malin asks.
‘They’re at work.’
She looks back at them.
‘They could be here, get compassionate leave if you’d rather not be alone.’
‘Then they’d get less money. And they’d probably rather work.’
‘You don’t mind being left on your own?’
‘No, I don’t remember anything, so what would I be afraid of? That it could happen again? That’s not very likely.’
The person who hurt you, Malin thinks. I’m afraid of them, and so should you be. You should be afraid, but you’re sensible, what good would being afraid do? The chance of the perpetrator coming after you is small, and if he or she wanted you dead, then you wouldn’t be here.
‘Why did you go to the cinema on your own?’ Malin asks. ‘People usually go with a friend, don’t they?’
‘I like going on my own. Talking just spoils the experience of the film.’
‘OK. Try to remember. What did you do that evening, what happened? Try to get an image, a word, a smell, anything at all, in your head. Please, just try.’
Malin tries to sound as persuasive as she can, but there’s an undertone: Remembering is possible. And it would help us.
And Josefin shuts her eyes, concentrating, but soon opens them again and looks at Malin and Zeke with a sigh.
‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘What about your dreams?’ Malin asks. ‘Anything from them?’
‘I never remember my dreams,’ Josefin replies.
On the way out Malin stops in the hall, looking at her face in the mirror. Through the door on her left she sees Josefin put a saucepan of water on an old Cylinda stove.
Without knowing why, Malin goes into the kitchen and puts her hand on Josefin’s shoulder.
‘How are you going to spend the summer?’ she asks, and Josefin starts and turns around.
‘I’m going to take it easy. I was supposed to be working in the kiosk at the pool in Glyttinge, but I resigned after just three days. I’d rather have the time off instead.’
Malin stiffens.
‘So you know Slavenca Visnic?’
Josefin laughs.
‘I don’t think anyone knows that woman.’
‘She was supposed to be working for Slavenca Visnic, but resigned after just three days.’
Malin is trying not to sound too excited about the connection.
‘Bloody hell,’ Zeke says. ‘Bloody hell!’
‘And she had an idea about where Slavenca might be, didn’t think she’d gone abroad.’
‘Where, then?’
‘She might be up in the forest, at the fire. As a volunteer. Apparently she spoke of nothing but the forest fires when they started working together, said they probably needed help.’
‘I read in the Correspondent that there are about a hundred people helping out at the edge of the fires. With blankets and so on.’
‘That would make sense. Her family died in a fire in Sarajevo. A grenade attack on the building they lived in.’
Janne.
He worked for the Swedish Rescue Services Agency in Bosnia. She knows he saw all manner of horrors down there, but he’s never really talked about it.
Silence.
Memory loss.
They’re more than just cousins.
Siblings, maybe.
The road leads into the smoke.
There are cars lined up along the edge of the forest road leading into the inferno, into the fire. The edge of the fire is just north of Lake Hultsjön, so they drive through Ljungsbro and take the Tjällmo road up through the densely grown forest, the same road they drove back on during the winter they were working on the Bengt Andersson case.