‘You know,’ Slavenca Visnic said, ‘it’s like the fire comes from under the ground, like the flames and embers are bubbling up from the centre of the earth.’
Malin noted that she spoke almost without any trace of an accent, thinking: You must have fought really hard for that.
Slavenca Visnic took a drink of water from the tap of her water tank.
‘Thirsty?’
‘No,’ Zeke said, before going on: ‘You know why we’re here?’
‘I see the papers and the internet, I listen to the news. I’m not stupid.’
‘Theresa Eckeved was found buried at the beach where you’ve got one of your kiosks. Josefin Davidsson, who was found raped in the Horticultural Society Park, worked for you at the start of July.’
‘I can understand why the connection would interest you,’ Slavenca Visnic said, wiping some beads of sweat from her forehead. ‘But there’s nothing behind the connection. Nothing at all.’
‘Have you got alibis for the night between Thursday and Friday last week, and the night between Saturday and Sunday?’
Malin wanted to see if a direct question would rouse any reaction.
Slavenca Visnic laughed.
‘No, I’m always alone in the evenings, but I got home late from the fires, so someone can prove where I was then, but not during the night. You can’t think I had anything to do with this?’
Fresh laughter.
Almost mocking, as if Zeke and Malin knew pathetically little of the evil that Slavenca Visnic had encountered in excess.
‘What about last night?’
‘I was at home, sleeping. I’ve shut the kiosks for the time being. I want to help fight the fires. And it’s impossible to get staff. No teenager wants to spend the summer standing in a kiosk selling ice cream. They’re spoiled, the whole lot of them. Just look at Josefin Davidsson, she gave up after just three days, and that left me without anyone for Glyttinge.’
‘Did it annoy you when she gave up?’
Zeke’s voice practically neutral.
‘Stupid question. Everyone can do as they like. Can’t they?’
‘Within the bounds of the law,’ Zeke replied.
‘I heard about the latest murder on the radio,’ Slavenca Visnic said. ‘And I can tell you straight that you won’t find any connection with that girl.’
‘You like fire? Is that why you want to help out here?’
Malin’s turn to be provocative.
‘I hate fire. I want to eradicate it.’
Flattery, Malin. That makes them talk.
Another of Sven’s mantras.
‘I know what you’ve been through,’ Malin said. ‘And I admire the fact that you’re standing here now. That you’ve built up your own business.’
‘I didn’t have a choice.’
‘You didn’t notice anything suspicious out at Stavsätter? Anything at all?’
‘Nothing. Until that dog started digging her up.’
‘You were there then,’ Zeke said. ‘Then you vanished. Where did you go? Most people would have stayed.’
‘I couldn’t bear all those upset people. And I’ve seen dead bodies before. It was better to open up in Hjulsbro instead. The girl in the ground didn’t exactly make people want to buy anything.’
Slavenca Visnic more friendly now. ‘As I’m sure you can understand. When I work, I just want to sell as many ice creams as I can.’
‘You didn’t see anyone behaving suspiciously on the beach at Stavsätter?’
Slavenca Visnic thought about it.
‘No.’
‘And you can’t tell us anything about Josefin Davidsson? Did you have an argument? That was what she implied.’
‘She probably thought I argued with her. I’m sure she was taking ice cream and sweets, maybe she was giving them away to her friends. I lost a lot of stock on the days that she worked, even though there weren’t many people about then. If you remember, they had a problem with bacteria in the pool? The Correspondent made a big deal of it. They had to shut the pool for a few days.’
Malin tried to remember the article, but it must have passed her by.
‘So she got the sack?’
‘Let’s put it this way: I was pleased she resigned, even though she was the only person I had for the Glyttinge pool.’
‘Did the fact that she was stealing make you angry?’
‘No, not at all. That sort of thing just happens.’
‘And there’s no one who can give you an alibi?’
Malin asked again, she knew where she wanted to go with the question, and Slavenca Visnic gave her a long, weary look, as if to show that she knew what game they were playing.
‘I have no husband. No children. I lost my family a long time ago. Since then I’ve made up my mind to look after myself. Other people just mean a whole lot of disappointment, Detective Inspector.’
Slavenca Visnic closed the back doors of the Fiat.
Turned to face them.
‘If you haven’t got any more questions, I think I’ll head off now. Make the most of the busiest time of day at the Glyttinge pool.’
‘Blue,’ Malin says. ‘Does the colour blue mean anything particular to you?’
‘I like white,’ Slavenca Visnic replied. ‘The purest colour.’
Slavenca Visnic is standing by the hotdog kiosk in Ljungsbro, eating a 150g cheeseburger. She realised how hungry she was as she was driving away from the forest, past Vreta Kloster golf club.
The hot food and hot air are making her sweat, but she doesn’t mind the heat; anyone who lived through the wartime winters in Sarajevo knows what real cold is, and would never complain about a bit of heat.
The town is quiet around her. Everyone’s probably gone to the beach.
The cops could think what they liked about her. They think they can put everything right, the woman, Malin Fors, in particular gave that impression: that she wants to put everything right.
And then I show up in their investigation.
Connections.
The lifeline of their work.
It had to happen sooner or later, Slavenca Visnic thinks, feeling the melted cheese sticking to her teeth as her stomach fills with food: the ridiculous privilege of being able to eat your fill when you’re hungry, a privilege that few people in this country could ever understand or appreciate.
The girls.
Things like that happen. Spoiled little girls can get their fingers burned. Who knows why anyone does what they do?
War, it’s everywhere, and it never ends.
All you can do as a human being is to try to create a reality for yourself that you can live with.
Slavenca Visnic throws the last of the burger in the bin by the kiosk counter. Gets in her car and drives away. Outside the big supermarket the newspaper headlines are all talking about the same thing.
Summertime death strikes again!
That’s what the Correspondent’s headline says about the fate that got me.
Our summer angels, that’s what the radio presenter with the warm voice calls me, us.
I didn’t want to believe it at first.
But then you came, Sofia, gliding towards me, around me, in a thousand different ways at once, and you told me that you doubted it at first, that fear and other feelings, many of them nameless, meant that you refused to accept your situation at first, that you wanted to scream: not me, I’m too young, I haven’t had a chance to live, and now I want to scream it too, now as we drift here together above the burning forest.
The smoke and fires.
The burning treetops are a volcano.
The machines and people and animals are like little pinpricks of despair down there, fragments of life trying to stop the flames taking over, trying to force the destructive power back into the meandering badgers’ tunnels under the ground.