Is their struggle succeeding?
Malin in the Volvo heading along the road down there on the surface, down towards Ljungsbro, out onto the withered plain where soon all the plants will have shrivelled into soft fossils of what could once have been verdant life.
You seem to trust her, Theresa.
If you trust her, then so do I.
You said it had got easier for you now, now that there are two of us. But for me everything is still so hard, even if I seem to have been less distraught about my state than you.
We drift side by side, wingless, but it still seems to fit, somehow, this idea of us being summer angels. Unquiet angels, not your standard bookmark angels, but girls who somehow want to get back what was taken away from them.
We’re clean now, aren’t we?
I like words. The way they’re mine now. And I like drifting in a world that can be free of memories for as long as I like, as long as I manage to keep my thoughts away from those hands, those white hands as they squeezed my neck, and the scrubbing that I could still somehow feel, and the smell of bleach, the fear I had time to feel before everything disappeared, only to reappear again, albeit in a far more unfathomable way.
I want to remember who I was, who I could have become.
Older.
I am.
But never will be.
‘Zeke. Hypnosis can make you remember things, can’t it?’
His hands have a firm grip on the steering wheel as they drive past Ikea and the retail warehouses out at Tornby. She reaches for the stereo, turning down the choral music. The people in the car parks are moving slowly in the sun, but are still heading determinedly towards the air conditioning of the shops.
‘So they say. But I’ve never heard of us ever using that method. It sounds a bit dodgy, if you ask me.’
‘But this isn’t a joke. It could work.’
‘I know what you’re thinking, Malin.’
‘We only have access to five per cent of our memories, at most,’ Malin says.
‘Have you been watching the Discovery Channel again?’
‘Shut up, Zeke.’
He grins at her.
‘Hands on the wheel, eyes on the road.’
‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ Zeke says. ‘I’ll try to remember that.’
39
‘So, you little black-haired worm,’ Waldemar Ekenberg says as he pushes Behzad Karami up against the wall of his one-room flat. ‘Did you really think you’d get away with lying to the police? One of your so-called friends has ratted on you. What were you doing last night? The night between Wednesday and Thursday, the night between Saturday and Sunday? You raped and murdered them. Didn’t you?’
Behzad Karami still cocky.
Still convinced he can handle this.
But you’re in the shit, Per Sundsten thinks. He’s going to beat everything he wants to know out of you.
‘Did you get a taste for little girls when you gangbanged that fourteen-year-old last winter? Huh?’
‘We didn’t . . .’
Waldemar pushes Behzad Karami back, thumping him against the wall again.
Then his voice softens: ‘Don’t try that with me. You know you raped those girls. Did you get a taste for it? And then it went wrong? And you ended up killing . . .?’
His voice gets louder with every word and then he punches Behzad Karami in the stomach. He folds in half like a flick-knife.
Behzad Karami gradually collapses down the wall, and Waldemar takes a few steps back, his pupils enlarged from the adrenalin.
‘I need a piss,’ he says. ‘Keep an eye on this sack of shit for me.’
Behzad Karami gasps for air, finds it and takes five deep breaths before turning to look imploringly at Per.
Don’t look at me, Per thinks. I can’t do a thing to stop him, I don’t want to, because what if he’s right?
‘It would be best if you just told him what you were doing,’ Per says in his very gentlest voice. ‘Christ, he even scares me. And he never gives up.’
‘He’s mad.’
‘Come on. Tell us. Then everything will feel better.’
‘Will you believe me?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
Behzad Karami is panting, but the colour has returned to his face.
‘On whether you’re telling the truth.’
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.’
‘I suppose you’ll just have to try us.’
Per looks down at Behzad Karami, bent, but not yet broken.
‘Try us,’ Per says, and then Waldemar is back in the room again.
‘So, the little shit has found his senses again, has he? Good. I’ll just have to see to it that he loses them again.’
‘Do what the fuck you like.’
‘I’m going to,’ Waldemar says, then kicks hard twice at Behzad Karami’s left shoulder, and Per sees the shoulder dislocate under the yellow and red T-shirt, and the scream that rises to the ceiling of the room and squeezes out through the window is full of primal pain, a scream of self-preservation crackling out from the core of the brain, out through the larynx and tongue.
‘So it hurts, then,’ Waldemar whispers into the ear of the whimpering, recumbent Behzad Karami. He puts his arm on his shoulder, gently, and presses down slightly, and Behzad Karami screams again, not so loudly this time, and Per can see from his whole bearing that he’s close to collapse.
Why resist?
Because that’s your role?
Because you did it?
‘Wait, I’ll tell you, I’ll show you my secret.’
Behzad Karami is sitting on the sofa with his left arm twisted backwards, over the back of the sofa.
Waldemar behind him.
‘Don’t make a fuss, you little shit.’
And Waldemar pulls Behzad Karami’s arm back, and there’s a clicking, meaty sound as the shoulder pops back in, and the scream that comes from Behzad Karami’s mouth is as primal as before, but this time contains the relief of an entire body.
‘Fucking wimp.’
Waldemar grins.
Per wants to get out of the flat, go home, wants this day to be over, but it isn’t over, not yet, not by a long way.
The warm, grey-black water of the Stångån River.
The fish sluggish, lethargic down there, maybe they can feel their flesh changing form as the temperature of the water rises, Per Sundsten thinks.
Nowhere to flee. And if the heat is almost making the water stop being water, then what do the fish do? Float up to the surface, lifeless, swollen guts upmost, the shiny silver of their scales dulled by the murky liquid.
The football pitches of Johannelund, their netless goals waiting for a cooler season, until someone feels like kicking a ball again, it’s too hot now, impossible, dangerous.
‘If I show you, you have to believe me. I’ve got nothing to do with any of that shit.’
Behzad Karami in handcuffs in the back seat of the car. They’re on their way to the allotments in Johannelund, down by the river. That was where he wanted to take them, refusing to explain why.
‘Nothing to do with any of that shit.’
The words echo in Per’s head as they walk along the well-tended gravel path that weaves between the allotments. The water sprinklers are working overtime, trying to keep the grass lawns green, and save the currants and gooseberries as best they can. The allotment owners are hiding in the shade of parasols or under the porches of their colourful little cottages.